Random Alaska Picture

Perhaps I just need a vacation

Ohhhhh Sweeeeeeeeet

Unless you fit yourself up with an IUD, I don't know that you'll really know just how sweeeeeeeet this is to contemplate.

I'm not looking forward to next week.

(via feministing)

P.S.

And also, I've decided that for Christmas I'm going to get a tattoo.

Or another loop ear peircing.

But leaning toward tattoo.

Celebrate the push to 30.

Another Wednesday Night

I'm sitting here in bed listening to Tom Waits and sending off my resume rather randomly to admin and project assistant jobs posted on Monster.com.

Damn, I remember when making $32K a year sounded like a lot of money.

Then, of course, I picked up a bunch of student loans.

Funny how that works.

I'm out of beer, which is a good thing. The last two weeks, my roommate and I have been coming home and imbibing every night of the week. It's time to lay off the sauce on weekdays.

Seriously.

I also just finished eating my last chocolate bar for some time, and my last bagels for some time, as well.

I have become soft and doughy, and though the morning weights are keeping up the muscle strength and definition in my arms, my endurance is for shit. And I feel guilty and shitty about it, because this isn't who I want to be, physically. I want to be stronger and leaner, and instead I've been stress-eating for the last, what, four months?

Yea. I can feel it.

The IUD is settling down; I can go jogging without getting some irritated pinching at the end of it. Yea, I admit, a lot of this backsliding physically has had to do with physical stuff. It makes sense that making a big change in your life (in my case, beginning a relationship after six years off) is going to have a big upheaval of an adjustment period. As we get more comfortable as a couple, I get more comfortable too (as does he - we've both let a lot slide while working on this relationship, and we're just getting to the point where it looks like we can breathe comfortably without worrying that the other person will jump ship. Lots of strong feelings on both sides).

And it's time to stop with the stress eating and drinking.

I'm on a long road, I have been for some time. The curse of knowing exactly who you want to be, exactly what you're gunning for, is that when you're not that person, you get pretty pissed off at yourself.

I don't need to eat three bagels. I do need to get back to running my three miles, and I miss my boxing classes more than I can say. Money issues are getting smoothed out at month's end as well. I have a terrible, terrible, way with money, and I've been using a credit card I'm technically not supposed to be using in order to go out for comfort-food lunches.

I need to concentrate on my other comforts.

Like, say, writing.

I'm down to 0 stories in the mail, and though the fantasy saga is currently sitting with an agent, I've gotta fucking get these other novels done so I can get a bunch of shit moving at once.

And I need to be stronger. I need to be smarter.

I realize it's a long road, but I've gotta get off my ass every goddamn day in order to be the person I want to be.

It's a fucking killer, because it hasn't been a couple days, or a couple weeks, it's been more or less four months, and in order to jolt myself out of the bullshit routine, I need to dramatically alter a bunch of shit at once....

You know, like giving up coffee.

That would certainly be something.

It would certainly be a start.

Do you know some Exec.Assistants make 65K a year?

Why the fuck didn't I get *that* job?

Need to work on that shit.

Good Morning, Chiklits

Downside to heading to the beach for a day and bringing a Kelly Link book?

I misjudged my flipping-over rate (it was just so much more comfortable to read while lying on my stomach).

Hence, one of those nasty sunburns on the backs of the knees, the small of the back, the backs of the shoulders...

wheeeeewwwwwwww

Sitting all day at work will be FUN!

Something more substantial later...

Book Launch: Bodies in Motion

My local writing colleague, Mary Anne Mohanraj, has a bunch of book-related events going on here in Chicago, including a reading at Women & Children First Bookstore, which, as I learned today, has been having a shitty sales summer now that the local Borders has opened up.

Swing by and show some support for Mary Anne's excellent story collection and the coolness that is Women & Children First.

Sweet cover, eh?

Fuck It, I'm Going to the Beach

Blew off work completely.

I'm going to the beach with a blanket, a copy of Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners, Singularity Sky by Charlie Stross, a notepad, and fucking enjoying myself.

But before that, I'm going to go buy some pancakes at the local pancake house, deposit my tax refund, and buy something decadent from the Women & Children First Bookstore.

This whole worklife 8-5 bullshit just doesn't do anything for me. It's not what I want. I don't know how much longer I can work a shitty job.

The Madness That is My House

It has been a hellish weekend here at hacienda Chicago. My roommate awoke this morning to realize she'd overslept and missed her plane flight, and I overslept so I could miss a couple hours of work because it fucking blows and we both did a bunch of rollcoaster stuff with our respective partners this weekend.

We look and feel like about eight kinds of shit, and are terribly, terribly late, overrtired, and overstressed. You know: life.

So, what's new?

The Rhysling

My buddy Greg Beatty won the Rhysling award for best SF short poetry.

Woooot!

Britain's Response:

Carry on:

ReaderCon Notes

Matt Cheney's got notes from ReaderCon up:

Day One

Day Two

I gotta get to more Cons. World Fantasy's in Madison this year...

It is 3pm, and I Have Just Gotten Up

Well, fuck.

The bank and post office are fucking closed now, and I had errands to run.

Have I mentioned how exhausted and sleep-deprived I was this week?

Dammit. I need another three days for sleeping.

Today of All Days

Because it's not the veil that makes them what they are, it's the girl inside.

Looking For Heroines

Well, I think she picked a pretty shitty lot.

But yea, shiiiiiit. We need better scripts. Something Michelle Rodriguez could be in.... yea....

Whiskey, Writing, Link Dump

"Tableaux of women pounding grain decorate the dimly lit lobby of the Rwandan parliament, but in the debating chamber inside there is a less familiar sight: rows of women MPs are seated on the black leather chairs alongside the men."

Next up after God's War, I'm going to look into writing a novel that involves me doing a lot of research into the genocide in Rwanda. It's been an interest of mine for some time.

"Boys should be taught in single-sex schools with strong male role models to help a 'lost generation' of fatherless young men find their way in life, the Tory leadership contender Liam Fox says today."

I've never been a fan of the single-sex school idea. I think it helps form a really strict gender polarity that ain't good for anybody involved. In real life, we've gotta interact with many different people, of different cultures and genders. The sooner we get used ot it, the better.

And, to be honest, being a "lost generation" likely doesn't have much to do with whether or not you went to school with boys (note the implicit assumption that only men compose this "lost generation").

"Shoes," Sheila Jeffreys says, "are almost becoming torture instruments. During a woman's daily make-up ritual, on average she will expose herself to more than 200 synthetic chemicals before she has morning coffee. Regular lipstick wearers will ingest up to four and a half kilos during their lifetime." We are talking about Jeffreys' latest book, Beauty And Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices In The West, and she is in full flow about the horrors of what she calls "the brutality of beauty".

What I enjoy about really, really radical feminism is that I can pick and choose what I want to pull away from it, look it over, interrogate it, say "Cool, that's interesting, I can use that," or "shit, she's a dingbat," and move on.

You've got to have voices from the far side of every debate acting as anchors for the rest. Radicals are fun.

Ok, back to drinking and writing. Still behind. Got some good stuff done today, but... yea... still behind.

And feeling nicely buzzed.

Ah, Friday.

Friday Beer Blogging

I am bleery and sleep-deprived and behind, and writing like mad, and I MUST catch up on my writing schedule this weekend and must continue to work, work, work... ehhhhhh

Lots of work. I got another agent nibble for the fantasy saga, which is nice only insofar as it's in play again, which is... cool.

In the meantime, I need to be halfway done with God's War by August 15th.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

But tonight, I will take time out for some beer, which is healthy.

You Gotta Love the British

The BBC has published a copy of a statement from a Islamist group claiming responsibility for the attacks.

I like the part: "Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters."

Who do they think they're kidding? "Britain is now burning with the desire for a cup of tea and wondering if they'll get tommorow off work" would be far more accurate.

Choose Wisely

I'm still behind on the writing. Back later.














"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
- Winston Churchill


"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
- John-Paul Sartre


"The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off."
—George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

A Little Cultural Bias At Work, or No?

Some people are attracted to women; some are attracted to men. And some, if Sigmund Freud, Dr. Alfred Kinsey and millions of self-described bisexuals are to be believed, are drawn to both sexes.

But a new study casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.

There are about three gaping holes here that don't hold water for me.

Oh, *Now* They Raise Their Vigilance

Wouldn't it have been a little late if theirs were coordinated with ours?

I feel like it's the 1980s all over again.

And I do feel it's neccessary, once again, to point out that terrorism is a tactic, not an adversary. You can't fight terrorism any more than you can fight a forward charge.

Name it. Stop turning these people into nebulous, faceless groups of "evil doers." Tell us what they're pissed about, what their motives are, let us listen to them, because the more we know about them, the better we can fight them. Otherwise, you're just waving words around, and we're off to bomb another small desert country.

Rolling blogging news from across London as it comes in.