Ganked from divalion.
I can be a shark!!!!
19
May
Egregores blog has a post about atheism as the new bigotry. I think a lot of atheists, especially those who consider themselves progressives, will find this take either very surprising or as just another attack from the aggressively religious to force them to assimilate. I have no interest in assimilating anyone, and given some of the treatment I’ve received and observed from atheists and the traditionally religious, I have to say this: as in all things where it’s not just a difference of opinion but a difference of taproot-level attitude, the words that express the attitudes must be taken on a case by case basis.
I am not a person of absolutes (contrary to popular opinion), and there are a lot of conversations I’ve had with atheists where comments made to me might sound bigoted to casual passerby that were perfectly acceptable and even appropriate within the context of the conversation. That said, some conversations have simply revealed to me that yes, the occasional atheist is simply a religious bigot of a newer and trendier variety. This is always the loudmouth that makes the humanists, agnostics and civilized/meditation-based atheists look bad.
Read more
18
May
This is the face I wore to Goth Prom last night. Goth Prom in Minneapolis is a fundraiser for Sisters of Avalon, a sort of anarchist collective food shelf charity. While a lot of my friends have traditions around this prom, this is the first time I’ve ever gone. I hadn’t played dress up since 2005 when I did the Erotic Angels exhibit for my friend Paul, and I’ve always shied away from extreme makeup. The theme was the Seven Deadly Sins. While most people just “gothed it up” some of us did choose a sin: Brenda went as Vanity, her fiancee as Despair. We did choose sins that fit our daily personalities the best.
I don’t worry about sins much, because in terms of lifelong proportion, I just don’t think I’ve committed all that many. Foul-ups, mistakes, hurting people through forgetfulness of how their emotional reactions can physically hurt them I’ve done plenty. But intentional sin, that’s just not in my wheelhouse, unless you count converting to a religion outside monotheism as a sin. The way I see it, that’s your problem and not mine. Read more
I realized, looking over my book on handparting, that I don’t/won’t be talking about spousal/partner abuse much at all. It is a topic that merits attention. It can also be very triggering, so the details will be put under the more tag. Read more
My friend Liz found herself in the middle of a storm last week. A longtime fan of AnswerBitch on Facebook, she posed the question, “Does anyone really care what celebrities think about a stupid Arizona law?”
She thought nothing of it. The editors at AnswerBitch were in a rut for entertainment questions, and Liz proposed it only half-seriously. She did not expect them to take her question and run with it. But they did.
I don’t think that Liz thought herself about the reaction such a question would get coming from a person with a distinctively Latino name.
She definitely knows now. She wound up taking down her blog, hiding her gmail address and facebook status and by the time she contacted my oblivious self she sounded just about ready to crawl under her desk. I found her asking to talk to me about it vaguely ironic: here she was, wanting the attention to stop, while I’ve spent the last five years working my butt off to raise my professional profile. Perhaps asking me how to make it stop is more of an appropriate question than I care to admit to myself.
I don’t think Liz’s reputation is damaged from this, although the number of entertainment blogs that picked it up explains a lot about the entertainment journalism industry (that they will do anything to avoid writing their own story.) She did mention that she was identified as various types of “experts” that she is not. She’s a computer science professional at a decent university. She is not an immigration expert, political writer or anything else of the sort. She is also in the process of attempting entirely legal immigration to the United States, and she happens to be one of the rare immigrants coming not out of greed and/or legitimate need for opportunity1 but out of a genuine appreciation for the underpinnings of our government and surprisingly non-homogenous culture. The US actually needs people with brains like hers.
Since there’s no stuffing the cat back in the bag – her real name was used – I recommended she use this as a starter for blogging her citizenship process. She’s already taken one step by saying no to marrying her US citizen boyfriend, which is what her immigration lawyer recommended. She can also educate and inform people who want to come here on legitimate grounds on how to do it the right way.
This is one case where taking the unwanted attention and turning it towards something you want attention on might work. However, I still don’t know what I’d say if talking to a senator caught with his pants down. “Put that away and go apologize to your wife?”
- I do not blame illegal immigrants for the social ills in our country, but I do think some of them come here for the wrong reasons and amplify their mistake by doing so illegally [↩]
11
May
I’m just curious as to who reads this blog. So I’m declaring an open thread. Be civil, but please, tell me about yourself. Why you’re here. What from my blog stays with you so far.
This Mercury Retrograde has been surprisingly active for me. It makes me wonder what’s coming when it ends around May 11th. This reminds me, I still need to read my AstrologyZone forecast. While I don’t subscribe to astrology as an answer in all things, I approach it more as a weather report that sometimes just misses, Susan Miller’s abilities and accuracies continue to astonish me.
Among the things accomplished/set in motion thus far:
There’s a lot of rewriting to do, and a survey to release – watch this space for said survey. I’m also going to muster up an article for Witch’s Voice that will hopefully a)fit whatever’s passing for a theme these days and b)will draw attention to my project.
So yes, I’m hurtling down the path towards something happening, whatever that may be.
Also, I decided not to do a post about it, but I did want to point to Diana Gabaldon’s comments on fanfiction. The general consensus is that fanfic is only illegal when the copyright holder objects. While I can’t speak for all creative people, I know that Joss Whedon has actually supported fanfic, and the reason the Doctor Who universe was resurrected is because fans kept it going with Big Finish Audio (now canon.) I’ll talk more about this in the future, first because I do write some for TV shows I love, but also because a lot of people misunderstand what fanfiction can really do for your writing. Do not assume because someone writes fanfic that they are a beginner even when the fanfic is awful.
So that’s what’s rolling right now. It looks like a lot, but trust me, it’s all done in very small daily steps so I can still wash dishes and fold laundry.
firepit at Joel's
Since sexuality is the overarching theme between Beltane and Midsummer here in the northern hemisphere, I’m going to return to that blog series I mentioned about discussing boyfriends past. The book I’m writing, Divorcing a Real Witch1 naturally raises the question, over and over, of where I went wrong. While I like to think that there are no mistakes in relationships, there are plenty. Much of mine came from a misunderstanding of how to conduct myself and how to express my desires. For all my fuck-ups when it comes to love, I’ve also made some smart choices over the years, too. Funny, but I’m only ruled by my hormones when I want to be. Maybe what I say will resonate. Some will be unintentionally funny. But I just want my experience on record, something that developed before we had the Sex and the City trope to draw from.
I think the core decision that made my love life different from the women around me was this: I never, ever set out to get a husband. While that has happened twice now, it was never my core objective. I went into relationships for what I could learn from them, not with an end goal in mind. At first that’s because I didn’t want marriage. While my parents loved each other as far as I can tell, the model they put forth and the model my maternal grandparents put forth made marriage completely unappealing to me. It looked like a con, and often still does to me: men installed women to take care of their needs while the woman eventually faded for lack of sunlight. The modern version of this was to spend half the day starving for light in an office, and the other half starving for light at home. Oh yeah, and the house needed to be cleaned, the kids dressed and dinner had to get on the table somehow. This did not seem to happen with co-habitation arrangements. The unmarried women with live-in boyfriends seemed like the happiest women I knew. Read more
- working title [↩]
It may not look like it right now, but progress is being made. I just sent off the intensive survey questions to a friend who will overview them for really obvious bias and inclusiveness. I’m trying to work in questions for those without gender identity, as I believe that is a factor I overlooked when writing the first draft of the book.
Towards the end of demonstrating I’m marketable, I’ve also opened up my own fan page on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook, please join and please recommend to anyone who would find my work relevant. Believe it or not, Facebook actually has a decent amount of marketing clout, so just by joining you are helping me bring this book into being.
Read an entry on Metafilter about Charlie Stross and the “writing lifestyle” which, I concur, isn’t so much of a lifestyle as it is telecommuting without a target. I was reminded of a few things, and learned a few things that were oddly reassuring, especially as I’m in the process of crafting a query letter and book proposal for the right agent, who is somewhere in my star pattern now.
I learned one interesting factoid:
The average age of entry into full time writing is 34. Well, by golly, I’m 34. I think I’ll stay 34 for a while, maybe a year or so.
I find this strangely reassuring. I’m average. I’m not hopelessly behind and dog-paddling in the kiddie lane like I thought I was. I’m right there with the rest of the class, right down to feeling confused as hell as publishing somersaults through incomprehensible change.
There’s a sort of post-modern entitlement theme these days of “I’m 30, where’s my sportscar?” I see a lot. Nearly every 30 something I knew went through some sort of identity crisis around 29/30 at the shocking realization that they have no accomplished all the stuff you’re supposed to by age 30. I did, too, though I tried to stifle it. These individuals are also quite surprised that they do not immediately cease to exist in a poof! of cultural irrelevance.
By now it’s pretty clear what Qabala and all those other traditions are talking about: you don’t calm the fuck down until you’re 30, and you finally get bored with the drama instead of seeking it out.
While in many ways I still feel hopelessly amateur, especially coming into this project, I accept that I have a long way to go and I’m learning to live without the guarantees. But if someone can point me at how to do the whole agent hunt/query thing right, I’d be grateful.