Paper Fruit

AND IT IS A THING THAT I AM IN! Behold:

So yes! Some brand new Ivybridge madness you never asked for! My story, “The Hour of the Tortoise,” which will be one of the wretched tales of weirdness and uncomfortable sibling relationships in A PRETTY MOUTH (out later this year through LFP!), will be appearing in THE BOOK OF CTHULHU II. Ross Lockhart’s at the editorial helm again so expect the same high-quality, mind-shattering madness of the original THE BOOK OF CTHULHU, which many many people seemed to enjoy.

Oh, and if you never got around to reading THE BOOK OF CTHULHU, Night Shade is totally having a 50% off sale right now. Just sayin’.

I know, I know. I leave for a million years only to come back with nothing more than THE ULTIMATE RECIPE FOR TIRAMISU.

Yeah. Look at that. What’s that? An inside shot, you say? Oh, no big deal:

Tiramisu. Holy hell. I love this dessert, and always have. It was the first dessert I made my husband during our courtship. I’ve made it a million times, but for the last six years, I’ve only made it in the form of the tiramisu cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. And those cupcakes are great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not the same.

Why have I never made real tiramisu, then? Ladyfingers, that’s why. The cookie upon which tiramisu is founded. None of the store-bought brands I’ve seen have been even close to being vegan, and I had no notion of how to veganize such a thing. So imagine my delight when, upon googling “vegan tiramisu” (I wanted to make it for my friend Raechel’s birthday), I found this recipe.

It looked amazing! And let me tell you, it was. But I tweaked and messed with the original so I’m posting my update. My version has a tangy raspberry layer and some raspberry jam in the cream that tints it the most precious My Little Pony pink. The original cream recipe also calls for cornstarch and flour, but I figured reducing the heavy cream would work as well to thicken as any thickener. It did. Oh, and as written, the original recipe makes waaaaaaaaay too much cream if you’re doing the 9×9 version (which I did). Like, more than twice as much as is needed. What you see in the above pictures, by the way, is a full 9×9, a full 4.5×4.5, and that wasn’t all of it. I also had a bowl full of the stuff.  So, yeah, it needed some tweaking for us lazy scrubs who love the ease of 9×9 cakes. There will be too many cake slices, but that’s … easily dealt with. Om nom nom.

ULTIMATE TIRAMISU

For one 9″ dish cake.

Ingredients

For the Lady Fingers:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cornstarch

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/3 cup canola oil

1 cup water

spray oil

1 square 9″ pan

For the Cream:

3/4 c Tofutti sour cream

1 cup Tofutti cream cheese (1 container)

1/4 cups heavy unsweetened soy cream

1  teaspoons vanilla

1 tbs raspberry jam

1 tsp coffee liqueur

¾ to 1 c organic powdered sugar, sifted

For Assembly:

1 “shot in the dark” (12 oz coffee w/one or two shots espresso), cooled. Really, go out and get this at a local place, it’ll taste a jillion times better than making instant espresso from powder and then letting the rest go stale in your freezer.

1 tablespoon coffee liqueur

¼ to 1/3 cup good raspberry jam

cocoa powder

dark chocolate bar for shavings (I got an espresso chocolate bar)

one 9×9″ glass pan

Directions for Cream Filling:

Beat the sour cream, cream cheese, soy cream, vanilla, and liqueur to combine using a handheld or standing mixer. Sift the powdered sugar into the mixture. Do not put too much sugar in, taste it frequently (no problem!). If it’s too sugary, it’s going to overpower the espresso and the whole thing will be too sweet to eat. I added ¾ cup of sugar and then taste, add up to another 1/4 cup a little bit at a time. Beat until thickened, stick in the fridge.

Directions for Lady Fingers:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Sift together the dry ingredients, including sugar, and stir just to combine.

2.  Add the oil, vanilla, and water.  Stir until most of the lumps are gone.

3.  Spread into pan, bake for 35 mins. Toothpick test for doneness, then set aside to cool.

4.  Unmold the cake, then slice into 8 equal strips. Line up on a cookie sheet, rebake at 350 for 15 minutes until just brown, flipping once.

5.  Set the cookies aside to cool.

6.  Once cooled, cut the strips in half, then cut each cookie—carefully—in half again. This will give you more strips than you need, but who cares! Use the prettiest ones for the tiramisu and make an ugly one with the leftover cream to eat by yourself whilst watching Parks & Rec reruns on Netflix.

Directions for Assembly:

1.  Pour the cooled espresso into a shallow bowl or pan, and stir in the liqueur.

2.  Line up the cookies, espresso, cream, and 9×9 pan.

3.  Carefully dip each lady finger into the espresso mixture for a few seconds. Do it fast so they don’t fall apart!

4.  Line the cookies along the bottom of a glass dish, pressed together.

5. Take ¼ to 1/3 cup good-quality raspberry jam and spread over the layer.

6. Cover the layer completely with cream.

7. Dust with cocoa powder using a fine mesh strainer

8. Cover with a layer of chocolate shavings.

9.  Repeat process with another layer of espresso-soaked cookies, and cream.

10. Cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for the day. Before serving, dust with another layer of cocoa powder and chocolate shavings on top.  This is best done with the chocolate bar on the hard side.

Oh, and if you need more dessert—or just a dessert more suited for a picnic/bbq—how about cookies that look like burgers?

These I made after seeing a version in Martha Stewart Living. I made 12 peanut butter cookies (I think I used the recipe in Joy of Vegan Baking, but do whatevs, just not too crispy), and pressed sesame seeds into the tops after flattening. Then I made a pan of the brownies from Joy of Vegan Baking (my favorite recipe!), but in a 9×13, not a 9×9. I baked them less but I wanted thinner “patties.” After everything was completely cool I picked a cup of appropriate size and cut out the “patties” from the brownies, and drizzled them in “ketchup and mustard” icing I made with just powdered sugar, soy milk, and vegan food color. They’re super-good!

I posted on Facebook last week that if any of you out there have not yet watched Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract—one of my favorite movies of all time—the whole bally thing is up on YouTube.

It’s a weird movie, unapologetically so, as well as being slow and, I dunno. Tawdry? Maybe that’s the right word. It’s definitely really sexy, or at least full of sex (depending on your perspective/inclinations), so don’t watch it with your parents/kids/nieces and nephews/maiden uncles, unless you have a very different relationship with them than I do with my own. So, yeah. The film as a whole, sex included, will not be everyone’s cuppa of course, but I aspire to write a period piece as awesome as that. It’s my gold standard.

Anyways, the score is super-good, too. Like, I love that movie to pieces, and I consider the score to be one of the best parts. It’s by Michael Nyman, who is a genius of course (he wrote the score to The Piano, The Libertine, and Gattaca; he did a lot on the Ravenous soundtrack, and also wrote an opera based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, because why not?). It’s my favorite thing of his he’s done, which is saying something.

Nyman’s score for the film is up on Spotify and YouTube, and though it’s not as complete as I’d like, it’s still amazing and I listen to it all the time. In isolation it makes for wonderful listening; in situ, the score is another character in the film. So, anyways, being the nerd that I am, when I was looking up supplementary information on the movie, I discovered that apparently all the compositions in Nyman’s score are based on “grounds” (a “ground,” to my understanding, is like a “riff” in popular music, but I’m really not musical at all so that might be wrong in some ways) by Henry Purcell and William Croft, period-appropriate composers. Best of all, Wikipedia was kind enough to list the specific songs Nyman is referencing, which meant that I could hop back on Spotify and locate them.

Listening to the tracks side-by-side made for a fascinating listening experience. The original compositions are all beautiful (The Academy of Ancient Music’s rendition of Purcell’s “She Loves and She Confesses Too” with Barbara Bonny’s vocals, in particular, is completely magnificent if you can locate that version, and spellbinding after listening to “The Disposition of the Linen,” Nyman’s interpretation). You can really hear why Nyman selected these pieces in particular, they give The Draughtsman’s Contract the frothy, dark, decadent, dissipated, luscious, and thoroughly-Restoration “feel” it has throughout.

yes, please. actually, come to think of it, I'll take two...

But more than the pleasure of being able to directly experience for myself a source of inspiration for one of my favorite artists of all time (not just “musical artists,” either: artists as a whole), listening to the pieces side-by-side was a weirdly enlightening experience. As a writer whose most popular, well-reviewed story to date is a “riff” on Lovecraftian themes, I understand encountering a piece of art and feeling the need to respond to it in an honest, creative way. I think the enduring popularity of the retold fairy tale speaks to this: Those with a creative streak often desire to play in the same sandbox as other creative types they admire, or take issue with, or whatever. Art can be found anywhere, and inspiration, too, so this makes sense.

But as someone whose musical abilities were never particularly amazing (much to my mother’s dismay—she and my grandmother are fundamentally musical people, whereas I was a mediocre singer and flautist … on a good day) it never really occurred to me that musicians might feel the same need as writers and fine artists to respond to those artists they found inspirational. Other than when listening to samples of this-and-that in rap/hip-hop/techno, and in a jazz class wherein we discussed “riffing” or whatever it’s called, I never really thought much about the way musicians comment on and are inspired by one another. I mean, I knew that musicians took subjects and responded to them musically (Into the Woods, the William Tell Overture, Nyman’s opera based on case studies of neurological abnormalities, etc.) but the notion of hearing something and then feeling an artistic need to reply to it in kind—that absolutely blows my mind.

Perhaps this is nothing new to anyone reading this, but if the idea of musicians pulling a Wide Sargasso Sea seems interesting, unusual, or curious to you, I encourage you to listen to the soundtrack for The Draughtsman’s Contract and then seek out the source compositions and listen to them. At the very least you’ll spend some enjoyable hours listening to gorgeous music…

Sometimes fortune smiles upon me. I posted on Facebook a few months ago how much I had enjoyed the batshit-insane post-apocalyptic barbarian queen epic She, and Ross Lockhart, friend/kick-ass editor of The Book of Cthulhu pinged me, asking if I’d like an advance copy of Nathan Long’s Jane Carver of Waar. I looked up the cover (left) and started drooling. Yes, I said. Yes, send this book to me, please.

I mean, omg, look at that cover! Big-hair muscle-babe in sweet armor uses a Gatsu-proprotioned sword to carve up purple tiger-taurs amidst an epic landscape? That is pretty much all I ever wanted from a novel. But a question came to mind: Could Jane Carver possibly live up to my expectations after I had gazed upon that wonderful artist’s rendition of a bad-ass warrior woman’s enviable quadriceps?

Yes. Yes, it could. Actually—no. Jane Carver exceeded every single one of my expectations in the best possible ways.

I mean, let’s talk about the protagonist: Jane Carver. Jane is a strong, punchy biker chick and ex-Airborne Ranger, who, due to circumstances, is forced to go on the run from the law … straight into a magical cave that transports her to an alien planet: Waar. Waar is populated with terrible monsters and all-too-human alien humanoids. They ride big chocobo-style birds and have a quasi-feudal society. So far, so awesome. Also: The gravity is less than Jane’s used to, meaning she can jump high, punch hard, lift heavy things, and go braless without pain. YES!

Jane, to her credit, takes all this in stride, and for much of the book ends up helping a male-model handsome (but hopeless-with-a-sword) princeling named Kai who early-on in the book has his sexy bride stolen from him by a rival nobleman-cum-asshole. Noble Kai, who speaks in luxurious courtly language, is the straight man to Jane’s joker. The dynamic is awesome, and often very funny. Take, for example, this early exchange, after Jane helps Kai extricate himself from the ruins of his coach, post violent bride-snatching:

I passed him some of the meat pies and veggies. “Eat. You gotta get your strength back.”

He took the chow, but offered some back to me. “And you? Do you not hunger?”

I hadn’t realized it ’til then, but I did hunger. I hungered like dammit. Traveling light-years in a second, or whatever I’d done, sure built up a powerful appetite.

That’s the tone throughout; Jane narrates the whole thing (College Feminist Molly says: Look how she’s a Subject rather than an Object! Hells yes!). Thus we see Waarian culture through her eyes, and Jane is not uncritical of what she finds. It may be a beautiful world full of thoroughly decent people, but misogyny, machismo, and double-standards abound among the folks she encounters. Jane, however, calls everyone on his or her bullshit, which is really fun for the reader. Not only does she freak everyone out by being a woman who looks unusual (Waarians are purplish, dark-haired, and on the shorter side; Jane is 6’2″, white, and red-haired), as well as being strangely strong and agile, but she freaks them out with her feminist and class-eliding notions, too.

Jane articulates her problems with Waarian culture beautifully, and without pretension, and with laser-pinpoint accuracy. Take, for example, Jane’s thoughts on lordly, incompetent, honor-bound Sai’s quest to win back his fiancee via single combat when she first encounters regular ol’ Waarians (instead of the noblesse):

…I understood these people. The guys were just guys. The chicks were just chicks. They wouldn’t die for some sucker’s idea of honor if you told them heaven was an eternal blowjob. They might die for love, or for friendship or even their country, but they wouldn’t throw their lives away because it was more honorable to be dead.

Sorry. I guess Sai was pissing me off a little at that point. I bet he could have ditched his title, got the girl and lived down here on Sailcloth Street and nobody here would have given him a second glance. But with his upbringing that would probably have been harder for him than dying. Oh well, fuck it.

Jane rolls with the punches (and throws them) which is gratifying and makes for smile-inducing reading. Even better: she never considers herself superior to the Waarians because of her appearance/opinions/abilities, just different. Jane is a very “live-and-let-live (unless you piss me off or hurt my friends)” sort of person. She may think she has a handle on things, but her opinions aren’t rigid and she’s willing to learn as well as teach. Long does a bang-up job of writing a first-person female protagonist whose feminism is unobtrusive but so omnipresent you can tell that’s just who she is. It’s fantastic. I mean, after reading the book I wanted a sequel, but more than that, I wanted to go to the gym and then grab a beer with Jane. So, yeah.

The novel hit all the right notes for me, basically. I can’t talk more about what I loved with out spoilering too much, so I’ll leave off here and just say, if you like well-written adventure novels, get this book when it comes out. It’s so goddamn good.

There was literally only one little thing that bothered me in Jane Carver of Waar, and wasn’t a big deal, though it does come in the first two pages, in Long’s prologue. I liked the conceit of the prologue just fine: that Long met Jane outside of a bar, and she provided him with the account that comprises the book. But then there’s a weird moment, before we’ve even met Jane, where Long tells us:

Jane is remarkably honest in her admissions of her failings, but sometimes I wonder if she is’t being too modest. She says throughout the tapes how ugly she is. Well, I met her, and though she was no Scarlett Johansson, she was by no means ugly. She had the kind of broad-faced, rugged good looks you associate with frontierswomen and female fire-fighters.

This comment rubbed me ever so slightly the wrong way. I understand what Long’s trying to do here—Jane is, after all, a 6’2″ female ex-airborne ranger, and even on earth that’s not something one sees every day, so Jane has certain opinions regarding her physical appearance that are informed by the beauty standards of our world. That said, I don’t give a damn if the heroine of a novel is butt-ugly or not, and I don’t need an outsider’s reassurance that “it’s not like that, objectively speaking” if a heroine says she’s not attractive. I didn’t feel it was a necessary remark; indeed, I felt it kind of undermined Jane’s authority in telling her own tale. That said, I understand why Long included this comment. I think it was with the best of intentions, and it’s true that body-worship is part and parcel of the barbarian epic. I just think it would have been fine to have Jane tell us about herself, rather than Long as he appears in his prologue, I guess.

Anyways, who cares, the book ruled like dammit, as Jane would say, and I would read a billion Jane Carver novels. The back-cover copy may read: “Jane Carver is nobody’s idea of a space princess.” Well, maybe that’s true for some people, but Jane Carver is exactly my idea of a space princess. Strong, foul-mouthed, bad-ass, socially aware in interesting and engaging ways, self-aware, feminist, malleable while holding strong opinions, crafty, intelligent, resourceful, and still entirely human in all the right ways. Yes! Yes, yes, yes. We need more books like Jane Carver of Waar out there. I actually delayed finishing the book for a few days because I didn’t want to leave Jane and Waar behind; hearing that Long has already planned a sequel, Swords of Waar, took away a little of the pain. I cannot wait to devour it.

… is over. I’ve been busy and that means no time for blogging—at least here. I did a guest blog for Damien Walters Grintalis, author of dark/horror fiction, vegan, and super-cool person all around. She was kind enough to offer me a spot and I’m kind of glad I left it a little late, because unintentionally I watched 3 super-cool lady-focused horror films this February (Alien, Aliens (rewatch), and the remake of The Thing), so I blogged about my thoughts on all three, and at least tried to tie it all together.

So please, check it out!

Due to certain circumstances in my life, I’ve resigned from Lightspeed. There were many, many things that prompted my decision, but the most important factor in my choice was that I realized I simply can’t give the magazine the time it deserves any longer. It’s been great fun, and I learned a lot—but as they say, “all good things” and all that. It was a hard decision, but I’m sure it was the right choice for me and for the magazine.

I’m now working for Prime Books as Sean Wallace’s assistant. I’m looking forward to new challenges and new kinds of work! I’ve already started easing into the job but will be expanding my hours next month. It seems like very enjoyable work already, and I couldn’t be happier.

So, farewell, Lightspeed Magazine. And, of course, farewell to Fantasy, but I’ve already had to say goodbye to that publication, as it’s been absorbed into Lightspeed. We’ve had a great run together–since 2009!–but so it goes.

Onward!

Argh, wtf happened to the internet this week?! Usually when I go on Facebook or wherever I am able to procrastinate over adorable pictures of cats and/or Dumbledore and/or whatever, but good Lord,  it’s apparently National Body-Shaming Week, and so I’m hoppin’ mad instead of mildly entertained. Ugghhh.

I guess people celebrate National Body-Shaming Week in a few exciting ways: If you’re a layperson, you post offensive memes about women’s bodies whereupon women of one size and shape are exulted for their attractiveness and women of another are shamed for theirs; if you’re a medical professional, it seems you celebrate by deciding to spend your money by putting up stupid-ass billboards featuring disembodied people with guts or, heaven forfend, cellulite, whilst alleging dubious claims about diet! Argh, no, please to stop?

So yeah, Infuriating Body-Shaming Piece of Utter Bullshit Number One is the meme to the right. I’ve seen a couple different of these, all with pictures of some random skinny girl I would probably recognize if I read more magazines, and then Marilyn Monroe or Bettie Page, with the general theme of “When did [modern generally-unattainable beauty ideal] become more attractive than [generally-unattainable beauty ideal from days of yore]?”

Now, I get the sentiment behind this one. A certain ideal of tallness, slenderness, and fitness has put pressure on women of all sizes for years and years, put forward by the fashion/entertainment industry. It can be a toxic world out there if you don’t fit in to what people (allegedly) find popularly attractive: Larger women get used as examples of “what [some group of people] don’t want all the time, it can be hard if not impossible to shop for trendy, fashionable clothing if you’re bigger lady, getting adequate medical care can be super-difficult, the list goes on. Hell, it seems the best roles non-skinny actresses can land are either the super-depressing tragic kind, or the “good-natured but sassy friend” or whatever [see: Gilmore Girls, and like, I dunno, every other show. Even Parks & Rec, my current fave show is guilty of this to a point, though to be fair, everyone is ridiculous in his or her own way on that show, not just my girl Donna). It sucks. But it also sucks to promote some redonk “real women have curves” nonsense* by way of responding to this, because it’s feeding the same fire. First up: it’s still alleging that women are only valuable if [some group] finds them physically attractive. Second: it’s not okay to pit women against each other, especially over their bodies. Women get the message all the time that we are constantly in some sort of Darwinian cage match against one another, over men, over jobs, over being considered most fashionable/in shape/successful/whatever. It’s dumb and untrue, and it makes the world a lot scarier if one’s perception of sisterhood is believing the woman hugging you with one arm has a stiletto held behind her back with the other.

Now, I’m not 100% down with the fat-posi/health at any size movement–in fact, I disagree with a lot of what I’ve read of that group’s writings–but I do believe 100% in body-positivity (to be fair there is a lot of overlap). It’s healthy to love yourself, natch, whatever you look like. More on that later, though. I’m only mentioning the fat-posi/HAAS communities because I think the best thing they’ve managed to get out there is the stone-cold fact that you can’t know anything about a person’s health just by looking at him or her. I mean, my dad is the best example of this. He’s had pancreatic cancer for close to two goddamn years now, and still looks fantastic. You would never think he had anything wrong with him, and yet he’s been in beastly chemo since his diagnosis. Christ, he went to the gym yesterday and did weight lifting. I can’t get to the gym when I have a hangover. The point is, you can’t simply look at any person out there, fat or thin, and claim to know how healthy he or she really is. It’s true that obesity can up your risk of heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc. but it’s also true that there are women out there every day who are in the overweight/obese category who eat right, exercise like total maniacs, and are perfectly healthy. By the same token–and here I am looking right goddamn at you moveon.org, you cannot look at a random skinny girl and decide she is anorexic. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK. How body-negative, judgmental, and icky. And how dubious a conclusion to reach based on A FACEBOOK MEME, amiright? Because unless we’re going to diagnose every cat in the world with dyslexia … you know, I’m not even going to engage further with this, it is too ridiculous. But other bloggers have, and much more articulately than me, so, good.

But, argh, wtf, it’s just too bad for common sense and kindness this week because even goddamn doctors are celebrating National Body-Shaming Week, too! See Infuriating Body-Shaming Piece of Utter Bullshit Number Two, to the left.

Behold: The PCRM, a group I usually like, has released the dumbest billboards this side of PETA, no small honor there. Every bit as bad as the “Save the Whales” campaign of whenever ago, the PCRM has erected the billboards to the left in Albany, NY, as some sort of … I dunno, anti-cheese-eating effort? AAAAHHHHWHAT. I know Americans eat a totally gross amount of cheese, which as I have noted more than once, is made from milk—a substance intended to turn tiny baby cows and sheep and goats into large cows and sheep and goats, meaning those dairy-industry claims that cheese will help you lose weight are REDONKULARIOUS—but this sort of body-shaming is a stupid, ineffective, and nasty way to try to motivate folks to cut back on the brie. First up: there are plenty of fat people who don’t eat cheese. Like, um, me? I was 40 lbs heavier this time last year and I hadn’t eaten cheese in five years. And guess what–now that I’m 40 lbs lighter, can run (knee permitting), hike up mountains, do unassisted pull-ups as of today, rock over 100 push ups at a stretch, lift heavy weights, and pretty much do any physical activity I want to … and, uh, I still have cellulite. OH NOES OMG PUT UP A PICTURE OF MY THIGHS TO SHAME THE MASSES.

Really, PCRM?! No one food makes anyone overweight; for some people, no amount of health eating and exercise will give them bodies that fit into the narrow range of acceptable/attractive in every way. That is some junk science right there.

And furthermore, how this repulsive fat-shaming fit into any of your stated goals? I just don’t get it: The message here is not one of “eat well and exercise as preventative medicine!” which is what I though the PCRM was all about according to their own, you know, “about” page. It says right there in black-on-white text that they are all about, allegedly, providing “vital information to tens of thousands of people” What is the vital information provided via those horrid billboards: “fat people are gross?” Gee, thanks!! That’s some truly revolutionary “bringing the message to the masses,” there. OMFG.

Maybe the worst part of this whole debacle is that waaaaay more motivated folks than me emailed the PCRM and are all getting the same stock response. My favorite parts have been these:

Thanks for being in touch. You’re making a good point, that people with weight problems might not be especially pleased about seeing obesity depicted on a billboard.

Um, I don’t have weight problems and … never mind.

Certainly, many people have enough self-esteem issues as it is. But that raises the question, what do we do to attack the problem of obesity?

Dude, y’all are supposed to be doctors or something. Even I know shame and fear are the worst motivators for long-term weight loss. Anyways hold onto your (cellulite-riddled, no doubt) butts, because here’s my favorite part of their form letter:

So how do we wake people up? Our ads are designed, not as any sort of “shaming” or falsified depiction of obesity, but rather simply as a view of ordinary obesity exactly as it is. If you thought “fat is beautiful” as some cultures have in the past, you would probably find the images attractive. Take another look, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

I took another look, and OMG that’s so true! See?

I totally see your point now, PCRM! The warm, loving colors, attractive posing, and non-disembodiment featured in your billboard totalllllllly highlights human beauty if you’re just into fat chicks and dudes!

Anyways. ANYWAYS. Fat-shaming is super-gross, and scare tactics instead of science is a reprehensible approach for a medical group. Just sayin’. Stunts like this are annoying, ineffective, and make vegans look like judgmental crazy people (which, sadly, some are). They also do nothing to inform the public. Ugghhh. There’s so much better stuff out there to talk about with obesity and dietary concerns regarding the Standard American Diet and really pernicious foods like bacon and sausage and I don’t even know what else. But I guess this is dumber and easier, so yay!

Anyways. ARGH! Can we just be kinder to one another? Can we make a vow to celebrate beauty without a compare/contrast attitude that puts people falsely into opposition? Or—even better—not hold up arbitrary standards of physical attractiveness as any determinant of the worthwhileness of an individual, male or female? While we’re at it, can we also please work together to learn about how to make healthy, positive choices for our bodies and the planet? I know it’s hard, but I betcha it’ll be worth it in the end!

_________________

*What is a real woman? What is a curve? How do we define either of these terms? Is a FTM transexual like Buck Angel a “real woman?” He was born female, and he does have some curves: His enormous biceps are super-curvy (and sexxxy), but he identifies as a man/male. Anyways. The point is, it’s a stupid adage because real women come in all shapes and sizes, and anyways it’s crappy to assign concepts of “realness” or “fakeness” to something as nebulous and undefinable as being a woman.

It’s a big bright new year and likely most people (who consider January 1st the start of the new year, anyways) have made some sort of resolution. Mine, for example, is flossing. I don’t floss enough … and, frankly, I am kind of suspicious of people who do, but whatever, it’s supposed to be good for you. So, flossing: YES!

I have a few fitness-related goals, too, because of course I do. I want to run a race (well, I am going to run a race: the Warrior Dash, in August), and I want to be able to bench press 100 lbs by the end of the year. Just because. Oh, and I want to conquer my fitness nemesis: the unassisted pull-up. For some reason I am just awful at pull-ups, and it’s total bullshit and I’m tired of it.

But anyways! This post isn’t about that. It’s about how not to talk about fitness, inspired by an unpleasant interaction I had today at my gym.

So I got it into my head it would be a good idea to get my body fat percentage checked. It’s a free service at my gym, and I was curious. I got it checked last year, and was in the low 20s if memory serves. I haven’t lost that much weight since then, but given how much muscle-building I’ve been doing at the gym, I figured it would be interesting to see what was going on inside my body.

This morning I’d never seen the lady sitting at the desk before, but I asked her if I could use the little weird electronic thingy they have to measure my body fat, since the personal trainer I’m friendly with at my gym had said it would be cool. The lady said sure, and led me to her office. There, I told her my weight (135 lbs) and height (five feet five inches) and age (30, going on 19). She plugged these numbers into the device and handed it to me—and I was pretty pleased when it blinked, beeped, and said 19.6%.

Woo! I thought to myself. That’s pretty awesome. I’m under 20% body fat! Rawr!

But I was just thinking this when the lady, her brow furrowed in maternal concern, said, “Ohhhhhh … 19.6 percent … hmmm.”

“Hmm?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s just … well. You’d need to be between 15%-17% if you wanted to be an athlete.”

I was sort of shocked by this—not only did that sound low to me (it is), but also … really? ‘Hmm?’ With a furrowed brow of maternal concern? And also: percentage of body fat makes you “an athlete” and not, like … being athletic? I regularly swim, lift weights, run, and hike, and yet … I’m not an athlete? Because of a number? What now?

If ever there was an IRL moment for the O RLY? owl to swoop down and hawk up a pellet of mouse bones on someone’s head, that was it.

So anyways, there I am, proud–and there she is, shaking her head. What came next, you ask? Hahaha!!

“Did you just join?” she asked, staring at my body.

“No,” said I. “I joined last year, in August I think.”

“And what do you do at the gym?”

“I run, swim … but I love weight-lifting the most! It’s so fun, I really enjoy it.”

“Of course you do,” she sneered. “It’s the easiest thing to do.”

“Uh,” I said. “Well…”

“Do you eat a lot of junk food?” she interrupted, still staring at my figure with obvious distaste.

“Not a lot,” I said, only sort of lying, because technically beer is a drink and not a food, “I’m vegan, and eat a pretty healthy diet.”

At this, her brow furrowed so much it appeared to have actually been plowed by a vigorous bucolic farmer with 17% body fat, perhaps with the aid of a stout horse with 15% body fat. An athletic horse, you get my meaning.

“Vegan means no eggs or dairy, right?”

“Right, no animal products.”

“What about fish?”

“Fish … is an animal,” I said, with what I hope was a polite smile, and added a cheerful “ha-ha I’m sure you were just joking right omg” laugh.

She stared back. “I guess I never thought about fish that way.”

I did not respond to this. Because, what? Also, I was trying to figure out a way to get away from her without actually fleeing.

“Well, the good news,” she said, in a doubtful, concerned you were hit on the head with a large boulder, but the concussion is only a mild one tone of voice, “is that the average American woman has 24% body fat. So you’re doing good by that standard.”

“Great,” I said, at this point desperate to leave her presence.

“And I’d never have guessed you were so heavy,” she said, also doubtfully. “You’re tiny—you must be really dense.”

“Okay, haha, yeah, cool,” I said, or something like that, beginning the inch-away-from-the-situation tiptoe-dance as she started to babble at me that it would be a reasonable goal to get down to 17% body fat (putting me at around, oh, 115 lbs, btw), and if I were her client and blah blah blah omg wtf bbq.

Whew! Hahah, sure, whatever. She sucked, no harm no foul. But the thing is, I’m super-duper lucky that I have an amazing, supportive family, and confidence in my own athletic abilities, because Good! Friggin! Lord! I can’t imagine how that interaction would have made me feel if I wasn’t secure in my knowledge that Crom himself forged me of Atlantean steel. Probably I would have felt like I was actually 19.6% dog poop.

I’m also lucky I didn’t have that encounter a year ago, when I was just getting into fitness (and had a far, far higher percentage of body fat!). I probably would have been really discouraged, and felt like “fitness” was some sort of insane impossible goal that only professional athletes could attain by spending thousands of dollars on equipment and training and whatever. (It’s not!) And this person is the Wellness Coordinator at my gym!

Don’t most people in this country already have a vexed enough relationship with fitness, overall wellness, and balancing the stresses of modern, sedentary life with healthy athleticism? Eesh!

This is the season when many people will join gyms, hoping to live healthier lives, and I think that’s so awesome, and I hope anyone who does so sticks with it until it’s a happy habit instead of a slog. I know I’ve never been happier than I’ve been since starting my quest to be a hard badass of legend, and I hope to pay that forward someday, in some way. But my greatest hope is that no one who is motivated to start working out and eating right has such a heinous encounter with a “fitness professional.” I know first-hand that it’s pretty easy to give up on goals, especially ones that make you sweat! Exercise and eating right isn’t always easy, but it is rewarding–and that should be the message people in the fitness industry try to promote. Not that you’re not an “athlete” unless your numbers are this, that, or whatever!

Talking about fitness in a worrisome, negative manner is not cool. Better, I think, to be encouraging; to play up the positive, celebrate success, and challenge yourself (and others, if it’s your business to do so) towards reasonable goals. Revolutionary stuff, that, I’m sure!

Omg. Anyways! Here’s hoping you all have a healthy, happy 2012! I know I plan on it—even though I’m so dense.

Nick Mamatas (who wrote Sensation, one of my favorite books I read this year), is really smart. He blogs and writes a lot about writing (I haven’t read Starve Better yet, but it’s on the list as they say), and a few days ago, responding in part to one of the usual kerfuffles over genre vs. literary writing, he said something that (seriously) moved me:

Anyway—here’s a secret. This is what creative writers should be interested in doing. Writing their own best material. Not the most popular thing, or the most acclaimed, or that which will be part of some conversation or leave a mark on this or that genre (including bourgeois realism), but that stuff that is unique to yourself and the complex of life experiences and interests and prior readings and environmental factors of which your writing is an emergent property. Writing is orthogonal to publishing and marketing. It’s also orthogonal to true mass culture. Mass culture only deals with aspects of writing—those aspects that can be reproduced according to the needs of either artisan creation or industrial manufacture. That, being the mass, is what an individual cannot control.

Happy Monday! Let’s all go be productive.

ETA: worst blog post title ever? Mayyyybe!

When I was in fifth grade I got really into dragons. I got into dragons the way some girls get into horses: I had pictures on my walls, read every book I could find in the YA section of the library, drew pictures on all my notebooks, subscribed to catalogues where you could purchase insanely expensive pewter wyverns clutching mystical orbs, you know. The usual stuff. I even kept a journal of my boring tween life—with added dragons. I had a scaly, wingéd, wise-cracking (of course) posse who would follow me around, comment on how boring math class was, etc.

My parents were big fantasy readers, which helped me read my way out of the YA section pretty quickly. My father especially: he has always loved fantasy, the longer and more convoluted/complicated the series the better, and he read a lot because of his constantly needing to travel for work. He brought home oodles of Tor and Ace and Ballantine paperbacks with covers that appealed to me big-time. It’s how I came to read Steven Brust and L.E. Modesitt, Jr. and a host of other writers.

Then my uncle Glenn (another fantasy nerd of legend) sent me a box of books, chock-full of dragonish glory. I still remember the day I got off the bus to find the enormous box sitting in the hallway; opening it up and pawing through the loot. I remember, too, which two books stood out to me the most:

It’s probably pretty obvious why I’ve been thinking about that afternoon recently: Darrell K. Sweet and Anne McCaffrey recently passed away. I admit I got a little teary-eyed at the news, both times. Both were incredibly important to me as a young fantasy reader—and a young writer.

Darrell K. Sweet’s artwork captured my imagination before I even realized who he was. His artwork was on the cover of so, so many books I read as a kid and young adult, and my own doodles of dragons were largely inspired by his lizard-faced monsters. He did the covers for the Recluse books as well as Xanth; his image of Gandalf and the Lord of the Eagles graced my cover of The Hobbit. He did the cover for Mercedes Lackey’s The Fire Rose, which I thought was the #1 Top Summer Jam when I read it (okay, I confess … I still have it on the shelf), and he did some covers for Robin McKinley, too. I still love his artwork. They are pure escapist fun, and instantly transport me to other worlds: the bold colors, the stalwart men and women, the reliable horses, the fantasy coaches. The moonlit nightscapes; the golden afternoons in magical woodland realms. They are pictures full of possibility and they ask the important questions, like, say … “Where does this road lead?” “What might we find in that castle across the river?” “Will there be monsters in the craggy snow-capped peaks?” (Yes!) “What wisdom will that dragon offer us?”

And as for Anne McCaffrey … oh my stars. For many years I was firmly convinced Ms. McCaffrey was the greatest writer in the entire goddamn universe. Seriously. I was an unattractive, lonely outcast like so many other nerdy adolescents: I got bullied by awful girls in the locker room and battled the worst acne, lived in an isolated neighborhood without many other kids—let alone ones who shared my interests—and could not dress myself to save my life, which didn’t help the whole “unattractive girl with terrible acne” thing. Her books provided me the escape I needed.

I read most of the Pern books more than once, and obsessively read and re-read the Harper Hall trilogy. Riding the bus, I dreamed of someone coming to take me away from middle school like F’Lar comes for Lessa or T’gran/Masterharper Robinton for Menolly. I spent more than a few hours wondering what color dragon I’d most like to ride, whether I’d rather be a harper with fire lizards or a dragonrider, made klah, etc. I bought The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern with my allowance. I got a perm, because if there is one thing old covers for Anne McCaffrey novels will inspire in a young lass without much fashion sense, it is a love of big hair.

Actually, both McCaffrey and Sweet are equally guilty for inspiring my love of seriously big hair, come to think of it—but, more seriously, they also showed me a lot of exciting possibilities, when I was a young woman searching for her sense of identity. Anne McCaffrey was one of the first, actually maybe the first female author of non-YA SFF books I really got into. She wrote big ol’ fantasy epics, just like the boys, and reading her, it occurred to me that hey, I could do that too! Also, her main characters were often fierce females … and, when they weren’t fierce enough, or too bitchy—or sweet—for my liking, it made me realize I could write the ladies I wanted to see in books. And Sweet’s artwork is rich in warrior babes as well as warrior dudes, which I always appreciated.

Thanks for inspiring my love of ferocious ladies, rich fantasy worlds, and badassery, you two.