Fleiss plans makeover for Nevada brothel
LAS VEGAS - Former "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss says she's bound for a brothel in the southern Nevada desert that she wants to help remake into a resort featuring male prostitutes serving female customers.
"I am moving to Crystal," Fleiss said Wednesday of a desert crossroads 20 miles north of Pahrump and about 80 miles outside Las Vegas. It features two bordellos and little else.
"I am opening up a stud farm," Fleiss declared from her Hollywood home overlooking the Sunset Strip. "I am going to have the sexiest men on earth. Women are going to love it."
Joe Richards, who owns the Cherry Patch Ranch and Mabel's Ranch in Crystal, said he sent a "courtesy" letter Tuesday to inform the Nye County Commission that Fleiss will work for him.
"She's going to be madam hostess of Cherry Patch Ranch," Richards told The Associated Press by telephone. He called her an employee rather than a partner.
There's one possible problem, though. County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said that because Fleiss is a convicted felon, she could be banned from the county's legal sex trade. DeMeo sits with the five county commissioners on a six-member brothel licensing board.
Fleiss, 39, was released from a California prison in 1999 after serving 21 months for money laundering, tax evasion and attempted pandering.
Fleiss was convicted in 1995 of running a prostitution ring in which models-turned-prostitutes were flown around the world to meet wealthy actors and clients who paid as much as $10,000 for a single meeting.
DeMeo said he'd heard several reports in his three years as sheriff about Fleiss' plans, including a failed proposal by an Australian firm that hired Fleiss in 2003 to promote a 50-room brothel-hotel.
"This is different," Fleiss insisted Wednesday, describing movers packing her belongings and her plan to arrive in Nevada later this week. "I'm moving."
Nye County is among 10 rural Nevada counties in which prostitution is legal under county and state oversight. Prostitution is illegal in Clark County surrounding Las Vegas, and Washoe County around Reno.
If she really wantes to make money, she'll have male and female prostitutes, and she'll stick to that "women clients only" rule with an iron resolve.
Sucks that she's working for a man, though. Which is why I think the whole thing will come to naught. She's just another Charlie's Angel.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Heidi Fleiss Intends to Open a Brothel For Female Clientele
What's So Bad About Being Called A Lesbian?
The girls' soccer team at Immaculate High School celebrated a goal that helped them win the championship game. A copy editor for the local newspaper placed a caption beneath a picture that stated they were actually celebrating one of their teammates coming out as a lesbian. The caption was considered offensive and unprofessional.
While the copyeditor was lying, and so violated journalistic principles, what he (?) was lying about shouldn't have been an issue. Yes, it's stereotyping female atheletes, but you know, some women athletes are lesbians. So are some fashion models. If "lesbian" wasn't a "bad word" would people have reacted so strongly?
The day when calling somebody a "lesbian" is considered a statement of fact and not an insult will be a good fucking day. Why's "lesbian" have to be a curse word?
I enjoy being mistaken for a lesbian. Doesn't bother me a bit. Why should it?
Only 37?
"Strong drink."
- Daniel Handler, author of the Limony Snicket books, when asked how he kept his confidence in his first book through 37 rejections
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
If Only I Could Type a Little Faster
A bit of a hunger night. Should have gone to the gym. Was bloody fucking cold, and I wasn't dressed for the walk home, dammit.
I'm going to seek out some yogurt and type a little faster.
I've got to finish this book.
But How Will I Type?
Fell on the stairs coming up from the train platform yesterday. I smashed the hell out of my right middle finger. I didn't think much of it at the time, but when I woke up this morning, it was pretty stiff and and sore. It's not puffy, though, and I can bend it easily.
But getting up last night, realizing it hurt, and not being able to see what was going on with it, I had this suddnen, terrible fear:
"But how will I type?"
The answer, of course, is two-fingered typing.
But it's funny how worried I was about that. My entire livlihood, from dayjob to writing work, hinges on my abillity to get words down on a keyborad quickly.
I have nightmares about people cutting off my fingers.
God's War: Excerpt
Chapter 14
“I always thought you’d be taller,” Nyx said.
Queen Nasyaan smiled and stood. Nyx had seen images of her before, of course, but most of those were doctored.
The Queen was a short, plump woman with a halo of graying hair. Her face was too young for the hair – she wasn’t even forty. The desert tended to suck the youth from everyone else. Nyx supposed the Queen was attractive in the way of an older sister or blood cousin; cute, and immediately likable, but not someone you’d first tag as a bed partner.
Nyx caught Rhys looking at her, and had the peculiar feeling he was reading her mind. One never knew, with magicians.
“Sit, please,” the Queen said, gesturing to the two seats on the other side of the polished white table.
Nyx watched the woman’s hands – soft hands, hands that hadn’t seen much of the desert. The filters kept out the worst of the sun. This was a queen who would never have to be scraped for cancers.
“I guess I should say I’m sorry about your mother,” Nyx said. “Her dying.”
When Queen Abyyad died, Nyx had gotten drunk and told Rhys to thank God for her dying. Rhys told her God didn’t work that way. It hadn’t put a damper on her spirits.
“I never liked the old bitch anyway,” the Queen said.
“Not many people did,” Nyx said.
“Nyx?” Rhys said quietly.
She waved him away.
“So it is Nyxnissa so Dasheem?” the Queen asked.
“Nyx, yea.”
“Nyx, a pleasure.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you for answering my summons. I’m interested in expanding my pool of hunters. I heard you served time at the front.”
“A long time ago.” Nyx looked around for something to drink, found nothing. Did they have something against liquor in the palace?
“Volunteered?”
“Yea.”
“Two years of service, honorably discharged at nineteen, so I’ve read.”
Nyx stiffened. This wasn’t going to be cut and dry.
“You came back with burns over eighty percent of your body,” the Queen said. “Your military file says you were put into the care of the magicians for reconstitution.”
The Queen eyed her over, as if looking for evidence that Nyx had once been a charred, blackened husk of a woman. “Is that right?”
“Yea.”
The Queen didn’t look convinced.
“I got a good magician. The best in the business,” Nyx said. And then he fucked me over and sent me to prison, Nyx thought. But she didn't say that out loud.
“You’re a war hero, then. A true patriot. I went against the advice of my best counselors in asking you here.”
“I don’t get on well with most people. They don’t like me much,” Nyx said. “I’ve been a bounty hunter and a bēl damê a lot longer than I was at the front.”
“I read that you served some time in prison for black work.”
“I did.”
“You have some sympathy for breeders?”
“Not really. It paid well.”
“More than being a bēl damê? As I recall, collecting blood debt is quite rewarding, monetarily.”
“Only if you’re good at it,” Nyx said. “I wasn’t.”
“You brought in all of your notes. What was it? Twenty-eight for twenty-eight?”
“I did that in three years. Most bēl damês do two or three times that. They’re better at throwing away bad notes than I was.”
“You pursue your notes to the end.”
“I do,” Nyx said. “I’m stubborn. Maybe just stupid.”
“Neither of us have gotten where we are by being stupid,” the Queen said.
“Oh, I’ve done some pretty stupid things,” Nyx said.
“How long would you pursue a note for me?”
Nyx shrugged. “It’s all the same. I’d go until I got it, or until someone else did. Rumor has it you’ve called in a lot of hunters.”
“A handful. All but half a dozen of the bēl damês have already given up the hunt. I need someone –“
“Desperate?” Nyx suggested.
“I suppose you’d like to know about the money, then.”
“I want to know what I’m hunting first.”
“You’ve shown an incredible dedication to your country.”
“Uh-huh,” Nyx said. Government types had sweet-talked her with words like honor, dedication, service, obligation. She had burned for it, and much more.
“Tell me, why did you volunteer for the front?”
“My older brothers died at the front. My little brother got called up. I joined so I could watch his back.”
“That’s –“
“He died of dysentery during basic training,” Nyx said.
“Sacrificing for the cause is truly –“
“Let’s go ahead talk money,” Nyx said. The last thing she wanted was to listen to the Queen of Nasheen tell her she was some kind of living saint for burning at the front. Nyx knew better.
“Money isn’t an issue,” the Queen said. “Bring me the woman alive and I’ll give you however much you want. I’ll set you up in an estate by the sea with a hundred servants if you wish it. Women, of course.” She flicked a look at Rhys. “Unless you’d prefer half-breeds. We have no end of male half-breeds.”
“Until we start sending half-breeds to the front.”
“Bring me this woman, and we never will.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s say this woman has the power to end the war. The war that took your brothers, your life. I offer you a way to end the war, and get paid well besides.”
Nyx eased back into her seat. “Now I know why you called me up.”
“Your file makes for interesting reading.”
“No doubt.”
“So.” The Queen, too, leaned back in her chair. “What do you think of my offer?”
“I have a good team,” Nyx said. “We could put something off. When did you last see this woman?”
“She’s a foreigner, an off-worlder called Nikodem Jordan.” The Queen pulled a slate off the table and called up a photo. She handed the slate to Nyx. “This gives her likeness and her vitals. You’ll need to change the password. I require the utmost discretion.”
Nyx took the slate and looked at a display of photos. They had date and time stamps. Some were dated eight years before. She’d figured that. Nikodem was a small woman, Chenjan in coloring, with a broad nose and wide cheekbones, gray eyes. It was an arresting face, not so much alien as exotic in the way she’d heard off-worlders were. She was too little for real beauty, but the face, ah, the face! Nyx saw strength in it, and some cunning. It was a face that kept others out, kept secrets.
“You will bring her back to me?” the Queen asked.
“I’ll need to know everything about her,” Nyx said. She looked up from the slate, reluctantly. “How long has she been gone? Does she have friends, other travelers? Who did she meet with while she was here?” She paused, wondered if she should show her card. “This wasn’t her first visit. Who did she meet with the last time she was here?”
The Queen answered a few of the questions, talked a little about the off-worlders. Nikodem had been missing for a month. The Queen said that when the off-worlders had come into Faleen fore the first time sixteen years before, they came in speaking Arabic. That’s how out of touch off-worlders were with what was going on in Nasheen. It took some time to explain to them that Arabic had been dead in Nasheen for two thousand years.
“What did they come here looking for?” Nyx asked.
“Some of that is confidential,” the Queen said. “What I can say is that they were very interested in finding other followers of the Book. They found our particular brand of Islam rather contemptible.” She glanced over at Rhys. “And they didn’t think Chenja’s was much better, but they have an offer for us, and we’ve been in negotiations these last eight years. That’s the transit time from our world to theirs.”
“New Canaan?” Nyx asked.
“Yes. You know it?”
“I didn’t take geography or astronomy much past the ones, but I listen to a lot of stories. I hear they’re pretty conservative, and mostly looking to some dead white guy,” Nyx said. She thought of Kine, who hadn’t had sex or alcohol in nearly fifteen years. That couldn’t be good for anyone.
“They call themselves the Mujahadin. The Quran is their primary book, yes, but they’ve incorporated both the teachings of the prophet Jesus and the old testament of the Judeans. They believe that because they have a faith composed of this trinity, they are the only true believers of the one God, the only people who know and understand Him.”
“God is unknowable,” Rhys said. “That is his nature. For them to claim to know God is arrogance at best.”
“It’s true that only the Chenjans have a call to prayer anymore, and some of Mohammed’s proscriptions I find terribly contradictory and backward within our current society, but it is no business of mine to tell my women how to worship. There are God’s laws and women’s laws. Whenever possible, they intersect. When they do not, I tend to ere on the side of individual freedom.”
Nyx coughed. Individual freedom, sure. She remembered her brothers. Remembered how honor-bound she’d been to “volunteer.”
“It would be a fantastic opportunity to spread that sort of freedom to other worlds,” the Queen said.
Rhys said, “But wouldn’t that be Nasheen imposing on others the sort of trinity the Canaanites are coming here to spread among the Nasheenians?”
Nyx sucked her teeth and glared at him. The Queen laughed.
“We have different views of God, you and I,” the Queen said.
“So when can I see these Canaanites?” Nyx asked. The less Rhys talked about God to the Queen of Nasheen, the better.
“Come, I will take you to them,” the Queen said, and rose.
Our New Contractor
We have a new person, let's call her Alana, working site ac. for us. She requested our team contact info, and here's what Yellow sent to her (names and numbers have been altered, of course):
Dee W. - Office - 773-XXX-XXXX - that's all you'll need for he's afraid of site walks and never leaves the office. In case he does leave his mobile is 773-XXX-XXXX.
Sarah H. - Mobile - 773-XXX-XXXX - that's all you'll need for she's afraid of the office and never comes in from the field.
Kameron Hurley - Office - 773-XXX-XXXX - Careful what you say to Kameron. If she thinks you're strange you'll end up as a character in her next book. I've been trying to get in for 2 years now - I'm either too strange or grotesquely normal.
I love Yellow.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Telling Stories
In honor of SciFiction's curtain call, David Schwartz has asked writers to pen appreciations for all 320 of the stories that have been posted during SciFiction's run.
So go check out the list of stories. If you don't see one you know, read and browse for something you like. Dibs seem to be going pretty quick, so jump over there and pick something up.
I got dibs on Russ. heh
What, you're surprised?
When In Doubt....
...add a car chase scene and the death of a love one.
Ah yes, getting back into my stride.
I would also like to praise Trader Joe's for the potency and reasonable pricing of their acidophilus. It is the IUD-carrying woman's best friend.
Today's song stuck on repeat: Antigone Rising, "Waiting, Watching, Wishing." Fucking fantastic.
Here we go again looking for a ride
got a smile to hide all the rain in my eyes
Got a bag stuffed filled with love and goodbyes.
I don't care if I never grow up
don't want to shrink in a suit, don't want to live
just to suck someone bone-dry
I'd rather die
Each time I think back to my hometown
my sad skinny self standin' around
waiting, watching, wishing, for something to happen
I used to dream about a boy like you
with your hair dyed black
and your eyes jet blue
hoping, searching, and praying for something fantastic
Chorus:
We've been here before
Stood up at the door
Holding secrets we'd never say
Hey don't hang your head
Feel the breeze instead
Fear no shadow don't feel no shame
Hey hey hey...
All that it took was one punch in the face
to make me wanna steal that guy's car in the first place.
Grass on suburban lawns never looked so black.
Slip through the window, step through the door
hand me your hairpin your knees to the floor
Head to the highway, we're never turnin' back
never turnin' back, never turnin' back...
Car by car and line by line
someday you'll find your place and I'll find mine
In a new time and a brand new town...get up get up get up GET DOWN!
On and on and on we go
we've got no radio so we sing songs we know
for miles and miles of open road get up get up get up let's go!
(chorus)
Get up get up get up get down
(repeat 3x)
That is all.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Damn This Fucking Book
ARGAGRGGRGA ARGARGAGR ARGA RAGR ARGAR
That about sums up what I think of my current output.
Fandom & Male Privilege
From Cereta:
Media fandom as most of us know it is often largely a female space. By that I mean, many of the circles we run in are made up mostly of women. Women write stories for other women, make vids for other women, talk with other women, go to cons with other women, and while few of us actively want to exclude men, we're not really invested in drawing them in, either. Fandom is one of the few places where you'll actually hear, "Wait, so-and-so's a guy?" And you know, we're kind of used to that.
Except lately, these fairly small spaces have been expanding, and intersecting with spaces where there are more men. And often, everything is fine and dandy. It's just that sometimes, it's not.
Let's take this post for example. Allowing for the moment that the guy was being obnoxious as all shit in his phrasing, there was still a rather disturbing amount of agreement to what was, in essence, a classic example of male privilege.
It is not enough, you see, not to exclude men. We have to actively get them involved. I'm not sure what's more insidious, there: the notion that we must find it not only desirable that men get involved in fandom but also some kind of imperative, or the notion that it is our, women's, responsibility to get them involved in fandom. That we are the ones who must act, in other words. That even though we carved these spaces out for ourselves (didn't nobody create those lists and cons and archives and communities for us, darlin'), we must take the further step to get men involved in them. And if you are going to argue that these couple of guys are in no way representative of male privilege at work in fandom, you might want to talk to the vidders who've been told that vidding can't be an "art" because no men are involved. Instead, it can only be a "hobby."
And further, as implied in this response, we must do so by actively suppressing our own interests. It is not enough to make things more appealing to men; we must stop the things that appeal to us. And that, really, is where things can get ugly. Because men can stand longingly at the window waiting for us to coax them in all they want, and ultimately, it doesn't affect us. What does affect us is the attempt to reshape the spaces we have set up for ourselves to better reflect their interests.
Read the rest
Oh, My Word
If Microsoft Word autocorrects one more "shit" into "sit," or - far worse - one more "fuck," into "duck," I may need to imbibe a good deal more coffee.
Why would I need real words "autocorrected"?
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Blah blah blah
Weekends should be 3 or 4 days long. I should be living in a Scandinavian country.
Free healthcare, too.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
What I'm Doing This Weekend
I need to write 40 pages this weekend, and need to spend this morning going back over my characters and making them more sympathetic. The problem with doing a brutal blood and sand novel is that you start to forget everybody's humanity.
That's a problem. It also makes the entire story more interesting when everybody's got their own shit going on. I need to deepen said shit.
