From now on until some as yet unknown time in the future, I will be crossposting between Dreamwidth and LJ and reading in both places, though as people become securely established over on DW I will probably trim the lj list down quite a lot to avoid duplication.

If this is our first introduction, hi!

You may want to read my DW profile before deciding if you mean to keep me or to toss me back. I find that over the years I have been holding house on Livejournal I have developed strong Opinions about how I want my journal to work, so unlike my lj profile, which sort of grew haphazardly, this time I have actually written a position paper of sorts.

Also, I am the sort of person who thinks this is funny:

(This journal is queer. And friendly.)

Spread the Net: Donate ten dollars. Buy one mosquito net. Save three people from malaria.

Got a couple of hours? Volunteer in the developing world from your own computer desk.

Got 25 dollars to spare? Donating money once is good. Lending it over and over is better. Microcredit from microlenders. Like you.

Arrow and Loon Pub, Bank and Fifth in the Glebe, 8 pm, Wednesday, on the indoor patio where the lighting is good.

Bring your knitting, or crocheting, or anything else you can comfortably work on at a pub.

I will have yarn and needles with me for teaching purposes, if you don't knit but would like to.

cristalia nails it. In fact, she nails it to the wall, with precision and elegance and very sharp and dangerous pain.

Let me tell you a little story about the cold.

In 1990 in Saskatchewan, a 17-year-old boy named Neil Stonechild was found frozen to death in a field outside Saskatoon. He had last been seen, handcuffed and bloodied, being packed into the back of a squad car.

Ten years later, two more Native men were found frozen to death outside the city in a single week. A third came forward with a story of being driven around outside the city by the police and threatened. There was a public inquiry. Two police officers on the Saskatoon force were ultimately charged and lost their positions.

There's a name for this thing. It's called a starlight cruise.

...

See, here's the thing about living in a cold-weather society. You stick together, because you have to: it's you against the winter. That is, on a certain level, the basic division of life. That's where the concept of the Wendigo comes from. A wendigo is famine, starvation, greed; the insatiable need to eat until you eat the members of your own society. Wendigo are creatures of the cold, the North. They are supernatural, but a human being can become one, if they resorted to cannibalism.

A wendigo is what happens when human beings turn away from their own and throw in with winter.

These are the worst sins of a cold-weather society, the ones that are irredeemable: siding with winter. Feeding off your own. Taking another person as prey, or leaving them as prey for the winter, in jeans and a shirt with no wool coat or scarf or hat; with no lined gloves and no transit home, knowing full well what the winter does.

And she's right. This is the part that was making me feel truly sick, earlier, and still is, though I couldn't articulate it at all, even to myself. Certainly not that well, though it does explain why I felt myself compelled to buy someone a hot drink so that they could stay inside the coffeeshop for another hour or two, earlier, and why that was what made the knot in my guts untie a bit.

As random said to me earlier: you could almost, if you looked at it sideways, find excuses for the beating. For the pepper spray. Peter's a tall and an imposing guy. Border guards are human and they can be frightened, or succumb to the pressure of the group.

Only almost, and not very good excuses, but at least it's a thing people DO. They overreact. They do stupid, vicious, violent things in the moment.

They took his coat. With lots of time to think better of it. In a blizzard. And then they, in their nice warm uniform jackets and hats and gloves, went back inside to their nice heated building, and they left a fellow human out there. Because they could. At least they didn't throw water on him. I suppose we're meant to be grateful; and I am, though to the Universe, not to them. It's been known to happen.

Like cristalia, I'm scared of that. Any sane human being who has lived through a 'real' winter is scared of that. We're meant to be scared of that. This is what Insufficient Deference will get you. Placate the Windigo, or join them, or be food for them.

And now I am going to go and get a hot drink, and remind myself that Peter Watts is somewhere warm and safe right now, and pray for those who are not. And for courage in the face of winter, and in the face of Windigo, when and as needed.

ETA: Peter says: Some are concluding that, when I was “dumped across the border in shirtsleeves”, I had to walk across the Blue Water Bridge in a snowstorm without my coat. No. The bridge is on the US side of the border, which they had to drive me across to dump me on the other side of; and Canadian Customs was on that other side. This was no Starlight Cruise; I was not exposed to the weather unprotected for an inordinately long time. Still. It’s winter. And they have my coat.

I am glad he didn't have to cross that bridge on foot. It is one long damned bridge. But it doesn't, really, change as much as all that. People do not leave people outside in the cold with no coat, no money, and no phone. Not in winter.

It's just that now I'm outraged, shaking, nauseated, and Not Crying.

If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

But that is not this universe.

Peter Watts is a friend of mine. Not a close friend, necessarily, but a good one; I try my best to see him whenever I'm in Toronto. I'm appalled and furious and worried and generally incapable of writing a good post about this. I'm not sure I could say anything I haven't already said at one time or another about people I do NOT know who were subjected to this kind of treatment, and I probably said it better then. So I will let other people speak for me right now.

David Nickle, via Boing Boing:

The charge is spurious. But it's also very serious. It could mean two years in prison in the United States, and a ban on travel in that country for the rest of Peter's life. Peter is mounting a vigorous defense, but it's going to be expensive - he's effectively going up against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and he needs the best legal help that he can get.

He's got that help, courtesy of one of the top criminal lawyers in the State of Michigan. We, Peter's friends and colleagues here in Canada, want to make sure he gets the help he needs financially to come out of this nightmare whole.

The need for that help is real. While Peter is a critically successful science fiction writer, he is by no means a best-selling author. Without help, the weight of his legal fees could literally put him on the street by spring.

We can't let that happen. So there's going to be fundraising.

Donate (and read some of Peter's work) here.

And - I don't normally say things like this. But in the words of coffeeem

Don't tell me Watts should have known better. He's a free, law-abiding citizen of a free country, who has a right to believe in the rule of law and reasonable behavior in the nation right next to his. If you tell me he asked for it, he deserved it, what happened to him was justified by his actions, I swear I will ban you from this goddamn journal. Because that could have been any of us.

ETA: It occurs to me in retrospect that if his cel phone is sitting in an evidence bag somewhere I may have just painted a large target on my ass. And you know what? I don't much care right now.

I have previously mentioned Soup from Leftover (fairly plain [1]) Potatoes: mash them well, if they weren't already, combine them with a packet of Knorr Fines Herbs soup, add, if desired, additional herbs and salt/pepper to taste, heat through, serve.

Now there is also Soup From Leftover (fairly plain [1]) Squash:

Mash the squash and toss it in a pan with one can of Campbell's Chicken Broth with Garlic and Herbs (or some reasonable equivalent. Fancy organic veggie broth, whatever.) Add, if desired, additional herbs (and, if you like, cinnamon or cayenne or, garlic or leftover fried onions if you have them or bits of crispy bacon, or... hey, it's your soup) and salt and pepper to taste. Heat through, serve.

[1] You get to define this: garlic potatoes au gratin probably work really well. Squash that has been mashed with brown sugar will probably produce revolting results - but I'm not you. Try it on your mental tongue and go from there.

Twenty years is a long time. Twenty years is a moment.

Tonight is not the twentieth time I've gone to a December 6th vigil, but I've gone to more than I've missed.

Dec 6, 1989, is the day I REALLY became a feminist. I'd been one before, in a take-it-for-granted sort of way, but that was the day I really figured out what we were up against, and what we had to do.

Tonight is not the first time I've seen "but what about the men/you feminists all hate men" comments, either. But this comment on the cbc website:

How much longer until the feminists get here and criticize the CBC for daring to mention that some of these women had men they loved and who loved them?

is the first time I've really felt moved to reply.

Yes, it's the twentieth anniversary of the Montreal massacre, and I'm going to talk about the men. Not because I feel like I have to. Just because I want to.

Not the men like the one who left that comment, because it's obvious that he's met maybe three feminists in his life, and he's sure as Hell never been to a Dec. 6 vigil.

Because if he had been, he'd never have made that comment.

As I looked around tonight at the vigil, I saw that, as is quite usual, about a third of the faces I was seeing were male faces.

Some of the police officers who volunteer their time every year so the event can happen are men. Many of them are or have been on the Domestic Crimes unit, or Hate Crimes, or Sexual Assault, or Homicide. They get it.

Some of the paramedics and hospital workers and ministers and social workers who come every year are men. They've patched us up after domestic assaults and sexual assaults and sometimes they've stood and watched us die of them. They get it.

Some of the men who came are - or were - brothers, or fathers, or sons, or classmates, or colleagues, or friends. There was a woman they liked, or loved, once, and now she's a different, more damaged person - or she is gone. They get it.

Some of the men who came spent some part of their childhoods in a women's shelter, while their mothers got their lives together after domestic assaults. Some of them saw their mothers beaten. Some of them were beaten themselves, for trying to intervene. They get it.

Some of the men who came have, or have had, partners who are living with the aftermath of domestic abuse, or sexual assault, or both. They've sat up at three am and seen and heard the pain. They get it.

And some of these men - just get it. They are fundraisers and activists and social workers and emergency workers and politicians and students and husbands and brothers and fathers and sons and friends and colleagues and Just Plain Guys, and they came on their own to the understanding that they had to oppose male violence against women because opposing our rape and murder and beating and silencing and terrorizing and disappearing is the only decent thing to do, and the only terms under which they want this package called 'manhood' that they've been handed.

And they don't set up straw feminists and then tear them down. They don't show up in coversations and announce that they've never raped anybody and they're a nice guy now where's their blowjob cookie. They don't insist that if we ask them to support women's rights or the enthusiastic cooperation standard of consent or to go out of their way a bit to try to find qualified women applicants or we question whether or not it's appropriate for them to call themselves feminists or we ask them to hang back at the Take Back The Night march or refrain from speaking at the Dec 6 vigil or to wear a white ribbon or to speak up against rape and for rape victims even when it will only get them laughed at, for no reward except the reward of being able to look themselves in the face the next morning, that we're "sexist against men".

And they understand that the reason that we don't praise them lavishly and endlessly for doing these simple, basic things, is because we have high expectations for them, and every faith in their ability to fulfil them, and to excessively praise a man for simple, basic, decent human behaviour towards women is to suggest that that man is either dumb as a rock or possessed of the moral sense of a mollusk.

They just roll up their sleeves and get in there and HELP.

(If, on the other hand, you're, for example, Henry Morgentaler, you can have a cookie. Hell, you can have the whole BOX of cookies Order of Canada. But that's the standard, my friends.)

The other two-thirds of the crowd ... were mostly, not all, familiar faces. Some of them are women I see once a year. Some of them are women I see every week. Some of them have lost friends or family to violence against women. Some of them have lost great bleeding chunks of their own lives to it. Some of them are twice my age. Some of them were not born twenty years ago. Some of them I like, or love. Some of them I don't like very much, and they don't really like me.

But once a year we stand together in the snow, with flowers and candles, and remember why we do what we do, and our differences aren't really all that important. And tonight, I love them all.

We're women. We're all a bunch of feminists.

The YWCA has a December 6 Fund:

We offer non-interest-bearing loans to women leaving violent homes.
The Fund supports women in the GTA and the Region of Peel. The YWCA December 6 Fund strives to remove some of the financial barriers that prevent women from leaving their abusers. Women use the loans to establish themselves and their children in greater safety. The purpose of the Fund is to help women make the transition from abusive situations to safety and self-reliance and to raise awareness about violence against women."

Talking of men who get it, have some Stephen Fearing:

As men begin to understand what women say
They see history reaching out to smother all of us
So ring the bells of morning for sorrow and for shame
And let the deep well inside each of us swell with outrage
For those of us who know what went before can come again
Must ring the bells, we must ring the bells of morning.

... which Loblaws sells frozen, in Club Pack bags, and frequently has massive sales on.

Bake from frozen on a cookie sheet or in a pan with deep sides for 25 minutes in a 400F oven.

In the pan or in a bowl, toss wings with pretty much any sort of sauce or seasoning you like (soy, sesame soy, lemon juice, alder-smoked salt and fresh ground pepper, Dante's Inferno chipotle ... ) and return coated wings to oven for ten minutes.

Eat with rice or oven chips or whatever you like.

*is very lazy today*

... standing in the gathering dark, filthy and shivering, over your planted-with-300-bulbs, pillaged, completely turned over, sifted, sorted, in 3C weather thank-you-very-much, totally replanted-and-now-chicken-wire-and-brick-protected front garden shaking your fist and yelling into the treetops "Now get THAT into you, you furry little bastards!"

Which is not the nastiest thing anyone in this family has yelled at a squirrell

I'm sort of exhausted. Lots of pictures to edit, lots of posts to write. Meanwhile, damned_colonial asked me for this when I was in SF, and I think it's worth more general posting:



... gathering knitting to send to Afghanistan, Labrador and Mongolia.

They have also a Ravelry Group.

(So, can some nice person who has a child handy measure a five-year old and/or an eight-to-ten year old for me and tell me how large around their head is? I'd do it myself, but people get oddly excited when you pursue their small child down the street with a tape measure. And I don't really do hats from patterns. I just sort of busk them.)

... with issues, four stalkers, possible legal difficulties, seeks girl with saviour complex, Ford truck (dually preferred) for dysfunctional sex on first meeting followed by co-dependent relationship and mutual recriminations. Must be decisive and easy-going.

... in other words, we have been to Winslow AZ and had a fabulous dinner there (Turquoise Room at La Posada; highly recommended), and are now in Flagstaff having breakfast at Biff's Bagels and Internet Cafe.

This is a stunningly beautiful part of the world and we are absolutely coming back here.

More to follow, probably. Have a woeful armadillo in the meantime.

commodorified
I did a panel at WisCon on Porn Crushes the Patriarchy, it was interesting.

daveamongus
And then there's this: http://www.fmylife.com/intimacy/4274119

commodorified
I think we may have fetishised the Military Industrial complex in there somewhere.


daveamongus
nice
we can be a pretty hot fetish, let me tell you what.

commodorified
On the grounds that the patriarchy hates that shit.


daveamongus
*laughs*

commodorified
we're not well people


daveamongus
not really, no ;)

commodorified*finally reads that link*
... I should totally blog that you made me read that.


daveamongus
Go right ahead.

commodorified
also this is why chiropractors' kids go to Harvard.

I am simultaneously feeling:

too old for this shit.

and

too young to be allowed to sign complicated legal paperwork unsupervised.

... I have the horrible sinking feeling that that might be middle age in a nutshell, right there.

random
ok, monkey, it disturbs me greatly when i hear a very loud "OH SHIT" and then nothing.
what's up?
commodorified
Oh sorry.
Um. I forget.

You all know the BEST stories.

This is just to say that I crosspost between DW and LJ and generally let the comments fall where they may, but on this occasion I ought to point out that if you read the Family Legends thread only on Dreamwidth you are missing a story about a house, several stories about a variety of wars, one assassination, true love, and families divided and reunited under fascinating circumstances, and if you are reading only on LJ you are missing gangsters, shipwrecks, airplanes, and the one about the goose.

Friends of the Experiemental Farm Victorian Tea, Sunday, July 26, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Classic tea served on the lawns of the Arboretum.
Bring a patio chair and listen to the music.
Enter the best hat contest and don period costume (not required).
Location: Central Experimental Farm Arboretum.
Admission free, Formal Tea $6.00.

I'm going, and I believe that torrain was interested. Anyone else? Anyone local and in possession of suitable Regency[1] or Victorian attire, modern size 16-18, that I might borrow? Otherwise I shall just go modern; I'm not going to even try to rent at my size.

[1] I don't care, I like Regency better. I shall be that elderly aunt who refuses to keep up with fashion.

This is a splendid editorial: I am endlessly grateful that my curiosity about history came on while my grandparents and great-uncle were still alive and telling stories, so that I listened properly, instead of nodding along dutifully as I hope I would have done regardless.

And endlessly regretful that there was never enough time, especially in the case of my grandparents' last years, when looking after them tended to get in the way of - and suck up the energy for - listening to them. I never did hear the end of the one about the water tower at Dresden[1], or the joke about the duck hunter - Grandpa was going to tell me that one when I was old enough, and then he couldn't tell it properly - it was, I gather, one of those jokes you have to act out.

(On Henry Allingham)But perhaps the best tribute was that people listened to him. The boy who once longed to enlist lived to say on the BBC: “War is stupid. Nobody wins.”
...
The good bit is when they go off-message, quirky and human. I have never forgotten the day that an old lady’s casual remark revealed to my innocent schoolgirl ears her dislike of Churchill — “Horrid bossy man, all boiler suits and bombast”. It does not detract from Churchill, but it is liberating to encounter the stroppy, messy diversity of real experience.
...
You think, for instance, that upper-class Edwardian girls were chaperoned innocents, their swains respectful? Well, a friend’s great-aunt Olive tells of a girl found one morning sewing up the traditional open front of her drawers. She blithely explained why: “I’m going out with Freddie in a punt.” Her virtue hung by those threads.
...
It is instructive, though sad, to chat with a 100-year-old suffragette and have her casually remember turning down marriage with a man she adored because it would have ended her teaching career. “One couldn’t have both, dear. Not like girls now.”
...
In an age where ex-prime ministers (well, the last one anyway) display a sense of pampered entitlement to luxury, cherish also the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire’s story of Alec Douglas-Home. Coming home from the Kennedy funeral, he offered to lie very still in his pyjamas in the Chatsworth guest bed and not rumple it, so they wouldn’t have to change the sheets for Princess Margaret the next night.
...
And only conversations with elders can remind us of the fabulous but untried newness of things: in Canada, I once met a man whose father rode the first cross-continental train to get a job building a new place called — er — Vancouver.

Tell me a family legend of yours? I'll start:

My grandfather was on the railroad from 1916-1965. He had some difficulty with the pension people in '62 explaining that he wasn't actually retirement age, yet: the Canadian Army apparently knew a 6' 15 year old when they saw one by 1916 - thank God - but the Chesapeake and Ohio weren't quite so inclined to be fussy.

Sometime around 1945, when he was an engineer, his freight train nearly derailed. His fireman at the time - who I met briefly when I was a kid - never got tired of telling the story of climbing frantically up the - as he remembered it - damn' near vertical floor of the engine, hollering "She's goin', Hiker, she's goin'!", and my grandfather hollering back, "Well, let the sonofabitch go, then - we don't own her!"

I wish I had thought to ask how the Hell they got her back on the track ... but I guess that wasn't the point.

[1] Yard limits? More like what you might call ... guidelines, apparently.

ETA: and then via friendsfriends, I promptly find this: In the early forties, eight inmates of the Goree prison unit formed one of the first all-female country and western acts in the country, capturing the hearts of millions of radio listeners. Then they nearly all vanished forever..

commodorified: http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall06/PATTcruelty.html
commodorified (to damned_colonial): I am not sure whether your job is to tell me that that pattern is for size 4 women who work out three hours a day or whether your job is to tell me that if the Body Demons have a problem, that is what I have a cricket bat for.
damned_colonial:*hands you a cricket bat*
commodorified: : Right. I assume the 'I am not a real knitter" demons are best dealt with with a crochet hook?

commodorified: *ponders*
commodorified: I assume your unsureness is not about that?
iclysdale: i am not entirely sure. My unsureness is about point #1 in your previous comment. :)
commodorified: erm?
iclysdale: plus i think it's kind of generally fugly, but even on top of that, would not work on you.
commodorified: It's DARLING
commodorified: *humph*
iclysdale: It's FUGLY.
commodorified: HOW IS IT FUGLY?
iclysdale: The terrifying silver satiny layer, the dubious multi-colored "oh untie me now" ribbons over the butt, the weird gathering at the feet...
iclysdale: Since you ask.
commodorified: *sigh*
iclysdale: i don't appreciate your true art, i know.
commodorified: I WANT A DIVORCE!
iclysdale: :)
iclysdale: i don't know that "incompatible taste in kicky dresses" is considered grounds.
commodorified: *posts this*

Poll #1431209
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 77

About that skirt:

ETA:

commodorified: Monkey, you are not winning so far :-)
iclysdale: it's a good thing that aesthetic truth is not determined by the demagogic clamoring voices of the proletarian masses.

I am going to stop reading Lowering The Bar

The Times article points out that under the Code of Conduct of the Bar of England and Wales, "a barrister is not specifically prohibited from charging for sex, but he must not do anything which could 'lead to any inference that his independence may be compromised.'"... if this is going to set a precedent for applying ethical rules to this kind of conduct, there is more that British men may need to be worried about. Rule 701 requires a barrister to act "diligently and with reasonable competence," and to refuse "any task which (i) he knows or ought to know he is not competent to handle; (ii) he does not have adequate time and opportunity to prepare for or perform; or (iii) he cannot discharge within the time requested or otherwise within a reasonable time . . . .""

I am.

"Death v. Graves & Co., CGC-06-451316 (San Francisco Super. Ct. filed Apr. 17, 2006)"

Any minute now.

"United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins, No. 05-56274 (9th Cir. Mar. 17, 2008)."

... I am. Really. I have WORK TO DO.

I took a picture in Tennessee that I actually quite like:



( Mostly I was working on the Photographers Are Mostly Crazy series )

pecunium was, of course,( busy doing Art )

Of which, more here.

pecunium speaking at the Torture is a Moral Issue conference.

It's ten minutes. It's well worth watching. But if you really really don't have time?

Torture: still wrong, still doesn't work. Ticking bomb scenario: still complete and utter bullshit. In other news, water is wet, the sky is up there, and dogs have been known to return to their vomit.

... When Irwin Cotler stood up in the fourth slot in Question Period and challenged the government once again to bring Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik home from years of exile in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, we waited for the predictable response ... [c]harged once again with responding, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson stood in his place and said simply: “The government will comply with the court order,” and then sat down. For an instant it was almost like you could hear a whooshing sound in the place, then many of us stood up and applauded in total shock

...

Irwin Cotler was a lion in the exile’s defense, rising repeatedly in the house, faced by countless heckles from the Conservatives, and holding true to the belief that law is law and that you can’t keep a Canadian citizen interned when there is no evidentiary base for such a practice

...

Joanne Deschamps from the Bloc deserves full credit for marshaling her party’s response and reminding everyone in the House that the Bloc have been pathfinders in the realm of human rights and that they need not take a back seat to any party on that issue.

But the one person who stuck on this file and deserves full praise for the victory yesterday was the NDP’s Paul Dewar

...

Against all odds, Dewar exhausted every parliamentarian option, time after time, not just in an attempt to exonerate an innocent citizen, but to prove that the Canadian parliament could be relevant in such a case. I watched as the government members of the committee fought him vociferously. But he worked the system - very well. In key votes on the case, the three opposition parties worked together and won by one vote each time, Paul’s example being the key cause.

Paul Dewar is my MP, and I am very, very proud of him. I was lucky enough to run into him for a few minutes on Friday to tell him so.

Note: Mostly, when I say "I", I mean "we" because I have a cowriter and a steady editor, and with a few exceptions what I post, whether it's under my name and damned_colonial's or just mine, is the product of a shared universe with shared assumptions and agreements between me, her, and fairestcat, and the only really reliable functional difference between what I post as just me and what we post as us is who did the actual plot-generation.

Mostly, but not always, so I shall use "I". This is not true in reverse: Skud has written quite a lot of stuff that I had little or nothing to do with. Also, she may or may not agree with anything I say here and I do not speak for her. But she has been a huge influence on my thinking, as has fairestcat.

Warnings, my general philosophy on:

In most ways, I am the anti-labelling ficcer. I don't write summaries. I generally don't give pairings. My notes tend toward the terse or nonexistent. I'm not going to tell you if you're getting slash or het or both or none. Those are plot points, and I work reasonably hard at not telegraphing them. I don't use rating systems that involve suggested ages, because I think that's an awful, stupid system and I refuse to perpetuate it.

In general, I label things according to sexual explicitness or otherwise, and explicit or otherwise violence, and that's that.

But I firmly believe in warnings. I can't make you use them, but I can think that if you deliberately don't use them in general that you're being somewhere between sort of thoughtless and a right jerk.

If you go out of your way not to use them on fics with a lot of triggery content I can think that you actively enjoy luring people in to be triggered and that you're not someone I want to read, or indeed know. I can also think that if you really think your artistic freedom is threatened by warnings then you're badly confused about either 'art' or 'freedom' and should consult a dictionary.

I will particularly think this if you post pairings, summaries, notes and slash/het/both tags and yet refuse to give warnings because somebody somewhere is asking you to and that makes it automatically an assault on your integrity. As Blessed Saint Dorothy of Oxford hath truly said^[1]: "Some consideration for others is necessary in community life".

This is not an exception to my general approach, it's an intrinsic part of it. If I'm going to ask people to read stuff based entirely on a fandom, a list of characters, and the fact that it's me writing it, I need to make sure that they can trust me to do my best to make sure that that experience of diving into a story to see what happens isn't going to be triggering or damaging for them. We're going for enjoyable uncertainty, here.

A Small Digression:

"But Marna, hardly any of your stuff has warnings!"

Well, true. This is one reason I'm writing this post, actually. I don't want to be mistaken for someone who refuses to warn.

The paucity of warnings on my fic to date is because I largely don't write fic that seems to me to need warnings, barring the one where 18th C and 21st C definitions of 'underage' ended up in conflict and the Shakespearean dubious consent one - both of which I warned for.

In general though, I'm on the romance end of things, my sex scenes tend to involve not only consent but enthusiastic cooperation, my violence tends to be offscreen or inexplicit, and I don't expect that to change.

Warnings, my general philosophy on, some practical applications of:

Slash/Het/Both: Does not get a warning, a label, or whatever you want to call it. Ever. Don't ask.

Violence: gets a warning, with a note as to explicitness.

Dubious consent/Non-Consent/Sexual Assault: Damned well gets warned for if it's going to happen onscreen. Probably gets warned for if it's going to happen offscreen but during the period of the narrative. Probably gets warned for if it's in the past but is going to be discussed in any detail. Is slightly less likely to be warned for if it's canon. Questionable consent due to impairment: judgement call. The only time I've written really drunken sex it was between two people who'd already established a baseline of mutual knowledge and trust such that presuming consent was in the situation as written reasonable in my mind.

And really, those two are roughly it; the rest is details of how those two work out.

Significant Age Difference/Underage: The age of consent in Canada is 16. I am extremely unlikely to ever write or want to write any fiction in which sex involving a person under 16 is dealt with explicitly, but if I do, I shall warn for it very clearly indeed. If the age of consent is different where you are and you have concerns, email me and I'll tell you how old the youngest character involved in a sex scene is.

Age difference: if everybody is over 21, there will never be a warning. Sixteen to twenty-one with a significantly older partner or partners is a grey area. If in my opinion the age difference makes it Dubious Consent/Non-Consensual/Assault, both warnings will appear. If in my opinion it does not but the age difference is eroticised, or is accompanied by a power differential, or if for some other reasons it seems to me to be potentially problematic, I will warn for it. If the age difference is just a function of circumstance/time/place/culture, I'm just going to note that it's there.

(I hope this is far clearer than what I originally posted)

Death: ( Not "character death". If someone dies in a piece of fiction, they were a character, ne'st pas?)

If someone dies in their bed, after a long and happy, I won't warn you. If they die offscreen, ditto. If they die onscreen but without any detail being given, I won't warn you.

If I am warning for explicit violence in the fic and said violence results in death, I'll tell you, but I won't tell you whether it's your favourite main character or Midshipman Redshirt.

It has, however, been pointed out to me that for some people - especially people dealing with recent or imminent death in their own lives - death in fiction is actually a trigger (and of course, for others in similar situations it's a valued catharsis). So - if you need to know if a fic has death in it, ask me, and I'll tell you. If you need to know if it's a particular character's death, ask me that as well, as I won't give out more info than I'm directly asked for.

Incest: If it would be potentially actionable in a court of law in 2009, I'll warn you (and probably also warn for dubious/non/assault, because incest generally is). The fact that some cultures at some times have considered, for example, marrying your brother's widow to be incest, or the fact that everybody in Shakespeare's history plays calls everybody else "cousin", does not, in my mind, constitute a reason for me to warn should I write such a thing, even if the scandalous nature of it is discussed in the fic.

Consensual BDSM: Is consensual and not violence, and will not be warned for. I'm aware that reading about it is a problem for some people, and if you ask me if it's in there I'll happily tell you - but don't ask me by emailing me to say "Is this 'violent pornography'?" Just ask me if there's BDSM, and any additional details you need to know. And when I write it, I will always do my very best to make the consent transparently visible.

Gory medical details: I am, in the matter of medical/surgical/bodily details, almost completely unsquickable. Keeping this in mind, if I ever have an overwhelming urge to write a fic that contains a detailed discussion of the proper treatment of sucking chest wounds or kidney stones, I will warn for this as my personal "well, wouldn't bother me" is known to be completely unreliable.

Animals: violence/abuse/death will get the same treatment as with humans.

Potentially triggery things that are also canon: will be warned for if they would otherwise be warned for. I used to think otherwise about this, but, really, if it's canon it's not exactly a big spoiler for the fic, right? Generally dark themes in a fic with generally dark canon, no, but if I retell a violent or potentially triggery bit of canon I'll warn.

Language: if it's merely crass, crude, rude, or explicit, no warning. Sexism, homophobia, racism, bigotry (in character speech or actions: I hope to refrain from committing such things in narrative voice entirely): contextual.

I'll warn for anything that refers to a group still dealing with oppression today, not otherwise. In short: characters expressing anti-American sentiments, no warning. Characters expressing Anti-Semitic sentiments, warning.

People with unusual or idiosyncratic triggers: are invited to email me using the address in my profile, or send me a private message, or jump to the bottom of the post and hit reply or go to another post and hit reply and ask me straight out if the thing they need to avoid is in my fic, whereupon I will tell them. Seriously. I'm happy to. I like being read and am pleased to make reading me as easy as possible. I may sometimes put in a warning for a non-standard trigger because I happen to already know that someone who reads me has it. If you have a different trigger, or you have that one and are concerned about a different fic, please ask me anyway; I'm not perfect, but I am happy to answer.

Squicks-that-are-not-triggers: Sure, ask me. As long as it's something reasonably specific, I'll do my best.

Don't ask me if I've 'made the [male]characters into girls/women'. Unless you either specifically mean genderswop because that's a squick or you're prepared for me to reply "do you mean like Joan of Arc, or like Grendel's Mother, or what?"

I'm not really open to discussing the pro-warnings anti-warnings thing. I mean, if you want to tell me how you feel about it all you may, but there's a fair chance I won't really answer, because my mind's pretty extensively made up.

I am absolutely and emphatically open to discussing my particular approach and how it's working well or could be improved. Specific suggestions for specific warnings on fics I have already posted will be received with gratitude, considered with care, and acted on promptly.

[1] In Gaudy Night.

The American State Department has issued travel advisories for Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia and Haiti — but will it issue one for Vancouver?

An American couple living in False Creek North says they’ve alerted their government that the neighbourhood is unsafe for visitors, and is requesting it issue a travel advisory during the 2010 Games.

Deirdre Barlow, who is part of a group called Concerned Citizens of False Creek North, said residents are on edge after the city opened a shelter nearby, which she said has attracted violence, prostitution and drug use.

Ok, that's IT, people. NO MORE APOLOGISING FOR DAVID FRUM FROM THIS CANUCK. NO MORE. Not unless y'all come GET THESE MUPPETS.

ETA: Yes, it's a media stunt. I just think it's an incredibly lame one, and therefore I point and I laugh. Nastily.

Made for tiferet, in response to this.

Via random:

I am FRYING BRATS FOR SUPPER.

pecunium assures me that IN AMERICA THIS IS PERFECTLY LEGAL. THE WAYS OF HIS PEOPLE ARE STRANGE INDEED.

Also, Fritos are made with ALL NATURAL OIL. The mind refuses to contemplate origins of UNnatural oils...

Ottawa Sun, via seanchaidh.

This story takes place at a private birthday party held at City Hall this week in honour of an acquaintance and friend of many who work there.

He's not a politician, and as such, he's not going to be named here.

One of those in attendance was Rideau-Goulbourn Coun. Glenn Brooks, a man who's been a municipal politician longer than most can remember.

Brooks' gift to the senior, marking his 80th birthday, was a curious sight -- an armless mannequin sporting a blue bikini top and something flowered.

Brooks, in presenting the gift, suggested the birthday boy had a reputation as a bit of a ladies' man, so the gift was perfect for him -- a woman who couldn't fight him off and couldn't say a thing.

Cue the awkward silence.

I look forward to Coun. Brooks' apology. And by "apology" I mean "sufficiently copious personal donation to SASC that it actually cuts into his personal spending money for a month or so".

ETA email I just sent him:

Dear Sir,

Your reported behaviour at a recent City Hall party, as discussed here -

http://www.ottawasun.com/news/columnists/susan_sherring/2009/05/30/9621301-sun.html

is appalling.

I'm sure that you will be making a suitably political apology for "any offense you may have unintentionally, etc, etc", in the coming days.

May I suggest that while you're at it you apologise, in a genuinely meaningful way, to the women of your city and of your riding who "couldn't fight and couldn't say a thing"?

A personal donation to the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Ottawa, of a sufficient size that you will actually notice the shortfall in your discretionary income for a month or so - nothing extreme, regular coffees instead of lattes, perhaps - would be an excellent sign of a willingness to make amends.

I enclose a link to their web page for your convenience:

http://www.sascottawa.org/

Though were I you I'd drop by there in person and see where your money is going, and to whom, as it seems as if what they do would be news to you, and it ought not to be.

In other words, Councillor, don't bother apologising for having made the joke. Apologise for having made it to your present age and stature without ever having taken the trouble to understand why it is not, never was, and never could be, funny.

Marna Nightingale,
Ward 14, Somerset.

He can be reached via http://www.glennbrooks.ca, should anyone else feel so moved.

Poll #1409632 Faith and Poly Poll Two: The one where everyone can play!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 110

I am taking this poll

The description that best matches me is:

The description that best matches me is:

The description that best matches me is:

I am a member of a World Religion, and I identify as

More specifically, I identify as a member of a World Religion and my denomination/tradition/sect is:

I identify as a member of a world religion and as

I am a member of a smaller religious group or organised religion, and its name is:

I identify as a member of a smaller religious group or organised religion and as

I am a solitary practitioner and would describe my beliefs and practice as

I am a solitary practitioner and identify as

Also:

I am in Tennessee with pecunium, and have had two decent nights' sleep. I feel mostly recovered from the Greyhound Trip Of Doooom, so comments on the WisCon Take Back The SF panel are now reopened (a day late) at both DW and LJ.

If you've been linked here, welcome! Please take a look at my DW profile for a sense of how things generally work around here.

An Open Letter To The Songwriters of the World.

Dear Musicians Who I Basically Really Like, Including But Not Limited To Bruce Springsteen and Mark Knopfler:

It is hereby requested that you stop messing up otherwise perfectly good songs about love, sex, and romance with the following words:

1) Baby.

2) Little Girl.

3) Daddy.

Because

A) We see what you did there, and

B) Ew. Just ew.

By the way, "Mama"" is also pretty questionable. Seriously, think about that for a moment, will you?

Thanking you in advance for your attention to this matter,

Marna Nightingale.

I am doing a long post which might take a few days, but I want to get some stuff about Take Back SF and Porn Crushes the Patriarchy out there now.

I committed ... I hope not Fail, but certainly Flail, around this panel.

First, I went into it in a vaccuum. I had no panels on Sunday and I really didn't pay any attention to programming. This was in retrospect unwise.

If I am ever again on a panel on a potentially tricky or controversial subject which is scheduled for late in the con, I will By God, even if I can't make it to related panels, at least keep track of what happens in them. Had I known anything about what went down at the Take Back SF Panel, I would have probably talked about the same stuff, but I'd have gotten a panel report out of someone and tipped the mod and my co-panellists off and generally taken a slightly different approach to things.

In particular, if anyone either saw/heard my impatience during some parts of the panel or heard me grumping after the panel about how attempts to talk about women's roles as producers and consumers of erotic materials always seem to get derailed by Talking About Rape and about Women as Victims, or both, please forgive me for any impression of being an insensitive jerk I may have given. I am (I hope) only a disorganised and foolish jerk.

I'm not going to do an Imitation Of A Woman Expressing Eternal Repentance In Seven Positions here, because a) I did not know and b) by Monday I was not just out of spoons but reduced to one lonely bendy straw fished out of the bottom of the cutlery drawer for all my basic and extraordinary needs, but next time I will know better and I hope do better.

As I was not at the Take Back SF panel, I can't speak to it, but there is both discussion from an attendee and a whole pile of links here.

I do want to say this: I have said before that I think feminists need to be ready to make and enforce firm boundaries around how men participate in discussions of rape. I still believe that, and you will hear me say it again, but this? This is not that. And this I am not good with. At all. Being ready with the mic to cut off a man - or woman - who derails, victim blames, slut shames, or demands a whole bag of cookies for not being a rapist once it is plain that that is what they are doing is one thing. Assuming that no man is going to open his mouth in a rape discussion to either make a positive contribution or disclose information about how rape has affected his life is quite another and I am not there for that, not ever.

ETA: Ok, so. This has gotten heated and I have a problem.

Basic principles of this journal:

Everyone gets to be heard.

Everyone gets to have their dignity and safety respected and protected.

Making these things happen is my responsibility.

On difficult threads this requires careful, thoughtful modding.

Here's the thing: I have to be on a bus to Tennessee tomorrow night, and at the moment I'm starting to think I'm going to get there with a bag full of dirty laundry and a mild case of sleep-dep psychosis. Oh, and a sore throat and a cough.

I cannot mod this thread right now, and if I can't mod it I can't let it run, because it is my responsibility to ensure that people are not treated disrespectfully or abusively here. So I am disabling comments until I get to Oak Ridge and can give this decent attention again.

This post will reopen SOMETIME AROUND (I'm human and travel is tiring) noon on Saturday, EST, with its comments intact.

Posts reopened; sorry about the delay. I had a sleepy.

Random Idea Of the Day, inspired by the dumb remark:

"Watts would have been better off writing [instead of Blindsight] a nonfiction book or essays on the ideas that he was trying to convey in this novel. To me they are theories that he has formed based on various nonfiction articles, reviews and literature that he has researched on sociopathic behavior, pyschological disorders, and/or autism.

To which, Hell no he would not have, but I wouldn't mind reading said book AS WELL, either. Therefore:

Leftover Research Quarterly.

A journal of articles and essays, in styles both academic and popular, written by fiction writers who want to say more about Cool Shit they found while working on a story and then didn't really get to use.

There will of course also be a fannish version for ficwriters.

Any hypothetical person who wishes to grab this idea and run may be assured that I will happily and utterly give up any theoretically enforceable rights I may have in said idea in exchange for a lifetime subscription.

ETA: I maded us a community.

Quoth Ther Cat:

"[She]'s Episcopalian AND poly! How common is that?"

Me: "[Names several examples]. Hmmm. Actually, maybe pretty common."

Therefore, a poll.

Poll #1403250 The Devil finds poll questions for idle minds
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 81

Episcopalian/Anglican/Church of England/Anglo-Catholic?

Poly?

Episcopalian/Anglican/Church of England/Anglo-Catholic AND Poly?

ETA Cat: "Ours is a welcoming church."

Via lightcastle

ObAWeakDisclaimerIsNobody'sFriend: This is not really about Racefail in general or any iteration thereof in particular. It is decidedly not intended to derail either any current discussion of racism nor any other current discussion touching on any other aspect of anti-oppression work. The only particular relationship it possesses to Racefail is that related reading is what got me thinking about it this time, and the only reason that I am not holding on to it until a better time presents itself is because increasingly I am persuaded that there isn't going to BE a universally "good time". At most, this is a sideline, presented for whatever use it may have. Mostly, it's a general comment on something I am seeing in a lot of discussions of oppression[s]. Particularly, please do not link people here as a way of derailing or dismissing what they have to say about a topic.

Also, fairestcat very kindly read this over for me, as did another friend who prefers not to be named. The good bits are due to them; the idiocies are all mine. damned_colonial contributed a metaphor, but has no other involvement with this post.

I'm bothered by the expression "showing one's ass", as used to denote racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise bigoted or just plain nasty behaviour.

And yes, I know it's a metaphor. That's why I don't like it. I don't like it because metaphors have contingencies, and it's the contingencies that cause the trouble.

(What I mean by contingencies, and I'd use a not-jargon-y word if I had one handy, is this: the meaning of the words we use to build a metaphor tends to leak into our concept of the thing we're describing, and vice-versa. The Lord Is My Shepherd: I am a sheep. I would be tasty with mint sauce. And, less obviously: shepherds are sort of holy, and sheep have something to say about innocence, because meaning leaks both ways.)

So, yeah, we use "showing one's ass" to mean "going out in public [behaving] in ways which are not meant to be seen." It's an appealing phrase in a lot of ways. It's a bit funny. It's pretty self-explanatory. It hooks in to all those anxiety dreams about ending up naked in public. And when we use it to talk about behaviour that's silly, or inappropriate to its context, or foolishly impulsive, it's really kind of a great metaphor.

But it has all these contingencies, and when we use it to talk about truly bad behaviour, behaviour that is just never okay, then I think those contingencies become really problematic. Bear with me while I take this metaphor waaaaay more literally than it was ever meant to be taken.

The problem is, it equates two things that aren't actually like one another in ways that I think mess with our understanding of both.

The first one, the one that my anti-oppression stuff gets twitchy about, is this: asses are not meant to be directly seen in public, but there are lots of contexts where it is perfectly okay, even desireable, for them to be seen, even displayed. Oppressive ugly is not fit to be seen, in public or anywhere. I don't save my ugly oppressive stuff for my partners and close friends and then run around flashing it blithely, and if I did I hope I'd wake up single and friendless pretty damned quick.

My ass can be rendered perfectly acceptable, or even sort of fascinatingly interesting, in any company, exactly as it is, simply by me draping it with a bit of fairly opaque fabric. My oppressive ugly is not acceptable, and cannot be made so. At most, it can be made slightly less obviously unpleasant in the short term; it cannot be made in any way "better" simply by covering it up.

You can try to sort of save the metaphor by extending it: obviously, what my ass oppressive ugly needs to do is shrink, and ultimately wither away. I have ugly, ergo I need to ... diet.

And then the meanings start to leak the other way. And my body-acceptance and sex-activist and woman-loving and indeed -liking stuff goes "Oh Dear."

Asses are sort of funny. They can be sort of embarrassing. They're sort of attractive, too. They produce a lot of anxiety, of a lot of sorts. They stick out. They refuse to fit into our (non-metaphorical) pants. Dogs find them fascinating, reminding us that no matter how often we shower, we're not made of sugar and spice. Lovers and potential lovers sometimes find them entrancing. They're near stuff that produces even more anxiety. They occasionally produce embarrassing noises. We get anxious about their size, their shape, and their general acceptability. We check out other people's, competitively, admiringly, lustfully, and just plain curiously.

Asses, or more accurately their owners, get kind of a rough ride in Western Culture, especially when said owners are female. Especially especially when said owners are female and have asses not shaped the shape of the current "fashionable" ass.

I don't think leaking all of the meaning we attach to asses onto oppressive ugliness is especially helpful in correctly identifying what it is, what it does, and who it harms. And I'm pretty sure that dumping all of the hideous weight of oppressive ugliness onto our asses, onto each other's asses, is ultimately at least a little bit toxic to our ability to live in our bodies with dignity, pleasure, and joy, and I'm pretty sure that that is the case whether we're the ones using the phrase or the ones hearing it, even though we don't mean it that way - and we generally don't.

It's not my desire to tell anyone what they may or may not say. At the same time, I think that this usage is problematic enough for me to not just drop it myself, but to publically present the case for not using it, and to do so as persuasively as I can. So here it is; think about it, if you will, and thank you for reading.

For myself, because metaphors, for all of their dangers, are intensely useful things, from now on I will be adopting damned_colonial's excellent suggested alternative: when I see someone blundering into a conversation and unthinkingly flashing their inner oppressive ugly, I will tell them that they appear to have stepped in the cowshit. I will tell them that they have shit on their shoe, and that it's making them unpleasant and difficult to be around or converse with. And I will suggest that they get out a brush, clean off their shoe, and be more careful where they put their feet in the future. And possibly even that they get to work at processing the shit in their personal pasture so that some day it will be something useful, like compost, no longer offensive and even useful for growing good things in. Those are contingencies I can live with.

ETA: I have splendid, smart, and generous commenters, who point out things I miss. Over on LJ, nojojojo and spiral_sheep are being especially good value, and pointing out a number of contingencies I either missed or didn't give adequate weight to.

Pat MacDonald (Formerly of TimBuk3) and Melanie Jane:

Thursday, May 21, 2009

5:00 - 7:00 PM

Overture Hall Lobby

FREE.

"FREE happy hour music at Overture Center for the Arts!
Overture invites you to stop down after work for live music in a casual setting. Each monthly performance features some of the area's best blues, jazz, country, soul and funk musicians. Cash bar and appetizers available for purchase. "

It's been a Day. I've managed, barely, to meet my absolute Minimum Responsibilities to the Universe, but just barely and by the time fairestcat got home I was more or less gibbering and squeaking like the sheeted dead in the streets.

Then I remembered that lovelokest and chaotic_nipple are both Officially Done School today and that I had promised them Cake.

So fairestcat and I just made two identical cakes, one for Sci Fi Friday and one for when chaotic_nipple gets home from work. And it is really quite astonishing how much better I feel about the general situation now. I must remember this trick.

What we made was Peg Bracken's Cockeyed Cake, which I have been making since I was about thirteen or so.

It is cheap, fast, vegan, foolproof, endlessly variable, incredibly easy, and nearly mess-free, because you mix it in the pan. It is also rich, moist, tasty, and just to make it even easier, best without icing or elaborate toppings of any kind.

The basic recipe is this:

Preheat oven to 350 F, and go find an 8" round pan (9" will do) or an 8x8 square. Grease it lightly even if it is non-stick.

Then dump in:

1 1/2 level cups flour, unsifted.
1 cup sugar
3 T cocoa [1]
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt

and muddle it around with a knife until it's a fairly uniform colour. Then make three grooves in the mixture, and over the first one pour:

5 T. cooking oil

Over the third one pour:

1 T. vinegar

And over the middle one pour:

1 t. vanilla

Then, over the whole thing, pour:

1 cup COLD water (make sure it's cold; using warm or hot liquid is the only way I've ever screwed this up)

And mix it all up gently with your knife until you've got all the dry spots and the colour evens out (the bits where the vinegar hit the baking soda will be lighter at first)

Bake for 30 minutes. Then poke it with a toothpick, and if it comes out clean you're done. If it comes out damp, put it back in for five minutes, poke it again, and keep doing that until it DOES come out clean.

Eat it plain or decorate it with fresh berries, scattered icing sugar, or both.

Variations are more-or-less endless. You can substitute COLD coffee for the water. You can substitute rum, or brandy, for the vanilla, or use both. You can add spices. You can substitute spices for the cocoa. You can add dried fruit, or nuts, or both. If you know how to compensate for the extra liquid, you can use honey instead of sugar, or add mashed bananas or sift fruit. You can use brown sugar, in which case make the cup level and loosely packed.

Today's version has strong cold coffee instead of water, and then in addition to the ingredients called for:

1 C dried cherries
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t cayenne

Based on how the batter tasted, should be really good.

[1] T = tablespoon; t = teaspoon.

And so must I:

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

Oh, yeah, and it's Beltane too.

Back in February, I suggested the making of Autobiographical Concept Albums to my friends.

benet's is here.

pecunium's is here.

And here is mine: one song for every year of my life, vaguely chronological, yousendit links appended, terse liner notes included, longer liner notes available on request (pick a song and ask me a question, or just pick a song and I'll tell you a story[1].)

I got thrown around hallways and bedrooms and towns: 1969-2009

Now We Are Six:

The City Of New Orleans, Arlo Guthrie
Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Gordon Lightfoot
Probably the first two songs I ever really heard. My grandfather was an engineer, and I still wave at trains sometimes.

We Are Ten:

Your Mother and I, Loudon Wainwright
I don't actually like this song very much. But then, I didn't really like 1980 very much.

We Are Twelve:

When I Was a Boy, Dar Williams
Puberty and I didn't really get along.

Breaking Glass, David Bowie
I had this album on tape when I was 13 or so, and listened to it a lot for several years.

We are Sixteen:

Northwest Passage, Stan Rogers
I was madly in love with a man named Steve, who was madly in love with the music of Stan Rogers. It's not the best turn Steve did me, but it's close.

Train Song, Eliza Carthy
Boys Are Interesting.

Paint By Number Heart, Martha And The Muffins
But Kind Of Difficult.

We are Seventeen:

Me And A Gun, Tori Amos
"Do you think there's a heaven where some screams have gone?"

We are Eighteen and In Toronto:

Love These Hands, The Northern Pikes
Learning stagecraft, in love with a carpenter, and to all appearances Just Fine.

Kayleigh, Marillion
Girls are also interesting. And difficult.

Linus And Lucy, Built To Spill
This was the only tolerable song on the Christmas Muzak at World's Biggest Bookstore. There was Synchronised Bopping on the cash desks, every 90 minutes, in December.

The Coldest Night Of The Year, Bruce Cockburn
New Year's Eve, Yonge Street.

Rosy and Grey, Lowest of the Low
And January on Queen Street.

Native Son, Oysterband
1991 was my first trip back to BC on my own. I've always moved around. I've always travelled. I exist in a permanent state of mild homesickness, complicated by an equally permanent case of itchy feet.

Life Is A Highway, Tom Cochrane
God. I loved touring. LOVED it.

Hopes Go Astray The Northern Pikes
I moved back to St Thomas in 1992, because my grandparents needed more help than my mother alone could give them. It was hard. And wonderful.

After a while I moved to London, got a job, and got to be friends with benet, which has shaped pretty much every single thing that's happened since. Followed much hopping between London and Toronto:

The Story Shawn Colvin
London, Mexicali Rosa's, June.

Till I Am Myself Again Blue Rodeo

All This Useless Beauty June Tabor
There are so many kinds of awful men...

Second Hand News, Tonic
... one can't avoid them all.

Tango Til They're Sore Holly Cole
Beats the Hell out of card games, though.

My Affair Kirsty MacColl
There's nothing like a solid dose of the sort of monogamy that leads to hard to explain holes in the walls and noise complaints to make a Grrl, if already so inclined, start writing her own Declaration Of Independence.

We are Twenty-Seven and Have Moved to Ottawa:

Cold Fire Rush
Marriage is hard. Poly marriage is also hard.

It Must Be Love Madness
And then I met my wife.

Sacred Depeche Mode
The good news: I found my vocation. The bad news: it doesn't exactly pay.

We Are Thirty and Sort Of Single Again:

Confession Richard Shindell
Living in The Impossible Flat, with all of the broken that had been chasing me around since 1988, and, though I did not know it, a chronic illness. Trying to put it all together, with the help of some good friends and some less good doctors. Didn't get that sorted out until late 2004. Dr McQuakerty's Happy Pills: I love them, I hate them, and I am so glad they exist. If you deal with me, you should be glad too.

Anthem Leonard Cohen
Yeah, I'm a bit broken. Just don't joggle the bits where the glue's wet and it'll all be fine. Mostly.

Meet On The Ledge Fairport Convention
Dammit, when did my friends start dying?

Cynical Timbuk 3
I wasn't planning on getting married again. Certainly not so soon. But, see, it's like this...

This is sort of where we get into real-time reporting:

Life During Wartime Talking Heads
2001: a pretty good year personally, not that I had much time to notice. FTAA in April, we all know what in September...

The Trouble With Normal Bruce Cockburn
"It's my flag too and and I want it back

Mercy Of The Fallen Dar Williams
My friends started going off to war. My husband lost a kidney. We sort of lost our minds.

Fall at Your Feet Crowded House
And in the middle of it all, I lost my heart to fairestcat.

You Can Come From Here Bourbon Tabernacle Choir
While I was still unpacking from the UK we got an email: could we take in a couple of war resisters for a couple of weeks? We could. We did.

Teenagers My Chemical Romance.
It wasn't a couple of weeks. "No, there are no more Rice Krispies. I need your laundry in the hamper if you want it done this week. Then we have to go see the lawyer about your refugee application and the shrink about your PTSD. Christ Jesus, would it kill you to take the damned trash out once in awhile?" It's not that I don't love them. It's just that I love them more when there's gin in the house.

I Don't Need A Hero Concrete Blonde
When it comes to falling in love, my taste is as impeccable as my timing is vile. It just doesn't always look that way at first.

Our House Madness
My family is normal. We're just not average.

We are Not Quite Forty:

Don't Forget to Dance The Kinks
wotthell wotthehell, there's a dance in the old dame yet toujours gai toujours gai

[1]Which might not be strictly factual, because many of the individuals involved are still around, and deserve privacy, as do I myself, but it will be as true as I can make it.

Various people are discussing the implications of the subscribe/access thing on DW.

But nobody has yet pointed out that "has ... mutual access with" and "also gives access to" sounds kind of filthy.

Or maybe that's just me. At any rate, I regard it as a feature, which I am sure shocks nobody. OTOH, I am no longer regularly invited to Modify My Friends, but let's face it, that trick never works.

iclysdale should be on the bus between Toronto and Ottawa soon, after a Hair-Raising Last-Minute Escape from the Madison-Chicago Greyhound Void last night.

HUZBAND CAN HAZ!

*scuttles off to hide the wine bottles, lingerie not in my size, pizza boxes, and similar evidence of Debauchery. Oh, and change the sheets.*

We weren't allowed to acknowledge the existence of MI6 until 1994. The cloak-and-dagger air was slightly ruined by bus conductors who used to say, "Lambeth tube station. All spies alight here."

Paddy Ashdown.

ABOVE Zero :-)



I'm off to go buy cheese for a party, then muck about with the garden a bit, then get ready for said party.

You?

damned_colonial played this for me in 2004. It might even have been on Anzac Day.

So I was talking[1] last night about various aspects of fanfic and women's erotic writing/art[2] in general and the topic of clichefic came up. Specifically the much-committed and almost as much derided rape/(sometimes) revenge/recovery plotline, with Bonus Magic Healing Through The Power Of True Love And/Or Amazing Sex that so many people love to hate.

A plot I will happily read, btw, if the story wrapped around it is good. Hell, I've even written it, more or less.

It's not everyone's thing, nor should it be.

But, really:

I cannot for the life of me imagine why the world is full of women[3] who are more-or-less erotically and creatively preoccupied with the fantasy that one really really good fuck from one really nice person with whom you are deeply and reciprocally in love can wipe out the effects of one or more traumatic sexual assaults, can you?

[1] I may have been ranting, actually.
[2] Hereafter defined as "that genre of work which is produced by many women and some men, and which appeals, by design, to many women and some men, instead of the genre which appeals to many men and some women." IOW, if you don't feel comfortable in this box as it is presented, I'll happily cut a window for you; no essentialism or exclusion intended or implied.
[3] And people who love women, and a few men.

Poll #1387126 All God's Children Need Shoes. All God's Children Got Shoes. All God's Children Post About Shoes.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57

These shoes: