| half angel. half eagle. one eye on the world. |
[16 May 2012|06:14pm] |
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mood |
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 chipper |
] |
The first volume of Shadow Unit is now available as a proper paper book with a gorgeous Kyle Cassidy cover.
It will be available through Amazon within a week, and will slowly filter its way through the rest of the online distribution system.
 This volume contains the first half of Season 1. Volume 2 should be available in about a month, with other volumes to follow.
And of course, Shadow Unit in its entirety is available for free online, and as a modestly priced ebook through the usual sources.
The story began in 2007, and will end in 2013. It's not too late to discover one of the coolest collaborative serials in the genre internets!
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| Anthony Giangregorio—beware, for real! |
[16 May 2012|02:26pm] |
Remember the other day, when new writer Mandy DeGeit found her story substantially rewritten, with errors introduced, by a small press editor/publisher Anthony Giangregorio, who proceeded to act very unprofessionally when DeGeit complained about the added bestiality and outrageous introduced copy errors (e.g., the story is now called "She Make's Me Smile")?
Well, another writer, Alyn Day also came forward to describe a story she had placed with Giangregorio being substantially rewritten and retitled without her permission or even awareness.
And apparently, Giangregorio is upset enough about these revelations to invite himself over to Day's house. A Facebook screencap-you'll see that the conversation begins last year, and was updated 22 hours ago:
Is there a way to read this as something other than a threat against Day-especially as Giangregorio had previously told DeGeit that he would only communicate through lawyers? I tend to think not. Please spread the word.
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| (Character) Class and The Game of Life |
[16 May 2012|11:50am] |
John Scalzi has a good post comparing life to a video game, in which being a straight white male (SWM) is akin to playing a video game on the "Easy" setting. Being of color, queer, a woman, etc. is like playing on a harder setting. There are many many other variables of course, including class, which he touches on by writing "If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed." I think this is both a factual and rhetorical error, and that class should be fully integrated into Difficulty as opposed to stats, to make the analogy more apt.
(For those who don't know, a "dump stat" is the stat where you only put the minimum of points. It's not like you're "dumping" extra points into that stat, but that you dump your lowest score into it.)
The error, I think, can be seen in the comments to the post—and all the usual disclaimers about reading the comments on any Internet posting apply here, double. Two of the recurring themes are as follows:
1. SWMs complaining that their low class/socio-economic status/wealth means that their lives aren't so privileged after all.
2. SWMs who appear to be better off who a) want to know why they should act against their own interests by critiquing their advantages regardless of the origins of those advantages, and b) like expressing their ownership of and stake in the system built by previous generations of SWMs, and distaste for all those awful black African Jewish lesbians in wheelchairs who want to take over.
So, we have a group that feels it doesn't have a stake in the system, and is feeling the harshness of competition, and a group pleased with the rules of the system as they stand scoffing at the activities of their social inferiors. Clearly, there's a significant break in SWMdom, and it's along class lines.
This plays out in the real world in several ways that demonstrate to me that class is fundamental and thus part of "difficulty setting" in Real Life: Dragons of the Murderdome, or whatever you want to call it. Back in the 1970s, Albert Szymanski studied income and race and found that, of course, black workers made less than white workers. However, he also found an interesting regional difference—white workers in the American south made less than black workers in the American north. While the white workers in the south made more than their black co-workers in the south, they were underpaid compared to both blacks and whites in the north.
So, while whites were better off in a region of greater racism and thus greater race privilege for being white, most of them would benefit along with black workers in a region with greater equality. White privilege was paying white workers an extra dollar to keep from having to pay both white workers an extra five dollars and black workers an extra three dollars. (Clearly, we've not yet gotten any numbers from a truly equal society with no race privilege.)
What explained the difference? The north had integrated labor unions; the south, thanks to segregation, had many fewer labor unions (and those that existed were less powerful). Basically, white workers did not benefit substantially from racial discrimination, not even relative to blacks in another area with less explicit racist laws and social policies. Greater benefits would have accrued had they fought against their privilege, and in solidarity with black workers. Victor Perlo has found similar dynamics existing even today, a generation after the end of Jim Crow laws.
Sure, plenty of SWMs did benefit—managers, the highest tier of (almost invariably white) workers, factory and mine owners, people who play the stock market, etc. And sure, there is an important "psychological wage" white workers are paid—at least we're not black!, but psychology is even easier to print and inflate than fiat money. And yes, poor whites are less likely to have to deal with police harassment and the like. But they both get it worse in an environment where police are allowed to run rampant as a tool of keeping neighborhoods segregated and the property of landowners and businesses safe. Basically, the greater the race discrimination, the higher the inequality among whites.
There are similar analyses that have been done as regards gender discrimination, discrimination against gays, etc. It's not a cookie-cutter sort of thing—queer issues often have to do with the "nature" of the family itself and the need to protect certain kinds of families and eliminate other forms of families, for example—but in general there are lots and lots of SWMs that don't benefit materially from racism, or sexism, or homophobia, or national chauvinism, etc.
Of course, many white people, regardless of their own class "stat", accept racist ideas. Their perceived interests and their actual interests are two different things. Some confusion emerges when SWMs for whom racism (or sexism, or anti-queer sentiment, etc.) is beneficial declare themselves spokespeople for all the poor put-upon SWMs are who are the outrageous victims of Affirmative Action, or too many black ladies with dreadlocks being cast as wisecracking judges on TV, or women who won't have sex with the "beta males." And when discussions of intersectionality and oppression take class as a secondary issue*, the rhetorical floor is ceded to people with a material and ideological interest in racism, etc. to recruit the rest of SWMdom. Low-SES/working class/poor SWMs end up siding with billionaires who make the correct-seeming noises about "liberal elites" and competition from blacks and women and gays.
But when class is fully integrated into an understanding of the difficulty setting of the Game of Life, I think the arguments get much clearer.
The question: "I'm a poor white guy; should I fight against systems of privilege?"
The answer: "Because you'll benefit from it. The more equal things are, the better off you are."
For rich white guys who ask the same question, well, they're clearly on the other side, so they don't need an answer.
*Class actually is complicated when it comes to intersectionality. Very few people believe that the best solution to sexism is the elimination of men, or that the best solution to racism is the elimination of whites. And yet, many people do believe that the best solution to class division is the elimination of the bourgeois class. And yet, when so many theorists of intersectionality are themselves bourgeois aspirants with privileges of their own to protect...
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| non-country songs that creep me out |
[16 May 2012|10:12am] |
One Direction, "What Makes You Beautiful"
The chorus includes the immortal lines:
You don't know you're beautiful
That what makes you beautiful
You know what's sexy, kids?
Self-loathing!
I'm glad we had this talk.
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| omg |
[16 May 2012|06:27am] |
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Mirrored from Marsha Sisolak. Trader Joe’s dark chocolate bar, caramel with black sea salt. Run, do not walk, to the nearest TJ’s.
This commercial brought to you by my delighted taste buds. You may thank the Eldest Child’s girlfriend. I know I am.
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| Parenting and Writing, Imperfectly |
[16 May 2012|02:13pm] |
Over at the Smack Dab in the Middle author blog, I just posted a really personal blog entry on this month's theme, Parents. Mine is called "Parenting and Writing" and it begins:
Parenting is one of those issues in life that suddenly takes on completely different angles when you start doing it yourself. It was a shock, when I had my baby, to find myself suddenly a "mom", expected to be ever-nurturing, ever-compassionate, ever-strong. When you have a child, you stop being just a person - in a lot of ways, socially, you also become a construct: The Mom (or: The Dad, which has its own intimidating set of cultural ideals).
When I studied American Women's History in college, I remember my professor, with a wry quirk to her mouth, writing the phrase: "It's all Mom's fault" on the chalkboard, as she discussed the rise of that psychological approach. There can be a real sense of betrayal for a child (even a grown-up child) whenever we see a mother who has done something that isn't objectively right (or in other words, the way moms are supposed to behave).
I think the years of MG fiction are the years when many kids first start really noticing the ways their moms are failing to live up to that cultural standard. I know that my friends and I were vocal in those years whenever we noticed our moms' failures.
Well. Now I'm a mom, and guess what? I fail to live up to that cultural standard every. single. DAY...
You can read the full blog entry, and I'd love to read any comments, either there or here.
(I'm also really hoping that this is not TOO personal a blog entry...MrD is still sick, and I'm so tired, it's a little hard to judge stuff like that today!)
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| Henry Miller, letter to Anaïs Nin, February 12th, 1932 |
[16 May 2012|08:03am] |
| [ |
mood |
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 contemplative |
] |
At midnight last night my table was littered with notes that, unable to digest it all and frame a coherent letter, I gave up in despair and went to bed. The room has become infinitely more habitable since (after two weeks) I discovered that the light could be manipulated. I must tell you that the big coal box in my room is an object which I look at with a deal of affection. It is the best object in the room... One of my notes says: “Correct Anaïs’ English.” Do you want me to do that, or would Hugo consider that I am encroaching on his private domain? Furthermore, and this is more important, would it “cramp your style” if I were to do so? I think it fairly important to apprise you of your errors, since you are making English your language. Nothing is more embarrassing at times, and more provocative of ridicule, than these queer twists which betray one’s ignorance of the language. I suspect you want to come as near perfection as possible in this matter; and you know I'm no stickler for grammar, syntax, commas etc. No, it is only when the meaning is distorted or the beauty marred that I would hazard a friendly counsel… I sent a second letter to Switzerland, same address, did you get it? And did I enclose the book list I had promised? Don't be terrified by the avalanche of mail. It is a bad habit of mine, and as I can do no work with the pen it is just a way of letting off steam; Hugo, I hope, is not annoyed. Please have him say so. He must not. In any case, I am not dropping them on his desk. They arrive at Louveciennes, when commences a new life. But, I know how it can be sometimes. I should hate to have him saying to himself—"More mail from that guy? What's the meaning of all this? I hope to Christ he croaks.” And having written this I immediately perceive that it sounds a little like having a bad conscience, which I haven't at all, my conscience being practically defunct. No, I want Hugo to like me, to trust me always, to believe in me. It’s a little harder to get at him, and then it was not he who put the first foot forward. That always makes things awkward. But damn all that, Anaïs, but it is all for Hugo too, absolutely. And if I can write freely—without fear of planting worms in the fruit, why fine. Hugo will either like me tremendously after a time, or detest me. I think he will like me. And, if I may sound just another note before finishing with this subject—you see I am extremely touchy, because I myself was so often placed in Hugo’s role; the scars never seem to heal. But between you there is understanding. That is the big victory. I am where Proust was, only with more complications, more facts, more mysteries, more terrors, more of everything, except genius. You almost make me weep with your flattering words. No, I am far from being the artist you imagine. Maybe there are in me possibilities—they have not yet come to fruition. But your friendship, your wonderful sympathy is everything....
[Henry Miller, letter to Anaïs Nin, February 12th, 1932]
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| A wild child appears! |
[15 May 2012|11:50pm] |
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mood |
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 exhausted |
] |
Today the stork CPS delivered to us a nine-year-old girl. We spent the rest of the day enrolling her in school, buying some furniture, conducting an inventory of her clothes for the adoption agency*, and beginning the long slog toward bedtime.
Agent F, as I will refer to her until I get the foster care privacy rules figured out, spent much of the day trying to speak cat. She seems to be picking it up fairly quickly. Siggy--always glad to have more monkeys to dominate--seems to have taken her under her iron paw.
I already have many OPINIONS about the medications some genius put her on. Luckily, we see her new psychiatrist on Thursday, and perhaps he will join the litany of WTF that has been uttered today.**
I'm also very glad we only have two weeks of school left, because the hour of 6:00 a.m. and I are not friendly, but will be forced to get to know each other very well for those two weeks.
I'll probably keep further posts about this under f-lock, but if anyone has any questions about the process, feel free to email or message me. If I'm not dead of exhaustion, I'll try to answer.
* How many pairs of socks does a nine-year-old need? A lot, apparently.
** Two caseworkers, both of us, and three different people at her new school all looked at her list of meds and made emoticon faces, including o.0, O.O, and >:(.
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| Overhead on Riverside Drive |
[15 May 2012|06:21pm] |
Delia (to extremely sulky, broody EK): You are my darling one.
EK (sulkily): No, I'm not. I'm not anyone's darling anything.
Delia: So what am I, chopped liver?
EK: Oh..........OK.
Delia: Good; because I don't think there's any statute anywhere about marriage being between chopped liver and a woman.
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| our prayers are always answered. that miracles can happen. |
[15 May 2012|04:54pm] |
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mood |
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 i'm a fucking genius |
] |
I just had one of those labor-saving strokes of genius that I need to share with the world. Which is to say, the easiest method ever in the history of popovers.
Here is my basic popover recipe:
2 tablespoons solid fat (butter or animal fat (duck fat, mmm) or solid shortening)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (250 ml) whole milk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup (140 g) all purpose or white whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten
This tactic assumes you own a wand blender and a wide-mouthed quart Mason jar and a microwave. If not, just make the popovers the way you normally would--or if you are missing the wand blender but have a normal blender, you can melt the butter in a different container and use the normal blender.
About an hour or two before dinner, take your Mason jar. Put the butter/whatever in it. Put it in the microwave and melt it. (If you are making Yorkshire pud and are waiting for the roast to be finished before you add the fat, skip this step for now, and stir the fat in before you bake the popovers.)
Add the milk, eggs, salt, and sugar to the butter in the Mason jar (or blender)(or just put them in the blender if you are adding the fat later). Do not put the eggs directly into the hot butter before diluting it with the milk. Otherwise you will have scrambled eggs, which are nice, but not popovers.
Whiz them all up with the wand blender.
Add the flour and the wheat gluten.
Whiz that too, until you have a nice smooth batter.
Let the batter sit on the counter until dinner is nearly ready. If you are roasting something at 400 degrees, you're good; otherwise preheat your oven to 400 (F). (200 C)
Liberally grease 9 cups of a 12-cup muffin tin, or if you are making Yorkshire pud, drizzle a little of the fat from the roast into the bottom of the cups. If you have one of the giant-sized six muffin muffin tins, then you will have bigger popovers and they need to bake a little longer.
Using silicon cups for this results in popovers without stumps or a lot of loft, as they just levitate themselves out of the super-slick cups entirely. They still taste good!
If you are using fat from the roast you're making, add it now and stir it in.
Divide the popover batter between the nine greased cups. You can just pour it from the blender or the Mason Jar.
Stick in oven. Do not peek! If you open the door before they are set, they won't rise properly.
Bake for 35 minutes or until deep mahogany brown.
Pull pan from oven. Tilt popovers in cups, or remove them to a rack or basket. Pierce each one with a bamboo skewer. (careful of the steam!) The purpose of these two procedures is to (a) prevent them from getting soggy and (b) prevent them from collapsing.
Eat.
However you meant to eat them. Do not plan on leftovers.
Wash your one. dirty. dish. Oh, and the wand blender, sure. And the muffin tin. But that was inevitable.
ETA: Nota Bene
For even more loft in your popovers, preheat the muffin tin with the grease in it in the 400-degree oven for a few minutes before pouring the batter in. This is a bit tricky, though, and can be skipped.
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| ebook |
[15 May 2012|08:13pm] |
Circlet Press is releasing ebook versions of my 1st story collection, THE DRAG QUEEN OF ELFLAND, later this month. Anyone want to review/blog about it?
It's a collection of lesbian and gay fantasy short stories, published in 1997. Seems like ancient history! Fifteen years ago!
It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award, the Spectrum Award, and the Small Press Book Award. (Whew!)
It was also published in Spanish as MI NOVIO ES UN DUENDE.
Anyway, if you're interested, email me at desayunoencama (at) gmail.com with your preference for ebook format (.pdf, .mobi, .epub) and I'll be happy to send a copy off to you.
And thanks in advance for helping spread the word!
(Even if you don't like it, or all of the stories in it, or etc. It's been so long, I'm not sure I would either. Although I hope it is an entertaining read, still!)
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| past few weeks |
[15 May 2012|04:23pm] |
Still bad at updating this blog, but some of the literary highlights of the past few weeks:
The Banco del Libro in Venezuela chose my translation into Spanish of Wanda Gág's MILLIONS OF CATS, published by Libros del Zorro Rojo, as one of the best books for children and youth 2012!
(This is the only book I've translated INTO Spanish, I normally translate from Spanish into English.)
UK poetry journal AGENDA (http://www.agendapoetry.co.uk/), founded in 1959 by Ezra Pound and William Cookson, has accepted my translation into English of a poem by Jordi Doce for an upcoming issue.
I haven't written much (poetry or prose) in forever, but my poem "Kristallnacht" and two translations by me of poems by Sofía Rhei are reprinted in THE MOMENT OF CHANGE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FEMINIST SPECULATIVE POETRY edited by Rose Lemberg, Aqueduct Press. (http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/TheMomentofChange.html)
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| Gentlemen Prefer Blondes + Rantlet |
[15 May 2012|11:52am] |
Which brings us to Sunday. We already had plans for the evening, but when Ellen's Uncle Ron said he had an extra ticket to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at Encores! (1) I'm slightly more enthusiastic about musicals than Ellen and the Times had given it (and Megan Hilty, who played Amy on Smash, and plays Lorelei Lee here) a glowing review, so I went.
And I'm glad I did. I saw the movie with Marilyn Monroe, approximately a million years ago, and remember being mesmerized by the glowing innocence she brought to everything she did. But I didn't remember what actually happens. Or (with the exception of the iconic "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend") any of the music. So I was happily ignorant of what to expect. Except a truly professional production (which I got), and some great performances (ditto). Jules Styne and Leo Robin aren't exactly Cole Porter or Stephen Sondheim, but they deliver catchy tunes (I liked "I'm Just A Little Girl From Little Rock") and some clever lyrics (the funny better than the romantic, for my money). By the time we saw it, all the principals had put down the scripts Encore! actors customarily carry through the whole show (since they've only had a week to learn it, and have a lot of blocking and dance moves to remember), and were doing the whole thing from memory. The dances are spectacular, the costumes remarkably posh for what is supposed to be a semi-staged reading, and the performances polished, energetic, and engaged--especially Megan Hilty, whose Lorelei Lee falls somewhere between her Amy on Smash (2) and what I imagine her Glinda must have been like in Wicked: ruthless but with a core of genuine sweetness, hard because she needs to be.
In short, I had a good time. But I came out of the theater feeling, well, uncomfortable.
Uncle Ron loved it. When I said I found it a bit dated in bad ways, he looked so alarmed, I segued right into how much I'd loved Hilty's performance and the dancing (truth). But I can tell you, right?
Writing about it on the train (3), I realized I had some of the same issues about it I had with How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Yes, it's a light-hearted satire. Yes, every single character in it is a more or less featureless stereotype of a stock comic character (dumb blonde, alcoholic rich lady, chorine with a heart of gold, hen-pecked husband with roving eye, battle-axe wife, up-tight mama's boy, self-absorbed inventor, workoholic rich boy, stern parent. Yes, the tunes are hummable and most of the lyrics are cute and funny. Yes, what little common sense is demonstrated by any of the characters resides entirely with the women, who are also shown as working very hard for what they want. Which is, of course, the silly, blind, head-in-the-clouds, unpractical, vain, self-centered (but very rich) men we've all just been laughing at. Because that was the world Anita Loos was writing about in her 1932 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and the world America was eager to get back to after the social upheavals of WWII. Lorelei Lee is practical and self-sufficient out of economic necessity. What she wants is to be taken care of. Love is a means, not an end. The way Megan Hilty plays her, she expects men to come and go, and doesn't much mind when they do, as long as they leave diamonds behind them. I find it hard to believe she loves or trusts her Gus any more than the other men she flutters and pouts at. There's a hardness in her smile, a calculation in her innocence. The way Monroe played her, I was afraid for Lorelei. The way Hilty plays her, I'm more afraid for Gus.
Which is all true, but nothing I can't deal with. I am no stranger to historical cultural relativism. It takes more than a little cynical mysogyny to give me emotional indigestion. And yet that's what I had. I felt it when I saw How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, too. I suspect some of my discomfort comes from my fear that contemporary culture is being pushed towards the social attitudes that color those mid-century musicals (4). They present themselves as innocent, light-hearted, charming, silly, but when it comes right down to it, their basic assumptions are none of these things. They tell us that woman is nothing without a man, that marriage is primarily a financial transaction, that marriage turns women into controlling battle-axes or alcoholics and men into fashion accessories, spineless yes-men, or cheating sneaks. They glorify a world in which beauty, riches, and position are everything, kindness and learning opportunities for comedy, and racial and cultural stereotypes abound. During the Brazil number, I didn't know where to look, and that's a fact.
So yeah. Mixed feelings about the play. Not a single reservation about any of the performances or the staging. I bet it ends up on Broadway, with better costumes for the chorus and more scenery. And I might even go see it again, even if I don't really like diamonds. (5)
(1) They do obscure and/or impossible to mount In This Economic Climate musicals, mostly from more than 50 years ago. We saw Juno there, and Fanny. It's always a real education.
(2) Currently the only TV program we watch, and boy, are we addicted. Having started half-way through, we now have to go and see the beginning. Luckily, we're used to watching stuff inside-out.
(3) Where I was meeting Ellen for dinner before we went to see yet another play, which I'll write about when I've had a chance to think about it a little more.
(4) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was written in 1932, made into a musical in 1949.
(5) I wish I knew how to do superscripts, because I love writing footnotes.
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| Buy me! THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE out today. |
[15 May 2012|08:40am] |
Today is the official release date for The Future is Japanese, an anthology I co-edited with Masumi Washington for Team Rocket! It sure looks neat, see?
It's the first Haikasoru title with original content by both Japanese and non-Japanese writers. That is to say some of the stories are appearing in translation before they appear in Japanese. Plus, we have new stories from Bruce Sterling, Catherynne Valente, Pat Cadigan, David Moles, Ken Liu, Ekaterina Sedia, Rachel Swirsky, and the triumphant return of Felicity Savage!
Our Japanese authors include Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D!), Project Itoh (PKD-award citation winner for Harmony), Issui Ogawa (of the Haikasoru books The Last Continent and The Lord of the Sands of Time), Toh EnJoe (whose collection we're releasing soon), and TOBI Hirotaka, whose story I think has serious award potential.
You should buy this book. Partially because I want to do another one. Partially because it's awesome and has a cute cover with an actual Asian person on it. And if you are a bit short this month, you can enter my latest giveaway contest on the future of the short story. We're giving away four copies and will hip anywhere in the world, so get to it.
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