Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

Well, it was either Zoe or Jayne.


You are Zoe. While most others see you as a
stone-cold bitch and yes.woman to the captain,
you can be both a loving wife and quite
emotional - though you never let it show.


Which Firefly character are you?
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A Superhero And a Dinosaur Talk About Sex in a Public School

Randomly generate story ideas!

A serial killer holds a slumber party in a restaurant.

A courtesy clerk, a terminally-ill chef, and a racist priest practice an act for a talent show in a subway station.

A zoo keeper goes swimming with a psychic-powered serial killer in the jungle.

Good, clean, fun.

Don't Be An Asshole

I'm always fascinated to watch people who've never had to really work for a living interacting with waitstaff, cashiers, and retailers.

There's this sort of weird classist thing going on - like "those" people are lesser, for having that job, for getting paid $5.45 an hour to wipe your kid's smeared shit from the restaurant tabletop, like they're stupider than you are, like they have no other aspirations, and if they really don't have other aspirations, that that makes you somehow better.

It got even weirder when I found myself as the member of a hoity-toity group of executives who did a corporate dinner down in Indianapolis. I had a much greater loyalty and affection for the waitresses, but I was pretty fucked from the moment I sat down, cause I wasn't "one of them" anymore, I was "one of the enemy."

Oh, we hate our customers. Oh, yes. I remember. For every sweetheart who leaves you a ten dollar bill on a bad day, there's the couple with six kids who smear mashed potatoes all over the tabletop and leave you four pennies.

My parents were burger flippers. They started working behind the grill and the counter at the local burger joint when they were 16 and 17, respectively. They came home smelling like burger grease, smeared oil and dusted in the remnants of hamburger buns. It's a not unpleasant smell to me, actually, and I have fond memories when I walk into the backrooms of fast-food restaurants, as I spent a good deal of time in those places. And it means I'm also well aware of how people get treated in food service. People assume you're stupid. They assume that nobody there takes pride in what they do. And that's a load of shit.

It was very important for my parents to instill in me a good work ethic. They showed up to work on weekends and holidays, and I have fond memories of hanging out at the burger joint while my mom mopped floors on Christmas Eve. This was what you did. You did everything the way it was supposed to be done. You didn't shirk the floor on Christmas Eve, or any other day.

My parents would come home and talk about the people they knew at work. The managers, area managers, my parents' fellow employees, were a bit like an extended family. They would hash out the latest goings-on, compare notes about how well their stores did when they became managers, when they became area managers. When they became VPs, most of the talk was of corporate crap, and they didn't come home smelling like grease as often, but my dad was still in the back flipping burgers for store openings, making up new burger ideas, and loving every minute of it, and my mom would come in and make a batch of fries and mop up somebody's floor, and chat with the employees and let them know how valued they were. Cause they were people. And they were amazing people who had amazing stories.

There were women who'd come in after being housewives for years, and never had a job in their life, and this was it, and they took such incredible pride in what they did. And there were dumb teenagers who often stole money to pay their cell phone bills, and had to be let go. And there were other women coming out of bad marriages, divorces, and men coming out of divorces, and people who'd had life shit on them, and were using this to get through, or move on, on the way to anywhere.

There were petty arguments and stupid resentments and in-fighting and sexual harrassment and love affairs and fast food. And these were the people I hung out with, the people my parents befriended. And they were real people, with real problems, and they worked their goddamn asses off every goddamn day to make ends meet.

When I was sixteen, I got a cushy admin job in the corp. office, having parents who were VPs, and having been in and out of the fast-food joints my whole life. I understood the business, I understood the people, I liked being there. I started at minimum wage and within about six months, went from making copies to running the behind-the-scenes set-up work for employee training sessions and company events, hauling training materials back and forth, interacting with hotel staff and organizing box lunches. I copyedited training manuals. I started writing a company newsletter.

For a number of different reasons, my mother was let go from the company ("Choose between your marriage or your job"), and my dad told them all to fuck off the next day.

My parents were never really the same after that, because for 25 years, this place, these people, had been their entire life. They had talked of nothing else. They had spent all of their time, their effort, their energy, invested in this company, in these people, and they passionately believed in making it better.

Afterwards, I went through a number of different jobs. I've worked behind the counter at a health food store, worked collecting ticket money and behind the concession stand at a movie theatre; I spent six months cleaning dog kennels on weekends at the local vet clinic, I worked as a file clerk at a medical center, I've done some of the most insane work at a weekend catering business where I ran around with people engaging in the best of guerilla food terrorism, and I have been a hostess and waitress at a low-end restaurant chain where I was looked at by customers with an IQ half that of mine as being no more than the dirt beneath their shoes. And I smiled and was nice to them for my four pennies. I have worked in a call center at an electronics seller during Christmas time and had people scream at me, hang up, bitch about holiday orders. I've found fraudsters and cancelled orders and learned how to pick up a phone every two minutes and be incredibly polite to the next caller after being shouted out by the one before. I have done temp work, office drudgery, research. I've made a handful of dollars selling short, violent fiction.

And there has been a strange disconnect for me now, realizing that when I come up to the receptionist's desk at the hotel, in my suit jacket and nice shoes, carrying my corporate card, that I'm not "one of us" - I'm "one of them." They're paid to be nice to me and put up with my bullshit. When you're lucky, you can bust down the power divide and connect with them - sometimes the telemarketer calls and I can hear it in the background, I can remember that little office cubicle I had, can remember how crappy it was to cold call people to verify orders and have them pissed off because they thought you were a solicitor. I remember the phone, every two minutes. I remember this is a person sitting exactly where I was, and if we're both in a good mood, you can connect, I can say, "No thanks, dude, I used to do what you do. I totally understand," and he goes, "It sucks," and I say, "I know. Have a good night, OK? Hang in there."

Because they're busting their asses and getting bitched at for $8 an hour. And I've been there.

I don't bitch about my waitstaff. I don't make unreasonable demands. I tip well. I do this because I've been there, because I've been dirt fucking poor trying to make it on tips, had my phone cut off, been worried about paying the electric bill. I've been in that place. I know what it's like.

And that's why I always get so goddamn irritated with people who forget that the people paid to serve them may not actually like them, in fact, may loathe them, and that endearing themselves to that person is not about making their night worse by demanding that they acknowledge how smart and witty you are, or bow to your demands so that you can feel better than them.

They just want to make money and go home. Be nice to your waitstaff. Be nice to the people on the other end of the phone.

That's you. Could be you. Was you. Might be you.

Don't be an asshole.

Gender, Narcissism, and Masturbation

My friends love to bait me.

Jenn burst into my room last weekend and said, "Have you read anything by Norman Mailer?"

When I admitted I hadn't, Jenn broke out Mailer's "Thoughts on Writing" collection The Spooky Art, and proceeded to read aloud key passages she'd bookmarked just for me.

She then photocopied and highlighted these passages.

Oh, yea. It's that good.

Let me share:

"When your prime character is a man, the key choice is not how bright he is, because however smart, he can't be more intelligent than you are. That's easy. You dumb him down to taste or bring him up to your level.

This way, all of your characters can be male and God-like, like you.

"The real question is, How tough is he?"

Truly, one of life's great questions.

"Do you have the inner sanction to create a man who's braver and tougher than yourself? The answer is yes. Contra Hemingway - yes! You can do that by exercising your critical imagination. It must not be about wish fulfillment! You are entitled to guess how you might act if you were that much more of a hero."

Only write about characters just like you. Only, tougher. Tougher! You in a trenchcoat! You being the writer, of course. A MAN.

No, no, we're not talking about women - look:

"I don't know how to pose the question for an author who's female. Can she, for example, write about a woman who is more sensitive than herself?"

Cause fuck knows she can't write about a woman tougher than she is! Why the hell would she want to do that! But wait, it gets better --

"Probably not."

Probably not! Women have no imagination!

"She could write about a woman who uses her sensitivity and sensibility more than herself, because she can then key on all the frustrated times in her existence when the sensitivity and sensibility she possessed were not appropriate to a harsh occasion."

Did he just contradict himself? I don't know. I was busy being sensitive. That is, using my sensitivity to make myself more sensible, or a character more sensible, a female one, or something like that.

"Following question: Can a woman write about another woman more passionate than herself? Probably."

Women=sex. Women=understanding of passion. Good, good, Norman. Look, he'll throw us a bone! After all, he must have talked to thousands upon thousands of women writers to come up with this hypothesis! I bet he's not just talking out his ass. After all, he's a Famous Writer!

"Or a woman who's colder than herself? Without doubt."

All women are cold, evil bitches at heart, so they can write about cold characters. But she can't write about anybody more sensitive than she is. And she'll never want to write about anybody tougher than she is, because that would be too much like what men are allowed to write.

"If you believe in fiction, if you believe in the power of the novelist, then all subjects are possible. Of course, certain choices present more obstructions than others. It would be harder, as an example, for a male novelist to learn about the small irritations of a woman's day than to imagine what her sex would be like. A novelistic element in sex, after all, is the feeling of nearness to the Other. It's one of the most compelling reasons for sex precisely because such sentiments live almost entirely outside formal sacraments and private codes. It may be indeed why pious people so often feel driven to break their own deepest sexual prohibitions. It's because the experience of meeting the Other is incomparable."

What if you're a lesbian?

Oh, I forgot. Lesbians don't have sex. But you know, honestly, if I wanted to have sex with "the Other" I'd fuck a outside the species. C'mon, can we move past the "women are amazing, lithe, crystalline figurines who don't shit" and acknowledge that one of the great things about sex is coming together with somebody else? You know, a person. Not a plastic doll?

"Which is why I say it's easier - if you are going to write about the opposite gender - to limn them sexually than attempt to get into the nitty gritty of their daily life."

It appears that Norman subscribes to the Heinleinian school of female character creation.

"Another word on gender."

Oh, please, go on.

"Women certainly have every right to create men at war, but I think it might be recognized that it's likely to be less comfortable for them. War, after all, is essentially a male invention."

Women have never had to fight for anything. They never encouraged men to fight. They didn't pass out white feathers to civilian men in WWI, attempting to shame them into going to war. Women have never supported wars. Have never seen the necessity for war. Women don't have anything to do with war at all. Women are all naturally pacifists and don't get caught up patriotic fevor at all.

"How often have women show the same inventiveness and hellishness that men have in war?"

Slooooooooooooooow SCREAM.

"How can they approach that near-psychotic mix of proportion and disproportion which is at the heart of mortal combat?"

Maybe when they were giving birth, you know, during those days when 1 in 4 women died giving birth to a kid. You know, the life/death battle. Women have never seen none of that shit.

"On the other hand, if we ask whether men and women can write equally about bravery, I would say yes."

Oh, thank god. But wait!!

"How are we to define bravery, after all? Take a woman who is awfully timid - let's say she was terrorized through her childhood. She has an all-too-acute awareness of how bad things can come upon you suddenly. When she's an old lady and every bone in her body is aching, it may be an act of courage for her to cross a busy street all by herself. She doesn't know if she can make it across before the lights change, yet she has to do it. For her own honor, if you will. And she does it. That may be more brave, given the relative situation, than the bold act of a soldier who's been trained to be courageous, who is bonded to the soldiers he is with, who lives with the idea that there's no disgrace in life worse than not being up to the military occasion."

I would say something along the lines of, "I don't think this man has ever spoken to a woman in his life," but he was apparently married for years and years. Maybe they didn't talk. Something tells me that if he asked twenty women what the bravest thing they'd ever done was (and talked to lower-class women), it wouldn't be, "Crossing the street."

"So a woman can certainly write about brave soldiers, even though she's not the least bit brave, not at that level. Of course, she has to have an immense talent."

Of course. Women aren't naturally good writers. There are those select few that get put up on pedestals as model examples of just how rare it is that women are actually talented.

"I've often thought that Joyce Carol Oates, who is a very talented woman, will often, on the basis of a small bit of experience, write a six-hundred page novel. I think she's an arch example of someone who does almost all of it through talent."

The rest is dumb luck.

"She's willing to dare terrible humiliation. The irony is that she is rarely attacked."

She is, after all, a woman, and Famous Writers Like Me enjoy patting her on the head. She is no threat to us.

"I expect she arouses a fundamental if somewhat bemused respect in many a mean spirit."

Bemused respect. Bemused. Joyce, you're so damn funny when you write six hundred pages of text that has periods and everything!

And here are some of his thoughts on the writing of DH Lawrence:

"Indeed, which case-hardened guerrilla of Women's Liberation might not shed a private tear at the following passage (of DH Lawrence's):

`And if you're in Scotland and I'm in the Midlands, and I can't put my arms around you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I've got something of you. My soul softly flap in the little pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being between the sun and the earth. But it's a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause.

So I love chastity now, because it is the peace the comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause of peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow...'

Yes, which stout partisan of the Liberation would read such words and not go soft for the memory of some bitter bridge of love she had burned behind. Lawrence was dangerous."

Dude, if I was getting laid like that, I wouldn't have burned the bridge. But you know, I long for the days when women like me were called, "case-hardened guerrilla(s) of Women's Liberation." I want to be a case-hardened guerilla of women's liberation! Bring it on, Lawrence, you dangerous bastard! Think of all the guerilla fucking we would do. Beautiful.

And now, the really weird part. What, you thought it didn't get weirder. Oh, my chiklits! Now Norman talks about his favorite vice: Masturbation!

PK: Do you think you're something of a puritan when it comes to masturbation?

Norman: I think masturbation is bad.

That about sums it up. Next question?

PK: In relation to heterosexual fulfillment?

Norman: In relation to everything - orgasm, heterosexuality, to style, to stance, to being able to fight the good fight. I think masturbation turns people askew. It sets up a bad and often enduring tension. Anybody who spends his adolescence masturbating generally enter his young manhood with no sense of being a man.

The fuck?

PK: Is it possible you have a totalitarian attitude toward masturbation?

Norman: I'm saying it's a miserable activity.

...for me. I get really confused. All those parts, all the same. It's like being gay. And I'm not gay.

PK: Well, were' getting right back to absolutes. You know - to some, masturbation can be a think of beauty.

Norman: To what end? Who is going to benefit from it? Masturbation is bombing oneself.

Like a blitzkrieg of the self. Like invading Poland. If you're Polish.

PK: I think there's a basic flaw in your argument. Why are you assuming that masturbation is violence unto oneself? Why is it not pleasure unto oneself? And I'm not defending masturbation - well, I'm defending masturbation, yes, as a substitute if and when -

Norman: All right, look. When you make love, whatever is good in you or bad in your goes out into someone else.

Women absorb it, like sponges. They're great like that.

"I mean this literally."

Seriously.

"I'm not interested in the biochemistry of it nor in how the psychic waves are passed back and forth."

As psychic waves are wont to do.

"All I know is that when one makes love, one changes a woman slightly and a woman changes you slightly - "

Unless it's gay sex, which doesn't count. I'm not gay. Have I mentioned that yet in this interview? Not gay.

PK: Certain circumstances can change one for the worse.

Norman: But at least you have gone through a process which is part of life.

Unless it's gay.

"One can be better for the experience, or worse. But one has experience to absorb, to think about, one has literally to digest the new spirit that has entered the flesh."

Just make sure she swallows.

"The body has been galvanized for an experience of flesh, a declaration of the flesh. If one has the courage to think about every aspect of the act - I don't mean think mechanically about it - "

Cause then you might learn something.

"but if one is able to brood over the act, to dwell on it, then one is changed by the act."

There's nothing hotter than a guy pausing midthrust, staring out over your head, brow furrowed, while he contemplates Norman Mailer. Norman thinks it's pretty hot, too.

"Because in the act of restoring one's harmony, one has to encounter all of the reasons one was jangled. So finally, one has to experience which was nourishing. Nourishing because one is able to feel one's way into more difficult or more precious insights as a result of it. One's able to live a tougher, more heroic life if one can digest and absorb the experience."

He's back on the "tough, heroic" thing again. Sex is incredibly heroic, for men, but only if they think a lot about it. Otherwise, it's like masturbation.

No, I don't understand it either.

"But if one masturbates -"

Yep, we're back on this one again.

"all that happens is, everything that's beautiful and good in one goes up the hand, goes into the air, is lost."

Lost, like the survivors of a plane crash, fighting polar bears, learning how to walk, forming budding romances and hiding Terrible Secrets while learning French... oh, I'm sorry, wrong rant.

"Now, what the hell is there to absorb?"

Your own semen? Isn't that gay?

"One hasn't tested oneself."

Sex with women is a battle. That sounds healthy.

"You see, in a way, the heterosexual act lay questions to rest and makes one able to build upon a few answers. Whereas if one masturbates, the ability to contemplate one's experience is disturbed. Fantasies of power take over and disturb all sleep. If one has, for example, the image of a beautiful, sexy babe in masturbation, one still doesn't know whether one can make lover to her in the flesh. All you know is that you can have her in your brain. Well, a lot of good that is."

Women exist to be made love to. You must prove your manliness by conquering hot babes and fucking them while pausing, on occasion, to contemplate the act of absorption and the brilliance of Norman Mailer. You can't just settle for fantasizing about that hot babe who thinks you're a freak and wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole, you've got to go out there and go after her - with a pitchfork, if need be - to prove that your manly organ can go in its rightful place.

"But if one has fought the good fight -"

More fighting, again. Sex is war, after all. Not that women would know anything about war.

"or the evil fight and ended with the beautiful, sexy dame, then whether the experience is good or bad, your life is changed by it."

Hers probably will be, too. She might get herpes from you. Or get pregnant and kicked out of school. But we're really not interested in her. It's about the battle. I mean, you fought the good fight, you're a man. Just think, you could have stayed home masturbating and not forced yourself and your attentions on anyone at all! What kind of a man would you have been, then? Huh? Huh?

"The ultimate direction of masturbation always has to be insanity --"

Ah. The 50s.

"the ultimate direction, mind you, not the immediate likelihood."

Well, that's good to know. Masturbation today - insanity tomorrow.

"I was asked whether these remarks apply to women --"

Oh, sweet Jesus.

"and realized that I did not know the answer."

Having never spoken to a woman in my life.

"It strikes me that masturbation, for a variety of reasons, does not affect the female psyche directly."

Only indirectly? Like second-hand smoke?

"A male friend of mine remarked, "Since you've been married all your adult life, you don't know the true extent of the problem."

I feel so incredibly sorry for this man's wives. He doesn't know the difference between sex and masturbation. So every time he wants to get off, it's "Roll over, honey."

The difference between sex and masturbation is that with sex, you're with another person, it's about coming together with another person. Masturbation is, yes, about you, about pleasure, about getting off and going to bed.

And yes, there's a difference. And there are all sorts of men who've been banged on the head with the "if you want to get off, it's better to have sex than masturbate." Well, yea, it's good to have sex if what you're looking for is being with that person, cause you know, there's two of you involved. Way too many men approach sex like masturbation, and believe they're the only ones there.

It's no surprise that he's been married six times.

This guy needs to fucking relax....

And there's your introduction to Norman Mailer!!

Yet another Old White Male Writer who should really be included more in the Canon, as he speaks so well for all men - and especially their women! - with a deep, penetrating understanding of the core humanity in each of us.

Have I Mentioned Lately How Much I Love My MA School?

I love my MA school! I love all the cute newbies and their dinky weights! I love that the new guys come in and assume they can do everything with thirty pound weights and then have to stop halfway through and move to fifteen! I love it! They're adorable!

That's right, my chiklits, add 500 calories to your diet, and you, too, Might Just Feel Better and write a blog post full of exclamation marks! Stop it with the self-hate talk! Eat more apples! Feel better! Kick more ass!

I despise the dieting industry. They can eat shit and die.

Starve yourself so you look like an Olsen Twin! Everyone knows that eating less is good for you! Why should we give you calorie counts for *active* women! Women don't go out and kick ass! Women stay home and hate themselves for having hips!

No, no, eat less, so you'll have less energy, so you'll miss workouts, so you'll feel depressed, so you'll get a prescription for Prozac, so you'll have no sex drive, so your SO thinks you don't find them attractive any more, so you buy all of Dr. Phil's books, so you can only afford to binge eat at fast food places, so you can hire a lawyer to sue McDonald's and CNN can write a "news" story about it!

This is America!

Those dirty fuckers can kiss my ass.

I feel great! The world is beautiful! I've gotten in jogging days and MA school days, and I feel great! I am bouncing off the walls. The only reason I'm not out running is because if I don't get at least 8 hours of sleep, I crash and burn. Bad. Must sleep.

But the world is great! I love everyone! I'm going to go jogging tomorrow, and go to class on Saturday! And it will be great!

Why should we give out calorie counts for active women!! Women don't want to be active! They sit at home and starve, just like good little girls!

Fucktards.

Good night, chiklits!

Writing Today

See you after MA class, perhaps.



"Well-behaved women seldom make history."
-Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Things I Hate About My Flatmate

I'm so, so lucky that I have a good roommate.

Drunk Dialing Meets Drunk Blog Posting! This is Excellent!

Oh, sweet fuck. It just occurred to me, listening to some other sites with audio posts:

I can combine the best of Drunk Dialing with Drunk Blog Posting.

Oh, the shenanigans!!!

This entire media form was made just for me! Post your slurred, drunken rants to your blog at four am on Valentine's Day!

Yay!!!

Before You Go Banging On Your Drum, Step Back a Minute. It's All About Context

On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny.

Why the fuck don't we fucking teach people history in schools? Fucking shit, we'd avoid so many repeat propaganda fuck-ups.

Read the rest.

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

No shit. It's too bad I'm not more of a talker, but you know, a couple times a month I could see myself calling... myself, to bitch.

And you could all share in the fun!

Just think: long, bitchy rants from me, in my voice! With the proper intonation for "fucktard"!

So great.

The Latest on Battlestar Galactica

This Could Quite Possible Be the Best Show Ever.

But, it's not.

Cause the Scifi channel keeps fucking it up.

The premise is this: humanity is being systematically wiped out by "Cylons" - robots who come in several designs, some of them human. As most of their planets have been blown to bits, that last 50,000 humans in the galaxy (so far as they know), have formed a fleet of ships and are trying to outrun the Cylons while looking for a mythical "Earth" that they can settle down on.

There are things I love about this show. I love the end of the world stuff: the few against the Dark Forces of Evil. I love that in the episode "33" everybody's exhausted and looks like shit and they film all the interior shots with handhelds. I love that people are bitchy and confused and nobody knows what the hell's going on. I love that when the fighter pilots go out to Do Battle, they pass by a picture of a guy watching one of their cities bombed-out by Cylons - a reminder about what you're fighting for. I love the deck they've got that's a memorial to all the dead, all the pictures, the little momentos. I like that they, did, in fact, make an attempt to have a female character who outranks a male character have an affair with him...

... They fuck it up, but their heart was in it.

This is a show about genocide on a mass scale, and lots of very different people trying to work together, and a Faceless Evil to combat. Fucking Classic, right?

The Sci-fi channel toted the gender ratio on this show as being a big deal. It's a quasi-remake of the original Battlestar Galactica, and one of the show's favorite characters - the philandering, cigar smoking star fighter, Starbuck - is now being played by a woman.

There are, however, only four main female characters. Which, you know, considering there's only five or six male main characters, shouldn't seem so bad.

But.

But half of the female main characters are robots.

Seriously.

I shit you not.

Half the female characters in this show aren't supposed to be real women.

Fuckers.

I bet they think they're being "progressive."

Read any Golden-Age SF, much?

Worse, the one with the most screen time - the Evil Blond in the Red Dress - doesn't really do anything but make-out with the scientist guy. There's lots of Hot Blonde Cylon Skin for the 14-year-old boys in the audience, but not much substance. Just lots of scenes where she's breathily expositing nonesense about belief and redemption. In fact, the entire subplot of an entire episode consisted of the Cylon making out with the scientist.

Somebody over at Sci-fi doing a little wish fulfillment, much?

For the most part, the gender ratio on-camera is about 1/3 to 1/4 female, not 1/2, though if you're not paying attention, you may think it's half, because we're so not used to seeing women characters on screen.

They appear to have the best of intentions with doing this, but they keep fucking it up.

Some of the actors appear to be confused about What it All Means, too. There are weird scenes where you get these women deferring to the guys around them in weird ways - or sometimes they do, sometimes they don't - sometimes they seem confused during their scenes about whether they're attacking or defending, seeking approval or telling the guy to fuck off.

Starbuck starts to bitch out her commanding officer, who's also supposed to be her best friend (way too much "but shouldn't we play up the sexual tension between them" stuff for them to be best friends, but I digress), and she gets a little hysterical with it. Granted, they're all supposed to be frazzled at this point, but you know what - he didn't get hysterical. Boomer does the same thing when, in another episode, she blasts out a freak-out confession to her boyfriend (who she outranks), and he immediately goes into male-protector mode, and she goes into female freak-out mode and begs for him to "fix" everything.

This, after insisting that these were strong, smart women. And sure, even strong, smart women have freakouts - but you know what, you don't go hysterical in front of a commanding officer, and you can figure out how to "fix" something on your own without coercing the boyfriend who you outrank to cover everything up for you. These women are supposed to be smarter than that.

The hottest person in the whole damn show is definately Starbuck. She's fucking hot: not just in a "looks" way (because if you're too pretty you get points deducted, in my book - I need a little character in the face, not a plastic doll), but the way she talks, the way she walks, the way she holds herself. She's awesome. She's the only one who's got any real spit and fire to her - only she seems to switch from "butch" mode to "now I must be a seductive girl" mode rather too often for my personal taste.

Can't she just be ass-kicking Starbuck and have people like her anyway? Does she really need to wear a low-cut tank top (way lower cut that any body else's in the room) while she's kicking everybody's ass at poker? Does she even need to bother to pretend to defer to the scientist guy? Why doesn't she just find him amusing? Katee Sackhoff needs to take a couple of classes in the Joanna Russ school of feminism.... That would be so cool.

And you know there's this war going on: the director's saying, "These are tough women, but they haven't lost touch with their femininity! More femininity!" Which, somehow, actually means (to this director at least), "Show us that you really need male approval!"

Finally, the male characters defend the female characters a lot from verbal attacks by superior officers. You know, it's a fucking military setting. Getting chewed out by your superior is par for the fucking course. Get over it, you pansies. Again, this wouldn't be an issue if 1) the verbal attacks in question were without merit (in fact, they felt perfectly within limits to me, totally justified, and real) 2) if men were defending other men or women defending other women from such "attacks" in the same way.

Instead, you're sort of seeing this supposedly military-run ship tiptoeing around the women aboard it.

And it's really, deeply, stupid. Because you couldn't function effectively that way, if 1/3 of your crew got "special" treatment by virtue of having breasts. It would piss off everybody - male and female. And before you start arguing about women in the military now, let me remind you that this is supposed to be, like, 3000 years in the future. I'd certainly hope thoughts about what women could be and do and equal relationships between the sexes had improved somewhat by then.

But then, I'm a bit of an optimist SF/F writer, huh.

There's also this weird tension between the Battlestar commander (a man) and the President (a woman). He'll usually just make decisions without her input, like when to jump the fleet, who to attack, when to attack, what's best for everyone, but when it comes to, say, deciding whether or not to leave a lot of people behind, or kill dangerous people, she has to make the decision, even if those people are seen as a military threat.

I love the actress they've got playing the President, and I think she rocks the house, but you know, it's weird. The writers' decisions about when something becomes "her" decision, and when it's "his" seem decided merely based on how suspenseful it'll be. If you want suspense, you have him ask her what she's decided. If you want to move the plot, he just decides on his own.

Really random.

And for all my pissed off bitching, I do keep hoping it'll get better. I keep hoping that Starbuck will really come into her own, that maybe the cardboard too-pretty guy they've got opposite her will somehow develop an actual character, that just because Boomer is a robot doesn't mean she'll be an Evil Robot, that the fucking Cylon in the Red Dress gets blown up for spare parts really soon, that the twitchy scientist guy gets pushed out an airlock, that the President clearly states, "Here's when it's mine. Here's when it's yours," and that at some point, there's an actual likeable guy character who isn't 1) too-pretty and devoid of personality 2) a robot.

Which is like the same thing, I guess.

It's Bullshit, But it Pleases Me

I have no trust in these studies, because there are so many other factors at work, but reading this stuff always pleases me:

Not only red wine but also white wine, beer and hard liquor appear to protect against mental decline in older women, two new studies have found.

I'm going to live forever!

Good Stuff From Amanda

The Republicans have simply stolen the standard way Hollywood sells movies, which is bring in the men and the women will follow. The idea in selling movies is this: Stuff your movies full of good-looking women and violence, market directly to young men and they will drag their girlfriends to see it. And the girlfriends will go, because women are used to male authority in their lives.

The Republicans do the same thing. The Shrub is packaged up for maximum effect on a male audience. His rotating gallery of superhero costumes should be the first clue, as should the very existence of Ann Coulter, with her mini-skirts and her willingness to say nasty things about other women any chance she gets. The Stepford wife of a First Lady should really cause alarm bells to go off. The Republican party has been conveying a straightfoward, coherent message to the men of this country for a long time now, and that message is that they understand that men need to be Men and that the Democrats, in conjunction with the feminists, are trying to emasculate the men of this country. And that gets projected onto the nation as a whole--I would go so far as to say that 9/11 is perceived by many conservative voters as the result of our nation's "emasculation", that we became womanly and vulnerable and as such were violated.

I'm particularly pleased with the Laura Bush/Stepford equation. That one finally clicked. Wow. Read the rest.

My Secret Boyfriend Talks About Drugs, Alcohol, and Terrorism

Amusing thoughts from the other side of the pond.

Understanding the Religious Right

A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

via Echidne

Aren't There Any Bad Girl Poets?

Bad Guys and poetry:

In response to the question, “Can a bad man be a good poet?” there are only two things to be said: “Yes” and “obviously.” In part, that's because the poetry world sets the bar fairly low for “badness” — when we say a poet was a “bad man,” we don't mean that he was a shotgun-toting, baby-kicking monster; we mean that he was unpleasant, disturbed, or a jerk. And considering that poetry’s history is thick with unpleasant, disturbed jerks, the question would seem to answer itself.

He does, in fact, get around to talking about Anne Sexton for about two lines, but only to insist that it's impossible for a reader to "see themselves" in Sexton's poems, so it's different, somehow, to be shocked by her... I'm wondering if he means "a reader" to be "a male reader like me." Huh.

via Julian

Why is it Supposed to be So Much Worse When Women Do It?

Torture is torture. I'm so incredibly irritated that the "big freakout" about the abuse being dealt out to Iraqi prisoners isn't that it's happening, but that some of it's being dealt out by women.

No fucking shit. Women are people too. Women can do awful, mean, terrible things. And yea, it was probably men who told them to do it in some cases, but you know what, a lot of the time, they probably felt that what they were doing was "patriotic."

Women are Americans, too. Women were pissed off about 9/11, too. They felt they were serving their fucking country by interrogating people and treating them inhumanely, by working off religious taboos, by playing with sex. They were doing shitty things that their fellow male soldiers were doing, too. That's what you do. That's war. That's torture. Anybody who thought this isn't what they fucking voted for is wrong.

No, people shouldn't torture other people. It's fucking rude, whether you're male or female. Don't preach at me like women are supposed to be all "superior," and that it's perfectly fine for men to sodomize prisoners, but a woman rubbing her tits against some guy is oh-so-much-more-scandalous.

It's shitty no matter who's doing it. Stop freaking out based on the sex of the perpetrator, and talk about it for what it is: a bunch of Americans feeling that they were doing the right thing, being given orders by an administration who finds the Geneva Convention's anti-torture articles incredibly quaint.

It is a Fantastic Night For Piss and Vinegar, My Starry Chiklits!

So, I'm just about to cry right now, which I'll explain at the end of the post. I knew I should have waited until after I wrote this piss and vinegar post before I opened this box.

I was fucking pissed off today. Fucking, fucking pissed off. Fucking internet psychos drive me fucking nuts. I was also harrassed on the train platform last week, after six months of fending off fucking train psychos. I was exhausted, run down, and wasn't holding myself in my butch I'll-fucking-kick-your-ass-you-psycho mode, and he came up past me and dragged his hand against me and said something leering-like, and I yelled a big "fuck you" after him and turned to face him - I fucking wanted to fight all 300 fucking pounds of him - but he kept moving, and honestly, it's better that way, cause I quite like the shape of my face. But he fucking touched me, that fucking fucker!

So I've been pissed off. Pissed off femi-nazi pissed off. And you know, every once in a while, going back to your MA class when you're really fucking pissed off is really fucking good.

I grabbed one of the heavier weighted bags, the one that's 200 lbs and Sifu Kat likes to keep for "the big guys" and I beat the fucking shit out of that bag. We rotated out boxing and kicking rounds with squats on the balance balls, and the squats are getting easier, which is cool.

If all I have to do once in a while, is take some time off and eat properly to have ass-kicking workouts like these, I need to get my shit together and do that more often. I was bouncing off the goddamn walls. I should have stayed for the second class.

Instead, I went home and put the same five Everclear songs on repeat and went jogging. Yea. Ok, it was only a couple miles, but I went jogging. I went jogging not cause I *had* to, cause you know, I'd already fucking exercised, I went because I wanted to, and yes, I nearly fell on my ass like three times and did some fancy sliding routines around the stoplights, but I went, and it was great, and I burned off all the pissed off fucking energy I've been building up.

And it occurred to me that what I've been doing with all that freak-out, angsty energy is turn it into negative, loopy self-hate talk, bitching to myself about what I'm supposed to be doing, what I'm supposed to be eating, what size I'm supposed to be, the way people are supposed to look at me, and I was letting it eat me up. I was so mentally exhausted at the end of the day, after spending dull hours at work with little more to do than beat myself up about what I *wasn't* doing that I was too tired to do more than slump home and get to bed.

Stupid.

And there was one more thing I wouldn't owe up to, a big one, the biggest freak-out of all, and I pressed it back and shrugged it off and pressed it back. And tonight I stepped off the bus and headed to MA class, and thought back - what's been so different about *this* month? Why is it *this* month that I'm so unsettled? What's freaking me out? What's bugging me? Start with the first of January. Hell, start with New Year's Eve!

Oh.

Oh, well, there's that. Shit. Shit. Shit. Owe the fuck up to it. C'mon. Yea, there's that. Goddammit, son of a bitch, I fucking know better, I'm so fucking stupid, goddammit.

Cut that shit out. Get your fucking shit together. What the fuck are you thinking?

I'm an all or nothing person. I'm down for four days, down for the count, and then I get pissed off, and bang through the morning weights, the MA class, and I go jogging.

They're having a big "welcome back" workout session/party tomorrow at the MA school, so I'm going into class tomorrow, too, cause it sounds cool. We've got a bunch of new students, and it's fun to watch them. I suppose I'm not yet one of the amazons or anything, but my arm muscles are looking way cooler.

I was lying in bed last night, thinking too much, as I'm bound to do, and prepping, again, for the dating odyssey. If you want to know why I'm getting pissed off more than usual, and why I'm talking about guys more than usual, it's because I need 6-8 months to prep myself for actually sitting down and going on dates, which I'm planning to do this summer, and let me tell you, that takes all the fucking courage I have, and it means long nights of running through scenerios, of figuring out what's a make or break deal, of viewing me and the poor boy as two warriors sitting down to table and sizing each other up, me inevitably going:

"OK, so, what are you going to cost me, emotionally?"

And him going, "Huh?"

And I was thinking last night, running through another rehearsal, how I'd handle X or Z sort of guy, how I'd handle it if he pushed me a certain way, if he used threats of violence or coercion, "poor me, you selfish bitch," to get what he wanted, and there was that moment, that moment when I opened my eyes and said out loud, "I'm stronger than you. "

"I have been through the shit. I know exactly how far you can push. I know exactly how much I'll push back. I have a one-up on you. I know myself. I know exactly what I'm capable of. I know exactly what I've done, and what I will do. I'm stronger than you."

It was like I was a stand-in for Jennifer Connelly, staring down David Bowie, going, "You have no power over me," and everything broke apart.

And it was the first time I realized I could do it. I could sit at the table. I could pull up a chair. I could be me.

I am incredibly strong. I have done incredible things. I am fucking amazing.

When I got home, I found a package waiting in front of my door, which I did not open until after my run, because I had a feeling it would take away some of my piss and vinegar.

Jeff Vandermeer, cool writer extraordinare (I've gushed oodles of times about his Dradin, In Love here), wrote to me when I said I was taking time off, and said he was sending over a galley copy of his new book, Shriek, and some "goodies."

You know, the galley copy would have been enough to leave me hopping around my apartment. I can't even list everything else he sent me, but it includes a copy of Secret Life, which I was supposed to fucking buy three months ago, and his non-fiction collection, and a friendly plastic squid (long story), and.. and... it's just fucking amazing. It's the best present I've ever gotten, and he signed all of the books he sent that are his, and they are fucking beautiful, and I want to wander around the apartment just carrying them, it's so damned wonderful.

And you know, it's so funny, with these blogs, with public writing, with just bitching into space, because most of the time, you just feel like you're talking to yourself, and it doesn't mean a damn thing to anybody, and nobody but you could give a shit, and then the good people - not the fucking psychos, but the good people, and there are a lot of you - e-mail you and think about you, and you worry about them, and you think for just this one starry, pretty moment, "Wow, not everybody in the world is a fucktard."

And, of course, you get up in the morning and start over again, but you know, right then, right now, it's like people and life are the best things... well, the best things in the whole world. Seeings as they, you know, make it what it is.

I just love everybody tonight.

Well, maybe not the psychos. But the rest of you all are damn fucking cool.

Why Is it That I Attract Psychos?

I seem to attract a certain type of psycho, like moth to flame.

It goes something like this: boys crawling toward me, prostrate, talking about how they're not worthy of my glorious time and attention. They scream and cry and reach for me and go, "Strong, smart woman! Fix me! Nurture me! Tell me what to do! FIX ME! LOVE ME! I worship you! WHAT? You don't LIKE me? You can't FIX me? I HATE you! I'm going to FUCKING KILL YOU!!"

I so know this script.

Do they believe that I have some sort of Life Secret that they don't?

Do they believe I will act as some sort of big-hipped earth mother and pet away their woes (far, far, too many men with an interest in me are looking for absent mothers)?

Do they believe they can latch onto me and steal some of my spit and fire and hoard it for themselves?

Do they believe I'm a "fixer"?

Here's the deal, boys: I don't fix people. If you open up a conversation by trying to rip something out of me to bolster your own ego, your own fragile sense of self at the expense of mine, it's not gonna go well. Been there, done that. I don't take boys under my wing and baby them and raise them like fledgling chicks. I don't believe you attach yourself to somebody and then figure out all of the things you're going to "fix" about them. You've got the strength to get your shit together, or you don't. And you work at it every damn day. And you don't use people as crutches. You don't steal other people's souls cause you don't have one. Period. The end. You're a fucking adult. Figure out your damn life. Don't try and steal mine.

I am not a self-help guru. I don't know any more about life than you do.

So please, all you wonderful boys and borderline psychos out there, don't grovel toward me like I'm the Female Jesus Christ. I know exactly what tomorrow's flip side will be. Do not lay hold and scream, "FIX ME!" because the blood and guts on the floor when you're done aren't going to be mine.

Get your own shit together.

Feminism isn't a fucking dating service.

Writing Today

Been a while since I did any of that, huh? I'm pretty backlogged, and I miss writing. I miss my people.

If I go two or three months without writing anything substantial, I get a little weird... and I've been weird the last couple weeks.

Oddly, writing fantasy novels helps keeps me level. I think I've just been doing it for so long that I can't imagine life without it.