Schmap ... Map ... what rhymes with 'schmap'?

Pic taken last October at the Fremont (weekend) Street Faire.


I've been short-listed yet again for inclusion in another Schmap on-line photo thing. I got picked for one of my Vancouver pics last time. It was a pick I took in December '07 when I made a run for the border. Why they pick these particular pics, I'll never know. The Vancouver one was taken while I was standing on Jericho Beach but it was aimed across the Burrard Inlet at North Vancouver ... yet it's listed under Jericho Park on their map thingie. Whatever. Now if they'd actually start paying somebody royalties.

In other news, I'm crazy busy with this short-short term contract at Microsoft. Much nicer campus than Boeing's, that's for sure. The commute out on state highway 520? Don't even get me started. Grrr.

Oh and the Hipster asshats next door warranted a call to the cops last night. Really nothing quite like listening to someone plunk the same two cords on a amped acoustic guitar until 1am on a Tuesday night. I hope the sad little Connor Oberst wannabes got fined this time. And now here's me up at 5:45am to trudge out in the monsoon to Microsoft. Double grrr.

Now with 43 percent vag owners!

Just discovered (always the last to know) a cool blog for female fans of Sci-Fi and there's a lively rant on it by one of the female editors in response to a lame-ass article in the New York Times about the SciFi channel. The quotes in the article are priceless!


Vag owners like it too.

In marketing materials for “Battlestar Galactica,” for example, there are no spaceships, and the story lines try to create more of a balance between action and emotion.

Gee, I always thought people (yes, including vagina owners) liked BSG because it was WELL WRITTEN. Hello?!

It is not just “Star Trek” or “Star Wars” that would fit the definition. Superheroes, Indiana Jones and even the baseball fantasy movie “Field of Dreams” would all be considered part of the genre as defined by Sci Fi’s programmers.

'Field of Dreams' ... that thing about baseball and Kevin Costner? Oh, PLEASE. It wasn't even a good drama.

I've been reading and writing science fiction, fantasy and surrealism since I was, oh, about 14 years old. I had no less than four friends (all female!) in a couple of my fiction writing classes back at college that were all avid Sci-Fi fans and wrote Sci-Fi.

One of the greatest contemporary authors in North America has written no less than two novels that Barnes & Noble would have to struggle NOT to put in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of their cheesy stores. She's won the Booker Prize, the highest prize you can win as a fiction author AND the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Dig it.

That ugly monster, Reality

I've been enjoying (weirdly, not as much as I'd like to) being laid off. The pinnacle of my new unemployment has been watching hours of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. It's like crack, more addictive than those fraking Harry Potter tomes. In fact, the show reminds me of the best adult comics I've ever read. You pick up a Brian K. Vaughan book and you have to read it cover-to-cover right NOW, no interruptions.

So maybe it's kizmet (or too many ganja brownies), but I picked up the latest Stranger and right damn there on page eight is an ad for Seattle's annual Emerald City Comicon. And I'm actually 'free' those days and available to go to it. And I actually think I can swing the entry fee. What's weird is Jamie Bamber is going to be there. At first I just thought Bamber was way too toff and really bland. Then I decided bland was the new black and decided I liked him in BSG. He's like a really nice rug that pulls the whole room together.


The new black is bland.

But meet one of these TV celebs in person (along with 500 scary fans)?! Yikes! No way! I hate it when reality intrudes on fantasy and that's what television is. Damn good fantasy. This would be like finding out the way-too-cute guy in the corner office at work, the one you've lusted at from afar? Has halitosis, nose hairs long enough to braid or a weird sexual kink like dressing up in French maid outfits and being spanked. It would be like visiting your favorite aunt in California during a glorious California summer planned with horseback riding and trips to carnivals and accidentally walking in on her while she was changing her colostomy bag. Reality is a rude, earthy business and I try very hard to avoid trucking in it.

Baltar is right to prefer the Caprica 'in his head' to any of the 'real' versions. Who wants reality when you can have fantasy?

Half the World

I'm like the last feminist on earth to find this. Joss wrote it last year and it's a flawless essay on women's rights. Anyhow, better late than never.

Whedonesque.com

I'd like to re-post it here but I don't wanna step on any toes. Those BtVS fans are defiant, touchy people and they guard their websites ferociously.

If you only click on one single link the whole three seconds you spend surfing my blog, it should be the one above. I have complete essay envy. I wish I'd written it.

" ... the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered."

I haven't read any Rebecca Solnit in a while and that's too bad. She was one of the required reads waaay back in Women's Literature in 1995. Anyhow, somebody on Fbook posted one of her recent essays. And it rocks. But then everything she does rocks.



Considering I work with socially-retarded male engineers and calcified company bureaucrats all fucking day long, this essay seems especially topical.

Chick Lit ... grrr

I'm copying and pasting this thread from a Facebook group on feminism. I've abbreviated every poster's name except mine to protect people's privacy. It's a damn interesting thread and worth repeating on this blog.

Topic: The Orange Prize for Fiction & The Fawcett Society

N. (West Midlands) wrote.
Just to let folks know that I have just written an essay on the UK controversy over the existence of this literary prize for women. In the essay I also talk about the work of the excellent Fawcett Society. Hope you enjoy.

Link to N's essay here.

My reply to N's post.
Read your letter/essay. Awesome. Yeah, the complainer is clearly deluded.

While women in the US do make up the majority of college liberal arts programs (English lit, etc.) -- so what? Men still outnumber women 8 to 1 in the technical (and better-paying) fields like engineering.

Of the five English teachers I had in high school, only two were women.

A random sampling of the NY Time's bestseller's list will still show that male authors dominate publishing in America and always have. While more women work in the lower rungs of publishing (admin. assts, readers, proofers, etc) I'm sure most of their employers are men.

J.K. Rowling herself was told by her first publisher to use her initials or else she would be 'less likely' to get published.

I've been told by several fiction lit. professors to use my first initial and/or my nickname (Mel) so as to not give away my sex.

When I was a newspaper reporter in the 1990s, the vast majority of my editors (and upper management like publishers) were men. It's still extremely rare to see a woman editor overseeing a city newspaper.

I think you hit on a really good point in your essay when you talked about high school-aged boys 'zoning out' whenever they were asked to read something by a female author. And I think they are conditioned to behave that way.

"Chick Lit" anyone?

A's reply to my post.
Without even bringing technical fields into the equation, your statement can be clarified even more than while women may make up the majority of college liberal arts programs, college students in general, and even associate professors, they are a clear minority when it comes to being tenured, acting as chairs, and in the upper-level management of colleges (such as Presidents and Provosts).

N's response.
thanks for the response so far. Yes there is that phenomenon of women writers using initials-A.L.Kennedy, A.S. Byatt, and J.K.R herself. Think too of George Eliot, Currer Bell and the rest. Interesting too that you've found yourself in the same position. My other half works in publishing and reports that women are very well represented in the industry in the UK. But well represented enough? There's a lot of tokenism still going on, and many of the key literary editors in Britain are still men. Take the major UK poetry editors: Lee Braxton (Faber), Robin Robertson (Cape), Don Paterson (Picador), Neil Astley (Bloodaxe), Michael Schmidt (Carcanet). Talented they may be, female they are not.

C's response.
With JK Rowling it was more a case of appealing to young boys, who would be less likely to buy a book they might see as 'for girls', it was just to get a wider audience.

I'm not sure that it is a huge problem if young boys are defining their masculinity and want male role models.

I prefer books by women, because I love women and how women write and see the world, and I think this is an area in which I'm not going to be convinced (to buy books by men, which is a huge generalisation, and all I can do is to say simply I prefer books by women), and I'd hate to preach.

By the way I know this is perhaps contraversial and I'm just offering it as my perspective with complete respect.

My reply to C's above post.
>>With JK Rowling it was more a case of appealing to young boys, who would be less likely to buy a book they might see as 'for girls', it was just to get a wider audience.

A-hah, good point. I hadn't even thought of that. Christ, are they really THAT biased toward male authors? That's just tragic.

A Gentle Intervention

I got turned on to this about two weeks ago, funny as hell. I'm so glad they won a web award.



In other news, I am sick. Yes, after months of skating past the mine field of winter flu colds, I have fallen into a pit of flu-iness. 'A eel like 'RAP!

Bleh!

Awesome Blog Post

The lady who runs Fugly Horse of the Day just posted the most awesome personal essay about mythical "horse sense" and why some people seem to be these super psychic horse whisperers and why the rest of us just flail away in the saddle feeling like idiots and wondering just what IS going on inside that big furry head???

Yes, that kind of riding

I did a wild, crazy thing a few weeks back. It's along the lines of taking up surfing at 50 or learning to Rollerblade at 45. I started taking horseback riding lessons at a good school 20 miles north of Seattle.

Between the ages of 11 and 18, I begged, pleaded and pestered my Dad for riding lessons. His answer was always "no way". Horses were (and still are) large dangerous animals, I was (and still am) incredibly accident prone and my Dad was one of the most powerful attorneys in Monterey County. There wasn't a stable in central California that would take me. They were too scared he'd sue them if I slid off and broke an arm (an injury that happens to equestrians with monotonous regularity).

So as part of my effort to have a fun mid-life crisis, I started taking lessons. Last Sunday I tried "posting" for the first time. Of all the wacky physical shit I've done -- swimming laps in an Olympic pool at 29, fighting wildfires at 38 -- this is probably one of the most difficult. It's very technical, you have to concentrate on the horse and you have to time it just right. The video below makes it look effortless. Just bouncing up and down on a saddle, right? Wrong. It's way, way more involved than that.



And if one more idiot tries to equate horseback riding with some weird-ass form of masturbation, I will hit you right in the face with a sweaty, 10-pound horse blanket covered in pooh!

Poo ...

Finally proof that you literally can sell shit to yuppie/hipsters.



This is a luwak, they are a cat/raccoon type creature that lives in the jungles of Indonesia. They eat ripe coffee plant berries and then poop out the coffee beans. And then enterprising Indonesians collect the poop, roast the, uh, beans and sell it as an exotic, expensive coffee.



On a side note, Indonesia is like 99% Muslim. Is this really halal (kosher)? So eating the flesh of pigs is unclean but eating raccoon shit is okay???

That's your moment of Zen on this blog.

Signs of Seattle

There's more where this came from. Check out the latest on my main Flickr account. There's giant bronze robots and carbon emissions.

F*** Car

I had to rent a Flexcar about a month ago for a big, important job interview way the hell down in SeaTac. When the car sharing company billed me for the one day rental, I was charged $20 in tax. Just TAX for one afternoon! For a Toyota Prius that was so quiet I could barely tell when it was on!

After joining Flexcar I started getting cheerful notice-type emails. Recently, they asked me to email the Washington state legislature regarding these ridiculous taxes on Flexcars (now Zipcar). I dutifully wrote one of the legislative reps and then got this long 'flipper flopping' reply. I'm not gonna post all of it, here's a summary:

Thanks for writing to me about Senate Bill 6484, regarding the exemption of Flexcar from rental car taxes. I think Flexcar is a wonderful service that offers an eco-friendly alternative to car ownership ... Although I support this service, and know that it is different than renting a car at a rental car company, legislation that could potentially create a tax loophole in a major revenue source that funds public transportation must be carefully crafted ... Governor Gregoire has come out in support of exempting car-sharing companies (vs. car rental) from rental car taxes...I am very concerned that a significant loophole will be created in a major revenue source ... blah ... blah ... tax loophole ... blah ... loophole ... loophole

-- Sincerely,
Sen. Mary Margaret

There's nothing quite like watching a marginally liberal state legislator dance around the issue of taxes, especially exorbitant ones that don't affect homeowners, rich Humvee owners, rich hot tub owners, rich people, or rich homeowners who generally have the most say in state legislatures because they generate the biggest chunk of revenues.

Alas, I'm not the first or the last yuppie/hipster/urbanite/non-car owner to get stung by this bee. The Seattlest has covered this issue.

Once again Washington state, and ultimately, all of 'Merkica bows to the will of the few, the spoiled, the Escalande-driving ... and runs over a whole bunch of sincere minimalists in the process.

Prozac Mtn.

Poor, lovely Heath Ledger is dead dead, damnit. And he seemed to be headed for a spot at the table with the likes of Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, etc. A serious actor.



The only thing more appalling than his new taste in party friends (a skeevy-ass Olsen Twin) was all the prescribed meds he was apparently taking.

I wonder what would happen if I mixed Ambien (made me scarily comatose) with one or two SSRIs (two friends have described Zoloft as a great 'high'), some Valium and a Xanax (for the truly comatose)?

What if what was wrong with Ledger was simple nervous exhaustion and a chronic, undiagnosed sleep disorder (the maid said he was snoring)? Having developed apnea, one of the things I've struggled with was when it was explained to me part of the reason you repeatedly wake up with snoring is because YOUR BRAIN IS NOT GETTING ENOUGH OXYGEN and you might DIE if you don't rouse yourself from deep sleep long enough to cough and clear your throat.

But instead, the misinformed medical establishment eagerly wrote him Rx for shit at least as dangerous as the cocaine he may or may not have done.

I'm agreeing more with L. Ron Hubbard's moonies every day.

A Psycho Near You

Right when I got back from Vancouver a woman in Capitol Hill was murdered. Although I never met her, I occasionally caught her show on the local PBS station and, as cheesy as it sounds, I know people who knew her. She and I (and a ton of others in Seattle) had a lot in common. Single, no kids, career, lived alone, active in the community, had to deal with the odd junkie fucktard, etc.

The Seattle P.D. issued THE most generic artist's sketch the day after she was murdered. The running joke was the perp either looked like every white Hipster dude in CapHill or he looked like every other white junkie panhandling outside Pike Place Market.



The only thing that creeped me about it was he also looked a lot like one of the two tweaker asshats in my building. In early November Tweaker Twin No. 1 popped out of a dark bus stop to start screaming "DON'T EVEN FUCKIN' LOOK AT ME, FUCKIN' BITCH!", sorta muttering 'fuckin' bitch' over and over as meth addicts tend to do. I told him to 'fuck off', kept walking and felt frustrated that I didn't have my phone or stun gun at the time. When I got in my apartment, I called 911 to report a suspicious, known drug user hovering outside my building (again!). Of course, dispatch put me on hold. I don't know if the cops did anything that night, like even so much as drive by. Half the time when the S.P.D. says they're dispatching, that's code for 'doughnuts at 7-11, hurry!'

So when this woman was stabbed to death on New Year's Eve, it creeped me out a bit and I wondered when was the last time I saw Tweaker No. 1 getting buzzed into the building??? Funnily enough, I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since ... about New Year's. Que the Law & Order music.

So they just arrested this guy who is the second "person of interest", this time they got a positive on the DNA. And from the written description they released, he sure sounds like my un-friendly neighborhood meth dealer. I wanna emphasize, this is someone, I have no doubt is capable of flipping out on a meth/heroin cocktail and just randomly attacking someone (preferably smaller, physically weaker) than him.

I'm anxious to see his mugshot when they release it to the Press.

Hmmm, wonder if it's him ...

LMFAO !

The spice must flow, errr?

I stole this from Tiffany's LiveJournal. I had to because when I read one of the comments on it I laughed so hard I blew coffee out my nose and even woke some of my Boeing co-workers up (it's Friday nap time).

Enjoy the weirdness.

Note to Sports Fans:

No one cares. Except you. Professional sports could take a big sigh and die tomorrow and it wouldn't phase me in the least. Seriously.

The only thing on earth more annoying that rabid sports fans: rabid pro-athletes who "Thank God" when they/their team/their gang-o-thugs wins.

Note to Pros: God doesn't care. The Supreme Being/Goddess/DivineConsciousness/SkyBully/Jeesus/Christ ...just ... does ... not ... care.

Drama Queen for the Vag Owners

I just couldn't stay away from this dramafest. I was sucked in like a dust bunny into a vacuum.

Gloria Steinem, matriarch of American feminism, wrote what I thought was a pretty damn good essay in the New York Times about Senator Hillary Clinton and all the hoopla surrounding her run for president.

The drama followed Steinem's essay. A lot of it is posted on Slate.com.

And I posted a reply to one blogger on her blog. And then thought, what the hell, and am reposting it here.

So go read Steinhem's essay first before you read the below.


(Bill and Hill, the Paper Chase Years)

* * *

I think it’s almost impossible to not take feminism and civil rights personally.

But I don’t think Gloria was saying ALL women voters do this. I think she meant some or most depending on her argument point or statistic.

She wasn’t suggesting we (you, me, all vagina owners) are betraying our sex for not voting for her. She was implying that we are perceived that way. And we are.

I’ve heard Bill Maher (insightful, funny but a mysogynist) come at female guests on his show from exactly the same angle: Why aren’t YOU voting for her, you vagina owner?!!!

Barack Obama himself pointed out on a 60 Minutes interview months ago that it was condescending to assume that ALL black people would vote for him.

How condescending to assume that ALL women should vote for Hillary. And I think that is what Gloria was pointing out.

And if anybody cares, I'm not particularly fond of Senators Clinton or Obama. They're both products of the corporate-owned Washington political machine and they both supported a foul, fake, hideous war that has cost 500,000+ Iraqis and nearly 5,000 US soldiers their lives.

Gerbils Vs. Barbie Doll Townhouse

Yep, I'm anti-Xmas. I can't say it was one specific incident that led me to throw in the itchy polyester Santa hat. It may be part of my decline into a bitchy, solitary middle-age. Bill O'Reilly's freak out a while back might have been the last nail in the red and white coffin but the first one was ages ago.

While growing up in rural Nevada, my Dad used to shell out pretty big for my presents. It was the one time of year my Mom would pop a fuse if he failed to spend at least a hundred bucks on me. The rest of the time, he conveniently (and thriftily) forgot he had a third child living with the ex-wife far from the balmy golf courses of California.



When I was 10, the big present I bleated for was a Barbie Doll Townhouse. Not that I actually owned any Barbies. (My staunch feminist leanings were beginning to show). I just wanted a place for Johnny West and family to live and a split-level would be ideal so they could park the plastic ponies downstairs.

When I opened my present, I was a little disappointed in the Townhouse. It was two panels of cardboard printed on one side with some plastic yellow pillars to hold up the other floors.

Johnny West and his pardn'rs weighed more than the whole thing. When I tried to seat Johnny in one of the upper floors, the cardboard sagged perilously.

One day, bored with the whole plastic horse/plastic cowboy collection, I left them strewn in my room. I also had my gerbil family out running free range across the Linoleum. I shut the door of my room and went outside to play in the Siberian-like weather.

When I came back a few hours later, I was shocked to find the house completely collapsed. One yellow pillar was under my bed, and suspiciously, an entire section of printed cardboard had been dragged over to the entrance of the gerbil's cage. My Barbie Doll Townhouse had been reduced to a massive pile of carefully shredded bedding by the industrious gerbils.

Sulking and whining, I kicked the gerbil family rudely out of their fine pile of cardboard and took it out to my Mom where she laughed her ass off. She called the relatives and they all had a good laugh too.

I sulked on the couch and threatened to let our tabby cat, Freddy, have his way with my indolent pet rodents.

I'm not sure if there's anything in this besides some gerbil bedding ... but I don't know that I benefited from being brought up to believe -- like every other kid in America -- that Xmas was just about getting stuff. Just stuff. Usually plastic, guaranteed to break or end up in the back of the closet due to dis-interest.

There are only two presents guaranteed to enthrall children for more than five minutes. A shiny set of keys if they are under three and bedtime story books until they are 12.

If I had kids, I'd stay far from the malls and farther from Toys-R-Us. Forget the lead paint scare. Teach them to play without all the plastic.

A Vain Attempt at Motivation ...

In an effort to escape the cubicle prairie, I submitted copies of a short story I wrote about nine months ago.

A really old, professor-y guy up at Hugo House looked it over in October and right away said, "Why haven't you been published?"

Then he told me about this sea of (mostly) college-based literary anthologies floating on the edge of the fiction publishing world. This ain't literature you would find in the airport gift shop. But since I am PRO-art/writing and since I am PRO-independent anything, I'm plowing through a few of these, even if they don't pick my story to print.

The most prestigious of the lot is McSweeney's, which was founded by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius which sat on the New York Times best seller list for quite a while.

The others are:

Hayden's Ferry Review, which I'm reading right now. Not to brag, but the competition in this one just doesn't look that intimidating. Do these writers really all have PhDs in literature?

This one's based out of Purdue University. You can tell by the very serious font.

This one's out of a Texas university. Note the southwestern motif.

This one's out of Boise State U. I didn't know the literacy rate was high enough in the Potato State to support a college English department, let alone an annual literary anthology. I always thought Idaho was full of meth labs, Mormons, people missing too many teeth, pickups and neo-Nazis. Now, if they'd just build a really big fence around it ...

This one's out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which makes more sense. They have lots of time to read in Alaska.

So in six months, hopefully, the SASEs containing rejection letters will began to flow in. Yeah, that was 40 bucks in shipping an' copies well spent.

Is it just me ...

... or does anyone else have the urge to lick their TV screen when Lee Pace is on?



Not that I can stand to watch Pushing Daisies. It's this neutered version of "Dead Like Me", may that lovely show R.I.P. And also network commercials make me INSANE. I'll have to buy it on DVD after it gets canceled. Trust me, it will. Inventiveness never goes unpunished in Hollyweird.



And don't hate me for borrowing your fan pics off Flickr. It's a form of flattery ... and also I don't live within a 1,000 miles of Hollywood so it's not like I can stalk him with a camera phone.