"I takes an ocean not to break company."

[greygirlbeast]

So, yeah. Yesterday evening, after the blog entry, I was alerted to the fact that Two Worlds and In Between and I were being spoken of reverently in the pages of The New York Times. To whit:

There’s also no shortfall of ghosts, revenants and otherness in Ms. Kiernan’s Two Worlds and In Between. What’s most satisfying, though, in this retrospective — more than 200,000 words covering 1993 to 2004 — is watching Ms. Kiernan progress from competence and promise to become one of our essential writers of dark fiction...Ms. Kiernan is a cartographer of lost worlds..."

(byline, Dana Jennings)

Follow this link to read the full review.

Yeah, it brightened my mood a tiny bit. I think this is the first time I've ever been mentioned in The New York Times. Sure, the whole world can see my name and my prose every day just by going online. But today, from Manhattan to Tokyo, from Munich to Bombay, people will read my name and prose in print. And, especially in this day and age, that makes me smile. Sure, tomorrow, those same papers will be used to wrap fish and line bird cages. But today...damn. I want to buy copies, cut out the review, and make sure it's read by every one of those assholes who swore I'd "never amount to anything." Alas, many of them are mercifully dead now. As my life unfurls and winds down, I understand it's not enough to outlive your detractors. You also have to do something worthwhile during that whole outliving them thing. Anyway, yes, I am allowed to slip out from beneath the black cowl, feel some vague sense of accomplishment, and gloat for a few hours. I'll duck back into the shadows afterwards, don't worry. Truthfully, it didn't feel real until this morning. Spooky's gone out to find copies of the paper (page C4). Seeing it printed with ink on actual paper will make it feel much more real, I'm sure.

The morale of our story? Simple: If you manage not to die long enough, someone will notice. Maybe.

And if you're looking to bring me down today, over this or anything else, take a number. The line starts over there. Don't call me, I'll call you.

Oh, and having reviewed Apple's return policies, I'm fairly certain the iPad will be returned. I just don't need the thing as badly as I need many other things. And I do need what it could take away. I might change my mind. The jelly-bean shiny may carry the day. Nobody's perfect. We'll see. I'm encountering this phenomenon referred to as "buyer's remorse."

Great new episode of Fringe last night ("Subject 9").

Ah, Spooky's back. Must go see. But first this comment opalblack made to last night's entry:

Do you know there are actually people out there who envy us that tearing, bottomless darkness? Mostly nooage middle-class-white types who run around campfires waving dead things on sticks and calling it shamanism. I would like to slap them. For a lot of things, really.

Oh, I know those people...and antidotes.

Look upon me! I'll show you the life of the mind! I'll show you the life of the mind! — Charlie Meadows, Barton Fink

Surprised,
Aunt beast

Comments

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Unless the shows are about lesbians, then straight men are all over them.

Doesn't it just make you want to puke?

Well, this phenomenon is most prevalent with the faux lesbian set, those chocks who'll go down on each other, just because a) they're getting paid, or b) it gives men a hard on, or c) both. That's what really squicks me out. Those women who would never consider themselves lesbians or bi.

[opalblack.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit ambivalent about gay-for-pay in porn & sex work. That's a complex subject, to my mind. However, the lick-to-camera thing in "lesbian" porn made for hetero men does tend to make me scream with either fury or laughter, depending on the whether.

Women making out with women in bars or such, just to get their men excited makes me want to punch things. Only problem is, I can't make up my mind whether to punch the men or the women. Or just start a punch-storm, and punch everything in the room til it blows up.

The big decisions, you know.

But the thing that gets me right in the urge to murder the fuck out of someone til they die from it, and bring them back so I can do it again, even moreso than transphobic homos, is hetero men who "joke" that they are "a lesbian trapped in a man's body." That is NOT FUNNY. Not funny at all.

On top of the trans!fail and queer!fail of it, which is bad enough on its own, it smacks of unwanted advances and phallocentricism, which only adds to the ick. I got that one a lot when I was coming out; "Hey, I'm a lesbian too, we should totally get it on!" "No. You're not. You're a man. A heterosexual man. And even if you were a lesbian, that wouldn't automatically mean I'd want to sleep with you. Also, GO AWAY. Right now."

Closely followed in squik and rage value by the declaration "Lesbians are a waste of a good vagina." Yeah, that nearly cost the friendship.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Or just start a punch-storm, and punch everything in the room til it blows up.

That one. That one, right there.

[opalblack.livejournal.com]

To expand on the previous, somewhat, I was dating a (partly closeted and very tormented) transgirl around the time these comments were being made to me the most. It made me *so* angry, to see her suffering, and these privileged cisgendered hetero guys making a joke out it. And, of course, it was shitty "jokes" like those that made it harder for her to come out, which only made her suffer more. On top of negating our relationship and her identity.

I can't find the humour in that, you know? You know.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Only problem is, I can't make up my mind whether to punch the men or the women. Or just start a punch-storm, and punch everything in the room til it blows up.

Works for me.

even moreso than transphobic homos, is hetero men who "joke" that they are "a lesbian trapped in a man's body." That is NOT FUNNY. Not funny at all.

Yerp.