Flattened Affect

2004-01-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

Placebo: Every You Every Me.

My mild obsession with t.A.T.u. is at least coming to fruition.... I've got this idea for lesbian Regency Romance.

Ack. Swore I'd never write romance, but this one just grabbed me. And hung on.

The bad part is I know very little about the English Regency - my era is 200 years before, if not more. So time to drag out historical research skills.... *rolls eyes*

Galantier is currently back-burnered..... Lin is driving me nuts.

By the way, if you're the $#|+head who has stolen and is using my identity, let's just say you're on my quick karma list. Does the term FEDERAL CRIME mean anything to you? Does the term Supermax mean anything to you?

Might wanna look 'em up. I do prosecute.

2003-10-24T16:16:00.000-06:00

Got in a thingie with a 2nd Amendment type the other day....

Guy says that Mericans have to have guns else the gummint will come in an enslave us all like the Nazis.

I walked away.

I don't talk to stupid. It's not worth my time.

I didn't bother 'splainin' to this oxygen thief that the gummint has guns a thousand times bigger than anything he can buy legally and arms that he could never get a hold of anyway.... at least, not until www.darkprofits.net becomes real.... (good parodies should never die.... and that one's great satire.) I didn't bother to notice his fat, forties, smoker-breathless physique, his inability to take orders (and he wouldn't be the general in the Underground Resistance - he's too dumb) his congential incontinence of the mouth.

I didn't bother to point out that the Nazis did not, in fact enslave the people - they used propaganda to a very pointed end (just as the NRA does now....) to convince the peepul that what the gummint was doing was right and proper....

I just walked away and hoped that Lardo will shoot himself in the foot, become a statistic, and remind the rest of us that the 2nd Amendment is the one failure in the Founders's great document.... they could have been a little clearer.

2003-10-24T16:03:00.000-06:00

Listening to: The audio book of Frank McCourt's 'Tis.

Grr....

I posted at a literary site a few weeks ago on a book I had just finished and found profound. Today, I got an email from a (I hope) high school student asking me to summarize it for her for a class for a paper that's due Monday and that she had failed to read the book and would fail her class if she didn't turn in this paper.

Oh, this annoys me.

So I wrote an email back to her (The book, coincidentally, was Angela's Ashes, by the same author as the book I've been listening to as I clean house and work on editing Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (AKA Darya)) basically calling her a fool - the book is far from difficult since it's clear, simple English and each chapter is not that long - no more than 4000 words. Realistically, the girl deserves it, and if I knew where she was I'd telephone all the high schools in the area and leave voice mails that the teacher who gets a paper from Victoria on Angela's Ashes should know that it's probably plagarized, and at the least, she's been soliciting for others to do her work for her.

WHAT is wrong with the vast majority of 14-20 year olds these days?!?!

They don't want to work, they don't want to think, they don't want to be responsible for themselves. They have no interest in being independent, unless of course, they define independence as mooching money off their parents and doing otherwise as they please.

If it sounds like I have no respect for the generation following me, you're very close. I start with suspicion these days that these children don't want to be adults, except on their own terms. They don't want the responsibilities that come with freedoms. Individuals have to earn my respect that they are trying to live up to their responsibilities - it's okay to fail, but you have to try.

So far, the highest "grade" of anyone I know between the ages of 13 and 22 is a B. Far too few of the people I know in that age bracket are willing to force themselves to push, to survive, to be an adult and fall and pick themselves up and not waste their lives.

It's just as much a waste to do nothing and go no where as it is to waste your life with self-destructive behaviors and addictions and recklessness.

So you want to be a [insert here].... So do it. Try. Get going. Don't whine about it.

No one owes you a living. Perhaps we should provide health care, basic shelter, and other needs (though I believe those should be in return for agreeing not to have a child while you're not supporting yourself) but it's up to the INDIVIDUAL to provide meaning for their lives. No government can provide every one of us with a meaningful and fulfilling career. That we have to do for ourselves.

And we won't get it by copying others and begging for others to do our lives for us.

2003-10-02T02:06:00.000-06:00

iTunes: Nas Ne Dagonait, tATu

So it's been a while... Enough extraneous activities - usually forced upon me by unsympathetic, non-writerly types - to fill a Day Runner.

That's why I use a Visor.

On the upside, I finally got a keyboard for my Visor and I should have done it within a month of buying the thing. I'm also reviewing my Russian because I'm feeling terribly monolingual recently. Thus, the tATu.... Though it's not bad techno-punk-pop.

But as is normal for me, I get obsessive and want more facts. I remember reading a Rolling Stone article back in.... April, I think, on some business trip and being struck by the fact that they were presenting as out lesbians (and barely legal, if I recall correctly.)

For most Americans that's shocking enough.... But lesbianism doesn't carry quite the evil cachet that male gayness does for some reason amongst the Neo-Con-Nut-Right. And for the rest of us, it's kind of cute-cool-trendy. I've met more women with lesbian/bi behaviors in the past four years than I met in the entire time between coming out to myself and getting my first girlfriend and 9 years later when my LT girlfriend died. It's like getting a tattoo or your tongue pierced these days - somewhat shocking, but common enough that it's not, you know, freaky. And it drives the cubes up the frickin' wall.

So after I bought the album and got it down (BTW - iTunes Music Store is the coolest thing since pockets and as soon as they get the Indies on board, it will be perfect) I wanted to know what the gossip was.... And of course, there is gossip. Pregnancies, boyfriends, management with Politburo tendencies and New Russia money scruples (read: none)....

Insane.

But not really. The thing I think that most Western European and North American fans don't understand is that Russia (and the Russia that the artists have known) is a) in major transition and about as stable as a two legged table and b) that reflects on every citizen. The other thing the average fan doesn't understand is how different from the normal hetero life is from growing up bi or lesbian.

Economically, Russia after the fall is unfortunately the worst of Soviet Communism and American-style monopolistic capitalism. So it's no surprise to me that the producer might have capitalized on a sexual attraction between the artists he put together. Or even directed them to fake it - I seem to recall that some of the Motown producers were just as bad or worse when it came to publicity and promotion (though they tended to hide things like divorce, abuse, drugs....).

Socially, Russia is equally conflicted. The controls are all off. There's a truism that one can negotiate the vast majority of the Russian interior with under 700 words of Russian, of which the vast majority are curses or epithets. In fact, one needs about a thousand words (plus any technical words)... But +/-150 of those are epithets and one does need them.

However, it's virtually impossible to say "I love you" in daily Russian. Sexuality is not something that was discussed under the Soviet regime (it was assumed that everyone was heterosexual) and male homosexuality was a dirty joke at best (think 1950's America....). Lesbianism wasn't even thought of. In many ways, in transitioning from the Soviet Union to Russia and the former soviet states has been a social transition from the ethics and mores of fifty or more years ago in less than ten. It's no wonder that Russians are feeling and behaving a little unpredictably.

So tATu calls themselves lesbians. (I'm not going to go into the viewpoint that I have that their overtly sexual dress and behavior is a pretty good way of telling the lustful, dominant, middle aged male population to go f#$k themselves. Look but don't touch to the 10th power.) In some ways, for Russia, that would be like the Beatles coming out in 1965 and saying "We're gay" or the Mamas and the Papas announcing that they had a group marriage. It is SO shocking....

So shocking that the tabloids have to prove it wrong because it violates the entire worldview. Thus, boyfriends, pregnancy rumors, blah, blah.

As far as pregnancy rumors go, one thing I have been reluctant to mention is that in Russia under the soviet system, the number one method of birth control was abortion - pills were hard to get, condoms/diaphragms defective, IUDs risky and if one ended up with an infection from one, hard to get treated. When I was there 7 years ago, that was still true. (I could have made a fortune importing TriPhasil.) According to a friend in Mockba (Moscow) it's still true for most people. If the rumors are true, it's probably not true 4 weeks later. (Medical care, while getting better for the wealthy - which does include tATu - is still lagging. People, even the wealthy, will let illnesses go untreated; chronic conditions are not pursued as aggressively as they are here.

And the other issue is that young women who grow up in a primarily feminine environment (and the Russian school systems are segregated) are more comfortable with expressing their friendship and affection than those of us that were subjected to the persecution of the coed system. The tales about girls' schools not withstanding, there is solid evidence that women raised in a single sex environment are more comfortable with their sexuality, no matter which variety it is. They are more comfortable with themselves, period. (And do remember that the Russians have fewer nudity taboos than we poor Puritan descendents.) Bi-sexuality and intense, physical relationships between women are a type of bonding.... And may be an expression of friendship, solidarity, love, sorority.... Or all of the above.

Next on rant radio.... The damage done to us by our puritan ancestry.....

2003-08-12T23:08:00.000-06:00

Here's the link....
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/08/12/smallpox/index.html

Why I'm writing about it.

I think the CDC is making a huge mistake. Smallpox is no joke. The American continents were ravaged by smallpox again and again between the first contact with Europeans and the turn of the 19th century. Millions of people, mostly Native Americans, African Americans and children of all races, died from the disease; millions more were disfigured or disabled for life because blindness is a complication.

Facts: Smallpox has a 40% morbidity rate and a 40% mortality rate. That means of 100 people exposed one time, 40 of them will develop smallpox and 16 of that 100 will die, even with medical support. A teaspoon of smallpox virus is enough to infect a stadium. Smallpox has a 10-14 day incubation period before the "spots" break out, when the victim is contagious, but looks to have and feels like s/he has the flu. Smallpox has a 3 week sickness cycle - the first 5 days after exposure, you feel fine. From day 5 to day 14 or so, you feel like you have the flu - aching joints, fever, headache. About day 15, the "spots" break out and the contagion factor multiplies. Smallpox takes about 3 weeks to "dry up", or double the amount of time for chicken pox. Then there is a 3-6 week recovery period, because smallpox is very draining physically. If there was scarring or other complications, the recovery time will be longer.

Smallpox is painful. We can't make the mistake of comparing this to chicken pox, which is the disease most of us have reference to - Smallpox has been unknown in the US since the sixties, and earlier in most places in the US. It is disfiguring and debilitating. How many of us can truly afford to spend 12 weeks sick, with 3 of that in hospital? For that matter, how can our hospitals afford to have 40% of the population in isolation, or even wards, at a time? Most hospitals work on the bank system - there's one bed for every 100 of population in the area, or a smaller number, since very few of us need a hospital at any given time. In a city the size of Denver, the hospitals would be overwhelmed in a matter of days.

The contagion issue is the big one that it seems the CDC is missing. This is a disease that spreads quickly and invasively through a non-immune population. When Smallpox hit the Native American population with the arrival of Europeans, the mortality rate was not 40%, it was 90%. We are a non-immune population. My mother was one of the last to be vaccinated in the 60's; her immunity is long gone. There are almost no doctors in the country who know what smallpox looks like. There are virtually no people with disease-induced immunity.

We cannot afford to have a third or more of the population out of commission for three months. We cannot afford to have 16% of the nation die in the course of a year, which, if a bioterrorist-caused smallpox outbreak happened, it would encompass the country in a matter of weeks. This is not a disease that "containment" will work upon.

Let's try two scenarios. A terrorist cell from whatever faction hates us this week gets a hold of some of the missing Russian smallpox virus and infects themselves with it. They get on planes and come to the US when they're contagious. They infect the 300 people sharing their plane because that air is not purified in any way, and even if they're rejected at the borders, they've still managed to infect 120 people. Assume that 10% of those people are business travelers, the sort of "road-warriors" that live through minor ailments with over-the-counter drugs and coffee. If they infect 40% of the people they come in contact with, the disease can and will travel across the country in very short time.

The second scenario is a variation. If the same cell manages to gain access to a public place, like a mall, and somehow aerosolize the virus - say, with plant misters - thousands of people could be infected... think the last weekend before Christmas, or the last weekend before school starts. Those mall-goers would come home with more than just their purchases, and while this scenario is somewhat more contained, it's not contained perfectly. And the rest of the country will be exposed.

The argument against mass vaccination is a valid one - 1 in 1000 people will die from the vaccine. That's 280,000 people. But 44.8 million will die if we do not vaccinate.

I have my arm out and ready for the vaccine, and I'm willing to take the risk to save the rest of you. Those of us who die in the vaccination process should be hailed as heroes. They will give their lives to save the rest of us from a fate straight out of the Middle Ages. I would be proud to be that one in one thousand.

Write your legislators if this scared you into action. Remind them that death carts are a much worse end to this than a few lawsuits.

2003-08-05T13:20:00.000-06:00

The Promise (Covenant Mix) When In Rome

Productivity is one of those buzz words that gets tossed around a lot, like synergy and team building. We get a clue as to the health of the nation's economy by looking at the productivity index; we've got information on a healthy work ethic based on an individual's productivity.

And then there are productivity tools, like email and iCal and Outlook, DayRunners and FiloFaxes. PDA's and palm-tops. But even with all of these tools and indexes, productivity is still highly personal. There's nothing that's going to change that. Productivity is the amount of work that a person can do in a given amount of time. Period. A company cannot get more work out of a person than that.

What most corps, especially tech corps, it's like they don't understand this. They don't understand the concept of worker "regeneration", the amount of time that a worker must have to go home, sleep, relax, eat, have down time....

And so of course, when the corp demands more of the employee and pays him/her less for it, productivity goes down. This seems logical, right? When you ask your employees to work a 70 hour week and give them a paycut, they're not going to produce as well. It's the carrot and the stick, and if companies would just realize this instead of making stupid decisions....

Writing is kind of the same. If publishers would realize that when they hold the money back, they're not getting their writers' best work because the writers are worried about the mortgage and the groceries and the credit card bill, and start paying on time and appropriately, the quality of the writing would improve vastly. Slush piles would increase, true, but people like Connie Willis got their break thanks to slush piles. There are gems, if they're willing to mine. And willing to pay.

That's one of the reasons I'm so enamored with Ellora's cave and Fictionwise. E-Publishing is really going to change the business for writers - more pay, on time and a bigger cut. And the publishers don't have piles of backlog in a warehouse - they have electrons that take up hard-drive space. Much more efficient. Things can stay in print for a lot longer if everything is electronic.

Not that Electronic press is perfect. Illustrations are hard. They're not as easily secured as a book - after all, it takes real work to copy a book, be it with a scanner, a copy machine, or by typing it in. With an electronic book, all it takes is cut and paste, copy... But that's minor. Another problem of course is the technology that's required - you have to have a computer of a palmtop or a PDA to use e-pub.... So that limits it to the top 10% of the world's population that can afford such things... but then again, books are in the same category.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that writers need to take back the publishing business from the corporations. They don't look at the works as entertainment and art anymore, but as product. Commodities. And this is very essentially not a commodifiable market. A book is no more a commodity than a basket of hand-grown tomatoes is a commodity. A book is an artisan production. And artisan productions cannot be commodified the same way factory productions can be, and can't be treated the same way.

And well, software development is the same way. Software, all other things aside, is still an art. And artists can't be pushed. One cannot chain any artist to their desk, easel or computer and expect good work out of them.

2003-08-04T01:27:00.000-06:00

El Tango de Roxanne - Moulin Rouge soundtrack, Ewan McGregor & Jose Feliciano & Jacek Koman

Hmm. A friend brought up a topic about religion and the fact that we can't necessarily be buried the way we want to when we're dead.

And that means I have to finally write about Joseph. And I do, because his life and death directed my own in ways I never thought it would go.

Joseph and I met in 5th grade. Fifth grade was the first time I ever lived in the same school's borders to go to more than a single year, though for 6th, we fed into the Junior High, so I had to change schools, but it was with the same people. Joseph and I became friends during a bout of asthma for him and a broken wrist for me in PE class. In the mid eighties, it was strange for kids of opposite genders of that age to be friends, but we were, because we were both outsiders for more reasons than just having to sit out PE.

I was a smart kid, too smart for my own good as a girl, and a "military brat". I was also frequently ill for reasons that I'd prefer not to go into here and gifted when it was still okay to call gifted kids that. Before we got lumped into "special ed." Geek prejudice is pretty straightforward - you're too smart to make mistakes when the teacher calls on you, not smart enough to shut up about it, and so peers try to remind you that you're not all that and a diet coke... usually with bruises. (Not that I approve....)

Joseph was an outsider for more complex reasons. He never participated in a lot of the stuff we did in class - he went to the library at Halloween, whenever we had class birthday parties, couldn't even cut out snowflakes for the winter art project. He brought his lunch every day... but I brought mine too, since at the time salt was a no-no, and there were a lot of days when all he had was a sandwich and the milk the school provided. Sometimes, it was half a sandwich.

But Joseph wasn't poor, or at least his family wasn't by the numbers. They were Jehovah's Witness, and all of their extra money went to the church. And that meant that sometimes they were on short rations. I know not all JW families do this kind of thing, but his did. And the religion meant he had to sit out of everything.

We stayed friends for the rest of his life - he helped me through my several bad spots, I helped him. In Junior High, we mined the much better library together as well as the town library, and Joseph was off and running. He read everything, coming to my house to make paperbag book covers when it was something he didn't think his parents would approve of.... which was often as he found science and philosophy, history and mathematics.

When we hit High School, it got bad. His parents wouldn't let him take the sciences or the foreign languages except as required by the state... and Joseph wanted to be a physicist. By that time, he was fighting with them all of the time, and he spent some nights on my parents' couch. He wasn't atheist - he was certain there was a god and that god was a malicious, freakish, cruel thing from the depths of the Marquis de Sade's wet dreams. He was an anti-theist. He hated god because he had seen the world in books and knew what was out there. And knew that with his parents' views on the world, he was not going to get to see it for real.

They let him take mathematics, since numbers weren't sinful. But nothing that could possibly contradict the bible, and English was the language of god and the bible. It was bad.

They believed in faith healing for his depression, hours of prayer with the deacons and the bishops. That, to say the least, is the least effective treatment for what was, essentially, situational depression.

By then, my contact with Joseph was limited to phone calls, long ones, late at night because my parents had moved us to another city, 7 hours north. I talked him down from suicide half a dozen times in the two years after we moved, and down from homicide at least that many times. He did the same for me, when my parents fought or when I had problems with the local dominant Mormon culture. We were survivors in the same lifeboat....

And this is the hard part to write. I went to University at 16, having skipped a grade and graduated early. I was in a late night class at the end of my freshman year, astronomy. I had a message from Joseph when I got back, taped to my door since we didn't have phones in the rooms in that dorm. He was at a payphone and didn't have a number for me to call back; he was not going home and it had gotten bad... really bad.

I got a hold of the closest friend I had there and he went and found Joseph at the Denny's; Joseph came back to his house and called me. Joseph, who had taken calculus as a Sophomore, differential equations as a Junior and Imaginary Numbers Mathematics at the local University as a senior in High School, had been rejected from every school he had applied to because he didn't have a foreign language or biology, chemistry and/or physics. Even the state university had rejected him. The community college would take him, but that meant another two years at home. And his parents made a lot of money - he'd have a problem getting financial aid.

But they would pay if he went to bible college. Bob Jones, or Liberty University or Grand Canyon Christian. He couldn't bring himself to abandon his dream that way.

I tried to convince him to go to one of the other community colleges, just to get his requirements and transfer - with his grades and abilities, he would have entrance and scholarships... even if just for a year. He reluctantly agreed with me and we hung up.

And went and bought two poster boards, marker and a rope. He wrote his suicide note in big letters, explaining how his parents' faith had mistreated him, how it had stolen every opportunity he might have had.

He hung himself from the tree in front of Kingdom Hall with the suicide poster around his neck. The next morning was the church rummage sale, and to say that a young man hanging in the tree caused a ruckus would be like saying that a Mercury seven rocket is something like a Black Cat firecracker, only bigger.

And no one ever gave him the dignity of acknowledging his beliefs and his hatred of what had been forced upon him. His parents buried him as a JW and never mentioned once his suicide. He died April 22, 1992, one month and eight days short of his High School graduation, 2 months and nine days short of his 18th birthday.

I, of course, was devastated. I felt like I'd pushed him over the edge somehow, even though now I know he was planning to just say good-bye.

Two days later, I changed my major and decided to become a psychologist to help those who couldn't make it out of the darkness themselves.

While I don't practice much, having no respect for the current state of mental health treatment establishments and much of the drug pushing that goes on, I remain true to Joseph's memory in trying to be a light to lead those who cannot find the path out of the woods.

End song - Breath of Life, Erasure. Chorus.
"I want life, life wants me to breathe in its love.
Take me I'm yours, now I'm coming up for air,
Gonna live my time for the rest of my life."

2003-08-03T23:30:00.000-06:00

Joy - VNV Nation, Praise the Fallen

Truth versus fact....

In the previous entry, I mentioned a person who was going to continue to speak on a better-left-dead topic. One of the other justifications she used for it was that she wanted to tell the truth.

Hrm. I've been watching this from the side-lines, as I said, and I am disgustingly well reminded of a scene in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Dr. Jones the younger is addressing his class of freshman Archeology students and writes the word "Fact" on the blackboard. He says "Fact. Archeology is the search for fact. If you're looking for truth, there's a philosophy class just down the hall."

Or something like that. It's been a while since I watched the movie.

I liked the distinction, though. Fact is something that can't be disputed. Truth is more objective and internal. Like so: fact - it is 78 degrees here right now. Truth: It's feeling cold because it was 90 something here during the day and it rained a little about an hour ago.

This issue has a lot of Truth on both sides and facts that no one, not even the participants, will ever know entirely. That's entirely due to the fact that this thing was not something that can be weighed, measured or tested. There is no way to objectively replicate this thing, even if someone was so insane and cruel and malicious as to try. And so the participants and the outsiders are never going to know everything about what really happened. And that is a fact.

Truth is what you get when you get emotion wrapped up in it. Sorry I have to sound so clinical about it, but my life outside of writing depends on my objectivity and the ability to read and understand scientific, replicable experiments. If it can't be proven with numbers in a double blind study, I don't put any faith in it. It's opinion. It's why, when I have a client (I'm a psychologist by training and trade) that needs medication, I refer her to a psychiatrist who has a medical degree and can prescribe. I don't expect her to just muddle through, I don't send her to the health food store for homeopathic ergot, I don't recommend St. John's wort. That's because none of these are as effective or in the latter two cases, proven by solid studies, as the commerical preparations are. The science just doesn't bear out the claims of the dietary supplement manufacturers.

So to return to truth in this war of words, it's about as objective as the Petroleum Institute or the Philip Morris Foundation. There's just no way this thing can be anything *but* subjective. It's about personalities, and lifestyles and choices and privacy and those are as subjective as anything there is.

And that's the reason I think it should be dropped. It's truth, and that's personal. Fact isn't going to be possible in this situation. Just as we're never going to know what really went on in the deserts of the Middle East from 4000 BCE to 100 CE, we're never going to have complete information in this situation. And just as those events are now Truth for a lot of people and cannot be disputed even when the evidence says otherwise, this situation is now truth for a lot of people and can't be disputed. So rather than engage in a battle of theological proportions, I'm just going to say,

"Stick to the facts. Move on. Forward from stasis."

2003-08-03T22:12:00.000-06:00

Saviour (Vox) VNV Nation Burning Empires

Here in Colorado, there are two types of anarchists - the radical, anarchist leftist types who believe the world is better run by the people, that governments are nothing but parasites and screw-ups, and practice collectivism as radical anarchist capitalism. Then there are the other ones. These are uber, arch-conservatives that believe the world is better run by the people, that governments are nothing but parasites and screw-ups, and practice familial isolationism. The only difference really between the two groups other than their religious preferences is that the latter carry guns. Lots of them.

We call them the "gun-totin' anarchists".

Thinking about wars of words (as opposed to word wars which are fun and friendly) got me thinking about the anarchists this afternoon, the gun-toters. I've been side-lining something I'm not talking about because I agreed to, in fact suggested, armistice. One of those who refuses to let the issue die its deserved, disgraceful death (and unlike her, I won't use names or actual incidents because it's none of your business if you don't know and if you do, then you know the relevant details anyway) said something to the effect of "I'm going to continue to post on this because I can."

Well... sure. She can do whatever she wants as long as it breaks no laws and causes no damage.... It's a free country, it's her mail/blog/private message sys/whatever. The question is should, not can.

Those gun-totin' anarchists are kind of the same way... they carry guns not because they have to, or because they hunt or live in a bad, bad neighborhood, or because they're cops or something, but because they can and the law says so. And while there are no statistics on how many kids of gun-totin' anarchists get killed or kill or get maimed or maim every year, there are statistics that say that kids of people who keep guns are more likely to get hurt or dead or cause hurt or death than those who don't have access to them. It's simple access.

The same thing applies to words. Words can heal, they can wound, they can, on occasion, kill. Usually, words are benign. But some people use them as weapons. "Word-toters" I guess you could call them. People who are so dedicated to telling the "truth" (see next entry) that they're blind to the fact that sometimes what you can say and what you SHOULD say are two very different things.

Now, I'm not talking censorship, unless it's the self-censorship variety. I think it's absolutely heinous for any entity to tell someone that one cannot read, write or think about something. I believe very strongly in the First Amendment; as I once told a little girl at the airport when we were talking about what I do, "Even strong words have their place." I would not support half the things I do if I did not believe that we should not be free to think and speak and write as we please.

BUT... there's a caveat to that. Self-censorship of some things just needs to happen. There's a lot of things I will never put into this blog because they're personal and private, between me and the other person(s) involved. And there are even things that I won't put into email or spoken communication because there's just no point in making a bad situation worse by saying "Gawds, that is a stupid thing to be saying." It's just counter-productive. Yeah, sometimes I think it, so does everyone, but saying or writing it is just plain foolish... for me.

Just like the word-toter issue. There are times when the only thing one can do when one opens one's blog or mouth is to insert foot up to knee. That's not good for the author. Just because you can doesn't mean you should make a fool out of yourself. This just seems like logic.... Like just because you "can" play Russian Roulette, doesn't mean you "should".

The word toter in question comes off as a lot less intelligent and reasonable than she seemed to be when I first met her from this attitude. And that's sad. If she's so special, as she seems to think she is, then she should know better. Honor is not only the art of truthfulness, courage and fidelity, but the art of knowing when to graciously accede and step away. And for me, honor and reason go hand in hand.

Grace. That's what we need more of, not stridency.

My thought for the day.... with another to follow.

2003-07-30T22:28:00.000-06:00

Halcyon + On + On from the Mortal Kombat Soundtrack

Well, the kid is not coming to stay, and that's probably in her best interest. It's been a huge uproar, and with a couple of other huge uproars going on, life has not been the tranquil life of ease that some say is necessary for the writing life.

I disagree.

I'm realizing that the more pressure I'm under, the better the stories work. Of course, that leads to some procrastination on the Real Life (TM) issues, but then again, Rian's Rebellion got written druing the time I was *supposed* to be working on Godless Americans March on Washington and working on the Directory.

Things perhaps have been too tranquil recently.

Except they haven't. Things have, in some ways gotten more weird than they were last November, but somehow it has translated not into productivity, but into the opposite. Now that Rian is edited to a place where I'm happy with her, and Darya is sitting there while I wait to decide if she needs to be divided in two and rebuilt, cut dramatically, or what....

The ideas, of course, flow fast and furious. I really want to play with the Princess and the Murderer folktale I found recently; I am thinking that HereandBack will very much work as a hard R-rated novel. Not sure where I want to go next with Galantier. Ellanaine's story needs to be told, so does Linienne's. I want to tell Miklas's life and Selene's. But the hole in the paper is exceedingly elusive the last few weeks.

Okay, enough moaning and groaning. Back to reality.

2003-07-26T18:46:00.000-06:00

Ick. I was supposed to be making up words this weekend - the Slacker Make-up Marathon at www.HollyLisle.com when everything went to hell.

I got a call this morning. A friend of mine has a 13 year old daughter. Beginning of June, they moved to South Dakota because my friend could not find a job here in Colorado that would let her live on her own and she could not handle putting up with her mother's psychoCatholic beliefs and her mother's unreasonable behaviors (not religion related) anymore. (Not all Catholics are bad, let me state that now. Don't flame me if you're Catholic; you're not this woman.)

Well, the 13 YO didn't really want to move, being a typical teenager, but it had to happen, so when they get up there, the kid goes into that extreme pain-in-the-ass mode that all teenagers can do when they think it serves them well. They're living with friends until my friend gets on her feet, but the kid is such a PITA that the friends say you've got to move.

Well, my friend is waiting tables - she doesn't have the money to move yet. So since I get along with the kid (and don't put up with PITA attitude out of her) my friend is sending the kid back here until she gets a place. Oh, lovely.

So I'm cleaning my office (Which has to be said, was a FREAKING DISASTER AREA - superfund level); we went and got a new futon today for it, and next I have to work on the REST of the house.

Oh, well. At least we had a break in the weather. The 100+ days are over for a little while.

On the bright side, the darling husband said I can have my new laptop if I want it.... so now I have to decide between a 15in Powerbook and a 14 inch iBook. I've loved this iBook well and truly, but the 15 is looking pretty cool right now.

2003-07-25T22:47:00.000-06:00

Summer makes me feel singularly unmotivated. Maybe it's the remnants from US public education or maybe it's that Arizona summers are pretty much impossible to live through if you're a pale skinned, burns-under-fluorescent-lights type. Or maybe it's just the heat.

I've got story ideas coming at me all over the place, but writing them down is the hard part. I just don't find the interest.

Ah, well... rant done.