Tokens

Here's a great idea: put cosmetics vending machines in schools, so ten year old girls can have instant access to enhancing their sex appeal and learning how to be "real women" early! I wonder what would happen if boys started using them, instead? Boys wearing make-up would be totally hot. Think, Velvet Goldmine. Maybe they'd mix and match mascara? Use compacts as poker tokens? Who thought this up?

There's a new interview with Stephen King that's worth taking a look at - I was interested in his sudden intensity with the writing of the Dark Tower books, a series that looked to be one of those always-in-progress writer's constructions. I did fully expect that he'd die before he finished them. The accident in 2000 kick-started him into finishing. "I decided that I wanted to finish it. I wanted to be true to the 22-year-old who wanted to write the longest popular novel of all time. And I did: it's 2,500 pages long, maybe longer. I knew it was going to be like crossing the Atlantic in a bathtub. I thought I'm just going to keep on working, because if I stop I'll never start again." The interview also includes, some, uh, bile from Harold Bloom about King's winning the National Book award. I'd never read so much of Bloom's diatribe. It's pretty spectacular. And then, to end on a good, writerly note, there was this bit: "Now he has completed his personal equivalent to The Canterbury Tales and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, can he die fulfilled? `It's always the way. I know what I wanted to achieve and not all of it is on the page. That's the writer's torment.' So why continue the torment? `Let's not go crazy. It's just such a buzz to write. While I'm doing it, there's nothing better in life. It's what I was made to do.'"

That's a writer for ya.

Sidney Blumenthal's got an interesting article about Bush's use of "positive thinking" to undermine reality in the Guardian. It helps explain why he runs into so much trouble trying to talk to international audiences - he doesn't know how to speak to them. He's used to speaking to Americans wearing blinders. "'The liberation is 'succeeding', he insists, and only pessimists cannot see it....Bush explained that, for him, intelligence is not to inform decision-making, but to be used or rejected to advance an ideological and political agenda. His dismissal is an affirmation of the politicisation and corruption of intelligence that rationalised the war."

Hippies

So, there's frozen sugar at the end of the galaxy, the Pentagon is restricting access to web info about how overseas voters can cast their ballots (seriously), check out some free SF stories online (your pick), amuse yourself with new words at Word Spy, and check out Amanda over at Mousewords as she amusingly deconstructs reader commentary on "I had an abortion" T-shirts.

And, for those who haven't checked out at least the "highlights" of Bush's address to the United Nations... you should. You really should. It's worth a laugh or two. You know, I think all politicians are liars and backstabbers and all that, but you know, when I see the President of the United States of America standing in front of the United Nations and making us all look like war-mongering idiots who don't read newspapers and have no idea what the hell the UN does... well, those are the days I really miss hippie Clinton the Rhodes scholar.

Reaction to Mr Bush's speech, which received only moderate applause, was initially sparse. The Swiss president, Joseph Deiss, said: "In hindsight, experience shows that actions taken without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a security council resolution are doomed to failure."

Site Notes

As regulars will not doubt notice, I've been fucking around with my sidebar here on the site. Let me know if all these pics mess up your page download times too terribly, and I'll consider removing a few... I'm pretty happy with it right now. I'll also be adding more links to the blogrolls soon.

Also, Simon alerted me to the fact that I'd somehow disabled anonymous posting during some of my retooling yesterday. Apologies for that. The problem should be fixed.

As an FYI for those back in BG - I plan to be back in the sticks for Thanksgiving weekend (my parents are hosting this year's family shindig). See you all there?

::Snicker::

Does this even need a caption?

Basil!

Ahem. Sorry. It's my favorite herb. Mine looks way better than this one, though. Only took me three months and killing four batches of it.



via Sacrosanct

Wheeee! I Love Democracy!

Voter intimidation - how to keep minorities in America from voting.

If you think this is an anomoly, check out this article at Salon. Republican candidates have organized these intimidation campaigns during local elections and presidential elections - not just 50 years ago, or a hundred years ago, but, you know, NOW. Yesterday. This century. Keeping dusky people from voting is practically an American tradition!

It's like the 1950s South. Yeah!

In other news, people are getting way too fucking paranoid, you should all see this movie, the first three Star Wars movies are FINALLY out on DVD (though they've been fucking fucked with by that fuckwad Lucas *again* and I may go on ebay and get *original* un-fucked-up versions if these piss me off too much), and here's a cool interview with novelist Toni Morrison.

All Together Now! "In the Ghettooooooo!"

So, picked up my obligatory reject from Realms of F. for my abortion story, "Two Girls." Though Carina gave me the Blue Form of Death, she included a substantial handwritten note saying she really liked the story, but it had no fantasy element, and I might want to try women's studies mags.

I had to laugh. No fantasy element? A woman gives her womb to her husband and gives him the task of childbearing. He rebels violently. They end up being a barren couple, and as per the social rules of this society, they're stoned to death.

After I laughed, I burst into tears.

I admit, I was having a shitty day. I've got 200 rejections or more to my name right now, and I've been submitting stories for 10 years. I should be used to this. I shouldn't be bursting into tears at rejection letters.

But here's the thing:

I'm already a ghetto writer. I work in spec fic. I find the idea of further ghettoizing myself into "women's studies" deeply offensive.

This story has already been rejected with similiar letters of "I liked this, but.. I can't publish it" from Datlow and Sheila Williams.

I've never written a story that everyone seemed to like, but nobody can publish.

I knew Datlow would like it, and I knew Carina would like it (she's my age, and her academic background is in gender studies), but fuck it all if I can sell the goddamn thing to the print mags. About all I've got left is Strange Horizons, and maybe Talebones, if they can squeeze it in (it's 1800 words).

I don't want to tailor-make my fiction. Everytime I get one of these frustrating rejection letters (the, "you're a competent writer, but..." kind), I interrogate what I'm writing and question what I'm doing. As a competent writer, why don't I just write stories that'll get published? Why do I keep writing S&S stories? (Swords and Sociology) Why don't I just add some fairies to the abortion story?

When I was fifteen, I tried to write stories specifically tailored for the now defunct Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine. I read a bunch of sample issues, bought her Sword and Sorceress anthologies, and tried to imitate the style and subject matter I saw there. The rejections got a little nicer, but I still never sold anything to her, and worse - I was now really miserable writing useless drivel that I really didn't want to write but that seemed more immediately marketable than what I was doing before. MZB went belly-up, and I stopped writing stories tailored for specific markets. It bled all the fun out of what I was doing.

Now I'm back to writing what I want. And I have a deep belief in the idea that if you stick to what you're doing, and you love what you're doing, that the rest of the world will come around. Even if I have to wait around until I'm, say, 80, like Carol Emshwiller.

It's a persistence game. I'll be the first to say that, and the first to get pissed off about it, dammit. How the hell else do you winnow down pools of artists? You beat them over the head until 98% of them give up.

The masochists - er, headstrong - keep at it.

I'm writing what I want to write. Can't get better than that. Except maybe getting paid for it.

Here's to being 80.

Well-Directed Rage

Check it out: a compilation of female bloggers on the web (so the next time somebody starts up with the "where are all the women bloggers" rant, we can have an answer. WE'RE RIGHT HERE).

Also, the House has just passed a bill that restricts (even further) women's access to abortion and contraceptives (if the former doesn't scare the shit out of you, the latter better):

NEW YORK (AP) - In Congress and states nationwide, anti-abortion activists are broadening efforts to support hospitals, doctors and pharmacists who - citing moral grounds - want to opt out of services linked to abortion and emergency contraception.

A little-noticed provision cleared the House of Representatives last week that would prohibit local, state or federal authorities from requiring any institution or health care professional to provide abortions, pay for them, or make abortion-related referrals, even in cases of rape or medical emergency.

Feeling pissed off? Fill out a quite form with Naral's Pro-Choice America and get your voice heard by your local Senator (the Senate will be voting on this bill). It takes half a minute - spread the word to your buddies and get them to petition as well.

Book Fetish

Books I picked up this weekend:

Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Iron Council by China Mieville

The Shape Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body by Susan Bordo

These all will be, I expect, fucking brilliant. Unfortunately, I'm still backlogged. Currently working on finishing Nick Mamatas's Move Under Ground, which unfortunately isn't a "train book" and has to be saved for bedtime reading (ha). Reading Move Under Ground is a bit like being on drugs.

Transcending Social Mores

As is wont to happen this time of year, the birthdays are coming fast and furious here at the office. On birthday days, two dozen donuts and a coffee cake appear in our breakroom, without fail.

Today, I stared at the donuts. I stare at the donuts every time they bring them in. As I've just done another spate of reading about hungry women, women who deprive themselves, furtive attitudes toward food, the binge and purge cycle, and etc., I carefully went through my own food-obsessed thinking in weighing my decision to cut a thumb-sized piece of coffee cake from the enormous loaf looming aside the donuts.

I resolved to have this one piece, to curb any later compulsions. It was sufficiently small, I reasoned. I was hungry. I had a craving for it. There was, in fact, no good reason not to eat it. It wasn't like I was going to eat the whole loaf. I haven't had a binge eating session in almost a year.

I hid in the breakroom and did not take this carefully portioned piece of coffee cake back to my desk. I ate it standing up. I hoped no one would come in and see me. I busily poured coffee and turned my back when one of the architects came in. I furtively chewed the remainder of my stolen piece.

I returned to my desk, satiated.

And thought about women and food, and how we're not supposed to desire anything, and why is it the only women we see eating in films and TV are the ones who're supposed to be evil, psychotic, or just plain fat (which is a shorthand for so many Evils these days)?

Because good women don't eat. Good women don't get hungry. They've transcended their bodies. They're good little anorectic girls.

I rage about a society that wants me to be smaller and quieter, and here I am, feeling those pangs because I'm not smaller and quieter. Failed woman. All over again.

I'm not a stupid person. I'm in fantastic health. I'm smart.

Fuck transcending the body. My own inability to transcend social mores really pisses me off.

Demon Juice!

So my buddy Jenn says to me on Saturday night, "There's this show on the SciFi channel that the reviewers are comparing to Buffy. Apparently, it's about this woman named Lilith who's half demon who goes around fighting demons. They'll probably play with the biblical imagery. Might suck. Could be cool. Wanna watch it?"

There's a big push of shows preening themselves to "be like Buffy," now that there's absolutely nothing else even remotely like Buffy on television. Reviewers' idea of "being like Buffy" has been distilled to this formula: "Attractive young female with superpowers battles the forces of darkness."

That's about all any of these hyped-up shows ever have in common with Buffy.

So me and Jenn sit down to watch this show. Really, I should have known better. I'd submitted myself to the atrocity that was BattleStar Galactica, because the SciFi channel made a bunch of noise about the number of its female characters (women would make up about 1/3 to 1/2 of the cast), and how they were going to be so buff and cool and independent and new and different. But it turns out that having lots of female characters basically meant the audience of 14-year-old boys (assumption of audience, much?) got to watch more on-screen sex action. Since everybody knows that the only reason you pack women into a cast is cause you can have more on screen sex. For those not really interested in the sex, we got to play the "Woman... or Cyclon?" game. By the end of the series, you've discovered that you can tell the Evil female characters from the Good ones because the Evil ones have sex.

Which means that of the four "progressive" female leads, half of them are robots.

Yea, that's right. Robots. Women are robots!! HAHAAHaaha. Hell, I haven't read the women-are-really-robots story about a bazillion times, have I?

But hey, it's a Saturday night, I don't feel like leaving the house, and this shitty show comes on.

Our Heroine emerges from the thick ooze of a primordial swamp, and our Old White Man Narrator tells us that God created Lilith before Eve, but Lilith "would not lie beneath" Adam, and talked back to him (likely told him he was bad in bed), so God Cast Her Out. And, for some reason, cause she's an evil, headstrong woman who critiqued the size of Adam's penis, she goes on this millennia-long killing rampage, and appears to subsist mainly on human flesh. Mainly male flesh, actually, since she's never shown killing any women, just men and young boys. Cause, she's, you know, EVIL.

She's then tracked down in the "near future" by this band of Old White Male Priests (seriously. They're all men. I thought I saw some longer hair in one of the group scenes, but if some of the young acolytes were female, I don't know, cause we never saw their faces) who have been running after her for centuries (these are the guys who spam your e-mail accounts with penis-enlargement advertisements, which fund their serious work). She's captured, but not killed, so that the old white men can commodify her body and use it for "science," the way Sigourney Weaver is co-opted in the misogynistic monstrosity that was Alien IV (oddly enough, written by Joss Whedon, but I have my own theories about that).

Fast forward, and Lilith is Revealed as a petite, dark-haired (of course) little woman who rides a motorcycle and dresses in leather but walks around and speaks like a passive, inane, brainless child. She's living with some Old White Man (Jenn commented: "That better be her father") who turns out to be a plant from the Society of Old White Men who's been "raising" Lilith since the priests turned her out of the medical facility after taking away her memories. They hope to "tame" her (though of course they use the word, "civilize" and talk about how much they want her to show more womanly "compassion for humanity"). She's given a book by a "mysterious" person who wants to help her "regain" her past, and in that book, she reads about Bible Curses, like those Weird Birth Marks on her wrist that are the "Marks of Daggoth" - five of them - that will disappear upon Every Act of Kindness Lilith performs in the good female nurturing role. She subsequently saves a child from getting hit by a car, and one of the marks is removed.

Ok.

Wait a minute.

Lilith has been alive for millenia. She obviously figured out once upon a time ago that a single act of kindness would take off the marks one by one and she would not longer be demon-cursed, so WHY DIDN'T SHE JUST PERFORM 5 PERFUNCTORY GOOD DEEDS SO SHE WOULDN'T BE CURSED?

Oh, that's right, cause then the White Men couldn't "save her", couldn't you know, remake her into a less intimidating figure.

Silly me.

While in the medical facility, her demon juice (dark light???) was extracted, and now one of the scientists injects it into himself as a cure for immortality. What he doesn't know is that too much female demon juice will turn him into a monster!!!

The white man becomes a plague-carrying demon, which, if you didn't guess, is going to be the Master Villain that Our Passive Heroine will have to face - a guy drugged up on her demon juice! He couldn't control himself! It's all her fault, because she produces demon juice! Demon juice! Fucking women and their demon juices!

OK. Sorry. I'm getting distracted.

Anyway, so Lilith is approached by the guy who initially shot her and captured her so she could be experimented on by lots of eager white male hands who doubtless took this opportunity to whip out their penises for review (she was only let go, of course, after she gave her "thumbs up" approval of the size of all members).

The guy who shot her is now to act as her "trainer" (because, obviously, after millenia fighting off men, she really needs a man to teach her how to, uh, kill stuff). As for characterization of our Trainer, he's got a brief scene with a blank-eyed blond woman, a woman who gets two whole lines that make up the only other speaking female role in the whole movie. Her lines are made up of such winning constructions as "as you know, we're not married anymore," and "as you know, our son has been dead for years." These are all delivered so that the audience jives that Our Trainer is single, and Suffering after the loss of his son, who was, of course, killed by the Evil Lilith, which encouraged Our Trainer to slaughter that evil bitch.

Once Lilith and our Trainer meet up, we have our obligatory two-minute training sequence, with music, though it appears that instead of a "learning over time" montage, in fact, she's only training to be a demon hunter for the afternoon, and the two of them take off once she's learned how to channel her powers so that she'll become a black woman when she's ready to kill.

Oh, have I not mentioned the black woman thing yet?

Of course! Her magic superpower is "darklight" so when she goes into Evil Sexual Demon Temptress mode, she turns black! Yes, that's right! A black woman, with claws! She's showing her inner bitch! Her True Nature! Everyone knows how sexually dangerous black women are, right!! (imagine if a black actress played this part, and whenever she channeled her "powers of good" she became a white woman - what kind of outrage would that have produced, I wonder?).

So our petite heroine goes out to kill the demon, and gets her ass kicked, though I'm not sure why, except that the demon's, you know, a guy, and she's, you know, a little girl (the fact that she's been fighting demons and men for millenia is, once again, not apparently a factor here. Her success or failure appears to depend solely upon how well she listens to her "trainer").

"I bet she sleeps with him," I said to Jenn. "That's the good deed that gets her curse removed. She's gotta fuck her father-figure trainer and ease his pain with her demon body. Just you wait."

Our heroine pants after her trainer like a well trained dog, (at one point, I finally said, "Why don't they just put a collar on her and stop with all the pretense?"), and then they discover the plague victims who are dying from the plague that the demon is passing onto people, and we get our first crowd shot, and yes, yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, there are some female plague victims in the crowd! Whooo! They're the first female faces I've seen in any crowd scene in this whole movie (Jenn insists that there was also one black guy in a scene with the swat team, a brief crowd shot. He appears to be the only brown-colored person in the whole movie). One would think that men reproduced by, you know, jerking out each other's ribs. Though that might be construed by Bible-thumpers as borderline homoerotic, so we likely weren't allowed to see all that rib-jerking on screen.

So, the only way to make a cure for the plague is to get the head of the demon, and fry it up into an antidote. The Old White Male Priests have the trainer bring Lilith back into the Priestly Lair so they can restore her memories of all the Evil she's caused. She's taken to a little room with about four panels of "in memorium" names lit from behind, because, you know, this is the future, and carving them would take too long, and put the movie over budget ("Hey, wait a minute," Jenn said, "Did they REPEAT THE NAMES? Rewind that." She rewound it, and sure enough, on the four panels of the death list we got all in one shot, it was easy to see that the names had been repeated from one master list. "Low budget," I said. Lilith was such an evil bitch, she killed a bunch of people twice).

"See all this death you caused," the Old Evil White Man says.

"I'm so ashamed," Lilith says, crying. "I'm just going to kill myself."

And the Old Evil White Man gives her a "knife" made out of "talus" (isn't that like talcum powder?) that "dates back to the Garden of Eden" and is the only material that can kill her, a cursed half-demon woman.

As she raises the knife, she is once again Saved by her trainer, who convinces her of all the good she can do in the world.

"I'm evil, I've done terrible things, I deserve to die!!!" she says. She's presumably now regained all of her bazillions of years of memories (as the whole reason they brought her in to the death lists was to "give her back her memory.")

So, upon getting her memory back, knowing that not only was she cast out of the Garden of Eden cause God made Adam bad in the sack, but now she's been medically fucked with by these old white men, who captured her, extracted her darklight, wiped away her memory, and likely did countless other unhappy things to her evil demon (read: Female) body while they all patted themselves on the back for capturing the Evil Woman who carried with her the power of the female gaze that men have been trying so hard to shut up for thousands of years.

And instead of slaughtering all of these idiot men, what does she do?

She tries to kill herself.

The fuck?

What kind of fucked-up Lilith demon is this?

Then the trainer tells her to go out and kill something, and I know exactly what kind of "action heroine" this is. It's the one who acts as a passive marionette whose strings are jerked around by men. She protects them, listens to them, doesn't talk back, does exactly as they say, and feels guilt whenever they tell her to. She's a character written, directed, and produced by men.

"You know what's really sad," Jenn said to me after Lilith pulled open a big metal door in an effort to save her now plague-stricken Trainer, "you know they pitched this as a female-empowerment movie."

I have no doubt that they did just that.

In the end, Lilith slays the evil demon with the use of some "Toxic Adhesive" (seriously) and saves everyone from the plague unleashed by the old white guys. Yet another one of her marks of Daggoth burns away, so she's only got a couple more good deeds to do before she's free of the curse. It sure is lucky that she met these white guys. She'll get rid of the curse in the course of an afternoon, now that she's got white men around to train her properly!

After all, it's not *science* that's all wrong - it's women!

Our final scene is a mutual masturbation scene between the Old White Priest and the Trainer, who congratulate one another for the fine work they've done taming Lilith into a good little housetrained terrier.

Next week, she'll be baking cookies!

Now, *that's* a fearsome, empowered female heroine!

Why don't they feed us more of this stuff? Oh, that's right, they do. Every goddamn day. And they'll keep marketing spayed women and incompetent men with penis-complexes as female-empowerment episodes.

After the "show," the SciFi channel saw it fit to further aggrevate us by showing a trailer for its next debacle, its adaptation of Earthsea.

Upon seeing Danny Glover opening up the scene, I said, "Is Ged supposed to be that old?"

"Uh," Jenn said, as the trailer spun out, full of lily-white characters frolicking in the sundrenched flora, "That's not Ged. That's the old guy who trains him."

"Huh. Wait a minute, then. Why is the rest of this preview full of white people? Isn't Isabella Rosellini's character supposed to be the only white person in the whole book?"

"Yep," Jenn said.

THEY'RE MAKING EARTHSEA WHITE.

"You do realize now why Ellen Datlow will never buy any of your stories, even though she likes them?" Jenn said, pointing at the frolicking parade of whiteys. "She works for *these* people."

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG!!

This Woman is Wacky

Does anyone else, like, seriously believe that Ann Coulter is insane? I mean, not insane in a rah-rah Bush is great way, which is fine, because there are certainly things about Republicans that half the country likes, and that's cool, cause it's a free country, but... um... why is it that the press loves this insane woman? because she's insane?

For the record, she's also equated Ronald Regan with Jesus Christ.

Amazon.com: How important is this presidential election in the larger context of the Republic and its history?

Ann Coulter: Insofar as the survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry, I'd say 2004 is as big as it gets.

Amazon.com: Is there one standout issue, and why does it make a difference? What are the most crucial issues?

Coulter: I repeat: The survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry. I'd say that's the big one.

Amazon.com: What would a Kerry administration mean?

Coulter: Quite possibly the destruction of the Republic.

At least she's got the research paper formula down pat: Tell them what you're going to say. Say what you're going to say. Tell them what you said.

Adventures in Booksitting

The adventures of a Barnes & Noble employee:

This is the most fucked up thing to ever happen to me at work: Basically, I am calling a customer because the book she ordered has come in. A three year old picks up the phone and gargles into my ear before handing the phone to her father. I ask for the woman who ordered the book by name and he asks rather suspiciously: "Who is this?" I tell him it is "Barnes and Noble in Northville calling," and he says "Okay hold on." Five minutes (literally) later he yells to his wife (I presume) in an extremely sarcastic manner that "Barnes and Noble is on the phone!" Another few minutes later she picks up, and the other line hangs up. Before I can say anything she whispers in a shrill voice: "I know it's you! I told you never to call me at home!" This catches me a little bit off guard. All I can manage to say is "Excuse me?" to which she replies: "Ohmygod. Ohmygod. I thought you were someone else." I then tell her that her book is in and hang up.

Important: If you are buying something and the scanner doesn't work, and you say "Must be free!" and offer a shit-eating grin, well then shame on you. Presumably you believe the clerk is thinking: "Boy! what a silly guy! Perhaps his background is in improvisational comedy!" But you are wrong. Dead wrong. What the clerk is really thinking is: "If one more person says that today, I will attack with such ferocity that seasoned police officers will weep upon discovering the bloody remains."

Once, while attempting to locate a book on Breastfeeding for an older woman, she caught me off guard by stating matter-of-factly: "It was smart of God to make the baby and the milk come at the same time." Yes. Yes, it was.

It's That Time of Year Again...

What time of year, you may ask? Why, the 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day!

What, you don't get a paid day off that day? Oh, hell, it's a Sunday! Who cares??

Which Pirates of the Caribbean character are you?

Check out this Pirate Ninja Adventure

How Pirate Are You?

And, for more workday fun try: The English-to-Pirate Translator

How about a pirate name? We all need one of those...

My pirate name is:

Bloody Mary Flint

Every pirate lives for something different. For some, it's the open sea. For others (the masochists), it's the food. For you, it's definitely the fighting. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!


via boingboing

Snapshots From my Worklife, 3

8:15 am - Arrive at work after walking in from the train station. Put lunch in the fridge. Open up my e-mail, update the sitetracker.

8:18 am - Download a copy of games from worldoffreegames.com. Play Antz and 3D Morris. The Antz usually win.

9:00 am - read random blogs.

9:30 am - open chapter 27. Snarl at it. Close chapter 27.

9:55 am - open one of the early chapters of book 2. Type a couple sentences. Snarl at them. Close early chapters.

10:00 am - update my blog

10:30 am - nibble on some almonds, have a string cheese or something.

11:00 am - get more coffee. Play Antz again.

12:00 pm - Open chapter 27. Snarl at it. Reread the beginning. Delete something.

12:30 pm - Lose at Antz again. Play 3D Morris. Lose at that too. Download some more free games.

1pm - Lunch. Read a couple chapters of Zelazny's The Guns of Avalon. Go for a walk at the nature preserve across the street.

2pm - print something out for my boss. Harass Yellow about something random (if he's still in the office).

2:01 pm - Lose at 3D Morris

2:30 pm - Write a couple more sentences in chapter 5 of book two. Update my blog. Cruise Amazon.com adding books to my wishlist.

3:00 pm - Open chapter 27, replace everything I deleted

3:30 pm - have some coffee and a protein bar, download more free games.

4:15 pm - read random blogs

4:50 pm - go home.

I get paid for this.

Today's Random Quotes

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
- Isaac Asimov

"Come to the edge," He said. They said, "We are afraid." "Come to the edge," He said. They came. He pushed them... and they flew.
- Guillaume Apollinaire

"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."
- James Tiptree Jr.; The Women Men Don’t See

"I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. "
- Groucho Marx

"Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease."
- Bill Maher

"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
- Toni Morrison

At her last exhibition in Mexico, Frida Kahlo told reporters, "I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint".

Hiccups

Gmail is having hiccups, so while I wait for it to come back, here's some Onionized "news" for your entertainment:

Female Atheletes Making Great Strides in Attractiveness

LOS ANGELES—In the wake of the Summer Olympics, during which many American women achieved a level of media attention often reserved for men, sports fans are pleased to report that female athletes are continuing to make great strides in their personal appearances.

Point-Counterpoint "I Wish My Life Was Better"

I know what you're going through. Before I created my Total Forward Thinking plan, I knew that the life I was living was not for me. I was renting a cramped, dirty studio apartment. I had a dead-end job. My social life? What social life?! I knew I deserved better, but I was paralyzed by failure. Thanks to the Total Forward Thinking principles, my wonderful family and I now live in a $2 million house that overlooks the ocean. I couldn't be happier!


The Onion's Pool Safety Tips

- Your body is 70 percent water, so don't worry: Even if you were to drown, only 30 percent of you would die.

- Leave a drowned squirrel floating in the pool as a reminder of what can happen when one isn't careful, and is a squirrel.

- Remember, you can't leave young children unsupervised around the pool, the way you do in the house.

Shitty Chapters

Fucking chapter 27, fucking piece of crap!! fucking GRRRRR... !! dammit, $#()*&) bitch @#&$*#%&)(#$ crappy GRRRRRR!!

OK. Back to work.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

So, Yellow gave up his ticket to the Cubs game last night, so me and my buddy Jenn went, and met up with some of the guys from work, Dee, Garrett and Jonas (one of the lead architects) and his son.

Had a couple beers, chatted with the guys about work and baseball, discussed transactive memory and team building with Jenn, and took off after the 7th inning stretch and 36,000 voice-strong rendition of "Take me out to the ballgame." Turns out we apparently missed the best innings in the game, as the Cubs rebounded and won 3-2 in 12 innings. Most of what we caught wasn't the best of ball playing, though I got to watch a hitter break a bat, which was cool. I don't regret leaving early - we're 3 train stops from Wrigley Field, and I've *seen* what the train's like after a game gets out. 36,000 people flood Addison, pack into buses and trains and cars, and it likely would have taken us an hour to go less than 2 miles.

It was a hot night, and I'd never been inside Wrigley Field before. It's a strange conglamoration of old and new, seats haphazardly stuck on the original design, and I was sitting within view of the line of rooftop seats built up onto the tops of 3-flats ringing the east side of the ballbark. Wrigley's an old field, and it wasn't - for all intents and purposes - surrounded by the city when it first sprang up. It's become increasingly crowded in by buildings, all of which have been converted by sports enthusiasts and money-grubbers. I like Wrigley because there's something so deeply *Roman* about it. It's not clean and slick and shiny - nor are its crowds. The Cubs haven't won a World Series in... what, a century? And that place is packed to the gills every game night. There's enough bad beer to drown a couple phalanxes of Roman legionnaires. The audience really gets into it - they're a very vocal, seething mass of spectators whose booing and cheering sessions can shake the foundations of the field. It's a bizarre spectacle all the more because I sometimes wonder if the guys playing the actual game are really having fun. No doubt the audience is, but I sometimes looked at the players and wondered if they were just going through the motions. I mean, all they have to do is show up, and they get audiences like this...

All in all, I'm not much of a sports fan. Not because I don't like sports - I love seeing things done really well - but because I really can't get invested in a team that swaps out its players every year. I was into Portland basketball for a couple years and went to some local games, but they started swapping out players, and I just wasn't emotionally invested anymore. There's an "us" vs. "them" aspect to sport that doesn't really work when you're rooting for a guy one year cause he's (almost always "he" - the state of women's sports coverage in the US is another rant) "from" your town, and not rooting for him the next year cause now he's "from" Toronto. It's difficult to maintain the illusion of an "us" vs. "them" when nobody's willing to play along, and players switch teams based mostly on money and less and less on any sort of notion of "team" loyalty.

I get bored.

Enough With the Us and Them, Already

For a long while, I've had a problem with gay and straight labels, similiar to my problems with white and black labels, male and female labels. It packs us all up into boxes and allows people to make statements like, "We Americans should let gays get married."

The first time I read that, it stopped me short. "What you mean `we' white man?"

"We"? Aren't *all* Americans, no matter who they go to bed with (or don't), Americans? American citizens can vote, right? (Though Papa Bush wanted to revoke the citizenship of atheists). Who the hell is the Royal We?

I thought this was an interesting discussion that touched on some of my own problems with "defining identity" primarily based on who you want to sleep with:

"I’m not disputing that heterosexual behaviour is the practice of the majority. But then, a lot of people swim, but do we have a swimmers’ community? This is part of the problem of a binary: if you set up homosexuality over here and you say it looks like this, then in some senses you’re forced to define its Other in the same terms. Like chalk and cheese, homosexuality and heterosexuality ought not to be compared in the same terms, particularly when one is trying to contest the terms in which the other has configured it. Homosexuality has been saying for 20 years, 'We aren’t what you think we are. We never have been. Why do you think we are the way we are? Why are you even making us a "we"?’ And then I look over here and I see a new 'we’ being made in heterosexuality and I think, 'Why do you want to go down that track? Why institutionalise, put boundaries around, in a process we’ve experienced as really screwed?’

"There’s something about the project that seems to me to undermine the 20 years of sexual politics that’s been about trying to renovate all sexuality, all gender relations. It runs the risk of shutting out heterosexuality’s own confusions and potentials, and locking it into some kind of rigidity. I don’t see why heterosexuals should be subjected to that, quite frankly. It’s not going to be in the interests of heterosexually active people, in the long term, to have heterosexuality constructed in that form."

So, I ask, is it more liberatory to hold onto the notion of sexual identities as fluid and elastic?

"I’ve got my suspicions about the term identity, you see. I increasingly think, 'What the fuck is an identity? Who’s got one, what does it do, and why do you have one and how do you use it?’ My hunch is that is it something which functions, or doesn’t function: where the concept of an identity functions in some way for someone in order for them to deal with their social world, then it has a place. Gay men have an identity as gay because it is a place from which to cluster and face that which it is not, particularly that which is wanting to beat you with a stick. It is both a calling card and a rallying point. In the face of master discourses that argue that what you are or what you think you are (or you are doing) is sick or wrong, gay identity provides a vantage point for critique.

Hot Summer Nights in Chi-Town

Had a mediocre MA class last night. Worked on lower body strength training and kicking technique. Worked on crescent kicks and learning how to crunch up and shoot out a hook kick. Had a mediocre partner who appeared to be dancing around somewhere else - her mind really wasn't on it. Had to bow out of the second class (in which I would actually get to pound the shit out things), as I had prep work to do for Weds, cause I'll be at Wrigley Field tonight.

I got a call from Yellow* yesterday inviting me to a Cubs game tonight. He got six tickets from one of our clients, and he's got together a group of us from work to go. So me, Yellow, Dee, Blaine, and Garret are heading out to a night game, which should be cool, as I've been here a year and haven't seen a game yet (Yellow's got one more ticket he's trying to pawn off on somebody). Going to a Cubs game is just something you do if you live in Chicago.

Should be amusing. They're a funny bunch of guys.

Up, Up and Away

The always-amazing Katha Pollitt discusses the ridiculous hyper-masculinity of our bullshit elections, and the mysterious absence of the other 52% of the population, in The Girlie Vote.

Matt Cheney's got a new discussion going on at the Mumpsimus about the bizarre articles department at Strange Horizons (I've tried to join in this discussion, but I've been having trouble getting the comments to work).

And, in case people think that I'm narrow-minded and *never* listen to political rants from conservative Republicans, well, put your fears to rest. I get hours of mindless entertainment out of such ranters here.

On a more serious note, though I don't like to tote abortion rights "merely" to protect the "life" of the mother (wow, it sounds infinitely sick to feel that I have to say that), here's a useful first-person account from a woman who's much-wanted potential child ceased growing and expired after 19 weeks gestation - and due to Bush's progressive ban:

"She walked around for a week, bleeding, with her dead baby inside of her, because the virulent political controversy around dilation and extraction meant that no one was willing to provide her with proper medical care. This could happen to me. This could happen to any woman."

Repeat after me: "Being a woman whose reproductive health is administered by men's laws and powers of vote and veto is FUN!!"

And, one more, because I can't end of the above story, as it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth: here's a list of the top blogs being accessed and linked to around the blogosphere, in case you're curious (I was quite happy to see that Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin et al over at boingboing are ranked at #2)

Fat Girls, Obesity, and the American Obsession with "Thin"

So, I did get the inevitable "ping" for my "No Shit, Sherlock" post about the latest study CNN has decided to publish that purports that cardio problems are not necessarily linked to "obesity" or "overweight" as much they are to a sedentary lifestyle. No matter their weight, women (the study only involved women) who exercised for half an hour at least three times a week were healthier than those who did not, though those who did not may have been "thinner."

My poster sites the UK's NHS (National Health Service) website, though not a specific article - it appears he took the quoted text from the NHS Encyclopaedia. I don't particularly need a specific article, of course, because the US is already way ahead of the obesity-speak than the UK (I read The Guardian regularly, so I've kept up with their pacing of the US regarding obesity as a disease, school lunch reforms, rising fear and panic about slothful, gluttonous children, and outsized women et al). The US has, of course, already gone far past this and moved into gastric bypass surgery on demand (As I recall, there are currently appeals to the UK's NHS to perform this surgery free of charge to "patients." Gastric bypass surgery reduces the size of the stomach, inhibiting how much one can eat, and in effect, you suffer from malnutrition for the rest of your life, and have to subsist on supplements until the last breath leaves your body). What most studies have not done is separated out the sedentary and non-sedentary and controlled for that factor when making judgments about the correlation between weight and one's propensity for disease. They've even "discovered" a great thing to do with "obesity hormones": inject them in women suffering from anorexia or female athletes who've trained so hard that their bodies have dipped below the 10% body fat requirement that allows them to menstruate. Yes. That's right. Instead of telling a woman who wants to get pregnant that she should "gain weight" (that 10% body fat requirement is there for a reason), they'll inject thin women with leptin to trick their bodies into thinking that they've got enough resources to nourish children! Great!

I've watched the increasing medicalization of fat with some amusement, trepidation, and disgust. When I was five or six, and first got the Fat Talk from Concerned Adults, it had to do with their fear that I would be outcast at school, and in later life, lack for a sexual partner. The health aspect was peripheral at best. Now "obesity" is categorized as a "disease" whose symptom is "excess body fat." unfortunately, "excess body fat" is an extraordinarily relative term. "Excess body fat" isn't a disease. It's a symptom. For most of history, body fat has been a "symptom" of health and prosperity. The truly excessive body fat that impeded movement, the sort linked to sloth and gluttony, was most derided in the Christian era. Christianity had an abhorrence for the physical "earthly" body that still lingers into today, though today it's called "not letting oneself go," or "attaining self-perfection" - and both terms are now considered positive.

Want to know what the indicator of excess body fat is today? The BMI system. Where did the BMI system initially come from? Insurance companies. Who did all the medical studies to figure out the simple height/weight formula? No one. MET Life looked around at the people in the office, did some quick averaging, and printed up the now ubiquitous BMI charts. Yep. That's it. Not one single study was conducted in order to create the BMI charts. No doctors sat down with control groups, nobody measured body mass composition (muscle to fat ratio). For a far more realistic (but, I think, not quite lenient enough) BMI chart based (again, not on scientific evidence ::sigh::) on the goal weights of others in your age/height/gender range, and how drastically this differs from the very odd BMI charts promulgating the internet (the MET Life BMI chart, the insurance one, is the one you'll see most often. The other was, indeed, concocted by doctors - back in 1974, when they were trying to work out medication dosages, not critique fat or lack of it), check out this site.

My biggest issue with BMI is that few of them take age into account, and NONE take body shape and body mass into account (each individual has a differing bone and muscle density). According to the MET Life BMI, Brad Pitt is obese. Seriously. Muscle is heavier than fat. If your goal for "healthy" is taking up *less* space in the world, you may as well do this.

My quarrel isn't with health. I think we should all be able to take a couple flights of stairs without being out of breath. You should be able to walk a mile or two for fun, without feeling like you're going to die afterward. You should be able to lift things, to bend and twist and interact within the world without feeling like you need to sit down every five minutes. And for those with the time, money, and will, I'm a big proponent of competitive sport and conditioning, all of which require a balanced diet to keep the body running properly. This means you're likely going to have a very low amount of body fat - but it doesn't mean you're going to be "thin" in the supermodel sense of the word. Being that "thin" for most women means loss of muscle mass and loss of the ability to produce children.

The average white American female teenager's ideal body type is 5'7, 117lbs. One female survivor of Auschwitz measured 5'2, 55lbs. Add 10lbs per inch to get her to 5'7, and she's very nearly the American teen ideal.

How fucked up is that? I make "jokes" about concentration-camp chic, but they aren't really "jokes." They're not funny.

Too many people have conflated "health" with "thin." When I read all of these reports about the Evils of Obesity, I want to hit people. The language is flawed. When we talk about the Evils of Fat, we aren't talking about health, anymore than when we're talking about abortion we're talking about preserving some sort of mythical life (as opposed to the life working to bring the other to fruition, a nurturing that only succeeds 2/3 of the time anyway, without medical intervention of any sort, but I've already done that rant).

We're talking about fat people. We're talking about beauty, misogyny, aesthetics, and (the dirty word in America, though Britain is rife with talk of it) class.

We live in a largely sedentary society whose bottom rungs work a couple of jobs just to make ends meet. They often have children, and if they're women and/or single mothers, they're working upwards of three jobs including the care of their children and the maintenance of a home life. When you come home after standing at a mindless job for 12 hours, you want to come home and collapse. Exercise? Very funny. McDonald's and some mindless TV will do. Besides, how much does proper exercise cost? Sure, you could walk around the block, but what if you're in a shitty neighborhood (as many poorer people are)? What if, in addition to a merely bad neighborhood, you get home well past dark, living in a city with the highest murder rate in the country (Ah, Chicago)? You'd have to be able to afford a gym fee, or an exercise bike. And let me tell you, when it comes down to paying the heating bill or getting an exercise bike, guess what wins out?

Rich people - or single "young professionals" like me, who have no kids to take care of and were lucky enough to scrape out an education and slither into cozy desk jobs - have excess money, excess time, and the will to spend it. The times in my life when I've been the most out of shape were when I was the poorest (working two jobs and going to school, trying to pay rent and live on my own for the first time; and again in South Africa, once again desperately trying to pay bills, and this time around, also complete a master's degree in a foreign country). When life is a breeze, you've got more time to pay attention to status indicators like weight, and if you're looking to move up in the workplace or go on media tours, you're definitely making "image" a priority.

"Image" being the key term here.

If "health" were the biggest issue here in the US, we'd have a national health care system. We'd have a welfare system that supported people beyond the subsistence level, and a minimum wage that afforded people the ability to keep a roof over their heads that didn't belong to their hand-me-down car. If we were really so freakin' concerned about other people's health and welfare, you'd see less disgust at the Evils of the Fat and more interest in improving working wages, working hours, childcare, and access to education.

The "obesity epidemic" is another handwave. It's not a disease. It's a symptom. For those few who are actually sedentary, obese adults in the "dangerous health" range (the "healthy" range actually spans an 80lb range, not the narrow 15-lb range the MET Life bullshit BMI spouts on about) where "excess weight" impedes mobility, it's a symptom of a system catering to old white men with old white money. We're being peddled drugs and operations toted by old white male doctors who're getting rich on spreading Fear of Fat the same way Bush is trying to get himself re-elected through Fear of Terrorism (because he did such a great job "protecting" us three years ago).

I'm a firm believer in taking care of yourself: of eating good food, hanging out with good friends, drinking good wine, going on long walks on the beach and long bike rides in the park, and pursuing projects that make you the best person you can be. I resent being told by a screaming news media funded by dieting companies and profiteer doctors (it's all profiteering in the US) that I should hate myself for everything I do and don't do, that I should spend the best moments of my life counting every calorie, declining every beer, and passing up on social occasions because I haven't jogged 18 miles today so I can fit into the latest Abercrombie & Fitch 00.

Sure, fat people die of heartattacks.

But you know what? Thin people do too.

No more spin. I'd like some straight talk.

Snapshots From My Domestic Life

Sunday.

Took the overgrown herb garden of doom to task. The biggest of my basil plants is now over 2ft tall. I didn't know basil *grew* to be 2ft tall... Repotted the cilantro, which has proven to be far more delicate than I realized (there's a reason it comes *with* the roots at the grocery store - you can't mess with it *without* tearing it up by the roots).

Wiped down the kitchen, conducted the weekly bathroom cleaning ritual, vaccuumed all of the throw rugs (we have hardwood floors), dusted said hardwood floor in my room (I do all my morning weights and sit-ups standing on a rug on that floor, and it was collecting dust and other bits that I would find stuck to my skin as I took to the shower), reposted some notes of interest regarding futures novels, and reshuffled some of the photos clinging to the hutch over my desk (found the one of me and three high school buddies dressed in sheet-togas in Rome, standing in the balcony and looking in through the door - great pic), stacked all of the agent letters and agent packages I compiled last night and got them ready for sending out tomorrow, prepped my bag of goodies for martial arts class, and etc.

It's a gorgeous day in Chicago - 82 degrees, sunny, slight breeze, no humidity. Absolutley gorgeous. Opted out of my jogging and went on a bike ride instead. I took the Lakeshore trail all the way into downtown (the farthest I've made it thus far - ideally, I'd like to bike as far as Navy Pier and back), and looped back, which I think is just about 10 miles or so. I was really booking it today, enjoying the speed, weaving around pedestrians and getting passed by the most hardcore of roller bladers, watching pro bikers zip by on those delicate little bikes that look like they're made of wire hangers... I stopped at the beach, stuck my toes in the sand, and looked out at the jet skiers, sailboats and motorboats playing out in the lake. Frickin' gorgeous.

A local writing colleague is organizing a couple writing sessions this week at cafes downtown (a bunch of writers take over a coffee shop, drink coffee, giggle to themselves, and type away for four hours). The Saturday group meets a block away from my martial arts school. Meaning: I need to sign up for Saturday classes, take pilates and boxing at the MA school in the morning, then hit the cafe and write from noon to three or four, then head home.

It'd be a productive way to spend a Saturday.

Also looking at the logistics of biking to work again. It's supposedly only 10 miles or so. I just need to wait until I've got the funds available for a helmet, tire patching kit, and portable pump. I think I'm at the point where I'm in good enough shape that I can do it no problem.

Ciao.

If Bush Ran Against Jesus...

Via: Eschaton

If Bush ran against Jesus, his "Bush Approved" ads might look something like this...

Jesus of Nazareth says: "Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other."

CAN WE TRUST JESUS TO FIGHT THE WAR ON TERROR?

And... We're Out

Working on getting past page 100 of Book Two. Sending out another half dozen agent letters for Book 1 this weekend.

See you all again on Monday!

Boxing Life, 2

Had a mixed boxing class yesterday - had a great partner, was in the mood to hit the shit out of stuff, and felt like I was going to burn and fall over at the end. The "mixed" part was the "burn and fall over at the end" part.

Our MA school was closed on Monday for the holiday, so I went jogging Monday instead, and got my ass kicked more than usual when I came back in for my Weds class. Why aren't I getting better at this?

No, that's not fair. I am, in fact, getting "better," yea, yea, at certain things. But I've got pretty high standards for myself. I know how to throw a hook now (though, not a good one), I know what a boxing stance is (though my movement continues to be way too stiff - I have yet to move into that bouncy, duck-and-weave boxer style of movement), and I can complete my jumproping rounds without feeling like I'm going to die. But I still feel like a damn idiot. This may have to do with the fact that I was once again paired with a great partner. Eddy really pushed me to complete all the punching rounds without pause. He confirmed what several have already said, that I've got a good right cross (I'm not totally hopeless!), and during that last round, I was throwing straight "pushing" punches, driving my mitted partner all the way to the wall. It was invigorating, and it was also painful. I started my new morning routine with those 30lb free weights this week, and driving nonstop punches after already being sore because I'd added more weight to my daily routine... well, damn, I burned up.

I have this deep American dissatisfaction with things that are difficult for me. Being good at anything takes years of practice, a dose of talent, and backbreaking, muscle-burning hard fucking work. You can know this on an intellectual level, but until you're pounding the crap out of somebody's mitts after dancing around the floor for forty minutes of jump rope, abs, and punching combos, well, you don't really know anything about it (how do people do 3-8 hour workouts every day? Ah. That's right. They do it because it's their life). And juggling trying to be not-bad at this with everything else in my life I'm pursuing and want to pursue (I'd planned to take a French class this quarter, but due to lack of funds, I'm putting it off another quarter), I should actually be pleased that I've got a decent right cross.

But I'm fucking ambitious, remember? And I am highly dissatisfied.

Will look into bumping myself up to three days a week beginning in October (Saturday classes have begun). Three days. No more.

Yes, I know I've been hard on myself about limiting this stuff, and I'll tell you the reason: despite all that burning pain, the constant feeling that I'm totally incompetent, the hours of transit time, and the loss of writing time, I have this image of myself being a strong, no-bullshit person. That is, if I get into a bar fight, I want to be able to *fight*, no bullshit. No posturing. No bullying. Just a great right cross.

I Registered to Vote Today!

Have you?

Register to VOTE HERE!

No Shit, Sherlock

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- When it comes to heart disease, being fit may be more important than being thin, according to a study of more than 900 women published Tuesday.

"Our study shows that the lack of physical fitness is a stronger risk factor for developing heart disease than being overweight or obese," said Timothy Wessel, a physician at the University of Florida who headed up the research.

Fascinating that their study group was a group of women, isn't it? Particularly because more men suffer from heart disease than women... Once again: can we all just start talking about what all this obesity panic is about? It has about 2% to do with health. Just like invading Iraq had about 2% to do with terrorism.

Can somebody just do an Al Gore and say, "The reason we didn't intervene in the genocide of 2 million people in Rwanda is because we have no economic interests there"?

That would be great.

Sugar and Spice

"I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body."
- Elaine Boosler

So, somebody finally managed to capture what bugs me about the whole "save the rights of the fertilized egg" movements.

I can't really say when I understood that telling women what to do with their bodies was wrong. Probably when I was very young, when my parents instilled in me the belief that my body was mine, and it was my right to decide who touched it, when, and where, and that I had an inherent right to be free from physical abuse of any kind. Pain, if I should decide to endure it, would come from decisions I made, and should not come from something or someone imposed upon me against my will.

These are basic human rights that many of us are taught when young.

But the older I got, the more I realized that when most people discussed "people" they didn't mean "women."

Babies do not appear from thin air. My conception of birth and babies and what it takes to create a human being came from several sources. One the experiences which contributed to my views was watching an aunt who struggled for many years to get pregnant, and repeatedly miscarried before the third month of each pregnancy. This was when I learned that babies couldn't live outside of their mothers until at least the sixth month, after being nourished by their mothers into selfhood as a fully capable being that could breathe on its own. A child still needed the nurturance of a mother after birth, nursing and diapering and socializing. And the addition of a child into a household (as I learned with the addition of two younger siblings) meant 9 months of work undertaken by my mother, followed by a total and complete change not only in the dynamics of my household, but changes that would continue for the rest of my life and the lives of my family members. The decision to carry a pregnancy to term was not one to be undertaken lightly. My mother worked through all of the benefits and drawbacks when she became pregnant for the third time, and after carefully weighing her options, decided to invest her time, her body, her energy, her conception of self, the dynamics of her family, to go through with the creation of another child. Across the street, my sister and I were friends with a clan of six children whose mother perscribed to a religion that prohibited her use of birth control and instilled in her and her children the absolute rights of the father (including, I later realized, sex on demand and some tricky domestic violence. This is usually what the euphemism "obey thy husband" or "grant a husband his marriage rights" really means). I watched this stern-faced woman nurture and then birth child number seven. She, too, had weighed her options: 1) expulsion from her church and family for using birth control 2) abuse from her husband (whom she was financially dependent upon) for denying him "conjugal rights."

She "chose." Her child didn't grow on a tree, either. Neither did her husband's super sperm coagulate into a living, breathing, child all on its own. No matter what Aristotle or other slavery advocates say.

As Amanda said, "They don't call it labor for nothing, folks. In that view, when you force someone to labor against her will, it's slavery."

Now, I'm not going to take on religion here. I'm not going to point out that the vast majority of women and men who oppose rights to abortion and contraception do so because of religious beliefs (usually of one Christian denomination or another, in this country). I'm not going to do that because I'm a tolerant person: if you grow up in strict patriarchal religion and have no interest in leaving - or better yet, go out into the world, meet people with lots of different beliefs, discover other modes of thinking and doing and being - and you still decide pledging your body to Jesus Christ is the thing to do.. Hey, GO FOR IT!! That's what freedom is, right?

Choosing?

Yea. That's what I thought. We live in America because we have more choices. Because as a woman, you're free to choose to devote your life to bearing and raising children, volunteering, helping others, having a career, creating movies, writing books, being a CEO, getting married (your only marriage option right now, if you're a woman, is to marry a man. Sorry. We're working on that one), joining up with a female domestic partner (with or without sex - as you choose), being a lawyer, and if you're really, really ambitious, you're free to do any and all of those things and more all at once or all in a row. And it's No One Else's Right to limit those choices or to tell you you *can't* do any or all of them.

Why do I believe I'm allowed to control my own fertility?

Um.

Because, I'm a person? Because we've got these rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I went to school with teenage girls who chose to have children while still in high school because they believed abortion was "wrong," and they were clueless about both birth control and the sort of responsibilities inherent in birthing and raising a child. So they went through with it. Women who were going to do and be all sorts of things (all at once or in a row) ended up with their highschool boyfriends, usually the ones who drank too much, remained unemployed for long stretches, fucked around, and resented them for "getting knocked up" (like they just layed there), and they felt trapped into only one narrow role, not neccessarily the one they would have chosen if they viewed abortion as a "choice" and had a proper understanding of contraception. Women's work is hard work. Having children is hard work. Having children at the wrong time, however, can compromise your choices, your education, and will utterly change the course of your life. Forever.

There's no "do over." The decision to have children or not have children is a huge one. And because women's eggs divide to create cells, and those cells are nourished by a woman's body to create more complex cell structures, and those become the lungs, the heart, the tadpole-like-appendages that become legs and etc. because a child is created of a woman's body, the decision whether or not to expend her bodies resources in the creation of that child's body is her decision.
Yes. Hers.

Women are not vessels. We are not, as several boys in my high school theatre department enjoyed putting it, "Sperm dumpsters." Co-opting my body and telling me what to do with it is nothing short of slavery. Telling me my only option upon receiving the sacred male sperm is to spend nine months of my life expending my body's resources: enduring swollen ankles that slow my walk, back pain that more often than not leaves me in bed during any hour I can afford it, insomnia, nausea and vomiting, the expending of my body's blood, cellular energy, my body's breath, my body's nutrients, and at the end of it, asking me to spread my legs to strangers and violently birth a child in a gush of blood and pain, putting me at risk of death, leaving me with sore, aching, leaking breasts and a child whose ultimate care: feeding, changing, socializing, comfort, all rest solely on me - FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE (good luck finding that sperm donor... hate to break it to you, ladies, but the same people who think you're just a vessel put that child and its success or failure in this world solely on your shoulders), *making* me endure that as my "punishment" for engaging in vaginal intercourse with a male partner (who is more often than not coercive in his attempts at ejaculatory vaginal intercourse, because we've determined that procreative sex is the only form of "real sex." ha) is the ultimate in repressive bullshit. It takes away my agency. It reduces me to a body, to body parts, to a sperm dumpster.

The biggest fears around the female control of her own sexuality aren't really to do with birthing children anyway. Let's fess up to that right now. A woman controlling her own sexuality, her reproductive potential, is the most powerful person in the world. Choosing when, with whom, and how many (if any) children she has, a woman also has the power to control a *man's* fertility (yes, that's right! See, now you can see why this pisses people off so much!). She can choose to nurture the child of her body in her womb - it just so happens that egg's division is initially sparked by receiving half a man's DNA. The big complaint in Rome (and in many societies whose upper-class women had knowledge of and access to contraception) was that educated, upper-class women often chose to have no more than two children. The Roman government introduced tax incentives in order to convince women to undergo the birth of a child that killed 1/4 of all of the women who engaged in it.

Women chose not to.

We. Women.

Women. Yes. Women. I will say again: Women.

Men have figured this out. They figured this out a long time ago, and there's an argument that the oppression of women in most (NOT all, but most) societies we know today began when men figured this out. The backlash against the femenist movement in the 60s and 70s happened because people in power realized just what would happen if women 1) had control of their sexuality (which, theoretically, happened with the advent of the Pill and the legalization of doctor-assisted abortion) 2) had their own source of income (the vast majority of women who stay with abusers do so for financial reasons 3) had confidence in their intellect, their bodies, and were physically and psychologically able to defend themselves from attack (ever wonder why women are pushed so violently into hating their bodies and thinking they're weak and stupid?).

Why do I get harrassed on the street? Why do/did I get called fat? Why do/did men threaten me with physical violence?

Because I'm a smart women. I'm a physically strong woman (I am the hieght of the average American man, and I weigh more than the average man). I have a wide knowledge of contraception and venereal diseases, including the prevention of such diseases (which limits the number of people I permit in my bed).

Why do women "get" this power over men's procreation (because really, let's be clear, men aren't thinking about life, they're thinking about how women's agency affects a man's access to women's bodies)?

Because women make the babies.

If a guy wants my ovum and wants to mix it with some sperm in his palm and see what happens, I'll likely say, "Please, by all means, do so" (though I'll likely charge him for it).

He can keep it in a jar and name it.

Until then, oh lovely boys I adore and women who seek to please them, keep your opinions about "life" to yourself (I'm not arguing with religious people - that's another issue. I'm primarily addressing those who argue that we should limit women's choices and do not stand on man-made pseudo-religious doctrine, the argument against which is already pretty obvious in the ajective "man-made").

Cells do not divide and grow into a human being without the life of a woman. There's no life without women.

Consigning women to slavery and calling if "preserving life" is bogus. "Preservation of life" and "saving children" isn't the real issue. Not when we live in a country where women (in many states) are denied prenatal care, adequate monetary assistance, and refused health care for the children they actually choose to bring to term, birth, and raise. The state of child education and child social services, child care, and etc. in this country is deplorable. Worrying about some eggs because they're carrying around half a guy's DNA isn't about Life. It's about half a guy's DNA.

Let's be honest. I'm not a Republican, so I can't speak spin.

If we're going to have this discussion about control over a woman's fertility, let's discuss what it's *really* about. It's about men's laws controlling a woman's body and her ability to create and nurture children. It's the same old bullshit. If this was about life, we'd be talking a hell of a lot more about a woman's life and what it means to her to choose to have children when and with whom she chooses. We'd be talking about protecting women from sexual predators, teaching men how to *not* be sexual predators (reminding them that women are people too), protecting women from abusive "partners," teaching men that violence against women and each other *isn't* commendable, educating everybody about what psychological abuse is, teaching women to value their minds and bodies without seeking approval from overwhelmingly male gazes, teaching men that their gazes don't mean shit, and paying for everybody's college education.

Instead, we're talking about dividing cells.

We're taking the hugest thing a woman can do that a man can't and trivializing it. Making it "natural" and "inevitable" and taking away a woman's agency so it looks like it's a woman's destiny to spend her entire breeding window barefoot and pregnant. And by saying it's a woman's destiny to be pregnant, you're trivializing what that means, what that is, what kind of power that is, to knowingly choose to bear children. You do a disservice to women who choose to stay home and take care of children, and women who choose to not to. You invalidate my personhood by dismantling me into random body parts in service to half a man's DNA.

Taking away a woman's *choice* takes away the most beautiful thing about children: that they are wanted, loved, and nurtured with the full understanding of what it means to do so. Pain withstood, decisions made, because you *want* to do something as opposed to *having* to do something is a different sort of pain, and a different sort of decision.

It has to do with free will.

Life, liberty, happiness.

All that bullshit. Remember?

Vote for us or DIE!!!

I can't believe he said this. No, really, I can't believe it. To some extent, all my ranting about the current presidential administration has been somewhat restrained. I really, truly believed that they believed that they were doing the right thing. Mostly. Mostly, they believed it. Now I'm just... I'm just... I'm living in a fucking totalitarian regime.

Where are my UN voting inspectors? I want one in every city. At every polling station.


Here it is:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign immediately rejected those comments as "scare tactics" that crossed the line.

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.

I don't care if he qualified this statement afterwards. Really, I don't. Cause this is the core of the Culture of Fear. Eliminate democracy with Fear. Eliminate all Choices With Fear.

Think you're free? No, you're just afraid.

Road Work

By adding on another couple dozen yards every time I go jogging, I'm now up to 2.72 miles per jogging session (trying to get these to twice a week).

The goal is to top out at 3 miles, three times a week. I've set myself some top-out limits for the fitness stuff. No more than 3 miles, 3 times a week for jogging (or 4 miles, two times a week), and no more than 3 days a week of martial arts, no matter how many years I do it or how well I progress. Also, now that I'm at 30lb free weights for my morning routine, I've set myself a 50lb free weight limit. I want to have a comfortable "set" point for my fitness level - sufficiently high so I have a long way to go to get there, but "low" enough that I'm not going to be an obsessive who's always miserable because I can't get to the "next level." Fitness is great, but I've got these other things that need to take priority. Having a ceiling on the fitness stuff helps me focus.

Am currently reviewing another paper for my Ph.D-candidate buddy. I am living my academic life vicariously through him.

Damn, I need to put some damn stories in the damn mail. I'm going home and having a beer. It's funny how my life works: everything can come together for me, but I'm in a constant critique of the things that can be better. I've heard that ambitious people are more prone to fits of dissatisfaction: we have higher standards; every time we hit a goal, we make a higher one. Or, in my case, the goals are just always outrageously high. The stuff in-between (like, say, now) are just the steps I need to take to get there.

I'll look at it this way: my healthiness means I'll live longer, so I'll have time to write more books.

Yea, I've been in a writing rut for the last week.

More later. The blogosphere ceases to amuse me at the moment.

Boys are Great

via thisgirl:



Boys are great.

Speaking of boys, there's an interesting discussion over at BuzzMachine about what a "terrorist" really is... Are Chechens rebels, freedom fighters, or terrorists? What should our media be calling them?

Who decides?

I've dipped a toe in, but I'm not sure I want to dive.

The Body Project

My buddy and roomie, Jenn, and I were walking out to dinner the other night, and I was ranting about a paper one of my buddies and colleagues had just sent me (among many others) to review before his presentation at the Cultures of Violence seminar in England at the end of the month. I was being lively and animated, as the subject - the culture of violence in South Africa, its roots and reprecussions - is one I'm really interested in, and touched a little on my own work regarding female ANC members and their relationships to violence during the 80s and 90s.

As we paused at a stop light, Jenn turned to me and said, "You know, why aren't you going to those African Studies seminars at U of Chicago that Bernard invited you to when you first got here? You've been leaving work early all week. Why not head south and join in the discussions?"

Here followed my usual excuses, "It's on Tuesdays. I have Tuesday prep to do on Tuesday, you know, it's the day between martial arts classes. And with work, I never know when we'll be busy again.... and..."

"But Kameron, you're prepared to add another jogging day and *another* Saturday workout day to your schedule. Why not go to the seminars? You just seem so happy right now, talking about history and South Africa and cultures of violence."

Ah.

I flashed back to an anecdote from Paul Compos' The Obesity Myth: a highly successful female lawyer, who'd been on various boards, edited various publications, and was pulling a substantial salary, confided that the time in her life when she felt the most accomplished were those moments when she briefly (often for no more than a few months) "acheived" her "goal weight."

Arg.

A woman's biggest accomplishment. Bigger than law school. Money. Mate. Children. Friends. Publications. Professional esteem.

Her waistline was her biggest accomplishment.

Can you imagine asking a male CEO what he felt his biggest accomplishment was, and getting that answer?

Here I am, investing in 30lb free weights this week (up from 20lbs), getting ready to spend another $24 a month to add another day a week of martial arts classes, finding another day a week to squeeze in a jogging session... and in the mean time, I've been banging my head against a novel no one else seems to be interested in, I only have four stories in the mail (instead, of say, my top-out of 14), and I keep staring at Ph.D. programs in Women's Studies and thinking, "Shit, I'm just not up for *that*! Think of the pay cut!"

The pay cut. Of all things.

Gawd.

See what getting all comfy with the system gets you? A body that will always be imperfect, as standards of beauty always change, an obsession with whole-wheat pitas, and the ability to lift 100lbs above your head.

Useful? Only if I'm carrying buddies out of a raging fire. And there are no pitas about.

I'm currently reading Joan Jacobs Brumberg's The Body Project, a history of women's relationships with their bodies, sexuality, and the meaning of being female from, roughly, the 1890s to the 1990s. Brumberg uses adolescent girls' diaries to gauge differing attitudes about mensturation, acne, and the virtues of "being a woman" over the last 100 years. What she's beginning to show is the progression from conceptions of female beauty in forms of virtue and good works, to having fine skin, a robust disposition, and now, an increasing obsession with the size and shape of the actual physical body without the aid of undergarments. As corsets and girdles went by the wayside, the sculpting of the body has become the signifier of a woman's beauty and success. Moving through merely obsession over calories in the 1920s, when the "flapper" style became popular (it was a style that meant not wearing a girdle, yet having a skinny, boyish physique - oddly around the same time women got the vote in America. hm.), to the obsession with fitness and later toned, muscular female bodies (like Madonna) today. Our obessessions are now becoming increasingly medicalized (plastic surgery) as undergarments (the private) are thrown out in favor of the skin of the body itself as the undergarment (though I think most people would wonder what on earth the skin is keeping private. If anything at all).

It's been fascinating watching this romp through obsessions with various bits of the female form. It's never the actual woman that's all wrong, it's just her "parts," as if we women are a Frankensteinian assemblage of inadequate appendages (It's interesting that Shelley's Frankenstein created a male monster and not a female: because the writer was female, perhaps?). But the overall impression I'm left with, after trolling through bits of diaries, is this:

This is an amazing expenditure of female energy. Obsessing over calories, over "incorrect" body parts, huge thighs, small breasts, etc. etc.

What could we be doing with this energy, instead?

All of us. Every single one. If I halted my own body project at its subsistence "health" level right now, if I didn't try and overdo it, make it into my own personal obsession to the extent of everything else, if I kept myself in check and didn't apologize to people who look me up and down and say, "You do all that? You really eat that way? Then why aren't you thin?" If I instead loop myself back into the land of the living, focus again on acadamia, push the writing forward, leave the martial arts to casual recreation, and remind myself that trekking up to Macchu Picchu really isn't until 2007.... If I do all that, what sort of amazing person could I be?

Eliminate the body project, the depression and angst about eating whip cream with those strawberries, the needless sleepless nights worrying "If I ache so much and work so hard, why aren't I thin?", if I eliminate those nights and push them back to studying for the GREs, going over graduate school applications, researching programs, and getting these goddamn stories in the mail, well, hell... I might be able to beat the self-hate cycle and be really damn cool. Because I think it's not neccessarily increasing my martial arts classes that's the problem. It's the motivations behind it. I need to clean up my motivations.

As my buddy Jenn said, after I took up wall climbing on Sundays in addition to those boxing classes, "When you're 30, Kameron, you're going to be really scary."

I hope so.

And I hope my smart, brutal woman self remains not only physically strong, but isn't taken down by the trivial shite this culture keeps heaping on me. Somewhere in the middle, my strong brutal woman self will meet my academic sensibilities, and they'll dance.

Though, knowing me, they'll box.

Maybe they'll kiss afterwards?

It'll be a good show, in any case.

Notes of All Sorts

So, my latest Realms story's finally gotten through the slush pile, though it'll be at least another month before I know whether or not it's gotten through that round, or'll be returned with a Blue Form of Death. Granted, it's been a while since I got one of those: I graduated to Yellow Form of Encouragement some time back. Let's be hopeful and hope that I place this one, OK? I could sure as hell use the money...

I've stalled out on my rewrite again. I'm spinning my wheels with chapter 27 - I have five storylines going on all at once, two of which diverge at this point, and I have a shit load of clean up due to the subplot I added in *after* I finished what I thought was the final draft of book one (biggest note from Clarion: "Civil wars do not make good subplots." I'm bad at taking this sort of reasonable advice). I'm doing some ritualistic cleaning. Still. Again, I don't think this book'll be "done" until somebody buys it and sends it to the printer. Till then, I'll be fucking around with it.

The 62nd annual World SF convention is currently going on right now, and I must admit, I'm a little jealous of everyone who's there, though I had no interest in going to Boston this year. It's quite lonely to read most of my daily blogs and hearing con reports and not being there. Cory Doctorow's got some great pics up (does anyone else think Cory was cuter before he lost weight? Maybe just me... I haven't seen him in person in years). Ah, yes, it's a geekfest. These are my kinds of people... Next year in Glasgow, baby. I'll be there. I miss my people!

Back to writing... er, that is, after me and my buddy Jenn get back from seeing Hero. I hear it's awesome.

More later.

Beer & Writing

Gblah gblah words & beer.

I was such a writing slacker last month. I've got to catch up. Good music, good beer, piles and piles and piles of words.

Gblah gblah.

OK, I'll take out my internet card now....

Do-Whop-Doo-Eeee

Matt Cheney over at the Mumpsimus has a conversation going on about the equation of fantasy fiction with escapism. Join us here.

Other interesting things include, Why Young Women Reject the Lable "Feminist", some coolish story links at Lithaven, they're making a live-action movie of Aeon Flux with Charlize Theron and directed by Karyn Kusama (director of Girlfight) (who'da thought?), these fuckers would like you to believe unemployment is down (and yet, nobody says that all those "new" jobs are minimum wage, and several people are working two or three of them just to eat food and live out of their cars), and in other news, I've got a three day paid weekend, and will be writing my ass off.

I *will* get this next goddamn set of stories done and in the mail. Goddammit.