New Writing Time

Some work-in-progress. Trying to get back on the wagon here. I've got a new writing time from 8-9:30 every night. Let's try it on for size.

I've tried starting this particular story several times, but this is the first opening I've written where the setting feels right and the main character isn't a total asshole.

----------------
Yousra had always feared the bodies. Not the ones she killed, no, but the ones out on the hill that the heroes had left to the dung beetles and markflies. The children she killed were marked for death from birth – deformed children, dumb and blind, their twisted bodies already rotten and gangrenous in the womb. Those were the bodies she was tasked with gutting and burning before dawn. Some wombs drew up the pollution of the world, condensed it, spat it back out. That offal was hers.

But the bodies on the hill were men, just men. Tawny and smooth-featured, they were beautiful, all of them... The heroes skinned them from claws to tail and left them to die in the sun. A reminder to others of what waited for them beyond the thorny fence of the village. Some nights, before the double dawn, Yousra would climb up on the hill amid the babies' ashes and listen to the men scream from beyond the thorn fence.

Most days, she merely did her duty and came home. Burned her clothes. Washed her hair in her mothers' blood. Then she slept the peculiar sleep of the priests, the sleep-that-was-not. Her body remained alert while she dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed. Sometimes she remembered the conversations she had with those who visited while she slept, but more often – especially now – she remembered little more than the dreaming.

So when Ashet, the priest from the neighboring village, greeted her that day and said they had an appointment, she followed after him willingly, blindly. She pulled on a fresh robe of hemp and thorns and tied her machete at her hip. She had never done much more with the machete than murder the village's mewling monsters and cut back weeds, but the weight of it comforted her. A silly thing, to fear another priest enough to wear her machete. What did she have to fear, from a priest? They were not heroes. She knew that well enough. But she also knew that as things got worse, the people were becoming more desperate. Just three days before, a woman burned her husbands and herself. She had run out beyond the thorn fence, covered in flaming pitch, and died screaming and clawing at the earth.

Yousra and Ashet walked to the edge of the village, side by side. She nearly took his hand. It would have been polite. But instead, they strolled along the thorn fence a hands' length apart. Above them, the heroes' ships roared across the purple sky, so high up they were merely silver thrushes.

The big amber leaves of the walking trees shivered as they passed. Every year, the trees grew a new root, pulled up the old, and slowly crept out past the thorn fence. Another three or four years and half their flock would have escaped the thorn fence. Half the flock gone over into the wastelands, the unprotected lands, would leave their fields with barely enough shelter from the ravages of the autumn winds. Ten years more, and the fields would simply blow away.

“Have you thought much upon my offer?” Ashet asked.

Yousra had to think long and hard about that. What was the last offer he'd put to her?

“The marriage?” she said, because in her mind, all of his requests – for milking ale, more time at the village school, a day with her lending library – blurred together into one long litany of need, a black hole of desires she had no interest in filling.

“Marriage is an outdated notion,” he said. “We make families from the dust out here, or no families at all. My brother is anxious to meet with you. I believe the three of us will be a fine fit.”

A fine fit, three to a bed. Yousra had never wanted more than two husbands. She was not greedy. A man to work the fields and bring in income, and a man to raise her babies and keep her house. But there were fewer and fewer women now, and she had to think of the others first. If she wanted to be headwoman someday, she must do what was right for the village, not her comfort. Was it fair to expect her sisters to marry three brothers, while she took only two?

“I'm thinking on it,” she said, which was a polite way to refuse. He knew that as well as she, but he persisted.

“It would be a good life, Yousra. My brother has a fine farm in --”

“I've seen his farm,” Yousra said. She'd tended every farm for thirty kilometers in every direction. Every farm left within the thorn fence. Fewer every year, as the wasteland encroached. “I delivered his wife's babies. All of them.”

“Yes,” Ashet said, and his expression darkened. He fell silent.

Yousra tried to remember the wife, but could recall nothing of her but the sour smell of milk and wine gone to vinegar. Yousra had delivered her twins – two sets of them – all monsters. The woman killed herself not long after. She was not the first. Would not be the last. A waste and a terror, to lose so many women to pollution and madness.

“Is it the labor you fear?” Ashet asked.

Yousra looked at him sideways, then turned away, to look out past the fence. Out on the dry, desiccated land, the skeleton of a thorn tree marked the horizon. In her youth, the tree marked the beginning of her mother's starch farm. Three hundred acres of soy, yams, and grizzled water pears. Waves and waves of it, all through the growing season. Now... just death. Barren and diseased, like Yousra's people. She absently touched the machete at her hip, thought of the dead woman.

“I don't fear birth. I fear that marriages and more children won't be what saves us.”

Ashet smiled. “It's the only thing that can.”

“Is it? To continue with a way of life that's dying? When a man comes to you with a rotten wound, do you tell him to continue with his work?”

“We aren't rotten.”

“Aren't we?” She pointed out beyond the skeletal tree. “My mothers are buried out there. Their bodies ate them from the inside, long before the heroes came. Something rotten has been planted here, and we must cut it out.”

Ashet sighed. He pulled his hands behind his back, paused. “Marry us, Yousra. There is still happiness to be had here.”

“Happiness, yes,” Yousra said, but she was not looking at him. She was looking out at the tree. “But not a future.”

On "Promoting" Obesity

Isn't there some inherent sexism in focusing on the weight of a woman who is making a living because of her singing and songwriting skills? Does every Jack Black interview have to include "relevant" information about his weight? Seth Rogen became a star without a svelte physique. No one cared if we posted about those guys without mentioning their weight, but women must be small and tiny and delicate and therefore feminine, right? And let's not pretend this is a health issue: We see images of stars smoking and drinking and frighteningly thin, and never get emails about how we're "promoting" those unhealthy lifestyles.

Tofu Shirataki

Low carb pasta (no, really!). A blend of yam and tofu that... tastes like noodles! For serious!

I ate a huge plate of this last night that only cost me 25 carbs. HUGE PLATE. It was excellent!

Right after we took our first bite, J. insisted that he's been itching to make me a threeway... (I knew it).

What about low-carb chili, you ask? That's why Skyline chili was invented.

Halva: Fudge for Diabetics

2.5 carbs a serving. No joke! It is tasty and delicious!

This was a totally random find at Jungle Jim's yesterday.

Eating well gets easier and easier as I expand my shopping range.

Team

J is a full-time student now, which means he has a flexible schedule and a bit more time around the house than I do. It means that when I come home from work, he's just come in from working out in the yard, swept the whole house, finished up the dishes, and is usually cooking dinner (I cook on Fri, Sat, Sun, and Thurs is usually a leftover day. He cooks Mon, Tues, Weds).

I clean the bathroom once a week, help with yardwork when I get the chance (generally maintaining my flower beds, sweeping, collecting yard waste), and we generally share dishes and meal cleanup.

We each do our own laundry. Once a week, I also wash the sheets. We take turns taking out trash as it piles up around the house. It's fun to see who gets to it first.

Strangely enough, the only part of this we had the conversation about was laundry. I said I'd prefer to keep it separate, since I still had a weird laundry aversion from my first relationship, where I did... well, every fucking thing. Including his laundry (this would be the relationship that woke me up to feminism. If that was what a het relationship was, I wanted no part in it).

We didn't split costs down the middle, though. We sat down and based our portion of expenses on what each of us brought in. I bring in 2/3 the money, I pay 2/3 the bills. J. still isn't thrilled about this, but I reminded him that if our positions were reversed, he'd have done the same. In time, what we're each bringing in will change considerably, and we can budget accordingly.

I really like this. Every bit of it. For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm in a truly equal partnership. I don't feel like I'm the one always picking up after somebody. I don't feel like I've got four jobs. I feel like I'm with somebody who's got my back. I feel totally supported.

It's odd to me that in many relationships (het or not, but particularly het), the more-messy partner doesn't get how much of a burden that daily chores put on the person who ends up doing them. If you actually share? My god, it's amazing. It really is. All of a sudden you have energy to do things, you're a lot more interested in sex. You're a lot less stressed. And - this is the big one - you don't you resent your partner.

And that's the big part of it that people don't get, I think. If you're a woman and you're doing more than 50% of the housework, chances are you're going to resent your husband. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But the irritation wears you down over time. For me, that kind of irritation is just unbearable. I can't stand it. Some people can let it grind away, and then they fight over it periodically, but for me... yeah.

The sheer inequality in the amount of work we did in my first relationship drove me over the edge. I was working 6 days a week, going to school, writing, doing the laundry, doing the dishes, cooking, cleaning... I was exhausted. All the time. And I thought that's just how it was, and I was the problem because I just didn't "get it." I just needed to buckle down and accept it.

But doing that... it was sacrificing some core piece of myself. Housework is a symbol. Your participation - or not - signals how truly egalitarian you believe your relationship to be (I really think this).

And I'm sure I'll get all sorts of people who say, "Oh no, it's not like that!" but it is (I also, of course, know many instances where partners pick up the slack because their spouse isn't physically capable of doing the work - because of illness or constant travel. That's obviously not what I'm talking about here. If J. or I get sick, our responsibilites will adjust accordingly).

There's just so much bound up in the "woman doing all the housework" thing. It feels so much like institutionalized slavery. This strange, nebulous expectation that so many of us hold ourselves to. I never wanted a husband. I wanted a partner. I wanted somebody who would stand next to me. Not run out in front of me screaming at me to catch up or stand behind me with a whip urging me on. I wanted a buddy. A friend. A companion.

I got that.

And yes, partnership is about a lot more than housework. But how much of your own weight you're willing to pull for your team says a lot about how you regard your teammate.

I like my team.

Motivation!

I could use some!

Also, another air conditioner!

Why I Still Love My IUD

One word:

Libido.

Today's Stats

Today is hotter than hell. I plan to spend the rest of the evening reading in the bedroom where the box air conditioner resides. I should prob'ly start tracking my wordcount here too. Need to get back on the writing bandwagon.

Hot hot hot!

15 min free weights this morning
10 min bike ride to work
10 min bike ride home
20 min on the elliptical
10 min Wii Fit

Hot Eats

Breakfast: Egg mixed with spinach, tomato, & cheese
Snack: 2 tbs peanut butter mixed with 1/4 cup peanuts
Lunch: Spaghetti squash spaghetti and 1/2 cup pecans
Snack: 2 string cheese
Dinner: Chix strips, spinach salad, and peas
Snack: Perhaps a choc covered banana later?

Hot Sugar

Breakfast: 91
Snack: 157
Lunch: 129
Post lunch: 101
Dinner: 89
Post-dinner: 137

Huzzah!

The Money Shuffle

Nobody's immune to it, and I've been hearing more and more about it as those of us who had contracts, savings, and other reserves and fall-backs slowly eat through them.

Things aren't so bad here at Hacienda Dayton, but a judder of nervousness just went round the house this evening when we realized we were very nearly just shy of being able to pay rent on time next week.

J. is now going to school full time, relying on grants and student loans - all of which have been delayed until next week (the quarter started two weeks ago). We've been getting by on my salary and his savings for the last month. I also had $300 in savings, $150 of which we burned through yesterday for a mini-celebration celebrating good things that needed to be celebrated, and which we didn't expect would suddenly mean so much.

A little creative (read: groceries on the credit card) accounting (I get paid Thursday), solved the rent issue, but it was a good reminder that now that he's in school and I'm the sole breadwinner, we need to tighten things up around here... especially with how wacky student loan payouts are (nearly as bad as book check payouts, and on the same bizarre "we're not giving it all to you at once!" sort of schedule - like they'll blow it all on twizzlers and coffee if given a lump sum).

I got the crazy news at work last month that all raises had been suspended and they'd put a hiring freeze in effect (for reasons various and sundry which I won't relate here, but suffice to say, we'd done very, very well last year and this came as a big shock to all of us. Turns out it doesn't matter how well you do if your lending bank tightens its standards because of Great Depression madness). We're not anticipating layoffs right now, but we won't know for sure until mid-July. We've had to dump some core outside help my dept. was getting, tho, and it's meant a bigger workload with no raise (and I already bust my ass at work), which was a big morale buster for me.

In any case, the "what about rent?" fiasco reminded me of just how tenuous our position is, and how much it relies on my continued steady employment (and a late - as usual - book check which I should have signed the paperwork for by now). I don't think we'll have to cancel our August and September vacations, but I was conscious when I put together the September package that I wouldn't have to pay for it until August, so we still have time to back out (i.e. it's not paid yet, just booked and a small down payment made).

Overall, we're going to be a little more frugal, going forward. I'll be going through the budget again tonight and seeing how much of the "fun" bucket can be deferred to the "savings" bucket. With just one of us employed, that savings bucket is going to be more and more crucial going forward.

There's a big neighborhood yard sale this weekend that J. is going to make possible by cashing in his petty change jar so we can free up a few dollars for deals.

We've been living very well. I just got a cold reminder of how tenuous that wellness really is.

Today's Stats

Again, pardon the lists while I get back on track:

Hot rides:

Today was an "off" day for me, fitness-wise

15 min free weights this morning
10 min bike ride to work
10 min bike ride home
40 min Wii Fit

Hot eats:

Breakfast: Egg mixed with spinach, tomato, & cheese
Snack: 2 tbs peanut butter mixed with 1/4 cup peanuts
Lunch: Rueban sandwich and cabbage coleslaw (srsly un-low-carb)
Snack: 2 string cheese
Dinner: Chix strips, spinach salad, and low carb tortilla chips w/hummus
Snack: Half cup blueberries with whipped cream

I should also start listing my "sugar correction" snacks for when I get low. Had a serious low last night of 43 and again after work today (34).

Hot sugar:
Not bothering to post my sugar lows. Been having a lot the last couple of days - due to Wii Fit and new PDM settings. Better than the highs I was having before I finally refined the settings.

Breakfast: 138
Snack: 132
Lunch: 120
Post lunch: 245 (yeah, that rueban was a killer)
Dinner: 91
Post-dinner: 79

Today's Activity

I may start keeping a little activity log here to help track my fitness/insulin/food levels. It may help me stay accountable.

Hot rides:

15 min free weights this morning
10 min bike ride to work
40 min speed walking ("free" day with the trainers today)
10 min bike ride home
20 min on elliptical machine
30 min Wii Fit

Hot eats:

Breakfast: Egg mixed with spinach, tomato, & cheese
Snack: 2 string cheese
Lunch: Spaghetti (made w/ spaghetti squash) and 1/4 cup peanuts
Dinner: Pork chop and brussel sprouts
Snack: Low carb brownie with dollop o' whipped cream

Hot sugar:

Breakfast: 81
Snack: 132
Lunch: 62
Post lunch: 107
Dinner: 154
Post-dinner: 227 (lazy insulin math on my part, adjusted)

Latest Mod

Eyepatch is the best.

Badass of the Week

Blenda.

In The Future...

"In the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes."
- Seen here.

Low-Carb Brownies

This is a modification of this recipe, as agave nectar is not strictly low carb, but low glycemic index. The carbs still get to you, they just take longer,which is a royal bitch if you you're manually clocking your insulin. But if you're a type 2, agave's probably fine.

Type 1, eh, pain in the ass.

So, bring on the Splenda.

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups black beans, drained (low sodium if you can find it)
1 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tsp ground coffee
1 tbs cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon sea salt
4 large eggs
1½ cups Splenda
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line an 11- by 18-inch baking pan foil and lightly oil with canola oil spray.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl in the microwave in 30 second intervals. Stir with a spoon to melt the chocolate completely.

Place the beans, 1/2 cup of the walnuts, the vanilla extract, and half of the melted chocolate mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Blend about 2 minutes, or until smooth. The batter should be thick and the beans smooth. Set aside (I don't have a food processor. I used a fork to moosh the beans and then stirred it all together).

In a large bowl, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup walnuts, remaining melted chocolate mixture, ground coffee, cocoa powder, and salt. Mix well and set aside.

In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer beat the eggs until light and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the Splenda and beat well. Set aside.

Add the bean/chocolate mixture to the coffee/chocolate mixture. Now add the coconut (yep, all in the same bowl). Stir until blended well.

Add the egg mixture, reserving about 1/2 cup. Mix well. Pour the totally mixed batter into the prepared pan.

Using an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1/2 cup egg mixture until light and fluffy. Drizzle over the brownie batter. Use a wooden toothpick to pull the egg mixture through the batter, creating a marbled effect.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the brownies are set. Let cool in the pan in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour before serving.

Tastes amazing with sugar free whipped topping!

8-12 carbs a piece, according to the meter (that doesn't could the whipped cream!)

Things are so bad we might have to layoff Andre...

(click to embiggen)

Hardworking Dawgs

... have to commute, too.

More here.

Isn't it Obvious?

Of course!

I've always thought we took old manuscripts and buildings a bit too seriously... I can't wait for future generations to work out what the religious significance of The Bean is.

OmniPod Customer Service is Full of WIN

So, I've had the Omnipod for about a year now (as of July).

Except for a truly horrifying batch of pods that arrived during month 4, it's been a pretty liberating experience. You don't realize just how liberating until you have to go back to shots for a day or two and all your math is fucked up and you have to start recalculating and calibrating everything at mealtimes in order to fit in your workouts instead of just, you know, dialing into the PDM exactly how little or how much insulin you want.

See, after a year of being hooked to my PDM like - well, like a diabetic person who relies on it to live - I lost it yesterday somewhere between my office and the bike rack downstairs.

I still have no idea how this happened. I had it when I did my post-lunch correction. But when I leaned over to put my bike chain my backpack - no PDM.

See, other insulin pumps are totally hooked up to you. They have this long tubing connected to their control unit, which is hard to lose. Omnipod is different, which is why I love it. I can run around, work out, go swimming, whatever, with no tubing sticking out. My PDM communicates wirelessly with the actual insulin pod that's stuck to my skin. You only need to be near the PDM when you're bolusing or when you're changing a program (creating a temporary basal rate, suspending or reducing basal rate in anticipation of a workout, etc.). The rest of the time, the pod that's attached to you just doles out insulin according to your pre-programmed schedule.

So, I wasn't totally fucked when I lost the PDM. I was still getting my basal insulin. But the PDM is also my glucose monitor. And the PDM controls all of my boluses. So after spending 45 minutes searching my office, the foyer, the elevators, the entire floor where my office is located, I swung by CVS.

Now let's go through just how much $$ it takes to keep me alive.

I spent $75 on a glucose monitor that I *thought* was compatible with the testing strips I already had. Got all the way home only to discover they were not.

Spent $75 on a vial of 50 testing strips (the smallest amount they come in).

When I called up Omnipod, I was told that replacement PDMs cost $400.

I was getting pretty hysterical by this point.

Lucky for me, the rep was just giving me my options.

"Our new model is also out," she said, and then she said something that I swear to god sounded like, "One thousand forty nine ninety-five."

FUCK.

"No, no," she said, as I began to hyperventilate. "It's $149.95 for the new model."

Fuck, dude, seriously.

I'd been wondering how long this would take. If you can buy a cell phone for under $100, your wireless medical hardware controller shouldn't be $400 (I have since learned that $150 is the "upgrade" price for existing customers. It's over $900 new! SRSLY? C'mon).

She transferred me to shipping. He said, unfortunately, they were totally out of the new model (this was why the rep initially quoted me the old model price). They could ship it Monday, tho.

Queue me hyperventilating again. Because, see, you have to change your pod every three days. The one I was wearing was only good another two days. Then it was all Lantus shots and wonky guessing games again - that meant three days of adjusting to that, then another three days to get used to the pump again when it came in. It meant wild-eyed, bitchy-ass Kameron for at least two weeks.

"Let me call the local rep in your area," the shipping guy said. "She should be able to have one you can borrow for a few days."

I hang up thinking it'll be a few hours before I hear anything. I'm already formulating contingency plans.

Instead, the local rep for my area calls five minutes later and says she'll drop off my new PDM at noon. "It's an old model," she said. "Just keep it. I'm a t1, too. I just got back from Italy, and let me tell you - it's really, really good to have a backup!"

By 1pm - less than 24 hours after losing my PDM - the local rep had dropped off a new (original model) PDM at my house with J. I was able to come home from work and change out the pod without a problem using my new PDM.

Monday, they'll be shipping me the new model next day air, and I should get it Tuesday.

After the hell of dealing with insurance companies, I expected similar crazy treatment from Omnipod. Because it has to do with medical stuff, I conflate my experiences with the insurance company with my experiences with Omnipod. In fact, the folks at Omnipod are pretty awesome. I always get a new pod within 3 days when there's an error with one of them (and the failure rate is down to the promised 1-2% now, as opposed to that three months of horror when I experienced the 20% failure rate), the reps on the phone are always great, and... and this. Well, this was just amazing.

Because... you know what? I hate this illness. I hate it. And what I hate more than anything is being reminded of just how incredibly weak and dependent I am on the good will of other people. It's an incredibly weak and vulnerable place to be. I'm not shitting when I say I was hyperventilating on my way to the pharmacy to get some replacement hardware to get me through the night. I keep repeating my, "I'm fine," mantra the whole time. I was suffused in this incredible, deep, ridiculous fear. When Jay Lake talks about The Fear, about getting hit with The Fear... yeah, I have an idea of what that feels like.

I'm horrified and embarrassed at how totally and completely I'm taken out when this vulnerabilty gets hit. I managed to not break down until after the local rep called back and said I'd have a PDM the next day.

Then I knew I could lose it. Once the crisis is averted, yeah... then you can totally fucking lose it. And I did. And it felt really good to lose it, because it was a crushing, penetrating, breathless fear that I never want to feel again, but that I know I'm destined to deal with because... because this is what I've got.

In some ways, I think I haven't come to grips with chronic illness yet, with what it means. Especially when you've got the pod, you can pretend you're really normal. You can do stuff without too much planning. You have fewer lows, you get more exercise. You don't have to haul out a whole shoot-em-up-kit whenever you sit down to a meal. You just pull out this PDM that looks like a cell phone, bleed on it, punch a few buttons, and you're done.

You're allowed to forget - for weeks at a time - just how incredibly vulnerable you are.

Latest Pony Mod

This was initially supposed to be a Red Bull pony, but things got out of hand. I wasn't so sure how she ended up with wings.

When I expressed my consternation over this development to J., he said simply, "Red Bull gives you wings!"

Quote of the Day

"There is no more pure love in the world than the love a young writer has for the old writer he [sic] will someday become."

- Nabokov
(via NorwichGrrl)

My House is Full of Bugs

This should surprise no one.

Tonight's Song, Stuck on Repeat

You know when you find those songs that just, well, sound like somebody wrote them about your life? That's this song for me.

Well, this and Leed's United. Heh heh.


Five and Dime
The Wind and the Swell

I sleep all through my mornings
Spend my afternoons just lying in my bed
Cause I’ve done everything I could do
And I’ve said everything that I could’ve said
It kills me to think that straight lines
Have taken over the life that I’ve led

So say fare-thee-well to the concrete
I try to stand up on my own two feet
There aren’t any more winds in the road
That will be my time to go

With my eyes glued on the road
And from my fingers to my toes
I am aware of everything that I can know
So I’ll stand tall and I’ll stand proud
I’ll sing a song, I’ll sing it loud
I’ll bury all my apprehension underground

I don’t even know which way to go
I’ll pack my things and head home

I keep smiling at everybody
Passing by me while I get dirty looks
All my friends were empty liars
So I’ve just been hanging out
With the wanderers and crooks
There’s no value in education
It’s just lies and pens and paper and notebooks

Forgot about the state of the world
So I’ll just fall in love with a girl
Got too many years left to spend
She’s all I think about in the end

I’ll take my cue from rock ‘n roll
And everything that I’ve been told
Everything that I have known for my whole life
And I’ve been too afraid to use
And I’ve been too weak to abuse
And too concerned that I might lose this silly game

I don’t even know which way to go
Pack my things and head home

I’ve got some family in Alaska
Got some friends out in old Ohio
And I’d be fine to take some sun
And I’d be more than fine to play in the snow

I don’t want to be no businessman
Don’t want to be no crooked CEO
So take me out to Kodiak Island
We’ll go out to sea for a while
With my legs hanging off the stern
See what I can learn

The Northern Lights say hi
And throw all their colours into the sky
I’ll be sure to tell them that I’m doing fine
There’s just so much to explore
That I have never seen before
There are some things that are
Just easier to ignore

I don’t even know which way to go
I’ll pack my things and head home

Beowulf

I can't believe people actually took the trouble to make this movie. What a waste of space.

Work it Out

I've put on six pounds since J. and I moved in together, largely due to the lack of gym across the street (I got used to the convenience of the gym at The Greene), and our shared love of good food. And, OK, some of this is also weight I put on *because* of the new "low rep, heavy weight" routine with our trainers at work, which has really nicely increased my muscle mass, but I'm not silly enough to delude myself into thinking I've gained 6 lbs of muscle in 8 weeks.

And... well, let's face it: I'm not functioning optiminally when I'm not eating right and exercising regularly. I've been trying to get off carbs for good the last few weeks, but there's the inevitable, "Oh, I'll treat myself to a few fries at Red Robin" or "Oh, Donatoes pizza isn't actually as bad for me as those thick crust pizzas," and then I'm back on the sugar rollercoaster again, and it always takes me a day or two to get back into prime head functioning.

I really needed to be able to write with a clear head.

So, enough was enough. I was just feeling far too doughy. Biking to work every day wasn't making up for the extra workout or two a week that I've been missing since I moved.

So I started penciling in 20 minutes of cardio twice a week (Tae bo) and 20 minutes of pilates twice a week (on the days I also do strength training at the gym). Pair this with the 2 miles on the bike every day, and it should kick me back into gear. I also decided to start packing reasonable lunches. One enchilada or chicken wrap paired with string cheese and peanuts is perfectly fine. I really don't need two.

Next stop is to curb my soda intake. We drink Coke Zero here like it's going out of style. Having cold drinks in the fridge is especially tempting now when it's so damn hot outside. I'm subbing those out again with homemade iced tea. Not only is the soda expensive, but drinking more than one or two disrupts my sleep and tends to trigger my desire for something sweet to go with it.

Strengthwise, however, I've been pretty happy with my new routine with the personal trainers at work. What I love about heavy lifting is that you can see the results within just a couple of weeks. Getting up the pedestrian walkway over the highway on my bike has gotten easier and easier. I went from 3rd gear on my bike to 6th gear in just a couple of weeks of riding, and I know some of that is a result of the lower body training I'm doing during my workouts.

Should take a couple of weeks to norm the new routine. Already feeling far less fuzzy headed. Ah, sugar sugar.

Diabetic-Friendly Low Carb Coconut Cookies

1 cup almond flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup Splenda (3/4 for less sweet)
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon of baking powder
3 tablespoons vanilla (liberal splash, really)
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup of flaked coconut (unsweetened)

Combine all ingredients except coconut and blend with a mixer. Stir in the coconut and mix well. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a cookie sheet.

Bake at 375°F for 10 minutes.

My insulin budget works out to 5 carbs a piece for these.

For 12-15 carb pecan cream cheese cookies, see here.

Excerpt: Black Desert Gets a Plot Shift

Black Desert is currently in the middle of a heavy rewrite. Here's some additional sceneage I was working on today (I'll post something with a bit more action tomorrow):

____________________


“Mercia’s mother called,” Suha said. She put out the cigarette and stuffed a wad of sen between teeth and cheek. Her teeth were stained bloody crimson from long years of use. Both habits were far healthier substitutes to venom.

“She deposit my fee?” Nyx asked.

“Yeah. Says she’s taking you off her daughter’s case, though.”

“You serious?”

“Says she heard we had some trouble downtown today.”

“Fucking diplomats. She should thank me for keeping her daughter alive.”

“I called the bounty note office like you asked,” Suha said. She started the bakkie and turned them out onto south Raban. From here, Nyx could just see the curved amber spire of the Orrizo in the distance – a monument to anonymous dead men. “There’s no record that anybody put out a note on you or Mercia. That bel dame was definitely rogue. Maybe running black work for some Ras Tiegan government official? Somebody who wanted to get to Mercia’s mother?”

“Then at least I’ve got my right ass cheek covered,” Nyx said. The left, she wasn’t so sure about.

Eshe hopped up and down in his seat. Nyx wondered if she was ever that giddy at fourteen. “Does this mean we’re going to the bel dame office?”

“It means I’m going to the bel dame office,” Nyx said. She palmed some of Suha’s sen.

“Thought you made a habit of running black work back when you were a bel dame,” Suha said. “Why do you care so much about turning her in? Burn the head and be done with it.”

“I don’t generally mind folks running around picking up illegal bounties,” Nyx said, “but she made a mistake.”

“And what was that?” Suha said.

“She tried to kill me.”

Eshe snickered.

“You sure they’ll let you in there?” Suha said.

“We’ll find out.”

The bel dame reclamation office in Mushtallah was at the base of the city’s sixth hill, known to many as Bloodmount. Particularly pious Nasheenians paid exorbitant prices to take a brief, musty tour of the interior of the derelict that made up the center of the hill. Most of the hills of Mushtallah were artificial. Their rotting cores were made up of old refugee ships, derelicts from the mass exodus from the moons back at the beginning of the world. Nyx had never been down there – she didn’t much care what came before her – but she heard most of it was sealed off anyway. What was left was just a sterile tangle of old metal, bug secretions, and bone dust.

As they came around Palace Hill, Bloodmount came into view. At the height of the hill, a single tower gleamed a burnished copper color. That was the only visible part of the ship above ground, a twisted metal spire where every bel dame took her oath to uphold the old laws of blood debt.

“You sure you want to do this today?” Suha muttered, and spit sen out the open window.

Nyx stared out at the spire. The bel dame training schools, residences, and reclamation office ringed the base of the hill. From here, she couldn’t see the organic filter that protected the hill, but she’d been through it enough to know that it was the most powerful one in Nasheen. Hard to do, with Palace Hill just up the street. The inner filters were more precise, and more deadly. She didn’t figure she’d get much past the first filter on this little jaunt.

Suha drove to the big, burst-scarred main gate at the base of the hill. This neighborhood was mostly boxing gyms and cheap eateries. There were a few shabby text stores and some bodegas. Nyx stepped out of the bakkie and looked up in the tenement windows above the shops. Teenage girls - bel dame hopefuls and university students - sat around on the tiny balconies. High pitched laughter trickled out over the street. She caught a whiff of marijuana, opium, and the distinctive milky stink of too many teenage women. A couple of leggy girls stood on the stoop of a bodega across from the bakkie. They smoked clove and marijuana cigarettes and wore calf-length burnouses and looked Nyx over with heavy-lidded eyes.

“Can I come?” Eshe asked, leaning out the window. A couple of passing girls turned at his voice and stared outright. One of them stumbled. Her companion shrieked with laughter.

Nyx pushed his head back into the bakkie. “Stay with Suha. This isn’t a good place for boys.”

“Nyx –“

“You heard me. I’ll lose com with you once I’m inside the filter,” Nyx told Suha. “I’m not back in two hours, you file a report with the Order Keepers.” Not that it would do much good. Bel dames considered themselves autonomous. How they dealt with Nyx and her news was no business of the Queen’s, so far as they were concerned - even if Nyx hadn’t been one of their number in over a decade. At least if someone filed a report her absence would be noted.

Nyx motioned for Suha to pop the trunk. She dug the burnous-wrapped bel dame’s head out of the back and slung it over her shoulder. The burnous had eaten most of the blood, but it was stained a clotted amber brown.

She leaned into the driver’s side window and nodded to the side street. “There’s a good Ras Tiegan place two streets over called the Montrouge. Get the kid a soda and some curried dog.”

Eshe grimaced. “Tonight’s fight night.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Nyx said. “Save room for rotis and beer, all right? I might be a bit.”

She wanted to pat his head, but he’d been too old for that for a long time. She snorted. Kids belonged at the coast. Nobody else knew what to do with them. She'd always thought it'd get easier as he got older. But it just got more awkward. Some days she wished he'd stayed eight years old forever.

“You watch yourself in there,” Suha said.

“You watch yourself out here,” Nyx said, and waved. She walked up to the front gate, and turned to watch Suha drive back out onto the main street.

There was a young woman at the gate, just a kid, maybe twenty. Couldn’t have served a day at the front. She had clear skin and clear, shiny eyes. Definitely not a day at the front.

“Here to report a rogue bel dame,” Nyx said.

“You got identification?” the woman said. Nyx held out her hand.

The woman pricked Nyx’s finger and smeared the blood on her desktop slide.

Nyx watched her reaction as the file came up. But the girl barely blinked. She raised her head.

“You’ve got level one clearance. You can go as far as the reclamation office without being cleaned.” She punched open the gate.

Nyx slipped inside. The gate clanged behind her. Old metal, the sort of stuff that came off derelicts. She walked across the courtyard, past the bakkie barns. A couple of tissue mechanics raised their heads as she passed.

The bounty reclamation office was a single-story building of amber stone. Most of the original arches had been whittled away by small arms fire, and what remained had been badly reconstructed. Only half of the bel dame oath was visible. The complete line, the heart of the bel dame oath, was “My life for a thousand.” All that was visible above the office was “My life.” Nyx thought that somehow appropriate, knowing what she did about bel dames.

She hesitated at the stoop. It'd been awhile since she crossed one of these thresholds.

"Well, shit," she said aloud, and hauled the bel dame's head into the office.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Don't. Just... Don't.

I'm all about a good Kevin Smith movie. This is not a good Kevin Smith movie. The characters are not only not likeable (which can be forgiven - there are plenty of unlikeable folks in fiction) but not interesting. There's this crazy misogynist bent running throughout (it's about porn, afterall. Still, I'd hoped it would be a little more transgressively about porn. I should know better than to expect transgression from Kevin Smith).

The real letdown here was Seth Rogan, who I genuinely like in 40 Year Old Virgin, and who I'd really have liked to develop a crush on. But he's actively unlikeable in this movie. He goes off on this really mean, sexist rant about halfway through, and I'd like to think it was just great acting, but I don't get that his depth as an actor could really stretch too far from home plate.

So the show is sexist to the point of misogyny, ridiculously racist, and worst of all: none of it's even funny. If you're going to be sexist and racist, can you do it in a smart, sly, *funny* way? There's a way to do this that's clever. This movie isn't clever. South Park knows how to criticize everybody in a way that's creative and... not lazy.

This is just a lazy piece of storytelling with dull characters who don't even stay in character. It's a lazy orgasm of every "nice guy"'s wish fulfillment fantasy: that the woman you've been pining after for years who insists that you'll always be "just friends" finally has sex with you and realizes - OMG! - she's actually in love with you!

See, guys, all we really need is one good lay.... Maybe if you just get her drunk enough or poor enough she'll sleep with you! THEN SHE WILL KNOW THE TRUTH.

And it's sad, right? Because in the movie, he genuinely likes her, and it made me think of all these sad, groping guys who don't understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

You know, I write fantasy novels, and this fantasy was just too over the top for me.

Lazy writing. Lazy directing. Lazy acting. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

Gods and Monsters and Valkyries Oh My!

I picked up NorseCode based primarily on the strength of the back cover copy and first chapter, which is usually a good sign (Not always. See The Electric Church for first chapter readings that went wrong). Turns out this is the sort of book that makes me second guess my aversion for books clothed in urban fantasy covers (cause c’mon, you know this is how God’s War is going to look).

I’ve known Greg via shared friends/colleagues for some time, but it’s actually rare that I enjoy a book written by somebody I know. It’s just statistics: of all the books being written by all the folks in the SF/F community, I’m only going to like a certain fraction. The folks I know in the SF/F community represent a fraction of that fraction.

So anyways, this is an end-of-the-world-comes-to-California novel, made better by flawed gods and rogue Valkyries with swords. Overall, it’s good eats: totally epic battles and a whirlwind tour of Hel. There are just enough POV shifts, interesting characters, and great settings. It’s a good beach book.

And, of course, it helps that the female characters don’t suck. Who doesn’t want to read about a Valkyrie who’s good with a sword, really?

A couple of personal annoyances: our heroine and her sister had very similar voices. Totally different characters with very different views on life, but when I was in one head as opposed to the other, I couldn’t really tell much difference. They acted/reacted in very similar ways, and had similar thought processes. I actually wondered, for awhile, if they were twins and this was supposed to show how alike they were. In fact, they’re at least a couple of years apart, which is hard to tell based on voice and their interactions.

And, you know, the pan-to-the-lamp “romance” between the Valkyrie and one of the gods was, eh, so-so, and I was reeeeeally glad it was just a “pan to the lamp” romance. I liked that she was the active initiator of the relationship (gods rape human women so much in myth that seeing a human woman initiate was a nice change), but it felt a little strained. I had no idea what they saw in each other, except that they were a man and a woman at the end of the world. Maybe that’s enough.

In any case, this was a fun read. I was pleased to see eight copies on the shelf at the big bookstore in Newport, KY that J. and I visited on our way to see a far less entertaining bit of media...

Terminator, Or What the Fuck Did You Do With My Sarah Conner

This movie would have been better if I wrote it. It wouldn’t have sucked as hard.

How about this: they could have written all the parts that had to do with robots. And I would have written everything that had to do with the people.

It's true, the new Terminator machine concept was great. I genuinely liked the new Terminator model, and the creepy goo behind it. The heart imagery was way overdone (and let’s not even get into who the fuck is going to do a successful heart transplant in a field hospital but anyway), but dial it down by 50% and it would have been neat.

As J. said to me afterwards, “Well… I liked the robots.”

Indeed. The robots were great. They were fast, interesting, and in the case of the Terminator himself, strong, brave, and kickass.

But the people? The people sucked.

Let me tell you the fucking problem with the last two Terminator movies, because it’s pretty bloody obvious to anybody who loved the first two.

The problem is there’s no Sarah Conner. And I don't just mean Sarah Conner the actual character. I mean Sarah Conner the archtype.

I had great hopes for Christian Bale as John Conner. Because, you know, like anybody else who grew up watching Sarah battle it out for the future (her son’s and humanity’s), you really want to like him. No, you want to LOVE him. You want this to be the great, awesome, heroic, courageous leader you’ve been hearing about your whole life. This was the movie where I thought I would see him become that amazing leader. When he spoke, I wanted to be inspired. I wanted to believe him. I wanted a leader.

Instead, what I got was a whiny, hesitant, terrified grunt with a monotone Batman voice and absolutely no personality or charisma whatsoever (when Bale wanted to portray emotion, he yelled. A LOT. “I’M ACTING! I’M ACTING! I’M AN ACTOR!”).

And his wife? What was her name? I’m sorry, I don’t think she was name checked once. But whoever the hell she was, she and John had absolutely no chemistry, and she had no reason for being in this movie except to give you the impression that since she was pregnant it would be OK if Conner died, so you had a bit more suspense there at the end (honestly, I was secretly rooting for Conner’s death, if only because then maybe Bryce could have become the next awesome Mother of the Future in a Sarah Conner way and not a fucked up Padme way, tho honestly, I really can’t stand Bryce Dallas Howard and I have no fucking clue why she was cast in this movie. She acted with all the emotional power of a piece of blank cardboard).

The female characters in the movie are a BIG problem. James Cameron and Linda Hamilton set the bar for female heroines in this franchise, and directors have since gone backwards in their efforts to cast and portray female characters. I suspect this is largely because they felt that the only way to make John Conner awesome was to castrate all the women around him (freeing him from his perceived strong mother complex?). What they didn't fucking realize is that a guy who has a badass mother is going to surround himself with a lot of badass PEOPLE: this guy should have Gina Torres at his right hand. This is somebody who will naturally gravitate toward strong, kickass people, and many of those people will be women.

This is THE FUTURE, you fuckers. It’s a future full of badass people. Who else do you think would be left?

But instead of writing PEOPLE, the writers decided to write (and the directors decided to direct), WOMEN. WOMEN who wouldn't upstage Conner (first tip: surrounding a leader with strong people makes them stronger, not weaker).

What’s wrong with writing WOMEN as WOMEN, you may ask? After all, you don’t just want Conan with tits, do you? DO YOU??

Here’s what’s wrong:

When people who have a lot of preconceived notions about what a “woman,” is, about what “women,” can do, about why this character, in particular, is a “woman,” they’re more likely to write cliché women characters. They’re more likely to wax on and on about the character’s femininity, and take every opportunity to make it clear that THIS CHARACTER HAS TITS. Instead of, you know, writing a person.

Some of the great portrayals of great female heroines were parts originally written for men. This is largely because we all write with a misogynist bent, some of us more than others (you absorb this shit from you culture. Deal with it).

Note that Ripley in Alien was originally written as a man. Both female characters in Alien were originally written as men. The only change they made to the script was… well, it wasn’t. They just cast women for the roles and subbed pronouns. And why did they make this decision? Because the women’s movement was “really popular” at the time, and they figured it would sell more tickets to have more women in the movie.

What is it, exactly, that we figure will sell tickets these days? Not kickass female characters, apparently. Just women in leather who look good getting their asses kicked. The supposededly “tough” women in shows these days are all form, no substance. You can’t just put a chick in leather and hand her a knife. Recall Linda Hamilton’s arms. I BELIEVED she was a crazy psycho who could kick my ass.

I actually blame a lot of this form-over-substance change on Buffy. But that’s a rant for another time.

In any case, there are still a lot of writers who go out of their way to make sure we’re clear that the only reason the women are in the movie at all is *because* they’re women… not because they’re people.

So John Conner’s wife is pregnant (something only a woman can do). And Bloodgood’s character is 1) almost gangraped 2) cuddles up to and falls for the Terminator (both generally things that would only happen if the character was female. Far more transgressive would actually have been to write this as a part for a guy). At least the kid running around with Reese 1) had a useful 6th sense 2) knew how to properly load a gun 3) knew how to get her hands on lots of useful weapons and detonators. I guess that before you hit puberty, you're still allowed to be tough, because little girls are less scary that women with Linda Hamilton arms.

In fact, the one scene where we get to see a chick kicking ass… she’s saved by the Terminator. And even then, she doesn’t even hop back into the fight with him. She just lets him take over the whole fight, and doesn’t appear again until it’s all over, so she can shoot somebody (and puullleeeez, people: she’s been fighting machines for years, living as part of a rebellious underground, and she FORGETS HER GUN when she goes outside? Give me a fucking break. Folks who forget their weapons when they’re wandering around are just stupid, and wouldn’t have survived this long. Don’t insult me by making her stupid, too).

So, the female characters suck. Upshot would be that there were actually some faces (some with actual speaking parts!) that were non-white. At least there are black people, Asian people, and Other, in the future.

Though the Sarah Conners of the world all seem to have died off.

Apparently, the machines were smart enough to kill them off first.

These women were the biggest threat.

One For the Road

One For the Road

“You’re going to get this treatment your whole life. What are you going to do, stand up every time?”

Well... YEAH.

Good Reads

J. was out and about today, so I asked him to pick up a copy of Norse Code on the way home:



I'm already clipping through this one pretty quickly. I get the sense that it'll be inevitably (and favorably) compared to Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

Don't let the cover fool you. It's real urban fantasy, not vampire porn at all! Huzzah!!

Norming Disordered Living

Last night, I was telling J. about the leftovers in the fridge:

"There's chicken rollups and spicy coleslaw," I said, and opened my mouth to add, "Watch out for the cabbage, tho. There's more carbs in that than you think. Calculate at least 30 carbs for that."

I closed my mouth, amused at my own default.

At a certain point carb, insulin, and exercise math just becomes the norm. You do it in your head all the time. Every time I choose to eat something, I start doing the cost/benefit analysis in my head. Sometimes I'll even count out stuff on my fingers at the table.

I realized last night that it’s become so normed over the last three years to budget my carbs/insulin/expected activity level that my subconscious assumes, at some level, that that’s just a concern that *everybody* has.

It was an interesting example of how we unconsciously assume that our defaults must be the “norm.” Doesn’t everyone live like this? Doesn’t everyone want what I want? Doesn’t everyone hold the same values I hold? If they don’t HOW CAN THEY LIVE!?

After all, I couldn’t live without developing this disordered mode of living.

Oh Dear

Gods, why am I watching this show?

Podcast Previews

These will have proper homes on my web page, but here's what we're looking at now:

The Women of Our Occupation (with sound effects)
Genderbending at the Madhattered
If Women Do Fall They Lie
Wonder Maul Doll (will post after it comes out in this form in EscapePod)

First chapter of GW is taking some time to get right. Lots of voices in that one.

This is a Fine Cup of Coffee

Must be Sunday.


Also, sugar is wonky, but that's what I get for going to Denny's. Mmmm caffeinated coffeeeeee!

The Last King of Scotland

"We are not a game, Nicholas."

I am sad we had to have a white male protag to follow around in order to tell a black guy's story. The Ugandan doctor who saves his ass would have made a much better protagonist.

Forest Whitaker is amazing in this movie. It's worth every blessed penny to see him completely nail this performance of a man living on the edge of madness.

Women characters were marginal to the men's stories, and end up in refrigerators 50% of the time (I should say, story: it's still the white guy's story, and he's a really, really awful character), and as said, apparently white audiences aren't expected to show interest in stories about Ugandans unless a white person's involved, but it was a powerful film nonetheless. I'd put off watching it for a long time because I knew it was going to be a downer - what I didn't expect was how incredibly intense it was. Again, watching Whitaker zoom back and forth was phenomenal.

Highly recommended.

Three Extra Years

Yesterday marked the anniversary of my arrival in the ER in Chicago for what we'd later find out was severe DKA. My blood sugar was riding at about 860 (normal is 80). I don't remember must of this, as I was unconscious for the first 12 hours or so. A few things bleed through (someone asking me what day it was, discovering I had a catheter in was allowed to just pee in bed [this took some convincing on Jenn's part], being moved from one bed to another and wheeled into an elevator).

Oddly enough, this month also mark's J's one year cancer-free anniversary. So last night we went out to Pasha Grill, where we're quickly becoming regulars. We also stopped in and had a proper ring fitting at the jewelry store across the way. Due to the wackiness that is the publishing industry, I'll be getting a reasonable infusion of cash later this year. We'd only been putting off the inevitable for monetary reasons, and it looks like those are going to go away here pretty soon.

I feel immeasurably proud that book money has let me do things I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, particularly because I was in such seriously bad shape the year before I sold the book. You don't always get everything you wanted - who doesn't want a six figure book contract and the ability to publish before they're 30? It would have been nice.

But I got *enough.* I got what I needed, and hopefully things will turn around pretty quickly and I can start building a future with short bursts of book money. That would be pretty sweet.

In any case, there is this thing that happens to you when you stare death in the face. Or, at least, it happened to me - and to J to some extent, tho he was always a far nicer person than me.

I wanted to start building toward things instead of running away from them. I ran all around the world. I ran away and away and away. But, you know, I can't run away from myself. At some point I had to turn around and go, "I'm a selfish asshole and a coward and I want to change that." I wasn't a great person. I hated what I'd become when the shit hit the fan. I didn't want to be that person anymore.

And it's been a long journey, trying to get better. Trying to get my priorities straight now that I get all these extra years of life. I've been ready for adult things for awhile now. Ready to build some wealth, buy a house, build a career. I've been doing all those things. But what I realized along the way was that my desire for a partner hadn't really gone away. I still wanted a best friend, a buddy, to have adventures with. I just wasn't adult enough to take care of myself - let alone somebody else. You're never going to find the right person if you're the one who's not right.

90% of everything is timing.

J. and I met a few months after he'd finished radiation therapy. I'd been single for about a year and had stopped seriously looking. We met for dinner because I thought he was terribly funny... and I wanted to talk to somebody else who'd stared death in the face.

Cancer had changed him, just like t1 changed me. He'd become less of a doormat, and I'd become less of a cruel-hearted harpy. We both still lean toward our defaults, which means that when we're together, we balance out pretty well. Love is all very well and good when it comes to relationships. I've loved people. I've had people love me. But... what's the quote? I read a quote from someone that said "real" love is when two people who've been heartbroken and know what they're getting into... get into it anyway. It's the courage love, not necessarily the screaming teenager love, where it's the first time you've ever felt this way and OMG if we aren't together we'll DIE!!

It's the same love, really, just made even more polished by the heat of heartache. I don't think I could have even walked into a jewelry shop and sized rings with *anybody* before having my heart broken. I'm surprised it took so many years to really, truly, get my heartbroken. But then, I'd spent years avoiding real attachment. It wasn't until after I got sick and went through the Jenn craziness that I realized all my walls - though vital to not getting hurt - weren't getting me what I wanted.

I needed some serious heartbreak.

Now I know what I'm getting into. And I'm jumping anyway. I like this future we're building. I like my life this way.

Will there be more heart ache? Probably. The other thing you realize when you're somebody with a chronic illness fixing to marry a cancer survivor is that the chances of death, disfigurement, and further disability are disproportionately high for the two of you.

I'm allowing myself to love somebody who could leave me - whether through death or something more mundane, like waning passion - and I'm terribly happy about it. I know all the risks involved in it. I know it could all end badly, horrifically, spectacularly, but I also know that the years we do get together will be pretty cool and fun. We're a team. We have each others' backs. And for the first time, I trust this, however naive it may appear.

I want a big, bold life.

It just so happens that I now have a buddy to live it with.

Waitress

I think this movie was supposed to be funny.

I found it absolutely terrifying. I felt uncomfortably nauseous the whole way through. I don't know that I've seen a movie that so... effectively portrays women as a slave class. No, I'm serious.

This one hit me personally hard. As somebody from a small town who dated somebody for three years who was a lot like the heroine's husband, it really hit home. And the fact that she has to rely on men to pull her out of it the whole way through. The idea that you have to be nice to assholes, to put up with abuse and bullshit just to survive... you have to smile and be nice and maybe when they die they'll leave you money!

Because in the end, what's the difference between running off with the doctor she's having an affair with and getting a check from some rich guy who treated people like crap? You're still getting ahead by serving (literally serving!) men. And not just decent guys, but fucking assholes. If I felt for one minute that anybody in this movie wasn't a total jerk, it wouldn't have been so bad, but here she is, faking her way through life, this perfect "yes sir," slave robot constantly judging her self worth by what men thought of her - and her pie.

God, it made me sick. It made me sicker still because I have this even more disturbing feeling that I was supposed to find this show absolutely hilarious.

The fucking pie contest was just a fucking afterthought montage shot, a given. Leaving her husband, in the end, was "easy." Winning the contest was "easy." There were all these hand wave easy outs for her in the end, after all this bullshit. It's like the end of Kill Bill 2 where she just sees her kid and it's all over. All is magically right with the world.

And it doesn't work that way. You have to trudge through a lot of bullshit. You're not standing up for yourself once. You do it again and again and again, every day, for the rest of your life. You have to change your entire life. Yes, kids can change your life. I get it. But having kids doesn't mean the rest of the world goes away. Far better would have been an ending where she *doesn't* like the kid, she *doesn't* get anybody's money, and she has to fight her way to the life she wants, tooth and nail, with the support of her friends.

That's real life. That's how people do it when they decide not to be slaves anymore. You don't just say to the guy once, "Hey, I'm not a slave!" It takes years of undoing.

Bah.

Star Trek

Oh Star Trek, I will forgive you these things, because you move so damn fast and your characters are so damn good.

This is a Star Trek remix, and it's wonderful. That said, here's what actively annnoyed me (noet these aren't plot points. I could give a crap about handwavey Star Trek plots. This is a soap opera in space):

1) Uhura should have totally decked one of the guys in the bar. With how awesomely they re-did her, I was actually surprised this didn't happen. Uhura is pretty awesome. It made me teary eyed to see how far she's come. That said:

2) She is one of three female characters. One of them dies, and it is kind of boring. The other is Kirk's mom, who has this ridiculous giving-birth-in-an-evacuation-shuttle scene. At least she didn't die. It reminded me of Padme. I grit my teeth and bore through the thing, cause I knew the rest of the movie would be awesome. As J. pointed out, in Star Trek the families come with the crew, so it was not ridiculous for her to be there, just a ridiculously laid out scene. Would have much preferred her in uniform being rushed to a shuttle where she *then* goes into labor. Also, cut the fucking com with her dying husband. That was overmuch for me, even in a Start Trek movie. I wanted her to firm up her jaw and accept the sacrifice, teary eyed but tough. It was a little smarmy for me.

3) Gods, why do they go on with the overlong creature chase and Scotty-in-the-pipes hijinks? These scenes are both about 2-3 minutes too long. Not 7 minutes too long thank god, but they're still running long for "wacky hijinks."

I am so happy these characters didn't suck. This was well written and very well executed. A perfect reboot. If they did this to every series they reboot, I'd be a lot happier with them. They didn't sacrifice the heart of the show for special effects, and they had a great team of actors. It is, effectively, a soap opera, and without those character quirks, tensions, relationships, unique skills, weaknesses, foibles, and snark, you've just got elves in space.

This is why Firefly was so loved: it's about building great characters and letting them run wild.

I didn't even pay attention to the absurdities of the plot until later, because I just didn't care. I loved the people.

At the end of the movie I thought, "Wow, Gene Roddenberry would have crapped his pants to see this."

Because it felt a lot more like what he was trying to do. It actually *felt* like a diverse cast. It felt more like the future. Hell, it felt more like *now* than most tv shows and their lily white cornbread casting. And yes, everyone is young and beautiful, and our two primary protagonists are still white and male, and we only have three female characters, one of whom dies, but:

It's come a long way.

Thank you for building a cast for Star Trek that doesn't suck. Now don't screw it up.

Money Shot:

"For some men, the only thing more intolerable than the sight of a powerful woman is the sight of a powerful woman they don’t want to sleep with."

Zing!

Runner up, from the end of the article:

"Still, nonsense about women, weight, and “health” is particularly pervasive and destructive. Indeed, if we were really concerned about medical risk factors that actually do have a significant negative correlation with a candidate’s life expectancy, the most relevant is one that has afflicted 108 of America’s 110 Supreme Court justices: being a man."

Srsly, Why Am I Deadlifting 125 lbs?

The sounds I make when I lift this weight are not sexy.

The work trainers have upped the ante for me this training round, as said a while back, which is nice. I'm feeling stronger, and I needed it: I put on about 6 lbs in 4 weeks when we moved into our new place (for some reason, the increased amount of sex does not even out the increased amount of eating out one encounters when cohabitating).

Things here are starting to fall into routine, tho, and the weight is slowly going back to normal (my goal, as ever, is to maintain my weight). I'm biking to work every day, hitting the gym twice a week, and maintaining my morning weight routine. I do need to get in two more days a week of regular structured exercise, and I'm working on that.

We're also cooking a lot to save money. J. is planning on returning to school properly next quarter, which means I'll be the breadwinner for a bit (student loans will help, too), so we're looking to cut costs across the board.

Concerns over my A1c has curbed my interest in those tasty English muffins with peanut butter at work ("But they're low(er) carb!" just isn't a great excuse when they wreck havoc on my blood sugar all day. But man, that's been a tough habit to crack. I tend to be really hungry when I get into work now that I'm biking in).

Last week was an awesome sugar week, in no small part because I snacked mainly on string cheese and peanuts and didn't bake any of my low-carb cookies. I don't know how other diabetics eat complex carbs regularly (OK, I don't know how they can eat them regularly and maintain A1c's below 6. My goal is 5.7-5.9. But then, I'm ambitious like that).

Good to be back at the gym *properly* as opposed to in a non-structured way. I'm much better with structure.

Off to eat some meatballs and asparagus. Mmmmm mmmmm.

Then, as ever, to write and write and write.

I have a lot of work to do this month.

Escape Pod

Just sold a story to EscapePod. For those who prefer to listen to their fiction instead of reading it, I'll let you know the day it's available for download.

Huzzah!

And Sometimes You Stand and Fight

A 17-year-old high school marching band student beat up two assailants who tried to mug her as she walked to school in this high desert community about 40 miles north of Los Angeles, sheriff's officials said Tuesday.

My martial arts teacher once said that the cowards are the ones who attack you from behind. This means that if you show any amount of backbone, they're more likely to back off than somebody who, say, punches you in the face. These are the sorts of people who are also less likely to be armed, which definately helped our heroine.

I would have liked a little more back story on this student, tho. I'm always interested in why some people fight back and some people don't (again, them not being armed and her knowing how to use a baton probably helped).

Why We Love Stories About Sparta

With key Greek city-states in submission, Philip of Macedon turned his attention to Sparta and sent a message: "If I win this war, you will be slaves forever."

In another version, Philip proclaims: "You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city."

The Spartan ephors sent back a one word reply: "If."

(from here)

Why Lazy Writing Screws Women Over

Hollywood at work:

Kevin and I started with a concept: What if we did the entire thing in one shot? We follow a girl from her bathroom mirror, to a car ride, to a convenience store, to a seedy party where she finally shoots and murders someone. All in one shot. Problem then, became exposition. Was this just to be a conceptual idea? Or were we going to explain why she kills this motherfucker? And who exactly was this dude anyway? The words "seedy party" though, definitely got us excited. We began to see a pimp. Picture Roy Scheider from Klute or Gary Oldman from True Romance, mixed in with a little Alfred Molina from Boogie Nights and Willem DaFoe from Wild At Heart. And who was the girl? Just some scorned chick? Nah, how about something more interesting. Like a beautiful young woman hellbent on killing the pimp that murdered her sister. No! How about her identical twin sister. And how about, these weren't your normal twins. But two girls who shared a strange, abnormal bond. And how about this guy is a real class act. He's a suburban brat who thinks he's smarter than he is. Oh, and he's utterly psychotic.

You see how they start out all right:

We'll have this great female protagonist, yes... and we'll follow her... and she kills someone because... because...

And that's where it all seems to break down. After all, what reason could a woman possibly have to kill someone?

Wait, I know!

She'll get raped! OK, but she should be a super assassin, so we'll have her twin sister get raped, but she can feel the things her twin sister feels, so she'll actually be getting raped!

AND THAT'S HOW WE'LL OPEN THE MOVIE!

This is the same kind of lazy writing Joss Whedon is doing with Dollhouse.

"Not sure what to do next? Have somebody get raped!"

Sweet God, people. You do know that women have lots of traumatic, story-worthy things happen to them that don't involve rape, right?

Because opening your story with your protagonist getting raped? It's just not interesting. Your story is full of cheesy caricatures, but not in a Kill Bill way, in a stupidly LAZY way.

What drives me bonkers is that these are supposedly experienced script writers. I realize they're writing under deadline, for fun, but sweet fuck, you guys, it's not hard to write a good script with awesome characters who don't suck. It's really not.

But hey, let's try something else on for size, for fun. We have to write a script that follows the same constraints these guys did. Low-low budget, that can be shot in a week, preferably in one shot (but can take or leave that). So instead of:

We follow a girl from her bathroom mirror, to a car ride, to a convenience store, to a seedy party where she finally shoots and murders someone. All in one shot.

How about:

We follow a girl as she suits up for "work." Black stockings, black boots, black leather jacket, duel pistol holsters, knife strapped to her ankle, extra bullets and brass knuckles in her bag. She gets on a motorcycle and heads off to a seedy pool party. She pulls a shotgun from her side bag, shoots in the door, kicks her way in, and aims at the Big Bad and says, coldly, "This is for my brother." She shoots him. He goes over. She leans in close to blow his whole head off and we hear him say, "Your brother's not dead." She says, "I know," and kills him. Then she opens up a can of whoop-ass on the whole pool party with all her sweet-ass weaponry and kills everybody there. Then we see her start to torch the place. She gets back on her motorcycle and stops at a bench in what appears to be a park. A man is sitting on the bench. She sits next to him. "Didn't think you were coming," he says. "I don't think they'll be a problem getting that cancer drug approved," she says. "The big wigs are out of the picture. Just watch who you piss off next time. I can't clean up all your messes. We're not kids anymore. The stakes are a lot higher." She checks her cell phone, stands. "I may be out of touch for awhile. Say hi to dad for me." She walks away, we pull back, and we see that they're at a cemetary. On the headstone is their father's name and a eulogy indicating that he died of cancer.

Blah blah.

Slightly syrupy? Sure, but I wrote that in all of ten minutes. I'm uncertain as to why Hollywood can't come up with something more original than, "Chick gets raped, let's make a movie about it," in an hour, ten days, ten months or ten goddamn years.

Come, guys. Lazy writing is boring, and I'm sick of your boring-ass, victimized, brutalized female characters. Think outside the fucking constraints of your fucking institutionalized sexism.

Lazy, lazy, lazy.

"How many real adult times have you been in love?"

Inquiring minds want to know.

Why am I Deadlifting 125 lbs?

Well, I did tell our trainers I wanted to work on strength training.

Ooof.

Barbarella

That was... that was... that was a special, special film.

Oh, and they're doing a remake.

DEAR GOD WHY???

There are few films that are totally iconic of their times. This is one of them. You can't remake this movie. Outside of the context of the late 60s, early 70s, it makes no sense.

I mean, it made no sense anyway, but that was the point. It was just like the 60s.

No results found... Because most authors' webpages suck...?

Under Construction

Story of my life.

Jane Austin & Zombies Has Arrived

I bought a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for J., secretly knowing that I could steal it from him when he wasn't looking. Then Steph called dibs on it when we all went out to dinner, and now I'm 3rd in line. Still, I've been sneaking peeks, and I can say this much:

Reader, it's awesome.

These are the stories - and heroines! - I wanted to read about 20 years ago.

Why Other Cool People Like "The 300"

WIN!

I'm always delighted when I find women who thought fan-"boy" movies like The 300 and Fight Club were full of awesome.

Because they were.

"I've never met a writer..." The Writing Life

Me, Steph, J. and The Old Man went out to dinner last night to celebrate The Old Man winning a shiny Fellowship that will make it possible for him and Steph to eat come January.

Talk inevitably turned to Jim Butcher's new book. J. and The Old Man are big fans of Butcher.

"Are you coming with us Wednesday?" J. asked The Old Man. "You know Jim Butcher's going to be at The Greene."

"I don't know... probably not. I have a big test Thursday."

"You don't want to see Jim Butcher?" I said, incredulous. The Old Man bought Butcher's latest book the day it came out and finished it four hours later.

"Oh, I don't know..." the Old Man said. "I've never really met a writer before."

J. and Steph just kind of looked at him for a minute. I snickered.

Then we all burst out laughing.

"To be fair, you weren't a writer when I first met you (ten years ago)," the Old Man protested, turning to me. "You were just a wanna-be."

Quote of the Day

"A moron writes words. A moron flails about for telling details--declarations, clichés, sentence fragments. A moron owns a frying pan. A moron has an extensive collection of pornography. A moron makes assumptions--about gender roles, about sexuality, about class. Or he fantasizes--about sports cars, Rolexes, cash. He prefers the company of men, but not in a gay way, REALLY. Irony escapes him. A moron pretends that women have no interest in the martial arts because the thought that they might hit him is scary. A moron is not good with words. Not words, not ideas, not talking about men. He is paid by the word. Two-fifty. It doesn't matter what words he puts down, because those who do not agree with what he says are not men."

From here, and context.

Wiscon

For better or worse, I won't be able to make it this year. I owe bunches of taxes this year and I needed to put my book checks toward furniture, heat, and a car.

So, no Wiscon.

Next year, tho, I'll be peddling a pretty sweet-ass little book. So I think attendance is mandatory.

The Roots of Urban Fantasy

An interesting history of the "urban fantasy" (AKA vampire porn) novel.

As an aside, I'm kind of embarrassed to say out loud that, shit, man, Rusch is a really terrible writer. I'm sure she writes good *story* (which would be why she sells so many), but she really doesn't have a lot of technical skill. Lots of interesting stuff to chew on here, just not articulated as well as it could have been.

Sorry. I had to say that out loud.

Now go forth and create the next reimagined gothic, people! I'm bored with vampire porn.

4 to 46

I do wonder when we'll hit the tipping point. Think it'll take as long as 10 years? The buildup, sure, I understand that taking 10 years, but once you hit the tipping point, the rest should come on down just like dominoes.

Til then, keep on truckin.

Spring 2010

I was editing an RFI at work today that mentioned the date, "Spring 2010."

My immediate thought was, "My book comes out in Spring 2010."

I've started to associate that ENTIRE PHRASE "Spring 2010" with the release of God's War.

Heaven forbid when I actually get a solid release date.

Kcast 1.0

I'm working on a project to record all of my short fiction in podcast form (and hopefully some GW snippets soon). These will go up on my website once it's live. The header (Kcast and etc.) will likely change, and I'd like to get a better audio recording device, but here's a taste of what I'm up to:

The Women of Our Occupation (.m4a)
The Women of our Occupation (.wmv)

I'll probably record this a couple more times to get the tone right.

Next up is "Wonder Maul Doll," which pretty much nobody's ever read (it originally appeared in a little anthology called From the Trenches), but it's a seriously brutal women story. Hurrah!

Thoughts?

Is This was Women's Suffrage was Like?

It's fascinating to watch the three steps forward two steps back tidal wave of social change. I can't help but think this is what it was like with women getting the right to vote... This slow, building tide. One state here, one state there, until the whole country finally realized:

1) The world's not going to implode when something "changes"
2) You can't stop the tide of a cause that, well, actually makes sense

Hate may have a long lifespan, but it'll eventually topple in the face of human goodness and decency. That's what I want to believe, anyway.

It's why I'm a fantasy writer.

One for the Road

Empowering our Daughters

"Men don’t want to fuck feminists, and if no one wants to fuck you, what power have you got as a woman?"

I Really Hate April Fools' Day

The news is already absurd and fabricated. I don't need people to deliberately absurdify and fabricate it.

White Phosphorus Used in Gaza

These jelly-fish cloud bursts are about what I imagined Nasheenian/Chenjan bursts would look like in God's War.

As noted in the video, it's illegal as per the Geneva conventions.

House Photos are Up!

Check it out!

What Audio Books Should Be

I want one!

Words for the Road

"A man [sic] is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
- Bob Dylan

One for the Road

I Can Haz an Old Victorian House

Holy crap, I officially have keys to a big old fucking Victorian house. Yes, it's huge. It's 5 bedrooms. With a basement. A garden. Near a park. Bathroom and a half. 5 bedrooms, did I mention? And a turret room. A fucking turret room.

Holy crap. Holy crap.

J. and I got a Chipotle lunch to go and just sat up there and had lunch today in this big, gorgeous, empty house. My official move date is the 20th, but we have keys. And a big new stove. And washer/dryer will be delivered the 23rd.

God, this is a big, amazing house. I never dreamed I would live in a house like this, even if it's just a rental. It's just... I just can't believe it. We were sitting up there and I was just... I just couldn't believe it. It's amazing.

And it's all ours! Just the two of us in this big, huge, but amazingly cozy house. I'm in love with this house.

I love my life. I can walk to work.

I can walk to work!

It's just... I am just utterly stunned at this house. I can't believe I'll be living here. I just kept wandering around. I just can't believe it.

It's this huge writer's house. It's just right for a writer! It's like where a writer would live! It's like... it's a great house.

I realize we're all in danger of losing everything at any minute. All of us, every one. I know that better than... well, much better than I did before. I totally get that. And it's why I love the good things so much fucking more now. I could lose them any minute, but this one, wee moment where I have them?

Oh, it is glorious, like summer in Alaska. The most glorious thing in the world, that bright, brilliant summer glory after 8 months of winter.

I have a house!