Thoughts on Beauty

Something to think about -

A cool excerpt from the prize winning book Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body. I'm definately picking this one up:

"... Each image of a beautiful face or perfectly turned limb is not really about the subject that it appears to be, but rather what it is not.

"It is about the imperfections that are absent: the machine errors that arise from the vicissitudes of the womb, childhood, maturity and old age ...

"When we see someone who appears to have avoided them, however fleetingly, we pause to look with amazed delight. Beauty, Stendhal says, is only the promise of happiness. Perhaps. But it is equally the recollection of sorrow".

via Moorish Girl

China, China, China

In the movie Master and Commander, one of the boys working on becoming an officer is told by Paul Bettany, ship's doctor and amateur naturalist, that he has a knack for naturalism.

And the kid says: "You don't suppose I could be a sort of Fighting Naturalist, do you?"

China Mieville is a sort of Fighting SF Author.

"I always had a paranoia about someone pulling my earrings out and tearing my ears, so I always wore them with clasps that undo when pulled. Then about three years ago, this man ripped my earrings out during a political argument. Half of me was thinking, 'What the hell are you doing?', the other half, 'Result!'"

I mean, aside from the fiction, which is wholly weird and a fun romp, you've got an author personae like this:

"My first big crush was Purity Brown, the very cool human sidekick to Nemesis the Warlock in 2000 AD comics. She was a feisty kickass heroine dressed in apocalypse chic, leather, straps and guns."

and this:

"Being called 'the sexiest man in politics' when I ran for parliament for the Socialist Alliance was a pretty lovely cross to bear. But who's the big competition? Paddy Ashdown?"

Just read the whole column. It's great.

Did I mention that the fiction's not bad, either?

Some Thoughts on Fake Feminism

So, I sat down and watched the summer special-effects movie, The Day After Tomorrow. What can I say, I have a thing for Jake Gyllenhaal of Donnie Darko fame.

Being me, there's a little part of my brain attuned to the gender dynamics of the movies I'm watching. I watch them for their own sake, sure, and if they're popcorn thrillers, I let a lot slide, but I tuck the information away for later speculation.

In the case of tDAT, you've got a Scifi channel Battlestar Gallactica attempt at feminism, which is basically this: We've Got Female Characters in This Movie! One of them's a doctor! One's a Smart Asian who Works for NASA! And There's a Smart Girl member of the decathalon team! See how great and hardworking we are, how much we've done toward including women in our show? See! See!

And on the surface you go, oh, look, female characters.

Then you're reminded of why the female characters are there.

The female doctor stays behind to comfort a dying child. She's later "rescued" by helpful men in snow plows, showing that if you just keep up your faith in men and do your duty protecting a dying child, you, too, will be rescued by men.

The Smart Asian woman is almost a gender-neutral role, except that one of the science team members makes eyes at her, so we know that he's got "something to fight for." She has about three lines, and when The Boys go out to save some kids stranded in NY, she, of course, stays behind.

And the decathalon girl... dear god in heaven. She's a sweetheart actress and all, but she has about eight lines, and very little personality. She seems to exist merely for plot reasons: so that Jake Gyllenhaal will join the decathalon team in order to get close to her, and then brave an ice storm and some totally unneccessary and really silly looking computer generated wolves in order to get some antibiotics for her to "save" her from septic shock. Which, of course, he does (to be fair, she does get kudos for being able to speak French, and staying behind to help... um, a woman and some children from drowning in a car).

Here's what I want:

The female doctor stays behind to help a hot 30-year-old-guy dying from cancer, not a kid, and when told an ambulance isn't coming, she bundles up and goes out into the cold, finds an ambulance, hotwires it, expertly drives it around snowy obstacles, loads the guy in the back, and drives to safety. She is welcomed as a hero at the base camp, and quickly takes over the medical ward from an incompetent male doctor.

The Smart Asian actually has a personality. And instead of making eyes back at the scientist guy, she turns out to have just lost her female lover in the storm in New York, she, too, has Something To Fight For. When the guys try and leave without her, she says, "No, my lover would have wanted me to go. Besides, I've got better endurance than the rest of you, and I biked around New York for six years. I know the place better than any of you." She'll then go, and instead of one of the guys dying, she'll figure out a Smart Asian way of saving him. Also, her lover will end up being alive, and they'll have a really emotional reunion.

And Miss Female Decathalon with also actually have a personality that exists outside of Jake's conception of who he wants her to be. She'll tell Jake he's damn hot, and there won't be any of this back-and-forth with the dumb-ass loser rich kid, cause she's smart and sexy and knows what she wants, and she wants Jake. She'll save him from a bus accident or something, to prove it. Upon saving the French-speaking woman, she'll take charge of her own health, and point out her wound to everyone so they'll know right away that she's in bad shape. She'll be the one to come up with the idea that there's medicine on the ship, which she and Jake will then go and get. There can be some steamy sex action after she's been treated for septic shock. Or whatever. Then, when he's attacked by wolves for trying to save her from them, she can toss him over her shoulders and haul him back into the library.

That would a sweet-ass movie.

The Big Gay Media

I jumped over to Atrios' place and was troubled by this little post about Anderson Cooper and CNN's apparent reluctance to air the matter of his sexuality on prime-time news.

Whoa, buddy, hold on:

His sexuality is nobody's damn business.

Who I take to bed is nobody's damn business.

The forced "outing" of celebrities and media people really bugs me.

Now, I do take exception to this. People who go and vote on laws that deny me or my friends rights because of who we want to take to bed, or start to encroach on what I'm "allowed" to do in bed had better be the sorts of people who do nothing but hetero missionary style sex after dark - and don't cry every morning because they feel like there's something missing from their lives.

If they're not happy heteros, I wanna know why the fuck they're trying to force their happy hetero missionary married sex on me. If it doesn't work for them, why the fuck are they pushing it? Cause God said so? God also said slavery and incest are OK. Don't go throwing your book at me and burning everything by Michael Cunningham. Illusions of compulsorary hetero-ness need to be smashed out. If the guys who make the laws aren't even 100% grade A straight, (whatever the hell that is) they better not be making laws on who me and my buddies are allowed to be attracted to.

But here's my deal: who I'm fucking or not fucking ain't nobody's business if I'm not making laws about it.

Shows like Queer Eye are cool because they show "real" gay guys on TV who aren't dying of AIDS. Women like Ellen Degeneres are great because they're like, "Yea, I'm gay, and I do all this other stuff too. Get over it." But you know what, if Jodie Foster wants to be like, "She's my friend, fuck off, it's not your business," and Kevin Spacey is like, "I'm a reclusive bachelor, fuck off," then it's really not my business anymore than it's my business whether or not George Clooney hires high-class hookers.

Who Anderson Cooper takes to bed isn't my business. Sure, it would be great for more people to go, "Ha, yea, I'm not totally straight either. Not many people are 100% grade A straight. Get over it." because it would tear down some of the heteo-insanity myth, but at the end of the day, I can't demand that everybody talk about their fucking sexuality all the time. If you don't think that effects you, think again: cause that'll lead right on to interrogating men and women who aren't attracted to the "right" kinds of men and women, and women like me who also like little geeky guys are going to be required to talk about it all the time and justify it (as if I don't feel enough pressure to do that already).

Do we need more "public" figures to "out" themselves to help bust down the hetero myth? Oh, sure, it'd be great. But you can't force it. You can't require it. You can't ask people about it all the time. One of the reasons I mentioned my occasional attraction to women was to help bust down this myth, as it occurs to me a lot that I spend a great deal of time here talking about hot guys, and spreading my own version of the hetero myth - and I've chosen to share because this is a public space. But I can't be *required* to do that. If, like Ellen, somebody is brave enough to go ahead and share their private life in the public eye in order to help break down the absolute hetero myth, good for them.

But Anderson Cooper's a news guy. He does news. What, exactly, does his sexuality have to do with his chosen profession?

I suppose that as questions of sexuality become even more visible and more political, this is going to be an even bigger deal: who's got a same-sex partner, who's had a same-sex love affair. You can't just do a 50's "knowing wink" anymore (of course, the reason you could only do a "knowing wink" then is cause you'd get yourself thrown in jail as a communist). For some reason, if you're in a same-sex relationship, it's like you're required to scream it from the rooftops.

In a society where Britney Spears is dry-humping anything that moves and male singers display women in their music videos in the same way they display cars, we've really gotta have a dialogue about sex.

But you can't force it. And you especially can't force it on somebody just cause they're gay. Screaming heteros aren't forced to explain and justify their sexuality and how it affects their ability to be news anchors.

Nobody else should be forced to either.

Sex is personal. And sexuality is wide and varied and fun.

I don't think a news guy's sexuality is anybody's business: CNN's or mine.

And... We're Out

Writing today. I'm sure I'll find something hysterical to rant about tomorrow. Like this.

See you then.

In the mean time, here's some calming breathing space:

Just Take Away Everything That Doesn't Look Like A Statue

That's the joke, right? How to be a sculptor? Take a slab of marble and cut away everything that doesn't look like David...

When I open up a book or story project after a pause of more than a couple hours, I usually reread what I did before, which means I rewrite as I go, which means that chapter one of any book I work on is the most heavily rewritten of any part of the book, ever. Even when I trash 500 pages and start over. And it's the same kind of process: I'm cutting away and rearranging things that don't give me the story and mood I've got in my head - if you're really lucky, you might get 80% of what you were looking for when you started. That happened for me, once.

The rest of the time, I'm lucky if all the characters in the story end up with the same names they had in my original vision.

Cut it all out, tear it all down, build it up again, clearing up the image in your head as you go.

"It's not that."

"Definately not that."

"Oh, that's just shit."

And you start over again.

I love what I do.

P.S. It's so sweet being back from the break and hefting around my 30lb free weights again - my arms are once again looking Mighty... Oh, and I finished another Amber book. Almost done with The Origins of War. I'm way behind on my nonfiction (though I did recently finish, and recommend, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, which I'll discuss later).

A Woman A Day...

I love this crap:

"He defied the 25th century with a woman who was NOT HIS WIFE—and a WIFE who was NOT A WOMAN."

It's probably why I write what I do...It's like a screaming, pissed-off sort of response. With better fight scenes.

And, in response to my Hysterical Holiday Breakdown Rant, Jenn sent me this. For, you know, perspective.

Over the River and Through the... Whatever

Will be sporadic today, as my boss dumped a big pile of crap on my desk yesterday afternoon and told me to turn it into something that makes sense (during the busy days, I sometimes suspect that this is really what my job title should say: Bringer of Coherence to Crap). We're gonna get slammed soon. It ain't gonna be pretty.

Had a good MA class last night, a nice ride home, some reading in bed, & etc. Working on finishing up some war books that I need to return and/or renew this weekend. Will be churning through some line edits tonight and finishing a pesky chapter of Jihad (I really need to change that title), all willing.

But, for now: work. Ha.

Fun For Your Sidebar

Our Nuclear Neighbors

Some cocktail party tidbits stolen from The Cat's Blog

COUNTRIES WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS:

USA, RUSSIA, CHINA, FRANCE, and UK
The same countries with VETO POWER at the U.N. Security Council

ISRAEL, INDIA, and PAKISTAN have NUCLEAR WEAPONS too. But "we are not supposed to know."

Israel is considered an undeclared nuclear weapon state, and is believed to have 100-200 nuclear weapons. It could deploy these weapons on 255 aircraft (50 F-4E and 205 F-16), 100 missiles and three submarines.

For more, go here.

I find this fascinating. When will Israel, India, and Pakistan get seats on the UN Security Council?

Hahahaa

Yea. That was supposed to be a rhetorical question.

Tidbit

"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular."
-- Adlai Stevenson

via Soapbox Blog

Live Your Life Anyway

Fascinating peice comparing the behavior of abusers in domestic relationships and the actions of the Bush administration toward most Americans:

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.

I think he goes a little heavy-handed here, but it's something to think about - particularly the part about not making concessions: about living your life anyway, even if you're getting beaten over the head for it. That's what strength and bravery is all about.

Some people call that arrogance and stupidity: until 56 million other people get up and stand next to you.

I am a good woman until somebody tries to lay a hand on me, until someone tries to push me away from the life I want to live so that I fit better into their conception of the way "things are supposed to be." That's when the gloves need to come off.

I'm not letting myself get pushed into the "way you're supposed to be" box ever again. That's the stuff miserable lives are made of.

Some Happy Thoughts

Here are some textbooks disclaimers for evolutionists and other miscreants (via Jed)

And all I have to say about the latest National Organization of Witches stir is: Buy yourself a T-shirt.

Also, there's a very funny and terribly touching "How the Grinch Stole Marriage" ditty up over at Ex-gay watch, just in time for the holidays. Please read it.

More later.

I'm Back. Now, With Better Music

My favorite line from Thanksgiving:

"Careful what you say to her. She'll be blogging about it on Sunday."

My best response to the yearly "are you dating anyone?" question:

"No, I really like my life. I don't want to bring in anyone else who'll ruin it." (this statement illicited much laughter from the widowed and divorced)

Favorite ironic moment:

Talking about my aunt's gastic bypass surgery, my dad's interest in getting gastric bypass surgery, and how much it sucks to be fat while surrounded by three tables worth of food for 20 people.

We could have fed a small village in Peru.

My favorite response to said moaning about weight:

"We're the women built for populating the West."

I also packed up a bunch of CDs and story materials that'd been lodging at my parents' place for the last six years. So now I've got better music at work and more work to work on.

Here we go again.

Headin' Down the Highway...

A jet plane, actually...

I'm outta here at noon today, heading out to the West Coast for holiday debauchery (I wish). Currently listening to Snow Patrol's "Run" on repeat.

Packed up my plane books: The Origins of War, Zelazny's The Hand of Oberon, Chris Hedges's War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, and Mary Renault's The Persian Boy, which I've been savoring slowly, over many months, like a fine wine.

Ready to fly. I'm a nomad by nature, and I've gotten ancy this year - money troubles have prevented me from doing much traveling. I think it'll be a good break before all hell breaks loose. I've got a shitstorm of stuff to take on once I get back.

Will be working on Jihad and Over Burning Cities on the plane. I'm like 80 pages short of where I should be - when having trouble, revert to old-fashioned yellow notepads. They can work wonders.

Will be blogging and checking e-mail sporadically - apparently, my parents' computer crashed, so I'll be trying to wrest e-mail privileges from my gamer-brother and his hip customized machine. If you've ever tried to part a gamer boy from his machine... yea, definately sporadic access.

Fuck Unity

Why didn't we protest like this?

Oh. Yea. Cause we're united.

Also, there's a movie coming out that addresses the genocide in Rwanda in `94 - and the movie doesn't look half bad. Check out the trailer. There's a great book about the genocide here.

And, from the director of Hero, and starring Ziyi Zhang (who is just so incredibly cool) comes - "A feast of blood, passion, and silk brocade," called House of Flying Daggers. You better bet I'll be in line for this one.

Oh, the Humanity

It's writers like these who make the rest of us look bad.

You know what the best part about being a bleeding-heart liberal is? As long as these nutty people don't hurt anybody or try and pass legislation on my bedroom activities, I really don't mind sharing the world with them. They're wacky and insane, sure, but I don't feel that they'll physically harm me. If nothing else, I find them wildly entertaining.

The problem, I think, comes when they don't believe in sharing the world with the likes of hippies like me. That's when the shit starts to fly, and you get dems in black hoodies slashing people's tires...

Try and put your hand on me, and I'll lay you out. That's the line.

A History of Sports Brawls

I'm not sure what came over me, perhaps it's living in Chicago, and knowing how insane sports fans are here, or perhaps it's my interest in the history of organized forms of violence, but I went ahead and checked out the video of the basketball brawl down in Indy.

The Evil Kameron part of me was like: "Dude, that's so cool."

I pulled my liberal self together and banished the thought. Check out this history of US sports brawls at SI.

As somebody with a background in the history of warfare, I'm fascinated by violence in sports when instigated by what are "supposed" to be "passive participants" (though every sports geek will tell you otherwise). I'm wondering, with the red/blue divide in the country reaching an all-time freak-out level, will we see more fan brawls at sports outings and more sportsmen blowing each other away?

I mean, afterall, we're all just taking a cue from Our Fearless Leader.

I want data.

The Obligatory Hysterical Holiday Breakdown Rant

"What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner." - Colette

Because I'm not superwoman.

Skipped kickboxing last night.

Bad sign.

Wandered aimlessly downtown, renewed my worry and angst about being too big, about not losing enough weight, about not being smaller. Felt like I was spiraling into some sort of...

Oh, yes: holiday depression.

I don't often give thanks during the holidays: the holidays are my time to reflect on all of the things that I'm doing wrong, and all of the ways that I could be a better person.

And I felt completely aimless. What the fuck am I doing with my life? I should go back and get a Ph.D. I'm wasting all this brain power at a mediocre job that pays me well to use my MA skills to print shit out for my boss all day, to copy and collate and call contractors. I need to apply for another job. I need to write more shorts. I need to write better books. These fucking books aren't going to pay off for ten years. Why am I still doing this? Why is it my primary work, my primary project, when I won't see returns for a decade? And what about the boxing? Am I going to take this shit seriously, or not? What the hell am I doing, skipping a whole week of classes? Why don't I have any friends here? What the hell am I hiding from? Am I some kind of freak? Am I broken?

I fly home for the holidays on Wednesday, so Monday was really my only chance for a class this week, and I lost myself to apathy and stirred around downtown guiltily with $29 in my account and an Old Navy Card. And there's that, too: I'm going home for the holidays, which is always stressful as hell, because the whole time, we go out to eat and complain about how fat we are. That's just the family dialogue. That's just what it's always been. I've got an aunt who just had gastric bypass surgery. I've got a cousin who's up for trial for committing a felony. I've got a sister whose life is full-up with a child and a restraining order. I've got a bevy of relatives who measure my worth by the width of my ass. I'll never be thin enough, I'm not using my smarts enough, the writing is nothing so much as perverse masochistic scribbling of doom, and old friends back home who expressed interest in seeing me over the holiday have gone totally silent (how many have leapt over to this blog, I wonder?). I need a Ph.D. I need to be in better shape. I need to make better use of my time. I need to live up to my potential. I need a holiday.

And in the midst of my anger, my self-loathing, my freak-out about wasting my precious time, my youth, steaming toward 25 without seeing any kind of investment panning out in the near future - I realized that I could just stop.

That is, I could stop trying to be better.

It was really an option. To just stop. To go home and have a food binge, stop going to martial arts classes, stop trying to sell stories, stop looking at volunteer opportunities and French classes and angsting about not doing enough and just... stop.

And it was that realization that shook me, because it's just that attitude that I've been violently rebelling against since highschool. It was why I jumped off the bridge at Molton Falls. It was why I moved to Alaska. Why I moved to South Africa. It's why I'm here, carving out a life on my own terms.

Yes, I could stop. And I know exactly who I would be if I stopped. I'd churn back into the binge-eating, drinking too much, smoking too much, and attach myself to some abusive loser who could confirm all of my worst fears about myself. I could go back to living in a shitty apartment in the ass-end of nowhere, and get my phone cut off, my electricity cut off, get evicted and crapped on and start thinking up really great ways to *really* make everything stop.

But, see, I've been there. Done that. I'm very lucky in that I hit what I saw as rock-bottom at 18, six months after abandoning high school and running the hell out of my house. I was eager for life to start - and I made the big mistake of relying on somebody else to help me get it started. The lucky thing about hitting bottom so young is that you really have nowhere to go but up. And you've got a really great shitstorm to compare everything else in your life to.

"Am I doing better than I was then? Yea? Great. I'm on the right track."

But every morning I get up, I could choose to stop. And I know that person, and I don't want to be her. I know exactly where I'll be.

Maybe that's what's really hitting me full-on right now. There's this person I always wanted to be, this image of myself I had in my head. I wanted to be a writer, to travel, to have degrees, to know things, to meet people, to have friends in all sorts of odd places. I wanted to have stories, I wanted to speak in a loud voice. I wanted to be strong. Independent. Smart.

And I'm looking out now at what I've done, what I have, where I live, what I think... and I'm seeing in my life the sort of person I want to be. I'm seeing that and still living in mortal fear of the person who's still at the core of me, the one who allowed herself to stay in a shitty relationship, the one who used weight to punish herself, the one who didn't believe she was a real person because it didn't seem that anyone ever saw her.

I chugged home on the train and came home to find another reject from Sci Fiction. As per the usual, it's the rejections that tend to finally release the day's pent-up shit (likely because I only retrieve them at the end of the day). I sank to the floor in my hallway and burst into tears. Not just those slow leaking tears, but those full-body, Greek mourning wailing sobs that echo through the whole house. It's like taking all of this pain you've been holding inside of yourself and giving it a voice, making it tangible and real. I sobbed and sobbed, clutching the rejection letter, half disrobed of my work clothes, and let myself be sad.

It's a funny thing, with this sort of pent-up pain. If you give it voice, if you surrender to it, it sometimes eases up. It bleeds out of you.

I retreated to bed, cried some more, skipped dinner, took a couple Tylenol PM, and surrendered to darkness.

And this morning, I woke up.

And I started again. Because I start again every damn morning.

What's the difference, I always wonder, between the person I was and the person I want to be, the adult scribbling pages and typing up tidbits on blogs and backpacking around Europe?

There's only this difference, every morning: you get up and you start over. You let yourself have a hysterical little freak-out, and then it's over. You don't feel bad about it. You don't carry it around with you. You don't let it make you feel weak or crazy.

You just let everything bleed out of you - all that hate and anger and fear - and you start over. And the next time it builds up, you find another way to channel it.

Go to law school. Move to Tuscany. Spend six months living in some backwater in New Zealand. Go help AIDS orphans in Africa. Volunteer your time at a homeless shelter.

Only remember that you'll be the same person in all of those places, doing all of those things, and that's OK, cause now you'll also be the sort of person who does those things.

The fear and despair never really go away. Sometimes I think I'm the most cowardly person I know.

But living it up is about being afraid and holding the course anyway.

Every damn day.

...with a day off now and again for holiday hysterics.

Old and New Beauties

My buddy Greg Beatty has a poem up at Strange Horizons about sleeping beauties - check it out.