I can't stand "Arrested Development." I know, I'm sorry. But there it is. It's not that I can't appreciate what the show is trying to do, on a technical level I can appreciate the obvious talent and creativity that goes into a show whose script you could explicate like a Dickens novel.
Not that I care much for Dickens, either.
Watching the show just makes me sad. Not in a deep down, we're all alone and going to die sort of way, but in the I already know we're alone and mortal and this is not how I want to be spending my time.
It's the same feeling I used to get at one of my horrible hourly jobs. And while the stupid shit the manager said was genuinely funny, to the point that I would save choice quotes to share among friends, or even put up on my blog (oh, when the Internet was young, and bosses never read your MySpace page), living through them was unbelievably disheartening.
That, and I could watch every single last character die an awful death on that show, and it would be my equivalent of the Guiligan's Island where they all get off the island. At last!
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Widow's Walk; Road Trip Edition
"Out in Nantucket, you see all those cottages with the widow's walk up on the roof: when my husband comes back from the sea."
- Joseph Campbell
When I was eleven, my beloved paternal aunt was diagnosed with cancer. My parents tried to do the best in the days before Oprah parenting: they told me something was happening, and it might end badly, but that things would turn out alright. It's hard to reconcille the idea of an uncaring void of a universe being alright in the mind of a pre-teen who got most of her worldly interactions through fantasy books. The result was that I picked a cheap tin locket out of my jewelry box under the (what would turn out to be mistaken) believe that my aunt had given it to me. I had had it as long as I could remember at least. Throughout the day, when the locket bumped against my breastbone or got tangled in my hair, I would remember to say a prayer for my aunt.
A few months later the practice had evolved out of a talisman and into a sort of touchstone: a locket around my neck; god in heaven; all right in the world.
Then I went to a birthday party of a classmate. Life had not been kind to her on a social front: her birthday fell the day before Halloween, and so we ended up at some sort of third rate scare carnival where we were expected to run through old storehouses full of plastic skulls and fake blood and hay bales. In the straw-strewn queue, I was already nervous because the fair hired high schoolers to dress as serial killers and jump out from behind the hay. Then my hand found its familiar way to my locket, and my locket was gone. It was an ideal moment to panic in any other circumstance, as it was, I entirely lost my shit. I started screaming like I was being murdered, and, interrupted only by desperate sobs, I did not stop until someone's dad managed to produce my bauble from the haystack. I know to the other parents I didn't make a lick of sense - kids lost jewelry all the time, and this one wasn't even valuable. But in my mind, if I lost that necklace, I would have personally killed my aunt.
It's a psychosis valuable enough to take on its own terms: a person in an emotionally invested but relatively powerless place invents a magical element by which to control the situation to a positive outcome.
Remember the story of Penelope and the shroud? Despite being the wife of one of the tricksiest heroes of the Mediterranean, the lady queen suffers the indignity of being made a prisoner in her own home by her alleged suitors, who scheme to marry her for political power, all while she pines for her absent husband. Her solution is to swear off marriage until she can weave a shroud for Odysseus. She never finishes the shroud because she is not an idiot.
Here we have the same idea - Penelope is valuable, but powerless, and she translates her helplessness into a sort of shield. Feminine qualities of fealty and grief become a means to use time to her advantage. She can't fight, but she can wait.
How many of us would have the fortitude to act on non-action, to wage war by waiting, to trust not strength or grit, but patience? The lack of action translates into a sort of action, a reaction, a failure to engage with the world, like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, until the world gets its shit together. Refusing to react can be a type of action.
This, of course, is wrapped up in more layers of...what did Amanda Palmer call it...."gender shit" than you can shake a stick at.
And how I have fucked that prescription up.
JC up there was trying to translate the idea of a physical journey through space to satisfy an emotional and social need to transform the self to accommodate the demands of an expanded role as a society-focused, instead of individual-focused, hero figure.
The problem with this has always been that women are limited in the extents to which they are allowed to express individuality and social awareness. Translating an adventure from space to time neatly encompasses these limitations, which also touching on the idea of gothic novels, much religion, and the roles between men and women.
I had a bad spell recently. Time is my only solace, but in the meantime, I packed up and moved to the other end of the country. Because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I wanted something more to show for my life than a shroud.
- Joseph Campbell
When I was eleven, my beloved paternal aunt was diagnosed with cancer. My parents tried to do the best in the days before Oprah parenting: they told me something was happening, and it might end badly, but that things would turn out alright. It's hard to reconcille the idea of an uncaring void of a universe being alright in the mind of a pre-teen who got most of her worldly interactions through fantasy books. The result was that I picked a cheap tin locket out of my jewelry box under the (what would turn out to be mistaken) believe that my aunt had given it to me. I had had it as long as I could remember at least. Throughout the day, when the locket bumped against my breastbone or got tangled in my hair, I would remember to say a prayer for my aunt.
A few months later the practice had evolved out of a talisman and into a sort of touchstone: a locket around my neck; god in heaven; all right in the world.
Then I went to a birthday party of a classmate. Life had not been kind to her on a social front: her birthday fell the day before Halloween, and so we ended up at some sort of third rate scare carnival where we were expected to run through old storehouses full of plastic skulls and fake blood and hay bales. In the straw-strewn queue, I was already nervous because the fair hired high schoolers to dress as serial killers and jump out from behind the hay. Then my hand found its familiar way to my locket, and my locket was gone. It was an ideal moment to panic in any other circumstance, as it was, I entirely lost my shit. I started screaming like I was being murdered, and, interrupted only by desperate sobs, I did not stop until someone's dad managed to produce my bauble from the haystack. I know to the other parents I didn't make a lick of sense - kids lost jewelry all the time, and this one wasn't even valuable. But in my mind, if I lost that necklace, I would have personally killed my aunt.
It's a psychosis valuable enough to take on its own terms: a person in an emotionally invested but relatively powerless place invents a magical element by which to control the situation to a positive outcome.
Remember the story of Penelope and the shroud? Despite being the wife of one of the tricksiest heroes of the Mediterranean, the lady queen suffers the indignity of being made a prisoner in her own home by her alleged suitors, who scheme to marry her for political power, all while she pines for her absent husband. Her solution is to swear off marriage until she can weave a shroud for Odysseus. She never finishes the shroud because she is not an idiot.
Here we have the same idea - Penelope is valuable, but powerless, and she translates her helplessness into a sort of shield. Feminine qualities of fealty and grief become a means to use time to her advantage. She can't fight, but she can wait.
How many of us would have the fortitude to act on non-action, to wage war by waiting, to trust not strength or grit, but patience? The lack of action translates into a sort of action, a reaction, a failure to engage with the world, like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, until the world gets its shit together. Refusing to react can be a type of action.
This, of course, is wrapped up in more layers of...what did Amanda Palmer call it...."gender shit" than you can shake a stick at.
And how I have fucked that prescription up.
JC up there was trying to translate the idea of a physical journey through space to satisfy an emotional and social need to transform the self to accommodate the demands of an expanded role as a society-focused, instead of individual-focused, hero figure.
The problem with this has always been that women are limited in the extents to which they are allowed to express individuality and social awareness. Translating an adventure from space to time neatly encompasses these limitations, which also touching on the idea of gothic novels, much religion, and the roles between men and women.
I had a bad spell recently. Time is my only solace, but in the meantime, I packed up and moved to the other end of the country. Because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I wanted something more to show for my life than a shroud.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Smile!
"Hey lady, smile!"
The women among our readers will recognize the phrase...request...command?...or at least the situation. You'll be going about your day, doing your thing, when a stranger will stop you on the street, or interrupt you at your desk. "Smile!"
I smile. I smile when I'm happy, and I smile when I want to, and sometimes I smile really hard because grinning negates the gag reflex. But I also don't smile a lot - when I'm concentrating, when I'm deep in thought, when I'm pissed or miserable or coolly furious. Humans, of which I am one, have a vast emotional range that gives depth and breadth beyond description to our every waking moment.
To boil the emotional integrity of my human experience down to smiling or not-smiling is to cheapen my existence to the barest modicum of consciousness.
"You'd be so pretty if you smiled!"
This is why the smile-guy is so fucking offensive. I will smile when I goddamn feel like it. That's what emotions, and their corresponding expressions, do. I feel my feelings. When that guy tells me to smile, not only is he interjecting his unwelcome and unsolicited judgement of my appearance and attitude, but he is cheapening my emotional integrity to suit his expectations. I ought to smile because smiling is good. Smiling makes ladies pretty. A lady who doesn't smile...how could she be pretty...or good?
I recently had a man tell me he could no longer be my friend because I wasn't nice enough. He liked me fine enough when I was happy, when I smiled.
But I bothered him; when I was busy and didn't give him the attention he felt was due, when I had bad days and got upset, when he tried to explain things to me and I challenged him on facts or assumptions, when I disagreed with his philosophy.
When I didn't smile.
I'm never happy to lose a friendship. I'm sad loosing this one. But I'm getting older now, and wiser, and harder and harder to bully. We're all adults now, and we're all responsible for our own emotions. This guy, and his problems and his hurt feelings, he owns them. I am beholden only to my own conscious. I don't owe him, or the strange man on the street, my complicity.
And knowing that - it doesn't make me smile, but it makes me happy.
The women among our readers will recognize the phrase...request...command?...or at least the situation. You'll be going about your day, doing your thing, when a stranger will stop you on the street, or interrupt you at your desk. "Smile!"
I smile. I smile when I'm happy, and I smile when I want to, and sometimes I smile really hard because grinning negates the gag reflex. But I also don't smile a lot - when I'm concentrating, when I'm deep in thought, when I'm pissed or miserable or coolly furious. Humans, of which I am one, have a vast emotional range that gives depth and breadth beyond description to our every waking moment.
To boil the emotional integrity of my human experience down to smiling or not-smiling is to cheapen my existence to the barest modicum of consciousness.
"You'd be so pretty if you smiled!"
This is why the smile-guy is so fucking offensive. I will smile when I goddamn feel like it. That's what emotions, and their corresponding expressions, do. I feel my feelings. When that guy tells me to smile, not only is he interjecting his unwelcome and unsolicited judgement of my appearance and attitude, but he is cheapening my emotional integrity to suit his expectations. I ought to smile because smiling is good. Smiling makes ladies pretty. A lady who doesn't smile...how could she be pretty...or good?
I recently had a man tell me he could no longer be my friend because I wasn't nice enough. He liked me fine enough when I was happy, when I smiled.
But I bothered him; when I was busy and didn't give him the attention he felt was due, when I had bad days and got upset, when he tried to explain things to me and I challenged him on facts or assumptions, when I disagreed with his philosophy.
When I didn't smile.
I'm never happy to lose a friendship. I'm sad loosing this one. But I'm getting older now, and wiser, and harder and harder to bully. We're all adults now, and we're all responsible for our own emotions. This guy, and his problems and his hurt feelings, he owns them. I am beholden only to my own conscious. I don't owe him, or the strange man on the street, my complicity.
And knowing that - it doesn't make me smile, but it makes me happy.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Let's Read: The Taliban Send Malala Idiotic Non-Apology Letter; Prove Beyond Doubt They Have Mentality of Petulant Five-Year-Olds
When last we met the Lone Ranger, Malala Yousefzai was a teenage girl who had been blogging about how much her life sucked and how totally nobody understood her. However, since she was living in the part of Pakistan that had been taken over by the Taliban, she might have been the first teenager in history who was spot on about the whole Life Being an Endless Well of Misery thing.
The BBC picked up her blog and started running it. She didn't exactly go viral, but it was a cool gig to put on her college applications. Oh wait, she lives under an oppressive totalitarian regime deeply opposed to women's education, or pretty much any education that could contradict their ideology. I really hope the BBC was paying her for this.
So then she gets shot in the head, people freak out, and Pakistan plays a combination of medical urgency and severe lack of balls to protect its own citizens and hot-potatoes her off to England, where doctors put her skull back together. Malala proves to be a total badass and shrugs off bullet wounds like Salon.com trolls.
Last week for her 16th birthday, she addressed the United Nations about how world leaders need to stop being chickenshits and start putting girls in classrooms. Jesus, for my 16th birthday I went to the dollar theater and broke curfew because a friend locked herself in the bathroom, crying about a boy, and it took an hour to talk her out of there.
Anyway, the Taliban have sent some sort of response letter to her through the internet. The guy who wrote it was in prison for a while, and then I guess some of his buddies broke him out with a bomb, and now he's some sort of troll spokesman. The point I'm trying to make is, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr were both in prison for a while, and they had interesting and relevant things to say, so let's not assume this guy is a total dickwad.
Part 1: This Guy Is A Total Dickwad
IN THE NAME OF ALLAH THE MOST MERACIFULL AND BENEFICEINT
This is in KANYE KAPS so we know it's important.
From Adnan Rasheed to Malala Yousafzai
Peace to those who follow the guidance
Miss Malala Yousafzai
Well, at least he spelled her name right.
I am writing to you in my personal capacity this may not be the opinion or policy of Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan or other jihadi faction or group.
I'm just going to say right now, if any of you want to write a letter in the name of God, then put in an extra paragraph disclaiming that your boss may or may not agree with you, you should probably go back to the drawing board and rethink your motivations.
I heard about you through BBC Urdu service for the first time, when I was in bannu prison, at that time I wanted to write to you, to advise you to refrain from anti-Taliban activities you were involved in. but I could not find your address and I was thinking how to approach you with real or pseudo name, my all emotions were brotherly for you because we belong to same Yousafzai tribe.
A few things.
This guy is supposed to have been in prison for trying to assassinate the leader of Pakistan. He can't figure out how to comment on a website?
Okay.
I like that he mentions he wanted to use a fake name. Already he must have known that attempted murder is kind of an advice-giving-reputation killer.
But at least the brotherly part means he doesn't want to sleep with her. I hope.
Meanwhile the prison brake happened and I was supposed to be in hiding. when you were attacked it was shocking for me I wished it would never happened and I had advised you before.
Did this dickwad just seriously humble-brag that he's sorry he couldn't give her an attempted-murderers advice because he was busy awesomely escaping from jail?
Part 2: I Don't Need God To Tell Me When Someone's An Idiot, But This Idiot Does
Taliban attacked you, was it islamically correct or wrong, or you were deserved to be killed or not, I will not go in this argument now, let’s we leave it to Allah All mighty, He is the best judge.
Islamically or not, I see no point in having religious leaders that claim right to rule on moral grounds, then claim to be unable to pass moral judgement on the actions of their followers in favor of letting God figure it the fuck out. This is like hiring a lawyer who argues to bring back trial by combat. But thanks for arguing yourself out of a job. I'll take an attempted-murderer's advice if it boils down to let's let everyone live their lives without passing judgement or acting on the desire to correct each other's beliefs through violence.
I have a feeling this guy has never looked in a mirror.
Here I want to advise you as I am already late, I wish I would have advised u in my prison time and this accident would never happened.
Adnan has already admitted he has no backing from his superiors and doesn't believe his job should exist. He's pretty much spelled out the pointlessness of his chosen career path. Being unable to stop a single girl from getting shot in the head is just icing on the cake.
(Also, is "islamically" supposed to be a portmanteau of "Islam" and "comically"? Is this all an elaborately ingenious farce?)
Part 3: Education! Now Not Just To Undermine Your Theocratic Nonsense!
First of all please mind that Taliban never attacked you because of going to school or you were education lover, also please mind that Taliban or Mujahideen are not against the education of any
men or women or girl. Taliban believe that you were intentionally writing against them and running a smearing campaign to malign their efforts to establish Islamic system in swat and your
writings were provocative.
Education is fine, so long as you learn only what we want and say only things we agree with. May I remind you this girl was writing about how she wanted to go to college, not start a public orgy bestiality parade.
You have said in your speech yesterday that pen is mightier than sword, so they attacked you for your sword not for your books or school.
You fail metaphors forever.
There were thousands of girls who were going to school and college before and after the Taliban insurgency in swat, would you explain why were only you on their hit list???
Hey, did you guys know that Malala is the only girl to have ever been targeted by the Taliban EVER? There has literally not been a single other student or school that has ever been violently attacked!
Now to explain you the second point, why Taliban are blowing up schools?
Oh wait, he just admitted they were blowing up schools.
Seriously, was this guy drunk?
CONTINUED IN EYE-POPPING KANYE KAPS ON NEXT POST.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Reveiws - Scarlett: The Lunar Chronicals
The Book:
Scarlett: The Lunar Chronicles
by Melissa Meyers
The Skinny:
Scarlett is good enough for a sequel. Although the new characters can't emulate the charm of the original cast, we spend enough time with Cinder, and the plot is advanced enough, to keep me happily reading this obvious filler novel of the series.
The Backstory:
Scarlett is the second book in Meyers' Lunar Chronicles series. You need to know that this book is admittedly based on Sailor Moon fanfiction, which gives you an idea of the ensemble cast of characters we're dealing with, but otherwise doesn't detract from this good ol' fashioned robots vs. aliens science fiction romance.
Cinder, the first book, followed a Cinderella-esque story of girl robot meetcuteing the Prince, evil stepmother machinations, and a climactic showdown at the royal ball where - spoiler alert! - instead of her shoe, she loses her whole foot. (Robot girls, man. They just have it harder.)
Anyway, there are also moon men running about, led by an Evil Queen who just so happens to be Cinder's long lost, familialcidal aunt. When last we met our heroine, she was determined to escape jail, but waffling about reclaiming her identity as long-lost lunar princess.
The Dish:
As Cinder followed Cinderella, so Scarlett goes the way of Little Red Riding Hood. I have to admit, I find the inclusion of LRRH in the cannon of Grim Princesses a little odd - but people love using the red hoodie and I'm not one to deny simple pleasures.
That said, I find the allegory to be the weakest part of the book. With Cinder, we readers needed a familiar structure to follow as we ajusted to Distant Future Earth, with it's cyborgs, lunar psychics, and Risk-like overly simplified political geography. (It seems that, in the future, Africa really IS a country!)
With Scarlett, the book gets a little TOO literal. Scarlett (Red, gettit?) is living with her grandmother, and she meets a guy named Wolf. No, really. Scarlett is not about being subtle so it's nice the author didn't dick around thinking of something lupine or such for his name. Wolf it is!
Grandma is missing, Scarlett and Wolf set off to find her. Meanwhile, we catch up with Cinder, who has escaped from prison with the help of her new Swiss Army Hand, latent moon psychic powers, and a bumbling con artist who happens to still have access to the space ship he's in jail for stealing. He and Cinder pair up, and the "Captain," being as dumb as a bag of hair, serves a nice greek chorus for some of the more laborious elements of backstory. This part of the book works.
Scarlett, however, does not. While Cinder charmed me with her droll tenacity and rounded character, not to mention having a vibrant life and dreams outside of meeting the prince, Scarlett is flat, silly, and naive. Granted, we meet her at a bad time in her life, and the action of the novel takes place over only a few days, but we never get to know much about her outside of her cartoonish temper, her dedication to her grandmother, and her unsettling fascination with Wolf. She works on a farm, but doesn't seem to have much interest in it, outside of brand loyalty. She spends a lot of time being pissed off about not finding her grandma. It's not unrealistic, but it makes her hard to root for as a character. The action of the novel is largely outside or her control or understanding once she gets captured by the Big Bads, and her romance with Wolf is unconvincing and slightly creepy when taken into full context.
I think the romance was the biggest problem for me. As I said, this book only covered a few days, and in such constraint, sexual tension works better subvertly, not overtly. Played as it was, it makes Scarlett look weak, daft, and willing to attach herself to the first dude who looks her way, no matter how questionable his character, or how badly he treats her. Her sympathy for him is largely unearned, and while he makes good, there was very little in the story to make her think he would, and nothing in the book itself, outside of it's YA classification. Younger readers will miss this, but things once or twice get a little rapey. Overall, the romance feels like filling a quota for the genre rather than as a natural development between the characters.
This is a shame, because I liked Wolf. I found his story to be one of the most interesting of the book, considering that his personal struggle to establish an individual identity against a society that seeks to actively control his thoughts and actions echoes the larger setup of the book's main question of personal freedom versus individual responsibility. In the climax, Wolf choosing to alienate himself from his people as an act of consciousness mirrors Cinders decision to proactively confront her predetermined destiny. It shows the damage of groupthink and the sacrifice required of all individuals to challenge the impersonal machinations of society. But I didn't have time to appreciate that because then Scarlett starts dithering about Alpha Female (I told you this book was not subtle) and I had to go take a walk.
Overall, this is a good beach read, and works well enough on enough levels that I enjoyed it quite a bit. I look forward to the rest of the series. Meyers is, in my opinion, a very talented writer, and I can't wait to read what she does next.
Scarlett: The Lunar Chronicles
by Melissa Meyers
The Skinny:
Scarlett is good enough for a sequel. Although the new characters can't emulate the charm of the original cast, we spend enough time with Cinder, and the plot is advanced enough, to keep me happily reading this obvious filler novel of the series.
The Backstory:
Scarlett is the second book in Meyers' Lunar Chronicles series. You need to know that this book is admittedly based on Sailor Moon fanfiction, which gives you an idea of the ensemble cast of characters we're dealing with, but otherwise doesn't detract from this good ol' fashioned robots vs. aliens science fiction romance.
Cinder, the first book, followed a Cinderella-esque story of girl robot meetcuteing the Prince, evil stepmother machinations, and a climactic showdown at the royal ball where - spoiler alert! - instead of her shoe, she loses her whole foot. (Robot girls, man. They just have it harder.)
Anyway, there are also moon men running about, led by an Evil Queen who just so happens to be Cinder's long lost, familialcidal aunt. When last we met our heroine, she was determined to escape jail, but waffling about reclaiming her identity as long-lost lunar princess.
The Dish:
As Cinder followed Cinderella, so Scarlett goes the way of Little Red Riding Hood. I have to admit, I find the inclusion of LRRH in the cannon of Grim Princesses a little odd - but people love using the red hoodie and I'm not one to deny simple pleasures.
That said, I find the allegory to be the weakest part of the book. With Cinder, we readers needed a familiar structure to follow as we ajusted to Distant Future Earth, with it's cyborgs, lunar psychics, and Risk-like overly simplified political geography. (It seems that, in the future, Africa really IS a country!)
With Scarlett, the book gets a little TOO literal. Scarlett (Red, gettit?) is living with her grandmother, and she meets a guy named Wolf. No, really. Scarlett is not about being subtle so it's nice the author didn't dick around thinking of something lupine or such for his name. Wolf it is!
Grandma is missing, Scarlett and Wolf set off to find her. Meanwhile, we catch up with Cinder, who has escaped from prison with the help of her new Swiss Army Hand, latent moon psychic powers, and a bumbling con artist who happens to still have access to the space ship he's in jail for stealing. He and Cinder pair up, and the "Captain," being as dumb as a bag of hair, serves a nice greek chorus for some of the more laborious elements of backstory. This part of the book works.
Scarlett, however, does not. While Cinder charmed me with her droll tenacity and rounded character, not to mention having a vibrant life and dreams outside of meeting the prince, Scarlett is flat, silly, and naive. Granted, we meet her at a bad time in her life, and the action of the novel takes place over only a few days, but we never get to know much about her outside of her cartoonish temper, her dedication to her grandmother, and her unsettling fascination with Wolf. She works on a farm, but doesn't seem to have much interest in it, outside of brand loyalty. She spends a lot of time being pissed off about not finding her grandma. It's not unrealistic, but it makes her hard to root for as a character. The action of the novel is largely outside or her control or understanding once she gets captured by the Big Bads, and her romance with Wolf is unconvincing and slightly creepy when taken into full context.
I think the romance was the biggest problem for me. As I said, this book only covered a few days, and in such constraint, sexual tension works better subvertly, not overtly. Played as it was, it makes Scarlett look weak, daft, and willing to attach herself to the first dude who looks her way, no matter how questionable his character, or how badly he treats her. Her sympathy for him is largely unearned, and while he makes good, there was very little in the story to make her think he would, and nothing in the book itself, outside of it's YA classification. Younger readers will miss this, but things once or twice get a little rapey. Overall, the romance feels like filling a quota for the genre rather than as a natural development between the characters.
This is a shame, because I liked Wolf. I found his story to be one of the most interesting of the book, considering that his personal struggle to establish an individual identity against a society that seeks to actively control his thoughts and actions echoes the larger setup of the book's main question of personal freedom versus individual responsibility. In the climax, Wolf choosing to alienate himself from his people as an act of consciousness mirrors Cinders decision to proactively confront her predetermined destiny. It shows the damage of groupthink and the sacrifice required of all individuals to challenge the impersonal machinations of society. But I didn't have time to appreciate that because then Scarlett starts dithering about Alpha Female (I told you this book was not subtle) and I had to go take a walk.
Overall, this is a good beach read, and works well enough on enough levels that I enjoyed it quite a bit. I look forward to the rest of the series. Meyers is, in my opinion, a very talented writer, and I can't wait to read what she does next.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
The Friendship Club and Neil Gaiman
One of the things you must understand for this story to make sense is that, when I was in the third grade and newly transferred to public school, all the girls in my year formed "The Friendship Club" while I was out with the chicken pox, and for the rest of the semester I was patently excluded from all activities.
This wasn't as much of a blow as it might be expected - most of the girls in my class were rather idiots, I made friends with the girls I went out of class with for advanced reading, and there were some very nice boys who ended up being gay who took to me like ducks to water.
What this really means is that for the rest of my life I have had the sneaking, subcutaneous suspicion that the cool kids are all off hanging out without me.
The other thing you have to understand, outside of the future gay boyfriends, is that for many of my formative years I had books instead of friends, then books with a side of friends, and even now I hope the dilemma of house-on-fire, what-do-you-save thought problem never presents itself as an actual book vs. people problem. (You can't expect books to rescue themselves the way people can!)
Around the time I started giving friends the same consideration as hardbacks was around the time they started saying "Oh, you must read Neil Gaiman!" So I went dutifully to the library, got a nice think book, and would have done better to beat my head against the text. I simply could not get through it. It was similar to an experience I would have in calculous class - a white fog rose up from the floor and enveloped my fizzing brain until I regained consciousness an hour later, wondering what I had missed.
This is not to say he's not a fine writer, this is just to say I have no idea at all.
So time goes on, like it always does, and I keep some friends and lose some others, but all the while collecting Diana Wynne Jones and defending Robin McKinley. I took a poetry class in college that lead me to, of all things, an online perfume company that would make a custom, organic, pure perfume blends based on your favorite gothic poem. Neil Gaiman turned on Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab too - selling perfume for charity, at that.
All the while I was listening to The Dresden Dolls, and then up and out of nowhere the lead singer went and married Mr. Gaiman. I was starting to get a little nervous.
Even when he showed up authoring the forward to one of Ms. Jones' books (I think it was Dogsbody?) in the cheap paperback Firebird put out after her death I told myself firmly that I was being silly.
So I went ahead and took the plunge and started doing a little Google-fu, and what should pop up on his website but a photo of Neil Gaiman and Diana Wynne Jones with the caption explaining the photo was taken by Robin McKinley.
At that point I put myself in bed and hoped I would wake up in 1994 with the chicken pox and get a do-over. No such luck. I woke up me, overly well read, pick-about-fantasy me, friend to awkward feminists and future gay men me...
...and still not part of The Friendship Club.
This wasn't as much of a blow as it might be expected - most of the girls in my class were rather idiots, I made friends with the girls I went out of class with for advanced reading, and there were some very nice boys who ended up being gay who took to me like ducks to water.
What this really means is that for the rest of my life I have had the sneaking, subcutaneous suspicion that the cool kids are all off hanging out without me.
The other thing you have to understand, outside of the future gay boyfriends, is that for many of my formative years I had books instead of friends, then books with a side of friends, and even now I hope the dilemma of house-on-fire, what-do-you-save thought problem never presents itself as an actual book vs. people problem. (You can't expect books to rescue themselves the way people can!)
Around the time I started giving friends the same consideration as hardbacks was around the time they started saying "Oh, you must read Neil Gaiman!" So I went dutifully to the library, got a nice think book, and would have done better to beat my head against the text. I simply could not get through it. It was similar to an experience I would have in calculous class - a white fog rose up from the floor and enveloped my fizzing brain until I regained consciousness an hour later, wondering what I had missed.
This is not to say he's not a fine writer, this is just to say I have no idea at all.
So time goes on, like it always does, and I keep some friends and lose some others, but all the while collecting Diana Wynne Jones and defending Robin McKinley. I took a poetry class in college that lead me to, of all things, an online perfume company that would make a custom, organic, pure perfume blends based on your favorite gothic poem. Neil Gaiman turned on Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab too - selling perfume for charity, at that.
All the while I was listening to The Dresden Dolls, and then up and out of nowhere the lead singer went and married Mr. Gaiman. I was starting to get a little nervous.
Even when he showed up authoring the forward to one of Ms. Jones' books (I think it was Dogsbody?) in the cheap paperback Firebird put out after her death I told myself firmly that I was being silly.
So I went ahead and took the plunge and started doing a little Google-fu, and what should pop up on his website but a photo of Neil Gaiman and Diana Wynne Jones with the caption explaining the photo was taken by Robin McKinley.
At that point I put myself in bed and hoped I would wake up in 1994 with the chicken pox and get a do-over. No such luck. I woke up me, overly well read, pick-about-fantasy me, friend to awkward feminists and future gay men me...
...and still not part of The Friendship Club.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Full Moon June 2013
Welcome to Silent B Productions!
This monthly update: New tabs for books, fashion, gardening, language, food, and travel. Major construction on all pages through this week. Photos as I make peace with my camera and the exploding bottle of sunscreen.
This monthly update: New tabs for books, fashion, gardening, language, food, and travel. Major construction on all pages through this week. Photos as I make peace with my camera and the exploding bottle of sunscreen.
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