Another Wednesday Night

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

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

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

Funny how that works.

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

Seriously.

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

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

Yea. I can feel it.

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

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

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

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

I need to concentrate on my other comforts.

Like, say, writing.

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

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

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

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

You know, like giving up coffee.

That would certainly be something.

It would certainly be a start.

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

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

Need to work on that shit.

Good Morning, Chiklits

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

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

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

wheeeeewwwwwwww

Sitting all day at work will be FUN!

Something more substantial later...

Book Launch: Bodies in Motion

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

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

Sweet cover, eh?

Fuck It, I'm Going to the Beach

Blew off work completely.

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

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

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

The Madness That is My House

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

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

So, what's new?

The Rhysling

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

Woooot!

Britain's Response:

Carry on:

ReaderCon Notes

Matt Cheney's got notes from ReaderCon up:

Day One

Day Two

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

It is 3pm, and I Have Just Gotten Up

Well, fuck.

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

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

Dammit. I need another three days for sleeping.

Today of All Days

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

Looking For Heroines

Well, I think she picked a pretty shitty lot.

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

Whiskey, Writing, Link Dump

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And feeling nicely buzzed.

Ah, Friday.

Friday Beer Blogging

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

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

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

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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

You Gotta Love the British

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

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

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

Choose Wisely

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














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


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


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

A Little Cultural Bias At Work, or No?

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

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

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

Oh, *Now* They Raise Their Vigilance

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

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

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

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

Rolling blogging news from across London as it comes in.

Notes & Quotes

I am horribly behind on just about everything, chiklits.

Need to finish a chapter of the fantasy saga (book 2), and a chapter and a half of God's War in order to catch up. Also need to edit a paper for my brother.

I am also feeling really, really, sleep deprived.

The new head manager for the office has also started cracking down on employee hours, i.e. no more of our "fuck it, not much going on, I'm outta here at 3pm," thing, which is fucking ridiculous, because, of course, it doesn't apply to Yellow or Blaine. I know for a fact that Yellow works here *because* of the flexible hours. So, when things are slow, they'd prefer we just stay here all day playing Insaniquarium instead of saving them money by going home?

The fuck?

Take away my flexibility, and I'm not particularly sure why I'd work here. I'm a writer. I'm here cause I can take a writing day whenever I want to, and come in late on days when my boyfriend's in town.

Fuck it, honey, it ain't worth it if you take that away.

I'll go somewhere else where they pay me enough to care.

5 Rights Attached to Supreme Court Decisions That Women Could Lose

No, we're not only talking abortion, baby.

Stuff You Coul Be Reading

Hot damn, Kelly Link's story collection Stranger Things Happen is now available for free under a Creative Commons license... If you like what you read, why not go out and buy a copy, or check out her new one? I plan to.

And the uber-scarily taleted Simon Owens (21 and rocking the house) has another short up a Chizine (I still maintain he's just peaking early, dammit. Someday he will not be young and talented, just talented). Check it out.

I Accidently Saw "War of the Worlds"

Did anyone else assume we'd gotten past that whole "mankind," "man," "where no man has gone before" stuff with Star Trek the Next Generation? I mean, I really thought that narrators in the future would mention, also, that women did things, built things, and genernally contributed to the formation of society, seeings as women, like, have babies and design buildings and drive forklifts and such. Women: doing everything men do, and breeding for the cause, too!

I mean, really.

But anyway, if you suck it up through the Morgan Freeman narration, this is a great little summer adventure movie.

Yea, you heard me right.

Forget a minute that Tom Cruise is the lead (I wish they'd cast somebody else - he's a celebrity who's gotten to the point where he's so much "a celebrity" in my mind that it's difficult not to just be like, "Oh, Tom Cruise), and appreciate Dakota Fanning and Steven Spielburg as a director, and go along for the fucking ride.

It hits my pet interests of course: war, genocide, apocalyptic scenerios and how they bring out the worst and (sometimes) the best in people. Speilburg knows how you make a good action flick: always bring it back to the characters. It's about the people, not the special effects (though the effects are fucking stellar). Focus on the story, the journey of these people caught up in extraordinary events. He's great with suspense, tension.

Spielburg may spend a bit too long focusing on all of the grouped military shots, but hey, he after directing so many war movies, I think he just couldn't help it.

Cruise plays an incompetent asshole pretty well (does this surprise anyone?), and it's fun to watch a sort of anti-hero fill the hero role.

Unlike some other people, I didn't have so much trouble with the ending: hell, they stayed true to the original in that sense. What ya gonna do?

I will say that the cynic in me wanted it to end with the father & daughter cowering on the stairs after Cruise takes steps to ensure their survival. I love that idea as an ending shot. But then, I adored the original ending shot of "28 Days Later" when the two women - hefting shotguns - swing through the double doors of the hospital and into the great unknown.

I enjoy just being left to dwell on how far human beings will go to protect their kin, and speculate about how well they'll do in the long run.

But hey, it's Spielburg. Everybody's gotta live, gotta maintain the happy family unit.

Ah, well.

It was a good ride. I was pleasantly entertained.

I Am Fantasizing About A Beach House

It's one of those days where I want to fast-forward things a bit and get to that beach house of mine filled with books, already.

Patience, patience.

I'm Going to Get Some Work Done Now

Really.

Damn, why do I feel so tired?

Go Check Out Alaska Before It Melts

Alaska is changing by the hour. From the far north, where higher seas are swamping native villages, to the tundra around Fairbanks, where melting permafrost is forcing some roads and structures to buckle in what looks like a cartoon version of a hangover, to the rivers of ice receding from inlets, warmer temperatures are remaking the Last Frontier State.

And yea, I lived there for two years, and yea, Fairbanks needs a major overhaul. Cabins built on tundra that never froze are now looking like shipwrecks crushed by melting ice-as-earth.

Not quite apocalyptic yet, but hey, catch it while it's still cold.

If nothing else, it'll be a great place to retire when the Midwest turns into a desert.

Wooot!

Secular Summer Camp

Who'da thought?

Neat.

The Trouble With Masculinity

Thoughts?

Good Morning, Chiklits

Ooogg, what a morning. Feeling groggy and sleep-deprived. Also, need cofffeeeee and some water.

Came home and cleaned the house for the apartment showing we had and the bunches that are today and spent the rest of the nigh hashing out some stuff with Jenn.

B's flying in tomorrow, so I figure I'll wash the bedsheets tonight (I know how nice it is to have clean bedsheets when I arrive at a place that's not mine), and we've got a bunch of weekend shinanigans planned. It'll be good to see him. We're somehow managing to see each other twice a month now - I fly to NY to see him, then two weeks later, he flys to Chicago to see me.

We're insane, I know.

On the upside, Eli sent me a cool box of goodies, including a new CD that I'm listening to again this morning Trocadero's Roses are Red, Violets are Blue (fans of Red vs. Blue will recognize the music!). Good stuff, good stuff. It also occurred to me that I should probably begin cultivating an interest in comic books. They do some cool shit with those.

Anathema's Back From Thailand

Everywhere you go, you can buy skin whitening cream. I had one women come up to me and compliment me on my skin tone: "So beautiful, so white." I shudder mightily.

Writing Novels in Tehran

Over the past decade, Iran's best-selling fiction lists have become dominated by women, an unprecedented development abetted by recent upheavals in Iranian society.

The number of women who have published novels has reached 370, said Hassan Mirabedini, a scholar of Iranian literature, whose findings recently appeared in the magazine Zanan (Women). That is 13 times as many as a decade ago, the research showed, and is about equal to the number for men today.

Yes, you read that right, 370.

370 women have published novels in Iran.

This is considered huge.

Bizarre how something that seems so small is perceived as being so huge. It doesn't take a lot of people to make everybody else uncomfortable.

Censors at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which must approve every book before it can be published, ban any explicit mention of sex. They ask for the removal of words like "nudity" and "bosom," even if these appear in metaphors and do not refer to the human body.

Because if God wanted us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way.

Interesting little article. I find it fascinating that so many husbands have trouble with their wives making money this way. Women holding jobs and earning their own income is totally OK as per the Quran.

Oh, I'm sorry, you're not ruling your fundamentalist Islamic country based on the Quran? Dare I say you're skewing it for your own ends?

Blasphemy.

Feed Fish! Fight Aliens!

Why do I love this mindless game?

Bah. I'm behind on the writing... must... do... something... useful.

Happy Blogging B-Day To Me

OK, so, I'm a day late, but hey, happy belated b-day.

Blogging is weird.

Half of Me Came Straight Out of Prison, Baby

Your Slanguage Profile

Prison Slang: 50%

Southern Slang: 25%

Aussie Slang: 0%

British Slang: 0%

Canadian Slang: 0%

New England Slang: 0%

Victorian Slang: 0%

What Slanguage Do You Speak?

Though, you know, looking at all these numbers, I wonder where the other 25% went?

Bad quiz.

I'm Doing Science

Political Refugees, Head-Tossing Young Maidens, and Other Madness

Tim Pratt, via Steph Burgis, asks writers to post the pet subject they enjoy putting into their work, and list what they'd never want to write about.

Here's some overarching themes and subjects in my fiction:

1. Civil war as subplot

2. Blood. Lots of it. And screams. Loud ones. Nearby.

3. Big, strong women who wield big weapons and have intimacy issues

4. Beautiful male dancers who are uninterested in said heroine. My most popular side-kick template.

5. Queer and bisexual characters, particularly women within matriarchal set-ups, as well as sexless neuter characters, sex-changing characters, and androgynies.

6. War, baby. All-out, bloodthirsty, pistol-wielding, sword swinging, blood curdling WAR. Including genocide as primary plotline, often within a desert setting. Oh yea.

7. Multi-colored and cultured societies. See aforementioned interest in war.

8. Bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

Here's some things you probably won't see in my fiction:

1. Matriachal societies who end wars by putting together a big book that Explains Very Politely to the Evil People that Peace is Really Better, and Save the Day through their "natural" nurturing and soft-spokenness, proving that if you let yourself be a doormat long enough, eventually someone will become enlightened and listen to you.

2. Hard SF that's primarily about Big Machines that Go Real Fast

3. Anything where the social structure is exactly like it is in America in 2005, or 1985, for that matter.

4. You're not likely to see anything without bugs in it for some time. South Africa has scarred me for life.

5. Psychic cats

6. A women soldier who goes out onto the battlefield, pulls off her helm, and "tosses her long auburn locks." I'm not particularly sure what she's doing with long, unbound hair in the first place (particularly clean unbound hair that will bounce like it does in a Pantene commercial after being bundled up into a helmet and left unwashed for three months), let alone why the fuck she's stopping her horse in the middle of a bunch of dead bodies on the field to toss her head like Jessica Alba (Gardens of the Moon). Which would be why I wouldn't write it.

"Only My New Powers Can Save You, Padme"

Tom Cruise goes all Palpatine on Oprah.

I love geeks.

Gateways to My Blog

Well, it's about that time again, as google searches acting as gateways to my blog have increased a bunch in the last few months, and I'm always fascinated to see how random people get here.

Here are the keywords used by unsuspecting search-engine users who find my blog:

brutal women (the most popular)
brutal (oddly, the second most popular, which sort of pleases me, that people looking for totally different sorts of brutality end up... here)

brutal dildos
fucking fuckers

my uterus
under her heel
blogs women nj

shinanigans

women of deadwood
women boxing snap shots

percentage of women who regret having children

women + boss + fantasy

celibate female pictures (no doubt seeking to answer the all-important question "what does a celibate woman look like?")

hot women boxing free sample movies
brutal women fights

"my abortion" site: blogspot.com
buzzed women
africa women quotes
hollywood thin women
female cops

nick larbalestier (?)
Rita Hurley MA

pregnant jedi (by far my FAVORITE!!!!!!!!!!)

Getting Back Into It, cont.

Been working on figuring out an exercise schedule that doesn't involve me paying out the ass every month. I turned my daily lunchtime powerwalk into a walk/jog yesterday, and that worked well. The route's 40 minutes at my current pace (as I get faster, I can extend it), so if I bring a towel to work to wipe myself down and just go for it, I can get in my daily jog at work every day and not worry about, "But I'm home now," workout laziness.

Add my weight routine (15-20 min) in the morning, and I'm pushing over an hour of exercise a day. The goal is to add in 20 min of pilates when I get home at night (I have two 20 min workouts that I can alternate), and I can push that to an hour and a half of exercise 5 days a week.

Not too shabby.

Still miss hitting stuff, and I'm looking for a cheap punching bag that I can use to work off stress and keep up my punching practice while I try to save up the money I've been spending on the gym.

When the money situation eases off, I can go back to formal training. Until then, I gotta make do.

Kelly Link is My Secret Girlfriend

"I'd really love to read slush for Analog."

Buy her latest short story collection. She rocks the house.

Workaday, Workadoo

I've started getting myself familiar with some very basic Arabic.

It's a fun little exercise. Arabic is a neat language to write. The biggest gripe I've got so far is the right-to-left reading and writing bit.

It's a bitch.

But very pretty.

Just a Little Off

Went to post another excerpt of God's War, and realized something in this section is really off. Raine needs to be scarier, the escape needs to be tougher, and the dialogue's really... off.

Need to re-tool.

So it goes.

Another Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood

And, it keeps going... (good for Chris for getting back on topic).

Here's an interesting study via BFB about dieting and dying younger.

And my question is, why was the firearm unused? These were obviously not native Alaskans. Bears will kill you. In Alaska, there are bears. They are big. They will eat you. I promise.

Editor's Note

I prefer House of Flying Daggers to Hero.

Of course, knowing my subject interest, this isn't really surprising...

Fucktards

Just... fucktards.

I'm baffled that the way I speak and write freaks out so many people.

This is me. This is what I have. Why is it that men get more wiggle room to be assholes than women do?

Men make careers out of being assholes.

I can't even use the word "fuck" in polite conversation without being lambasted (by men and women) for being "angry" and "white."

WTF?

My Horoscope, According to The Onion

LeGuin (Jan. 3—Mar. 14)Your attempt to build a peaceful, agrarian matriarchy in the former northern-Californian archipelago fails miserably when the thousands of cat-fights breaking out amongst the basket-weaving lodgers are traced back to overexposure to winsome folk music.

This is Getting Old!

Showed the apartment again today.

It's a really fucking great apartment. Rent the damn thing already, OK?

2 bedrooms, hardwood floors, great neighborhood, huge kitchen, 1K a month, coin laundry in the basement, brownstone walkup.

C'mon already, OK?

Virtual Kung-Fu

Oh, Sweet. Sign me up:

Kickass Kung Fu: Like Dance Dance Revolution for martial artists

Kickass Kung Fu is a video-game in which you use real martial-arts moves to control an on-screen kung-fu fighter in order to best both human and AI opponents.

Whooot! Blogger's Got a New Way to Upload Pics

Firefly is going to Kick Ass. Zoe is fucking awesome.

Just wanted to say that.

Friday Beer Blogging: It Ain't No Negra Modelo

Was hankering for a beer last night, but stopping at the local liquor joint, I found that they didn't have any of my Negra Modelo. I never nearly didn't bother getting anything at all, but a buddy of mine has a husband who's a beer snob, and he'd recommended a couple other beers. I snagged a six pack of one that looked like something from his list, and bought.

Yuck.

It ain't no Negra Modelo.

What a Sorry State of Affairs

According to my paystub, my "base rate" is $3265.83 per month. I never actually *make* this much money, of course, cause I usually don't bother coming in 40 hours a week, and taxes are harsh (hey, I'm used to taxes in Fairbanks, Alaska - i.e. the government pays *you*), and they automatically take out 3% and put it into my 401(K) plan.

Where, exactly, does all this money go?

Truly one of the great questions of the universe.

Sweeeeeeet

I have finally squared the bills with my roommate. I only owe her $38 now, which'll get paid off with the rest of the bills next month (the total at one point was $1338.19 or something like that).

Whew. It was getting wacky there for awhile.

When you have too much fun, the bills start piling up....

They Fight Crime!!

It just seems like the right time to link to this again... I'm hip-deep in writing a bounty hunter novel, afterall.

They Fight Crime!

Walnuts.

I don't like walnuts.

Worst Books Ever

John Rickards submits his candidate.

My submission?

Why, my favorite Clarion-buddies Read Aloud, of course!

In the Shadow of Omen by Steven Burgauer

Oh yea, baby.

Here's the digs:

A first-rate adventure set in a time when Mars is caught in the throes of early colonization. A feisty young woman must battle not only the untamed Martian wilderness, but a powerful corporation as well. To prove herself she must scale the tallest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons. O.Mons to some, Omen to others, it becomes a symbol for all the mountains mankind must yet climb to conquer space!

The Year 2433: For ten thousand years every gulag had been the same. The same drawn faces. The same haunting vacant stares. The same cold-blooded, unfeeling guards. The same tools for inflicting pain. It was in this godless place called a gulag that the line between humanity and inhumanity blurred, that the basest of animal instincts revealed themselves, that people learned how much agony they could endure before they folded.

Now comes Carina Matthews. Rebellious. Feisty. Intelligent. And her crime? Upsetting the status quo. Oh, the arrogance of it all!

Oh, the arrogance of it all! To publish your own SHITTY FUCKING NOVEL!!!

I don't have a copy here with me, but let's just say that the particularly fun passages to read aloud are the info dumps about agriculture on Mars, the female protagonist's "sharp breasts poking" into a guy's back, and the oh-so-marvelous Padme-like birthing scene. The sex scenes are a riot. It feels like a book written by a guy who's never had decent sex in his life.

Highly entertaining for those drunken Con readings.

Here are some great Amazon reviews:

If I could have given a zero-star review for this book, I would have. This is dreck on the level of Newt Gingrich's "1945". Mr. Burgauer should hire a good copy editor, at the very least. At the most, he should stick to his business books. - reader

Congratulations Mr. Burgauer, you just got the first one star review I've ever given! Thank you for the excellent recipe for llama sausage given in such exhausting detail mid-book! Thank you for revealing, showing, and writing down the contents of your thesaures at every chance, opportunity, or possibility! Thank you for so clearly illustrating the endless literary uses of the generally underused exclamation point! Thank you for the multitude of sex scenes in which portions of the female anatomy are proved to not only have independant motion, but apparently minds of their own! Think of the endless fun I've been missing by not knowing such little tidbits about my own anatomy! - kangarex

Talley-ho!!

Your Books Don't Make Sense To Me So We Don't Need Them

Dumb questions like this always fuck me off:

Do we need gender exploration books any more? Do they have anything left to say to us?

Oh, sweet fucking fuck.

My response:
---------------------------------

Is this a rhetorical question?

I assume the primary writer being evoked with the statement "how rotten the world is because it has men in it," likely refers to Joanna Russ (of course, there's the famous Tiptree line from The Women Men Don't See "Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see.", so I suppose Tiptree must have been one of those man-haters, too, right? Or maybe she just foresaw a neoconservative American future. Not too far off the mark, some might one day say), in which case, I don't know that a fair reading of Russ has been had, but one interpreted by a biased (likely male - oh yea, I'm making assumptions) reader who was so offended about all of the complaints women had about how they were treated (by men and other women) that he got offended and threw the book across the room.

And I'd argue that "gender exploration" was "new" in the 70s, not the 80s. "The Left Hand of Darkness" came out in 1969/1970. The 80s was the era of Heinlein, in which women were great fuckbuddies ideal for covorting with men in multiple parings, but cardboard in the actual character as living-breathing-human sense.

Safe light, I absolutely agree that it'd be cool to see more people (men & women) exploring issues relating to masculinity as well - "gender" is *not* the synonym for "women" that so many people appear to think it is. When we talk about "exploring gender" and "gender cliches" it shouldn't be confined to "cliches about women."

There are a shitload of cliches and social mores ascribed to men as well, and I've met a shitload of men who find those roles incredibly stifling and don't believe that they fit into them at all.

Widmanstatten - I don't think that in the realm of SF, the nature vs. nurture debate we're always in the process of screaming about has much relevance. What I want to read are those writers who are able to push past current debate and go, "Well, fuck it. What if things were really different?"

What bone-headed Summers has to same about my ability to put 2 & 2 together because I have a uterus would be incredibly dull to put into a current SF story.

Why?

Cause that's right now. Cause that's the world I already live in. I already live in a place where fucktards make assumptions about who I am and what I can do based on the fact that I bleed once a month.

I've already seen these ideas about what the sex of a person means in regards to their social role in this society. I fucking live it every day. I've been told my womb makes me stupid a hundred thousand times from a hundred thousand different blowhards.

And it bores me.

I want somebody to think outside the box (and, as David pointed out, there are indeed writers who do this, and there's a great starting list there); I don't want to hear the same boring arguments about how men are "naturally" rapists and killers and women are "naturally" passive nurturers.

SF/F drew me because when I was younger I realized it was the best place to really explore how things could be different, the place where you could say, "Sure, things are this way now, but what would have to change/be conceptualized differently for things to *not* be this way?"

*That's* the challenge, that's the allure of the genre for me, taking me somewhere new where people can express themselves in alternate ways, where society can be shaped differently, where biology does *not* equal destiny... and never did.

That's why I love this genre, and that's why there will *always* be a place in SF for questioning what makes us human, and how our bodies and societies can transcend these rigidly defined categories: women and men, that aren't rigid at all in actual practice.

If you're not finding anything that challenges that, you've either not looked over the Tiptree selections, or there are not enough people writing it who are being published mainstream. In which case, there's either a dearth of writers thinking outside the box (a bit doubtful) or editors who aren't seeing something that speaks to them (true, though if you're looking for a place for your gender-bending, we've got Strange Horizons for that, in which case you can't blame your subject matter for rejections, only the quality of your story :) ).

Yea, we need more genderbending fiction, but it also may need a better marketing strategy -

Stories that fly too far outside the box often freak publishers out, because there's a deep fear that there's no market for it.

My suggestion?

Market it to women. Try tearing off the 14-year-old white male audience template and pushing the idea that SF/F is where you're gonna get to live outside the world of Larry Summers and the "girls are physically and mentally weak" world and enter, say, Buffyland.

Wow. That just might work (ha ha).

You may even interest a shitload of aforementioned guys who live outside the boxes, too.

But for better or worse, there's a reason that much of SF/F (some of the bestselling stuff) is considered a comfort food. It's conservative. It's token. It's Heinlein giving us polyamory but populating his work with female stick figures.

It reassures old ideals about what everybody's place is, and how the world works.

It's a dangerous place for a gosh-wow genre to be.

So, fuck it, what do gender-bending books and stories of the non-comfort kind have to say to us?

The same thing they said to Joanna Russ, the reason she started writing it:

"Things can be really different."

Yes, I'm Overprotective

Had a dream last night where Jenn's SO was being held at knifepoint. Jenn (all 5'2 120 lbs of her) was trying to talk the guy down.

I ran up, distracted him, and Jenn threw a front-leg roundhouse to the guy's knees and felled him, her SO got out of the way, and I tackled the guy from behind and twisted his arms behind his back until the police came.

At some point, I got my wallet stolen somehow, but it was OK because I only had $9 in my bank account, no credit card, and I don't carry cash, so we were the winners all around....

Fat-Friendly Events

BFB is having a bowling event here in Chicago on Saturday, and other fat-friendly events are going on all over...

It is just one of many social and athletic get-togethers that Ms. Bellemore's network and other groups like it organize around the country to allow the very overweight to mingle in a climate of tolerance. The events are meant to encourage people to get out and meet one another, to transform their shame into confidence and to accept themselves as they are, not as others would have them be.

As Sandy Schaffer, the director of the New York chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, put it, "Why allow somebody to say, 'You can't do this until you lose weight'?"

Some people have found it interesting that I identify so heavily with the whole "fat acceptance" gig.

I've had a friend or two say, "But Kameron, you're not obese."

Surprise:

I'm 5'9, 210 lbs or so, and a big, substantial woman in the big, substantial woman sense: my shoulders are as wide as my hips. My lowest weight post-puberty was 175/180 lbs, when I was working out six days a week, sometimes twice a day, and living mainly on brown rice and eggs. My sister told me I was looking "really skinny." (?) What these whole "5'2 200 lbs" descriptions never seem to take into account is how well that person holds themselves at that weight, what their workout and eating schedule is like, and how they maintain their time.

And guess what? According to the ridiculous BMI we're using, I'm obese.

Just like Brad Pitt.

Lucky me!

And I can jog three miles and until a few months ago was engaged in regular boxing classes.

And guess what's even more:

At my "lowest weight" of 175?

Still overweight by BMI standards!

What incredible fucking useless fucking bullshit crap.

A lot of us have to monitor everything we eat just to stay at 200 lbs. Unless you want to get into starvation mode or major work-out mode (yea, I could do this in college. With 15 hours of commute time a week, it's not feasible at the moment), and starving, for me, means sleeping a lot. And you know what? Missing out on my life cause I'm sleeping all the time just ain't worth fitting into a size 10 (in fact, unless I start taking the boxing seriously and do about 3 hours of training a day, I don't think I'll ever be a size 10. I've never been a size 10. Post-puberty, my comfort level is a 12, and that's a tough size for me to stay at).

My journey the last two years has been one of getting my binge-eating under control, which I've very nearly successfully done. It was a crazy, fucked-up, freak-out sort of behavior that I engaged in when I was stressed out and pissed off because I wasn't fitting into the "right" size of clothes, because I viewed myself as too big and too unfeminine, and believed everyone thought I was a fat, ugly, useless slob.

Binge-eating is a great cyclical sort of problem...

So I have some experience in the realm of self-acceptance and learning to break the binge/diet cycle through the realization that being big and intimidating can be...

Really cool.

The trick, for me, is finding the power in my size, and working to build muscle mass, which I view as very useful weight.

I have up and down cycles: as mentioned, I've gone soft and doughy again, and I'm irritated about that, because exercise makes me feel a whole lot better in my skin. I make it a point not to eat shit food during the week, but if they've got bagels at work, I might have some. If we're celebrating and ordering Thai food, I'm totally in. When B's over, we have pancakes with enough lite syrup to drown a small navy.

Food's not the enemy, it's just that there are certain times for certain things, and hating myself by gorging is a terrible form of punishing my body because it's not "right" or "perfect." Like everything else in my life, it is what it is.

What I've realized is that my body goes through cycles, and it also has a pretty "high" set point and comfort zone, and I need to respect that, and respecting that also means respecting myself enough to give myself the right sort of fuel to get through the day, and through workouts.

I'm not here to get down to a place where I can fit into clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch, though that would be nice...

I'm just getting to the point where I realize it's not my body that's all wrong - it's Abercrombie & Fitch.

And if the A&F wearers are going to roll their eyes at me cause they're so hungry and I'm not, I'd far prefer to be in a crowd of equally non-hungry people who are out to have an actual good time instead of sitting around punishing themselves for not being a size 00.

I have more important things to do than play the who-can-eat-less-and-still-function-game.

It's cool to be around people who feel the same way.

These Old Boy Writers Always Baffle Me

I mean, really.

Today's Research Topic: Hysterectomies

I love being a writer. You learn so many interesting things...

You Did *Not* Just Say That...

In response to Danica Patrick's strong finish at the Indy 500: "You know, I have this wonderful idea... women should be dressed in white, like all other domestic appliances."

What century am I living in?

(thanks, B)

The Onion: 2056

People are cool.

(thanks Jenn)

Bloody Wednesday

Ug. I need to take some iron...

Gosh, What a Great Out!

But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.

It's not my fault that I don't obey laws and I think black people are evil and I rape women and don't believe in taxes, your Honor...

...it's all biology.

I find these sorts of studies really insulting. Like the kind telling me that because I'm a woman, I'm naturally inclined to build nests, burst into tears, and unable to learn how to defend myself.

"As long as there are entrenched social and political distinctions between sexes, races or classes, there will be forms of science whose main function is to rationalize and legitimize these distinctions."

- Elizabeth Fee

I Am Confused

Why are donut shops producing donuts that are twice the size of usual donuts?

To what purpose?

An extra 500 calories for those of us who are American desk jockeys?

Getting Back Into It

So, I've started to go soft and doughy, like cookies. Like cookie dough, which I've decided is a very Buffy-appropriate way to describe my state post-MA school.

My morning weight routine has been spotty, and what it really needs is a dynamic overhaul. Every six months or so, it's good to just change the whole thing out and do different exercises. Also, my pushups count is ridiculously low, and I need to get it back up to 50. Currently, I'm not even at a continuous 30. I'm at more like, uh... 20. On a good day.

I told you: it's sad.

There's also the big issue of figuring out a good gym for me. The MA school wiped me out, moneywise, and with things so tight, I need to find a place that offers some boxing or kickboxing classes, pilates, and access to regular cardio machines so I can get back to a regular workout schedule. I miss it, and not just for the not-being-soft-and-doughy part. The endorphin rush at the end of the day is always a pleasure.

And, to be honest, I just feel stonger and more confident when I've got some classes under my belt for the week.

And, to be honest...

I really miss beating the shit out of stuff.

The solution to that may be to get a punching bag and just keep it on our back porch and head out there whenever I'm pissed to burn off some energy. I've still got my handwraps, and I think it would really be good for me.

In the meantime, I'm getting back to my lunch hour power walking routine, which bit it here during those 90+ days we had. Walking outside was like moving into an oven, and I've been lax about it. Time to get back on the ball.

What is this "Relationship" Nonsense You Speak Of?

I realize I've been pretty quiet on the personal front lately. This mostly has to do with the fact that I've spent the last four months hashing out a relationship of the more-than-friendly kind after six years without.

It's weird. See, I'm not one of those people who has to be attached at the hip with somebody else all of the time. I was waiting around for something that felt right. When that failed, I figured I'd spend the summer going on casual dates and getting to know new people, because I realized it was a shame to waste a sex drive like mine.

Then I bumped into B, and things all sort of went upsidedown and backwards. I mean, here was this guy who's mom was the president of the local chapter of NOW for four years, who spoke in feminist language, who kept a sports blog, who followed boxing, who had the entire collection of Doctor Who tapes and DVDs, who was passionately involved in pursuing a career in Counseling Psychology, knew how to bang out a fucking fantastic furl of writing on a wide variety of topics, and loved people watching and history just as much as I did.

It was completely baffling.

The first night we spent in bed together, we spent most of our time just looking at each other.

It was like we were both going, "I can't believe you exist."

But that whole, "Ohhhhh he was so great!!!!" thing doesn't mean everything's been perfect and easy and a fucking cake walk.

No, no. We both bring our own stuff to the relationship, and it's become abundantly clear to me that my ideas about what constitutes a romantic relationship are pretty pessimistic and flawed. I've seen relationships as the enemy, the one thing that'll finally bring me down, halt my life, turn me backward into all the awful things I never want to be. My first time around was fine and normal so far as highschool relationships go at the start, and then it exploded into my worst nightmare at the end, so I didn't exactly have a great template. I've spent most of my life being told that boys were only out for sex, that they never really cared about you, that they were selfish and only wanted one thing and they would fuck you and dump you (and that was something, of course, that you really didn't want, you know, the casual fucking part ha aha ).

I solved that problem by having a lot of guy "friends" who I just didn't sleep with. I enjoyed thinking of my friends as people instead of the Evil Other, and being friends made that a shitload easier.

The more it becomes clear that my current relationship is a keeper, that I really adore this guy and really, truly, he adores me, the scary and wackier it's been for me, because I keep waiting for it to all go to shit, and I start picking it all apart and saying, "Aha! But it's *not perfect*!! That must mean it's doomed! I should end it now before it's too late and I gain 70lbs and have no money!"

Well, no, no relationship is perfect. Nothing is perfect. The question is do you trust and respect and adore each other?

Of course we do.

But you know what, that's damn scary.

That's damn scary because to some extent that's what I feel I've been running from in fear and yet desiring all along: I love having buddies, I enjoy having a great run of people, and having a true partner is the coolest thing ever. Negotiating that partnership is a shitload more work that I could ever imagine, but ultimately incredibly rewarding.

I don't know how long our run will be, but I have high hopes. We both adore each other, and we're stubborn talkers and both very big on compromise without self-sacrifice.

It's a tough road. I'm on it.

We'll see where it goes.

Choose Your Own Choose Your Own Adventure

Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure.

Don't like the options they give you? Write-in your own.

History of the Starbucks Logo

She was originally a bawdy two-tailed mermaid with accessible sexual goodies and a beer belly.



Who would have guessed?

I really must get to the original Starbucks next time I'm in Seattle.

(via boingboing)

Looks Like A Good One...

With its explicit descriptions of lovemaking, the book has been compared to Marguerite Duras's coming-of-age novel, "The Lover," and to Catherine Millet's more recent confessional essay, "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." Yet in this case the feisty 40-something North African author who goes by the name of Nedjma appears to have been motivated by more than a desire to titillate.

Rather, she explained in a recent conversation here to coincide with Grove Press's publication of the novel in the United States this month, by portraying a woman enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, she wanted both to celebrate the body as an expression of life and to strike a blow against the centuries-old repression of Muslim women.

Why Aren't you Wearing Your Pink Triangle So We Can Put You in the Gulag?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

What's `at, Huh?

Yea, I'm awake.

I think.

"The Bounty's on Me."

Faleen is not a border city.

I love what I do.

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:

The Housewife

The Marxist

The Liberal

The Liberal Extremist

The Gender Abolitionist

The Radical

The Gender-Liberal

The Revisionist

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.

Song for the Day, Stuck on Repeat

Mr Brightside by the Killers

Today's Advice:

Be a Pirate today, The Law is coming Tomorrow!

(via Lysha)

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.

Brutal Women: There's More Than One Way to Fight Back

Last fall I wrote about Mukhtaran Bibi, a woman who was sentenced by a tribal council in Pakistan to be gang-raped because of an infraction supposedly committed by her brother. Four men raped Ms. Mukhtaran, then village leaders forced her to walk home nearly naked in front of a jeering crowd of 300.

Ms. Mukhtaran was supposed to have committed suicide. Instead, with the backing of a local Islamic leader, she fought back and testified against her persecutors. Six were convicted.

Then Ms. Mukhtaran, who believed that the best way to overcome such abuses was through better education, used her compensation money to start two schools in her village, one for boys and the other for girls. She went out of her way to enroll the children of her attackers in the schools, showing that she bore no grudges.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Friday Beer Blogging

Oh yea.

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.