How to Survive A Terrorist Attack!

Now! With Photos!!

Hijacking of VanderWorld Has Begun

Superkewl.

Starting today, I'll be dual-blogging here and at VanderWorld for a couple weeks (I'm not double-posting. VW and BW will have different content), so check-in periodically.

Who knows? It might even be interesting.

(thanks for the reminder for a reminder, Scott)

Ode to the Lesbian Swans

Boston's beloved pair of swans -- feted by city leaders, residents, and tourists alike as one of the Hub's most celebrated summer attractions -- are a same-sex couple. Yes, scientific tests have shown that the pair, named Romeo and Juliet, are really Juliet and Juliet.

Massachusettes is spreadin' the gay! This proves it's contagious. Interspecies contagious, even.

If we make same-sex marriage legal in Texas, the swans will all turn gay!

Just watch.

There's A "Diet" for Everybody

The McDonald's Diet: health = thinness.

Because at no point in this article to they say her resting heart rate and cholesterol have decreased, at no point does she say she took up exercising, and at no point does anyone with a medical degree say she's lowered her risk of cardiovascular disease by "losing" thirty pounds.

Because it's not about health:

"It feels great," she said. "Because, the truth of the matter is that beauty is power, and if you're fat, or your overweight, then people don't really take you seriously."

At least she's honest.

Feminism: I Can Dig It

An understandable protest, an amusing endquote.

Monday Monday

Oh yes, chicklits, it is Monday. That time when all coffee bites back with that saccharine-savvy aftertaste and the fucktards leer from the rooftops to snicker at your workaday commute from Hell.

The good news is that once again, there's fuck-all to do but blog and write and snicker.

It could be worse.

I might actually have to work for a living.

Could you imagine???

Being Strong is Good For You

'I was shy. I didn't have any confidence. I hid behind clothes that covered up my thin wrists. I remember being pushed about by the boys at school and it was pretty tough for me. I took it hard. For six months I didn't want to go to school. But sport became my revenge. Because I could beat these guys at the high jump, I stopped caring about my body shape any more. It was a good lesson to learn.'

Moral of the Story: Don't Cheat on Your Boyfriend

Following on the weird dreams caused by hot weather post of Wendryn's, here's last night's weird caper:

I dreamed that I met this really attractive doctor who was working with poor people around Lawrence. His sister, who was a reader of my blog, brought me there and introduced us. He was obviously hot on me from the moment I walked in, and we kept glancing at each other as she showed me around.

The sister noticed this and gave us some time together, and we chatted, and he was kind, funny, charming, socially responsible, successful, and smart. He was also quite attractive, not in a plastic-guy way, but in a kindhearted, superkewl way. The sister finally just told her brother to ask for my goddamn number already.

I hesitated, and considered telling him I already had a boyfriend, but Oh! he was soooo obviously into me, and I was soooo flattered, that I gave him my number anyway and when I left, I began to plot what sorts of activities we could engage in before I was actually cheating, and could I ever leave B for this doctor? I mean, this doctor was so polished and normal, and without any neuroses or weirdness at all, and he paid for everything without worrying about it and lived well, and he did all this volunteer work, and he was totally wild about me! Just imagine what my friends would think!

I left Romeo and headed out onto the street to get home, and he ran after me, climbed up a fire escape and yelled after me, saying he was going to call me, I was great, we should do dinner.

We had dinner, and he was sweet and smart and funny, and told me that my brain needed cleaning.

Why yes, he said, everyone did it. He was quite skilled at it himself.

I was still trying to figure out if making out with him would be considered cheating, and if I should break up with my boyfriend, and I agreed to a good brain cleaning. I knew I couldn't have sex with him because I 1) could expose B to some kind of bizarre disease, which was rude 2) I've got an IUD, so if he had chlamydia or something I'd have to have all of my internal organs removed, and I could die.

So, no sex. Not even in my dreams, do I get extra sex!! I have to get it all in real life. Poor B.

Anyway, Romeo then removed my brain and stored it in his refrigerator, where it had strange tubes poking in and out of it that bathed and drained the brain of fluid, washing it super clean.

Apparently, I could live without my brain for 48 hours before my system shut down and I became brain dead, so I could still walk and talk while this guy "bathed" my brain.

But once he had my brain, he started acting pretty weird and controlling. He wanted to tell me what to eat, what to wear, how to do my hair. He tried to convince me to break up with B. He waxed on about how romantic he was, and how nobody would love me like he did.

Then he went back to the refrigerator to retrieve my newly bathed brain, but he slipped, and knocked the entire brain and petri dishes of fluid on the floor, and the brain burst into a zillion pieces.

He was trying to decide what pieces he could salvage to restore basic motor skills to me when I woke up from my dead sleep and thought:

OMG I'M SO GLAD I'M NOT DATING.

Whenever I worry that B and I are too neurotic to be together, I remember that we both layed out our weirdnesses up front instead of trying to decieve each other until we were both so far gone in the relationship that getting out was sticky, and though he thinks my brain is superkewl, he definately doesn't want the rest of me without it.

And yes, I'm looking forward to an end to this weird-dream-inducing hot weather.

Friday Beer Blogging: Martini Edition

Me, Jenn, the SO and B are all going out for GOOD FOOD and MARTINIS tonight!!! Woot!! Woooooooooootttttttt!!

Sour Duck's Take on Inhibited Writing, Anger, and Brutal Women

Sour Duck had some thoughts on my Intelligent Blogging post. Cool, right?

She disagreed with some of the things I said, and got all riled up to write, and then:

I initially felt very charged and excited by the prospect of writing about some of the issues Kameron inadvertently raised for me through her post; however, as I was mentally formulating responses to it, I also became very aware that I should be careful not to tread on her toes. In other words, I became concerned that if I disagreed with her, she might come on over to my blog and leave a hostile or semi-hostile comment, or post one at her blog. This concern/fear/anxiety, as you can imagine, greatly inhibits your writing. I have no idea how much of it has to do with the fact that she is a well-known blogger, but certainly that has something to do with it.

Dude, if I ever show up on anyone's blog and personally attack them and tell them they're a flaming freakshow, please delete my comment, OK?

Disagree with me, please! Conversation is what this is all about.

Some of her other comments in the post also bring up that funny fear of hostile comments. Apparently, fear of trolls was a big topic of conversation at the Blogher conference. There is a desperate fear that speaking one's own opinion will... make people angry with you.

Well, yea.

Yea, it will.

If you haven't pissed somebody off, you're not trying hard enough.

I haven't had much of a problem with trolls, because I adhere to Teresa Nielsen Hayden's advice about trolls. She's consistently got comments numbering in the hundreds, and the conversation stays civil, intelligent, and relatively on-topic. They're always worth reading:

9. If you judge that a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it's important to get rid of it, or at least make it hard to read. Do it as quickly as possible. There's no more useless advice than to tell people to just ignore such things. We can't. We automatically read what falls under our eyes.

10. Another important rule: You can let one jeering, unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two or more of them egging each other on, they both have to go, and all their recent messages with them. There are others like them prowling the net, looking for just that kind of situation. More of them will turn up, and they'll encourage each other to behave more and more outrageously. Kill them quickly and have no regrets.

This is one of the problems I have trying to read comments over at feministing, because they've let a lot of rather useless assholes propagate, and comments often become off-topic and unreadable.

I know they've got a great hit count there: there's no reason they shouldn't be having consistently great conversations with comments in the hundreds. Unfortunately, one or two assholes are hijacking threads and pissing people off, and a lot of great threads devolve into off-topic pissing matches.

As said, I haven't had much trouble with trolls. Comments like, "Feminists give the best head," and "This is just a FUCKING STUPID POST. U R STUPIDDDD!!!" get deleted outright. Stuff like, "I completely disagree. You're killing babies," might get engaged with if they're willing to get teased out into having an actual discussion instead of just screaming, "U R KILLING BABIES!!!!" over and over again.

I had one persistent heckler whose post I had to delete two or three times. He was a right-winger who tried to start pissing matches at other blogs, and ran in here and guerilla-posted about homosexuality being a "birth defect" and felt it neccessary to give me his permission to go "muff diving" with the nearest "homosexual" I could get my hands on.

Assholes like that aren't looking for an intelligent discussion. They're looking for a fight. And I'm not going to give over any of my time or attention to them.

Delete.

This is my space. I own and control it, and it's my job to make it a place where my readers can come and engage in a discussion without feeling like somebody's gonna be able to get away with calling them a "cunt" or an "angry feminist." I don't tolerate personal attacks. Attack the issue, not the poster. You may very well get somebody telling you your opinion omits certain facts, or they disagree with your take on things, but when we get to the "you're fucking stupid" place, I step in.

As for anger, and disagreeing with me, I'll steal my response at Sour Duck's blog wholesale:

Oh, lord, please disagree: goodness knows the boys have no trouble doing it. Disagreement does *not* mean you hate a person, it just means you think differently about their ideas. That's a *good* thing. A place without dissent is a place without conversation, and that sort of place stagnates.

As for the anger bit: don't get me wrong, anger is an absolutely fantastic tool. The problem with blogging while running on sheer anger, however, is that you often don't pause to think over the particular issue you're discussing, so your thoughts are more likely to come out disjointed.

When I blog angry, it tends to take the form of linking others' thoughts without commentary, which often implies that I completely agree with those thoughts (and, again, *completely* agreeing with everyone is the first step to stagnation. If you do agree, try a, "I thought this was interesting, but I had another take on it"). It also leads people to assume what I'm thinking about the subject, since I've just left a link and a curse word and not much else...

Anger is a potent tool. It has the ability to get you up off your ass when the shit hits the fan. It also can cause you to flail wildly and smack anything that comes near you while gnashing your teeth in a feiry, but ultimately, unproductive, rage.

The trick is to channel the anger into something more constructive. Have your anger moment, step back, feel it, and then engage the topic again with the anger running just beneath your rational thought so that what you end up with in the end is a biting, intelligent criticism instead of incoherent screaming.

Lots of people get turned off by incoherent screaming, and they just tune out. My goal is to be read. If I'm not speaking in a thoughtful, intelligent, entertaining way (and the anger can add entertainment value, particularly when irony and sarcasm are involved), then people will go elsewhere for thoughts and commentary. Not neccessarily a bad thing, but talking to myself (as noted in Burningbird's post) can get kind of dull.

What drives me is getting mail from readers who've changed their lives or looked at something differently because of what I've written. Beyond self-expression, that's what I'm in it for, and if I'm unreadable, I'm not reaching anybody.

The issue of the suppression of women's anger is a big one, and an ongoing discussion that's been around forever. It's been around so long that I'm still startled to see both men and women all over the net still use the "You're just an angry woman" brush-off. The first insult you'll get in any forum if you don't tow the party line is that you're being an angry feminist (I was recently taken to task for being "an angry white feminist" at an SF criticism blog, of all things).

I admit that when I get pegged this way, it pisses me the fuck off, and the best retort for something like that is irony and sarcasm. Getting into a bitching match with the offender just ends up devolving the thread into a pissing match about who's got the most degrees and/or life experience, and that doesn't get anybody anywhere.

Please don't ever feel you need to apologize for disagreeing with anybody (especially me - I'm really not all that "well known" a blogger!). That's the pure joy of the net, particularly for those who blog anonymously.

I *want* people to disagree with me, intelligently. I get into huge arguments with those around me all the time about things I blog about, and my take on issues. One of my best real-world friends was actually one of the people who e-mailed me about my lazy blogging style, and I was so pissed off with him for a week that I could barely speak.

In the end, since he certainly wasn't the only one who'd brought it up, I read and re-read his comments and looked at my blog again and realized there was a lot of truth to his comments. I was losing myself to the feminist blog "community" and becoming part of a thing instead of being an individual.

That's not something unique to feminist blogs at all; it happens within many, many communities, usually because of the concern you noted: you start feeling like you "know" these bloggers, and feel that if you disagree with what they're saying, you're attacking them. And who wants to attack people whose opinions they respect?

I remember taking on a post of Amanda Marcotte's (now of Pandagon) just before she won the Koufax Award and being a little leery of doing it, cause I knew she read me.

In the end, I posted my criticism, and she and some others hopped on board, and there was a conversation going on that hadn't gone on before. Doesn't mean I hate Amanda: she's superkewl and I respect the hell out of her, but sometimes I'm going to disagree with what she says, and that's OK.

I love that people disagree with me, and so long as it's well-thought out and worth engaging, I'll totally engage with it. That's the great fun of blogging.

Sitting around with a bunch of people who tell you you're perfect and superkewl all day is a great pat on the back, but ultimately not terribly constructive.

New Domino Trailer

Keira Knightley is just so cool.

Guest Blogging

For those interested, I will be guestblogging over at World Fantasy Award Winning author Jeff VanderMeer's place starting Monday.

I'm going to try and be very polite.

We'll see how long that lasts...

Girl Crushes

As somebody who identifies as being "Mostly Straight," I've still had my fair share of "girl crushes," so I was interested to read this piece in The NY Times about the apparent "resurgence" of women feeling free to express infatuation with one another.

Oh, did I mention it's purely infatuation, not attraction?

Not at all.

Because that would be gay.

A girl crush:

refers to that fervent infatuation that one heterosexual woman develops for another woman who may seem impossibly sophisticated, gifted, beautiful or accomplished. And while a girl crush is, by its informal definition, not sexual in nature, the feelings that it triggers - excitement, nervousness, a sense of novelty - are very much like those that accompany a new romance.

It's not gay.

Now, there are some interesting bits in this article. And of course, women were able to express this kind of affection more freely in the 19th century, and often wrote one another long love letters and kissed and hugged and everybody was cool with that. And it's neat that in some circles there's a resurgence of that.

But there were a couple of things that really bothered me. The first is the way "girl crushes" were categorized as giving women "safe and valuable experience in the emotions of love" and "there's every reason to think that girls can fall in love with other girls without feeling sexual towards them, without the intention to marry them."

The first comes dangerously close to implying that oh-so-19th-century idea that romantic love felt by women toward other women is somehow childish and quaint, something to give you "experience" before you have a "real" romantic relationship with a man. The second bothers me because it's another elbow in the ribs of the "not gay" variety. People can also fall in love and get married and not have sex. Well, only if they're a hetero couple, or maybe if they live in Massachusettes or Canada or Amsterdam. Or Spain, actually. Marriage doesn't neccessarily guarantee a sexual relationship, either, and like any other sort of crush or infaturation, the urge for hetero sex/sexual feeling between partners cools down over time as well.

Anyhow, I was a little struck by how clearly both the author and researchers quoted wanted to distance this kind of attraction (and yes, I'll call it attraction) from same-sex attraction (i.e. LESBIANISM) or hetero attraction (i.e. "Real" attraction).

I would also argue that some of their attempts at differentiating "girl crush" from "real crush" are kinda lame: "Crushes are typically fleeting, and infatuation often turns to friendship in this way." Isn't that true of most relationships, sexual (hetero and same-sex) as well?

I do believe that fears of "this must mean I'm a lesbian" do still really curtail the ways in which crushes/attraction between (and among) women are expressed. I've got no trouble saying that I love some of my friends, and it doesn't bother me to think, "Hey, that feeling I have toward that woman, that's kinda gay." I don't need to go around in loops and hoops and try to justify it as some sort of "special" or "different" sort of love or attraction.

I was happy that they made a nod toward men in this discussion as well:

As for men, to the extent they may feel such emotions for each other, Dr. Caplan said they are less likely than women to express them. They are not reared to show their emotions. "A man talking about emotions about another man? Everybody's homophobic feelings are elicited by that, and that's because men aren't supposed to talk about feelings at all," Dr. Caplan said.

Let's qualify that with "Men in this culture." Guys holding hands in Iran isn't anything to look twice at.

Though if you do more than that, they'll kill you.

Not that anybody's justified in being afraid to be called gay for feeling sexual toward another woman. Cause so many current cultures are so approving of that. I think it's far easier for women to justify it as childish "infatuation" (NOT GAY!!!!), and hold out for the more socially-acceptable penis, which they may prefer anyway, but which shouldn't totally negate their attraction to particular women.

What I'd love is for somebody to just up and write the article where they admit that sex and sexual expression is a social activity. It brings people of same and different sexes together. It builds social networks. It's one of the things in our evolutionary toolbox that's helped us survive: forming bonds of friendship can and does include actual touching of the Evil Corporeal Body.

Keeping us all terrified of touching each other smacks to me of living inside some dystopian novel where we're perpetually at war with a Nameless Enemy, a Society of Disinformation reigns supreme, we're all being tracked and tagged with DNA cards, and the President speaks only in doublespeak...

Oh, wait, that was me watching CNN this morning.

Nevermind.

Good Morning, Chiklits

Had myself wound pretty tight the last couple of days.

Getting into the new house routine has been a little stressful, and getting used to my much smaller room has been a lesson in patience.

There's a trick to getting around the room without banging into bookshelves and overturning the fan that involves a lot of opening and closing the room door and the closet door in a certain order. The same attention to movement has to be applied to getting in and out of my desk chair, as well, which has about four inches of play room between itself and my queen-sized bed. In the morning, before coffee, this can be really annoying, and I've found myself, on occasion, stuck in my chair or half-fallen over onto the floor.

I'm also adjusting to new house rules. Jenn and I didn't plan this particularly well, so we've got a space that fit two people now housing three, and she and I didn't do well throwing out all of our old junk in order to make room for her SO.

Luckily, the SO is good with spaces (and drinks beer - yea! There's beer in the house!), so getting everything to fit looks nice. House rules, however, are different. The SO doesn't like doing dishes, and doesn't like looking at labels, so the labels on stuff in the kitchen (like dish soap and Lysol wipes) had to be taken off (and my "Survivor, Africa!" cup has been deemed rather cheesy, and would have been thrown out if it was Jenn's! I have compromised, and it now lives back in the cupboard instead of by the coffee maker).

There are just lots of little things to get used to, and I think that combining house-stress with gym-stress/body stress and work stress (work stress of the "I hate this job" variety as opposed to the "I actually have stuff to do at work" variety, cause I never have much to do at work. That's why I started a blog), and I was feeling pretty tired.

I've also been having some trouble with my contacts apparently drying out during the day - I don't know if it's the weather or what, but they're bugging me more than usual, and not being able to see properly is enough to put anybody in a shitty mood.

I'd like to just wear glasses, but I prefer contacts for the gym, and lugging *more* gear to the gym, even just some saline solution and a contacts case, just makes me tired. The strap on my gym bag broke, too, from carrying around too much shit, so the more spartan I can be, the better.

Work on God's War, the next book, continues. I'm still really behind, but it's moving. I'm actually really, really, loving this book. I'm in love with it. Yes. It's just a shitload of fun, and the style it's written in, the pacing, the actual story structure, are unlike anything I've done before (the subject matter, well, I've been writing women, blood and sand stories for nearly six years). Right now I'm going back and doing some editing so the rest of the book rolls a little more smoothly and I've got a better plot-setup. I'm notoriously bad at plot, and I'd like to actually *have* one this time around.

I continue to get a lot of reading done, which also helps with stress. B will be in town this weekend, which means lots of bedroom... uh, reading time, so that's good. Very relaxing.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm really looking forward to fall weather. This summer's just been a bitch as far as the heat goes, and I'm done with it.

How the hell did I survive in Durban for a year and a half?

Who knows?

In any case, I wouldn't mind an Alaskan vacation right about now.

Looking forward to fall.... ahhhhh.....

Honey, You Came Too Soon

Wow. Pfizer, maker of the Viagra, has patented a pill for "premature climax." No, no, not for men -

For women.

Has anybody ever had a "problem" with this? I mean, come once, you can just come again, you know? The "recovery" period for most women really isn't that long. And what's wrong with having sex *after* you come? I mean, a proper weekend sexfest would involve lots of sexual expression and perhaps two or three or four orgasms.

The company believes that women and men do not complain about the sexual dysfunction because, "male partners often choose to take rapid orgasm as positive feedback on their skill as a lover".

And I choose to take rapid orgasm as a great stepping-off point to having another one real soon.

I'm always curious as to who decides whose orgasm (male or female) is "too quick." Isn't that more an issue of partners' preferences and not the medical establishment?


(via feministing)

Pirate Vs. Squid

I take far too much delight in Pirate paraphenalia.





















(via pharyngula)

I Think People Who Are Good With Numbers Should Make More Money

And yet, women office accountants don't often make much more than I do. But looking at some of this spreadsheet bullshit that our now twice-fired accountant used to do, I'm wondering why the hell women accountants don't get paid more.

I wonder how much better it used to pay when more men did it?

I remember my mother telling me that for years, the bosses where she worked used to argue that the reason men got paid more for doing the same work was because they were being paid a "family" wage (even if they weren't married), and women were just going to go out and get married and have a guy with a "family" wage "support" them.

I suppose women who were working were assumed 1) not to have a family or any reason to spend money (the whole "women just work for pin money" deal) 2) not to understand that getting paid less for doing the same work sounded like something out of the "seperate but equal" south.

Women & Weight Training

Kudos to Heather for pointing me toward this site that provides a bunch of info for women who are interested in/new to weight training.

Good info on weight, sets, reps, nutrition, and tips for training before and after pregnancy (and for those interested: working out actually tends to *decrease* the discomfort of monthly bleeding and cramping, which is yet another great reason for me to stay on track).

I particularly like the photo of her pushing her car.

It Feel Like All of My Limbs Are Going to Fall Off

Sitting around the house, eating sushi and drinking beer, reading the second-to-last book of Zelazny's Amber series (one of the few old-school SF authors who actually writes women-as-people) at my new digs (pictures coming soon) in the designated reading room full of bookshelves... yea, life is good.

Overdid it a little at the gym. I think all my limbs are so sore they're gonna fall off.

I mean, in a good way. Just think of how buff I'll be. Yea.

Life is good.

I love wireless internet, too.

It's amazing, the luxeries you can pretend to afford when you're not terribly worried about leaving around an inheritance.

I intend to die in debt.

But man, I sure will have had a lot of fun.

Burkas May Reduce The Risk of Unwanted Pregnancy

Better resolution graphic
(via cara)