::Snicker::

Does this even need a caption?

Basil!

Ahem. Sorry. It's my favorite herb. Mine looks way better than this one, though. Only took me three months and killing four batches of it.



via Sacrosanct

Wheeee! I Love Democracy!

Voter intimidation - how to keep minorities in America from voting.

If you think this is an anomoly, check out this article at Salon. Republican candidates have organized these intimidation campaigns during local elections and presidential elections - not just 50 years ago, or a hundred years ago, but, you know, NOW. Yesterday. This century. Keeping dusky people from voting is practically an American tradition!

It's like the 1950s South. Yeah!

In other news, people are getting way too fucking paranoid, you should all see this movie, the first three Star Wars movies are FINALLY out on DVD (though they've been fucking fucked with by that fuckwad Lucas *again* and I may go on ebay and get *original* un-fucked-up versions if these piss me off too much), and here's a cool interview with novelist Toni Morrison.

All Together Now! "In the Ghettooooooo!"

So, picked up my obligatory reject from Realms of F. for my abortion story, "Two Girls." Though Carina gave me the Blue Form of Death, she included a substantial handwritten note saying she really liked the story, but it had no fantasy element, and I might want to try women's studies mags.

I had to laugh. No fantasy element? A woman gives her womb to her husband and gives him the task of childbearing. He rebels violently. They end up being a barren couple, and as per the social rules of this society, they're stoned to death.

After I laughed, I burst into tears.

I admit, I was having a shitty day. I've got 200 rejections or more to my name right now, and I've been submitting stories for 10 years. I should be used to this. I shouldn't be bursting into tears at rejection letters.

But here's the thing:

I'm already a ghetto writer. I work in spec fic. I find the idea of further ghettoizing myself into "women's studies" deeply offensive.

This story has already been rejected with similiar letters of "I liked this, but.. I can't publish it" from Datlow and Sheila Williams.

I've never written a story that everyone seemed to like, but nobody can publish.

I knew Datlow would like it, and I knew Carina would like it (she's my age, and her academic background is in gender studies), but fuck it all if I can sell the goddamn thing to the print mags. About all I've got left is Strange Horizons, and maybe Talebones, if they can squeeze it in (it's 1800 words).

I don't want to tailor-make my fiction. Everytime I get one of these frustrating rejection letters (the, "you're a competent writer, but..." kind), I interrogate what I'm writing and question what I'm doing. As a competent writer, why don't I just write stories that'll get published? Why do I keep writing S&S stories? (Swords and Sociology) Why don't I just add some fairies to the abortion story?

When I was fifteen, I tried to write stories specifically tailored for the now defunct Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine. I read a bunch of sample issues, bought her Sword and Sorceress anthologies, and tried to imitate the style and subject matter I saw there. The rejections got a little nicer, but I still never sold anything to her, and worse - I was now really miserable writing useless drivel that I really didn't want to write but that seemed more immediately marketable than what I was doing before. MZB went belly-up, and I stopped writing stories tailored for specific markets. It bled all the fun out of what I was doing.

Now I'm back to writing what I want. And I have a deep belief in the idea that if you stick to what you're doing, and you love what you're doing, that the rest of the world will come around. Even if I have to wait around until I'm, say, 80, like Carol Emshwiller.

It's a persistence game. I'll be the first to say that, and the first to get pissed off about it, dammit. How the hell else do you winnow down pools of artists? You beat them over the head until 98% of them give up.

The masochists - er, headstrong - keep at it.

I'm writing what I want to write. Can't get better than that. Except maybe getting paid for it.

Here's to being 80.

Well-Directed Rage

Check it out: a compilation of female bloggers on the web (so the next time somebody starts up with the "where are all the women bloggers" rant, we can have an answer. WE'RE RIGHT HERE).

Also, the House has just passed a bill that restricts (even further) women's access to abortion and contraceptives (if the former doesn't scare the shit out of you, the latter better):

NEW YORK (AP) - In Congress and states nationwide, anti-abortion activists are broadening efforts to support hospitals, doctors and pharmacists who - citing moral grounds - want to opt out of services linked to abortion and emergency contraception.

A little-noticed provision cleared the House of Representatives last week that would prohibit local, state or federal authorities from requiring any institution or health care professional to provide abortions, pay for them, or make abortion-related referrals, even in cases of rape or medical emergency.

Feeling pissed off? Fill out a quite form with Naral's Pro-Choice America and get your voice heard by your local Senator (the Senate will be voting on this bill). It takes half a minute - spread the word to your buddies and get them to petition as well.

Book Fetish

Books I picked up this weekend:

Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Iron Council by China Mieville

The Shape Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body by Susan Bordo

These all will be, I expect, fucking brilliant. Unfortunately, I'm still backlogged. Currently working on finishing Nick Mamatas's Move Under Ground, which unfortunately isn't a "train book" and has to be saved for bedtime reading (ha). Reading Move Under Ground is a bit like being on drugs.

Transcending Social Mores

As is wont to happen this time of year, the birthdays are coming fast and furious here at the office. On birthday days, two dozen donuts and a coffee cake appear in our breakroom, without fail.

Today, I stared at the donuts. I stare at the donuts every time they bring them in. As I've just done another spate of reading about hungry women, women who deprive themselves, furtive attitudes toward food, the binge and purge cycle, and etc., I carefully went through my own food-obsessed thinking in weighing my decision to cut a thumb-sized piece of coffee cake from the enormous loaf looming aside the donuts.

I resolved to have this one piece, to curb any later compulsions. It was sufficiently small, I reasoned. I was hungry. I had a craving for it. There was, in fact, no good reason not to eat it. It wasn't like I was going to eat the whole loaf. I haven't had a binge eating session in almost a year.

I hid in the breakroom and did not take this carefully portioned piece of coffee cake back to my desk. I ate it standing up. I hoped no one would come in and see me. I busily poured coffee and turned my back when one of the architects came in. I furtively chewed the remainder of my stolen piece.

I returned to my desk, satiated.

And thought about women and food, and how we're not supposed to desire anything, and why is it the only women we see eating in films and TV are the ones who're supposed to be evil, psychotic, or just plain fat (which is a shorthand for so many Evils these days)?

Because good women don't eat. Good women don't get hungry. They've transcended their bodies. They're good little anorectic girls.

I rage about a society that wants me to be smaller and quieter, and here I am, feeling those pangs because I'm not smaller and quieter. Failed woman. All over again.

I'm not a stupid person. I'm in fantastic health. I'm smart.

Fuck transcending the body. My own inability to transcend social mores really pisses me off.

Demon Juice!

So my buddy Jenn says to me on Saturday night, "There's this show on the SciFi channel that the reviewers are comparing to Buffy. Apparently, it's about this woman named Lilith who's half demon who goes around fighting demons. They'll probably play with the biblical imagery. Might suck. Could be cool. Wanna watch it?"

There's a big push of shows preening themselves to "be like Buffy," now that there's absolutely nothing else even remotely like Buffy on television. Reviewers' idea of "being like Buffy" has been distilled to this formula: "Attractive young female with superpowers battles the forces of darkness."

That's about all any of these hyped-up shows ever have in common with Buffy.

So me and Jenn sit down to watch this show. Really, I should have known better. I'd submitted myself to the atrocity that was BattleStar Galactica, because the SciFi channel made a bunch of noise about the number of its female characters (women would make up about 1/3 to 1/2 of the cast), and how they were going to be so buff and cool and independent and new and different. But it turns out that having lots of female characters basically meant the audience of 14-year-old boys (assumption of audience, much?) got to watch more on-screen sex action. Since everybody knows that the only reason you pack women into a cast is cause you can have more on screen sex. For those not really interested in the sex, we got to play the "Woman... or Cyclon?" game. By the end of the series, you've discovered that you can tell the Evil female characters from the Good ones because the Evil ones have sex.

Which means that of the four "progressive" female leads, half of them are robots.

Yea, that's right. Robots. Women are robots!! HAHAAHaaha. Hell, I haven't read the women-are-really-robots story about a bazillion times, have I?

But hey, it's a Saturday night, I don't feel like leaving the house, and this shitty show comes on.

Our Heroine emerges from the thick ooze of a primordial swamp, and our Old White Man Narrator tells us that God created Lilith before Eve, but Lilith "would not lie beneath" Adam, and talked back to him (likely told him he was bad in bed), so God Cast Her Out. And, for some reason, cause she's an evil, headstrong woman who critiqued the size of Adam's penis, she goes on this millennia-long killing rampage, and appears to subsist mainly on human flesh. Mainly male flesh, actually, since she's never shown killing any women, just men and young boys. Cause, she's, you know, EVIL.

She's then tracked down in the "near future" by this band of Old White Male Priests (seriously. They're all men. I thought I saw some longer hair in one of the group scenes, but if some of the young acolytes were female, I don't know, cause we never saw their faces) who have been running after her for centuries (these are the guys who spam your e-mail accounts with penis-enlargement advertisements, which fund their serious work). She's captured, but not killed, so that the old white men can commodify her body and use it for "science," the way Sigourney Weaver is co-opted in the misogynistic monstrosity that was Alien IV (oddly enough, written by Joss Whedon, but I have my own theories about that).

Fast forward, and Lilith is Revealed as a petite, dark-haired (of course) little woman who rides a motorcycle and dresses in leather but walks around and speaks like a passive, inane, brainless child. She's living with some Old White Man (Jenn commented: "That better be her father") who turns out to be a plant from the Society of Old White Men who's been "raising" Lilith since the priests turned her out of the medical facility after taking away her memories. They hope to "tame" her (though of course they use the word, "civilize" and talk about how much they want her to show more womanly "compassion for humanity"). She's given a book by a "mysterious" person who wants to help her "regain" her past, and in that book, she reads about Bible Curses, like those Weird Birth Marks on her wrist that are the "Marks of Daggoth" - five of them - that will disappear upon Every Act of Kindness Lilith performs in the good female nurturing role. She subsequently saves a child from getting hit by a car, and one of the marks is removed.

Ok.

Wait a minute.

Lilith has been alive for millenia. She obviously figured out once upon a time ago that a single act of kindness would take off the marks one by one and she would not longer be demon-cursed, so WHY DIDN'T SHE JUST PERFORM 5 PERFUNCTORY GOOD DEEDS SO SHE WOULDN'T BE CURSED?

Oh, that's right, cause then the White Men couldn't "save her", couldn't you know, remake her into a less intimidating figure.

Silly me.

While in the medical facility, her demon juice (dark light???) was extracted, and now one of the scientists injects it into himself as a cure for immortality. What he doesn't know is that too much female demon juice will turn him into a monster!!!

The white man becomes a plague-carrying demon, which, if you didn't guess, is going to be the Master Villain that Our Passive Heroine will have to face - a guy drugged up on her demon juice! He couldn't control himself! It's all her fault, because she produces demon juice! Demon juice! Fucking women and their demon juices!

OK. Sorry. I'm getting distracted.

Anyway, so Lilith is approached by the guy who initially shot her and captured her so she could be experimented on by lots of eager white male hands who doubtless took this opportunity to whip out their penises for review (she was only let go, of course, after she gave her "thumbs up" approval of the size of all members).

The guy who shot her is now to act as her "trainer" (because, obviously, after millenia fighting off men, she really needs a man to teach her how to, uh, kill stuff). As for characterization of our Trainer, he's got a brief scene with a blank-eyed blond woman, a woman who gets two whole lines that make up the only other speaking female role in the whole movie. Her lines are made up of such winning constructions as "as you know, we're not married anymore," and "as you know, our son has been dead for years." These are all delivered so that the audience jives that Our Trainer is single, and Suffering after the loss of his son, who was, of course, killed by the Evil Lilith, which encouraged Our Trainer to slaughter that evil bitch.

Once Lilith and our Trainer meet up, we have our obligatory two-minute training sequence, with music, though it appears that instead of a "learning over time" montage, in fact, she's only training to be a demon hunter for the afternoon, and the two of them take off once she's learned how to channel her powers so that she'll become a black woman when she's ready to kill.

Oh, have I not mentioned the black woman thing yet?

Of course! Her magic superpower is "darklight" so when she goes into Evil Sexual Demon Temptress mode, she turns black! Yes, that's right! A black woman, with claws! She's showing her inner bitch! Her True Nature! Everyone knows how sexually dangerous black women are, right!! (imagine if a black actress played this part, and whenever she channeled her "powers of good" she became a white woman - what kind of outrage would that have produced, I wonder?).

So our petite heroine goes out to kill the demon, and gets her ass kicked, though I'm not sure why, except that the demon's, you know, a guy, and she's, you know, a little girl (the fact that she's been fighting demons and men for millenia is, once again, not apparently a factor here. Her success or failure appears to depend solely upon how well she listens to her "trainer").

"I bet she sleeps with him," I said to Jenn. "That's the good deed that gets her curse removed. She's gotta fuck her father-figure trainer and ease his pain with her demon body. Just you wait."

Our heroine pants after her trainer like a well trained dog, (at one point, I finally said, "Why don't they just put a collar on her and stop with all the pretense?"), and then they discover the plague victims who are dying from the plague that the demon is passing onto people, and we get our first crowd shot, and yes, yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, there are some female plague victims in the crowd! Whooo! They're the first female faces I've seen in any crowd scene in this whole movie (Jenn insists that there was also one black guy in a scene with the swat team, a brief crowd shot. He appears to be the only brown-colored person in the whole movie). One would think that men reproduced by, you know, jerking out each other's ribs. Though that might be construed by Bible-thumpers as borderline homoerotic, so we likely weren't allowed to see all that rib-jerking on screen.

So, the only way to make a cure for the plague is to get the head of the demon, and fry it up into an antidote. The Old White Male Priests have the trainer bring Lilith back into the Priestly Lair so they can restore her memories of all the Evil she's caused. She's taken to a little room with about four panels of "in memorium" names lit from behind, because, you know, this is the future, and carving them would take too long, and put the movie over budget ("Hey, wait a minute," Jenn said, "Did they REPEAT THE NAMES? Rewind that." She rewound it, and sure enough, on the four panels of the death list we got all in one shot, it was easy to see that the names had been repeated from one master list. "Low budget," I said. Lilith was such an evil bitch, she killed a bunch of people twice).

"See all this death you caused," the Old Evil White Man says.

"I'm so ashamed," Lilith says, crying. "I'm just going to kill myself."

And the Old Evil White Man gives her a "knife" made out of "talus" (isn't that like talcum powder?) that "dates back to the Garden of Eden" and is the only material that can kill her, a cursed half-demon woman.

As she raises the knife, she is once again Saved by her trainer, who convinces her of all the good she can do in the world.

"I'm evil, I've done terrible things, I deserve to die!!!" she says. She's presumably now regained all of her bazillions of years of memories (as the whole reason they brought her in to the death lists was to "give her back her memory.")

So, upon getting her memory back, knowing that not only was she cast out of the Garden of Eden cause God made Adam bad in the sack, but now she's been medically fucked with by these old white men, who captured her, extracted her darklight, wiped away her memory, and likely did countless other unhappy things to her evil demon (read: Female) body while they all patted themselves on the back for capturing the Evil Woman who carried with her the power of the female gaze that men have been trying so hard to shut up for thousands of years.

And instead of slaughtering all of these idiot men, what does she do?

She tries to kill herself.

The fuck?

What kind of fucked-up Lilith demon is this?

Then the trainer tells her to go out and kill something, and I know exactly what kind of "action heroine" this is. It's the one who acts as a passive marionette whose strings are jerked around by men. She protects them, listens to them, doesn't talk back, does exactly as they say, and feels guilt whenever they tell her to. She's a character written, directed, and produced by men.

"You know what's really sad," Jenn said to me after Lilith pulled open a big metal door in an effort to save her now plague-stricken Trainer, "you know they pitched this as a female-empowerment movie."

I have no doubt that they did just that.

In the end, Lilith slays the evil demon with the use of some "Toxic Adhesive" (seriously) and saves everyone from the plague unleashed by the old white guys. Yet another one of her marks of Daggoth burns away, so she's only got a couple more good deeds to do before she's free of the curse. It sure is lucky that she met these white guys. She'll get rid of the curse in the course of an afternoon, now that she's got white men around to train her properly!

After all, it's not *science* that's all wrong - it's women!

Our final scene is a mutual masturbation scene between the Old White Priest and the Trainer, who congratulate one another for the fine work they've done taming Lilith into a good little housetrained terrier.

Next week, she'll be baking cookies!

Now, *that's* a fearsome, empowered female heroine!

Why don't they feed us more of this stuff? Oh, that's right, they do. Every goddamn day. And they'll keep marketing spayed women and incompetent men with penis-complexes as female-empowerment episodes.

After the "show," the SciFi channel saw it fit to further aggrevate us by showing a trailer for its next debacle, its adaptation of Earthsea.

Upon seeing Danny Glover opening up the scene, I said, "Is Ged supposed to be that old?"

"Uh," Jenn said, as the trailer spun out, full of lily-white characters frolicking in the sundrenched flora, "That's not Ged. That's the old guy who trains him."

"Huh. Wait a minute, then. Why is the rest of this preview full of white people? Isn't Isabella Rosellini's character supposed to be the only white person in the whole book?"

"Yep," Jenn said.

THEY'RE MAKING EARTHSEA WHITE.

"You do realize now why Ellen Datlow will never buy any of your stories, even though she likes them?" Jenn said, pointing at the frolicking parade of whiteys. "She works for *these* people."

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG!!

This Woman is Wacky

Does anyone else, like, seriously believe that Ann Coulter is insane? I mean, not insane in a rah-rah Bush is great way, which is fine, because there are certainly things about Republicans that half the country likes, and that's cool, cause it's a free country, but... um... why is it that the press loves this insane woman? because she's insane?

For the record, she's also equated Ronald Regan with Jesus Christ.

Amazon.com: How important is this presidential election in the larger context of the Republic and its history?

Ann Coulter: Insofar as the survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry, I'd say 2004 is as big as it gets.

Amazon.com: Is there one standout issue, and why does it make a difference? What are the most crucial issues?

Coulter: I repeat: The survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry. I'd say that's the big one.

Amazon.com: What would a Kerry administration mean?

Coulter: Quite possibly the destruction of the Republic.

At least she's got the research paper formula down pat: Tell them what you're going to say. Say what you're going to say. Tell them what you said.

Adventures in Booksitting

The adventures of a Barnes & Noble employee:

This is the most fucked up thing to ever happen to me at work: Basically, I am calling a customer because the book she ordered has come in. A three year old picks up the phone and gargles into my ear before handing the phone to her father. I ask for the woman who ordered the book by name and he asks rather suspiciously: "Who is this?" I tell him it is "Barnes and Noble in Northville calling," and he says "Okay hold on." Five minutes (literally) later he yells to his wife (I presume) in an extremely sarcastic manner that "Barnes and Noble is on the phone!" Another few minutes later she picks up, and the other line hangs up. Before I can say anything she whispers in a shrill voice: "I know it's you! I told you never to call me at home!" This catches me a little bit off guard. All I can manage to say is "Excuse me?" to which she replies: "Ohmygod. Ohmygod. I thought you were someone else." I then tell her that her book is in and hang up.

Important: If you are buying something and the scanner doesn't work, and you say "Must be free!" and offer a shit-eating grin, well then shame on you. Presumably you believe the clerk is thinking: "Boy! what a silly guy! Perhaps his background is in improvisational comedy!" But you are wrong. Dead wrong. What the clerk is really thinking is: "If one more person says that today, I will attack with such ferocity that seasoned police officers will weep upon discovering the bloody remains."

Once, while attempting to locate a book on Breastfeeding for an older woman, she caught me off guard by stating matter-of-factly: "It was smart of God to make the baby and the milk come at the same time." Yes. Yes, it was.

It's That Time of Year Again...

What time of year, you may ask? Why, the 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day!

What, you don't get a paid day off that day? Oh, hell, it's a Sunday! Who cares??

Which Pirates of the Caribbean character are you?

Check out this Pirate Ninja Adventure

How Pirate Are You?

And, for more workday fun try: The English-to-Pirate Translator

How about a pirate name? We all need one of those...

My pirate name is:

Bloody Mary Flint

Every pirate lives for something different. For some, it's the open sea. For others (the masochists), it's the food. For you, it's definitely the fighting. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!


via boingboing

Snapshots From my Worklife, 3

8:15 am - Arrive at work after walking in from the train station. Put lunch in the fridge. Open up my e-mail, update the sitetracker.

8:18 am - Download a copy of games from worldoffreegames.com. Play Antz and 3D Morris. The Antz usually win.

9:00 am - read random blogs.

9:30 am - open chapter 27. Snarl at it. Close chapter 27.

9:55 am - open one of the early chapters of book 2. Type a couple sentences. Snarl at them. Close early chapters.

10:00 am - update my blog

10:30 am - nibble on some almonds, have a string cheese or something.

11:00 am - get more coffee. Play Antz again.

12:00 pm - Open chapter 27. Snarl at it. Reread the beginning. Delete something.

12:30 pm - Lose at Antz again. Play 3D Morris. Lose at that too. Download some more free games.

1pm - Lunch. Read a couple chapters of Zelazny's The Guns of Avalon. Go for a walk at the nature preserve across the street.

2pm - print something out for my boss. Harass Yellow about something random (if he's still in the office).

2:01 pm - Lose at 3D Morris

2:30 pm - Write a couple more sentences in chapter 5 of book two. Update my blog. Cruise Amazon.com adding books to my wishlist.

3:00 pm - Open chapter 27, replace everything I deleted

3:30 pm - have some coffee and a protein bar, download more free games.

4:15 pm - read random blogs

4:50 pm - go home.

I get paid for this.

Today's Random Quotes

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
- Isaac Asimov

"Come to the edge," He said. They said, "We are afraid." "Come to the edge," He said. They came. He pushed them... and they flew.
- Guillaume Apollinaire

"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."
- James Tiptree Jr.; The Women Men Don’t See

"I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. "
- Groucho Marx

"Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease."
- Bill Maher

"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
- Toni Morrison

At her last exhibition in Mexico, Frida Kahlo told reporters, "I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint".

Hiccups

Gmail is having hiccups, so while I wait for it to come back, here's some Onionized "news" for your entertainment:

Female Atheletes Making Great Strides in Attractiveness

LOS ANGELES—In the wake of the Summer Olympics, during which many American women achieved a level of media attention often reserved for men, sports fans are pleased to report that female athletes are continuing to make great strides in their personal appearances.

Point-Counterpoint "I Wish My Life Was Better"

I know what you're going through. Before I created my Total Forward Thinking plan, I knew that the life I was living was not for me. I was renting a cramped, dirty studio apartment. I had a dead-end job. My social life? What social life?! I knew I deserved better, but I was paralyzed by failure. Thanks to the Total Forward Thinking principles, my wonderful family and I now live in a $2 million house that overlooks the ocean. I couldn't be happier!


The Onion's Pool Safety Tips

- Your body is 70 percent water, so don't worry: Even if you were to drown, only 30 percent of you would die.

- Leave a drowned squirrel floating in the pool as a reminder of what can happen when one isn't careful, and is a squirrel.

- Remember, you can't leave young children unsupervised around the pool, the way you do in the house.

Shitty Chapters

Fucking chapter 27, fucking piece of crap!! fucking GRRRRR... !! dammit, $#()*&) bitch @#&$*#%&)(#$ crappy GRRRRRR!!

OK. Back to work.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

So, Yellow gave up his ticket to the Cubs game last night, so me and my buddy Jenn went, and met up with some of the guys from work, Dee, Garrett and Jonas (one of the lead architects) and his son.

Had a couple beers, chatted with the guys about work and baseball, discussed transactive memory and team building with Jenn, and took off after the 7th inning stretch and 36,000 voice-strong rendition of "Take me out to the ballgame." Turns out we apparently missed the best innings in the game, as the Cubs rebounded and won 3-2 in 12 innings. Most of what we caught wasn't the best of ball playing, though I got to watch a hitter break a bat, which was cool. I don't regret leaving early - we're 3 train stops from Wrigley Field, and I've *seen* what the train's like after a game gets out. 36,000 people flood Addison, pack into buses and trains and cars, and it likely would have taken us an hour to go less than 2 miles.

It was a hot night, and I'd never been inside Wrigley Field before. It's a strange conglamoration of old and new, seats haphazardly stuck on the original design, and I was sitting within view of the line of rooftop seats built up onto the tops of 3-flats ringing the east side of the ballbark. Wrigley's an old field, and it wasn't - for all intents and purposes - surrounded by the city when it first sprang up. It's become increasingly crowded in by buildings, all of which have been converted by sports enthusiasts and money-grubbers. I like Wrigley because there's something so deeply *Roman* about it. It's not clean and slick and shiny - nor are its crowds. The Cubs haven't won a World Series in... what, a century? And that place is packed to the gills every game night. There's enough bad beer to drown a couple phalanxes of Roman legionnaires. The audience really gets into it - they're a very vocal, seething mass of spectators whose booing and cheering sessions can shake the foundations of the field. It's a bizarre spectacle all the more because I sometimes wonder if the guys playing the actual game are really having fun. No doubt the audience is, but I sometimes looked at the players and wondered if they were just going through the motions. I mean, all they have to do is show up, and they get audiences like this...

All in all, I'm not much of a sports fan. Not because I don't like sports - I love seeing things done really well - but because I really can't get invested in a team that swaps out its players every year. I was into Portland basketball for a couple years and went to some local games, but they started swapping out players, and I just wasn't emotionally invested anymore. There's an "us" vs. "them" aspect to sport that doesn't really work when you're rooting for a guy one year cause he's (almost always "he" - the state of women's sports coverage in the US is another rant) "from" your town, and not rooting for him the next year cause now he's "from" Toronto. It's difficult to maintain the illusion of an "us" vs. "them" when nobody's willing to play along, and players switch teams based mostly on money and less and less on any sort of notion of "team" loyalty.

I get bored.

Enough With the Us and Them, Already

For a long while, I've had a problem with gay and straight labels, similiar to my problems with white and black labels, male and female labels. It packs us all up into boxes and allows people to make statements like, "We Americans should let gays get married."

The first time I read that, it stopped me short. "What you mean `we' white man?"

"We"? Aren't *all* Americans, no matter who they go to bed with (or don't), Americans? American citizens can vote, right? (Though Papa Bush wanted to revoke the citizenship of atheists). Who the hell is the Royal We?

I thought this was an interesting discussion that touched on some of my own problems with "defining identity" primarily based on who you want to sleep with:

"I’m not disputing that heterosexual behaviour is the practice of the majority. But then, a lot of people swim, but do we have a swimmers’ community? This is part of the problem of a binary: if you set up homosexuality over here and you say it looks like this, then in some senses you’re forced to define its Other in the same terms. Like chalk and cheese, homosexuality and heterosexuality ought not to be compared in the same terms, particularly when one is trying to contest the terms in which the other has configured it. Homosexuality has been saying for 20 years, 'We aren’t what you think we are. We never have been. Why do you think we are the way we are? Why are you even making us a "we"?’ And then I look over here and I see a new 'we’ being made in heterosexuality and I think, 'Why do you want to go down that track? Why institutionalise, put boundaries around, in a process we’ve experienced as really screwed?’

"There’s something about the project that seems to me to undermine the 20 years of sexual politics that’s been about trying to renovate all sexuality, all gender relations. It runs the risk of shutting out heterosexuality’s own confusions and potentials, and locking it into some kind of rigidity. I don’t see why heterosexuals should be subjected to that, quite frankly. It’s not going to be in the interests of heterosexually active people, in the long term, to have heterosexuality constructed in that form."

So, I ask, is it more liberatory to hold onto the notion of sexual identities as fluid and elastic?

"I’ve got my suspicions about the term identity, you see. I increasingly think, 'What the fuck is an identity? Who’s got one, what does it do, and why do you have one and how do you use it?’ My hunch is that is it something which functions, or doesn’t function: where the concept of an identity functions in some way for someone in order for them to deal with their social world, then it has a place. Gay men have an identity as gay because it is a place from which to cluster and face that which it is not, particularly that which is wanting to beat you with a stick. It is both a calling card and a rallying point. In the face of master discourses that argue that what you are or what you think you are (or you are doing) is sick or wrong, gay identity provides a vantage point for critique.

Hot Summer Nights in Chi-Town

Had a mediocre MA class last night. Worked on lower body strength training and kicking technique. Worked on crescent kicks and learning how to crunch up and shoot out a hook kick. Had a mediocre partner who appeared to be dancing around somewhere else - her mind really wasn't on it. Had to bow out of the second class (in which I would actually get to pound the shit out things), as I had prep work to do for Weds, cause I'll be at Wrigley Field tonight.

I got a call from Yellow* yesterday inviting me to a Cubs game tonight. He got six tickets from one of our clients, and he's got together a group of us from work to go. So me, Yellow, Dee, Blaine, and Garret are heading out to a night game, which should be cool, as I've been here a year and haven't seen a game yet (Yellow's got one more ticket he's trying to pawn off on somebody). Going to a Cubs game is just something you do if you live in Chicago.

Should be amusing. They're a funny bunch of guys.

Up, Up and Away

The always-amazing Katha Pollitt discusses the ridiculous hyper-masculinity of our bullshit elections, and the mysterious absence of the other 52% of the population, in The Girlie Vote.

Matt Cheney's got a new discussion going on at the Mumpsimus about the bizarre articles department at Strange Horizons (I've tried to join in this discussion, but I've been having trouble getting the comments to work).

And, in case people think that I'm narrow-minded and *never* listen to political rants from conservative Republicans, well, put your fears to rest. I get hours of mindless entertainment out of such ranters here.

On a more serious note, though I don't like to tote abortion rights "merely" to protect the "life" of the mother (wow, it sounds infinitely sick to feel that I have to say that), here's a useful first-person account from a woman who's much-wanted potential child ceased growing and expired after 19 weeks gestation - and due to Bush's progressive ban:

"She walked around for a week, bleeding, with her dead baby inside of her, because the virulent political controversy around dilation and extraction meant that no one was willing to provide her with proper medical care. This could happen to me. This could happen to any woman."

Repeat after me: "Being a woman whose reproductive health is administered by men's laws and powers of vote and veto is FUN!!"

And, one more, because I can't end of the above story, as it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth: here's a list of the top blogs being accessed and linked to around the blogosphere, in case you're curious (I was quite happy to see that Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin et al over at boingboing are ranked at #2)

Fat Girls, Obesity, and the American Obsession with "Thin"

So, I did get the inevitable "ping" for my "No Shit, Sherlock" post about the latest study CNN has decided to publish that purports that cardio problems are not necessarily linked to "obesity" or "overweight" as much they are to a sedentary lifestyle. No matter their weight, women (the study only involved women) who exercised for half an hour at least three times a week were healthier than those who did not, though those who did not may have been "thinner."

My poster sites the UK's NHS (National Health Service) website, though not a specific article - it appears he took the quoted text from the NHS Encyclopaedia. I don't particularly need a specific article, of course, because the US is already way ahead of the obesity-speak than the UK (I read The Guardian regularly, so I've kept up with their pacing of the US regarding obesity as a disease, school lunch reforms, rising fear and panic about slothful, gluttonous children, and outsized women et al). The US has, of course, already gone far past this and moved into gastric bypass surgery on demand (As I recall, there are currently appeals to the UK's NHS to perform this surgery free of charge to "patients." Gastric bypass surgery reduces the size of the stomach, inhibiting how much one can eat, and in effect, you suffer from malnutrition for the rest of your life, and have to subsist on supplements until the last breath leaves your body). What most studies have not done is separated out the sedentary and non-sedentary and controlled for that factor when making judgments about the correlation between weight and one's propensity for disease. They've even "discovered" a great thing to do with "obesity hormones": inject them in women suffering from anorexia or female athletes who've trained so hard that their bodies have dipped below the 10% body fat requirement that allows them to menstruate. Yes. That's right. Instead of telling a woman who wants to get pregnant that she should "gain weight" (that 10% body fat requirement is there for a reason), they'll inject thin women with leptin to trick their bodies into thinking that they've got enough resources to nourish children! Great!

I've watched the increasing medicalization of fat with some amusement, trepidation, and disgust. When I was five or six, and first got the Fat Talk from Concerned Adults, it had to do with their fear that I would be outcast at school, and in later life, lack for a sexual partner. The health aspect was peripheral at best. Now "obesity" is categorized as a "disease" whose symptom is "excess body fat." unfortunately, "excess body fat" is an extraordinarily relative term. "Excess body fat" isn't a disease. It's a symptom. For most of history, body fat has been a "symptom" of health and prosperity. The truly excessive body fat that impeded movement, the sort linked to sloth and gluttony, was most derided in the Christian era. Christianity had an abhorrence for the physical "earthly" body that still lingers into today, though today it's called "not letting oneself go," or "attaining self-perfection" - and both terms are now considered positive.

Want to know what the indicator of excess body fat is today? The BMI system. Where did the BMI system initially come from? Insurance companies. Who did all the medical studies to figure out the simple height/weight formula? No one. MET Life looked around at the people in the office, did some quick averaging, and printed up the now ubiquitous BMI charts. Yep. That's it. Not one single study was conducted in order to create the BMI charts. No doctors sat down with control groups, nobody measured body mass composition (muscle to fat ratio). For a far more realistic (but, I think, not quite lenient enough) BMI chart based (again, not on scientific evidence ::sigh::) on the goal weights of others in your age/height/gender range, and how drastically this differs from the very odd BMI charts promulgating the internet (the MET Life BMI chart, the insurance one, is the one you'll see most often. The other was, indeed, concocted by doctors - back in 1974, when they were trying to work out medication dosages, not critique fat or lack of it), check out this site.

My biggest issue with BMI is that few of them take age into account, and NONE take body shape and body mass into account (each individual has a differing bone and muscle density). According to the MET Life BMI, Brad Pitt is obese. Seriously. Muscle is heavier than fat. If your goal for "healthy" is taking up *less* space in the world, you may as well do this.

My quarrel isn't with health. I think we should all be able to take a couple flights of stairs without being out of breath. You should be able to walk a mile or two for fun, without feeling like you're going to die afterward. You should be able to lift things, to bend and twist and interact within the world without feeling like you need to sit down every five minutes. And for those with the time, money, and will, I'm a big proponent of competitive sport and conditioning, all of which require a balanced diet to keep the body running properly. This means you're likely going to have a very low amount of body fat - but it doesn't mean you're going to be "thin" in the supermodel sense of the word. Being that "thin" for most women means loss of muscle mass and loss of the ability to produce children.

The average white American female teenager's ideal body type is 5'7, 117lbs. One female survivor of Auschwitz measured 5'2, 55lbs. Add 10lbs per inch to get her to 5'7, and she's very nearly the American teen ideal.

How fucked up is that? I make "jokes" about concentration-camp chic, but they aren't really "jokes." They're not funny.

Too many people have conflated "health" with "thin." When I read all of these reports about the Evils of Obesity, I want to hit people. The language is flawed. When we talk about the Evils of Fat, we aren't talking about health, anymore than when we're talking about abortion we're talking about preserving some sort of mythical life (as opposed to the life working to bring the other to fruition, a nurturing that only succeeds 2/3 of the time anyway, without medical intervention of any sort, but I've already done that rant).

We're talking about fat people. We're talking about beauty, misogyny, aesthetics, and (the dirty word in America, though Britain is rife with talk of it) class.

We live in a largely sedentary society whose bottom rungs work a couple of jobs just to make ends meet. They often have children, and if they're women and/or single mothers, they're working upwards of three jobs including the care of their children and the maintenance of a home life. When you come home after standing at a mindless job for 12 hours, you want to come home and collapse. Exercise? Very funny. McDonald's and some mindless TV will do. Besides, how much does proper exercise cost? Sure, you could walk around the block, but what if you're in a shitty neighborhood (as many poorer people are)? What if, in addition to a merely bad neighborhood, you get home well past dark, living in a city with the highest murder rate in the country (Ah, Chicago)? You'd have to be able to afford a gym fee, or an exercise bike. And let me tell you, when it comes down to paying the heating bill or getting an exercise bike, guess what wins out?

Rich people - or single "young professionals" like me, who have no kids to take care of and were lucky enough to scrape out an education and slither into cozy desk jobs - have excess money, excess time, and the will to spend it. The times in my life when I've been the most out of shape were when I was the poorest (working two jobs and going to school, trying to pay rent and live on my own for the first time; and again in South Africa, once again desperately trying to pay bills, and this time around, also complete a master's degree in a foreign country). When life is a breeze, you've got more time to pay attention to status indicators like weight, and if you're looking to move up in the workplace or go on media tours, you're definitely making "image" a priority.

"Image" being the key term here.

If "health" were the biggest issue here in the US, we'd have a national health care system. We'd have a welfare system that supported people beyond the subsistence level, and a minimum wage that afforded people the ability to keep a roof over their heads that didn't belong to their hand-me-down car. If we were really so freakin' concerned about other people's health and welfare, you'd see less disgust at the Evils of the Fat and more interest in improving working wages, working hours, childcare, and access to education.

The "obesity epidemic" is another handwave. It's not a disease. It's a symptom. For those few who are actually sedentary, obese adults in the "dangerous health" range (the "healthy" range actually spans an 80lb range, not the narrow 15-lb range the MET Life bullshit BMI spouts on about) where "excess weight" impedes mobility, it's a symptom of a system catering to old white men with old white money. We're being peddled drugs and operations toted by old white male doctors who're getting rich on spreading Fear of Fat the same way Bush is trying to get himself re-elected through Fear of Terrorism (because he did such a great job "protecting" us three years ago).

I'm a firm believer in taking care of yourself: of eating good food, hanging out with good friends, drinking good wine, going on long walks on the beach and long bike rides in the park, and pursuing projects that make you the best person you can be. I resent being told by a screaming news media funded by dieting companies and profiteer doctors (it's all profiteering in the US) that I should hate myself for everything I do and don't do, that I should spend the best moments of my life counting every calorie, declining every beer, and passing up on social occasions because I haven't jogged 18 miles today so I can fit into the latest Abercrombie & Fitch 00.

Sure, fat people die of heartattacks.

But you know what? Thin people do too.

No more spin. I'd like some straight talk.