Useless Things to Do in the Dallas Airport

Check out the human clock. via whatisthisnonesense?

Read something random of Simon's. And snicker over the latest issue of Asimov's in order to soothe my own mashed ego.

Prepare to mash in the head of this pigfucker, whose violent assault of his girlfriend because of her political beliefs is "OK" because: "Many relatives of Steven's have served in the armed forces ... and he had every intention of going to other parts of the world to defend the United States," Salnick said.

He's a patriot? Oh, well, that's OK then!

And oh, shit, I missed the big decision. What the fuck?

Now, for something completely different: Some thoughts on sex and the L word; who gets to have it on screen, and who gets a pan to the lamp... -

Now I'm not one to look for the sex scenes, and, in fact, the soft core porn atmosphere of the show is often very upsetting to my feminist politics, but damn, if I'm going to see a bunch of people having sex, if I'm going to be subjected to tons of explicit heterosexual screwing, and if I'm going to hear women talking about fucking one another every week, completely internalizing patriarchal ideas about sex, then damn it, I want to see some fat! I want to see Kit's big body with its soft rolls of fat and big thighs just like we see Katherine Moennig's spine and boney sternum on every single episode.

Annnnddddd.... ooops. We've got the boarding call for Chicago goin' on here.

I'm off!

Well, It Finally Happened

The client finally figured out that the same 12 people are running all of our projects for North America, just as Blaine predicted.

What does this mean?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Let's just say any sane businessperson will tell you that 12 people can't physically turn out 5000 sites worth or work, no matter how many combinations of places we get flown out to over six weeks or six months.

Ce la vie.

Bulimia

Good article focusing on TS's bulima... (thanks, B).

Bits N Pieces

I love living in conservative America... land of free women; free to live, free to choose, free to live with whom they please... oh, wait. Nevermind.

NYU's Great Empowered Solution to preventing student suicides, now in the NY Times. How enlightened.

And, Japan is the best. Before putting stuff in a diff't language onto your body, even if it's just magic marker, double check it, OK?

It's just good business.

More later. I'm drowning in deadlines here at the Workplace of Doom, Dallas style.

Oh, the Irony! Me, My Uterus, and I

You know, Dallas ain’t bad. It’s not butt-fuck-nowhere Denver. The air is good, there’s leaves on the trees, everybody’s real nice, and – best of all – it’s a perfect 70 degrees.

Once you get over the whole “President George Bush Turnpike” thing, and if you find the freeway signs advertising “Men’s Only Clubs” funny because there aren’t any advertising “Women’s Only Clubs,” you’ll do fine.

I’m stuck, actually, about two-thirds of the way between Dallas and the airport, at one of those huge corporate complexes that are little cities unto themselves, complete with hotels and restaurants and 10-12 storey buildings built like palaces.

Our Dallas office is damn nice, with mirrored elevators, a faux-marble entryway with fountain, and we’re on the highest floor, so there are good views. In fact, we take up the entire floor of this building. The bathroom is huge, and has one of those really nice lighted vanities, and the whole place smells like potpourri. The receptionist is a sweetheart of an older woman, who clucked her tongue at me and asked where I was staying. When I told her, she nodded curtly, said, “Good, but next time, stay at XXX hotel, they’re even better than YYY with their comfortable beds, and XXX is just across the street.”

Duly noted.

There’s not much to do here today until the people who are supposed to be training me show up – I’m only here for a day, but overall, Dallas isn’t bad. And there’s a pharmacy across the street, where I was seriously starting to think about going to get a pregnancy test.

Oh, yes, it’s that time of the month – the time when you figure out whether or not your birth control pills are working.

Oh, pooh-pooh, people say of “us feminists” and how we perpetually talk about our uteruses and our rights over what’s done with them. People who pooh-pooh are the fuckers who’ve never had to be concerned about their “pesky” uteruses.

Let me reiterate just how fucking important this whole “uterus” issue is to the rest of my life, and the functioning of my day-to-day life, and why shit like “emergency contraception” and “great women’s health care” are so vitally fucking important. Here's my take on the "Pharmacists' Have the Right to Deny You Legal Healthcare in Order to Save Their Own Souls” bullshit. Here’s my take on what “Right to Life” really means: the right to my own life. Control over my own body. And my own power. These are real women’s lives, and these are the battles we fight every day. They’re battles of life and death, and by virtue of our biology, we’re the ones who get to make them.

Here’s how we live, what we do, and why that goddamn uterus and what these fuckers what to do with it is so goddamn important: cause they're putting their hands on us. On real women. Real people. Us.

A couple of weeks ago, I came down with symptoms indicating that my yearly sinus infection was on the make, and I went to my usual walk-in medical center in order to get some antibiotics. I told the doctor’s assistant and the doctor – three times – that I was on birth control pills, and would the antibiotics they prescribed affect the pills in any way?

I was assured – three times – that it would be no problem, that I shouldn’t be concerned about it, and I was given a prescription for a 10-day regimen of antibiotics, which I picked up… (::drumroll::) across the street from the very same Chicago OSCO pharmacy in the Loop that protestors were pissed off at for not issuing birth control pills.

Well, you can guess where this is going.

I spent four days taking antibiotics before I got smart and thought, “Hey, what’s this paper on the other side of the prescription receipt?”

Why, it was the list of medications that that the antibiotics may interact with.

Last on the list?

“May decrease efficiency of birth control pills.”

I love that phrasing “Decrease efficiency.”

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Why not fucking spell it out, “You’ve got an increased chance of getting pregnant against your will if you take these with your birth control pills and engage in hetero sex.”

Add this to the fact that this is the first time I’ve used a low-dose pill instead of the higher-dose one I had when I was 16 that worked without a hitch (well, except for the weight gain and weird mood swings that often ended with me in hysterical tears), and you may as well have stuck an icy knife in my gut. I immediately stopped taking the antibiotics.

Pregnant.

That would mean a $300-$400 abortion (after pushing through a line of protestors; that is, if I can get an appointment), and at least a half-day of missed work time (at $18.86 an hour – there aren’t a lot of clinics that do Saturday abortions, and if they do, they’re likely booked up). If I was one of those women who was really conflicted about whether or not a handful of cells dividing in my uterus and sucking on my body and breath for survival was an actual “life-complete-with-soul,” I’d have to deal with the moral freak-outs associated with that, too (luckily, I have no moral qualms whatsoever about having an abortion. I don’t believe it’s a living thing until it can live without… well, without ME. Part of ME is my uterus, and the part that people keep trying to put their hands on IS my UTERUS as well, which is part of ME, which is why I get so fucking pissed off when people tell me the personal isn’t political. It’s really fucking political when the laws people are passing have to do with ME and MY BODY and WHAT I DO WITH MY BODY).

Or, if for some fucked-up reason I didn’t want to or couldn’t have an abortion (because, say, my abortion doctor didn’t believe in giving abortions… the fuck s/he become an abortion doctor for then, anyhow? Yea. That’s how fucking ridiculous these pharmacist “protection” laws are), then I’d get to spend nine months nurturing a fertilized egg into a living person (using, of course, MY breath, MY blood, MY uterus, and MY money to buy all the food, all of which requires MY labor, and which, therefore, should be a CHOICE that I make, but I’m digressing… or am I?), then a day or three of blood and pain while delivering that person into the world, then a year of recovery while your body bends back into some semblance of shape (though never the same shape it was before of course), and either you give the kid away to somebody who can care for it better than you can, or you spend the rest of your life caring for that person…
All because your idiot doctor handed you some shitty antibiotics without mentioning that maybe you should use a back-up method of birth control during the four days your boyfriend was in town… Or, in my case, being an idiot and not checking the goddamn pharmacy receipt and double-checking what medications interfered with the pill.

What a great reason to have a kid. I bet the kid would be real appreciative, too.

I have spent the last four days anxiously awaiting the arrival of my period, jumping to the bathroom at every stomach twinge, hoping against hope that I had menstrual cramps.

And after looking out at the CVS pharmacy across the road this morning and resolving to get a pregnancy test when I hit the last of my green pills, I went to the bathroom here in the office, and viola! Behold! Wonder of fucking wonders!

Blood.

Good blood.

Oh, thank God.

It appears that my body and the pill are still very, very compatible. It’s always worked for me.

But, shit… Wow. Blood. How great. What a wonderful thing. And oh yes, these are definitely menstrual cramps. I don't even mind that I forgot to bring in some aspirin. I really don't care about that.

Because all of the sudden, I don’t have to worry about coming up with $400, missing work time, pushing through protestors, dealing with the cramping and blood after the abortion, deciding about whether or not to blog about an abortion, deciding how to break said news to said boyfriend or even if I should say anything to anybody at all and therefore continue the circle of silence about abortions (probably one of the few legal medical procedures many women feel ashamed to talk about). With another period, another month, I don’t have to worry about giving up nine months of my life for the creation of another person, and another year… or, actually, the rest of my life in a body altered by a pregnancy I didn’t want. I don’t have to worry about pushing somebody out into the world, through my own pesky uterus, who I really don’t want in my uterus.

It’s my choice, what I do with this body, who I choose to bring into the world, when and if I choose to do it.

The thing about pregnancy, about women’s fertility, is it’s something that every woman’s concerned about. Even if you’re not hetero or currently engaging in penetrative hetero sex, there’s the threat that a guy could come along one day and coerce or overpower you into having sex you don’t want, getting you pregnant and trying to get you to carry to term a pregnancy you don’t want.

Back in the old days, when 20% of women died in childbirth, having sex with a guy could kill you. And even now, more women die in childbirth than die having legal abortions.

And we’re living in a country that’s moving toward a stance that would rather see women dead than allow them control over their own bodies.

This is the message I get when I see protestors outside of women’s health clinics, when I see pharmacists refusing to give out legal medical prescriptions, when I see state governments pushing through parental consent laws, when I see women’s health clinics shut down because they’ve been bombed or threatened.

That’s homegrown terrorism. That’s terrorism against women and power.

A man can have sex with a woman and walk away… and retain the ultimate life-or-death power over her. Because unless we have access to these legal procedures, to safe abortions, to emergency contraception, to Planned Parenthood where we can pick up our pills, then we’re left with what the men have left us, and for many women, what was ultimately left to us was death.

If I choose to risk death in childbirth – however slight my chances are in a first-world hospital – that’s my choice. There’s not a women’s birthing draft. This is an all-volunteer army of women bearing children.

As it should be.

Don’t take away my body. Don’t fuck around with my uterus. Don’t put your guilty hands on my body.

You’re right, I talk about my uterus a lot, and what people want me to do with it, the restrictions they want to put on it…

And I do that because having a womb can be damn fucking cool and damn fucking scary. It's the only way – as yet – to create human life from a couple strands of DNA and some protein.

Me. My body. My body does that. It’s amazing.

This the power of life and death, and women deal with it every day. We decide how we want to use our bodies, and the methods we’ll use to control our bodies, because those are our rights.

My right.

Not a pharmacist’s. Not a doctor’s.

My womb, this one, is mine.

That pharmacist had no trouble handing over those antibiotics, though by taking them with the pill and engaging in hetero sex, I’d increased my risk of pregnancy. And pregnancy is a risky behavior, don’t forget that. However small the possibility, women still die bringing pregnancies to term.

Women still die, every day, birthing babies.

If I’m going to risk death, that’s my choice. Not a pharmacist’s. Not a doctor’s. Mine.

Next time, I get pushy with my health care professional - and I recommend you all get pushy with yours; whether it’s about insistence on proper medication or the doling out of proper medication. It’s our bodies being fucked with. Not theirs.

I’m not going to die for my pharmacist’s soul.

I'm not birthing a baby with this body, of this body, for anybody but me.

My body, my life, my choice.

Every damn day.

The Good News

Oh, thank goodness... my bank posted my current balance with the eye appt. and contact lenses and Costco run *already taken out.* So my rent check not only won't bounce, but I'll actually have over $70 in my account to last me until payday on Friday.

I am the scary liberal elite. Hear me roar.

All $70 worth.

Flea's Advice to Young Ladies...

Stolen, shamelessly:

Having reached the advanced age of 35, I feel this entitles me to dole out advice concerning certain patterns of behavior I have noticed over the past three years among the whippersnapper set. I know that a lot of you do not like to listen to your elders on the grounds that we spoil all your fun, and that may be true, but I think these points are extremely important ones, and maybe some of the other geezers will back me up.

1.) Thing One:

If your boyfriend insists on anal sex even when he knows it's hurting you, he does not love you.

In fact, he doesn't even like you that much, and all the Anal-Eze in the world isn't going to change that. Any man who tells you he will cheat on you unless you allow him to hurt you is an unqualified prick, and I promise you, you are worth more than this. I see this phenomenon way more among the African-American young ladies than any other race, and since the AIDS virus is spreading the most rapidly in young, straight, African-American women, I want you to know that my heart is in the right place when I beg you to PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP ENGAGING IN SEX WITH A MAN WHO IS MAKING YOU BLEED.

2.) Thing Two:

If you are 19, you do not want to date a 40 year old man.

I know you describe him as "really together," and will think I'm crazy or jealous or having an outbreak of fat suburban housewife anxiety for saying this, but I, his peer, describe him as "manipulative loser." He comes across to you as being really together because he has more life experience than you do, and more money, and sure, he's better in bed than the kid who took you to the prom, but...you're not listening anymore, are you? Forget it, then. You'll see. But just like a 19-year-old who hangs out exclusively with 11-year-olds, 40-year-olds who party with people more than half their age are wincingly pathetic and are just using you to disguise the fact that it hurts him *really* *bad* that those Silver Fox life insurance plans advertised on tv are starting to include him now.

Read the rest

Bits (Stolen)

One in five teenage girls are hit by their boyfriends. More here. And 31% believed it was acceptable for a boy to act in an "aggressive" way if his girlfriend had cheated on him. My question is, did they ask men if they thought it was acceptable for their girlfiends to act "aggressive" if their boyfriends cheated on them? via Bird

And Jenn and I were just recently talking about the Pagan roots of Modern US holidays. via Feministe

Here's some kids' (well, eighth graders) takes on gender equality. What's interesting is how many times the issue of women's rights to equal participation in sports comes up as a major issue in developing gender equality.

First woman to row solo across the Pacific. Yea. That's right. Rowing. Across an ocean. For 72 days. Remember that there are still people out there who think that women have "biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days..." but they can row across the Pacific Ocean. Biology didn't seem to get in the way of that, now, did it?

Your Daily Dose of Food Porn

Breakfast.

Dinner.

God Bless Texas

Well, I was hoping I'd get out of a trip to Dallas, but it looks like I'm off for some sort of training or other... Leaving tomorrow night, spending all day Weds, coming back in on Thursday...

Dallas. ::sigh::

I've never been to Texas. There's a first time for everything.

Thoughts on Society and Depression

Excerpt:

Undoubtedly being a somewhat sensitive and emotional person to begin with makes me more susceptible to depression than the run of common people, but I still resist labelling this as a "biochemical imbalance." It's not. It's normal human variation. My circumstances fully warranted depression. It was a normal, healthy response to my situation, and only by paying attention to that situation and changing it, by validating that emotional response, did I manage to make a long-term escape from depression. Now when I get depressed, my response is not to say, "What's wrong with me? Can I fix myself?" My response is: "What's wrong with my life? Why am I having trouble? Can I change it, and if not, how can I cope?"...

I don't like that our society has such a narrow definition of what constitutes an "ok" emotion that when someone feels something outside this narrow bound it gets labelled pathological. I don't like that we are all expected to be the same people, feeling the same things in the same way at the same time. I don't like that we are expected to be happy all the freaking time, even when life is hard and we are struggling. And then if we're not happy, we can't just be sad--we're sick.

via Bitch

And SF For All

SCIENCE FICTION FOR IMPERIALISTS

SCIENCE FICTION FOR ANARCHISTS

SCIENCE FICTION FOR MONARCHISTS

SCIENCE FICTION FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK SUPREME EXECUTIVE POWER SHOULD BE LODGED THE CANDIDATE WHO POSSESSES THE MEMORIES OF PREVIOUS LEADERS

AND, FINALLY, FOR THOSE WHO JUST SAY FRELL DEMOCRACY WE WANT ARTHUR TO RULE

Martyr Yourself For Christian America!

Become a martyr for America, chiklits!

Paul Campos connects the dots. Cause none of these dumb media fuckers is willing to do it:

As I write these words, Terri Schiavo is being starved to death because she was once a chubby little girl.

Almost everyone has heard about how, 15 years ago, Schiavo's heart stopped for several minutes, causing massive brain damage that left her severely disabled.

What very few people are aware of, because it has gone largely unreported, is that Terri's heart stopped as a consequence of an eating disorder.

Terri was a chubby child, in a culture that tells children, and especially girls, that not being thin is both a disease and moral failing. And our children get the message: fully half of all 9- to 11-year-old girls either are or have been on a diet.

Terri was one of these children. She spent much of her childhood and adolescence dieting, in a desperate effort to deal with having the "wrong" kind of body. Like most dieters, her weight fluctuated a great deal, but she was unable to remain thin.

Eventually, according to evidence introduced at the trial following her collapse, she started forcing herself to vomit after meals. This, combined with a regimen of 15 glasses of iced tea per day, made her thin and "beautiful." (More than 200 articles have commented on Terri's beauty. Almost none of these mention her eating disorder).

On the night she collapsed, Terri had just eaten dinner. She went into the bathroom and forced herself to vomit. Apparently, the chemical imbalance brought on by her bulimia stopped her heart.

I find the irony of this situation deeply, deeply sickening.

I went out to lunch today, this being a Friday, and sat at a table across from two men and two women. They appeared to be work colleagues. The men were average-looking, 30ish, on the overweight side, looked like they could pass for, say, computer programmers, so I thought they were quite good-boy nice looking, but MTV would call them boring couch potatoes and Queer Eye would have a field day. They ate cups of soup and cheeseburgers and fries and talked in loud voices about work.

The women, at first glance, looked and acted much younger. Their hair was straightened, bleached. The one closest to me had that perfect bronze tan. They were both about a size four, though the tan one looked like she was aiming for a 2. They ordered salads, and spent their time waiting for those salads... talking about food.

The tan one salivated over the dessert menu, said something like, "I haven't had chocolate sauce in two years."

The other one, not so classically MTV-girlish, with more of a midwest softness to her face and complexion, said, "Don't you ever treat yourself?"

"No," Barbie said.

"Not even once?"

"No."

Barbie was little and very slender, wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt I wouldn't dare wear in public, and had just enough defined arm muscle to be considered hot.

And, the thing was, looking at Barbie, that's what I was thinking: she's the way I'm supposed to look, the way women are supposed to look. Thin, tan, straightened, dyed-blond hair, those pert features, the flawless-appearing complexion. It wasn't that she was beautiful: there was nothing behind her look to make her beautiful, no amazing wit or cute laugh or witty turn of phrase or particularly striking feature. The thing with encouraging all women to look like a certain "type" is that eventually they'll look that way, and it'll take so much time and energy to cultivate that "type" that they're not exactly going to have a lot of time for an internal spiritual journey that makes them really interesting people. Mostly, they're just going to talk a lot about diet and excercise and what they can't eat this week.

When the food came, Barbie scarfed down her salad like she was starving: and, likely, she was. Most women don't look like Barbie into their thirties without being very hungry as a result.

I had ordered a burger, no fries, coleslaw on the side, and an iced tea. I've learned to balance out my hunger: if I really want a burger, I'll eat a burger, I just won't have the crap I don't want, which is usually the fries, and that cuts the calorie count pretty neatly.

And eating that way will keep me at what I consider a reasonable size, in reasonable health, but I will never, ever, look like Barbie.

Ever.

Not even if I ate salmon ceasers and started getting that dull-eyed hungry look that supermodels carry around.

But oh, God, sitting there next to Barbie, I felt so guilty for eating my cheeseburger. What must everyone think of me, scarfing down my burger for lunch? Had I no shame? I could see everyone turning to look at me, thinking, "Look at that fat girl scarfing down that cheeseburger! Grotesque! Look at that fat woman, eating! A woman, eating, in a restaurant! How revolting! Has she no respect for herself?!"

I wanted to curl up and die.

And that's what a lot of women feel like: we'd rather die than be fat. We'd die to be thin for a decade, just give me a decade of hotness! Please! Please! I'll starve! I don't care!

Careful what you wish for.

Yea. I've had nights like that.

I used to think it must be a pretty neat thing, to be thin and beautiful. And, in fact, it has its perks. You get better jobs, people treat you more respectfully, treat you like you're important.

But you know, if you're doing it the way most women are doing it, you're also going to be weaker, and stupider (try doing complex math equations while suffering from extreme hunger and fatigue caused by overexercise), and ultimately, you're risking your life for a pound of flesh, for a beauty ideal.

And today's a good day to decide if you're interested in martyring yourself for Christan America and the MTV beauty machine.

We've got a great example of the end result.

The Strange Case...

The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck...

Do you really need my commentary?

I learn something new every day.

Old-School Ancestor Worship

Here.

via boots

What the Hell *is* This?

I suppose I would take stuff posted at Tangent more seriously if they actually proofread their work. As it is, I merely choke on my coffee, as good old Dave clambers up on his pulpit yet again. If you're going to post this blather from the most inane of the back-to-old-school-SF blatherers ("When men were men and women were green!), at least edit him into some semblance of coherence:

Politcal [sic] Correctness (and in the case of the instance written about in Silverberg's column, the fallout from Political Correctness, but that's another essay), has run amuck. Now, it seems, an active imagination and artistic freedom are under siege by those on the Left who have the power to punish us for what we think, and it ain't those mean old, uneducated, bible-thumping, red-state bubbas who are to blame. It is those on the Left, often-called the Elite Left—those who believe, in their heart-of-hearts, that they know what is best for us, that we are incapable of making our own decisions..

Much as he will berate short SF writers in this column about being unable to think for themselves, which is why he - an illustrious, well-read, uber-published writer - will tell SF short story writers what to think and what to write about:

ATTENTION SF SHORT STORY WRITERS!! YOU ARE BEING BRAINWASHED BY THE LIBERAL ELITE!!!

The best part about this bit is that it comes right after his introduction, in which the author insists that he's not "left" or "right" but shares a mixture of political views.. you know, like every other person in America. He then goes on to remind us that there is, however, a Liberal Elite working at Keeping Him Down.

I want a T-shirt:

I AM THE LIBERAL ELITE! I HAVE RUN AMOK!

All of which led me to wonder if SF is going soft these days.

The same way his erection's going, apparently, which is why he's so pissed off.

One doesn't often see hard-edged political stories in short SF anymore—at least not many of them in the past twenty, twenty-five years or so.

Umm... is he part of the same genreverse I am? Wasn't there just a big story that came out extrapolating what a neo-conservative America of the future would be like? I guess that one doesn't count... being about a conservative America and all.

We'll see the occasional story dealing with gender (a very tired theme these days, as more often than not a predictable Left/liberal agenda is espoused, but not really, dispassionately explored; the agenda is so predictable as to make for comfortable reading for those in the choir, but also terribly boring as SF—or as Judy Merril had it in the '50's—Speculative Fiction. Occasionally, we'll see something by way of satire (humorous, as in Esther Friesner's "Johnny Beansprout" from the July, 2004 F&SF; or darker, as in some of Terry Bisson's or James Morrow's short work), but they are too far and few between, when taken as a percentage of the tonnage of short sf/f foisted on readers today. Most of which deals with character interaction, or the feelings of characters, or how they feel about whatever milquetoast situation lazy authors choose to put them in (yet another essay).

SF is talking too much about women and their feelings. Men, as we all know, don't have feelings. So only women write about feelings. And only women are interested in gender roles. Men are just naturally manly - unless they're James Morrow, who's an amazing writer and so is allowed to admit that men might have feelings. Though that still makes Dave uncomfortable.

Everyone knows women aren't real people anyway. They should stop writing about themselves. And stop writing about men. And men need to stop writing about gender-conflicted men, too.

Men should only write about fishing.

In space.

I'm sorry, where is that happening? Must be in the work of all those pesky non-humor-writing Women Writers. Like, who, Leguin? Show me all the softy gender-speaking young women preaching touchy-feely writing as SF. Shit knows that if we're talking about gender - you know, conceptions of being, say, human (that's female and male, you fucktard) - that we must not be writing real SF anymore, huh?

It's as if much of today's short sf has become metrosexualized, a term I'll co-opt from one coined to label the metro-sexual male.

At this point, I go into cardiac arrest and must stop reading this column. Who's in charge of Tangent?

Oh, this one's good, too:

Sometimes I have this unnerving and spine-chilling thought that too much short SF today is naught but metrosexualized SF.

Truly, spine-chilling. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

There's a dearth of imagination on any real, cutting-edge level today.

I don't think Dave reads books.

No, really, I don't. I don't think he's ever gotten past a couple of shelves at the local Borders.

Do I even need to mention that he uses "he" as the default pronoun throughout? I wonder what women readers think? Is he speaking for *all* male readers when he asks if they're scratching their male heads trying to figure out what to think about a story? I certainly get the feeling that he's only actually talking to male writers. And funny women, of course, who write funny stories about gender. That's pretty cutting edge, right?

Ballard had it 99% right. Switch his "ultra-conservative" government for "ultra-liberal" and we pretty much are living what many on the Left are preaching today. Individual rights trump everything, all the time, regardless of the effect on society as a whole. And how timely is the line about the mentally ill being left to their own devices, in light of the Terry Schiavvo case in the news. Ballard puts Nostradamus to shame.

Wow. Did you know you were living in a country run by an "ultra-liberal" government? Fooled me!

What a mess!

Indeed.

The overall point of bringing up Silverberg's column, Ballard's forgotten story, and my own comments, is perhaps to strike a spark in today's short sf/f writers. Not just in a political sense of awareness, and what isn't being written about very much anymore, but more importantly not to forget the story. If you're not writing about much of anything, it doesn't matter how well "nothing" is written.

Though, in the case of this column, being well-written might have helped.

What a fucktard.

Deadwood

As there's no real actual good shows on "real" television - and I hate commercials, the messiness of taping stuff, and etc - and since I do so adore HBO's Carnivale, I went ahead and rented the first couple of episodes of HBO's Deadwood.

Watched the first episode last night, and thus far, I'm not terribly impressed.

We're in South Dakota in 1876 with a cast of characters trying to make their fortune in the mining "town" of Deadwood, where there's no law but who's a better draw. There's lots of literal backstabbing, lots of liquor, lots of whoring, as yet very little of the actual prospecting, but lots of dirty people trying to make a living, which I always appreciate in a show.

As yet, nobody's too classically pretty, and they're mostly dirty and occasionally threadbare, which is cool. Episode one also wins for the most times I've heard the word "cocksucker" used in an hour - I think, 26 times. I don't know how historically accurate the frequency of that particular word use is, but hey, I'll go with that one. These are gritty Western boys, they better be talking pretty dirty.

This being a Western set in a mining town, I was also cool with the fact that there wouldn't be many female characters, and those there would be wives or whores, and maybe you'd have the occasional really kick-ass prospector woman who walked into camp with 120lbs on her back and a couple Indian scalps.

That's pretty much what they did: they've got an actress named Robin Weigert playing Calamity Jane, who's our butch heroine... well, er, that is, she's played by a fresh-faced slip of a thing who'll clean up really well when they decide to fem her out and do the "look, she's really pretty!" thing instead of a character actress who has got a little spit and wisdom in her face and some bulk in her body, but she's got a good swagger and her blustering almost convinced me that some of the guys might respect her... that is, when she's not making eyes at Wild Bill Hickok or getting passed off some kid that the guys rescued... (Why the hell would you pass the kid off to Calamity Jane? Cause she's a woman? Looked like they were doing just fine carrying the kid on their own, and town wasn't very far off, but this possee of guys rescued this kid, ran into Jane, and then had her *carry the kid the rest of the way into town with them.* Weird. I think it was one of those instances where the writers reverted to stereotype. Who's to say that Jane had any more idea what to do with a kid than the guys did? )

And so, yea, there's The Gem tavern where more of the liquor and prostitutes are (in that order), and we've got an immediate subplot going on with a gun-toting woman named Tricksy who has a habit of killing her clients. Sounds promising, interesting power dynamics; might go somewhere, might just go cliche (as the episode ended, she was apparently reconciling with her master, but we'll see).

There's also a promising wife to a rich-boy wanna-be prospector guy who's getting himself swindled by all of the locals: right now, she's mostly living on sleep and laudenum, but I can already see how they could play it so her strutting dandy gets axed, and she has to step up and become her own sort of prospector: fragile flower turns to tough heroine in the face of adversity.

Hey, it could happen.

So, there's hope, but I'm not in love with the series, thus far. I'll watch another episode tonight, and see what I think.

Women, Writing.

Oh, here we go again. It's like the "Where are all the women bloggers?" debate... It. Just. Won't. Go. Away.

There is no such thing as Women's Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless. Sadly, Women's Writing is the only one of the above repeatedly used as a stick to beat women who write. Either Women's Writing is fluffy and inconsequential, full of romps and buttocks - or Women's Writing is coarse and aggressive and the kind of muck you'd expect from an off-duty stripper in a strop - or Women's Writing is obsessed with plumbing and bleeding and bonding to whale music. Effectively, Women's Writing is whatever has most annoyed any given journalist, commentator, academic, or author in the past few books by women they've read. Sweeping generalisations must be made, insults must be slung, personal abuse is welcome and two or three days of columns and op-eds can be sustained with the merry to-and-fro.

There a couple of problems with all this bullshit "women aren't edgy writers" bullshit.

First: men, for some reason, just get to be men, but women, as individuals, are always a stand-in for Every Woman. So if you get 800 subs from men and 100 from women, and those women's stories are:

40 about women fleeing bad marriages/having midlife crises and bicycling around the world
20 about women and their families/finding marriages/having children/relationships with other people
20 about women overcoming vast personal hardship (including family trouble)
10 about women who take heroin or become prostitutes, and how neat or tragic that is
10 are about women who kick everybody's ass and rage against society like superheroes

Mostly, you'll hear people bitch: "Look at how domestic those women are! Always talking about all those domestic issues like marriage and family!"

But of those 800 subs from the guys:

300 are about men going through midlife crises and bicycling around the world (and/or dumping their wife/job/car and getting an upgrade)
200 are about men and their comraderie in war or with gangs or on sports teams (you know: "real, meaty fiction" like Hemingway would write. Stuff women aren't supposed to be writing about anyway, and if they write about it, there's something definately suspect about them and not worth listening to.
150 are about men who take drugs and how neat or tragic that is
150 are about men overcoming personal hardship (including family trouble)

Only, those final hundred are, of course, "better" than women's literary attempts at talking about personal hardship and life struggle because they're about men overcoming personal hardship, and how hard that is, and there's no pregnancy involved, unless he gets a minor character pregnant and ditches her.

And these stories, because they're written by men, aren't called "domestic" --

They're called "examinations of the human condition."

Men being stand-ins for All of Humanity.

Whereas a woman, of course, is speaking for ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE ON EARTH SINCE TIME BEGAN!!

But not, of course, for humanity. Women aren't real people. A woman doesn't know how to tell a story about the human condition, even if her main character(s) are men.

How ridiculous would it be, for me to group every male writer into a box and say, "These male writers? It's all about boys with penis envy trading in their wives for cars! How safe! How dull! How domestic! Where are all the edgy male writers? Where are the men writers who really take risks!"

Bah.

Maybe it means I'm trying to find a "real" reason that I just don't like the book - but am too lazy to find it, so I blame it on the author's gender. Maybe it means I need to be a better reader.

"Women's Writing"... bah.

Some Thoughts on the Day of the Dead

Most religions have a day of the dead, and today is that day for Christians. In this most secular nation, polls show few now know what Good Friday is for, this day for sorrow, for contemplating death, loss and endings.

But here the usefulness of faith ends, for it is mainly the power of the religious lobby that forces people to die in pain and indignity due to beliefs on the nature of life and death shared by very few. For 20 years now, every poll on the subject shows that 80% of people want the right to be helped to die at a time and in a way of their own choosing. But that kind of "choice" is not on the agenda. Or not yet.

Charlotte Bronte, Sex Kitten

Read the rest at the Guardian:

Let me introduce you to the real Charlotte Brontë. She was not a wallflower in mourning. She always wanted to be famous; she pined to be "forever known". Aged 20, she wrote boldly to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey, asking for his opinion of her talents. He replied: "You evidently possess and in no inconsiderable degree what Wordsworth calls 'the faculty of verse'." Then he chides her: "There is a danger of which I would ... warn you. The daydreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind. Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life and it ought not to be." Charlotte ignored Southey but Gaskell couldn't believe it. She concluded the correspondence "made her put aside, for a time, all idea of literary enterprise".

Charlotte continued in her position as a schoolteacher, which she had already held for a year. But she hated her profession and heartily despised the aggravating brats she was forced to teach. As the children at Roe Head School did their lessons, she wrote in her journal: "I had been toiling for nearly an hour. I sat sinking from irritation and weariness into a kind of lethargy. The thought came over me: am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness, the apathy and the hyperbolic and most asinine stupidity of these fat headed oafs and on compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity? Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair prisoned within these four bare walls, while the glorious summer suns are burning in heaven and the year is revolving in its richest glow and declaring at the close of every summer day the time I am losing will never come again? Just then a dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited." Note to Mrs Gaskell: Charlotte didn't want to kiss those children; she wanted to vomit on them.

Charlotte did not only feel passionate hatred for small children; she felt passionate love for men. Unlike the female eunuch created by Gaskell, she was obsessed with her sensuality. She wrote to a friend: "If you knew my thoughts; the dreams that absorb me; and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up ... you would pity and I daresay despise me." The thwarted lust of a parson's daughter? Gaskell dismisses it as "traces of despondency". In Brussels, studying to become a governess at Heger's school, the virgin became ever more lustful. She wrote obsessive letters to him, begging for his attention. "I would write a book and dedicate it to my literature master - to the only master I have ever had - to you Monsieur." Later she writes: "Day or night I find neither rest nor peace. If I sleep I have tortured dreams in which I see you always severe, always gloomy and annoyed with me. I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to every kind of reproach - all that I know - is that I cannot - that I will not resign myself to losing the friendship of my master completely - I would rather undergo the greatest physical sufferings. If my master withdraws his friendship entirely from me I will be completely without hope ... I cling on to preserving that little interest - I cling on to it as I cling on to life."