IUD Update

I finally got around to getting my 3-month-post-IUD-insertion checkup at PP (Dear PP, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...).

There's some pre-menstrual discharge for about four days before my period, I still bleed for 7 days, but only two of those are freaky. The cramps aren't fun, particularly for somebody who never really had any menstrual cramps before and used to laugh and point at other women who ran for a heating pad once a month and popped Motrin like candy.

Oh, karma's a bitch.

But I don't have to worry about taking a pill. My appetite and hence, my waistline, have not gone wild. I don't have to worry about picking up or paying for pills (and I don't have to worry about a pharmacist not giving them to me).

Best of all, there's non of that agonizing depression that draped a gray guaze between the part of my brain that wanted to do things and the part of my brain that actually did them. Just getting out of bed, basic functioning, grocery shopping, was really, really tough.

And did I mention that my sex drive's back? Oh, sex drive, how I have missed you, let me count the ways...

I'm not going to recommend the IUD, because it's got its own set of problems. Since I haven't had a kid, my IUD is a tight fit, which means I mostly sleep on my right side now because when I do get a dull aching pain, it's usually on the left side (my gyno says this is pretty normal. Any pain that's manageable with Motrin is pretty normal). And when I'm on my period, it's a pinching pain, usually but not always on the left side. Not happy, but manageable.

And, of course, there's the blood issue. I've successfully managed to get up, go to work, hit the gym, and get home no problem while bleeding like a sacrificial lamb, so it's not crippling or anything, but it's not a "Yay! Fun!" sort of thing, and the first time you have those heavy days, it's pretty freaky.

So if you're not good with blood and pain, you'll need to find another option.

But if you're good with blood and pain and looking for something besides the pill, something you can put in and not worry about or pay for month-to-month, and you're looking to keep your waistline and your sex drive (after the first month. The first month is a bitch. You really don't want anyone to even touch you for, like, the first week), then it's certainly an option.

I'm told that it should further settle down over the next year, and hopefully the periods will get a little lighter and/or last fewer days. Pretty much every month that goes by, there's less pain during the period and a longer window where I don't feel anything at all, really, except an occasional fluttering.

So I'm back to functioning, but it wasn't a pleasant trip.

It's pretty much what all the literature says it is: hell for the first month, and settling in for the next two, so that after your third period, you're pretty well situated.

If you're going to do it, make it a month where you don't have a lot of shit to do.

That was a crappy month.

Women Aren't Adults, They're Minors: But Don't Worry! The Government Knows What's Best

Even if it were true that birth control leads to promiscuity, what business is that of the state of Wisconsin? College students are adults.

Nope. You can go fight and die and kill other people for your country, but go off and have sex and or get raped and you're screwed! Literally! No b/c for you, slut!

Welcome to Iran.

On Being Strong

So, I've been getting back to the gym now, after four or five months off. I was never an athletic person, and I always thought of myself as the resident Fat Girl at school (this wasn't so true once I hit high school, but my self-image was already set by then), so when I go to the gym, I'm still pretty self conscious. I try not to look at the women around me and compare myself, but shit like that happens. I mean, when everybody's (OK, when all of the *women*) are skinnier and hence more "socially acceptable" than you are, you tend to get a little ancy.

I do about forty minutes of cardio, and I don't kill myself doing it. There are Super Women who run full tilt for an hour on the treadmill or beat themselves up on the elliptical machine like it's a torture device, but I like to pace myself. I don't want to fall off the elliptical when I'm done.

So if you were to see me and one of these thin racer-women side-by-side on the elliptical, I'd look like I was behind, not as tough, not as healthy, not as strong. I mean, after all, look at her go!

That is, until you get us both to the weights.

It's something I noticed at the martial arts school as well when we'd do free weight and punching bag rounds. I took dumbbells in equal or greater weight to the ones the women who'd been there for years took. I thought it was interesting.

Then I started here on these weight machines, and you can use the pin to select what weight you want, so you can track what the person ahead of you was lifting, and I started to clock what everybody else was lifting. There were women who left the pin at 5 or 15 pounds for the upper body exercises. The heaviest weight I saw a woman clock in was 35 lbs.

I was doing a minimum of 45, and that was when I was doing the lift-over-your-head stuff. For the rest, it was 55-65. And for the legs? 90 lbs minimum, up to 115/120. the only other woman I saw do over 100 lbs for the leg weights was bigger than me set everything on a really high weight and only did 5-10 reps, one set.

And I'm thinking, what the hell is up with the lifting weights thing?

I don't think women in general can only lift 15-35 lbs. I just don't buy it. So what gives? Is it just a matter of doing it for years without increasing the weight? Why?

I know there are a lot of women who fear "bulking up" like a guy. The thing is, unless you've got a big dose of above-average testoserone, you likely won't do this unless you're expressly training for it and taking supplements. Instead, you'll likely condense. Muscles get denser, not bigger, if you don't have a ton of testoserone. That's what happened to me after six months or so of martial arts classes. My biceps got to a certain size, and then just stared getting denser and harder.

So, lifting more than 15 lbs isn't going to turn you into Arnold Swartzenegger.

What gives? Are women afraid of being strong? Or are the weights really not the priority, since we're all *really* just at the gym to get *thin*? And is there really such a push to be thin that we'll give up being strong to get it?

Because let me tell you, being strong is really fucking useful when your roommate and her SO are out of town and you have to move your entire household (including the goddamn fucking air conditioner) up two flights of stairs. It's also really useful when you're getting harrassed on the train or on the street. It gives you a confidence you didn't have before, and in fact, you'll likely get harrassed *less* because of that newfound confidence (yes, I've been harrassed far, far, less since I took up the MA classes and learned the boxer's walk).

So why keep lifting 15 pounds? Cause you think you can't lift any more? Cause you're thinking, "What's the point?"

At work, I sit in a cubicle immediately behind the receptionist. It took her almost a year to realize that she didn't need to call one of the guys from the back to haul around boxes for her. The sad part was when she brought me over to haul a box that weighed less than 20 lbs.

Fucking Phone

Our phone's still out. And I collapsed yesterday after grocery shopping and putting the last bed together, so the liquor cabinet contents are still downstairs.

Sad. Lord knows I need the liquor upstairs...

Also, I tried to go grocery shopping yesterday, and realized I'd overspent myself for yet another month, and my bank card gave me a "not authorized" message. I'm not sure how this happened. I was doing grandly this month.

Shit, what am I saying? This is me. If I actually had money in the bank on payday, I'd be somebody else entirely.

Tired, Tired, Tired, Tired

Was up until midnight last night moving shit upstairs. Do you have any idea how heavy a goddamn air conditioner is? That thing was a fucking bitch.

Still, we're at about 98% moved. What we have left:

1 bookshelf
1 floor rug
100 lbs worth of free weights (ah, yes, me and my free weights)
A handful of unwashed dishes
The contents of the liquor cabinet
My roommate's clothes
2 of my roommate's small shelves
Everything sitting on the back porch

Then I need to put together my roomates' bed, replace some lightbulbs, and clean the entirety of the old apartment at some point.

Damn, I'm tired.

But hey, we've got air conditioning.

Take care of the luxeries and the details will take care of themselves...

The Problem with Flickr

The problem with trying to host images with Flickr is that they only give you two or three sizes of the appropriate sort, one too big, one too small.

Crappy. Need to host elsewhere.

This Logo is a Work In Progress

Teaching myself Photoshop here at work. The logo's a work in progress. I'm having oodles of fun over here, so watch for changes and logo clean-up.

Santorum On the Daily Show

Whu-pah.

I'm so confused at how guys like Santorum can say this stuff with a straight (ha ha) face. It's a step away from saying people who have sex with people of the same sex aren't actual people, they're fake people. I find it incredibly surreal.

I don't know how long people can just nod along with the crap before they start realizing what's actually being said. I'm waiting for the Great Masses (the 52%) to wake up and go, "Hey, wait a minute! That makes no sense!" Read the rest:

Santorum: No, no. Again, what's society's purpose in marriage? Society's purpose - the reasons civilizations have held up marriage is because they want to establish and support and secure the relationship that is in the best interest of the future of the society, which is, a man and a woman having children and providing the stability for those children to be raised in the future.

Stewart: Wouldn't you say though and with that same thing and I completely agree, although I always thought the purpose of marriage was a bachelor party but that's beside the point. (laughter) But wouldn't you say that society has an interest in understanding that the homosexual community also wants to form those same bonds and raise children and wouldn't a monogamous, good-hearted, virtuous homosexual couple be in society's best interest raising a child rather than a heterosexual couple with adultery, with alcohol issues, with other things, and by the way, I don't even need to make that sound as though a gay couple can only raise a child given failures in other couples.

Proving It's All Just the Same Shit

Oh, the shock, oh the horror.

I bet that without the manly label, it would have cost 50 cents more.

I'm Not Sure Why I Find This So Cool. But It's Cool.

Condensation clouds:



















The clouds appear for the same reason that clouds always form, namely, that the air has cooled to the point that the ambient water vapor condenses. Flows around bodies and wings always change the temperature and pressure of the fluid. It is well known that lift is caused by pressure differences on top or bottom of a wing or body so that it ought to be obvious that the pressure varies from point to point in a flow around an object. The fact that the temperature changes can be seen by noting that most fluid flows and nearly every aerodynamic flow are frictionless. In the language of thermodynamics, the flow is said to be reversible or loss-free. Read More

Gallery.

(via boingboing)

Looking for a Toilet?

You know those annoying communting days when you're stuck on a train platform and wishing to hell you knew of a public toilet that was open that early in the morning? Or, have you ever been a tourist stuck in the middle of a tourist trap, wondering how the hell to navigate through the hawkers to find a public toilet?

Well, if you live or travel through Australia, no worries (mate - oh, god, I had to say it!). Much like a useful transit map, Australia's got a Public Toilet Map.

No shit (I'm in a mood this morning, gee).

(via justine)

Signs You've Stayed Too Long At Your Job

Should I feel bad that I pretty much have experienced all of these? Put a star by the one about getting angrier...

You have a lot on your mind, just not work. The work doesn't challenge you and time hangs. "Boredom is a big factor," Hollander said. "When it's just a job, it's time to leave."

Things change, not to your advantage. The boss you got along with so well leaves, or worse, takes on a new favorite employee. Eventually that person gets layered in above you on the corporate ladder, intercepting your access to the boss, taking over plum projects and moving you out of the decision-making loop.

Hollander describes this as "death by a thousand cuts." The change is subtle at first, but your loss of status compounds over time.

Your boss takes you for granted. You do something well and you get pigeonholed as the company expert in that area. Or you're no longer seen as having potential for new projects. Or, just as bad, you're known as the good corporate citizen who'll do whatever you're asked – including relocating multiple times.

You pigeonhole yourself. Hollander knows top performers who stay at their jobs because they don't believe they could succeed elsewhere. "The longer you're at a place, the more you think your success depends on your environment," she said. Or you lose confidence that you can do anything else.

Your mood ranges from angry to angrier. No matter how well-regarded your work is or once was, if you develop a reputation as a depressing crank, colleagues will distance themselves. And that isolation can make you more vulnerable in a layoff.

You feel like hell. Unhappiness can undermine your health, said Paul Spector, professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of South Florida. Early signs of excess stress: stomachaches, headaches and insomnia.

(thanks, B)

Ah, Yes. I Remember This Feeling

With regular gym workouts comes, once again, regular aches and pains. When I first started taking martial arts classes, I was sore for three months.

No kidding.

Let's hope the recovery's quicker this time.

In any case, hot damn, it's nice to be moving again. I really like being strong. I've missed this.

Rape Spam Rant

As a woman who travels a lot and has well meaning parents, I get these "you should be scared shitless!" e-mails all the time, you know:

I allude to those rape-avoidance-tips emails, the kind written by “the police department” and sent by your well-meaning friend, warning you to always look under your car for attackers (or up in the trees for ninja attackers!), and to stroll around town with your keys sticking out of your white-knuckled fist.

You remember these ones, eh?

Luckily, Twisty ranted about it, so I don't have to:

The subtext [of rape spam], of course, is:

“You should be scared shitless! You were born female, and rotten luck that is, because that means you are pretty much there for the taking whenever the fancy strikes, and nothing you can do will actually prevent some psycho shitbag from sexually assaulting you, and we really can’t help you by doing anything that will actually make a difference--like giving stiffer sentences to sex offenders or castrating known rapists with jagged bits of metal or suggesting to boys that a woman is not obligated to screw them just because she smiled at'em--so, just to make sure you feel like the entirely powerless speck of dirt you are, here are a few half-assed tricks we all know don’t work--like, 'practice screaming into your pillow,' or 'never go out alone'--but probably you ought to just be too scared to ever leave the house again, even though rape is most likely to occur in your own home by some fucktard you already know. Oh well! That’s the good old patriarchy, the social system of misogynist barbarians! Sucks to be you!“

Yeah.

And I must say, I'm very happy to see the increasing use of the word "fucktard" around the net.... It's just such a useful word for so many, well, fucktards.

Why Are There So Many Tampons in Our House?

Why are there so many tampons in our house? I was digging around for more pads in our bathroom cabinet this morning, trying to clear space around the boxes and boxes of tampons tumbling out of the cabinet and spilling onto the floor. Why are there so many tampons in our house? I don't use them. My roommate hardly ever uses them. Yet we have amassed 4-5 boxes of tampons and have no pads left but the diaper-like overnights.

Alas, terrorist bombings have not yet reached Chicago (knock on wood), so it's not like we've got any local wounds to staunch, either. But I suppose we'll be prepared, in any case.

Why are there so many tampons in our house?

I need some more coffee.

An Open Letter to Viagra Guy

Do you really need to listen to sports scores and track the minute by minute countdown (from 60 minutes) of the shuttle launch on the speakers of your computer without using headphones and then narrate your experiece for the rest of us at 8 o'clock in the morning when some of us, who require 8-10 hours of sleep, only got 6 last night because their landlady was showing the apartment until 9 o'clock at night and me and my roommate went out to see a movie?

Do you need to comment on every drawing that comes back from Jonas and tell us how hard and tough it is cause he's such a stickler for actually making sure you get the drawing right? Do you have to sit in this shared space (there are four of us in here) and call you pharmacist for more Viagra prescriptions and haggle with your credit card company about late charges and tell us all about how tough it's going to be for you to get to the bank after work, like the rest of us don't have lives, too? Can you do this on your lunch break, or outside from your cell phone? Are you just a closet exhibitionist who gets off on that sort of thing, intruding on the personal spacing-out of others that gets them through their work days?

I despise sitting back here. I can't fucking wait until these goddamn uploads are done and I can disconnect from this T-1 connection.

I Hate My Job, Monday Edition

The coffeemaker at work is broken.

You'd think this would be enough tragedy for one day. I'm stuck here in the back of the office with a bunch of architect temps, including Viagra Guy, who felt it neccessary to call his pharmacist from work and request that they give him more Viagra pills because, "I have more activity than other people." He also just talks a lot in general about things like the weather, droughts, and local sporting events. He bores the crap out of me. I keep my headphones on and the music loud and ignore him as best as possible.

I've been stuck here in the back because we have a lot of uploading to do, and we have a cable connection back here, so I'm uploading from two computers a laptop and a desktop. I hate this job. I hate the repetition. This isn't even my goddamn project, it's someone else's, and yet, *I'm* the one stuck on two computers? What the fuck is up with that? The laptop is now giving me shit this morning, and I have to keep restarting it. I'm irritated at work, I hate this job.

I spent all weekend packing and moving stuff up to the 3rd floor apartment. Me and Jenn had a short window on Friday, and were hauling stuff up two flights of stairs in 90+ degree heat until nine at night. All in all, I'm happy about the move and love the upstairs space, but I'm ready to just get all that shit done. Hopefully the current tenant will move out a littl early and I can haul more stuff up during the week. B will be in town this weekend to help.

And let me tell you, 1642 books is all well and good until you have to pack them up and haul them box by bloody fucking box up two flights of stairs. We hauled about 1500 books on Friday.

To help alleviate some of this stress, I've finally joined a gym again, a much more local one, that's got kickboxing and pilates classes as well. That's a big load off my mind. I've been missing gym work, and I know that's been seriously wearing on me these last few months.

I'm also bleeding like a fucking lamb at the block, but hey, I'm bleeding. Got my follow-up PP appointment on Friday, which'll be nice. Still happy with the IUD; when I look at my other options (weight gain, depression, mood swings) compared to these ones (blood and pain), the blood and pain really isn't so bad. Motrin works wonders.

I'm behind on a lot of other stuff (writing, reading, Arabic), but I've been so stressed out this last week I just really don't care. This week, of course, I'll need to start caring, and particularly once the move is finished, things need to get back on track.

Ce la vie.

It's the Weekend

::collapse::

Beer... beeeeerr... must... have.... beeeeeerrrrr....

Am I Fat Or Sexy? (Implying One Can't Be Both?)

Interesting experiment by Marie Claire magazine:

We photographed a gorgeous, size-14 model in a neutral pose and made the unretouched photos into two mobile billboards. Then we gave each billboard a vastly different message: one confident ("I think I'm sexy. Do you?"), one unsure ("I think I'm fat. Do you?"). We asked everyone who saw these billboards to visit MarieClaire.com and tell us what they thought. Here's how 4,000 people reacted.

Is it the Weekend Yet?

No? No?

Someone called the house this morning at 5am - THREE TIMES. Finally, on the third call, someone with a slight Irish accent actually replied to my angry "HELLO!!!" and said they'd been trying to fax something three times ("I KNOW!!!" I said), and wasn't this New York?

"No, this is a RESIDENCE in CHICAGO at 5 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING."

Like many Brits, he was deeply apologetic, but my alarm was going off in twenty minutes, and fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

I'm so ready for the weekend. Where are you, Friday?

Thoughts on Roe

If they have the balls to do it, it might go something like this:

1) The legality of abortion will get kicked back to the states, so blue states will have the procedure, some of the bigger red and mostly southern states won't, and I'll be smuggling in terrified pregnant teenagers from Indiana into Illinois and fending off further homegrown terrorists bombing health clinics. We'll have our own underground railroad. How charming.

2) Abortion is totally illegal, and we get 1.9 million more unwanted children every year. This will likely go the way of Prohibition, so we'll have ten years of women dying on tables and in back alleys and trying to self-perform abortions. Ten or twenty thousand dead women a year should do it; get a million real, live women who are now dead and talk about *their* deaths in front of a higher court, and we'll go back to allowing legal abortion. Of course, a lot of women, maybe you, your sister, your wife, your girlfriend, will have to die to get that to happen, but hey, that's politics.

It's not like politics are personal or anything. I mean, after all, this has nothing to do with me, or you, or anybody else.

Just politics.

In the meantime, there's a war on, the country's a bazillion dollars in debt, and most people don't have health care. I'm so glad we've picked something like this to spend all of our time and money on, instead of letting a quite good law continue to provide a quite good service that results in less death and complication than actual pregnancy.

When are we going to go after the real villains? Why am I the terrorist?

Thoughts on Food Addiction

Though I’ve never been a classically small person (which I’m generally OK with), I put on about 70 lbs between the ages of 16 and 18, due mostly, looking back on it, to getting on and then off the pill. Add in some depression (also partly caused by the pill) and a bad relationship, and I ballooned. It was an issue of never-ceasing hunger, the feeling that no matter how much I ate, I was still unsatisfied, still looking for something more and better.

I’d been an overeater before that, but all those triggers at once turned me into a raving lunatic, and that’s the period when my binge eating really took off. At 16, I had a car, and made my own money, so I could run into a convienence store and feed my cravings at all hours. The binges were definitely triggered by high stress, and the overeating was largely pill-based.

What I did to slough off all that excess pill and depression weight quickly so I could move around in my own skin again was to get on the Atkins diet. I lost 40lbs in four months (and kept that off because I’d merely gotten back to my set point anyway) and got up the self-confidence to go ahead and go bike riding several days a week and up my exercise routine in a “fun” way – not thinking of them as workouts, but just days where I’d go out to have fun.

By the time I hit college, I was down a total of 60lbs, and after the first couple months of college, I lost another 10lb and was at my fighting weight of about 175lbs or so. That meant going to the gym 3-6 days a week for 30-60 minutes. By that time, I’d modified my diet so I was eating wheat bread, lots of fruits and veggies, meats of all sorts, and as summer rolled around and I started bike riding a lot, I had no trouble going out for ice cream and pizza once a week.

What I remember most about my time in Alaska is how happy I was, and I know a lot of that had to do with my diet, and all that bike riding. Add that to the fact that I had a boat load of money and not a care in the world, and yea… I was damn happy.

The trouble is that I’ve been raised with bad habits, and during times of high stress, I still haven’t found another way to deal with that stress besides eating. I’ve gotten better in that I don’t binge eat so much anymore (my project for the year), but I’ll still turn to shit food when the going is tough, as I did in South Africa. As I’ve done the last couple of months (though every time I do it, it’s to a lesser and lesser degree. This is a positive sign!).

But I’ve gotten stressed and lazy, and I can’t afford new clothes, so I’ve gotta cut back for a bit to get things under control. When my world is out of control, my eating goes there too, and I have to cut it quick before it becomes an issue again.

I’m cutting my drinking down to a couple beers or some whiskey one night a week, which always helps, and I’m back to reasonable low-carb (brown rice and sweet potatoes are OK), no sugar. I’m on day two of this, and today was the office “bagel break” which turned out to be a heaping tray of danishes.

I hate this place.

The cravings are always the worst the first few days after I’m trying to break my white bread and sugar addiction. I wanted to dive into the whole platter of danishes and spend the rest of the day eating.

The problem with me and sugary sweets available on demand is that I can never eat just one, or half of one. I’d love to be one of those people who could just cut down portions instead of eliminating nearly an entire food group and all sugar, but I’m just not. I have to go cold turkey. There are certain foods I’ll binge on, and I have to avoid those at all costs, or I’m going to be dropping money I don’t have on new, bigger, clothes I can’t afford.

I think I’m beginning to move into the watching-my-weight-for-economic-reasons place. Which, actually, is pretty damn cool. I’m not hating myself. I don’t feel I’m unlovable just as I am, I just realize that if I don’t get a handle on myself again, I’m going to have to buy new clothes.

And this morning on the bus, I noticed that the world was looking a little clearer than usual, a little brighter. I recognized the feeling, because it was what I had in Alaska when I was really taking care of myself. Ah, sweet happiness, a clear head.

I always feel better when I cut out processed food. It really sucks, goddammit, because damn, it’s so good to eat that food. So, so, good. But then there’s this feeling, this great high I get when my body’s running a little cleaner, and damn, I don’t want to eat those danishes if they take this away…

The sad thing is that knowing, intellectually, that the crap food won’t make me feel any better, in fact, will make me feel worse, doesn’t help with the actual physical craving for a thing. It’s like I have a gaping black hole inside of me waiting to be filled.

And it’s going to take a week before those cravings subside. And it’s a bitch of a week.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I've learned as I've gotten older is that everything is changeable. Getting back into a rut doesn't mean you're doomed to stay there. Many states are temporary. You get back up and start going again, you get to the place you want to be.

Falling isn't dying. It's not over until you're dead.

Kids Aren't For Everyone

Continuing with the subject of having kids...

Unless you're absolutely wild about the idea, you probably shouldn't. I must say I admire those who do, but you better be clear about what you're getting into.

Stuck In NY

All five flights out of La Guardia Sunday night were cancelled due to weather. They didn't finally give into this, of course, until about midnght, when we'd all been suffering through unannounced gate changes and assurances that flights would get out at some point, which is why we sat through 7 or 8 hours of waiting time in the airport instead of taking the 10 hour bus ride to Chicago. People were so pissed of that the desk agents had to call security.

Got rescheduled for 3pm on Monday (missing work I can't afford to miss), got delayed again at the gate, got out onto the tarmac and waited, then heard air traffic control had put a stop on all planes going into Chicago. We spent nearly an hour sitting on the tarmac. Me and the girl next to me had been at the airport the night before, and we were pretty much resolved to spending yet another night in NY. I love B and everything, but I seriously couldn't afford to spend any more time in NY. We got to sit around on Monday and snuggle and eat pizza, but missing another day of work for Tuesday...

Yea.

Anyway, miraculously, we got clearance to go ahead and go over the big storm that was blocking Chicago from the northeast, and the pilot navigated through no problem.

Long weekend. Wish it could have been longer, actually. I need a new job. Got a call from a woman at Washington Mutual who saw my resume on Monster.com (this really does work - I've gotten three or four calls from people through just posting a resume there) who wanted me to work out in Vernon Hills.

Ummm

No. It's the loop or nothing, at this point. I want a shorter fucking commute.

And more money.

Off to NY

Off to NY for the weekend...

It's Like Genderfucking, Only With Sex

Alleyrat rant:

Many people have come to accept the notion of homosexuality but have a much harder time with bisexuality because it suggests a type of sexual flexibility or fluidity they find threatening. It is also much harder to pin people down into sex/gender categories if they tell us they are bisexual. We have our "gay man" category neatly figured; we've got our "lesbian" category; now we've got some new gender-related categories like the metrosexual, so we can sort out the dapper straights from the dapper gays; we've got "lipstick lesbians" for the femme dykes. But with bisexuals, it gets confusing. If John has a boyfriend one year, we see him as a gay man. But then, who is he when he shows up the next year with a girlfriend?

Bisexuality threatens the comforting straight/gay and man/woman binaries. (And the identity politics built around them). But it is also only the very beginning of sexual diversity. The simple fact is that sexuality is infinitely more complicated than which dirty pictures get you hard/wet, and the fact is that any one person's sexuality can shift over time or circumstance. And that it's sometimes impossible to tease out where gender and sexuality diverge.

For example: One of my high school boyfriends confessed to me, a few years after we broke up, that he had been getting blow jobs from an apparently "straight" friend of ours. The friend would come over, the two would smoke some weed, and then the friend would get to work on my ex. The Ex said that "if you close your eyes, it's just the same as getting it from a girl". But it wasn't, not really. Because (my hunch is) that this was an act that grew out of their particular friendship, their particular intimacy, their particular chemistry with each other. And it probably felt excitingly dangerous and taboo. And for my ex, more invested than our friend in thinking of himself as "straight", receiving felt like an okay, straight-ish thing to do. But giving would not have.

How do things like that fit into our rigid little categories of "straight" or "gay" or even "bisexual"? I don't think they do. I think the categories are almost worthless. (Except as community building and organizing/political strategies. Identity politics, again).....

So my point is: sexuality is not reducible to visual arousal, or even arousal. It's not reducible even to sex, or whom we have sex with. And sexuality is infinitely more complicated than these narrow little categories we have, as a culture, created for ourselves. Labels can pin people down, make them feel trapped, defined. "Bisexual", as a label, is the most open category. Though people tend to assume that a "true" bisexual would have equal desire for men and women (and if not, well, that means they're actually straight, or gay!) at least the bisexual label gives people room to move around in. Maybe I should start identifying as bisexual, as a political move. Maybe we all should.

Amen to that.

Read the rest.

Musing

You know, this empty iced tea glass looks a lot like an empty beer glass, with bits of foam and everything.

I can dream.

Raising Children, or Lack Thereof

I've been thinking a lot about raising children. Not because I'm all that hot on having any, but because of this post over at Bitch Ph.D. and because of a comment one of my first readers made about a draft of the fantasy saga.

I've got a female-dominated matriarchy as one of my major countries, where men only make up about a third of the population at best. When my buddy asked, "So, where are all the children in Dhorin?" I prepared to explain that that's why they had so many slaves. The slaves stayed home to take care of the kids, and women got raises and advancements depending on how many kids they had, and the social system was set up so they had this prime birthing window so they could take time off to nurse kids, and then...

And then...

The trouble with being stuck with the whole "women want to be equal" instead of "let's revolutionize this society so it's better for everybody," is that you get stuck, again, with "male" being the norm. So instead of revolutionizing the workplace so we've got onsite childcare, or better, can have kids hanging out acting as interns at the workplace and functioning as members of society instead of subordinates, we just figure, hey, the parents will work and just hire somebody to take care of the kid, like a wife.

One of the big jokes between me and Jenn is that we're both so busy that we need a wife to do things like change lightbulbs and pick up mayonnaise.

And I was reading about kids in Rome, how they were dressed like "little adults" and had to function as adults by the age of 10, and I was reminded of my great grandfather, who was orphaned at 10 and who supported himself shoe-shining by the time he was 13. Infantilizing kids in the Victorian age, I guess, just made it more acceptable for a woman to spend 20 years raising kids instead of five or ten, you know, until they could go out and function in society.

In Durban, the department secretary sometimes brought her child to work with her on those days she and her husband weren't able to juggle childcare. The kid was maybe 2 or 3, and played quietly on a blanket, surrounded by toys, in the department office. Profs and grad students would come in to say hi, and the secretary could do her work at her desk and watch her kid. It didn't hurt anybody at the department, and I'm sure it was good for the kid to get out and be around other people.

We had a paper presentation once where the presenter brought her baby with her. Unfortunatley, the baby was pretty whiny and upset at being up there; it sure would have been nice if the conference room had a cradle or something she could rock the baby in with her foot while she lectured.

Yea. I'm being serious.

What's wrong with it? Shouldn't children be fully integrated into society? Isn't treating them second-class keeping them acting like "kids" far longer than they would otherwise? I know that the more people treated me like an idiot, the more I knew I was going to be able to get away with. In high school, if teachers treat you like you're four, you'll do just the amount of work they expect, and you'll produce it like a four year old. Why should I work harder? It wasn't like I was being treated like an adult.

And I realized I was doing that fantasy matriarchy all wrong. Why should they hide their kids at home? By the time the kid's five or so, they can function in society. Kids were being sent off to knight training and Roman schools at that age. Why can't we ask the same of modern children? Why can't we tailor institutions so that we can integrate our desire to raise families with our desire/neccessity to work?

Kids in Dhorin would be shipped straight off to schools and jobs at 5 years old. The lucky ones would likely apprentice to their mothers or mothers' friends and be ushered through the halls of the capital, running notes and errands and acting like "little adults" - and being treated that way.

If you want to change basic ideas about how society works, try altering assumptions about the place of children, and the separation of private and public life.

You might come up with something really different. Well, different to 21st century America, anyway.

I Am Not An Overly Friendly Person

There's this guy at work who keeps trying to be overly friendly with me, and talk to me while my headphones are on, and be generally polite and say hello every morning. This is usually fine if it's just a regular "good morning," but I'm not somebody you want to try and have a conversation with at work if I hardly know you and don't interact with you often.

It took me nearly a year before I felt comfortable idly chit-chatting with Cyllia the secretary and the regulars here. I take a loooonnng time to warm up to people. That's just who I am, and I tend to keep things as business-like as possible for as long as possible. I'm not at work to make friends. I'm at work to work, and write, and blog, and play Insaniquarium.

I am not here to make idle chit-chat when I'm half-awake and grumpy.

Also, I am drinking ice tea this morning instead of coffee.

That's enough to make anybody anti-social.

Random Alaska Picture

Perhaps I just need a vacation

Ohhhhh Sweeeeeeeeet

Unless you fit yourself up with an IUD, I don't know that you'll really know just how sweeeeeeeet this is to contemplate.

I'm not looking forward to next week.

(via feministing)

P.S.

And also, I've decided that for Christmas I'm going to get a tattoo.

Or another loop ear peircing.

But leaning toward tattoo.

Celebrate the push to 30.

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.