Several folks asked about the new tattoo, so here’s a photo. I’ll probably try and get a better one later in the week, but here’s what I could pull together using a webcam and online editing tools:
It’s a wren with a needle through its ankle, which is a reference to how Lleu Llaw Gyffes gets his name in Math Son of Mathonwy:
“And thereupon, lo, a wren alighting on board the ship. The boy aimed at it, and hit it between the sinew of its leg and the bone. She laughed. ‘Faith, ‘ said she, ‘with a deft hand has the fair one hit it.’ ‘Aye,’ he replied, ‘God’s curse on thee! He has now got a name, and good enough is his name. Lleu Llaw Gyffes is he from now on.’”
The tattoo design is an original drawing by Katy at Iron Tiger, who is absolutely magnificent. If you are ever in Columbia, MO and need some work done, I cannot recommend her highly enough.
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Oh, world. It has been a bit of a week and I have felt better. The writing and I keep giving one another awkward looks from across the room because I’m still not sleeping properly, which either means I can’t concentrate or I concentrate too hard and end up not sleeping.
It’s been so bad that I was kind of grasping at straws about what to write about for this week’s Win But Fail until I woke up this morning to discover that LiveJournal has pulled yet another hilarious, privacy-damaging bit of unwanted technology out of its horrid corporate nethers.
So yeah, here’s this week’s edition of WBF.
~*~
Whinging and whining aside, this week hasn’t been all bad. I had a couple of fabulous coffee get-togethers, my new netbook has given me a kind of nerd high, and I’m getting a new tattoo tonight. There are pears from our tree in the kitchen waiting for me to…I don’t know. Bake them into something probably. I’ve got Friday night plans, which almost never happens.
I am a (mostly) happy man. I just wish I felt a little bit better and could be a little bit more awake so I could enjoy it more.
~*~
I’ve got links enough around here to choke a small army, but I promise I’ll trim it down to the good stuff.
From the Department of News That’s Still Awesome Even If It’s Stale: Man arrested at the LHC claims he’s from the future. Excessive tweed is suspicious enough without the disappearance factor. I suddenly feel justified in listening for blue boxes.
Especially at MIT.
Tangentially related, a guide for gardening with a view to attracting bees. I’m thinking about this in September so that I don’t have to scramble in March. POLLINATION IS HARD.
As a member of a handful of sexual/gender minorities, this piece was a beautiful kick in the ass. Possibly kind of unsafe for work, and probably something I may find myself having to explain to my mother.
In a similar vein, problems of sexuality and gender in MMORPGs. Having been an avid WoW player, and being someone who may well again get into it at some point, this struck a chord.
Five things to remember about the Pakistan Flood crisis.
I really enjoyed this interview with White Collar’s Matt Bomer, but was surprised when it veered heteronormative. More proof that I live in a happy queer bubble more often than not.
Remember that hospital that refused care to a transwoman? They’ve updated their practices and policies. This is a Good Outcome.
A really interesting article about Western Civilization’s relationship with pop culture. And when I say “Western Civilization,” I mean us and Plato.
Right. Off to my ink appointment.
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This has been a bad week for sleep. I’m staying up too late, I’m tired all the time, and so on. It’s taken a toll on creativity. Hopefully that toll will be offset slightly this weekend. I have good plans in place, like an early night tonight and some writing dates with friends.
Fingers crossed. I need to finish some stuff in the next week or so.
~*~
I think it’s time for me to spend a moment to make a statement about certain important things. “Important things,” in this instance, being last night’s Project Runway. More specifically, Gretchen.
Until last night — and really, until last night’s judging — I was ready and willing to go to bat in the face of Gretchen Hate. She’s skilled, she’s talented, and she’s got opinions. Were some of those opinions a little catty? Um, hello. Project Runway.
But yes, I’ve had a super short fuse for Gretchen Hate on account of so much of it being the sort of ridiculous misogynist bile that women with ideas and chops tend to get subjected to.
And then last night’s shenanigans went down, someone who didn’t deserve to get auf’d got auf’d, and I’m cranky about it. Not that it has any sort of real effect on my way of life or anything, but I’m disappointed. Thank you, so-called reality television, for making my life that much more ridiculous.
I still loathe the misogyny that goes along with the Gretchen Hate, and will probably continue to snarl about it in the usual channels, but I’m also saying the captain should have gone down with her ship.
Way, way down.
~*~
Just a reminder that there are good causes in play and folks raising money for Race For The Cure and the MS Bike Tour, as well as the Help Pakistan auctions, which end Sunday.
Expect a proper linkdump in the next few days when I’m more awake.
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Yep, this week sees the triumphant return of Win But Fail. This week, I take on Good Dick, a 2008 indie romance flick about a video clerk who tries to win the affections of a woman who rents stacks of soft core pornography. Read it here.
When you’re finished (and if you’re interested), I also suggest “Feminism 101: Your Underdog Lovelorn Romantic Could Be My Rapist” as related reading. [Insert obvious trigger warning for stalking and sexual assault here.]
~*~
Life is trying to resume this week. I’m still sleeping off some of the exhaustion, but regular routines are starting to establish themselves again after the usual mad transition into the academic year. Traffic aside, the whole thing is pretty swell. I can start figuring out what my life will actually look like until mid-December.
Writing is back on, and I’m coming back to two in-progress stories and my novel draft with fresh eyes. I’m doing this on a fresh netbook as well, which is a tremendous relief. It’s nice to work without disk space warnings popping up every forty-five seconds.
~*~
And now, more links than you require!
I have been completely remiss in boosting the signal on work colleagues who are raising money for Race For The Cure and the MS Bike Tour. Tyler and Eric are great guys, and these charities do important work. Support them if you can.
YouTube triple feature:
- I am generally skeptical of trailers for books, but for Dawn of the Dreadfuls I will make an exception.
- Ceelo Green’s “Fuck You” is the feel-good song of the season, and currently topping the list of songs I cannot sing full-voice at work.
- Ted Olson, one of the attorneys who pled against Prop 8 in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case, being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News and systematically disassembling the “activist judges” argument.
Speaking of reasons not to mess with the LGBTQ community in California, Target is having trouble getting zoning permission after blowing off the Human Rights Campaign. Memo: sometimes endorsing discrimination pisses people off.
HeadsUp Design Co. makes interesting clocks. I’m particularly taken with the Sasa clock (which displays time with a long string of beads) and the natural wood birdhouse alarm clock, though I’m not sure I want to train myself to wake up every time I hear birdsong.
Anyone remember a cartoon called Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers? Well, apparently some geeks in Russia do, and they’ve started a cult around Gadget Hackwrench. No really, they have. The most perplexing thing about it — at least to me — isn’t the existence of the cult itself. It’s the sheer hostility that some people seem to have in the face of it. Really, people. What’s it to you that a bunch of people have taken an interesting cultural symbol and elevated her to a goddess of technology? It’s not like media has taken the place of traditional storytelling or anything…
Over at Apex, an essay about reading authors with squicky politics. This is an idea I’ve been struggling with for a while. It’s nice to see people engaging it in public.
This article about the intersection of trans life and marriage law in Texas is an excellent illustration of why it’s pointless for me to consider marrying. (Well, that and my current state of delicious singledom.) Not that I live in Texas, but consider that if it’s this complex in one state, and it’s different state-to-state, and then weird on the Federal level…
From the Department of Immanetizing the Eschaton: Ways that adapting to global warming could exacerbate things.
~*~
And now I shall make some tea and get a few hundred words in before it’s time to fall over.
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The last two weeks have been relatively light on writing. Last week, this was mostly of necessity (thank you, dayjob) while this week is mostly by design (thank you, Chloie).
That doesn’t mean I haven’t made any words at all, but it’s meant I’ve limited myself to only writing down vivid and precise things that I will regret not writing down for later use. These things are non-negotiable because they respect and feed the well as well as coming from it.
(Also, I might have slipped and published a 400 word how-to about auditing college courses here in Columbia, Missouri. I swear, I have the strangest household accidents…)
Making words is necessary to my mental health. Being a writer is a significant element in my self-image, and I derive a lot of my self-worth from writing, but the process is also critical. Sometimes, when I sit down to write, it’s got nothing to do with a project. There are days that I put everything else away so that I can unwind with an idea. Other times, I spend ten minutes putting something down so that it can exist somewhere other than my skull.
Don’t misunderstand. When I write a story, the story itself isn’t necessarily therapy. My characters aren’t me, their struggles (usually) aren’t mine. It’s the process of feeling for them (or maybe as them sometimes) and putting everything together that’s therapeutic for me. Making stuff helps me keep my brain in order.
Weeks when my writing is curtailed either by circumstance or by design are strange beasts. I imagine it’s like the horror stories the conservation guys would tell us about underwater caving; too much silt or not enough light and you literally lose track of which way is up. I have trouble regulating my moods, or knowing what those moods actually are until I start talking about them. Things like anxiety and depression start to well up in the gap like water fills a hole in the sand.
It isn’t all bad. The little holiday I get when I’m only working 40 instead of 60 hour weeks can be nice. I went out to see Rifftrax do Reefer Madness and then followed it up with karaoke on Thursday, and then last night caught up on Project Runway.
After a while, though, I stop being able to enjoy the extra time. The noise in my head starts to get too loud. Reality gets harder to grip, taking care of basic needs gets harder to do, and sooner or later my choices come down to losing my mind or writing a way up out of the pit.
~*~
If you’ve been living under a rock, you might not be aware that about one quarter of Pakistan is underwater due to massive flooding. There are already signs of cholera outbreaks. I encourage everyone to give, if they can, either directly to aid organizations, or via fundraisers like help_pakistan. Recommendations: Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
~*~
The Internet is a strange and wonderful place where even RDJ can be a pin-up girl. (Link possibly unsafe for work.)
PSA: Facebook “dislike” button scam.
Florida GOP/Tea Party candidate believes people with “Coexist” bumper stickers (example here) want to give the country away to our enemies. In other news, I have a new bumper sticker and think Allen West is an imbecile.
A friend linked me to The Princess, a Monday/Friday web comic about a transgirl. She got linked to it via a parenting list/blog. I think it’s sort of charming, though I don’t know that I’m likely to be a regular reader.
From TIME, an article about what prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are reading.
This article about the NYT killing off the word “hipster” amused me no end. Full disclosure: I own a fedora and chunky black glasses.
US Civil War thing #1: nearly untouched Confederate prison camp located in Georgia.
US Civil War thing #2: Small Truth Papering Over a Big Lie. Mostly this is more about the modern cultural situation still arising from the Civil War.
From the Department of WTF: Evangelist Billy Graham’s son, Rev. Franklin Graham, believes that President Obama was born Muslim because of his father’s faith, and that the “seed” of Islam is propagated father to son. Yeah, no.
From the Department of Freaking Awesome: The oldest house in Britain. When something was built before your island detached from Western Europe, it’s old.
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Many things, including Win But Fail, have been called on account of the time of year. August isn’t just incredibly hectic. It may actually want me dead.
Things are set to equalize in the next week or so, and the hope is that normal service will resume shortly. Failing that, I hope to have a really nice wake.
~*~
When I put my garden together this past spring, I had an impulse-buying moment at Home Depot and picked up three pepper plants: two regular bells (one yellow, one green) and an orange “yummy bell” plant.
Or, at least, it was purported to be.
The first few peppers it produced early in the season looked for all the world like jalapenos, and had just a hint of spiciness to them. Since the beginning of August, though, it’s finally giving me vivid orange peppers. Curiously, though, most of them are still jalapeno-shaped.
It’s fun, though. I like them a lot, and tend to snack on them when I pick them. I need to remember to save some seeds for next year. Other than the radishes, it’s been my most successful plant.
~*~
Somebody is selling J.D. Salinger’s toilet. Insert joke about whether Holden Caulfield gives a shit here. But hey! Free shipping!
I keep staring at this mug because I want it, but when I admit that out loud I experience this surreal, crushing blow of panicked guilt over pretty much all of my life circumstances. So, uh, let’s never speak of this again, yeah?
While we’re not talking about it, have some sex tips from the same artist. (Text not entirely work safe, images more or less work safe unless Microsoft Paint is too darn kinky for your office.)
Just a friendly reminder about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” (real name Park51, aka Cordoba House) and how it is neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque. No really. Super duper really. Also, could we please stop being afraid of Muslims and trying to infringe on their right to worship now? Please?
Wales apparently has a witch problem. Also reported to the police: vampires, ghosts, and one lone werewolf (presumably called George).
~*~
Right. I’m off to get up to mischief.
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Last week’s Win But Fail has finally escaped the queue! Feast your eyes on my week-old opinions about the Perry v. Schwarzenegger verdict!
I was tempted to do a double-feature, but then discovered that they’d also released/published my piece on Missouri’s Proposition C, which means my weekly quota for “get off my lawn” has probably been met.
Consider this a reprieve, as well as an opportunity to let me know if you’ve got any suggestions for a future column.
~*~
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably already seen me say unflattering things about this piece from the Christian Science Monitor. The short version: the author’s thesis is ridiculous and demeans both women and men. Also, allowing a portion of the population that even the most liberal estimates say tops out at about 10 percent to marry doesn’t exactly prevent the other 90 from doing whatever it is they do. Nice red herring, though. Thanks for playing.
Like the Lovecraft mythos but find it woefully free of women, sexuality, and LGBTQ people? Like to write stories in that vein? Cthulhurotica is accepting submissions until September 15th. (This interview helped clarify the editor’s stance on how far the erotic element can go, FYI.)
Someone on Twitter linked to this really excellent article about anti-Islamic sentiment, and how the government isn’t exactly helping. My city has a mosque, and I’ve worked with Muslim students, and yet I’m not surprised. We get some of this around here, and it breaks my heart.
Smashwords founder Mark Coker talks about the future of publishing. As always, I maintain a healthy skepticism both of self-publishing (quality control is a Good Thing) and books that never see print (say “historical record” with me), but it’s interesting to see an investor quoting Tool lyrics and talking about how the independent e-publishing scene affects publishing overall.
This op ed by Paul Krugman about American regression is more than a little terrifying. I don’t agree with everything he says, but it’s useful if nothing else as a signpost that should give us pause.
There is not a day that passes that this XKCD strip doesn’t make my world better by existing.
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Well, deferred at least. Apparently having an opinion about the Perry v. Schwarzenegger ruling gets one consigned to the bowels of the editorial review queue.
I shake my tiny fist at the review queue.
~*~
My dayjob year is a strange beast. Things get intense in May, stay a little bit crazy through the summer, and then go sanity-crushingly busy in August. I’m staring down the barrel of two incredibly busy weeks — weeks during which my lunch hours are only nominally my own, during which at least one Sunday and one Friday night will be spent running around like a lunatic, and during which my entire city will be overrun with tens of thousands of new arrivals and their parents.
It’s no wonder I haven’t slept well these last three nights. My brain knows what’s coming.
That kind of stress makes it hard to write. This may be my last really sane week until September. With that prospect in mind, it’s hard not to want to freak out something terrible. Instead, I’ve got a writing date with a friend this Saturday to ensure that I get at least 3,000 new words into my draft before everything goes bonkers.
Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll get a really nice padded room.
~*~
I link because I care:
Possibly only amusing and/or of interest to me and a select group of friends, the t-shirt I want to buy in time for Gallifrey One.
Sometimes my friends and family try to minimize the fear transfolk have of institutions like law enforcement, hospitals, and suchlike. And then something like this happens.
Brian May has just cornered the market on awesome. Now if only I didn’t have a bastard ex who idolized the man.
This article about the so-called anti-gay litmus test Elena Kagan is facing points out so many obvious things that people just don’t get about the way our culture, law, and government work right now. When your confirmation to the highest court of the land hinges on your willingness to discriminate against a class of people, something is wrong.
Polytheology: Syncretism, Process Theology, and “Polyamorotheism” Does exactly what it says on the tin.
Catherynne Valente has a new story up over at Clarkesworld, and it’s lovely.
Helpful hint: LGBTQ youth does not equal child pornography. Also, pulling a book because one disagrees with it bad, dumb behavior for a librarian, and arguably a massive breach of the public trust.
Other breaches of the public trust: charging someone for wiretapping when they videotape a police officer behaving in dangerously abusive ways.
Ever wonder what the world would look like if it stopped spinning? Science is here to show you.
And this video is absolutely beautiful.
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I’d been majoring in Computer Science for about a year when I met Dr. Pam McClure. It was one of those weird class sessions during which none of my major courses were available, so it was an opportunity to take care of some gen eds and electives. One of those classes was Creative Writing: Poetry.
I’d been an avid writer in school, and focused on literature, language, and journalism, but hadn’t done much with it since. Dr. Pam’s class changed all that. She had a rare touch. She worked us hard, critiqued us fairly, but she had a genius for finding the things about our work that were good. In her class, all the ways the world has of treating poetry like it doesn’t matter ceased to have any authority.
I changed my major.
About a year and a half after I went on hiatus from college in order to have time to really, really write, I discovered she’d been diagnosed with cancer. I’ve spent a lot of time regretting being prodigal, and about not finishing the thing I did because of her. I’ve been starting to work on ways to make it possible to go back this year or in 2011, and had been quietly hoping that my second stab at my undergraduate thesis course might be with her.
Yesterday, I got word from a friend that she’d passed away this week. Yesterday evening, a group of people gathered under the tree where she met with her daytime classes and read poetry and shared stories about her until well past dark.
Pam McClure was kind to me, and I don’t think she ever knew how much she saved my life. She gave me back my words and taught me that they meant something. She was a brilliant instructor and a gifted poet in her own right. I’m gutted she’s gone. I’m sorry I missed my chance to make her proud.
~*~
“Ode to the West Wind”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
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The new Win But Fail is up. This week I take on my discount chain of choice, Target.
Also, if you like zombies, poetry, and e-books, you can get Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes for $2.99 in Kindle format at Amazon or in other formats at Smashwords. I’ve got a piece in there, as does my good friend JC Hay.
~*~
Heads up for US readers: the Freedom For Consumer Choice Act (aka the FCC Act) is looking increasingly like an AT&T-sponsored effort to prevent the actual FCC from enforcing net neutrality laws.
It’s the last week to bid to help Maria graduate. I haven’t got anything in over there, but some of what’s on offer is amazing.
Hey, remember that church in Gainesville that plans to burn copies of the Quran on 9/11? They’re also protesting Gainesville mayor Craig Lowe, who was elected in April and happens to be gay. Consider this a second call to moderate and progressive Christians to publicly repudiate this kind of thing.
Related: NOM is running a cross-country summer bus tour to protest against marriage equality. The Human Rights Campaign has flat-out called it a sham intended to provoke the LGBTQ and ally communities into behavior that NOM can characterize as intimidation in their legal fight to restrict donor information, but it’s still drawing some nasty elements from the anti-gay crowd. As others have pointed out, when an organization’s entire platform comes down to a group of people being a threat to Western Civilization, that fosters this kind of violent hate.
On the other hand, groups like NOM and the American Family Association are good for one thing: helping me know where to shop. The AFA is boycotting Home Depot for being pro LGBTQ. Man. I knew I wanted to go out and buy a bunch of lumber. Mmm. Lumber.
In honor of all my friends at RWA this week, I link you all to As His Kilt Rises.
Harper Collins have adopted a novel (if slightly ridiculous) strategy for marketing literary classics to the Twilight generation: gothy covers and turgid jacket copy. They didn’t just stop at Wuthering Heights. They’ve done it to Pride & Prejudice as well.
Maurice Broaddus did a guest spot over at Jeff VanderMeer’s blog about the PC challenges of being an editor. This should be required corrective reading for apologists for all-white, all-male, all-straight, etc. anthologies, or for the underrepresentation of women and other groups in publishing.
The list of reasons I regret not going to San Diego Comic Con gets longer every year. This year: Klingon-language trolley signs.
I’ve used pin-up calendars before — I’m actually using one full of firefighters in my writing office right now — but somehow I can’t help but feel I haven’t reached my full potential in this arena. (Possibly a little bit NSFW.)
From NPR’s Morning Edition, China’s government is changing its stance on religion to encourage the resurrection of indigenous Chinese faiths and folk practices.
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