Jiggety-Jig

The weather's finally gotten sunny here in lovely rural BG, I've been jogging a couple times (one more time tomorrow, and I'll hit my three-times-this-week-goal), the three-days-of-eating fest is over and I'm back to omelettes (oh, thank goodness), had dinner last night with my parents and my brother at Portland City Grill for my soon-arriving-birthday (quarter century, baby), and now it's off for some holiday gift-card spending.

All said, I'll be happy to get back home on Wednesday and get back into my old routine. This has been the perfect sort of break for me: I needed to gear myself up for a really busy year, and I think the events of the week have been a great motivator.

My favorite bit of dialogue at last night's dinner. My family owns a pizza franchise where everybody works, and the dialogue went something like this:

Dad: I know, I treat them like crap. They drive me nuts.

Brother: You should. They deserve it. They're such losers.

Me: How can you treat your employees like that? No wonder you have trouble getting good people.

Brother: Oh, we're not talking about the employees. We're talking about the customers.

I love my family.

Done

Well. Thank goodness that's over.

Anyhow, via my brother, France is adding anti-gay and anti-women remarks to its anti-racist and anti-semetic remarks list of "things people can say that'll encourage us to send them to jail."

Free speech crosses the line when you threaten violence against somebody else, but you know... I'm glad I live in a country with a first amendment.

Now I understand why the French just don't get stand-up comedy. What would they be allowed to say?

Jet Plane

I'm about to get on a jet plane to the West Coast, but stay tuned:

Tomorrow I'll be ranting a lot about sex, and delivering my much-promised scream-fest about the sexist assumptions of an author's hope-filled matriarchy-cum-S&M-child molestation-rape fest.

Fun.

My Brain's Gonna Explode

Bah. What a frickin' long day.

I'm getting on a jet plane tomorrow afternoon. Got the place all packed up and all is ready to go, and you know what? I'm going to bed. Bed... bed...

I'm so exhausted.

Who Cares?

You know what my response is to the "men want to form long-term relationships with subordinate women because it's biologically good for men" thing is?

Who cares?

And who the hell is asking these questions? Did anyone ask how biologically useful it was for women to be weak and malnourished and grow up hating their bodies? Did anyone ask the guys if they found the idea of being ridiculed by their peers for being "pussy whipped" a factor in their dating choices? Did anyone ask what biological advantage women have for going out with men who enjoy beating the crap out of them?

Why, no. No one asked this. Cause this is about men and what men like.

Who cares about the women?

To which I reply, then why should I care about men?

It's studies like these that try and make it up that men and women should hate each other, that men will always "naturally" be assholes and women will always "naturally" be victims. And these are dangerous images to go selling people.

Blow me.

Fuck the Fucking Fuckers

Boring, boring meeting. Now I know why all the managers are fucking insane.

Corporate says: How many people do you need to do the job?

We say: we need this many people to do the job.

Corporate says: you lie! That's not what we budgeted!

We say: if you're only going to give us what we budgeted, why are we having this conversation?

Corporate says: fuck you, you fucking fuckers!

Anyway, I met Piper today, my new boss, and it looks like I'll be taking on all of document controls. I really want to stay top dog on this particular aspect, and I made it clear I can handle it. So I'm now a Document Controls Manager, with a part-time sort-of staff and at least one full-time staff member who'll we'll pick up in Denver.

Unfortunately, in order to keep this position (and get the right compensation for it), I need to really wow them with how I handle this huge influx of work. It ain't gonna be pretty. In fact, it's gonna suck. The sheer amount of shit they're going to funnel at me is phenomenal.

And yes, I want to do it, cause I HATE being a lowly admin. Document Controls is a slightly less gender-obvious position (which means it involves a lot more "you fucked this up and now everything went to hell" responsibility, and as such, it's better paid). There's also some murmuring about flying me out to Denver for the occasional trip, or relocating me to Denver at a later date, which I don't mind. I'm young and free: now's the time to do it.

I'd really rather I sold a book or something, but if nobody's buying the books, I've gotta figure out how to get what I want the old fashioned way, until something finally hits for me.

Bah. Fuckers.

Gotta Love Lunch

I've got a couple posts up at Alas, A Blog.

Come join the fun.

Somedays, I Work for a Living

Stuck in corp. meetings all day. More tonight.

Guest Blogging at Alas, A Blog

Starting tomorrow, I will be guest blogging over at the always-amazing Alas, A Blog. My partner-in-guest-blogging crime will be Lauren of Feministe.

I'll be doing some crossposting; hopefully producing a good post a day over at Alas in addition to my usual mixed bag of goodness over here.

Should be fun. Hope to see you all there.

One for the Road

Philobiblon has a post up about unisex sport/women in sport (one can't have an interest in women in war and not keep one eye on women in sport), which I'll be addressing tomorrow.

In the mean time, I've got a painter story I need to work on. Today's story reject was from an editor who found one of my women & war stories too "didactic."

::snicker::

Well, I'm just screwed, then.

Someday, when I write better stories, I'll actually get paid for what I write.

Until then, it's bugs, painting, violent women, and a love affair at the end of the world in my latest must-get-it-into-the-mail story, which I need to be working on... right now.

See you all tomorrow.

If I Wasn't at Work, I Would SCREAM

Must. Contain. Myself.

(why the fuck does Jenn send me these links? Satire? Or not? Want to wage a guess?)

The Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair is a fair that promotes children's interest in science from a Creationist perspective.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Of course, I thought, nodding happily along, we must include all views of...

And then I saw the "science experiments" that the children engaged in, using thier powers of deductive reasoning:

Elementary School Level

1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"

Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.

2nd Place: "Pine Cones Are Complicated"

David Block and Trevor Murry (grades 4) showed how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God's design in nature.

And... wait for it.... Here it is!!

Middle School Level

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"

Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

I AM IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY!! PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME COME BACK!

[EDIT NOTE: I have since been informed that this site is SATIRE. The scariest part about that, is, though... it fooled me. There are enough wingnuts in the world that you just can't go over the top enough to prove a point]

A Short Shout-Out

Thanks to all those coming in via Alas, A Blog (thanks for blogrolling me, Amp) and Pharyngula. And, as usual, hello to everybody reading offsite at the LJ feminist forums and friends' lists.

Good to have you here.

Dream

Had a nightmare last night that Yellow found this blog.

Really must rein in my work posts. I have a history of prescient dreaming.

Revenge of the Wingnuts

I've been keeping up with Jeff Jarvis over at buzzmachine and his research into complaints about television programming, FCC censorship, and the like. What's interested me about it is just how few crazies it takes to freak out networks, sponsers, and get television shows slapped with FCC fines.

Just how few does it take?

In a country of about 260 million, about 23.

His latest rant is about wingnuts and religion in America:

There is a debate supposedly emerging -- even raging -- in this country:

One side says that religion is under attack in America.

Another side says America is under attack from religion.

Jeff goes on to say that too much is being made out of a few wingnuts. They're getting too much screen time with the media and bloggers are spending too much time screaming about them. It makes the nutty crazies in the country look like a majority.

My worry? That the nutty crazies will scream so long and so loud that they start to look normal. In response, I'd like to remain screaming loud and long on my own end, as a sort of counterweight.

I think that's fair.

Writing & the Word

John Rickards, "making a shameless bid for linkage again" posted some thoughts on why writers write. Being someone who makes a living writing crime novels, he went straight for the jugular:

To quote 'Fight Club', "You're not your job". And that, when it comes down to it, is what writing professionally is. It's a job. It's fun, it's interesting and it's varied, but it's basically a cool way of earning a living. That's all.

"Looking at it that way, sure, but what about the whole 'writing as a calling?' aspect?" Sarah said in the original backblogs. "Art vs. livelihood. I mean, I'd love to make a living writing, but even if I couldn't, I'd still do it because at least when it comes to fiction, my brain would probably explode if I didn't find a way to write about it."

To which I say, for most writers, bullshit. We're no more 'called' to it than that mechanic. We enjoy it, we get a great deal of fun from it, but that's all.

I always seize up with I read these "you frickin' pansy-ass writers" things, cause I'm an elitist snob just as much as the next word hack, and sure, money is great for a writer who can get money that way, and if you're not making money (like me), you're sure as hell looking to *get* money by writing... but no more than anybody else looking to get money for doing something they like...

And... and...

Well. Then you read something like this, and all of that cynicism just sort of bleeds away.

You write because there's a power in the telling of stories. The rest is just details.

A Lady in the House

I was channel surfing last night and saw a familiar-looking room getting decorated for the holidays. I paused and realized where it was -- First Lady Laura Bush appeared on screen looking perfectly coiffed and dainty, hands folded demurely in her lap.

Ah. Yes. The Lady's House.

I had found HGTV's special on the decorating of the White House for the holidays, an apparently immense affair that filled Laura will no small amount of joy, this being a chief first lady duty this time of year.

And it got me to thinking about what a perfect first lady Laura Bush is. She's just got it all down: stay in the background, push appropriately lady-like programs like the education of the young (yes, there's a devaluation of "women's work" - note our American incompetence when it comes to education). Give substanceless but uplifting speeches about women being able to vote in Afghanistan. Smile. Wear heels and knee-length skirts. Never, under any circumstances, raise your voice. Host tea parties.

She's a brilliant woman, I've gotta give her her props. You won't find Laura heading a committee on healthcare reform and getting lambested the way Hillary was. You won't find her raising her voice like Hillary. And you sure as hell won't ever hear her tell somebody to "shove it" like the admirable Teresa Heinz Kerry.

So what's wrong with this image of the first lady as cookie-baker and White House decorator? What's wrong with the image of Laura in her proper wifely role as nurturer and house-beautifier? After all, Martha Stewart made an entire industry of her own out of it.

I was watching Laura Bush smiling warmly and speaking about all of the Christmas displays, the "vingettes," and coyly implying how clever she was to put the vingette of "I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus" underneath the portrait of former first lady Barbara Bush, and I thought, "This is all fake."

All of it? No, of course not. But it's fake in the way it matters. That house has been full of ballsy women, from Eleanor Roosevelt to the amazing Abigail Adams, to Nancy Reagan (who ruled the White House for better or worse), to Hillary "I don't bake cookies" Clinton. And I just don't buy that all of them are real keen on giving teas. Hilary was the first one to actually say so. Laura, though, Laura knows her place. She knows the part she has to play, she knows *she* wasn't elected, just her husband, and she's happy to play the lady and be America's wifely role model.

But you know, I believe in the power of images. Seeing Laura give her little speech about the holiday decorations, I wondered what else she would rather be doing than supervising the decorating of the White House, which is likely down to a science by now and doesn't really need her to direct it anyway. I know that if I was First Lady (oh, let's be realistic - I'd be president before I'd be first lady), I'd have other stuff to do around the holidays than talk to HGTV about what a perfect homemaker I was, but I'd have to tow that line, I'd have to mince around and hold a bunch of White House teas, cause that's what First Ladies do, and if I didn't do them, then I'd be the antichrist, like Hillary Clinton.

You know who I wanted to march around playing First Lady in the White House? Teresa Heinz Kerry. I liked her better than her husband. Teresa's the sort of woman I'd love to go out and get drunk with. She'd be table dancing by 2am, and we'd flirt with outrageously younger men and do tequila shots and fall out of our limos onto the sidewalks in front of our respective houses sometime around 5am, and wake up the next morning with hazy snatches of memory that included the smeared visage of some hot guy named Enrique. I wouldn't be able to find my shoes, I'd have some bruises from falling off the table, and I'd call up Teresa sometime that afternoon and ask when we were going out to party again.

And she wouldn't say something like, "I have to decorate the White House today, sorry." She'd say something like, "I'd love to, but we're planning on passing a universal health care bill today, and I need to be on the floor. Also, I'm flying off to Zimbabwe with the Secretary of State to talk about election reform."

I'd turn on C-Span, and there she'd be, ushering in a universal health care bill before flying off to Zimbabwe while I was still nursing my hangover. She'd be wearing a sensible pair of pants and a floppy hat and good shoes. Maybe she'd say something in French just before she left, to really piss people off.

Images are powerful things. Halle Berry knew this, which was among the many reasons she broke into such hysterics when she was the first black woman to win an academy award for best actress. Sure, you know, rationally, that this is a possiblity: you know that there's no *legal* reason a black woman can't win, but you've never actually seen it done. And it was a huge deal for her to show black women: See. Look at me. It can be done.

And when I look at the images of First Ladies that they feed to us - however truthful or not they are - I think, nobody realizes how different it could be. Everybody sees these women sipping their tea and pretends not to notice how important they really are, the power they may have, because we have to hide behind all these feminine accoutrements that make people think that this is the only way women can be. And we think that because we haven't seen anything else. All we know is First Lady tea parties and holiday decorating tips, and because such women's work has been so derided, we look at these First Ladies and assume that this is it: this is the pinnacle of womanhood, and no, really, see, she doesn't have any power! She bakes cookies, for goodness sake! As if baking cookies eclipses the fact that she's got the ear (and a lot more) of the President.

And it pisses me off. Everybody knows that she's got to be an image, a symbol, and it's gotta be played the happy hetero-Christian patriarchy way.

I wish people would have left Hillary alone. I wish they'd just let First Ladies be powerful. Not behind the scenes, but right there, in your face.

If they're powerful, let them be powerful.

I want an anti-First Lady.

And Then My Heart Got...

Breaks my damn heart.

(via Empire o' Dirt)

All I Want For Christmas...

Is a damn non-stick wok. There's enough chicken satay on the bottom of this thing to feed a small midwestern town.

Anyway. My photo page is up. Proof of my life-long debauchery.

I'll be ranting about Laura Bush & Yuletide cheer tomorrow. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's my very late build-your-own-superhero:



Perfect.

Movies, Movies

[Spoilers]

Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood is an old, cynical man. Don't expect this to be a happy movie. And if you walk in wanting this to be about the fighter, you'll likely be disappointed. Swank does a great job, but this is definately about the old guys and their issues.

The first 3/4 are pretty good, and it wins for the best line I've heard delivered by a priest this year: "There are no demigods, you fucking pagan!"

Swank wasn't bad, but she's no Michelle Rodreguiz. Maybe it was all that smiling she does. I don't know. She just wasn't scary in the ring. And even though they play her white trash, which is cool (I have a fondness for white trash characters, being not so far removed from white trash myself), I just didn't get that she wanted it bad enough. But then, in the end, the movie wasn't so much a happy underdog story, so...

And you know, any movie that ends up turning a strong fighting woman into a vegetable through marriage malaise/abusive relationship/or accident just isn't going to be something I want to pick up on DVD. Granted, I don't think I'd enjoy watching a male protagonist get turned into a vegetable either.

Leave at the beginning of the third round with the female prostitute. Trust me.

To be fair, it's a movie more about choosing how you live and how you die, and it had a bit to say about it, stuff I agree with. But that wasn't the movie I wanted to watch.

It shoved in some fun fights, though, before it all went to hell.

House of Flying Daggers

Beautiful people. Beautiful scenery. Beautiful clothes. Sweet-ass fantasy fight scenes, with lots of projectiles.

Zhang Ziyi of Crounching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, who's a dancer by training, gets to do some dancing in this one, which is cool. They're Tiger-like fight scenes, lots of flying shit, a brothel, enough turncoats & backstabbing for three movies, a number of scenes where people are rolling around in the grass half naked, and some really cooly dressed female guerilla fighters with neat hats.

Oh, and there's this great love triangle scene at the end, with lots of blood and snow.

In proper Chinese-romance-movie fashion, everyone dies at the end.

It's great.

Tiger is still better, though.

Movin' On Up

So, before the holiday party, Blaine took me aside in his office and closed the door, which I knew meant that we were going to talk about the restructuring of my role in the office.

"You've heard we're going to be getting a lot of work?" he said.

"Yea," I said. "Mosh already talked to me about it. He said I'll be better integrated with the Wireless team, so I'll be reporting to Piper."

Blaine went on to say how great I was, how much work we were going to get (double what we did last year), and said, "Anyway, I'll get right to the good news. Usually, at year end, if all goes well, we get 3% pay increases, but I did some haggling with corporate, and they're pushing your salary up 4.5%."

I suppose I was supposed to look really surprised and grateful. I was calculating what 4.5% of my base salary was. I'm not great at math, but I'm not totally incompetent, either. It wasn't a great raise, so far as I was concerned. It meant another couple hundred dollars a month, which makes the Glasgow trip in August more feasible, but it wasn't on par with what him and Mosh had been talking about regarding the sort of role I'm going to be playing in the company.

"Nobody knows how to do what you do," Blaine went on (he's very, very good at flattery, which is why everyone likes him and why he's been moved into Business Development. He's like a big happy puppydog. You just can't dislike him). "You're going to be asked to take on a *lot* more responsibility, and you'll need to learn how to replicate yourself."

"Mosh said he'd be interested in hiring on some temps I can supervise," I said, "because if we're doing twice what we did last year..." I was working nine or ten hour days and doing some weekend time and fielding work to the accountant and the secretary, and we still barely pulled it all off.

He intends to give me a shitload more responsibility, a staff, and a 4.5% raise that won't even allow me to be able to afford a car, let alone a cellphone? (the lack of staff with cellphones in our office is one of our biggest jokes).

"I tried to get Mosh and Piper to understand what a great resource they're getting," he said.

"Don't worry," I said. "I intend to sit down with Piper next week and impress upon him exactly what I can do. All they need to do is put something in front of me, and I can do it." I've been bitching to Blaine all year about what an under-utlized resource I am.

I think it was during his speech about how he was trying to convince Mosh & co. how great I was that I realized Mosh and Piper just don't get what I can do, hence the 4.5% raise. They think they're getting an admin, not a Project Support Manager with a Master's degree.

Ah. Of course.

4.5% my ass.

At meeting's end, Blaine still seemed troubled at my lack of enthusiasm. I wanted to stomp around and throw things. 4.5% raise my ass! I want to hop up a position pay scale. Lowly admin my ass! Freakin' fucktards!

But really, it wasn't so much worth it to bitch to Blaine. I was going to have to convince my new supervisors that I'm worth a 10K pay raise, not an extra $200 a month.

I'm going to have to really wow these fuckers.

And insist on proper compensation.

4.5% my ass.