I, for one, enjoy the "confusion."
This is also probably the first article I've seen that uses the term "gay-vague." As in, "That's a gay-vague band." Too pretty to be straight, but not effeminate enough to be gay?
Wow, somebody's really caught up in stereotypes and assumptions.
This one's basically addressing the mythical "gaydar" bullshit that (mostly straight) people purport to have or not-have, and that because more and more "straight" men are cleaning up and looking good and using hair products that it's becoming tougher for people to "tell" whether they're gay or straight (ha. Like you really could before unless the person wanted you to).
OK, mostly it's about fashion and capitalism.
But it's another example of the fact that when you walk outside the stereotypes, people seem to get really, really nervous.
I enjoy keeping people nervous. Maybe they'll learn to make fewer broad assumptions based on outerwear.
You never know.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Why Aren't you Wearing Your Pink Triangle So We Can Put You in the Gulag?
Writing Update
I'm supposed to be done with the first three chapters of God's War today.
I'm just about done with the first.
As usual, I'm behind.
Excerpts later.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Top 5 Worst Readings
VanderMeer shares his top ten worst author reading experiences.
#5 – World Horror Convention II, 1993
My reading at the second World Horror Convention, in Nashville, Tennessee, was probably the lowest point for me of any reading. No one was there except my wife, Ann. I was going to just leave, but Ann insisted I read anyway. So I launched into “The Bone-Carver’s Tale.” About fifteen minutes into the reading, two people showed up. It was still the loneliest reading I’ve ever endured and I came out of it convinced that I was never going to amount to a hill of beans.
Younger Women Take the Hits
Half of this I've already heard before (yawn), and certainly felt I'd experienced:
An increase in a woman's body mass results in a decrease in her family income and a decline in her occupational prestige
Well, sure.
But not only that. Under 30? You're doubly screwed:
In addition, the researchers found that the association between body mass and occupational outcomes was more pronounced among younger women, suggesting that it is body mass that affects occupational prestige rather than the reverse.
Think you're not getting a promotion cause you don't starve yourself?
You're probably right.
And, my favorite part:
There were no such associations found for the men in the sample.
Of course not.
Don't feel like starving yourself and being a weak fruitcake, or don't have a super metabolism?
Don't despair:
We just have to work harder than everyone else.
Clarionites With Pages
A couple of my Clarion buddies have got some (newish) blogs up:
Left of the Mississippi (Inez)
Alec Austin
The Brutal Woman Store
So, I really wanted a T-shirt that said "Fucktards" on it.
And I got a little carried away... come join the fun.
Any requests?
Quote of the Day
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next."
- Gilda Radner
Home Again, Home Again
Back in Chicago after visiting B in NY for the weekend... we hashed out a lot of personal stuff and watched some great movies and ate good food.
A lot of life-stress about what I'll be doing next year also came up, and I'm a lot more stressed about it than I'd like to be, but I'm working through it. Really focused on getting this book done by the end of the year, too, and add that to work stress (gotta get a new job) and money stress (don't have any), and moving stress and... yea. I'm working through it. Just needed to owe up to it, I think, and take a deep breath.
All said, it's awhile away. In the meantime, I have a book to finish, moving to start in a few weeks (only up two floors, but a bitch nonetheless), and looking forward to a great 4th weekend with B.
"I Had An Abortion"
Ginmar's got a thread up where women are talking about their experiences with abortion.... answerings the question: if half the women in the country have had an abortion, where are they?
Here are some.
I wish there were safe forums where women wouldn't feel they had to talk anonymously about it. But here's a start.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
What I'm Working On:
God's War, Part One
God's War, Part Two:
________________________________________________________
2.
They passed the big water purifying plant just outside the refugee camps. Nasheen didn’t leave out much open water anymore. Chenjan operatives were notorious for poisoning wells.
Faleen was a port city, not the kind by the sea but the kind that took in the ragged handfuls of off-world ships that sputtered into its ancient docking ports every year looking for repairs and supplies and usually, directions. Faleen wasn’t the sort of place anybody off-world was looking for on purpose. Neither was any other place in Nasheen for that matter, or any other place on the planet.
Faleen was where you ended up when you were out of options.
They drove for an hour more before the big ship from New Canaan came into view, rearing above Faleen like some obscene, winged minaret.
They drove past women and girls walking along the highway carrying baskets on their heads and big nets looped over their shoulders. Bugs were big trade to the magicians in Faleen, and everybody was always looking for locusts.
Kine pulled up outside the towering main gate of the dusty city, scattering young girls, sand, and chickens from her path with a blast of her horn. Another cloud of beetles escaped from the leak in the back. Nyx batted them away as she jumped out of the bakkie.
“You watch yourself,” Kine yelled at her.
Nyx raised a hand, and Kine shifted gears and turned back off onto the highway, heading for the coast, and home. Nyx hadn't been to the ocean in an age.
She turned toward the two big slabs of metal that were the main gate into Faleen. They had seen better days as compression doors on an old star carrier.
Nyx pulled up the hood of her burnoose and bled into the traffic heading in through the gate. She found a boy crouching outside a mihrab near the broken tower of a minaret. She tugged at his ear.
He took her to a gangly girl selling a couple other girls in a back alley who demanded a steep fee for showing tourists around Faleen.
Nyx reminded her she was a bēl damê on a blood debt, and the girl worked for the magicians. Barring that, she could always threaten violence, but her stomach hurt and she was really fucking thirsty.
The girl turned gray and acquiesced.
They moved through narrow corridors and skirted around the edges of mud-brick buildings whose precipitous lean threatened a swift death by asphyxiation. At the edge of the wooden gates into the Chenjan quarter, the girl pointed her to a cantina with a bright red awning. On the other side of the cantina was the magician’s traveling boxing gym: never in the same place for two consecutive fights.
Two big women stopped Nyx at the battered blue door of the cantina.
“You have an appointment?”
“Do I look like I have an appointment?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Tell her I’m the bēl damê.”
The women shifted on their feet. “I’ll get her,” the biggest one said.
Nyx pushed at her sore belly and rocked back on her heels. She wondered if they sold morphine before noon. She wondered if any of this was going to work. She had some doubts. Doubt wasn’t good. She knew better.
The woman arrived back at the door and bid her enter. “She’ll see you,” she said.
Nyx ducked after the bouncer and into the dark, smoky interior of the cantina. Dust clotted the thick air, and sand covered most of the floor. It was good for soaking up blood and piss. Boxing fans weren’t the best behaved, and they liked to pack Bashir’s cantina before and after a fight.
Bashir sat at a corner table smoking sweet opium. Nyx could taste it in the air. The woman had a couple bottles of sand-colored whiskey at the table, and someone had left behind a still smoking cigar that smelled a lot like a B-40. Bashir had two teenage boys beside her, both just shy of draft age, maybe sixteen. They were sallow and soft-looking and kept their hair long, braided, and belled. Somebody had kept them out of training - letting adolescent boys go that soft was illegal in most districts, even if they were prostitutes. When they were called up, they wouldn’t last a day at the front - the Chenjans would mash through them like overripe squash.
“Nyxnissa,” Bashir said. She exhaled a plume of rich smoke. Her eyes were big and dark. “Thought I’d seen the last of you.”
“Most people think that,” Nyx said, sliding next to one of the boys. He flinched. “Until I show up again.”
“How was your trip?” Bashir asked. She wore red trousers and stained short coat, but kept her head uncovered. Her skin was a shade paler than those who worked in the desert, but the tough, leathery look of her face said her wealth was recently acquired. Like her boys, she was getting fat and soft at the edges, but unlike the boys she’d fought it out on the sand with the best of them in her youth. There was muscle under the wealth.
“Not as smooth as I hoped,” Nyx said. She pulled off her hood and shrugged out of her burnoose so her shoulders were bare.
Bashir looked her over with a lazy sort of interest. “A bird told me you don’t have what we bargained for.”
“I need a drink,” Nyx said. She hailed the woman at the bar, but Bashir waved her back.
“The bird says you dropped the purse at the butcher’s.”
“I did,” Nyx said. Bashir wasn’t a stupid woman. Being evasive would just get Nyx chopped into more pieces.
“That was a big purse,” Bashir said.
Nyx leaned back against the seat. The boy next to her had a hold of his glass, but wasn’t drinking.
“Where’d you pick these two up?” Nyx asked.
“Aren’t they lovely?” Bashir said. Her dark eyes glinted in the low light. The place was too cheap for bulbs. They were still using worms in glass. “They were a gift.”
Nyx felt suddenly uncomfortable. She cut a look at the door. The place was mostly empty. The woman at the bar was still wiping the same length of counter she’d been mopping up when Nyx dropped in.
Nyx knew the answer, but asked anyway.
“Who gave them to you?”
Bashir showed her teeth.
“You’ll get shit from the magicians for crossing a bēl damê,” Nyx said.
“Will I?” Bashir said. “Even a bēl damê who sells her womb out for black money?”
“I do a little side work.”
“What would your sisters say?
“Leave the family out of it.”
Bashir clucked her tongue. She prodded at one of the boys with her opium pipe. “Pretty aren’t they? So much better than the ones that come back old and scarred from the front.”
“I’ve seen better,” Nyx said. And she’d certainly fucked better.
“Raine can be very generous,” Bashir said, fixing her gaze back on Nyx, “when I have something he wants.”
“How much am I going for?” Nyx said. Her hands itched for a blade that she no longer owned.
“More than the purse you were carrying,” Bashir said.
Well, that was something.
The boy beside Nyx took his hand away from his drink.
The woman behind the bar moved toward the kitchen.
Well.
Nyx kicked up onto the tabletop before the boy could steady the pistol in his other hand. The gun went off with a burst of yellow smoke.
She threw a low roundhouse kick to the other boy’s face and leapt off the table before Bashir got her scattergun free.
Reflex sent her running for the back door, spewing sand behind her. Too late, she remembered who taught her the back-door default retreat. She would have had better luck with the bouncers at the front.
Nyx shouldered into the kitchen, knocked past a startled blind cook, and ran headlong out the open back alley.
A strong arm shot out and slammed into her throat. Nyx was going so fast it took her off her feet.
She hit the sand and rolled.
Still choking, she tried to get to her feet, but a big man already had hold of one of her arms.
He twisted it behind her and forced her face back into the sand. She turned her head at the last minute, so only her cheek thrust against the burning ground. She saw three pairs of dirty feet in front of her, two in sandals, one bare. She strained her eyes up to catch their faces.
Little, ropy-muscled Anneke hadn’t broken a sweat. She stood chewing a wad of sen, one arm supporting the weight of the rifle she kept lodged just under her shoulder. The other feet belonged to skinny half-breed Taite and big, broad-shouldered Dakar, whose face was so pale he couldn’t go outside unless it was covered.
“You must be desperate,” Nyx said, spitting sand, sucking in air through her bruised throat, “To take on Taite and Anneke as your muscle.”
“That’s all the greeting I get?” Raine asked. He pulled her up, kept a grip on her arm, and tugged off her burnoose.
“Where you lose your gear, girl? I taught you better.” He shook the burnoose off on the ground, thinking she’d hidden something in it.
She made a grunting laugh. He didn’t know how hard-up she was.
“You’re clean,” he said, half a question.
He was half right. She had one more thing to sell and one more thing to do, but if she was lucky, only the magicians knew that.
Raine cuffed her hands with sticky bands and turned her around to face him. He draped her burnoose back over her.
“You know how much you’re going for?” he asked.
“Over fifty,” Nyx said.
Raine was a big man, a head taller than Nyx, just as dark and twice as massive. His face was broad and flat and stamped in two black, fathomless, expressionless eyes, like deep water from a tribal well. The hilt of a good blade cut through a slit in his brown burnoose. He was pushing Bashir’s age: men didn’t come back from the front until after they were forty or dead. Mostly, they came back dead.
Raine was an exception.
It made him dangerous.
Another Reason to Love What I Do
I'm sitting here at work researching opium (the smell of it, particularly) and collecting slang terms for marijuana.
No, I've never done illegal drugs in my life.
But I write about a lot of people who do them.
Fun, fun, fun.
More Places to Exercise Capitalism
Hey, J.Jill now has a 14W-28W women's clothing line.
Sweet.
Of course, I doubt you can get those sizes in the store, cause then both big and small women would be able to... shop together! Unlike at places like, say, Ann Taylor, and let's not even talk about Abercrombie and it's size "00" fetish.
The Book Census!
My wacky roommate has performed the bi-annual book census of our apartment:
January 2005
Apt Total: 1541
Kameron: 486
Jenn: 1055
Kameron's%: 31.5%
Jenn's %: 68.5
June 2005
Apt Total: 1606
Kameron: 524
Jenn: 1082
Kameron's%: 32.6%
Jenn's %: 67.8
As you can see from these fine numbers, the percentage of books that are mine in the house has gone up by 1.1 percentage points.
This is most excellent.
I must continue to excel at my book-buying skills while my roommate continues to buy less, unawares of my Supah Ninjah skills.
Something Troubling in the Dark
There's been something bugging me about this Dark Cabal site that I mentioned a couple days ago. Reading Nick's take got me to thinking.
Now that I've had time to read over some more entries I'm thinking:
You've gone to all this trouble to be anonymous and super-secret about your identities... so why aren't you taking advantage of that and really critiquing the field, you know, real balls-to-the-wall taking to task of issues that deeply bother you, in a sweet brutal style?
Instead, there's very much just a sense of "I like this story, read it. Only vote for good stories. I don't like these new kewl stories."
The end.
I'm not sure why you'd go to all of this trouble unless you had something really witty and dynamic to say, something you thought would get you so ostracized by the writers and editors of SF/F that you had to hide behind a screen name.
Anything less is just silly. Why not owe up to it?
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Night Thoughts
Packing for NY, getting ready to show the apartment again, writing up a proper description of a city that doesn't exist. Drinking wine like water, as it's the only other beverage besides water that we have in the house... I'm behind on my e-mail, so apologies to those I haven't gotten back to. Going to try and catch up tomorrow before my night-flight.
Got some good books. Off into the blue again tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
You are the Revisionist Feminist
You scored 66% Gender-Abolitionist, 80% Sexually Liberal, and 80 % Socialist
You are the Revisionist Feminist! You are, by far, the most philosophical, the most sexually-liberated, and the most politically extreme variety of feminist. You are very, very freedom-oriented. You abhor oppression in all forms. For instance, your views on sexual liberation and reproductive control adequately reflect your devotion to personal freedom. Not only that, but you also feel gender needs to be destroyed to maximize equality and freedom, because accepting socially-constructed gender roles binds women into false categories and places upon them an unneeded identity. Gender should not be a part of one's identity, but rather an irrelevant aspect of their physical bodies, such as their hair length or nose shape. Not only that, but Revisionist Feminists are political extremists and feel very strongly that the oppression of class society is a big part of the cause of women's oppression. Basically, a Revisionist feels that cultural ideas of gender, political class, and repressive sexual morality all work together to oppress women, and the only way to truly escape this oppression is to challenge all of these problems directly and extremely. You are a Marxist, a Gender Abolitionist, and a Liberal Feminist all rolled into one.
The other feminist types:
Second Quote of the Day:
"When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
- Audre Lorde
(via Kaete)
I'm Always Worried When Something Experienced By More Than Half the Population is Categorized as an "Illness"
Just like medicalizing the female body (sure, women are over half the population, but their bodies are "weird" and "other". Huh?)...
In a report released last week, researchers estimated that more than half of Americans would develop mental disorders in their lives, raising questions about where mental health ends and illness begins.
In fact, psychiatrists have no good answer, and the boundary between mental illness and normal mental struggle has become a battle line dividing the profession into two viscerally opposed camps.
Or maybe our society's so fucked up that we're *causing* mental disorders?
Oh, sorry, that's not gonna fly... everybody has to be HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY to get up and work a shitty job they hate all day so they can eat crap food and then get pissed on by friends and media for being fat and ugly and unacceptable and then they can't buy the right clothes, they're not married yet, OH dear GOD, I FORGOT TO HAVE CHILDREN, there's no money in a 401(K), everyone tells them they're behind, behind, behind in the rat race, WHY DON'T YOU LIKE LIVING IN CITIES??, crime is UP, their vision sucks, they're UGLY dorks, and should DIE DIE DIE... And they WILL because every day on tv you read all about the HORRIBLE things that happen to pretty, affluent young white girls EVERY DAY. And if it could happen to THEM it could happen to YOU.
Um. Yea.
Where's the wiggle room for "normal human variation"? The more we move toward a society that's supposed to think, act, look, and experience everything in exactly the same way, the more worried I get.
Maybe it's not the people who are fucked up. In fact, maybe what everybody's exhibiting are normal reactions to excessive stress.
Basho (Two Haiku)
has B.o.
Swamp mist, eyes water -
Why is that monk still wearing
Winter robes in June?
ah, soB
A yellow snake eats
The robin's lone precious egg -
You motherfucker
- by Francis Heaney
(via Jenn)
Bitching About SF: Now, With an Out!
There's a site that's been set up by some writers in the SF/F field called "Dark Cabal." (their tagline? "Vote for Stories. Not for Friends.) Over there, they have the ability to bitch about the state of SF/F, awards, and the shortcomings of certain books, a bit like I do here.
The difference is, they do it anonymously.
SF/F is a pretty tight-knit crowd. Everybody knows everybody. If I bitch about a book here, there's a high liklihood of me bumping into the writer one day, or relying on a book blurb from said writer if I ever get something out there.
It's a great place to bitch about people like gabe, Trent, Dave, Card, Brin, and Goodkind.
But then, I can do that here, so what's the point?
Well, I'm not famous.
There's a lot of freedom in that.
Stolen Exchange
Yea, I'd read the Card article on fat earlier, and I couldn't figure out what was bothering me so much about it, because, of course, I mostly agreed (bah!).
But luckily, Alas caught Card's bizarre lack of self-reflection:
You think fat people don’t know how they’re despised? You think they don’t want to be different?
Gosh, Orson, like all those Mormon fags you condemn to hell with righteous indignation because you just can't understand why they can't "control" themselves?
But of course, some people don't mind being fat [or otherwise "other"], or may, in fact [horror!] enjoy it: I do have a deep fear of being small and weak and enjoy being big and strong, but, ahem, I digress.
Funny that he writes that sentence without any self-reflection at all.
See, being biased against people "who just are that way" is always oh so much less moral when the "group" in question is one you're a part of...
Card is a fucktard. The sooner everybody realizes they're in the same goddamn boat, the better.
We'll be able to get more shit done.
Movin' On Up
Had a couple of guys come by to view our apartment yesterday. As I showed one of them the living room I said, "If you've got fewer books that we do, there's actually a lot more room in here."
He laughed and said, "Oh, I've got more books than you do."
Then he walked into the dining room and its Wall-O-Books.
"OK," he said, "Maybe not."
And he hadn't even seen mine or Jenn's room yet...
Me, Jenn, and Jenn's SO are gonna be moving up to the third floor where we'll have three bedrooms and a neat 3-way split for rent and possibly utilities. We'll also be at the top of the brownstone building, meaning our back porch will no longer be a thoroughfare (I have secret hopes that I can get a punching bag and put it out there), no pounding from upstairs neighbors, and we can leave the windows open as much as we want.... ahhhhh. As somebody who lives to have the windows open, that's a major plus.
The downside?
We're not sure how we're going to fit all three people's books up there...
Overall, it'll be a fun move. We're relinquishing our place August 1st, likely moving upstairs a little before that, as soon as our upstairs people vacate (she's going to law school in Milwaukee). If anybody's interested in a 2 bedroom in Uptown for 1K a month, have I got a deal for you...
In other news, things are pretty good on this front. I'm heading to New York Thursday night to hang out with B for the weekend, which should be nice and relaxing. He intends to bust out a bottle of champagne, we'll likely see Batman Begins, and then watch some pro boxing on Saturday (at some point I'm actually going to be able to follow the who's who of pro boxing). Should be a good time.
Jenn's SO is in London, so I get to be her date tonight, and we're going to see if we can catch Howl's Moving Castle. I have no idea what this movie's about, but I keep seeing the name everywhere...
The writing is... writing, research is being done, and I'm feeling good about it.
It's looking to be a fantastic week.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Foiled Again
The last two workdays I've gone to go out on my daily powerwalk, the heavens have opened up and dump rained - *after* I've already gotten into my walking clothes.
Damn weather.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
It's All Relative
The thermostat here in the house says 80 degrees. That's with the aid of a box air conditioner and a room fan.
Yet when I walked in from outside, it felt like a 69 degree oasis.
Afterall, it's closer to 98 degrees outside...
I've never been good with hot weather. Fuck knows how I survived Durban.
I also committed the mortal sin of watering my plants every other day instead of every day... and my cilantro has paid a bitter price.
Sad.
OK, back to work. I'm working. Really.
Friday, June 10, 2005
In Which the Protagonist Drinks Cheap Whiskey and Pretends to Fly
Ahhhh
Whiskey and Writing night. Welcome to Friday.
Got a bunch of deadlines to hit tonight, some Bad Guy character sketches to do. Finally figured out what exactly it is Nyx was hiding in that womb. Now we've got an assignation, betrayal, firefight, and Queen Nasyaan.
I love what I do.
Sadly, I'm Back Here
Crappily, I also discovered that I didn't have the PTO hours in my bank that I thought I did (paycheck went through today, at which point PTO hours were subtracted that I forgot about). Well, shit, that was silly of me.
Oh well, more fried rice for me come next paycheck time!
June's gonna be a motherfucking shitter moneywise. Gotta pay for all that fun I had in May... This also makes next Friday's PTO suck.
Long live the Corporate Card.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
I Blew Off Work
And I used to be such a nice girl...
Anyway, called in and took some PTO (Paid Time Off) time.
Here's my to-do list:
Vacuum the rugs - done
Clean the bathroom - done
Sweep and and spot-checked the kitchen floor - done
Call back new recruiter - done
Try to schedule routine follow-up PP appointment - done (full today)
Water plants and pinch off basil - done
Do the dishes
Make the bed
Finish putting final chip coating on the sink
Eat pancakes for breakfast
Print out latest version of Book One
Finish first "real" chapter of God's War (including prologue)
Continue research with latest books from library
Go on long bikeride along the lakefront and get a great tan
Sounds like a productive day....
Enjoy yourselves, my chiklits!!
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
SF Fans: Putting Women Back Into Science Fiction
Revelations.
Dueling female Jedi. Three female main characters.
Not one of them with a Holy Womb of Antioch.
Yes, the script was written by two women.
I have hope for the future.
Stock Up on Your Sudafed
Soon, it won't be legal to trust in anything but God to cure all of your cold symptoms, allergy problems, and contraception needs.
Won't that be a great day?
Cough, Cough. Oh dear.
Like heart disease, anxiety and depression, scientists discovered in a study of 1,397 pairs of female twins that there is a genetic basis to female orgasm.
Why is it that this study worries me? Because nobody's doing a male equivalent?
Probably, it's this sentence:
But Spector said orgasm is a very complex process which is poorly understood. Little research has been done because it is still a taboo subject.
Yea.
I'm Boring Today
Well, it was bound to happen.
For your amusement:
____________________________________________
Morning Absolution
They were still three bounties short of rent when Nyx found the headless body in the trunk.
“You should have put some towels down,” Rhys said.
There had been dog carcasses in the alley that morning, tire treads on burst stomachs, fat rats squealing over tidbits, old women netting rats for stews. The accumulated filth of rotting tissue, blood, sand and the stench of human excrement had sent Rhys out onto the veldt for dawn prayer, and Nyx had grudgingly agreed to take the bakkie out and pick him up. She had made sure to arrive well after the end of prayer, because catching Rhys praying was about as uncomfortable as catching him masturbating. He was a Chenjan conservative, one of the old breed who still bothered adhering to sexual and religious "purity."
In any case, she hadn’t thought to check the trunk.
“Whose is this?” Nyx asked. She was due to pick up a bounty in a quarter of an hour.
She needed the trunk space.
The body was draped in the white burnous of a cleric, gold tassels and all. The feet were bare. Though he had no head, a red newsboy cap was cradled under the left arm.
Nice touch, that.
“Khos’s,” Rhys said.
She should have recognized his work.
Nyx glanced over at Rhys, tried to read him. His dark face was pinched and drawn. He was a skinny man, too slender in the hips and shoulders - he’d been a dancer back in Chenja. He looked seventeen, pushing thirty.
She watched him gather his gear. “I’ll put this in the cab. I forgot about the body,” he said.
“Khos won’t get anything without the head.”
“He’s got a birthmark, Khos says.”
“Khos is an idiot.”
Rhys pinched his mouth. Nyx waited for a word of affirmation, but he only said, “Khos said he was one of the men on the boards. He had me open a file.”
Nyx guessed the body was Chenjan, judging from the color. Black, like Rhys. Chenjans had trouble mixing with the tawny brown of Nasheen. Rhys knew that as well as anyone.
She shut the trunk.
“The boards?” Nyx spat. “Looks like somebody’s going to revoke my license cause Khos can’t keep his bodies buried.”
They were late. Nyx moved around to the cab of the little bakkie, kicked the latch loose and propped open the door. She took the driver’s seat, pumped the ignition pedal. A growl came from under the hood.
“Hit the grill,” Nyx said.
Rhys banged the flat of his hand on the grill. Not much weight behind it. For a man as focused as Rhys, he didn’t have much energy to expend when the situation called for it.
The last time she was in front of a civil rights court, they’d taken away her bounty license for a year. Anneke had gone back to working for Raine, Kos had hit the bottle and the Wall, and Rhys had taken up painting.
Painting.
“Would you put some shit behind it?” Nyx yelled. “You want to go back to whoring-out portraits? Shevaa din!”
Hurry up. Her favorite words in Chenjan. Right after muja-ah shevaa din.
Hurry the fuck up.
Rhys kicked the grill. Better.
The bugs hissed, the engine rumbled.
“In, in, let’s go!” Nyx called.
Rhys gave the bakkie a push and leapt forward as it began rolling down the dusty hill toward the city.
There was a hot desert wind blowing in from the western waste, pushing out the city’s black shroud of smog and settling a misty cloud of red sand - fine as silt - over the cityscape. Dawn had risen, and the new sun - filtered through the silt - caught the world on fire.
It looked like the city was burning.
“Not the best portent,” Rhys said as he buckled on his dueling pistols and shrugged into his black coat. He kept his dark hair cropped, a Chenjan affectation Nyx had always found repulsive. Only slaves wore short hair. She’d told him that once, and he’d said he didn’t do anything for her pleasure. Some days, talking to Rhys was like trying to argue with an antique harem girl.
Nyx shifted gears as the road straightened out. They hit gravel, and a couple of fire beetle nymphs wiggled free from a leak in a hose by her feet and flitted out through the open windows. She batted at them, switched pedals.
Punjai was one of the shittier city jewels on the Nasheen crown. It was a border city, meaning Chenja and the Wall were less than a day’s walk across the veldt. It was also a popular way-station for Chenjan terrorists coming into Nasheen and political criminals trying to get out. Most of the city’s wealth came in via trade on the red and black markets: the red being in blood and bounties; the black in sorcery and embargoed Chenjan goods.
The city was a jagged wound, a seething black groove torn out of the red wash of the veldt. At the edges of the city, the desert stirred, set free by decades of overgrazing and centuries of heavy warfare that had seared the veldt and carved deep pockets into mud-brick ruins and heaps of rock the color of old blood. At the center of the city rose the old onion-shaped spirals of the minarets, long since converted to more effective watchtowers equipped with long-range bursts and scatterguns. The only minaret that still called the faithful to prayer was a crumbling black spiral in the Chenjan quarter.
“Taite briefed you on the file?” Rhys asked. He had never trusted her reading ability. Dancers like Rhys got big educations in Chenja - he didn’t put much stock in non-readers. The state schools called her dead dumb. She got her letters backwards.
Nyx watched him fiddle with the frogged tie at his collar. The day was fixing to be scorching, but his public modesty superseded comfort. Chenjan men were like that, always covering up. Such a shame.
“You know,” Nyx said, “if God wanted you naked, you’d have been born that way.”
He stopped his fiddling.
Conservatives.
Under her burnous, Nyx wore little more than a dhoti, breast binding, and her baldric and harness. The hilt of her short sword jutted up from a slit in the burnous.
“Yea," she said, "I looked over the file. Some Chenjan terrorists on the edge of the Chenjan district. Expected to be armed. Good boxers, I heard. They’ve been competing for cash. I sparred with one of them at Faleen.”
“I should have expected they’d be friends of yours,” Rhys said.
“I run with a lot of questionable characters," Nyx said. She wanted to pinch his dark skin, for emphasis. "We’re stopping at the hub. I need to offload your body.”
“I just do Khos's paperwork. Is Anneke in?”
“She’s already posted. Less picky about where she spends morning prayer.”
“I hate this city.”
Nyx nodded at the radio tube jutting out from the dash. “Find something useful on. You have a cigarette?”
He obediently switched on the tube. It vomited a misty blue-green wash. A cacophony of low voices muttered at him. Local politics.
“I don’t smoke,” Rhys said.
Nyx grinned and waited for him to start in about bodily impurities. She could use the diversion.
The hunched black smudge of the city grew closer. Umber-clad women moved along the side of the road, balancing baskets on their heads. Girls herded spindly gaggles of geese and a couple of pigs along the drainage ditches flanking the road. A couple of sorceresses in blue and gold carried baskets of beetle creepers and grasshoppers in tiny wooden cages. Big dropping nets hung over their lean shoulders.
“Stop and get yourself a drink, then,” Rhys said, “if you’re looking to pollute yourself.”
There it was.
“I only drink the blood of my enemies,” Nyx said, showing her teeth. She touched one of the dozen silver loops ringing her left ear. Raine’s loop. “And sometimes a whisky and water,” she said. “Partial to dark beer with a little lime.”
Rhys didn’t even look at her.
She considered selling him to a mardana. It was one of her more popular fantasies.
They passed under the burst-scarred main gate, and into Punjai.
They were late.
Edited New York Googlism (For New York Lovers)
new york
new york is book country
new york is nuked
new york is now
new york is having a ball without the snow
new york is a very old city
new york is starting to feel like brezhnev's Moscow
new york is the quick and easy way to sell your car
new york is not enough
new york is "invincible"
new york is committed to rescuing our democracy from the strangle
new york is dedicated to bringing some of the best of new york to the rest of the us
new york is learning
new york is enjoying a renaissance
new york is a densely packed mass of humanity
new york is now available
new york is still downtown
new york is an accredited branch of the ramakrishna order of india
new york is 330 miles long and 283 miles wide
new york is one of the approved charities
new york is 15
new york is een begin voor van der sterren
new york is now available online
new york is not affiliated with any other political party
new york is a catastrophe
new york is "a unique exhibition and sale" of 5287 photographs of the world trade center disaster
new york is here
new york is
new york is 91
new york is short for obvious reasons
new york is the "city that never sleeps"
new york is a new york city
new york is situated in manhattan on fifth avenue and 55th street
new york is still the city that never sleeps
new york is ‘highly concentrated’
new york is the black rat snake
new york is now ornette coleman
new york is "invincible"
new york is too great a city
new york is a city that people easily fall in love with
new york is a place where all the earth's ends meet
Googlism
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "googling yourself":
kameron is scheduled to start the ketogenic diet in may
kameron is wearing a
kameron is a purebred pembroke welsh corgi who just turned 5 years old this summer
kameron is the youngest driver on the roster
kameron is
kameron is 15
kameron is a member of the naacp
kameron is a member of sag/aftra and plans on continuing her career in the creative entertainment business
kameron is livid
kameron is awoken by a servant boy
kameron is an adorable caucasian boy
kameron is hardly a reincarnation of moses
kameron is two years old and not yet started
kameron is a more reluctant shopper
kameron is 8
kameron is the technowhiz of the school
kameron is going to tell you her story
kameron is already a car nut
kameron is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
kameron is almost 10
kameron is the greatest boyfriend in the whole world
kameron is shy and extremely sensitive
kameron is 2 yrs old
kameron is fostered in el cajon
kameron is 7 months
kameron is 10
kameron is a young lawyer of russian
kameron is getting the itch to drive and his grand daughter is cheering them all on
kameron is droppin’ like it’s hot with his navy blue
kameron is droppin’ like it’s hot with his navy blue waves pants and his red and white and1 shoes
kameron is a mad scientist who decides to avenge the world by unleashing a
kameron is about 6'5 plus
kameron is sweet and she had
kameron is the current field commander
kameron is 2 and his vocabulary is growing in leaps and bounds
kameron is now on bass
kameron is an illustrator
kameron is working on a minor
kameron is also going to that show
kameron is holding to make pillows for children at the hospital
kameron is a year 6/7 primary teacher
kameron is 13 years old
kameron is five and ash
kameron is 24
kameron is the black/brown tabby
kameron is now walking and getting into everything
kameron is the son of long
kameron is one of the most popular producers in hollywood
kameron is 18 and girl
kameron is a hot latin mixture and is fun too
kameron is a young lawyer of russo
kameron is hot latin mixture and is fun too
kameron is a mad scientist who decides to avenge the world by unleashing a modern version of the biblical ten plagues against
kameron is 100% puerto rican from ontario california who loves to fuck
kameron is a gorgeous 18 yr
Rambling About Writing (novel procrastination)
I’m spending the morning getting some chapters into shape so I can meet my Friday deadline. I started thinking a lot about story, and how I do what I do. I realize I’m not a perfect writer or storyteller (obviously), but the more I read and write the more intuitive the actual process becomes. Sometimes you just “know” when the pacing is off. You know when the dialogue is stilted. You know when something you wrote early on belongs somewhere else.
You want to take people along on a grand adventure in a new place. You want them to identify with and care about the people you choose to take them through it. You want to live a life as interesting as your fiction...
Walking to the train today in shorts and tank top in the 84 degree heat and brilliant morning sun, I had a sudden urge to be in Seattle; to be wandering around the piers, heading out to Elliott Bay Books, buying caramel corn. I longed for that perfect, bookish, writing-intensive summer when I had a full bank account and not a care in the world.
It’s now been five years since I went to Clarion West in Seattle. I was there for six weeks, and yes, the experience changed my life, though not in the way most other Clarionites would think. I have fond memories of that summer, because I was also living on money I solicited from relatives to help me pay for the workshop, and I had enough that I didn’t have to be concerned about overspending myself on meals and books. I had complete and utter freedom. I lived and worked with sixteen other writers, most of whom were as passionate about writing as I was.
I was the fittest I’d been in my life, due mostly to subsisting on rice and eggs and bike riding everywhere in Alaska during the first part of the summer. I was probably still too invested in a friendship with a guy who probably wasn’t the greatest sort to associate with. I’d spent the last year dressing down and pretending to be stupider than I was. I had a lot of drunken Alaska stories. For the first time I was living a life of my own choosing. I may not have made the best choices, but they were different from anything I'd ever done before, and the life I made was mine.
Clarion was great for the writing, sure. As somebody who was so incredibly fucking sick of being the best writer/only writer who finished anything/had sold anything/submitted anything in college writing classes, Clarion was a new experience. I was toe-to-toe with some fantastic people.
But more than “learning” how to write, it was the people who changed my life. It’s the relationships I’ve maintained with a small core group of them that altered what had come before, that really challenged me to look behind the I’ll-go-hide-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods-and-write for 80 years life. I still think that’ll be a fun way to end my life, but now there’s a lot more I want to do in-between.
The writing bit – jolting my experience ahead 2 years in six weeks because of the intensity of the program – was great, but I can honestly say that I’d still have stayed on the writerly path and likely been just as successful, long-term (I ain’t dead yet) without going to Clarion.
What changed my life was that I gained a lot of close friends. Friends who were smart and strong and had mad, crazy lives. Ambitious, driven people who lived in diverse locations. Meaning: I got to go visit them. New Zealand, South Africa… and Jenn here in Chicago, who was quite cool about the idea of rooming up together. We’ve been roomies for two years now, and it’s been a fantastic experience.
And those experiences, those relationships, will change you as well. You’ll learn how to give a shit about people, how to trust them, how to love. You’ll know what it is to respect someone.
That, too, was something I learned at Clarion.
My writing, like my life, is done largely by feel. I couldn’t explain to you why I’m jetsetting to the next big city next year any more than I can tell you why I moved a paragraph of description out of a page of dialogue. Something felt out of place. Moving it to the end felt better, felt right .
To some extent, I’ve viewed my years in Chicago as a recovery from my time in South Africa: grad school, foreign country, living on my own, very little money, crap food, too many cigarettes, too much fear. Far, far too much fear. Before that, I’d lived back home for six months and saved up money while my parents graciously allowed me to stay at their place between academic programs. Unfortunately, being home meant I fell back into bad habits: binge eating, no exercise, the language of self-hate. Launching straight from there to SA wasn’t a great idea.
I’ve needed the recovery time. I have one more year in Chicago to get the last of my shit together, to find some more self confidence, get stronger, leaner, save up some money and find some financial security, and get myself a job that doesn’t make me miserable while still paying the bills.
I have a year to reclaim the summer sun, to find myself a pier, a good bookstore, some caramel corn.
Not neccesarily in that order.
You get the idea.
In Another Life...
.... in another life, I will have a super-metabolism of Doom, and I will be able to eat bagels all day long.
The end.
Hot Time on the Old Towne Tonight
Stepped out of the house today at 6:45am. Local bank clock read: 84 degrees, and climbing.
Real Feel for today is 98 degrees.
I have taken to imitating G, and dressed for my commute today in tank top and shorts. Switched to my corporate linen when I got in.
These hot summer days always put me in mind of Clarion, of traveling, of new cities.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Doing it on Somebody Else's Terms
In truth, women shouldn't have to legitimize themselves as athletes by challenging the guys, but with America's short attention span, it's one of the few ways women find mainstream recognition.
These days, "A League of Their Own" sounds like a quaint notion because the WNBA is the only significant survivor of all the women's pro leagues started over the past eight years.
Why? As one reader pointed out in an e-mail message, the answer may be in the Associated Press report last week on a Pennsylvania State University poll of sports editors. Marie Hardin, one of the researchers, explained that the sports czars weren't giving adequate coverage to women's athletics because they believed the ladies were less interested in sports than men, despite increased participation.
Of course, I would argue that when it's "no big deal" to see men and women competeing against each other, in the same sports, with the same rules, things'll be a better, and we'll worry slightly less about coverage... though it'll be interesting to see who gets props by the media more often, and how much more talent will come into play, rather than "novelty." Of course, by definition, any woman who's "allowed" to "play" with the guys has gotta be twice as brilliant.
When Will it End?
When oh when?
I stopped reading 1/4 of the way through book 8, when I realized the plot had stopped completely and I was getting twenty-page descriptions of clothing and scenerey.
However, as with the Star Wars franchise, I'm invested, and someday, I'm told, the books will end. I should probably start catching up on the reading, as rumor has it there'll be "only" 13 books or so total.
I mean, 8 more years, and it might be done. As he started in 1989, it'll be about time.
Dressing Down: Worklife
It's going to be 94 degrees today here in Chicago, and muggy. I wandered in from the train station to work (about a 12 minute walk) wearing a tank top with my linen pants, and some sensible hiking sandals. A guy on a bike, wearing shorts, tank top, and do-rag, whizzed by me. He hopped off his bike and went into the office ahead of me.
Once inside, I pulled on a "nice" black shirt over the tank top to give the illusion of some semblance of corporate attire. I bumped into G, one of the temps, wearing khaki pants and long-sleeved gray shirt, and realized he'd been the guy on the bike with the do-rag.
Oh, how we love dressing in drag for corporate America, when we'd rather be in shorts and/or sports bras.
I haven't had anything to do at work for at least a week. Blaine bumbled in this morning and asked me if I knew how to do a mail merge so I can work on his wedding invitations. For better or worse, I didn't know how to do a mail merge, and told him to ask Cyllia the secretary.
And so goes the only sort-of project I've been asked to do all week: my boss's wedding invitations.
Oh, what a life.
Sucks to Be a Woman
Woke up at 2:30am, pouring sweat, jerked out of a nightmare in which I'd dreamed that I'd yanked out my IUD, to the tune of much blood and pain.
Reassured myself that no, really, all was still in place. Took a couple of Motrin this morning.
Sucks to be a woman.
Bloody womb fiction, here I come.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Fannish Labors of Love
You'll appreciate this, Jenn.
And I thought my character database was nutty... But then, I'm the actual author.
Wow.
Fans are great.
Welcome to Summer
It's another beautiful day in Chicago-land, my chiklits.
Finished editing and fixing the headers for Book One. It was a bitch and a half: cut 30,604 words. I dreampt Saturday night that I was cutting more words, proving that I really can write in my sleep... Have now tentatively retitled Book One The Dragon's Wall
I can already hear the wails from prospective readers:
"But there aren't any dragons in this book!!"
Tough nookies.
Moving straight back into working on God's War, which has got a revised "first draft" schedule, since things have been so off the last six months:
Part one: July 20th
Part two: August 31st
Part three: October 1st
Revised draft: December 31st
Word Count goal: Nothing more that 100K, please sweet fuck. I'll save the egregious word counts for Book 2 of the fantasy saga, which has also got a revised schedule (I'm about 5 chapters in)
Schedule for Over Burning Cities (Book 2) :
(but there aren't any cities in this book! oh, sorry)
Chapters 1-10: October 15th
Chapters 11-20: January 15th
Chapters 21-30: March 31st
Chapters 30-39: May 1st
Chapters 40-45: June 15th
Revised Draft: September 1st, 2006
I enjoy keeping busy.
Books! Books! Books!
The Number of Books I Own:
Jenn has a detailed spreadsheet, but suffice to say that by last count, we had a combined total of about 1500. Though Jenn continually has books arriving via mail from half.com and I went to WisCon and spent too much money, so we're liking moving past that count real quick. If Jenn's SO moves in with us in August, we'll have over 2,000 books in the house.
That's so cool.
The Book I'm Currently Reading:
I'm reading a lot of books. The Labyrinth, Homicide in the Biblical World, The Hours (continually), Ahab's Wife, Collapse, The Koran, The Origin of Satan, Gloriana, Orlando, The Persian Boy, Shriek: An Afterword, The House of Blue Mangoes, Dreaming By the Book, Strike Sparks, etc. etc.
Someday, I might finish some of those. I better, because I keep opening up new ones.
Last Book I Bought:
I buy in batches. Neveryona, The Dialectic of Sex, Affinity, and The Labyrinth.
Last Book I Read:
Million Dollar Baby
Five Books That Have Meant a Lot to Me:
The Hours by Michael Cunngingham.
A nearly perfect book that seeks to understand the entirety of three lives by giving you one day in that person's life, and watching them touch each other. The final "connection" at the end was too much for me, but I've read the book at least a dozen times, and continually have it open. When I get to the end, I start over. I can recite some of it by heart.
What I enjoy(ed) about this book is that it feels so intimately true. He captures the experiences and thoughts of these women existing within the social confines of their particular eras, and their internal turmoils and everyday concerns and joys strike something within me every time. You feel like you're reading a book about your own life, about different versions of your life, a book that will get you through the hours and onto the next and the next.
The best sorts of books can tell you something about your life, the good and the bad, and this is one of those books.
Alanna: The First Adventure, by Tamora Pierce
I read this book when I was ten. I'd already been writing a number of short stories by that time, about runaways and mad scientists, and a couple about this scullery maid who was really a princess. True to tropes, she got saved a lot by the stable boy who was really a prince. They had adventures and everything, but she was small and frail and very fem and very pretty: just the sort of woman every dorky female writer would write about - you know, wish-fulfillment.
I hadn't yet struck upon the warrior-woman theme because it just didn't seem possible. After all, women were smaller and frailer than men, and the fact that I wasn't meant that I was just a freak, and should spend the rest of my life dieting to excess in order to be smaller and never quite standing up straight so I wouldn't seem so tall.
Then I read about this girl my own age who tricked her father and swapped places with her brother and went off cross-dressing and trained to be a knight. She was smaller than most of the boys, but she bested some of them at some things, and some of them bested her at other things: in other words, she was just another one of the gang, not overly great at everything, not overly bad at anything. She was training alongside them and holding her own.
As the series went on, she even got to have sex with multiple guys (though, alas, not all at once), though I wished more would have been said about contraception, as she never got pregnant. But hey, you can't be picky.
Looking back, this is the book that really got me thinking about how things could and were different than what I'd been socialized to believe about men's and women's places, and biology as destiny. In no small part, I think it probably helped me on some level to not be so self-conscious as I got taller and taller and continually outweighed most of the boys in my class right up until the 8th grade.
There are some books that can catch you early enough, and challenge you to change your view of everything. That was this book.
On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ
I had to pick a Joanna Russ book because she makes me weak at the knees. She's the best of the militant 70s feminist SF authors, and I own a great deal of what she's published, fiction and nonfiction. Everybody always makes a big deal about The Female Man, and yea, it's a good book, but I'd have to say the one that challenged me the most and got me to think about myself, about desire, was On Strike Against God. It's a semi-autobiographical books about Russ coming to grips with her sexuality through long therapy sessions with male therapists who told her she was frigid at best, unnatural at worst. It catalogues her long internal debate with herself about what her dreams about women "really" meant, how having crushes on women may really mean that yes, she was attracted to women, and goes through one awful hetero date after another without really finding any kind of fulfillment from it, and finally, at the ripe old age of nearly 40, she braces herself for a gay bar and ends up having an affair with a female friend during which the two of them declare that if god says what they're doing is wrong, well, fuck, they're "On Strike Against God," then.
This was the book that really made me come to grips with that whole, "You know, I think I'm sometimes attracted to women," thing. I was always very clear that I was attracted to men, so that wasn't an issue, but at sixteen and again at seventeen I had a couple of serious crushes on women that I spent the next seven or eight years trying to justify to myself as something other than actual sexual attraction. As I've gotten older, I've had a handful more crushes on women, and I'm old enough now to recognize them as just that. It's not that I want to be those women, or I'm jealous of them, or blah blah blah, no really, it's actual desire. And that's cool. That's part of me, and that's OK.
Reading about Russ trying to do the same sort of justification of her own desire, and reading about some of her earlier (though not her later experiences with men, as I've not had much trouble there) experiences with desire, I couldn't help but feel slapped in the face with things that were incredibly parallel to my own experiences. And when you're reading about something that's that close, there comes a point when you have to owe up to it.
Good stuff.
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
My mom sent me this book while I was living in Durban, because it was on my amazon.com wishlist, and she happened to have a copy. I read it on the beach a couple of days after turning in my Master's thesis, the last days of a year and a half in a foreign country described by one friend as "The most dangerous place outside a war zone," where I'd spent most of my time living on peri-peri rice, cigarettes, red wine, and weekly binge sessions.
A third of those in the province were HIV/AIDS positive, the media was blaring about brutal violence, every gathering I went to, somebody knew somebody who'd been raped, stabbed, burglarized, carjacked or killed. I realize now that I was probably more hyper-paranoid than I should have been, but I was living on my own for the first time, going to grad school, living in a foreign country, and bat-shit crazy out of my mind. The thing with living alone with stories of all that death and violence around you, is that every day you're alive, you feel really lucky to be alive, and when you go out and get drunk, you get really, really drunk and you have a really good time because, hot damn! - you're alive.
And I sat on the beach in Durban, and I read this book, and I just started crying. It was the strangest thing. If I'd have read it two years before, I'd have shrugged and moved on, but instead, I drank and savored every word of it, and cried, because life was this beautiful, fragile thing, and it could all be over at any moment.
I go back to that book when I want to remember that, when I need to remember how lucky I am.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Poor Emma. Raised on romance novels with particular ideas about the way that love and marriage and life would be, and ending up sorely disappointed.
As a child who'd grown up on books and Disney movies, I good really relate to Emma, particularly at the time I was assigned to read this book in junior college. I'd broken up, badly, with my highschool boyfriend, had to deal with some post-breakup stalking, and was recovering from being evicted from my first apartment because I couldn't pay the rent.
It wasn't exactly the way the script was supposed to go.
When I turned thirteen, I remember looking out the window of my parents' room and thinking, "OK, I'm a teenager. I'm ready for my life to start. I'm ready for somebody to come along like they do in the books and notice me and see all of my talent and potential and show me this big, great life."
What I learned in the real world was that if you try and live your life by somebody else's ideals, by the way you think it "should" be, you're going to have a really unfulfilling life and eat rat poison.
And rat poison just never appealed to me.
What I learned from Emma was that I needed to live my own life, set my own path, and not wait for someone else to "save" me from my life. I needed to figure out not what the books and stories and other people thought I should do with this great cool life, but what I wanted to do. And it's a life that hasn't been easy, hasn't been predictable, and so far, hasn't ended in me eating rat poison.
I figure I'm doing pretty good.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Snip, Snip, Shit, Bring Out the Machete...
5,849 words left to cut to get me to 140K. I've cut 25,982 so far during this pass.
Exhausting work, but I'd just put it off too damn long. It was about time it got done. It's a reasonable book length now, and the story's been scraped down to the core, no extraneous bullshit.
Still, tiring. Should finish by tomorrow, and then I'll have no book-guilt regarding this one. It's a clean shot.
Off to a Good Start, Then...
A British couple -- the record holders for the world's longest marriage — said on Tuesday their success was down to a glass of whisky, a glass of sherry and the word “sorry.”
I think that's a good way to maintain any relationship...
Friday, June 03, 2005
So, you've arrived in the fantastical city of saints and madmen... let's see how long you last!
Ah, yes, my typical experience in a new city:
FATED TO (DIE IN A) FIGHT
You last about halfway through your first night in
Ambergris - or perhaps until the darkness just
before dawn, if you're lucky. You are killed in
a random bar brawl, a street fight you
inadvertently started or an artistically
violent argument. Your body disappears before
dawn and you are not remembered.
How Would You Fare in Ambergris?
brought to you by Quizilla
In Search of that Pesky Hetero Gene
That one gene, the researchers are announcing today in the journal Cell, is apparently by itself enough to create patterns of sexual behavior - a kind of master sexual gene [in fruit flies] that normally exists in two distinct male and female variants.
In a series of experiments, the researchers found that females given the male variant of the gene acted exactly like males in courtship, madly pursuing other females. Males that were artificially given the female version of the gene became more passive and turned their sexual attention to other males.
My favorite bit of that? Describing homosexual male behavior as "passive."
I mean, all females are totally passive sexual partners, so males who go after other males or are interested in other males must be passive, too. My other favorite assumption in that is that females "act like males" when courting females, and males "act like females" when being courted. Why aren't they described as "acting like females interested in other females" or "acting like males interested in other males"?
They real key is this, of course:
But no one dreamed that simply activating the normally dormant male portion of the gene in a female fly could cause a genetic female to display the whole elaborate panoply of male fruit fly foreplay.
Key being, "dormant."
Yea. It was already there.
In all of them.
I Love Stealing From BFB
Ah, fat prejudice: the last one that's still PC.
"...fat people just don't work as hard or produce as much. I'll never hire a fat person, and I'll never say that for attribution. Whether true or not for the overweight population as a whole, I can't say, but it sure is my experience, and I hire based on my experience."
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Surreal Moment of the Night
... flipping to the History Channel and seeing Terrence Cole, the head of the U of Alaska Fairbanks history department, talking about the discovery of Kayak Island.
Sometimes I forgot what a cool education I had.
The INFERNOKRUSHER Movement
Screw all this wishy-washy feel-good emotion-character bullshit. SF writers need to blow more shit up.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Cuttings
Considering that the first draft of this book was just over 200K, I find it incredibly admirable that I'm getting it down to 140K.
This is going to be the leanest fantasy epic ever.
Trust me.
Have I mentioned recently how great it is to have a job with long down periods where I can get paid $18 an hour to write and edit my own books and drink Starbucks-quality coffee?
It's a charmed life.
Good Self Esteem = Better Health Than Weight Loss
No shit.
I'd like them to replicate this with a bigger sample, though - and include men. What's up with all these fucking "weight loss" studies if the "obesity epidemic" has to do with *all* Americans?
Ah, that's right, because women are still targeted more than men. Evil Womanly Fat Takes Up Too Much Space in America. Substantial women are really fucking scary.
Good news is, you can be substantial, scary, and healthy too. Imagine that.
Behavior change and self-acceptance trump dieting hands-down when it comes to achieving long-term health improvements in obese women, according to a two-year study by nutrition researchers at the University of California, Davis.
The findings suggest that significant improvements in overall health can be made, regardless of weight loss, when women learn to recognize and follow internal hunger cues and begin feeling better about their size and shape. Results of the study will appear in the June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
(via BFB)
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Back On the Road
No bleeding, no depression, no yeast infections... ah, why, yes! It's time to hit the road again.
Did an experimental jog tonight: slow, short, easy and rather dismal. The second half turned into walk-jog-walk-jog-oh-fuck-it-walk.
The IUD started banging at my insides toward the end, just little twinges of occasional cramping. Not bad (I took a couple Motrin a few hours before), and if all goes as they say it will, I should be pain-free in a couple months. It was good to start out now to see where I'm at with that. I wish they made a smaller device for women who haven't had kids - I'd really rather that thing wasn't banging around all the time. In any case, I have confidence that my body will get used to it, and I'll be back together in no time.
The idea is to get a couple weeks of MA classes back in before my membership runs out - I'm going to let it expire over the summer and sign back up in September, mainly to save the money. Things are agonizingly tight right now, and heading to WisCon didn't do me any good.
I've been keeping up on the power walks at work - that's an hour every day, and my free weights in the morning, so I'm healthy, but not buff, and you know, honestly, I have a secret desire to be buff. The day I can tell a set day job to shove it so I can spend some time getting into actual shape will be a fucking fantastic day.
In other news, I've been reading a lot about boxing, as I've got a couple of shorts and a novel with a protagonist who's taken it up, and I'm interested in seeing how other authors handle writing about boxing (B is very good at this, and his blog is great for that).
I'm also currently in the process of cutting 31,000 words from the first book of my fantasy saga before it hits the road again with agents. I picked up a couple more names at WisCon, and I figured, shit, why not? So that's getting cleaned up while the day job is slow, and at night I'm coming home and working on my blood and sand bisexual shapeshifiting bounty hunter novel and stories, which hold a special place in my brutal little heart.
Those stories are gonna rock.
Overall, life is definately smoothing out again, most importantly on the health front. I really took a nose dive for three or four months, and coming up out of that has been a bitch and a half. Now it's all back to working to where I was, writing and shape wise, and surpassing that.
No big thing.
It's a good life.
Straw Dogs Meets Deliverance: Oh Boy, I Sure Do Want to Sign Up For That One
Some people just don't know when to retire.
The red bandanna and the hunter's knife are back: Sylvester Stallone is set to reprise his role as Vietnam vet John Rambo, 17 years after his last outing.
Stallone, now 58, will don combat trousers for a fourth time, this time to slug it out against American white supremacists bent on killing his wife and daughter. In the new film, the grunting killing machine has turned middle-class family man and has "assimilated into the tapestry of America," according Stallone, who is also the movie's scriptwriter. He promises a film in the vein of Straw Dogs and Deliverance.
It reads like something from The Onion.
How Long Until the Government Starts Monitoring What You Eat?
In the past, his parents had no clue when he bought a treat at school. Now, thanks to a new school-lunch monitoring system, they can check over the Internet and learn about that secret cookie.
Health officials hope it will increase parents' involvement in what their kids eat at school. It's a concern because federal health data shows that up to 30 percent of U.S. children are either overweight or obese.
"My parents do care about what I eat. They try, like, to keep up with it," said Hughes, a 14-year-old student at Marietta Middle School.
Because it's best that your children learn right away that you don't trust them to make good decisions, and more than that, that you don't respect them. This way, your children will remain child-like and dependent all their lives.
What good sheep-like citizens they will make!
Why Does This Not Surprise Me?
New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades, yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.
As an SF writer, I wonder, could you start requiring your lover to "test" their love for you with a brain scan?
Ah, think of all the dystopian possibilities...
The Holy Womb of Antioch
"Love can't save you Padme. Only my new powers can do that."
"Hold me like you did by the lake in Naboo."
And I'm thinking, "Sweet fuck, why?"
To his credit Hayden Christiansen really gave it his all. He told the story he wanted to tell, he worked as best he could with the lame dialogue and sudden loyalty-switching scene that had very little lead-up. It was a poorly written script. Lucas spent the first half of the movie lovingly panning through long, drawn-out shuttle docking sequences, and must have realized two-thirds of the way through the film that he was actually telling a story that somehow involved the actions of people, and he spent the last half of the movie cutting through a series of quick-cut scenes of the most disrespectful sort that not only insult your actors, but insult your own worldbuilding skills, so that Super Jedi who can "sense" things with the force get taken out by a couple of blaster-shots to the back (in fact, only two Jedi besides Obi-wan actually get any sort of actual fight scene when they get turned on, both of them being men).
The tragedy of this movie is watching what is, at core, a really great story about how power corrupts, and how you kill what you love, and turn yourself into a monster. It's absolutely fascinating to watch someone who's a great "idea" guy fuck up stuff like the actual telling of a story: he has no intuitive sense of narrative drive, of how to cut a scene, of when to trust his actors to deepen a scene, of when to edit a fight scene because they all look alike. In fact, he's not even sure of the right balance between fight scenes and character/plot scenes. Any scene with dialogue is almost always painful. Ewan McGregor is about the only one who can do anything at all with the shitty dialogue, though Hayden gives it his all: you can tell that he was holding out for this movie and fuck George if he wanted him to play it wooden, cause this is why he signed up for this shit, to be fucking Darth Vader.
And then, of course, there's the Holy Womb of Antioch.
I mean, Padme.
The Senator, right? Busy doing senatorial things, meeting with people, having her own subplot, caught up in negotiating with Jedi and telling Palpatine to fuck off and engaging in long talks with the new Queen about domestic policy and...
Oh, I'm sorry, I was thinking of the wrong movie.
In fact, every scene Padme is in, she's sitting on a couch or standing at a window or standing on the balcony staring blankly at something, pregnant, (because everyone knows pregnant women live like invalids) waiting for the scene to start. Waiting for Anakin or some Jedi to come in and break up her staring-at-the-wall reverie. Natalie Portman checked out of this movie a long time ago. And who can blame her? It was utterly obvious from the writing that she was only there as a peice of scenery. Her hair and clothes changed drastically with every scene; she was a walking, talking set peice.
And her death scene? Oh, yea, death scene in childbed in the 80th century! The robots attending her surmise that "There's nothing physically wrong with her. She just seems to have lost the will to live."
Lost. the. will. to. live.
Luckily, she lives long enough to contort her face into what resemebles the face one would make during a particularly troublesome bowel movement, and squirt!-squirt! - there's Luck and Leia! Isn't that cute! I'm the director, and I'm just going to blast through all this silly plot and character stuff here at the end, cause everybody already knows what's going to happen. I'm going to let the next three movies in the series inform just how significant this moment is, so I don't have to work at it and write actual dialogue that makes sense!
So the men and robots make the decision to "operate" quickly to "save the babies" - an operation which essentially consists of her delivering the kids the regular way, not via Cesaerean, so I'm not sure what planet these robots came from where they thought natural childbirth was an operation, but they should probably be mindwiped.
But lo! Padme's death is appropriately celebrated like any good female martyr's - there's a great parade through the streets and she's in an open coffin with flowers all over her like good virginal Snow White. Having fulfilled her purpose for living, the Holy Womb is delivered unto the underworld. All hail the holy womb!
And this is the end, purpose, and plot we get for the only female heroine in the entire movie. She exists to give birth to Darth Vader's kids. No hopes, desires, dreams of her own, except to escape back to Naboo with Vader and raise up his babies. Um, hello, isn't she a Senator? Isn't there work to do? Shouldn't she have scenes where she did work? Couldn't she have been better involved in the plot? I'd almost rather she didn't have any scenes at all and the babies were just sent off to Obi-wan to distribute, but we were supposed to have these stupid scenes with Vader and Padme where they had this obvious love and chemistry for each other, so we could see why he'd go crazy and go all dark thinking that she'd die unless he had his "new powers."
It's such an incredibly sad movie to watch because you can see all these really neat set peices: the image of the Jedi temple burning, Anakin going in to kill all of the Jedi - including the children, the plausible scenerio of how a president/prime minister becomes a despot by ruling through fear, all of Yoda's extreme coolness, Obi-wan's affection for Anakin. All ruined, just ruined, because the delivery was for shit.
I just didn't buy it. It was poorly written, and the actors were insulted with very little slow scene time in which to emote or at least pretend to feel something. Instead it was "line, line, line, CUT: new scene line, line, line: CUT."
Luke! Leia!
The end.
Thank God. Because really, Luke and Leia are way more interesting in the next three movies than just about anybody got to be in these three movies, so the sooner we get back to them, the better.
If anyone ever comes to my house and discovers that I own any of these three prequels, please feel free to put me out of my misery.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Memorial Day
"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men [sic] to die in."
- George McGovern
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
"Draft beer; not people."
-Author Unknown
"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
"It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate."
-George McGovern
Sunday, May 29, 2005
What I'm Working On Tonight
God's War
1.
Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert. Drunk, but no longer bleeding, she pushed into a smoky cantina just after dark and ordered a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser. She bet all of her money on a boxer named Jax, and lost it two rounds later when Jax hit the floor like an antique harem girl.
Nyx lost every coin, a wad of opium, and the wine she’d gotten in exchange for her womb. But she did get Jax to bed, and loser or not, in the desert after dark that was something.
Especially considering Nyx’s profession.
“What are you after?” Jax murmured in her good ear. They lay tangled in the sheets like old lovers, a losing boxer with a poor right hook and a tendency to drop her left, and a wombless hunter bereft of money, weapons, food, and most of her clothing.
“I’m looking for my sister,” Nyx said. It was partly the truth. She was looking for a lot of people.
Jax could only get her halfway there.
Nyx woke sometime after dawn prayer with a hangover and what felt like a wad of cotton in her belly. The pain wasn’t supposed to kick in until noon. She should have started drinking to prep for the pain, but she had another sort of boxer to meet in Faleen, and four women and a eunuch on her tail looking for a womb she’d dumped at the butcher’s. They would take her without the womb, of course, but dumping it kept them occupied in the fleshpots a day longer.
She pulled on her burnoose and pushed into the short hall. Jax was long gone, and the cantina was mostly empty. There was a room charge to pay, the cantina keeper told her. She put breakfast on the tab and slipped out the back.
A girl was selling sand cats in a pool of smoke weeping out from the back end of the cantina. It was a bad day for smog, even this far outside the cities. The thick air trapped the smoke too close, cloying close. Nyx pulled her gutra over her face, tucked it up under the aghal.
“You seen any bakkies on this road?” she asked the kid.
The girl spit red. “You want a sand cat?”
The kittens in the cage were bloody, half-starved. Flies circled them. The girl didn’t look much better.
Nyx was shit and gone from Punjai.
She walked. She looked back, once, at the smoky cantina and the starving girl, and wondered who they were burning back there.
The sun bled across the big angry sky. The road was unpaved, mostly sand and gravel. She had traded her good sandals for directions out of the fleshpots, too dopey to figure her way out on her own. Under the burnoose, she wore little more than a dhoti and breast binding. She had an old baldric - her dead partner’s - buckled too tight.
All the sheaths were empty. Had been for some time.
She was reminded of some proverb about meeting God empty-handed, but morning prayer had come and gone, and she hadn’t knelt. Her knees weren’t calloused anymore. Not from praying, away.
She hitched a ride on the back of a snarling cat-pulled cart just before midday, and by late afternoon she found a bodega and a call box and a sign telling her she was thirty miles from Faleen.
She made a call.
Two hours later, Kine pulled up in a bakkie spewing red roaches from its back end.
Kine leaned over and pushed the door out.
“You’ve got a leak in your exhaust,” Nyx said, sliding onto the seat.
Kine was an unremarkable woman, big in the hips and slight in the bust, average height, long face. Her hands had the brown, worn, sinewy look of old leather, but her face was younger, fleshier. She wore an embroidered housecoat and hijab over her dark hair, but Nyx figured there was very little on underneath the coat. It was a hot day.
“What’s her name?” Kine asked, shifting the bakkie into gear.
“Who?”
“I can smell her,” Kine said.
“I lost a bet,” Nyx said.
“Where’s Tej?”
“Dead. I couldn’t get him back over the border.”
Kine pursed her lips, a thousand daggers of disapproval in her dark eyes. She never frowned, never that, but the tight mouth held back words her God didn’t permit her to say. Nyx knew that well enough. She’d known Kine long before she went conservative.
They blew back out onto the road. The shocks in the bakkie were going out.
“Where am I taking you?” Kine asked.
“Faleen.”
Nyx looked out the window, watched the flat white desert turn to dunes.
“A ship just came in from New Canaan,” Kine said. Faleen was a landlocked city. Only one kind of ship docked there. “If you’re looking for the magicians –“
“Which sect?”
“Yebez. This is God’s war we’re fighting. They want a part in it.”
“God didn’t say anything to me about it. Does the radio work?” Nyx asked. She leaned forward to fiddle with the tube jutting out of the dashboard.
“No,” Kine said. She pinched her mouth again, then - “How did you lose Tej?”
Nyx was bleeding again. She could feel it. She needed something stronger than liquor.
“You have any weapons on you?” Nyx asked. She kicked the radio tube. It rattled. All the news was behind her.
“Who’s tracking you?”
“What is this, the fourth inquisition?”
“Nyxnissa?”
Nyx pulled her gutra free, dipped her head out the open window. The air was clearing up.
“Raine,” she said.
Kine’s face scrunched up like a prune. She shifted gears. The bakkie rattled and picked up speed. Dust and dead beetles roiled behind them.
“You’re putting me in a pot, sister-mine,” Kine said.
“I wouldn’t be blood if I didn’t.”
“I’ll drop you at the gate, no farther.”
The gate was good.
“You never could get a man back over the border,” Kine said. Her expression hadn’t changed. She had liked all of Nyx’s partners, even the men. Kine thought she was a good progressive conservative for putting up with Nyx's male partners.
“Tej was a good boy. The only one of yours I liked. You kill good men for a lost cause.”
“Raine always got us back out.”
“Raine isn’t a bēl damê, he’s a bounty hunter.”
“There’s not much difference.
“It’s all the difference in the world, in God’s eyes.”
They’d turned off the gravel track and onto the 101 Highway that bisected northern Nasheen from the Chenjan border to the sea. Splintered red rock jutted up from the dunes or lay scattered among them. A careful eye could spot the shimmering casings of unexploded bursts lining the highway. The road signs were popular shooting targets for Chenjan operatives and Nasheenian protestors, and most of the metal markers were pocked with bullet holes and smeared in burst residue.
Nyx supposed that there were worse places to go to sell the last of what she had, but she couldn’t think of any. Except maybe Chenja. And she’d already given Chenja enough of her. And enough of everyone else.
She tightened her baldric.
Eighteen miles to Faleen.
Wiscon....
... was great. Had to leave early due to scheduling and life events, and etc. but I had a blast. Got to meet great people, had a great time.
Looking forward to next year. It'll totally rock the house.
Things are great.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
What I Love About Wiscon
It's incredibly nice to find your people. It's incredibly surreal to have several people stop you in the hall and go, "Kameron Hurley? Brutal Women? I love your blog!"
Next year, I'd rather they were loving my fiction. But hey, I'll take what I can get.
Next year. The fiction will pay off. I'm passionate. I believe in it. Things can be really different.
And now I will cease drunken posting, in case I get myself in trouble by talking about James Frenkel.
Ahem. Yea.
Also, need to call Simon and Ashley at some point - dude, let's do lunch.
Sidenote
hahah ahah aha
The hotel "decency" filter won't let me view my blog... because it has words like "fucked" in it.
Tell them to join the Real World.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Why Yes, It's Friday Random Quiz Day. I'm Lazy.
Your Birthdate: January 12 |
Being born on the 12th day of the month (3 energy) is likely to add a good bit of vitality to your life. The energy of 3 allows you bounce back rapidly from setbacks, physical or mental. There is a restlessness in your nature, but you seem to be able to portray an easygoing, sometimes "couldn't care less" attitude. You have a natural ability to express yourself in public, and you always make a very good impression. Good with words, you excel in writing, speaking, and possibly singing. You are energetic and always a good conversationalist. You have a keen imagination, but you tend to scatter your energies and become involved with too may superficial matters. Your mind is practical and rational despite this tendency to jump about. You are affectionate and loving - but very sensitive. You are subject to rapid ups and downs. |
God's War (January 2011)
Year's Best SF 12
Labor is hard work. Forcing women to labor against their will - is slavery.
"I'm not afraid of storms,
for I'm learning to sail my ship."
-Louisa May Alcott
"No person is your friend who demands your silence." -Alice Walker
"I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it." - Voltairine de Cleyre
"The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed." -Edna O'Brien
"The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind." -Mary Ritter Beard
"They sicken of the calm that know the storm." -Dorothy Parker
"I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine." -Rita Rudner
"Adventure is worthwhile in itself." -Amelia Earhart
"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin." -Grace Hansen
"I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex." -Katharine Hepburn
"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow talent to the dark place where it leads." -Erica Jong
"I have always had a dread of becoming a passenger in life." -Margareth II, Queen of Denmark:
"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing." -Dorothy Parker
"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you." -Mary Tyler Moore
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." -Anais Nin
"No more tears now; I will think about revenge." -Mary, Queen of Scots
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Muriel Strode
"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." -Rebecca West:
"If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression." -Toni Morrison
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." -Delores Ibarruri
"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow." -Maria Mitchell
"This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes." -Hannah Arendt
"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it." -Toni Morrison
"I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say." -Ingrid Bergman
"We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don't know that men can do what women can do. That's absolutely crucial. We can't go on doing two jobs." -Gertrude Stein
"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off." -Gloria Steinem
"It's all make believe, isn't it?" -Marilyn Monroe
"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." — Virginia Woolf
"I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body." -Elayne Boosler
"Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.'" -Clare Boothe Luce
"Soon they'll be telling you you can't be Batman, Shakespeare, President, or God. Little fat baby, going on schoolgirl, you can be anyone, but it won't be easy." -Marilyn Hacker
"We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters." -Gloria Steinem
"Remember our heritage is our power; we can know ourselves and our capacities by seeing that other women have been strong." -Judy Chicago
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there." -Indira Gandhi
"I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it." - Alanis Morissette
"Nothing will work unless you do." -Maya Angelou
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." -Cheris Kramare and Paula Treichler
