Today's a writing day. Cleaned up and sent out some stories that have been sitting, bumping up my stories-out count from 3 to 6 (paltry, I know - my highest count was 21 stories out, and that was the year I sold three stories. A good example of the Law of Averages). I have several more half-completed stories I'd like to work on today and see out by the end of the weekend (ha). My goal is to stay at at least 10 stories out. I've been spending too much time on the novels and not enough on shorter fiction.
I'm sure I'll have a rant or two up later, after I hit the post office. Until then, check out Amanda's reaction to the "where have all the fuck buddies gone?" question, and another rant about the "boycott" (read: intimidation campaign) by a bunch of groups in Austin who are pissed off at the building of a new Planned Parenthood (once again, if we were really fighting this mythical "war on terrorism", health-care protestors who threatened to hurt, maim, and kill health care providers would be sitting in Guantanamo. Ha), Katha Pollitt finds Fox news intimidating college voters, and I'm sorry, but, it's just amusing, you must check out the Klingons for Kerry.
Ah, geekdom.
My people.
In other news, I'm listening to The Beatles, and reading The Shapechanger's Wife, which is quite good, though I may rant about it in the near future. I also have a backlash gender analysis of Escape From New York that I really must compose...
Muwahahahaa.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Muwahahaha
Thursday, September 23, 2004
The Usual
Picked up another of the usual sort of rejects from Datlow for one of my shorts, the WMD story. She said there's not "enough to the story" which I can't complain about. There's not. But I like the story anyway.
I've been wondering if there's a form reject for SciFiction (cause I've never seen it), and if Datlow is really signing these, or her slush reader signs for her (I don't think Kelly Link is still reading the slush, is she?). Every reject I've gotten from SF (and I have a great collection) has been typed and signed and addressed to me, and she always asks for more. The language varies (like all editors, there are common reasons for reject, but never identical letters).
So, I take this as a good sign. In another ten years, I might start selling stories there.
Ha. Persistence.
In other news, I'm taking tomorrow off work, because "work" is just a ridiculous term for it.
Such Pretty Boys
I figured they were dumping the talent competitions for the Miss USA beauty pageant because, really, it was always about skin, and nobody gave a damn about world peace. Donald Trump said as much about the jury picks and how so many "reall beautiful" women were "passed over" by "incompetent judges" who, I presume, weighed the talent and bogus question categories over silicone implants.
What bugs me is that this year's skin show is even far surpassing the comfort level of the women being paraded out like cattle at a meat market (I've been to a meat market. I know what it looks like. This is it. And I still have very vivid memories of a man in South Africa turning to me at a party and saying, "How many cattle do you think you're worth?").
"Contestants will wear more revealing swimsuits on stage following a 2-year contract with Speedo, owned by Warnaco Group Inc. . The one-piece or two-piece suits, worn as bikinis by most competitors, leave little to the imagination and have caused some unease among the contestants, most of whom are aged between 22 and 24.
But organizers are playing down the swimsuits, saying the contest showcases the talents and aspirations of today's young women who want to make the world a better place and brighten it with their good looks."
Brighten the world with your good looks, ladies!
After all, that's all we're here to do! Be pretty! Make Nice!
I want a beer.
Where's my parade of male bodies? Men's bodies can be just as overly scrutinized and just as conflated with sex as women's - so what's the deal, guys, where are all the Suicide Boys (not work safe)?
via ddw
Godless Americans Political Action Committee
I had no idea this was a real organization.
Who'da thought?
They endorse Kerry, by the way.
Assumption of Privilege.. and kittens
A day in the live of Thin Privilege
A day in the life of Straight Privilege
White Male Opression Awareness Month! (because I couldn't resist) White men being oppressed! Here and here!
Ahem. Yes. I realize I'm being intolerant and exclusionary, so here's:
Kitten Terrorists. The next wave (this one's for Jenn).
October Surprise!
So, what's your guess for October's "surprise" fear tactic to increase Bush approval ratings?
Bets?
"It will be revealed that the three token female bloggers the A-list confesses to stealing material from via Bloglines are actually men who work for the DNC." - CC
"All kidding aside, we're going to get another alert that terrorists have crossed our borders." - Trish Wilson
"They won't be imaginative, because something too complex won't have the emotional pull they need.
But it would be cool if it were that McCain will commit hari-kari on the Capitol steps to show his support for the Bush campaign." - Amanda
"Palace revolt. Congressional Repugs see THEIR jobs going down the rathole with Bush. There is a shootout between the Congressional delegation and the Saved. The pragmatics win the soul of Bush. The RNC dumps Cheney "for health reasons" and puts in McCain for VP. McCain accepts on behalf of his friends in the Senate. Everyone wins and the country sinks into the sunset.
I hope it doesn't happen. Don't let any Republicans read this." - Anon
Gay People Get Married Every Day!!
Hate yourself! Hate who you are! Have sex with a woman you're not attracted to! You'll both love it! Donate money to the church! Pay us for making you think you're a freak!
ARRRRRRRRRAAAGGGGGHHHHhhhhhhh
It's a good reminder, though: gay people do get married. "They" get married everyday. And add to the mistaken assumption of normative heterosexuality, and whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.
At least there are some ad companies refusing to post this thing.
"Some" being the operative word.
Tokens
Here's a great idea: put cosmetics vending machines in schools, so ten year old girls can have instant access to enhancing their sex appeal and learning how to be "real women" early! I wonder what would happen if boys started using them, instead? Boys wearing make-up would be totally hot. Think, Velvet Goldmine. Maybe they'd mix and match mascara? Use compacts as poker tokens? Who thought this up?
There's a new interview with Stephen King that's worth taking a look at - I was interested in his sudden intensity with the writing of the Dark Tower books, a series that looked to be one of those always-in-progress writer's constructions. I did fully expect that he'd die before he finished them. The accident in 2000 kick-started him into finishing. "I decided that I wanted to finish it. I wanted to be true to the 22-year-old who wanted to write the longest popular novel of all time. And I did: it's 2,500 pages long, maybe longer. I knew it was going to be like crossing the Atlantic in a bathtub. I thought I'm just going to keep on working, because if I stop I'll never start again." The interview also includes, some, uh, bile from Harold Bloom about King's winning the National Book award. I'd never read so much of Bloom's diatribe. It's pretty spectacular. And then, to end on a good, writerly note, there was this bit: "Now he has completed his personal equivalent to The Canterbury Tales and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, can he die fulfilled? `It's always the way. I know what I wanted to achieve and not all of it is on the page. That's the writer's torment.' So why continue the torment? `Let's not go crazy. It's just such a buzz to write. While I'm doing it, there's nothing better in life. It's what I was made to do.'"
That's a writer for ya.
Sidney Blumenthal's got an interesting article about Bush's use of "positive thinking" to undermine reality in the Guardian. It helps explain why he runs into so much trouble trying to talk to international audiences - he doesn't know how to speak to them. He's used to speaking to Americans wearing blinders. "'The liberation is 'succeeding', he insists, and only pessimists cannot see it....Bush explained that, for him, intelligence is not to inform decision-making, but to be used or rejected to advance an ideological and political agenda. His dismissal is an affirmation of the politicisation and corruption of intelligence that rationalised the war."
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Hippies
So, there's frozen sugar at the end of the galaxy, the Pentagon is restricting access to web info about how overseas voters can cast their ballots (seriously), check out some free SF stories online (your pick), amuse yourself with new words at Word Spy, and check out Amanda over at Mousewords as she amusingly deconstructs reader commentary on "I had an abortion" T-shirts.
And, for those who haven't checked out at least the "highlights" of Bush's address to the United Nations... you should. You really should. It's worth a laugh or two. You know, I think all politicians are liars and backstabbers and all that, but you know, when I see the President of the United States of America standing in front of the United Nations and making us all look like war-mongering idiots who don't read newspapers and have no idea what the hell the UN does... well, those are the days I really miss hippie Clinton the Rhodes scholar.
Reaction to Mr Bush's speech, which received only moderate applause, was initially sparse. The Swiss president, Joseph Deiss, said: "In hindsight, experience shows that actions taken without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a security council resolution are doomed to failure."
Site Notes
As regulars will not doubt notice, I've been fucking around with my sidebar here on the site. Let me know if all these pics mess up your page download times too terribly, and I'll consider removing a few... I'm pretty happy with it right now. I'll also be adding more links to the blogrolls soon.
Also, Simon alerted me to the fact that I'd somehow disabled anonymous posting during some of my retooling yesterday. Apologies for that. The problem should be fixed.
As an FYI for those back in BG - I plan to be back in the sticks for Thanksgiving weekend (my parents are hosting this year's family shindig). See you all there?
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
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.
Monday, September 20, 2004
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.
