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I dislike the last 'teaching' week of college. Most of you know I've been in college a long time and I've noticed certain trends. I don't attend college to be subjected to religious bombardment. Teach the class materials or science. It is enough to teach the science.
On the last day of teaching, without fail, there are a percentage of teachers who move from teaching the science to teaching the theology of their subject matter. I ALWAYS want to get up and leave. I detest prostheletyzing (sp?) and its undertow of YOU ARE INCOMPETENT and YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE and YOU ARE A SINNER.
This is the theology of disempowerment wearing different gloves and hiding behind science in exactly the same way most religions hide behind dogma and God.
All of us live with a razor edge of suffering in our life. The theology of ____insert your subject here____ will labor to position you on top of that razor of suffering and pain. It is like watching the movie Private Ryan - let me grind at your spirit for a few hours or better yet, consume your joy with my descriptions of the ways you are guilty of environmental, ecological SIN.
I suspect you.
The length of my life informs me that there are innumerable ways I can improve my life and my world and over time I have chosen to embrace most of them because it makes sense for me to renovate my older bad habits. However, when the priests of the new religions show up I am informed of their desire to oppress me, to reduce my sense of joy, to disempower me.
I will not embrace your religions of suffering. Prostheletyzing is a form of violence - of assault. It is when someone wishes to IIMPOSE nonconsensually, their belief, theology, ideology on others. It is earmarked by features of DISEMPOWERMENT of the recipient. Let me hand you YOUR sin and add stones to the weights on your shoulders. This is YOUR burden because I give it to you.
The next teacher who tries this crap in a class I'm part of will see me walk out in the middle of their passioned rhetoric. They are TEACHERS, not PRIESTS. Keep your sin for yourself.
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Hooray for motels w/free wireless!
All I want to say is this: if you have a chance to read or listen to The Death Collector by Justin Richards, do it *immediately*. Esp. if you love YA Victorian thrillers on the order of Pullman's Ruby in the Smoke. The Death Collector is rich, vivid, and stuffed to the gills w/fascinating, fully-realized characters, history, and science. The action is intense, the humor perfectly placed. I haven't so thoroughly loved and cheered for a book in a long time, and I'm only jealous that the book didn't occur to me first. :)
Hooray again for audiobooks!
Also, I always enjoy keeping track of bizarre items, signs, etc., on the road. So, for today, we have:
-A woman both signing and singing "Once in a Lifetime" quite loudly in the middle of Cracker Barrel. It didn't seem that anyone in her family was hearing-impaired but maybe she was practicing for something? Talking Heads jarred oddly w/the downhome atmosphere, and now I definitely have TH earworms.
-A sign that said: "We give you the meat your family deserves." I am worthy of my meatz!
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If you think that I only like reading very literary, fancy-pants, thinky kinds of books -- well, you don't know me very well. In fact, I love candy-flavored books! And there's something about a 90-degree day that makes me want to veg out and read something just for sheer, silly pleasure. (I guess if there was a beach here, these would be beach reads. Instead, they are lie-on-couch-with-popsicle reads).
Enter MODEL by Cheryl Diamond. It's the book equivalent of a True Hollywood Story about America's Next Top Model... which is to say, it is awesome. I seriously stayed up almost all night to finish it.
 When Cheryl Diamond was 14, she went to NYC for the first time to try her hand at modeling. She got some attention, took some great pictures... and then 9/11 happened. Everything shut down, and Cheryl went back home. At 16, she tried again. This time she moved to NYC, by herself, was briefly homeless, slept in a freaky storage unit, but managed to pull it together despite brokeness, drama, predatory men, drug-addled photogs, mafia stalkers, etc. She became a real working model, successful, a great book, headed for the top... until disaster. OMG. Nothing I like better than a good old-fashioned rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-? story. And Cheryl herself has a very compelling voice. She can be kinda obnoxious, but she's also funny and smart, and she seems to have her head on straight despite being in some seriously weird situations. And, whoa, talk about mature. I liked her. Nice one, Simon Pulse! -- If you are between the ages of 14 and 18, Simon Pulse wants to hear from you. Click here to get free books and be a part of the Pulse IT Board!
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So I was talking to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) penmage about The True Meaning of Smekday (a very funny SF book I very much liked), and the whole subject came up of: what makes a book post-apocalyptic?
It's not spoilery to say that The True Meaning of Smekday takes place after an alien invasion that had casualties and that changed life as we knew it forever--you learn that in the first few pages. But ... the world doesn't end, exactly. Life goes on, even in the immediate aftermath of that invasion.
But then, life goes on to some extent in almost every post-apocalyptic book, or there wouldn't be a story to tell.
So what makes the changing of the world dramatic enough to be post-apocalyptic? How do you define the end of the world?
Does it even have to be the whole world? Or just your own corner of it? It's as much a matter of defining "world" as "end," really.
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| ravenelectrick |
| 2008-05-16 15:24 |
| Sporty Spec reviewed at SF Site |
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Sporty Spec has just been reviewed by Greg L. Johnson at SF Site. There's probably more emphasis than I would like on Sporty Spec's being a small press book, but it is a small press book, so perhaps I should get over that. "... it is full of the enthusiasm and sense of creativity that you will find in many of the small press magazines and websites. If you're unfamiliar with those publications, and have a taste for stories that mix the worlds of sports, science fiction, and fantasy, it's well worth checking out."
Unlike the review at The Fix, Mr. Johnson's review does not cover all the stories, but at least it does highlight some of the poems. Stories by Lawrence Schimel, Andrew C. Ferguson and Brenta Blevins are singled out for praise, as are poems by Robert Frazier, James S. Dorr, and Roger Dutcher.
Let me know what y'all think.
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A review by Paul Kincaid:
Sfsite
I rarely argue with reviews. When I have on one or two occasions is correct a review, which I will do here--this is what Kincaid says:
"Just about all of them pay reverence to the ghost stories of the past, perhaps most blatantly in Gene Wolfe's "Sob in the Silence," a nasty but inconsequential tale that, I suspect, would not have been included here if it didn't have Wolfe's name attached to it."
I object to this most strenuously.
Perhaps Kincaid didn't care for the Wolfe story, but I found it creepy and scary. I don't know what what he means by "inconsequential" --perhaps it's not a socially instructive moral tale such as Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Daughter (a Fantasy)" which Kincaid considers the best story in the book. But IT DOES WHAT IT IS MEANT TO DO.
However, that is not what annoys me. What I do object to (and I hope someone sends him over here to read this) is the idea that I included the story because of the presumed marketability of Gene Wolfe's name. Sorry, but that's not how I edit YBFH.
I have NEVER taken a story for YBFH for the name value. I've NOT taken plenty of stories by writers whose names have a much greater impact on the marketing of a book than Wolfe's.
I have no interest in responding to the rest of the review but to say that Kincaid seems not to understand horror vs fantasy. Horror is usually better served in traditional forms/structures --which isn't to say that occasional experimentation isn't sometimes effective in evoking horror. But I'd say that too much structural fooling around can dissipate the mood.
Comments most welcome.
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"It looks like you're struggling to get it up," my kung fu instructor said. Which was particularly distressing, considering I was practicing with my staff.
Yes, I giggled.
What he meant was, I was using my arm to raise the staff above my head instead of using the momentum of my hips. So, I tried it the correct way, and twaaaa-aaaaang, aggravated the part of my back that I hurt yesterday from sitting in a chair.
Last week it was my shoulder. Hurt it sitting in a chair. Aggravated it by head-banging at the Rush show.
At least when I told people at the kung fu school about the Rush show, I became instant hero to the males between 35 and 45.
I think the real gist of this little missive is, I need a new chair.
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Still floating high about selling Returning My Sister's Face to Norilana. Thanks for the deluge of congrats!
Things I've done this week:
• Sold my flash story "The Wiggly People" (audio reprint) to Drabblecast.
• Seen part 1 of my article, "Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children," reprinted at Absolute Write.
• Decided that I will try out the new flexible work hours being implemented at work. Starting next week, I'm going 4x10 (10-hour days, 4-day weeks). I used to work 9x80 at my previous job (three-day weekend every other week), which was nice, but I'm wondering if a 10-hour workday might be a bit long.
• Received, signed, and sent back contracts from Norilana, the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology, and Drabblecast and looked over galleys from the Killers anthology and Baen's Universe.
• Broke then fixed the Daily Dragon website, giving myself a crash course in PHPMyAdmin in the process.
• Added 1 GB of RAM to my VAIO laptop, upgrading it from its original 512 MB to 1.5 GB. Very stressful, and in the end, I needed fosteronfilm to seat it properly for me; I don't get along well with hardware. But my laptop is speedy-fast now...although the hibernation function keeps going wonky.
• Joined Facebook (friend me if you've got an account!).
Things I haven't done this week:
• Write.
So yeah, not a productive week...
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| melissa_writing |
| 2008-05-16 14:42 |
| the cure for what ails me? Marilyn Manson |
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Marilyn Manson is the cure for what ails me. I swear that every time I don't listen to him for a little while I almost convince myself that he's not as incredible as I remember, must be a trick of memory or something, but then I hear his voice . . . If you could take that feeling of temptation, that if I could bottled sin it would be this . . . *sigh* and the voice . . . and the lyrics . . and passion . . . I've even watched YouTube videos to find interview clips and of course, looked at his art online . . . It all underlines the "yes, wow, and did I mention YES" reaction I get when I hear his voice.
I listen to others, hoping to find someone else that flicks my switches to this degree, but he's it. There are plenty of other artists I can & do enjoy, but none come close to this never-fails-to-please reaction. I don't even need to see which CD I'm selecting. If it's his, I'll be happier once it's on. His music is the perfect drug--all the pleasure without any of those nasty consequences real drugs have.
So, what abt you? Is there something--music, food, painter, school of art, style of poetry, etc--that is a surefire "daaaamn, that's what I needed" source for you?
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Well, I'm pissed off about something that happened during lunch. It wasn't anything big, either. In fact it was very small. Something insignficant. Normally I'm usually quite easy-going, and it's very disconcerting for me to realize that I'm actually angry about something. Luckily I have not said anything yet, although as the minutes tick by I just get angrier and angrier.
Since there's no civil way to breach the subject, and since I am angry in complete disproportion to the slight -- and, in fact, I may even be the one in the wrong -- there's nothing I can do.
And I don't seem to be able to let go of the anger, either. It just stews and stews and gets darker and thicker and more vile. A very strange situation.
UPDATE: Due to the miracles of Get Fuzzy, I have recovered. I was angry for 2 hours straight, which is an exceptionally long time for me to hold a grudge (most last about 10-30 minutes).
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| ogre_san |
| 2008-05-16 13:35 |
| Light a Candle, Curse the Glare |
| Public |
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The first batch of promo material has gone out and I don't mind saying that I'm so far outside my comfort zone that I can't even see the border. Still, nothing new. We do what we have to.
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| mkhobson |
| 2008-05-16 11:22 |
| On my way home from San Diego |
| Public |
| La Jeunesse D'Hercule - Camille Saint-Saëns |
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OK, so I didn't die without my BlackBerry. But that's only because I found a T-Mobile store and added a line of service to my family plan and got a free Razr. The mostly helpful young T-Mobile clerks in San Diego made me a new sim chip and I was off to the races. I could get calls again. And checking email was no problem because San Diego, unlike many places I could name, has free WiFi EVERYWHERE. I had free WiFi in my hotel room (which was staggering, given that I stayed at what was basically an boutique-ized YMCA) and there's free WiFi here at the airport.
So it all turned out OK, as so many of you lovely people assured me it would. ;-)
( My trip to San Diego, cut to spare the innocent from boring travel details )
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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/lAQV/~3/291801717/also-true.html A couple of weeks ago, Roseanne Cash was blogging about her songwriting process at the NYT. This week it's Suzanne Vega (who I was listening to in the car just this morning). I like this: Many times a song will begin with a clear image in my mind, but
sometimes a song can begin with a melody popping into your head. How
does it come? On an instrument? With a voice? On something unearthly
that is neither, maybe. It could be a clear voice that says, for
example, “Men in a war, if they’ve lost a limb, still feel that limb as
they did before.” I heard that line clearly in my mind and it sounded
like a voice to me.
But voices and visions are scary to admit to. And also you have to make time for them, or they go on to someone else.
Like what Cash had to say, this strikes me as equally applicable to the writing of fiction. Which I should get back to right now...
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My vacation joy is complete: I just got a phone call from PetStay, our local pet-sitting company, confirming that Maya will be able to stay in a family home while we're in Stockholm. Whew! Maya will be soooo much happier there than in a kennel, and Patrick and I will be happier in Stockholm knowing that she isn't lonely and scared while we're off having fun.
Now I can happily settle into fantasies of gorgeous Swedish kanalbulle (cinnamon rolls - omnipresent and soooooo delicious!) and 18th-century palaces. Perfect! And less than three weeks to wait. :)
In the meantime, I've been re-reading Patricia McKillip's Solstice Wood, which I like even more on the second reading. (The first reading was on a long plane trip, which is never a bonus for any book! I'm generally so exhausted and out of it by the end of the plane trip that whatever book I'm reading is lucky to have even half my mind focused on it.) It's a really lovely book, written with all the lyricism of her high fantasy novels, but with a really convincing modern American setting. (Actually, she does something really interesting there, because it's a kind-of sequel to her earlier book Winter Rose [which I adore], which was DEFINITELY a high fantasy novel...except that now it's being looked back on as real history. Very strange, and it shouldn't work but somehow really does...)
My single quibble with the book is one of my old standbys: I really hate it when writers toss in dogs (or other pets) as character-flavor without actually thinking through the lifestyle implications. The heroine's boyfriend Madison is a great guy, very responsible and caring, and partway through the book, the heroine thinks about all the wonderful things about him, including his sweet mixed-breed dog...and I thought, wait...what???? - because the book started with Madison sleeping over at the heroine's house, as usual, after a nice evening together, and there's no dog in sight! So I was left wondering: did he leave the dog at home alone for at least 14-16 hours? And is that his regular routine? In which case, he is really not the nice, responsible guy he's supposed to be... Or was it just that the idea of a dog for Madison was tossed in to show off his nice-guy-ness without actually thinking the implications through?
It was a really small niggle in a book that's genuinely wonderful overall - evocative, magical, and insightful about family relationships and misunderstandings - so I don't want to put anyone off the book by my ranting. Patricia McKillip is one of my favorite fantasy authors, hands-down. But I do wish authors wouldn't toss in dependent pets - or, for that matter, children (I'm thinking of those awful romantic comedies where the hero's adorable and saccharine-sweet kids suddenly show up partway through just for a quick cameo to show off his softer side) - without taking them into consideration when they're showing the rest of their character's lifestyle. (On the other hand, I'm such a dog nut that if an author gives the protagonist a realistic dog, believably integrated into their lifestyle, I'll forgive a whole multitude of other flaws, just for the dog's sake! It's one of the things I love about Jenny Crusie's novels, and it sold me on Agatha Christie's By the Pricking of my Thumbs despite various other issues I had with it. I am a total sucker that way.)
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You can tell when post-novel ennui finally lets loose it hold on the muse. First draft voice falls into place, scenes start to grow longer as the particular narrative voice takes hold.
Projected Goal
Working title: Shift New words: 500 Deadline: August 3 Reason for stopping: Lunch and an episode of SupernaturalDarling du jour: Charles Child was the first person in Lourdes to see the statue of the Virgin Mary come to life.It's almost the same as the first line I posted a week or so back, but I've narrowed the story focus a bit, and I don't want to use locations as scene breaks. So, I had to incorporate Lourdes into the prose. Today's words Word didn't recognize: keikogiSoundtrack: Kansas -- "Carry On Wayward Son" and "Dust in the Wind" Credit Supernatural for the above, though I still have my original Point of Know Return LP. I think some Queen will sneak in along the way, and perhaps some Journey, and most certainly Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds, which I also still own in its original LP format. There's not a formal soundtrack yet, though.
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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) the_fix_feed |
| 2008-05-16 15:52 |
| Paradox, #12, Spring 2008 |
| Public |
http://thefix-online.com/reviews/paradox-12/ There are fewer stories in issue #12 of Paradox due to the presence of the longest piece the ‘zine has published yet, a novelette by David Erik Nelson. All these stories have to do with war, either between cultures or nations. Though there are a couple of settings that have become very [...]
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| the_fix_feed |
| 2008-05-16 15:22 |
| Distillations: Breaking the Line |
| Public |
http://thefix-online.com/features/breaking-the-line/ Once upon a time, it was easy for both poets and readers to know where to expect a line break. The rhythm of the meter shows it and by the rhyme you would know it. However, the previous example is an example of why this approach is less common today. It takes a great amount [...]
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+900 words
Started writing on Act 2 again. I will sort out the issues witht the beginning later. For now, I just want the rest of it done.
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busy
tired![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
annoyed
hot
