Quote of the Day

"The fundamental intellectual level of humanity has and will always be low. New technological possibilities mean more experimental things can be forgotten in new ways. There are amazing filmmakers, like the Soviet Dziga Vertov. Who knows who this guy is and who cares? Who knows or cares who Joyce was? That means people who want to write at that level, and I include myself, are only doing so because we love it. In the end, what else is there? There is no prize, including the Nobel Prize, which can compensate you for the work you put in. If it's not a joy, you shouldn't do it. If you don't get published, that's unfortunate insofar as whatever else you must do to stay alive consumes and prevents you from doing what you really must do. When I wrote Rising Up and Rising Down, it took me 23 years, and my publishers all said if you want it to see the light of day, you have to cut it. And I said no. I fully expected that it would never appear. I was fortunate that McSweeney's agreed to publish it. Now it's out of print."

- William T. Vollmann

(thanks Jenn)

You Can Make It Up, Or You Could Just Read About the Real Thing

Wilfred Thesiger lived with and observed the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. Here's a quote:

One afternoon, a few days after leaving Dibin, we arrived at a village on the mainland. The sheikh was away looking at his cultivations, but we were shown to his mudhif [guest house made of reeds] by a boy wearing a head-rope and cloak, with a dagger at his waist. He looked about fifteen and his beautiful face was made even more striking by two long braids of hair on either side. In the past all the Madan [Marsh Arabs] wore their hair like that, as the Bedu [Bedouin] still did. After the boy had made us coffee and withdrawn, Amara [one of Thesiger's boat boys] asked, 'Did you realize that was a mustarjil?' I had vaguely heard of them, but had not met one before.'A mustarjil is born a woman,' Amara explained. 'She cannot help that; but she has the heart of a man, so she lives like a man.'

'Do men accept her?'

'Certainly. We eat with her and she may sit in the mudhif. When she dies, we fire off our rifles to honour her. We never do that for a woman. In Majid's village there is one who fought bravely in the war against Haji Sulaiman.'

'Do they always wear their hair plaited?'

'Usually they shave it off like men.'

'Do mustarjils ever marry?'

'No, they sleep with women as we do.'

There's also mention of a biological man asking for his penis to be cut of so he can be a "real" woman, since in "every other way" he was "a woman."

I've read about the same gender issues in colonial New England and among the Pueblo Indians.

But, as everyone knows, marriage has always been between one man and one woman, women don't go to war, and the existence of male transvestites and transexuals are a uniquely 20th century invention.

(via David Moles)

On Being an Afghani Warlord

Her eyesight has faded to the point where she can no longer shoot straight and her limbs have grown stiff, but Afghanistan's only female warlord is still unassailable in her remote eyrie high in the mountains of north-east Afghanistan.

Known as Kaftar, or "The Pigeon", 55-year-old Bibi Ayisha has fought off the Russians, the Taliban and a host of local rivals.

My favorite part:

"It makes no difference if you are a man or a woman when you have the heart of a fighter," she said. Kaftar claims to lead 150 men and her only concession to gender roles on the battlefield is that she requires a male relative to be present when she is fighting, in line with Afghan tradition for women outside the home.

Because one must keep up appearances...

And if there's another lame WisCon panel where everybody argues about whether or not women can fight and kill people, they really should discontinue them. It's like arguing about whether or not women can do math or plant vegetables. Not much of an argument if they're already doing it, huh?

What I've Been Doing:

Working.

At the day job.

A lot.

At least the overtime is nice.

In NYC

I'm in NYC this weekend for me and B's anniversary. Going out to see "The Producers" and actually look around the city a bit.

Yea, I've been commuting into this city for a year and.. haven't seen much of the city.

But hey, if you only saw your SO once a month, what do you think you'd be staying in and doing every weekend?

Broken Out & Busted Down

If I have to run one more report, I'll vomit.

Pretty exhausted. Left work early with the, "It's Valentine's Day," excuse. Got some food. Taking a nap.

Just too much going on over here to keep my head on straight.

Here's What's Happening

Survived my time in Indy - anybody know any good telecommunications CMs? We're hiring.

In other news, K moved out the rest of her stuff yesterday, and me and Jenn are hitting Ikea and Target today to re-stock the house with furniture (we have no couch, microwave, or kitchen island now). We've been trying to think of what to do with K's empty room, and I'm thinking I may make it a map room. I've been meaning to draw an updated wall map of the fantasy saga world for some time, but putting it in the middle of the house meant it got mud tracked in on it and got in everyone's way. So I may revive that project and make the extra room a drawing room.

The people at Best Buy managed to save the stuff on one of my computers, but not the other - which I anticipated, so I'm not too heartbroken, but it means I lost all of the music I stole from my buddy Julian in South Africa. That sucks, but is survivable. I should have a copy of one of the stories I need to get in the mail by March 1st, so I'm happy.

I'm spending my morning doing God's War edits, working on a writing contract passage, and copying all of my CDs to my new computer.

Things are getting better. Slowly but surely.

Knock on wood.

So, Where *Is* That Male Pill?

Administration of testosterone to men markedly reduces sperm counts and is a very efficient and well tolerated method of contraception. Combinations with progestogens or with gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonists are even more effective and suggest that hormonal contraception in men is feasible and may be as effective as the currently used methods.

It Only Took 30 Years to Figure This Out...

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet reduces the risk of getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet has no effect.

The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.


AHHAh AHah hHAah aha aha haa

And, once again, it's a study composed entirely of women. Because it's really the fat women in this country that we're all so terribly scared of.

Last Day in Indy

For awhile, anyway. These are always long days. I'm behind on some other projects. I'll get caught up this weekend.

70,000 Dead Women

The International Planned Parenthood Federation estimates 19 million women worldwide will have an unsafe abortion in 2006; a similar number took this risky step last year - 70,000 died.

Off to Indy

I'll be in Indy from Tuesday-Thursday this week.

Oh, I can barely contain my enthusiasm.

Why is it I work at this job again?

Oh, yea, cause it pays me to screw off half the year. The rest of the year it's... Indianapolis.

Fantasy Novel Title Generator

It's not much better than the stuff I come up with myself...

Children's Mists
Heart of Darkness
Island Ruby of Trisilion
Secretِ Fireِ and Dream
Spell of Empire
Spirit of Pride
Stoneِ Rogueِ and Earth
The Isindaria Spirit
The Realm of Eltios
The Rune Herald

Link

The Times On Friedan

Nice overview of Betty Friedan and her work.

Re-Equipped

Last night, I maxed out my credit card and bought one of these:



Dropped the other two computers off with The Geek Squad to see if they can do any data recovery.

Gateway told me that Blue Screen of Death + Clicking Sound + inability to restart past the "Gateway" symbol page meant my hard drive was truly fucked. The other computer has a dead screen and is perpetually restarting, and after dropping $317 useless dollars on "fixing" the Gateway only to have it explode two hours later, I wasn't dropping another $500 on the other computer only to see it, too, die in some horrible way as soon as it got back home.

For the same amount of money ($700 +), I could buy a whole new system (This was $999. I paid the extra $200 cause this had a more comfortable keyboard than the one for $749. Since I spend anywhere from 4-12 hours a day typing on my laptop, comfortable keyboard was priority 1, followed immediately by how good the screen was).

So now I've got a new baby and a 3-year warranty. And I'm getting myself a back-up data storage service or an external hard drive, because this ordeal has been massively ridiculous.

Sometimes I have to learn my lessons the hard way.

Back to work.

Dear Mr. Grande Latte Enema;

Fuck you.

For Those Who Haven't Seen or Heard it Yet:

Pink's "Stupid Girl."

Is Romance Really for Guys?

What exactly is the princess of archetypal hero myths? She’s not a real love interest, since the reasons the hero loves her are never explored. She’s a symbol, possibly like today’s real-life trophy wife. An object of status to impress other men. Maybe that explains why the whole idea of women characters as “love interests” is such a turn-off to women. After all, it’s not much more satisfying to be wanted as a trophy than to not be wanted at all. This could also explain why more than one man has expressed sympathy for Sam (Of Stargate SG-1) that she can’t have her man: they’re extrapolating the hero’s quest onto her, and like a man, part of her prize package for heroic deeds should include the prince of her choice.

(thanks, Jenn)

You Need to Make A Decision

I had lunch with this one editor, she took me to this fancy restaurant, and she told me I had to make a decision...whether or not I was writing for black people or white people." - Danyel Smith

If you're a white writer, would you expect to get asked a question like that?

February's Black History Month

But, then:

For this bitch, every month is Black History Month but my ass can see the value in setting aside one month for deeper exploration.