Post-Drunken Blogging

Lots of beer, meeting people you've only known through blogs, and eating pizza at 2am will result in some very strange dreams.

Had a great tour of Madison with some folks, finally got to meet the VanderMeers, chatised Matt Cheney for not blogging while at the con, and met a ton of people at the parties whose names and/or work I knew, which is always a surreal experience.

Not much to report, except that the pizza at Glass Nickel Pizza is really fucking good, and they deliver until 2am.

Oh, and all these people I'm meeting are cool, of course. But I mean, it's a Con, that's expected. heh heh

On the Road Again

Whooooooooooo hooooooooooooooo!

World Fantasy Convention, Madison (that's Wisconsin)

No, I'm not there today. Got bills to pay. But I will be heading up there tomorrow after doing some remote reporting for work from home. Me and Jenn should be there just in time to catch lunch, register, and maybe hit a 2pm panel, though we might get lost in the Dealer's Room en route.

We're staying at the Hilton Madison, with a water view, because dammit, if I'm going to travel, I'm making this a proper vacation.

Hopefully, we'll get there just in time for a good, old-fashioned Wisconsin riot.

I must say, I'm looking forward to it!















P.S. Yes, I'll be bringing my computer and may be doing some drunken blogging. I'll be trying to stay out of the way of any wayward cameras, as there's nothing worse than getting a candid drunken photo snapped of you at a con and find it widely circulated on the net. heh. As if I could be so lucky!

It's -5 Today in Fairbanks

Why do I miss it so?


























Ah, that's right. Now I remember...

I'm Not a Lesbian, But I Play One On TV

Some Appreciation for Rachael Ray -- From a Feminist Lesbian Boxer

Heh heh

I'm so amused.

My Brother's Price is a Ford F150

I put off reading Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price for as long as possible. Finally, after seeing it again in Locus and reading some good reader reviews, I decided to give in.

The book's about a boy about to be married in a world where women rule because live male births are incredibly rare (about one in thirty). I like keeping up with what people are writing about female-dominated societies; I like to know how they work out the world-building around it, how everything works, what things are different, what are the same.

The idea around the story, I read, was that it would be a reversal romance: the passive "heroine" looking for a good marriage would be male, and the sisters he falls for would be the active "heroes."

All this being so, I had a lot of worries about this book, starting with the cover:




























Yea. Looks like some serious role reversal there.

My second worry came in paragraph one:

There were a few advantages to being a boy in a society dominated by women. One, Jerin Whistler thought, was that you could throttle your older sister, and everyone would say, "She was one of twenty-eight girls - a middle sister - and a troublemakers, too, and he - he's a boy," and that would be the end of it.

So, even in a female dominated society, men are allowed to beat up on women without penalty because there are so many women?

Yet, I perserved. Why? Because, after the first twenty pages of as-you-know-bob dialogue set up, I really started to like the characters. I really hoped Jerin would get laid with some hot, strong, smart chick, and his sisters were all these really awesome theif/soldier trained women who ran a farm. Despite my reservations about the world they lived in, I liked them. So I was happy to hear that they planned to swap their brother for a husband for themselves. Meaning, they hadn't been laid either.

Getting laid in this society is a little trickier than you might suspect. Spencer works in the importance of a man's virgitiy before marriage by explaining that if a boy gets and STD before his wedding day, the family of sisters buying him off will choke the deal because if he's got something, then the whole family will get it. Same with the women: they pick something up, husband gets it, all the sisters get it. Oddly, this society can measure the sperm count of a man but can't cure syphilis. Go figure. Anyhow, so boys get lots of attention from their sisters. Boys, being so rare, are considered property and kept close by. Women raiding holds for boys isn't an uncommon practice.

In fact, women are so prolific in this society that it's common for women to just toss out their girl children when they have them and "try again" for a boy.

Great! A female-dominated society, and girl babies are still greeted as gutter trash. One royal husband also abuses his wives and brutally rapes one of them. And guess what? Because he's a guy, he goes unpunished.

How does this fulfill the "things can be really different?" school of spec. fic.?

Anyway, with all this worry about disease and all this aching celibacy until marriage, where, you may ask are all the lesbians?

Oh, well there's just the one. The evil river trash villain, of course. Well, one of them. And one of the sisters Jerin ends up with may be bisexual. Whatever her past, she's in love with him, of course.

And therein lies some of the most troubling bits of this book. Jerin is beautiful. All the princesses love him. Whatever you predict will happen after you read the first fifty pages of the book, does. There's not a lot of plot twists. Not much suspense. The scene changes are choppy, like the book was getting too long so transition scenes were cut. I was never worried about Jerin, his sisters, or the princesses dying or having really horrible things happen to them. I was unsurprised when Spencer ended the book with "happily ever after." It's that sort of book.

Nobody you care about is killed, maimed, dismembered, or scarred in any way. And you never believe anything like that will happen to them anyway. The plotting is really cut and dry, easy to follow. The main plot of some missing cannons and another family trying to take over the throne is actually the *sub*plot. The majority of the book is taken up with Jerin accidently getting all the princesses to fall in love with him. This ain't no Game of Thrones.

And yet you really want to watch Jerin get laid and all these women get laid and everybody get in a big bed together.

I could have done with some more explicit sex scenes, I think.

That might have made up for the fact that there weren't any good lesbians in it.

Strange Days

Sure is a surreal day when you get linked by Salon.com

Shut up, You Book Junkie!

Apparently, I’m not a “real” feminist because I haven’t “suffered” enough. Instead, I’m one of those “college feminists” whose daddy paid for college and who will go on to live a picket-fenced life and raise my 2.5 kids and forget all about what life’s like outside the suburbs. Right?

Oh, fuck off.

You know what: I do have a really good life. And yes, I’m white. I have three degrees, all but one of which I paid for, in full, by myself. I’ve also been evicted from my apartment, subsisted on nothing but eggs and macaroni and cheese for two years, had my phone turned off because I couldn’t afford the bill, threatened a restraining order on an abusive ex, and told myself when I turned 19 that I would never live that life ever again.

And here in Chicago, after three months of temp jobs, I landed a cushy project assistant position at a telecommunications company.

And you know what?

I worked really fucking hard for this.

My sister’s currently in an off-again, on-again relationship with a former (?) meth addict who’s unemployed and sponging off his meth-dealer family. She’s got a child from a former boyfriend that she can’t afford to support and whose health insurance is paid by the state. She’s lived most of her adult life in subsidized housing. She’s employed only because my dad owns two small pizza franchises and has allowed her to work for him despite a number of altercations. She and her ex used to have screaming fights and hit each other.

And you know what?

I don’t want to live like that.

I live very well. And I live this way because I refuse to be white trash. I refuse to go back to subsisting on macaroni, and everything I’ve done in my life has been getting me to this place I am in my life. Education was my route to this life, and I’ve got 30K in student loans to show for it.

And I’m now a cozy college feminist in her cozy 3-flat in Chicago.

And let me tell you, there were many, many, many turns along the way that would have led me to a much different life. But this was the life I wanted.

So don’t tell me my opinion doesn’t matter because I have an education and you’ve had a harder road. I got hit with a lot of bad nuts, too, but this is where I wanted to end up, and with a lot of luck, some very good friends, and some good choices, this is where I am.

The fact that I can pay my bills (mostly) on time and have a desk job doesn’t give anyone the right to silence my voice.

Especially when they do it anonymously.

What I'm Doing Tonight

Cooking. For spite.

Things are busy at work, OK at home. I've got WFC coming up this Friday. Juggling some writing projects.

Going to bed now.

Good Cancer-Lovin' Fun

A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teenagers could encourage sexual activity.

"Teenagers" is actually code for:

GIRLS. Women. Female. Just wanted to remind everybody that boys don't get cervical cancer. In this case, gender-neutral "teenager" might throw you off.

Oddly, nobody's talkin' bout withholding a cancer vaccine from all those young hoodlum boys on Prom night!

And people say women are all "paranoid" and shit about all that religion mixin' with women's health services.

Why oh why could that be?

(via Pandagon)

It's Not Misogyny if Women Say It!

Gee, I'm getting tired of that argument.

The Happy Clitoris

She (Dr. O'Connell) first became interested in the anatomy of the clitoris as a urology trainee when she realized preserving sexual function in women having pelvic surgery was pure guesswork. In contrast, the retention of sexual function in men undergoing prostate removal was paramount.

"There was no description of the clitoris in the main textbook that was being used to prepare surgeons in training. There was no diagram, and in the diagram of the pelvis no clitoris was evident," O'Connell says.

The clitoris needs more lovin'.

(via Mistress K)

So Much For the Boy's Club

What was that I was saying about marketing to men and women, again?

Majority of UK SciFi Channel viewers are women

The UK Sci-Fi channel reports that more than half its viewership is now female:

The digital television channel Sci Fi UK has seen a 10 per cent rise in the number of female viewers over the past eight years and 1.4 million women now tune in - 51 per cent of the audience. The channel, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, links the rise in "girl geeks" to the proliferation of heroines such as Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena.

(via boingboing)

And.. Why Feminism Doesn't Suck

Lest we all forget...

"I am writing these words in a bar in London in the spring of 1997," she says. "I'm drinking a glass of beer ... My ability to find work allows me to pay for my drink, a small freedom, but it also gives me all the other freedoms and dignities that women before the middle of century rarely knew: to choose whom I should live with and where I can go in the evenings and how I can spend my time ... I don't think about these freedoms ... Yet all these everyday transformations, as well as others - that I use contraceptives, that I work at a newspaper, that I got a degree at university, that I am paid much the same as my male colleagues, that I can vote, that I own a flat - were only brought to me after the struggle and argument of previous feminists."

And I am writing these words from a three bedroom flat in Chicago that I share with a lesbian couple who can walk down the street holding hands in Andersonville without getting shit thrown at them. I have a Master's Degree in history that I got at a university in South Africa of all places. I've literally traveled around the world. I'm engaged in a relationship with a younger man who lives in New York. We're not married, and we have a lot of guilt-free sinful sex because I was able to get an IUD: even though I'm single (some states still won't give you one unless you're married). I work for a telecommunications company that pays me enough to live on and where my boss actually brings and/or buys me coffee. I have my own health insurance. I didn't have to marry the first guy I dated/had sex with in part because I didn't have any massive family pressure to do so. I wear guys' clothes and nobody looks twice at me. I eat alone at restaurants and nobody asks me where or when my date's coming. I can afford to tip well. I travel a lot. I used to take boxing lessons. I regularly lift weights at the gym. I know how to throw a good right cross.

So when people tell me what a terrible, confusing world all those 70s feminists made for me, I can't help but look up and around at my life and realize that without all the gains our mothers made, I wouldn't be living the life I'm living now. Nor would my female friends. And woe to all of my guy buddies who like hanging out with the smart, beer-swilling independant person that is me. Think of all my friends of both sexes would miss out on if I weren't allowed the freedoms that feminism has given me.

That's a scary thought.

Feminism Sucks Because I Can't Get a Man

Oh, Maureen, Maureen. Maureen Dowd puts the smack-down on feminism again because she's a high-powered NY Times columnist who's over 40 and not married.

Yea, feminism sure has failed you, Maureen. I mean, look at all the quality men she missed out on dating:

At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties.

This isn't the first time that Maureen has lamented the fact that everywhere she looks in her NY City superset, men are marrying their maids, secretaries, and personal assistants.

At no point does she question whether or not she or any other women with "critical faculties" would want to date these men anyway.

In fact, this entire column feels like it's been written by a sixteen year old sitting at the front of the math class chewing her nails because "boys only notice the blond chicks."

I recognize the tone because I, too, once worried and gnawed over the fact that I was invisible to all the tall beautiful blond boys in grade school. Once I did start dating in high school I tried to dress and act more fem in order to keep said man, since he, Cosmo, and my girlfriends seemed to think this was the only way to "keep" a guy, and keeping a guy was akin to finding the holy grail.

Then I grew the fuck up.

Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men, it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to brush up on the venerable tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music, drawing, elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered captivating to lie on a chaise longue, pass a lacy handkerchief across the eyelids and complain of a case of springtime giddiness.

Who are these women? Why can't they find honest, meaningful relationships? Maybe because they're play-acting, pretending to be somebody they're not, and turning off both men and other women. So not only are they not getting laid, they don't have any friends either.

Grow the fuck up.

Today, women have gone back to hunting their quarry - in person and in cyberspace - with elaborate schemes designed to allow the deluded creatures to think they are the hunters.

And then they get angry when their prospective mates call them "deceitful." heh

"There are plenty of ways for me to find out if he's going to see me as an equal without disturbing the dating ritual," one young woman says. "Disturbing the dating ritual leads to chaos. Everybody knows that."

What planet are these women from? Just after my first date with B, I conspired to spend the night at his house. When he offered to sleep on the floor, I asked him how big his bed was.

Oh, that's not forward at all.

And oh, look, we're still together and I'm still getting laid.

A few years ago at a White House correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful and successful actress. Within minutes, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

To reiterate: Why would you want to marry these men anyway? These are the sorts of guys who'll tell you to quit your high-powered job, dress more fem, stop eating all together, and dump you on the street when you're forty and marry their secretary.

What the fuck do you want with people like this? I don't even have friends like this. Why would I fuck anyone who acted this way?

So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less desirable as they get more successful?

And here's the bit that really pisses me off everytime I read these backlash articles: why the hell are women so damned concerned about men all the time? Why are so-called feminist magazines and articles all about men?

As K pointed out when I read the NY producer line out loud, "Why's a guy need to be your mate?"

Why, indeed?

Not only are a good deal of women lesbians, but a shitload more are at least bisexual. If it's about kids, fucking adopt or get a sperm donor. And what's with having a mate? Be single. What's wrong with it? Single women suffer from less depression than married women, in general, anyway.

Pair up with another woman or a guy friend in a sexual or non-sexual pairing and buy a beach house. Learn to garden. Buy some big dogs. Why, as women, do we have to equate our success with "having" a man? Male bachelors with high-powered careers are rarely if ever berated for not "settling down." For them, having a high-powered career is enough. But as women, whether you're a doctor, lawyer, or CEO, your success is measured in whether or not you've managed to "keep" a man. Why? Why's having a relationship so important? I was single for nearly six years after high school, and you know what, I had a really awesome kick-ass time traveling around the world and getting a sweet education. Was I somehow a failure because I wasn't partnered up?

Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to Harvard from guys they met because it was the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they dubbed it. "As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said.

And my response to this is - so what? Should you have not gone to Harvard Law so it'd be easier for you to get laid? If getting married was all you were looking for, shit, you could do that straight out of high school. You could have bundles of kids by now and be living in a rented picket-fence house, and when you're forty, without education or money of your own, said guy could dump you or die and you'd have... nothing. No job experience, no Harvard Law, and bundles of kids to feed.

That sounds fun.

When Gloria Steinem wrote that "all women are Bunnies," she did not mean it as a compliment; it was a feminist call to arms. Decades later, it's just an aesthetic fact, as more and more women embrace Botox and implants and stretch and protrude to extreme proportions to satisfy male desires. Now that technology is biology, all women can look like inflatable dolls. It's clear that American narcissism has trumped American feminism.

It's been argued that American culture is, at root, an adolescent one. And I'd agree. As a teenager, I was really obsessed with all of my supposed "imperfections." I believed that because of them, no men would ever like me, and as Maureen has pointed out, there's some bizarre belief that, as a woman, not being desired by men is the worst thing in the whole world.

But, again: then I grew up.

And you know what? Who the fuck cares what guys think? Why is feminism always talking about what guys want? Why should I care? Cause guys are in power? Then maybe I should become *more* powerful. And maybe the guys who like plastic women aren't the ones I should be interested in anyway. Maybe I should look for some alternatives. There are a lot of other choices out there, and lesbians in the audience may laugh aloud at the idea that silly straight girls are spending so much goddamn time concerned about men.

Maybe you should go out and grow up first, Maureen. Maybe you should go climb Kilamanjaro and help AIDS orphans in South Africa, then come on back home to New York City and tell me just how goddamn life-shattering it is that you aren't getting laid by an NY producer who thinks smart women are gross.

Put some of this shit in perspective, you fucktard.

What I Did This Week

Me: We're short on tower crews because they can make twice as much money in NOLA repairing the entire cell tower system out there. We're wheeling and dealing with who've we've got, "Sweetening the deal" whenever we can.

B: So, basically, you're telling me that tower crews are like mercenaries.

Me: Yea, pretty much.

B: So you're "in the field" hiring mercenaries.

Me: Yep. That's about right. And "flatlining the bar."

And I'll just let you guys figure out that last bit.

What's Wrong With This Form Rejection?

`Tis the season.

Just got back a form reject from Baen's Astounding Stories.

Let's play: What's wrong with this form rejection? See if you can spot it!

Baen's Astounding Stories wishes to woo back the casual reader and
become part of his entertainment habits. In that spirit, we are looking for thumping good stories, with plot, theme, character and resolution. We do not demand that your ending be so shocking that no one can see it coming and -- in fact -- no one can see where it came from. We don't demand that your idea be startlingly original, only that your execution of it be so.

We are not aiming to make you a literary star -- whatever that might be. We're trying to entertain readers. We are competing for a reader's beer money. We want stories that make the reader put the beer down and read to the end in breathless hurry. And we want him to feel satisfied with the logic of the ending when he gets there. If in addition the stories make him think, so much the better.

We want boys and their beer money! If your story's made for women who swill beer, too bad!

Strangely enough, instead of getting a simple "we don't want your story" I received a treatise on why the editors believe that so much fantasy/Science fiction sucks these days:

Over the last few years, perhaps because so many of our readers are also writers, science fiction and fantasy authors working in short form fiction have devoted themselves to outdoing each other in form and artifice, in the originality of the plots and the sheer shock of the stories' endings -- which often had nothing to do with what had come before. In the process often -- though not always -- the simple enjoyment of the story was lost and with it the casual reader's attention.

Let's face it, over the last few years stories have been more of a vehicle for awards than for readership and award committees move in different ways from those of a fan looking for a thumping good story.

Basically, if you're a "literary" writer looking to win "awards" it means you're bad at telling stories; your story, by virtue of its "literaryness" must have no plot and suffers from a lack of "simple enjoyment." Literary writers need not apply.

heh. heh. You want hack stories?

Oh, honey, I have hack stories!

Baen: lowering the bar.

Someday, I'm going to get into trouble for doing this sort of thing in public.

Workado

Yea, it's gonna be a busy week.

Luckily, also lots of free dinner, free lunch, free breakfast, free drinks. We've got lunch dates and dinner and drink dates with the reps for the company we're teaming with for this project.

And, as per the usual, the hotel we're staying at is awesome. It's the size of a one bedroom New York apartment. Separate room for the bed, with a closet, a tv, a desk, a living area with a couch and easy chair and another tv, a huge desk/eating table separating the kitchen from the living area, a big bathroom.

Yea. At least it's comfortable.

Though I must say, I'm really looking forward to those drinks.

I'm Feeling DownToday: Time for a Random Useless Quiz

KNIGHT

You are the Knight, the
legendary, romantic hero of great kingdoms. The
Knight is a true warrior and an epic hero. He
will do anything to defend his honor and his
kingdom. Whatever his lord or king commands he
will do without hesitation. He is very
virtuous; he holds honesty, loyalty, and
bravery in very high regard.

Color:
Purple
Animal: Lion
Gem: Ruby
Symbol:
Shield

Image:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/7339749/


Who would you be if you were a character in an epic fantasy? (beautiful pictures)
brought to you by Quizilla

What's with all this "he" crap?

(via tempest)

Total Book Count For The House:

2,749

Dude, we're so hitting the over 3,000 count by next year.

My sad, paltry piece of this count?

A mere 544 of these actually belong to me.

What kind of writer am I?????

Ah, yes: a poor one.

Need to work on that.