Good morning to all you 12 readers who've managed to keep with me through the last few months.
Some days, I'm amazed I'm still here.
I enjoyed a good, long weekend with B, managed to snatch an hour or two with Jenn for coffee before she headed out again. I continue to work on various projects - and if not progressing chapter by chapter - they're percolating well and being notated, which is a big step in the right direction. I also seem to be very able to start things (I've got a couple great NEW short story beginnings staring at me), but have my usual trouble coming up with actual plots. Still need to work on that.
Slow day at work today, so good writing will be done, things accomplished, and all that jazz.
That's the plan, anyway.
Monday, May 16, 2005
Good Morning, Chiklits
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Boy Writers. So Cute.
“Well, the best way [to improve your female characters] is to have relationships with a lot of different women. What's the best way to do that? It's to pick up whores.”
- William Vollman
Shit, I knew there was something I was supposed to be doing to be a better writer! I need to pick up more whores!!
(thanks, Julian)
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
Office Shinanigans
We have a new coffee maker in the office. Just got it hooked up.
You should see the stir it's making. Oh, what dull workday lives we have!
The cappucino is apparently pretty good... I better go make sure.
Workaday, workadoo.
Sometimes, When You're Feeling Down, You Just Need to Listen to Yourself.
Was moving through the archives, and found this little piece about what I learned in 2004.
You know, sometimes, I just need to listen to my own advice:
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
Here's this year's: there are often long stretches of downtime on the road to where you're going. You know, those long stretches of highway between New York and LA, or the shitty stretches of nowheresville between Seattle and Chicago - but those distances, those driving times, are neccessary to get to where you need to go.
2004 has been a shitty stretch of midwestern highway, with road stops along the way like Toledo's Tallest Tree & Billy Bob's Lint Museum, intercut by signposts that say stuff like "Civilization: 2000 miles," and the car has mostly run pretty good, but it overheated once (luckily, I keep a couple gallons of water in the back), and got a couple of flats (ever since my roadtrip to Skagway, I keep two spares in the trunk), and there was the odd problem with something hanging off the engine that was resolved by tying a couple of choice parts back together with a shoelace before I got to stop off at the shop and get it fixed proper, and I didn't stop for any hitchhikers along the way, but I felt bad about it. I'm now consulting a really confusing map somewhere in the Salt Flats of Utah on my way to the ocean, and yea, I'm stronger and more confident, and I'm getting better rejection slips, but I can't see the ocean yet, likely because I'm just not ready to see it yet. Likely because I need to pick up a few hitchhikers and learn how to play the harmonica and trade in the car for a motorcycle, but I switched from fast-food to granola bars sometime back, and I've got better shoes and a good pair of sunglasses, and there's nothing so cool as arriving at the seashore on a sweet-ass motorcycle, wearing a floppy newsboy cap as my striped scarf streams behind me, and maybe that's the whole point.
There's a place I want to be. This is the road I'm taking to get there.
I don't mind that it's a long road. It just means I'll be a more interesting person by the time I get there.
Amen to that.
Thoughts and Wanderings
Now that the gray fog of illness is lifting, and now that I appear to be fighting off the last of my sicknesses, it's time to take stock of this life, and what the hell I'm doing with it.
The June date for taking the LSAT is full, which is actually a good thing, cause I haven't had time to study, and I'm still not sure I'm really gung-ho about the idea of law school - mainly because it'll mean I've got to commit to one place for 3 years and take out a huge amount of money. It means going back to being a *really* poor student. And though I miss the freedom of student life, and learning new things, taking a money hit for three years depresses the hell out of me.
The issue then becomes: well, shit, woman, what do you want to do with your life? Certainly, I'm writing books and short stories, and someday I'd like to make a living doing it, but that day isn't today, and in the mean time, I'd hate to think I was wasting my potential and not making full use of the years I've got. I'm youngish, nearly in great health, and can (mostly) pay my bills. So what's next? What do I want? What's my next challenge?
That's how I keep my mind going, how I keep from feeling like I'm atrophying. I need new places, new challenges.
I have a couple of options, and I've been mulling them all over for some time, to the point where, I think, Jenn and B are sick of hearing them. But I'm going to mull them over again.
Jenn and her SO will be moving in together after next year (likely), and the SO doesn't particularly want me in on this get-together, which is understandable, so if I do stay in Chicago, I'm on my own. This means that in order to live in something other than a studio apartment, I'll need to have a better-paying job by next year. At least 45-55K.
B is also very keen on me moving to NY for a year while he finishes up school - and I think living in NY for a year would be really cool. While I'm flying up there on the off-weekends, I can always extend the trip for job interviews. Living would be tight (money and spacewise), but I could do it for a year, and it would give me a new city to explore, a move to negotiate; a challenge, which is what I'm looking for.
There's also the opportunity with a gaming company one of my writing buddies is currently at. They're hiring, but they're also in Canada, and about an 8-hour plane flight from NYC, where B is. And basically, an 8-hour-flight is a make-or-break for our fledgeling relationship, or, to paraphrase B, "I think that's a great opportunity, and if you really want to do that, I'll totally support you as a friend. But I can't maintain a relationship where we see each other one weekend a month if 16 hours of that weekend are taken up with flying time."
He's right, of course. If I applied for, got, and took that job, I'd effectively end my relationship with B, and I'm not willing to do that. He's still got a year of school, so there's no compromise on that for at least a year.
It all comes down to what makes me feel the most fulfilled, and I don't know what that is right now. Writing books at a beach house on the Oregon Coast would certainly make me feel fulfilled, but I'm not at that point in my life yet. So how do I fill up the years between now and then?
The answer, for me, is about being better. I want to be better. Go back to school for another Master's degree? Or settle for taking French classes at Truman College? Could I "settle" for that? Would I feel like I was progressing? What if instead of academic pursuits, I focused on the physical stuff, really started taking boxing and martial arts seriously? Would I feel that that was a great enough challenge for me? (and oh boy, it would be a big challenge, to focus on actually getting *good* at something physical).
At what point can I step back and say that those social measures of achievements: school degrees et. al. aren't neccessary for me to feel like I'm "accomplishing" something?
Education was and is very important in my family, and it's how we measure success, that and money, of course, but education is considered almost *more* respectable than money. I'm sure I'm carrying around some of that when looking at my life. Am I done with formal school? Can't I just take up painting and collect books and have a nice place and feel as if I'm accomplishing something? At what point can I just say, "This is enough for me"?
I don't know. I don't think I'll ever be able to say it's "enough," but I'd like to be able to say I have enough academic degrees. Because those damn things are fucking expensive. I've got to find something I find fulfilling. I don't want to feel like I'm stagnating, like I'm merely existing.
I've got to find focus: the kind that comes with a "reward" at the end. Problem is, most things don't have a golden key at the end unless you give yourself one.
It's crises time, when nothing feels like it's moving forward, and you just want to kick yourself in the ass cause life just seems too damn comfortable.
Maybe I just need to spend a couple weeks abroad, and get this travel bug out of my system. I feel like I need to move.
Good Morning, Chiklits
At some point, I'll become a good worker and get here on time.
Just not today.
Whatever happened to my work ethic?
Ah, yes, that's right: I became old and cynical.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
I Was Going for "Rock Star," but I Think I Got "Squire"
Not sure I'm happy with this haircut. It was supposed to be shortening up my previous Rock Star haircut... but now I look more like a knight's squire. If I was thinner and in better shape, this might be hot. As it is... I dunno.
It also occurred to me today that I could lose 50 lbs without any real trouble, and then I'd be able to fit into trendy clothes and sizes, and yet not quite look like an Auschwitz victim. I still find this idea oddly appealing, which says a lot about my current mental state.
I'm having another one of those days where I wish I was better.
What's Going On Uptown
A big glass container of lotion just toppled from the top of the medicine cabinet and descended through the porcelein sink - yes, through the sink, bashing out a big chunk where the soap is supposed to be.
Oh, I can't wait to tell my landlady about that. I can't wait till Jenn reads this. Look, more money I get to owe to people!
That aside, things on the health front are much, much better. My body seems to have totally gotten used to the IUD, and it's painless and discomfortless at this point. About the time that was clearing up, I got attacked by more yeast (yep - as promised, getting on/off the pill and high stress are great triggers) and started popping acidophilis like candy, which proved a good move - that cleared up quick. I'll be taking it all week as a precautionary.
I've been doing a lot of reading relating to the book I'm working on. I'm concurrently working on getting through Pamela Barmash's Homicide in the Biblical World and Jan Goodwin's absolutely wonderful Price of Honor, which is a great overview of the status of women in Islamic countries. I also picked up a copy of the Koran, which is a lot more woman-friendly than most Islamic fundamentalists would have anybody believe. Like the Bible, it's another one of those "holy" books that people use for their own ends, selectively quoting and interpreting it to back their own beliefs. Bah.
Anyhow, good stuff.
The goal is to get back to MA class this week (ah, yes, my goal *every* week), but it's also the first week I've felt 90% of normal, healthwise, for the last couple of months.
We'll see how things work out.
Connected
For the first time in almost two months, I now have an internet card in my home computer, which I lost somewhere in Parsippany.
Bless my roommate for hitting Best Buy and hooking me up.
It feels like I'm a bit more connected to the world again.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Friday Beer Blogging
Beer is great!
It is quite tasty!
Beer is great!
Even when it's late!
Oh yes, oh my!
Beer is so great~!
Oh, Friday, how I love you!!
Stumbling Around on a Friday Mid-morning
Stumbled out of bed at quarter past seven, got my weight/abs routine in, stumbled to the bathroom, spent a bunch of time doing a bunch of dishes and so caught the bus instead of the train to work, which saves me 15 min.
Was here in this office until 8pm last night, so I don't feel bad coming in at 10am, and I'll likely be here until at least 6-7pm tonight, with all these deadlines.
Also, Yellow found out I was being shanghied by other projects, and send out a really nasty e-mail to one of our projects teams about co-opting me.
Oh, it's so lovely to be popular.
Now they need to pay me appropriately.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Workaday, Workadoo
Stuck at work all night!
Boy, do I love deadlines with big wireless carriers!
Wheeeeeee eee ee hee hehe ehehheeh eeeeeeeeee!
NYC
Starting next month, I'll be flying into NYC every other month to visit B, so I thought this quiz was appropriate:
| You scored as Inwood. Inwood is located on the northern tip of Manhattan. Inwood extends from 200th St (Dyckman St) to 220th Street. It is banked on all three sides by huge wild parks. Thanks for taking my test! -Susan
Which neighborhood in Manhattan is best for you? created with QuizFarm.com |
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Good Morning, Chiklits
Another day, another dollar, another week of emotional and physical angst.
Yay!
Somebody get me some goddamn coffee.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Update.... Uterus!!
For those uninterested in their uteruses, or those of their spouses, significiant others, sisters, and other loved ones, you can totally skip this. It's about uteruses, afterall. I mean, sure, they're attached to women, but... oh, that's not important!
Anyway, IUD update for anybody interested or considering doing the same thing: still getting some twinges of pain when I sit up for long periods (like, say, at work), so my midday walk and getting up and walking around the office are great for helping me feel better. And, again, it's not any kind of pain that's not manageable with Tylenol, so all is well. I wore some looser pants, and I'm trying to work out a better way to sit here at work for at least the next couple days, until my body adjusts.
The bleeding/iodine discharge has pretty much abated, and I'm just getting a little residual iodine smearing, nothing that noticable.
I expect I'll still be popping Tylenol, especially later in the day, when all the sitting gets to me, and I'll probably still take a Tylenol PM or two at night, but... so far, so good. Things are progressing the way I was told they would, which is always a great feeling.
Tips For Modern Living
If you don't feel like doing the pile of dishes in the sink, but can't stand the idea of waking up in the morning to find that the ants that live under the stove are seething all over your dishes like tiny black maggots, spray a couple spitzes of 409 on your pile of dirty dishes before going to bed.
You will awake refreshed, and untroubled by ant attacks.
Or, of course, you could actually wash your dishes. But who wants to do that?
Monday, May 02, 2005
Jon Stewart, Still My Secret Boyfriend.
Ah, Jon.
Click "view clip" on the right hand side of the page.
George Sings the Hits
Splices of George Bush clips slapped together to create a presidential rendition of "Imagine" and "A Walk on the Wild Side."
Amusing.
(vis Simon)
Sucks to Be a Fat Kid. No, Really.
"We were wondering if obesity would be more accepted today because of its increased prevalence and visibility," said Janet Latner, an assistant professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Latner worked on a 2001 study of 415 New Jersey middle school students that indicates stigmatization of overweight children has grown 40 percent since 1961.
Not good news for the 9 million children who are overweight or obese in the United States, where the prevalence of obesity has tripled in children 6 to 11 and doubled among adolescents 12 to 19 since the 1970s.
Read the rest.
(via bigfatblog)
And it Occurred to Me, Lying There on the Table...
It took three clinicians and nearly an hour on the table to get me fitted with an IUD. The trouble was, I wasn't menstrating (though I was supposed to be - last week's breakthrough bleeding threw me off), and I've never had a child, so I've got a very small cervix, and you've gotta be pretty aggressive to get anything up there.
After forty minutes or so, they brought in the aggressive clinician.
So after forty minutes of being asked "Do you feel anything?" and replying, "Just pressure," and thinking, "What the hell is it, exactly, I'm supposed to be feeling? Some menstrual cramps? Some --"
Ohmotherfuckerchristshitdamnfucksonofabitchshitmotherfucker!!!
And my initial clinician turned to the midwife who was in there to observe and learn, and said, "That's how you know it's in."
Jesus fucking christ.
It would have been nice if somebody'd told me, "If you haven't had a kid, you'll get two short bursts of the absolute worst pain you've ever felt in your entire life... once, when they put the tube up through your cervix and again when they push the IUD through the tube."
You get this amazing white-hot burning stabbing pain in your gut that clenches every muscle in your entire body. Your whole body jerks on the table and you find yourself clutching for the nearest thing you can grab hold of so you can crush the life out of it while your uterus (the strongest muscle in the human body - male or female) engages every other muscle in your body to scream NO!
I wish somebody would have told me about that part. I would have been better prepared. I now have even more respect for women who have children. I don't know how women survive it. Being in that kind of pain, experiencing those kinds of contractions, for hours or days or... sweet fuck. Have every lawmaker in Washington experience that pain for five minutes, and then have them deliberate about a woman's right to choose pregnancy and labor. You'll get a quick vote.
It actually ended up being really nice to have that many people in there, though you feel a bit like a circus freak because it's like there's something wrong with your body because it's taking so long. In fact, all it took was getting a more experienced clinician to come in and go POP! and it was all over (painfully so, but over) in a few minutes. But having people in there to bullshit with while the clinician is poking away at you, and having someone stroke your arm afterward and tell you it's all over was actually really nice; particularly there at the end, because that sort of jolting pain is a real shock to your system, and I felt a lot like a deer-in-headlights. It's nice to have lots of people around saying everything's normal: it eases some of that back-brain fear that cloaks you when you feel that kind of pain.
Being the stubborn bitch I am, I didn't have B or Jenn come with me, so I tromped home, ate Tylenol like candy, and situated myself on the couch with a heating pad until I started drifting off around 10pm. Took a couple Tylenol PM, and spent Saturday relaxing as well. After that initial freak-out pain, the pain was pretty much what they said it was going to be - for 24-48 hours, it felt like menstrual cramps, and I took Tylenol every 3-4 hours the first day and every 4-5 hours on Sunday.
Looking back on it, I should have asked Jenn or B to be there, so somebody could get up and get me something to drink, or get me more Tylenol, or just be there to cuddle with and talk to afterward. I suppose it was a kind of shock I felt afterward, because your body carries around the memory of that pain, and it's a fucker.
Today, I've just got the occasional twinges of pain, kept in check by Tylenol, and I'm waiting for the blood/iodine discharge to abate, which will hopefully happen sometime this week.
If this works out, I can honestly say that it'll have been totally worth it. Sitting on the train today, not depressed, not hysterical, not experiencing a weird increased appetite or feeling too low to go to MA class tonight... *and* not having to worry about getting pregnant. Hot damn. I don't mind a little blood and pain if it means I can get back to my old self and have sex without worrying about it all the time. It's worth it.
And as I was lying on the table, recovering from that second bout of intense pain, I thought of all the things women have done to control their fertility, all the wacky shit we'll put up with, the shit we'll go through, because we enjoy sex and enjoy being closer to our partners, and because whatever risk we take to control our fertility doesn't outweigh the risk to our lives if we get pregnant, if we're perpetually pregnant or nursing. I'll do any number of wacky things in order to live the sort of life I want. And I do view controlling my own fertility as a basic human right.
We'll see how the next few months go.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Friday Beer Blogging
Had a whiskey and writing night last night. Very nice. Mostly productive. Felt good to be able to drink alcohol again, and better to be working on my book again.
And for tonight: my favorite beer and some Giordano's pizza. Yay. It's been another long week.
Good Morning, Chiklits
The great thing about Friday morning commutes is that you can always find a seat on the train.
It's the little things.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
If You're Old Enough to Get Pregnant, You're Old Enough to Make Decisions Regarding Your Reproductive Health
Sorry.
That's just the way it is.
The world in the palm of a 13-year-old girl.
Yes. It's her body. Her right. Too bad for you, Florida. Maybe you should have been educating girls and women like her, you know, protecting her life and making sure she lived well and had regular check-ups and knew the ins and outs of birth control. Now it's a little late.
Whose fault is that?
(via bitch)
An Open Letter to Joanna Russ
I've read this one before, but I want to bring it up again:
So I'm going to tell you about it, Ms. Russ, because I think I've just discovered another strategy to suppress women's writing. You wrote the book, How to Suppress Women's Writing, describing in gory detail all the different ways that have been used to disallow, prevent, discourage, disbelieve, discredit, devalue, ignore, categorize, debase, forget, ridicule, malign, redefine, re-evaluate, and otherwise suppress women's writing. I'm sure that you meant to warn us with your book--to warn us that the suppressive strategies are still around, armed and dangerous--and that it's important for women to recognize them and to work against them. But still, I remember (or perhaps I imagined) an up-beat ending to your book and I'm surprised that there really is no happy ending. That the business is still going on today...
It was not one or two or a mere scattering of women, after all, who participated in women's renaissance in science fiction. It was a great BUNCH of women: too many to discourage or ignore individually, too good to pretend to be flukes. In fact, their work was so pervasive, so obvious, so influential, and they won so many of the major awards, that their work demands to be considered centrally as one looks back on the late '70s and early '80s. They broadened the scope of Sf exploration from mere technology to include personal and social themes as well. Their work and their (our) concerns are of central importance to any remembered history or critique. Ah ha, I thought, how could they suppress THAT?!
Gotta scream louder. Write better. It'll get done. Trouble is, after it's done, will anybody remember?
(via Mumpsimus)
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Thoughts on Medicated Depression
The problem with being somebody like me, who is very clear about what works regarding dealing with my "low" days or holiday freakouts, is that when I'm confronted with a serious depression that's actually caused by my reaction to a new birth control pill, I try to "treat" the medicated depression the same way I deal with my low days.... you know, eat right, exercise, try to figure out what it is that's really bothering you. Depression is a message, right?
Yea: IT MEANS THAT THE PILL YOU'RE TAKING REALLY SUCKS.
Which is, of course, the big problem with depression. If you can't physically get up and get out of bed for anything but bare survival (and keep hitting your alarm every morning, when you've never, ever, not in the entire year you've had this 5:15am job, ever hit the alarm in the morning and skipped your weight routine), then it's very difficult to deal with "low" days the way you're used to. About all you can do is crawl into bed when you get home and maybe get some reading done.
Now that I'm back to myself again, I'm starting to realize just how bad it was getting. I figured out what the problem was when I started to burst into tears at weird moments, like on the bus, at work. Hysterical tears for no real reason.
The rest of the stuff - the low energy, the lack of willpower - I could tack up to sheer laziness, or the stress from traveling a month or so ago, or the stress of figuring out what I was doing next, or the stress from being so sick dealing with the *other* consequences of the bc pill. But the weepiness I remembered from when I was a teenager first getting hopped up on hormones.
The great thing about being older - and getting off the pill for six years and then on it again - is that it was pretty obvious to me what was wrong, and instead of trying to continue to pawn it off as just me being "hysterical" or freaked-out, I can call it for what it is: my body's reaction to synthetic hormones.
And my body reacted with a really freaky, really nasty depression.
It's a funny thing, because it's not like I lacked the will to do things, it's just that it felt like there was this gray gauze between my will to do things and the part of me that was actually consciously doing (or not-doing) things, and every day I'd get home and my will would tap-tap me about going jogging, about not eating those fries, about going to MA class, and it's like the conscious part of me just wasn't picking it up. Just wasn't reacting. Like there's something that kept those parts of my brain from actually talking to each other properly. I got pretty disconnected from everything else around me. It's like stuff was going on, and I was aware that time was passing, but I was having trouble really connecting with everything around me.
On Monday, I was taking my usual walk at the nature preserve, and I was like, "Wow! It's spring! When did that happen!" and I actually went around, like, touching trees and stuff. Everything was so bright and shiny.
It was fucking weird, to realize just how out of it I'd been.
Getting up in the morning this week, doing my regular weights routine, hasn't been like pulling teeth, even though I've been staying up talking to B until past 10pm, my usual oh-shit-I'm-going-feel-like-crap-tomorrow-if-I-don't-go-to-bed time.
I decided Monday that I'd start turning my nature preserve walk into a 40-minute power walk, and I'd bring an extra set of clothes into work (I'd jog it, but we still don't have a shower here in the office, so I compromised), and start on Tuesday.
And, suddenly, unlike all the other shit I've been trying to do the last couple months that's been so fucking hard, like ripping something out of myself so I don't feel even worse about myself, I went home, packed my clothes, and did the power walk yesterday, and will continue today, and wow, hey, all the sudden I can really *do* stuff again, without feeling like I'm pushing through a gray curtain!
What bugs me the most about this is that I'm such a stubborn bitch. If I hadn't experienced pretty much *all* of the side-effects related to this birth control pill (depression, nausea, breakthrough bleeding, yeast infection [FROM HELL], weight gain/increased appetite), I would have probably just let the depression thing go. I might have done the adoloscent thing and just been like, "Well, you know, I'm just feeling really low. I did a lot of traveling, I'm not happy with my job, I'm starting a new relationship, I'm not sure where I'll be living in a year, I don't know what to do, I haven't been writing anything, things are just really shitty right now."
And I might have just let it go, because, hey, it was "just" depression! I'd just deal with it the way I always had, and everything would be great! Right!?
Problem was, I could track it. I could say, "It's been about two months, actually, that I've felt this way."
And the connection was just so blaringly in-my-face obvious that I had to make the connection: I started the pill two months ago. I couldn't shrug that off.
And, to be honest, a low period lasting that long was really, really scary, cause there's always that fear that maybe it's *not* the pill, and you'll be stuck that way forever.
In any case, it was a great learning experience, not only for the future, but for the way I view my past. I remember starting the pill when I was 16 and bursting into tears at work one day (in front of my boss, no less), and thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with me?" and moving through a crappy relationship like some sort of zombie.
The pill has always worked for me: no pregnancy! Yay! But it's exacerbated my own occastional tendency to have low days, and it's turned low days into one long sweeping period of gray fog interspersed with that 7-day-no-pill breather period that's just long enough for you to think, "I'm being silly! There's nothing wrong with me!"
Problem was, being the stubborn bitch I am, I never connected the dots when I was younger. Three years of freakouts. Wow. And I didn't even question it. I just told myself I was a hysterical idiot freakshow, and that's just the way things were.
Wow.
It's so great to be back in the world again.
Full of fucktards as it may be.....
Oh, For Fuck's Sake
But in one sense, contraception may indeed be the new abortion -- that is, the next battleground for reproductive rights.
I feel like I'm living in a really, really bad SF novel.
Open Letter to the Fuckers (and friend) I Owe Money To:
Dear Corporate Visa Fucktards:
Why, yes, I realize my corporate card account balance is more than 30 days past due. In fact, it stresses me out, too! It would be a great thing if my fucking employers actually reimbursed me on time, so that I could pay you expediantly and not continue to fuck up my already fucked up credit rating.
Believe me, I would love to pay you so that I didn't have to *pay* late charges incurred because my company is full of accounting snobs, late charges that are not, in fact, reimbursed!
Oh, how I would love to pay you!
But I am a lowly fucking admin, I have no money in savings, and you are just one of many, many people I owe a significant amount of money to.
In fact, you're the luckiest of the bunch, because you will, in fact, get paid within the next four weeks, when the payroll snobs get their shit together and give me my goddamn money back.
Someday, I will have a real job that pays me real money. Today is not that day.
Sincerely Yours,
Corporate Slave
___________________
Dear Great Lakes Student Loan Fucktards:
Why yes, I realize that my fucking student loan payment is due the 20th of every month. Did you fuckers look through your fucking accounts and notice that *I pay you every single month by the end of every month* before you started leaving pissed-off "you fucking owe us money" messages on my machine?
Have I missed a payment in the last year?
Why, fuck, no I haven't!
In fact, your fucking check went in the fucking mail today, so you can kiss my ass.
Sincerely yours,
Super Bitch
__________________
Dear Dell,
Yea. I lost last month's payment.
Sue me.
Your check's in the mail.
Sincerely Me,
Kameron the Great
____________________
Dear Jenn,
Yea. Sorry. You can cash the check tomorrow.
- Kameron
_____________________
The beat goes on.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Chicago SF Signing
There's a big group signing here in Chicago on Sunday, May 1st at the Borders on State Street, downtown.
Signers include Cory Doctorow, Kevin J. Anderson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Eric Flint, Janis Ian, Geoffrey Landis, Todd McCaffrey, Jack McDevitt, Rebecca Moesta Anderson, Mike Resnick, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Steven H Silver, Laurel Winter and W.R. Yates.
When: Sunday, May 1, 11AM-1PM
Where: Borders, 150 North State Street, Chicago, IL (312.606.0750)
Good Morning, Chiklits
Yum. Coffee.
Reminds me I'm alive.
Fun stuff:
Penguins - the next terrorist threat!
Hô Xuân Hu'o'ng
And:
But since 1980, the two groups have taken diverging paths. Women without undergraduate degrees have remained at about the same rate, their risk of divorce or separation within the first 10 years of marriage hovering at around 35 percent. But for college graduates, the divorce rate in the first 10 years of marriage has plummeted to just over 16 percent of those married between 1990 and 1994 from 27 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979.
What, you mean, smart, older, wiser people generally make better marriage decisions? No way! Marry `em young, when they don't know any better.
::snort::
Not a study you're going to see toted around next Valentine's Day.
(thanks, Jenn)
Thursday, April 21, 2005
My Favorite Phone Call of The Day
Yellow calling me from the scoping meeting with the client and having me walk the client through their own site tracking system so that they can access the files I've uploaded onto their server.
Ah. Corporate America. Nobody has any idea what they're doing.
Oh, Canada
OTTAWA - Women in Canada should soon have access to the morning-after pill without a doctor's prescription.
The drug levonorgestrel, sold under the brand name Plan B, has been approved for sale directly from pharmacies, Health Canada confirmed Wednesday.
Which, of course, begs the question: if we could do an over-the-counter plan B deal in the US, would we then have check-out clerks who refused to sell you plan B for "moral reasons"?
And yet, we've got people selling liquor and tobacco products. Oh, yes, tobacco kills! What about the Culture of Life!!??. How can those check-out clerks *sleep* at night!!!
But shit, pharmacists are hopping over the line all over the place.
This isn't what I signed up for. Where's my rights? I think we all need a little lesson of the "not everybody thinks like I do" variety.
Think of the amazing peace, love, and understanding that would engender.
Pretty scary.
Stealing is Bad.
This is just great. Makes me want to be a University prof.
Jenn, you might be able to use this one someday....
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
The Update: Still Employed, Almost Not-Sick, Still in Workout Limbo, Still in Writing Limbo, Still... Alive
Finally trekked into PP and said, "Do I just have a Super Yeast Infection from Hell, or what?"
And she's like, "Yea, you just have a Super Yeast Infection from Hell. Here's some Super Medication. Get yourself some over the counter treatment next time right away instead of waiting a week hoping it'll just go away, cause otherwise, it does what it's been doing, lingering and recurring when you're stressed."
Yea.
I seem to have beat this year's sinus problems as well now, but only just. Starting to feel totally human again. It's been a long time.
Also getting off the pill and getting an IUD next Friday, which'll help the depression upsurge, the mood swings, the breakthrough bleeding, lower sex drive, and all-around wackiness I've been dealing with since I got it (oh yes, you all realize, *this* is why it's been so quiet at Brutal Women lately). Between sicknesses of various kinds and general wackiness, I just haven't had the energy to write full-blown rants. My workout schedule crashed and burned, and I need to fucking get back to my fucking MA classes. I'm barely keeping a healthy diet together.
I also found out I owe the equivalent of 1/3 my monthly income in taxes.
For fuck's sake.
My body's stressed out about what I'll be doing after this next year - I still plan to take the LSATs, but more and more, I'm concerned about that path. All I fucking want to do is write books. Do I want to add 100K of debt and have all my free time taken up with law? Yea, it'd be fun to learn - if I could afford it and if it didn't suck the rest of my life from me. More and more, I just want to move to a new city, get a job, and write. Or continue on in this city, and write. But money's a big issue, and I don't do well living on my own. Yea, I can live by myself: I just notice that I do a lot better, mentally, living with other people.
So it's a concern. I'm mulling it over. Things seem to be sliding back into place, but it's taking a long time. I have a year to figure my shit out.
Looking forward to Wiscon at the end of next month. Looking forward to time away from this brain-numbing job.
Looking... forward. In the mean time, things'll be a little off around here. I'm considering shutting down the blog all together, because I think it takes away from my real writing. The alternative is to just continue with these shorter linkage-posts, which are easy, and rant when I feel like ranting, but not make a production out of it. I just don't have the time.
We'll see how it pans out.
How to Score With Chicks (and Real Women, Too)
Nicky counts `em down:
1. Don't be the biggest loser in the whole fucking world
and so on.
Eat Well and Exercise Regularly, but Still "Fat"? Guess What, You're Probably Healthy! Just the Way You Felt All Along!
Got three different taps this mornings about this article in the NY Times (thanks Jenn, B and Maureen!) about the latest, most extensive study done on the relationship between "fat" and "health."
And guess the fuck what?
People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.
and:
And being very thin, even though the thinness was longstanding and unlikely to stem from disease, caused a slight increase in the risk of death, the researchers said.
Well, yea.
Here's the take from the AP version of the story at Alas, A Blog.
I'm going to live forever. Just look in my refrigerator.
Not at my pants size.
Fucktards.
Or, to sum up:
"The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous," Dr. Glassner said. "What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight."
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Music & Writing
James Schellenberg, new columnist at Strange Horizons, has got a piece up in the latest issue where he's quizzed a handful of writers about their music-listening habits while writing.
Oddly enough, James asked for my own take on the subject, and it's sorta cool to see me listed up there with Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly, Louise Marley, Nalo Hopkinson, Maureen McHugh and Suzy McKee Charnas.
Most excellent. Go check it out.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Good Things
Deana Carter's CD The Story of My Life. That whole thing United Airlines has, where they play the same four songs from the same six CDs over and over in constant rotation throughout their flights for months on end? Works really well to lure business travelers into buying said CDs...
Michael Faber's incredibly cool and creepy Under the Skin, a book about a female human-looking creature who goes out and picks up male hitchhikers and... well, you'll just have to read it and find out. Deeply creepy, very good. Definately my kind of book.
Chicago's Riveria Theatre, right around the corner from my house. Went to a Westerberg concert there on Friday with B, and had a good time. The acoustics aren't great, but it's a neat venue. Next time, I'm going to buy lots of beer, too. There's just something about a smoke-filled rock concert that makes one want to consume large quantities of alcohol...
Good Morning, Chiklits
Ah, yes, enjoyed a nice, relaxing weekend, arrived comfortably late to work in order to catch up on some sleeping, and am enjoying an absolutely great warm sunny Spring day. The leaves are on the trees, the flowers are blooming, my basil is spouting, and I didn't over-creamer my coffee this morning.
Excellent.
Friday, April 15, 2005
BLAH BLAH BLAH
I'm so leaving early today. As you all can see, the workplace has fried my brain, and there will be nothing but mostly fluff, links, and very little commentary beyond "FUCKTARDS!!" for the rest of the day...
Oh, For Fuck's Sake
Here we go again.
Let's get over this sex thing, OK? We'll lead, happier, healthier lives that way.
Sheesh.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Random Pirate Blogging
Because you can only do about 30 hours worth of uploading onto a client's server before you go batshit crazy.
Pirate Relationships!
Pirate Poem!
Moon Pirate!
Pirates for Dummies!
Pirate legos were the best!
It is Another Beautiful Day, My Chiklits
Picked up some writing music yesterday, as work on my stand-alone novel (was "Jihad," now is the more all-inclusive "God's War") petered out earlier this year and needs to get back on track so I can have a finished book by year's end.
Going through the library catalogue to get more research books. There's jack shit at the public library, but Jenn's got access to the Northwestern U library, which is a great resource.
Also typing up a story I've started working on longhand, which I'd like to get in the mail at the end of the month. I've gotta get some new stuff out. I feel like I'm drowning, and I know a lot of my low-feeling the last few months has to do with the fact that not much fiction's getting written while my job's been throwing me around the country and the rejection slips have been piling up. Creating new worlds, running through stories, I just feel a hell of a lot better when I'm doing it. I've gotten sidetracked, discouraged, and it's time to get better.
I think getting the second agent reject for the fantasy novel (only two actually asked for the 50 pages - the rest were flat rejects) really bit me. Sometimes, you just want to stay low for awhile, clear out your system, before you start again. I've been losing a lot of my self confidence.
And still, I write. And submit.
Cause if I'm gonna do it anyway, I want to get paid for it.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
These Days, Even the Cookie Monster Has an Eating Disorder, Redux
If you're not familiar with Cookie Monster, he's a muppet with an unhealthy obsession with cookies. He completely lacks self control when it comes to his favorite food and often gets himself into trouble because he'll do just about anything for a cookie.
For the past three decades the Cookie Monster has been the monstrous embodiment of gluttony. He has, in other words, always taught children about healthy eating habits.
And now we're dumbing down our television programming even further. Assuming kids won't "get it."
Gosh, it's great to be a stupid Amurikan.
The Real Reason They Don't Like Women Competing Against Men: Cause the Women can Win
...at 10 years old, Makeba Elliott, an honor student at Blackhawk Elementary in Park Forest, has won two consecutive boys' state wrestling championships. Last month, the Park Forest fifth grader -- whose quickest takedown was in 18 seconds -- ended a 54-5 season by taking top honors in the boys' 2005 Midget State Championship. She also won the boys' midget championship in 2004.
But my favorite part is:
Makeba has also been a trailblazer for female athletes at her school. When Blackhawk Elementary was forming a basketball team last year, school officials told Makeba she couldn't join because basketball was for boys and cheerleading was for girls, her father said. Makeba responded by writing a letter to the principal that persuaded him to allow girls on the team, and Makeba now plays point guard.
A Proper Brutal Woman's Bag
You know, I don't carry a purse, but I sure could see myself toting one of these to my next shindig.
BlogHer Conference
via boingboing
BlogHer: Woman-centered blogger con, Sta Clara, Jul 30
The BlogHer conference is a woman-centric conference on blogging to be held on July 30 in Santa Clara, CA:
BlogHer Conference '05 will provide an open, inclusive forum to:
1. Discuss the role of women within the larger blog community
2. Examine the developing (and debatable) code of blogging ethics
3. Discover how blogging is shrinking the world and amplifying the voices of women worldwide
All Your Base Are Belong To Us!
“At Last, You Could Become America's Next Best Selling Author and Reality Show TV Celebrity!”
You know, when we were at Clarion, the idea of a "Clarion Reality TV" series came up - for about three seconds.
SF writers - in fact, writers in general - are not the world's most beautiful people. We're just not. You'd have to fall in love with us the way you fall in love with the characters on Carnivale. We're not plastic people. Our sex is very messy; especially the sort that goes on at Clarions.
And, you know, writers write. We spend most of our time actually hunched in front of keyboards, screaming, "Fucktard!" or laughing maniacally every few hours.
That's about it. Nick's rant about the glam writer's lifestyle, here.
What's that I've Been Saying, Again?
The study found that having obese parents, suffering from depression, and engaging in radical dieting like forced vomiting, were all risk factors for future obesity in adulthood.
"Engaging in these radical behaviors isn't going to stop you from being obese," said psychologist Eric Stice, Ph.D., the lead author of the study. "In fact they're likely to do the opposite."
I'm curious, however, why they chose to focus only on girls.
I guess because being a fat woman is just so much grosser and more dangerous. Of course, women are more likely to engage in vomiting and anorexic behavior, leading to greater percentage of obesity? Or not? Without a comparison among teenage boys, this is sort of floating around in nowhere land.
Malicious Public Blasphemy, Coming Soon
A Greek court will rule on whether to allow sales of a cartoon book from Austria depicting Jesus Christ as a drinking buddy of Jimi Hendrix and a marijuana-smoking, naked surfer.
They charged `em with: "Malicious public blasphemy."
Dude, I so want to charged with malicious public blasphemy. Imagine what it would do to my hit count...
Good Morning, Chiklits
Another day, another dollar, again with the too much creamer in my goddamn coffee. It's like drinking milk.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
These Days, Even the Cookie Monster Has an Eating Disorder
Oh dear.
You know, advocating healthy eating is great and all, and you better bet it's something I'm on top of all the time, but shit you guys...
We're breeding a culture of food paranoia. And I think there's a big risk that instead of making things better, it's going to make things worse. It may, in fact, have been making things worse for a while now.
via bfb
What's this a Symbol of, Again?
These are men who think a great deal about their penises; like Mike, they are submerged. But what concerns Dr. Sharlip is why men feel the need to raise the bar in the first place. Of those who come to him for advice, he says, "the very great majority -- 99 percent -- have normal penile size. It's a psychological problem more than a physical one."
Mike denies that his obsessions with enlarging his penis stem from some primordial trauma. "It wasn't a huge emotional drama I was trying to settle," Mike says. "What guy's not going to want to go out and make his dick bigger?"
Wow. The amount of amazing things we could all do with this time and energy...
Wikipedia – first with the news
Cool note on how Wikipedia and feminist blog rings were the first to report on Andrea Dworkin's death. Those pesky internets: moving far faster than the media at large.
It's like a giant game of telephone.
Religion in the Workplace
To the Editor:
"Moralists at the Workplace" (editorial, April 3) addressed "scattered reports" of employees refusing to perform certain job requirements that conflict with their personal moral or religious beliefs and customers seeking to have these requirements filled. We believe that there is a solution that accommodates the needs of both parties.
Recently, we introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which clarifies current law to say a person's religious beliefs should be recognized and accommodated in the workplace as long as this does not adversely affect the employer's business or customers.
The bill is supported by a diverse coalition of more than 45 religious and civil rights groups as well as a bipartisan group of senators and representatives.
If the bill becomes law, an employee who does not wish to do their job would not have to do so long as another employee is on duty and would do their job for them.
The Workplace Religious Freedom Act provides a sensible solution to the potential conflict between an employee's religious conviction and the needs of their employer and employer’s customers.
I, for instance, am part of a strict no-technology-using religion similiar to that practiced by the Amish. I work for a telecommunications firm where my job requirements include using computers, telephones, and managing projects that aid in the spread of telecommunications technology, which I do not believe in.
Luckily, thanks to this law, I can come into work everyday and have my coworkers do all of this work for me while I write novels longhand.
I believe this solution accomodates the needs of all parties involved.
Kameron Hurley; AA, BA, MA
http://brutalwomen.blogspot.com
Monday, April 11, 2005
Yellow Says Hello
"Don't worry, Kameron, in the next edition of Webster's, wussify will be a word."
"Is that right?"
"Better yet, you can have someone say it in one of your books. Hey, you can have my character say the word, `wussify,' and then you'll have made up a new word, and you can attribute it to my character. Ha ha."
It's great being back in Chicago.
I Am Eating An Orange
.. it is quite tasty.
I have uploaded something like 300 .jpgs onto the client's server.
Only 900 to go.
It's one of those days.
Another Reason Not to Get a Cell Phone
According to a new global survey, fourteen percent of cell phone users have interrupted screwing to answer their cell phones. Just like Paris Hilton. From Consumer Affairs.com report on a subscription-only Ad Age article:
The highest incidence of cellular interruptus was found in Germany and Spain, where 22 percent of users interrupted sex to answer their cell phones; the lowest was in Italy, where only 7 percent reported doing so. In the U.S., the figure was 15 percent, the magazine said, citing a study conducted by BBDO Worldwide and Proximity Worldwide.
via boingboing
Snapshots From My Worklife
Blaine came in this morning and asked me how to print out his contact list from Outlook. I had no idea, but looked it up on Outlook Help and walked him through it.
Yellow came in a while later:
"Kameron, you're a writer. You know all about this spelling stuff. How do you spell wussify?"
"Huh? Like, somebody who's a wuss?"
"Yea, yea. They're a wuss, and by doing something crappy, you're wussified."
"Wussify isn't a real word, Yellow."
"Yea, yea, but if it was, how would you spell it?
"It's not... oh, nevermind. W-U-S-S-I-F-Y."
"Oh, great thanks. See, I knew you'd know how to spell it."
::Yellow bumbles off::
I call after him, "Wussify is NOT A REAL WORD!"
"It's OK. All the guys'll know what I'm talking about!"
This is what I do for a living.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Spring is in the Air
Yellow rode his motorcyle to work today, which was very hot to see.
I really must get myself one of those.
And Friday bagels are EVIL, EVIL, EVIL.
Drowing in work. Behind on e-mail. More later.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Women & Children First
My most excellent local independent bookstore, Women & Children First, has a cool blog.
Thoughts on books and feminism. Cooool.
Redesign
Cory Doctorow's redesigned his own "updates" page as a Movable Type blog. Cool. Check it out.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Bits N Pieces
LSATS are Monday, June 6th at 12:30pm (what, nobody works anymore?), and they'll cost me a pretty penny. Fucktards.
Need to register next payday. There goes my paycheck again.
It's bloody humid in Chicago today. Also, these contact lenses really need to be thrown away.
Ready for the weekend.
What was that? You say it's only Weds?
Fucktards.
Wiscon Set
For all those interested, I've confirmed my Wiscon status, and will be running around Friday-Sunday (May 27-29), heading out Sunday mid-afternoon.
Looking forward to seeing some of you there!
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Randomosity
That's "SF" - "Not only does the University of Liverpool boast a library with the largest collection of science fiction literature in Europe, but from next week it will launch the world's first website dedicated to science fiction research."
Who's Amber Reeves?
"Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days."
"Doctors crack down on videotaping births" - you know, if they're doing their job correctly in the first place, they wouldn't have to worry about videotapes, would they? That's like saying you should take videotapes out of police cruisers so you'll stop catching police officers who use excessive force. Bah. Just one more notch in that whole, "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country" Bushism. What's up with that?
Yea, keep talking. Spread the gloom and doom. Keep that diet industry moving, keep us bulimic, anorexic, and binge-eating until the end of time. Make it a moral disease to be overweight. Spread the self-hate. That sounds real healthy.
There's another way to talk about this. And shit like that ain't it.
One of Those Days
State of the Union
To sum up: it's been a bitch.
Want to know the last time I actually wrote something substantial and actually finished it? Oh, I don't know... about 4 months ago? Three, if you count a chapter of something as "finishing." I think I've only got two or three stories in the mail. Utterly pathetic.
And no sooner had my traveling schedule settled down than I came down with a sinus infection, leading to this, which led to that oh-so-female malaise (antibiotics + sex = much, much discomfort) that required me to eat a lot of yogurt and sent me scuddling to bed early and avoiding MA classes and exercise of any kind for the last two weeks. Now that that's over (a week of "what the fuck is this?" followed by most of a week of yogurt-eating and cranberry juice-swilling while symptoms eased off), my sinuses are acting up again, and I feel like a walking vector of disease.
About the only good news I've got is that things at work appear to be settling down, which means I'm back to working with Yellow and Dee on manageable projects (300 sites instead of, say, 1200) where I have a clearly defined role and a clearly defined "boss". It makes doing actual work a fuck of a lot easier.
I also managed to lose my internet card Somewhere in New Jersey, so I don't have net access from my computer at home (I called NJ today and had them go back to the walk-up computers and look for the computer slipcase and card, but they couldn't find it, and nobody'd turned it in), so I've been getting a lot of reading and sleeping done at home. I really need to call RCN tonight and get them to help me configure my internal wireless card - for some reason, it's been having trouble picking up on our network, and I tried to print something out on Jenn's computer yesterday and fucked up her printer somehow. There's nothing better for roommate relations that fucking up something that belongs to your roommate while she's in high stress mode, especially when if I'd have called RCN in the first place, I wouldn't have needed to use her printer.
Fuck-ups galore.
In fact, I've been doing altogether too much reading and sleeping lately, though I'm hoping that being ailment-and-immediate-stress-free will help get me out of my funk. Though workouts have gone out the window the last 6 weeks or so (it got to the point where I couldn't even manage to get down to the hotel gym, I was feeling so low), I've been back into my morning weights routine the last couple of weeks, and it looks like this'll be the week I get back to my workouts.
I've been trying to decide what I want to do about my MA school, and whether or not I want to switch to a gym that's got more bang for less buck. I can get pilates classes with more flexible times, kickboxing classes, and access to a full range of gym equipment, which'll make 5-6 days a week of workouts that much easier (6th day being merely a pilates day). As it is, I physically can't double up on MA classes on Mon/Weds because of how late I get home from downtown, and I hate going in more than 3 times a week because 1) I start getting sick of the place and feeling obsessive 2) I need those Tues/Thurs/Fri days to be a little different so I can shake up the routine. Keeping Tues/Thurs as jogging days'll be great - until winter hits again. I'd like to have a gym much, much closer to my place that gives me greater flexibility for less money.
So after much thought, it looks like I'll be switching over to a new gym come May/June, at least for the summer. If I miss my MA classes too much, I can always switch back. We'll see what I think of the set-up. As it stands, the ease with which I'd get there is just staggering, and it's just a few blocks from home. If I want to be at the place I want to be with my weight/fitness by year's end, I've gotta ramp up these workouts, and having a place downtown where I'm locked into a 45 min class + transit time just isn't cutting it. And yea, the gym cost will be half what I'm paying for MA classes, and honestly, money's really hurting right now. Too many health care expenses the last couple of months, bought a new bed, need to get to Wiscon (doesn't look like Glasgow is even feasible). Shit to do, and the bills aren't going away, either.
LSATs are also in June, and I need to call and see where the local test is being administered. I've also got to seriously ramp up my study, if I don't want to bomb the damn thing.
Taxes are also due, and have to get done this weeked, as B is in town the next weekend, and well, next Friday *is* the 15th. Fuck, I better not fucking owe anything. I don't have any damn money. Fucktards.
On the other good news front, the weather's finally clearing up to sunny 70s Chicago spring weather, and though my workouts have sucked, I've actually got my diet pretty well figured out. I added in 2-3 extra servings of fruit/veg every day and started taking a multi-vitamin, and I have a feeling the last of my binge-twinges are ready to go by the wayside. Overall, I feel pretty good on that front.
It also turns out that I didn't overspend myself as badly as I thought I did this weekend, so I'll just be able to afford the paintball outting with Jenn and the rest of her grad department on Saturday - and still manage to pick up a couple of groceries, too.
Having money with which to actually do things is always nice. Someday, I'll figure out this money thing. Until then, it's paycheck to paycheck.
And everything else is day-by-day.
Here's to hoping shit starts moving, and things get better.
Monday, April 04, 2005
These Are Still Damn Funny
My favorites of the Locus "Next Wave" of Year's Best Anthologies:
The Year's Best Stories by Old Farts Who Were Once Young Turks (co-editor Norman Spinrad)
The Year's Best New Weird-ish Tales by Cornered & Tasered Non-New Weird Writers (co-editor David Brin)
The Year's Best Retold Folktales Involving Fairies, Sprites, or Pixies (co-editor Nick Mamatas)
The Year's Best Hard SF for Soft-Core Porn Readers (co-editor Anne Rice)
The Year's Best Kathryn Cramer Blog Entries (edited by David Hartwell)
The Year's Best Interstitial Ficciones (edited by a large committee of sixty or seventy writers)
Geeks are great.
Time to Write the SF Story
Damn, I didn't even realize you could skew it this way. But you can:
"Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.
The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds."
What happens when Jewish/Muslim/Athiest doctors decide they don't want to administer health care to Christians?
Bet they'll nip that in the bud real fast.
Sorry, people: you go into health care, you help people. Everybody. That's the job. That's why we have a Hippocratic oath.
Shit.
via feministing
Somebody Else Said it For Me
Adrienne, on the mixed legacy of the Pope. I pretty much agree with everything she says. Whew. Now I don't have to write up my own post...
Saturday, April 02, 2005
I Love Living in a Blue State
Thank you, Chicago.
I'll be interested to see how this turns out after the 150 days is up.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Friday Beer Blogging
Drink something with alcohol in it for me.
Beer is good. Friday is good.
Life is good.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Useless Things to Do in the Dallas Airport
Check out the human clock. via whatisthisnonesense?
Read something random of Simon's. And snicker over the latest issue of Asimov's in order to soothe my own mashed ego.
Prepare to mash in the head of this pigfucker, whose violent assault of his girlfriend because of her political beliefs is "OK" because: "Many relatives of Steven's have served in the armed forces ... and he had every intention of going to other parts of the world to defend the United States," Salnick said.
He's a patriot? Oh, well, that's OK then!
And oh, shit, I missed the big decision. What the fuck?
Now, for something completely different: Some thoughts on sex and the L word; who gets to have it on screen, and who gets a pan to the lamp... -
Now I'm not one to look for the sex scenes, and, in fact, the soft core porn atmosphere of the show is often very upsetting to my feminist politics, but damn, if I'm going to see a bunch of people having sex, if I'm going to be subjected to tons of explicit heterosexual screwing, and if I'm going to hear women talking about fucking one another every week, completely internalizing patriarchal ideas about sex, then damn it, I want to see some fat! I want to see Kit's big body with its soft rolls of fat and big thighs just like we see Katherine Moennig's spine and boney sternum on every single episode.
Annnnddddd.... ooops. We've got the boarding call for Chicago goin' on here.
I'm off!
Well, It Finally Happened
The client finally figured out that the same 12 people are running all of our projects for North America, just as Blaine predicted.
What does this mean?
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Let's just say any sane businessperson will tell you that 12 people can't physically turn out 5000 sites worth or work, no matter how many combinations of places we get flown out to over six weeks or six months.
Ce la vie.
Bits N Pieces
I love living in conservative America... land of free women; free to live, free to choose, free to live with whom they please... oh, wait. Nevermind.
NYU's Great Empowered Solution to preventing student suicides, now in the NY Times. How enlightened.
And, Japan is the best. Before putting stuff in a diff't language onto your body, even if it's just magic marker, double check it, OK?
It's just good business.
More later. I'm drowning in deadlines here at the Workplace of Doom, Dallas style.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Oh, the Irony! Me, My Uterus, and I
You know, Dallas ain’t bad. It’s not butt-fuck-nowhere Denver. The air is good, there’s leaves on the trees, everybody’s real nice, and – best of all – it’s a perfect 70 degrees.
Once you get over the whole “President George Bush Turnpike” thing, and if you find the freeway signs advertising “Men’s Only Clubs” funny because there aren’t any advertising “Women’s Only Clubs,” you’ll do fine.
I’m stuck, actually, about two-thirds of the way between Dallas and the airport, at one of those huge corporate complexes that are little cities unto themselves, complete with hotels and restaurants and 10-12 storey buildings built like palaces.
Our Dallas office is damn nice, with mirrored elevators, a faux-marble entryway with fountain, and we’re on the highest floor, so there are good views. In fact, we take up the entire floor of this building. The bathroom is huge, and has one of those really nice lighted vanities, and the whole place smells like potpourri. The receptionist is a sweetheart of an older woman, who clucked her tongue at me and asked where I was staying. When I told her, she nodded curtly, said, “Good, but next time, stay at XXX hotel, they’re even better than YYY with their comfortable beds, and XXX is just across the street.”
Duly noted.
There’s not much to do here today until the people who are supposed to be training me show up – I’m only here for a day, but overall, Dallas isn’t bad. And there’s a pharmacy across the street, where I was seriously starting to think about going to get a pregnancy test.
Oh, yes, it’s that time of the month – the time when you figure out whether or not your birth control pills are working.
Oh, pooh-pooh, people say of “us feminists” and how we perpetually talk about our uteruses and our rights over what’s done with them. People who pooh-pooh are the fuckers who’ve never had to be concerned about their “pesky” uteruses.
Let me reiterate just how fucking important this whole “uterus” issue is to the rest of my life, and the functioning of my day-to-day life, and why shit like “emergency contraception” and “great women’s health care” are so vitally fucking important. Here's my take on the "Pharmacists' Have the Right to Deny You Legal Healthcare in Order to Save Their Own Souls” bullshit. Here’s my take on what “Right to Life” really means: the right to my own life. Control over my own body. And my own power. These are real women’s lives, and these are the battles we fight every day. They’re battles of life and death, and by virtue of our biology, we’re the ones who get to make them.
Here’s how we live, what we do, and why that goddamn uterus and what these fuckers what to do with it is so goddamn important: cause they're putting their hands on us. On real women. Real people. Us.
A couple of weeks ago, I came down with symptoms indicating that my yearly sinus infection was on the make, and I went to my usual walk-in medical center in order to get some antibiotics. I told the doctor’s assistant and the doctor – three times – that I was on birth control pills, and would the antibiotics they prescribed affect the pills in any way?
I was assured – three times – that it would be no problem, that I shouldn’t be concerned about it, and I was given a prescription for a 10-day regimen of antibiotics, which I picked up… (::drumroll::) across the street from the very same Chicago OSCO pharmacy in the Loop that protestors were pissed off at for not issuing birth control pills.
Well, you can guess where this is going.
I spent four days taking antibiotics before I got smart and thought, “Hey, what’s this paper on the other side of the prescription receipt?”
Why, it was the list of medications that that the antibiotics may interact with.
Last on the list?
“May decrease efficiency of birth control pills.”
I love that phrasing “Decrease efficiency.”
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Why not fucking spell it out, “You’ve got an increased chance of getting pregnant against your will if you take these with your birth control pills and engage in hetero sex.”
Add this to the fact that this is the first time I’ve used a low-dose pill instead of the higher-dose one I had when I was 16 that worked without a hitch (well, except for the weight gain and weird mood swings that often ended with me in hysterical tears), and you may as well have stuck an icy knife in my gut. I immediately stopped taking the antibiotics.
Pregnant.
That would mean a $300-$400 abortion (after pushing through a line of protestors; that is, if I can get an appointment), and at least a half-day of missed work time (at $18.86 an hour – there aren’t a lot of clinics that do Saturday abortions, and if they do, they’re likely booked up). If I was one of those women who was really conflicted about whether or not a handful of cells dividing in my uterus and sucking on my body and breath for survival was an actual “life-complete-with-soul,” I’d have to deal with the moral freak-outs associated with that, too (luckily, I have no moral qualms whatsoever about having an abortion. I don’t believe it’s a living thing until it can live without… well, without ME. Part of ME is my uterus, and the part that people keep trying to put their hands on IS my UTERUS as well, which is part of ME, which is why I get so fucking pissed off when people tell me the personal isn’t political. It’s really fucking political when the laws people are passing have to do with ME and MY BODY and WHAT I DO WITH MY BODY).
Or, if for some fucked-up reason I didn’t want to or couldn’t have an abortion (because, say, my abortion doctor didn’t believe in giving abortions… the fuck s/he become an abortion doctor for then, anyhow? Yea. That’s how fucking ridiculous these pharmacist “protection” laws are), then I’d get to spend nine months nurturing a fertilized egg into a living person (using, of course, MY breath, MY blood, MY uterus, and MY money to buy all the food, all of which requires MY labor, and which, therefore, should be a CHOICE that I make, but I’m digressing… or am I?), then a day or three of blood and pain while delivering that person into the world, then a year of recovery while your body bends back into some semblance of shape (though never the same shape it was before of course), and either you give the kid away to somebody who can care for it better than you can, or you spend the rest of your life caring for that person…
All because your idiot doctor handed you some shitty antibiotics without mentioning that maybe you should use a back-up method of birth control during the four days your boyfriend was in town… Or, in my case, being an idiot and not checking the goddamn pharmacy receipt and double-checking what medications interfered with the pill.
What a great reason to have a kid. I bet the kid would be real appreciative, too.
I have spent the last four days anxiously awaiting the arrival of my period, jumping to the bathroom at every stomach twinge, hoping against hope that I had menstrual cramps.
And after looking out at the CVS pharmacy across the road this morning and resolving to get a pregnancy test when I hit the last of my green pills, I went to the bathroom here in the office, and viola! Behold! Wonder of fucking wonders!
Blood.
Good blood.
Oh, thank God.
It appears that my body and the pill are still very, very compatible. It’s always worked for me.
But, shit… Wow. Blood. How great. What a wonderful thing. And oh yes, these are definitely menstrual cramps. I don't even mind that I forgot to bring in some aspirin. I really don't care about that.
Because all of the sudden, I don’t have to worry about coming up with $400, missing work time, pushing through protestors, dealing with the cramping and blood after the abortion, deciding about whether or not to blog about an abortion, deciding how to break said news to said boyfriend or even if I should say anything to anybody at all and therefore continue the circle of silence about abortions (probably one of the few legal medical procedures many women feel ashamed to talk about). With another period, another month, I don’t have to worry about giving up nine months of my life for the creation of another person, and another year… or, actually, the rest of my life in a body altered by a pregnancy I didn’t want. I don’t have to worry about pushing somebody out into the world, through my own pesky uterus, who I really don’t want in my uterus.
It’s my choice, what I do with this body, who I choose to bring into the world, when and if I choose to do it.
The thing about pregnancy, about women’s fertility, is it’s something that every woman’s concerned about. Even if you’re not hetero or currently engaging in penetrative hetero sex, there’s the threat that a guy could come along one day and coerce or overpower you into having sex you don’t want, getting you pregnant and trying to get you to carry to term a pregnancy you don’t want.
Back in the old days, when 20% of women died in childbirth, having sex with a guy could kill you. And even now, more women die in childbirth than die having legal abortions.
And we’re living in a country that’s moving toward a stance that would rather see women dead than allow them control over their own bodies.
This is the message I get when I see protestors outside of women’s health clinics, when I see pharmacists refusing to give out legal medical prescriptions, when I see state governments pushing through parental consent laws, when I see women’s health clinics shut down because they’ve been bombed or threatened.
That’s homegrown terrorism. That’s terrorism against women and power.
A man can have sex with a woman and walk away… and retain the ultimate life-or-death power over her. Because unless we have access to these legal procedures, to safe abortions, to emergency contraception, to Planned Parenthood where we can pick up our pills, then we’re left with what the men have left us, and for many women, what was ultimately left to us was death.
If I choose to risk death in childbirth – however slight my chances are in a first-world hospital – that’s my choice. There’s not a women’s birthing draft. This is an all-volunteer army of women bearing children.
As it should be.
Don’t take away my body. Don’t fuck around with my uterus. Don’t put your guilty hands on my body.
You’re right, I talk about my uterus a lot, and what people want me to do with it, the restrictions they want to put on it…
And I do that because having a womb can be damn fucking cool and damn fucking scary. It's the only way – as yet – to create human life from a couple strands of DNA and some protein.
Me. My body. My body does that. It’s amazing.
This the power of life and death, and women deal with it every day. We decide how we want to use our bodies, and the methods we’ll use to control our bodies, because those are our rights.
My right.
Not a pharmacist’s. Not a doctor’s.
My womb, this one, is mine.
That pharmacist had no trouble handing over those antibiotics, though by taking them with the pill and engaging in hetero sex, I’d increased my risk of pregnancy. And pregnancy is a risky behavior, don’t forget that. However small the possibility, women still die bringing pregnancies to term.
Women still die, every day, birthing babies.
If I’m going to risk death, that’s my choice. Not a pharmacist’s. Not a doctor’s. Mine.
Next time, I get pushy with my health care professional - and I recommend you all get pushy with yours; whether it’s about insistence on proper medication or the doling out of proper medication. It’s our bodies being fucked with. Not theirs.
I’m not going to die for my pharmacist’s soul.
I'm not birthing a baby with this body, of this body, for anybody but me.
My body, my life, my choice.
Every damn day.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
The Good News
Oh, thank goodness... my bank posted my current balance with the eye appt. and contact lenses and Costco run *already taken out.* So my rent check not only won't bounce, but I'll actually have over $70 in my account to last me until payday on Friday.
I am the scary liberal elite. Hear me roar.
All $70 worth.
Flea's Advice to Young Ladies...
Stolen, shamelessly:
Having reached the advanced age of 35, I feel this entitles me to dole out advice concerning certain patterns of behavior I have noticed over the past three years among the whippersnapper set. I know that a lot of you do not like to listen to your elders on the grounds that we spoil all your fun, and that may be true, but I think these points are extremely important ones, and maybe some of the other geezers will back me up.
1.) Thing One:
If your boyfriend insists on anal sex even when he knows it's hurting you, he does not love you.
In fact, he doesn't even like you that much, and all the Anal-Eze in the world isn't going to change that. Any man who tells you he will cheat on you unless you allow him to hurt you is an unqualified prick, and I promise you, you are worth more than this. I see this phenomenon way more among the African-American young ladies than any other race, and since the AIDS virus is spreading the most rapidly in young, straight, African-American women, I want you to know that my heart is in the right place when I beg you to PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP ENGAGING IN SEX WITH A MAN WHO IS MAKING YOU BLEED.
2.) Thing Two:
If you are 19, you do not want to date a 40 year old man.
I know you describe him as "really together," and will think I'm crazy or jealous or having an outbreak of fat suburban housewife anxiety for saying this, but I, his peer, describe him as "manipulative loser." He comes across to you as being really together because he has more life experience than you do, and more money, and sure, he's better in bed than the kid who took you to the prom, but...you're not listening anymore, are you? Forget it, then. You'll see. But just like a 19-year-old who hangs out exclusively with 11-year-olds, 40-year-olds who party with people more than half their age are wincingly pathetic and are just using you to disguise the fact that it hurts him *really* *bad* that those Silver Fox life insurance plans advertised on tv are starting to include him now.
Read the rest
Bits (Stolen)
One in five teenage girls are hit by their boyfriends. More here. And 31% believed it was acceptable for a boy to act in an "aggressive" way if his girlfriend had cheated on him. My question is, did they ask men if they thought it was acceptable for their girlfiends to act "aggressive" if their boyfriends cheated on them? via Bird
And Jenn and I were just recently talking about the Pagan roots of Modern US holidays. via Feministe
Here's some kids' (well, eighth graders) takes on gender equality. What's interesting is how many times the issue of women's rights to equal participation in sports comes up as a major issue in developing gender equality.
First woman to row solo across the Pacific. Yea. That's right. Rowing. Across an ocean. For 72 days. Remember that there are still people out there who think that women have "biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days..." but they can row across the Pacific Ocean. Biology didn't seem to get in the way of that, now, did it?
Monday, March 28, 2005
God Bless Texas
Well, I was hoping I'd get out of a trip to Dallas, but it looks like I'm off for some sort of training or other... Leaving tomorrow night, spending all day Weds, coming back in on Thursday...
Dallas. ::sigh::
I've never been to Texas. There's a first time for everything.
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