Work Again, Work Again, Jiggedy-Jig

Another day, another dollar. Back in New Jersey. Last fucking week in NJ, dammit. Only mildly sleep deprived, because I was smart enough to take a Tylenol PM last night.

Stuck in the Tuesday conference calls of doom: eight to nine hours of `um. Yum. Here's a great idea for running your project - Fly people into New Jersey for conference calls that everyone else is calling into. What a grand idea. I suppose the fact that I'm here to make copies, too, justifies the $2200 in expenses I'm racking up. Ha.

Work out tonight, dinner, catch up on some story reviews. Maybe. Entertain a guest. The usual.

Can't wait for this week to end.

Thoughts on Polygamy/Polyamory

Jason's got some thoughts up on polyamory (I'm going to say polyamory as opposed to polygamy, because I feel that polyamory implies that everyone involved is marrying *each other* as opposed to polyandry or polygmany, in which it's more along the lines of one person of one sex marrying a bunch of people of the other sex, and if we're gunning for equality, you've gotta get all the polys into one word).

I went through a couple years of serious thought about my sexuality, and about the time I came up with the realization that yea, boringly, I was mostly straight, I also realized I was boringly hardwired for monogamy, no matter how alluring the idea of polyamory was (I have a lot of fun playing with polyamory in my fiction). So I've done the research, looked around at places like alt.polyamory and had discussions with a woman who had an open marriage, read about other people's open marriages, and am always fascinated with finding out how other people negotiate their sexual pairings.

As somebody who's liberal-minded, I realize that what works for *me* obviously *doesn't* work for everyone (which, I think, is the typical conservative mindset - "If *I'm* a man who thinks that kissing a man is gross, *all* men must feel that way!"), so I'm really interested in what'll happen if people do start pushing multiple marriages in this country again (the polys not being anything new under the sun). So far, I don't have too much of an opinion on the matter, though I tend to think consenting adults should be allowed to enter into whatever pairing they wish.

However, my mind immediately turns to Heinlein and his massive political/financial marriages in Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Friday, just to name two. What you can do with marriages like these is wed not for emotional/sexual feeling but for consolidation of money and power, so all the heavy hitters keep the goods within one family.

If you think there's a huge rich/poor divide now, think of the day when multiple billionaires consolidate their funds into one huge family-corporation.

Heinlein saw it.

Others Weigh in on PP

Amanda and Bitch Ph.D. and Media Girl, on PP as well.

Glad I decided to write about this one; sometimes going real personal can bring it home.

More on Being Beautiful... Only, Less

Well, Kirstie Alley's Fat Actress is gonna be out soon; not that I'm going to see it, cause I don't watch tv, but I've been interested in the tabloid interest in her and the show.. mainly because she's 5'8 and considered an obese balloon at her highest weight of.... drumroll.... 203 lbs.

Um.

203 lbs does not a freakshow make. If she was a guy who was 5'8, 203 no doubt people would be like, "Damn, that's a husky guy! He's kinda chubby!" They would not tell him to cover himself up and hide in his bedroom in shame.

Well, not quite yet anyway. Not in... some circles.

What gets me about Kirstie Alley's look is that she's not ugly. She's not unnattractive just the way she is. Like the women in Carnivale and Kate Winslet in Engima, a size 12 does not a sailboat make.. particularly when you see these women in real life and realize that the reason they look so huge on screen is because their co-stars are all 112 lbs.

I've been thinking a lot recently about my old pet interest: desire. What draws people together, why we obsess so much about our looks and how we look with the sorts of people we're attracted to.

I remember watching Carnivale and being a little weirded out that nearly half of the female main characters weighed more than 120 lbs. As I discussed before, it was a great choice for the show, and the time period, and the more I watched the show, the more I wondered why we don't have that sort of diversity on regular television and movies. Because you know what? Cynthia Ettinger is really beautiful, and has an amazingly powerful sexual prescence on screen... it just took me forever to realize it, because I'd gotten so fooled (me!) into reading "fat" (which, again, in Hollywood means anything above 120 lbs) as "no sex drive/no sex appeal." Seriously.

In fact, the only people allowed to be truly attractive appear to be the beautiful Hollywood types. Funny, how they're the only ones who're having sex, and yet... all these babies in the world. Imagine that!

It's funny, but until I read this article about the Camilla/Charles affair, it didn't really hit me that perhaps one of the reasons why nobody wants the grand wedding and the media isn't terribly interested is because they're not beautiful pepole. Diana was beautiful. Yes, she lived in her own private hell and dealt with bulima and probably had a lot of psychological freak-out image stuff, but she looked really pretty on screen, so during the wedding, when nobody wanted to look at Charles at all, they could just pan to princess-fairytale-pretty Diana.

Now, instead of a pretty farce, they've got a real love story about two not-perfect people who've been madly in love against all odds and despite all the media grotesquerie for thirty-five years... and people just laugh at them. It's like this incredibly fucking big joke that two not-perfect people could actually... love each other.

We'd rather have virginal Diana marrying her prince and pretend that somehow, by sheer virtue of her prettiness, it would make her attractive to Charles, and he to her. For some reason. Because, obviously, everyone should be immediately soul-struck by appropriately beautiful people - that is, people who look the way "beautiful" people are understood to look; thin, blond, women and tall, built men; and that's supposed to be all there is to it. Just look like a walking Abercrombie & Fitch ad, and you'll be the happiest, most loving couple(s) in the whole world.

Right?

Just buy enough plastic surgery, starve yourself, laugh a lot at some loser guy's jokes, and you'll be happy. Happy, happy. I mean, you're pretty, he's pretty. That's all there is to it, right?

Jenn mentioned an article she'd read about the rush of plastic surgeries that porn star women have been undergoing... oh, no, not just for the breasts and the tummy tucks - for the genitals. For the clit and the labia. To form a more "perfect" uniform version of female genitalia, so that they, too, all look the same.

Porn full of the same faces, the same pair of breasts, the same hips and thighs, the same clits and lips. Forming a more perfect female form. A uniform one.

Does that make us less scary? Easier to please? After all, if all women are the same, it certainly makes going to bed with them easier. And getting to know them easier. In fact, if all women were robots, life would be a lot easier for men, in general. At least for the straight ones.

Funny. Science fiction not so far off.

And watch out, boys: the consumer media culture's coming for you, too. And the day when you're expected to conform to body type ain't that far off. In some circles, it's already here.

Welcome.

The Annual Pilgrimage to Planned Parenthood

Because we don't talk about our uteruses enough.

I hadn't been in for my yearly exam in about three years, when I had to get a clean bill of health in order to get a student visa for South Africa, and it was About That Time again.

I chose to go to my old friend Planned Parenthood, as I had good memories of the one I went to back in high school. It was a small little office just off Main Street, and I was very comfortable there. It was like any other doctor's office, only full of women, women, everywhere, and frankly, when it comes to my reproductive health, I've always been a lot more comfortable with women administering to me, and I've never had a male gynocologist. Not by choice, mind you, it's just always sort of worked out that way, and to be honest, though being splayed open and prodded at for health reasons doesn't flip me out or anything, there's just an extra comfort level when the person doing the check-up's a woman.

So I made an appointment for an exam at one of the PP's closest to my place, and hopped on the train after work and went over. The building was easy to find, labeled prominently, very nice.

I opened up the main door and found myself in an odd little boxed room with a door in front of me and a door to my right that was, in fact, locked. I peered in through the small rectangular window and saw a set of stairs and some office plants.

Weird.

Then I saw the call box by the door.

Did I have to buzz in to Planned Parenthood?

Ah.

I picked up the phone by the door and hit the intercom button, told them I had a four o'clock appointment.

I was buzzed into the building, and proceeded upstairs...

Where I found a woman sitting in a booth behind bulletproof glass who asked for my ID and verified that I had an appointment.

She then buzzed me into the waiting area.

I felt like I was there to buy heroin, or maybe get a child prostitute for the night.

What the fuck?

Inside, I checked in up front and filled out all my paperwork (which, blissfully, didn't ask me when the last time I had sex was. I figured the gyno would ask anyway. I can never seem to get away from that question).

No, I haven't had any pregnancies, no STDs, no I don't have asthma, high blood pressure, oh, yes, my dad has high blood pressure, oh, yea, my dad's had a heart attack.... but me, I'm good. Check, check.

I turned everything over and sat around waiting to be buzzed into the actual medical office. Oh, yea, both the doors leading into the clinic were the gotta-buzz-you-in type, too. Three doors of buzzing-in before you can get to clinic personnel.

And I did a people watch, listened to all the women around me. There was one girl there with a guy who was most likely her boyfriend, a couple of women there with friends. A couple of friends were talking in low voices about abortion services, about women they know, about a boyfriend who was insisting a friend bear a pregnancy to term because, "He really wants to be a dad."

Sitting there, listening to these women, watching a room full of women waiting, another roomful behind glass sorting patient folders and scheduling appointments and handing over birth control pills, and having gone through the security checks in order to get in there, it really sort of hit me for the first time - not in an abstract way, because I've realized it in the abstract many times - but in a real, gut-kick visceral way, just how fucking terrified as all hell men are of women, of this power, of this choice. This is birth and death in this room, right here. This is where all the power is. And it scares the fuck out of people so much that they're willing to come in here and murder healthcare professionals and bomb us and our kids as we sit around waiting for a pap and some pills.

How fucked up is that? To live in a place where we live in fear of being killed for exercising power over our body's reproduction?

Sweet fuck.

I've got all the power in the world, and I've gotta go into a locked-down building so I can exercise control over that power; so I can make these choices.

What bugs me is that the fear and stigmatization of women's reproduction and control over it *is* so intrinsically tied to women's health that what's happening is that women's health, I feel, gets a similiar veil of fear and shame pulled over it. If you've gotta be buzzed into a building and feel like a criminal for going in, and if there's protestors outside screaming at you that you're a whore and threatening violence, you're less likely to go in at all - even if you're just getting a pap or an HIV test.

PP is more affordable than other places, it's more friendly, the staff is mostly volunteer and always very cool. Twenty-something student volunteers were running the ship behind the desk; those smart, savvy, cool women who believe in what they're doing.

Once I got buzzed in, I got another in a long line of great gynos; very friendly, professional, excited to talk about birth control options, relaxed and cool with the exam while using just the right amount of humor.

I checked out well, got a bunch of info on IUDs, which I'll be switching to in the next couple of months, because the failure rate's way, way lower than pills, and they last a hell of a lot longer - about 10 years. More expensive in the short term - about $450, but pills are $21 a month, so over 5 or 10 years, you're getting a pretty good deal.

I've always been in great health as far as the female parts go, so after much discussion with the gyno, it looks like that's what I'll end up doing.

I was buzzed back out into the waiting area, then buzzed back in through the check-out door where I picked up my pills and settled my bill.

All the power in the world.

It's a funny thing, reproductive power, and the fear of it. It finally really hit home for me, because here I am, in real life, trying to get out to these places, to get my shit taken care of; and you know, I'm lucky, cause it wasn't Abortion Day, and the protestors weren't out, and I didn't have to push through a crowd of hecklers.

Lucky.

Lucky.

How fucked up is it, that a woman's ability to choose whether or not to bear a life is so incredibly fucking scary that there's an entire formal and informal institution of fear and shame set up around her body to keep her from understanding it? How fucked up is it, that when I say that out loud, or here in a public forum, that people just dismiss it, pretend talking about women's uteruses is boring and unimportant and not worth thinking or talking about? How can they say that and then spend their time passing laws that directly affect me and my pesky uterus, and heckle me when I try and take control over my body's processes? How can they say that and then tell me that not only is my body not worth discussing (so long as I'm the one discussing it), but that having this body makes me bad at math, too emotional, weak and inferior and flippant and flighty?

Why talk about uteruses at all? It's so obvious that they're so bloody fucking unimportant.

Obviously.

I don't scare anyone at all.

Which is why rooms full of women and contraceptives are on a lot of people's hit lists.

What's Happening

Working on getting my shit together. Feeling incredibly slothful. I've pretty much reached the breaking point with the traveling stuff - I haven't done a bit of cardio work at all this week, and only a couple days of weights. It's tragic. And I can feel it.

The writing's gone by the wayside, and about all I've been able to manage the last couple of days is sleeping and take-out food. This is not, obviously, a sustainable existence. I mean, it's one of those "hey, I'm breathing," lives, but there's not a whole lot of fulfillment to it. I recognize that I'm atrophying.

Against all better logic, I've also started seeing somebody, after a long, long dry spell of pushing people away; but shit, hey, I'm gonna give it a shot. How I'm gonna work that and get my life back together after all this traveling, I don't know, but it's worth it for me.

This should be my last week traveling into New York - I told them I was done with it after this week. After this, I shouldn't have more than a few days a month in some strange place (knock on wood) so I can train any admins they bring on.

After this week, I'll be back in Chicago, back to going to my MA classes regularly, back to eating like a reasonable person, and back to blogging regularly.

That's the plan as of now. We'll see how it goes.

Addendum

Of course, all the strength in the world won't help you a wit if... you forget the Ikea box with the actual bed slats in it.

Yes, I have three academic degrees.

Fucking shit. Guess who's sleeping on the floor tonight?

Brilliant.

Thoughts on Strength

For all my talk about women's strength being so incredibly important for self-defence and self-confidence, I haven't talked much about the actual practicality of strength, and how great it is to be able to take care of yourself as far as everyday shit goes. Maybe this has something to do with self-confidence, too.

Jenn and I did our pilgramage to Ikea today, and managed to pack up the entirety of a queen-sized bed and another whole trunkload of shit. It took the two of us to move one of the more ungainly pieces of the bed puzzle, and as she picked up her end, I watched her biceps clench; ah, yes, the benefits of working out with free weights regularly. Does it look great? Sure. Yea. But more importantly, it means you're able to heft 50-100 lbs without too much trouble.

I came home and started the purging of the old bed, pulled out the 50 lb box of paper underneath it, deconstructed the old single bed and cleaned up. I'm starting to put together the new one, and I'm thinking, you know what? This being strong thing? This is really cool. It's cool that I can live in a house with another woman and we have absolutely no trouble keeping our shit together. I change all the light bulbs, cause I'm taller; I can heft the stuff that she has trouble with; she can grab the tail end of something to make it easier for us to move it around. We can make all the basic household stuff work. I can tie the trunk of the car closed when neccessary. I know about the wonders of WD-40 on everyday items. I know how to use tools.

We make our own money. We handle our own transportation. And we can heft around our own shit.

We were watching Vanity Fair last night, a good movie full of women freaking out about how they're going to marry, worrying about their reputations, freaking out about sex or lack thereof and not getting to hop about with whom they please. Watching other people throw them into poverty, watching them using their wits to get out of it.

And you know what, shit's not great right now, there's a lot of people who'd be happy if my place in this world was as constrained as theirs was, but for now, I'm enjoying this life; being me and free and strong and smart and capable. It's not often in history that women have been able to build lives for themselves without being *too* heavily stigmatized. And yea, I'm lucky; we live in a big city, so there's more freedom. I recognize the constraints.

But right here, right now, it's nice to be alive, and not too bad being female.

One of Life's Great Mysteries

How the hell Jenn and I fit a queen-sized bed into the back of her car.

Gotta love Ikea.

More later; women in sports, the annual pilgrimage to Planned Parenthood, & regular bitching.

Blog Down

Blog will be down for the rest of the week while I work through some stuff, do some housekeeping, get my shit together, etc.

I need a break from all things computer-related for awhile.

Women, Boxing

Women beating each other up. Blood and spit. Female aggression sold as objectification of women. In fact, women should just go back to being card girls only: holding up those "Round One" signs. At least then there's nobody freaking out about their place.

What do the women have to say about it?

Well, nobody's asking, of course.

This guy didn't seem particularly concerned with why women get interested in boxing, why women would want to know how to fight, or why they continue to fight in a sport that trys to sell many of them on looks before talent (Ah, a League of Their Own, anyone?).

Like most women's sports, women's boxing isn't taken seriously, women aren't encouraged to do it - much less get good at it - and they're sold as being freaks or sexual objects before athletes. Anna Kournikova, anyone?

Somebody's still making women tennis players wear ridiculous little skirts, and it has nothing to do with their ability to play the game... and women boxers aren't being encouraged to train or taken on by the best of trainers because it's seen as a sport even more ghettoized than its male counterpart.

Does that mean women shouldn't be "allowed" to particpate in boxing? I mean, if it's so scary to see women in sports, out goes the WNBA, women's soccer, and tennis - short skirts or not.

Cause women being strong is scary.

Of course, his argument here isn't with women's sport: he feels women are being cheated into thinking that they can "compete like the boys" when in fact, the sport is incredibly ghettoized for women. What interests me is that he doesn't seem to grasp just why so many women keep coming back to it. I don't know that it has as much to do with the Rocky movies as he might think.

The problem with women's boxing isn't that women are doing it - it's that women's sports aren't taken seriously, and this one's no exception. The fact that there's often more blood involves doesn't matter a wit.

Brutal women, indeed.

What the fuck was he expecting? Skinny blonds in tutus?

via Jeff

Zombie in a Winter Storm

The only problem with trying to sneak in extra time with Brendan while in NJ/NY is that I spend the rest of the next day utterly sleep-deprived.

Not that is wasn't worth it, mind you. I'm just not exactly functioning on a high level today.

Must go drink more coffee...

Much-Anticipated E-mail

Note from my NY/NJ "boss" to the project team:

"Office hours are at your discretion."

Basically, try and be here before 9am, and stick around until at least 4 or so, OK?

Oh, finally.

Snowing here, too.

Legos Do Escher

Neat.

via Alas

Trolling Through Blogs for Useless Trivia

It's Sunday. Looking for useless trivia that doesn't piss me off. Not finding much.

I think I'm going to go out and buy books today.

Decompression

This weekend has been reserved for much-needed decompression time. The problem with go-go-go nonstop is that I need down time in order to properly evaluate everything that's going on: to look at what's going on, re-evaluate what I want, and figure my shit out.

One of Jenn's buddies from California is over for the night, and I opened up the door to find a tall, blue-eyed guy in a suit staring back at me, and felt a startled jolt at the idea that ah, yes, this was the guy I'd been hearing about for the last five years, standing at my doorway... and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and sweet fuck, he's pretty. And damn, yes, he's currently single.

We all went out for dinner, and the plan after that was to go to the Hancock Tower for drinks and then go out to the Second City comedy club and have a night of it... but after dinner, when we came back to the place so Jenn could switch coats, I realized I really didn't want to go out on the town. I just wanted to be home. I leave for New Jersey again on Monday. All I want is this time, here, in my own bed, sleeping and mulling over everything that's going on. I haven't had enough downtime.

So I bowed out of the rest, and here I am, preparing for bed, trying to work some stuff out, wondering about life, about what I want, about how everything can fit together, wondering about... just, everything, and how it can all go spectacularly wrong and change you forever, for better or worse.

I wonder, sometimes, if relationships are just sort of like the rest of the things in my life... something I'm so afraid of, but need to come to grips with in order to live fully.

I've been told that vertigo is not, in fact, the fear of falling - it's your mind fighting your body's desire to fall. We have a tendancy to desire those jumps, those freefalls into space, and what we fight, the battle we wage, is desire against logic.

For some bridges, the big kind, the ones you jump off in order to die, these are good battles to fight: having some wit keeps you breathing. But for those more modest bridges, the ones, say 55 ft. tall with a freefall into water, well, those are more realistic bridges; the ones our mind might fear, but the sort of jump that will make us different, better, for having jumped it.

That's what I'm decompressing.

Good, Old Fashioned Romance

Everybody needs a little lovin'...



via Greg.

Ah, Chicago

Oh, I'm home....

Thai food, beer, soaking in the tub, decadent reading of multiple books...

Oh, yes. This is the good life.

You're In Trouble

Mosh just took me aside with the immortal words, "You're in trouble," and put me in a closed-door meeting with him.

Thoughts running through my head:

1) Somebody's been checking my internet time. I'm screwed.

2) Somebody found my blog

3) Somebody found out that I'm staying at the Grand Hyatt week after next

4) Hopefully, I'll be fired.

In fact, Mosh was totally being a smartass, and he'd brought me in to discuss my $1000 yearly bonus that just got deposited into my account. 40% is stock, 60% is cash, but all of the taxes come out of the cash, so I've only got an extra $221 in my account.

Not exactly a high-roller.

I was thanked for doing what I do (what do I do, exactly?) and thanked for my willingnes to travel, and told what an asset I was and blah blah and hope you'll be here many years to come and blah.

I swear, people can totally sense when you're completely fed up with your job and ready to jump ship.

The Pope

Gosh, sure is lucky he had the choice to have an elective surgery, huh? Sure is great that the Catholic church thinks going to the hospital for an elective surgery is OK, if it can potentially improve and lengthen your quality of life.

How thoughtful of them, to let him choose how he'd like to be cared for. I mean, could you imagine having the procedure in place that could potentially allow him to lead a better life, but him being unable to make that choice because his religion said that only God could play God and that humans had no right to interfere with the body's "natural" processes? Like, say, birth and death?

He sure is lucky to be a white man with choices. White men sure are lucky that way.