Paper Fruit

Tomorrow the all-new Films of High Adventure will go up (I am having PTSD just writing the entry for this one), but for today, mellow out with Rainy Mood. Seriously, do yourself a favor. As a mood-lift or a writing aid, it’s amazing!

Personally, I’m enjoying the combo I’m rocking right now: rain + Aufs Lautenwerck, an album of Bach’s lute and harpsichord music. I’ve heard, via J.T. Glover, that the Goldberg Variations are also awesome.

A lot of awesome people are up on the British Fantasy Awards: in terms of novels, Jesse Bullington’s up for his debut The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, Jeff VanderMeer for Finch. Ann VanderMeer (Weird Tales) and Cat Rambo (Fantasy Magazine) are up for the Best Magazine category, and several Fantasy Magazine authors are up in the Best Short Story category! Yay, and congrats to all!

Dan Savage has the contact info for the Itawamba school district’s superintendent as well as the contact info for Itawamba Agricultural in his column today. Please send an email/fax/letter on behalf of Constance McMillen!

I’m working on a project involving Atlas Shrugged. This means I am re-reading Atlas Shrugged. I shan’t be saying a lot about this project here, it’s still in its infancy. I will, however, post a quote from the book that I read today, a quote that filled me with the sort of dread and horror the characters in this book supposedly feel when faced with the moral outrage of, say, charity:

The boy had no inkling of any concept of morality; it had been bred out of him by his college; this had left him an odd frankness, naive and cynical at once, like the innocence of a savage. (AS 342)

I know that’s what college did for me! And it’s certainly what I tried to do when teaching college! Woooooo! Let’s all hear it for savage innocence!

Actually, let’s talk about “savages” for a moment. Who’s a “savage,” according to Rand? Well, Native Americans, for one (all quotes from a lecture at West Point Academy in 1974):

[Native Americans] had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages.

Oh?

What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their “right” to keep part of the earth untouched–to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen. Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it’s great that some of them did. The racist Indians today–those who condemn America–do not respect individual rights.

Uh? So what did the whites do, when dealing with these savages living “like animals or cavemen” all over the place?

The white man did not conquer this country. And you’re a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights–they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal “cultures”–they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It’s wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you’re an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a “country” does not protect rights–if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief–why should you respect the “rights” that they don’t have or respect?

Holy mother of fuck.

So the question “who is John Galt?” is asked repeatedly in Atlas Shrugged for various reasons; I think a better question is “who is Ayn Rand?” Well, friends, these quotes do a lot to answer that question. This is Ayn Rand.

I’ve been quiet over here due to my recent concentration on personal projects (though watch for tomorrow’s Films of High Adventure installment, we’re reviewing Red Sonja!), but just for yuks, I’m posting this Daily Show clip.

I don’t usually watch the Daily Show, and I admit to being less amused than I used to be by Mr. Stewart’s zany mugging, but this. . . oh my. Perhaps it’s just that (like everyone else) I am occasionally spammed with dreadful, insane conservative propaganda “fair and balanced” email forwards which reek of the sort of paranoid hand-wringing Fox News’s “reporting” tends to inspire in certain segments of the American population espouse views different than my own, but this really made me smile.

I’m seriously closing in on the end of The Book. Like, less than five chapters away, probably more like three and a half, and I’ll have a draft. Seriously, omfg.

But! I’ll be taking some breaks over the next few days, tomorrow to post the next installment of Films of High Adventure, which will be on Barbarella, Queen of the Universe (yes!), and Monday, my review of Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy.

I haven’t said a lot about the content of my in-the-works novel here, mostly because I am insane and superstitious, but in celebration of that just-in-sight finish line, I’m posting three songs that have really gotten me through the tough spots in the writing. But with no explanation of why, of course. Enjoy!

Belly’s “Slow Dog,” for the ultimate in 90s song-writing technology:

Lizzie West’s “Chariot’s Rise,” with incredibly distressing footage from the Harry Potter movies featuring Ron and Hermione, but it was the only version I could find with the sound enabled:

Susumu Hirasawa’s “Forces,” from the Berserk soundtrack:

No no, I’m not pregnant, I just was, you know, reading The Handmaid’s Tale a few news articles about how women should probably avoid living in Utah altogether these days, since if a woman miscarries there, she’ll likely be tried for murder. . . if the governor signs a new bill that would criminalize miscarriage if it is determined (?) the woman acted “recklessly” (?), even if she was not attempting to terminate her pregnancy. Penalties are up to life in prison! Fucking awesome! From the article linked above:

“This statute and the standards chosen leave a large number of pregnant women vulnerable to arrest even though they have no intention of ending a pregnancy,” Paltrow said. “Whether or not the legislature intended this bill to become a tool for policing and punishing all pregnant women, if enacted this law would permit prosecution of a pregnant woman who stayed with her abusive husband because she was unable to leave. Not leaving would, under the ‘reckless’ standard, constitute conduct that consciously disregarded a substantial risk,” Paltrow explained.

Well, such a provision would be just goddamn unreasonable! Especially according to the bill’s sponsor, a (big fucking surprise) Republican by the name of Margaret Dayton (source: The Salt Lake Tribune):

“I know it’s well-intentioned,” Dayton said of the attempt to lift “reckless acts” from the bill, “but I don’t think we want to go down the road of carefully defining the behavior of a woman.”

What? You mean like, defining a miscarriage as homicide and deciding to prosecute women for miscarriage when, like, drinking coffee, or horseback riding, or not knowing you are pregnant and taking a hot bath can cause a miscarriage? And something like one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage just for whatever random reason? Well here’s something good about it. . .

The bill does exempt from prosecution fetal deaths due to failure to follow medical advice, accept treatment or refuse a cesarean section. Bird said this exemption was likely because of a 2004 case where a woman who was pregnant with twins was later charged with criminal homicide after one of the babies was stillborn, which the state deemed due to her refusal to have a cesarean section.

OK! Cool! Good thing, because if they hadn’t, then it might not have had the added bonus of protecting Quiverfull types who ignore medical advice constantly in favor of prayer and keep pumping out babies because apparently it’s God’s will and stuff for ladies to risk uterine prolapse so we can have one more potential Christian on Earth. Wouldn’t want them to be punished, they’re God-fearing.

Basically, what it comes down to is this:

Paltrow says this bill puts a lie to the idea that the pro-life movement cares about women.

“For all these years the anti-choice movement has said ‘we want to outlaw abortion, not put women in jail, but what this law says is ‘no, we really want to put women in jail.'”

Pretty fucking much.

ETA: Well! Since the Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall (Republican? Huh!) just came out and told everyone that abortion makes God punish abortion-havers by making their subsequent children disabled (!!), I wonder if he’d care to comment on if this is also the case for miscarriages? Keep it up, folks.

So, this show. It’s called Look Around You. I think anyone who has watched boring videos in science class will identify and be charmed. Check it out! It’s all up on YouTube.

The pilot, part one:

The thrilling conclusion:

There are more. Go check them out!

Marie Brennan has a wonderful post up at SF Novelist entitled Emasculation Not Required. It’s about gender in media, and how, unfortunately, in many male/female relationships presented in movies, TV, and books, the loss of the archetypal male protagonist who runs roughshod over the plot and gets the useless (but attractive) babe at the end has been replaced not by men and women working together as friends and equals, but instead it has been replaced by shrill women who assert their power over newly useless or dumb males.

This sucks, obviously. Brennan’s point is that this new trope does nothing to level the playing field and does everything to create frustration and annoyance on the part of women and men alike.

To wit: I love Princess Leia from the original Star Wars movies, but I always want her to. . . I dunno. Chill a little. Be the same bad-ass laser-gun-weilding bun-head (hell, be the same space-concubine on a leash) but at the same time, be less terrier-like, please! That said, Leia is infinitely preferable to Queen Backlash or whatever her name was in the new Star Wars movies. Queen Backlash is not, if I recall correctly, shrewish. . . but she also is critically deficient in moxie, so much so that she appears to die of sad, like some sort of weird throwback to Genji Monogatari or something.

We’ll see what happens with the Red Sonja remake in the works. I cannot imagine how that movie could be worse than the original, but I will be majorly disappointed if the new Sonja takes its cues from the original, which I believe was an hour and a half of:

Red Sonja: I don’t need a MAN to help me!

Not-Conan: Yes you do!

(She does)

Here’s hoping!

My dear friend S.J. Chambers, independent Poe scholar and all-around-neat-person, whose name you should recognize from her flash fiction “How a Blog was Born,” the Honorable Mention in my Bloggiversary Contest, and, more importantly, from various sundry locations around the internet (check S.J.’s website for a full listing of her fiction, poetry, and non-fiction), has a work of fiction over at MungBeing Magazine!

Stories like S.J.’s “Of Parallel and Parcel” are always of interest to me as both a reader and a writer of historical fiction. My personal take on the genre is this: there are holes in history, gaps where the curious mind wonders why? Those, for me, are some the best places to begin a story, especially if said historical fiction veers into the realms of science fiction/fantasy. S.J.’s story plays it mostly straight, with subtle hints of the fantastic affecting the internal motivations of the main character, in a narrative that treats a figure often overlooked beyond the rather cursory dude, Poe totes married his cousin! one often gets in high school.

S.J.’s love for Poe and Poe-related matters comes through passionately in her writing, in both the framing of the piece and the actual content. It’s worth your time. Go check it out!