greygirlbeast: (Default)
Oh my fucking dogs. We didn't get to sleep until 4:30 ayem, then woke at 10 ayem. I woke from a hellish dream (thank you, both of you, you who know who you are, you and that fucking day in October 2005) into the mouth of an overheated water buffalo. More on that shortly. The overheated water buffalo, not the hellish dream or heat-induced sleep deprivation. Our heat index is already 97˚F.

Where was I? No, where am I? Oh, here. Great comments yesterday, kittens. Let's keep it up, through another scalding day.

Just sold "The Prayer of Ninety Cats" to Subterranean Press for Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 3. Nope, don't know the book's release date yet, but I'm very happy with the sale.

As for yesterday, well...other than a LOT of email, the less said the better. Work that should have been done was not done. However, I have devised a way to recover. It calls for me finishing Blood Oranges at the end of the third week of August, instead of at the end of July. Fortunately, there was wiggle room. Now, I just gotta get back on that goddamn horse by Monday.

If you're reading this, Merrilee, I've not yet acquired a second coolerator. The one we needed was out of stock. AC units are crazy out of stock up here, which is hardly surprising. Our windows really aren't conducive to window units, so we need another (and smaller than Dr. Muñoz) portable unit. So, no longer broke, but still broiling.

---

One thing that has occurred to me is how little the "triggery" people actually know about human psychology. Sure, if you've been attacked by a dog and maimed, you're going to have issues with dogs. Obviously. Well, no. Many, but not all, people will react that way. Let us avoid oversimplification. Anyway, point is, there are going to be hundreds or thousands of other "triggers," most of them working on a subconscious level, that you'll never be able to guard against. Which leads to all the "unexplained" anxiety and panic attacks experienced by people with PTSD. Which brings us back to the problem of oversimplified pop psych. Mostly, I think the "triggery" folk are desperately trying to control their lives, when all our lives are, genuinely, all but completely beyond our control.

---

Last night, we watched Colin and Greg Strause's Skyline (2010). When I saw the trailer in the theatre, I was impressed and hopeful. But bad and lukewarm reviews kept me away. In truth, it's a perfectly enjoyable big bug sort of sci-fi invasion flick. Sure, it needs a script in the worst sort of way, and the acting's pretty off key. And talk about "unsympathetic characters," what a lot of sleazeballs. However, this is irrelevant, as the real stars are the SFX, which is how it works with the Bros. Strause. And the SFX and creature design, that part's exquisite. It's just a shame no one hired screenwriters who could, you know...write. Or directors that could direct people, and not just CGI programmes. But, like I said, it was fun to watch – quite a bit more than Battle Los Angeles. And unlike Battle Los Angeles, it had a pleasantly and more realistically bleak ending.

After the movie, we watched the first three episodes of Steven Speilberg's Falling Skies. Well, the two-part pilot and the first regular episode. Not bad, in that TV non-space opera sf sort of way. Watchable. Some good moments here and there. But it does feel like television. Which is to say that it feels constrained, and I don't believe for a minute all those people would be so clean six months after becoming nomadic refugees from an extraterrestrial invasion. Creature design is so-so. I find this sudden bloom of alien menace films interesting. True, it's a nice break from zombies. But I wonder at the cause. Probably just the usual Hollywood clusterfuck, especially given that both Skyline and Battle Los Angeles flopped at the box office. The only truly good film to emerge from this, of course, is Abrams' superb Super 8 (a joy, all round).

---

Two films I'm very excited about just now – excited about their potential – are Andrew Stanton's John Carter (US release date 9 March 2012) and Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing (US release date 14 October 2011). I do worry the latter could go horribly awry, but the trailer looks very promising. As for the former, I think I have faith in Stanton to do it right, and I love the trailer. I was a huge fan of Burroughs, and especially the Mars books, when I was a kid. Anyway, here are both trailers:

John Carter:



The Thing:



---

I'm living in an age
That calls darkness light.
Though my language is dead,
Still the shapes fill my head.
-- Arcade Fire

I have no tribe.

Okay...gotta try to be productive.

Hotter Than Hot,
Aunt Beast
greygirlbeast: (Narcissa)
I used to write,
I used to write letters. I used to sign my name.
I used to sleep at night,
Before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain.

But by the time we met,
By the time we met the times had already changed...
(Arcade Fire)

No, nothing special. Just sort of where I am right now. But, have you noticed? I mean, how it's much easier to find people with insomnia than without? See, it didn't used to be that way. I remember.

---

Yesterday was an assembly day, as I predicted. And Sirenia Digest #65 has gone out to subscribers. I very much hope you enjoy the issue. Thanks again to everyone who answered the most recent Question @ Hand.

Today, I need to do a small bit of editing/reworking on "Fake Plastic Trees," following questions from the editors. And I need to finish the updated FAQ for the new Sirenia Digest page. And answer email. And just maybe have energy left to start thinking hard about the two projects that need to be consuming May.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thanks.

---

For months now I've been pondering something I usually call "virtual transgenderism." I started thinking about it a lot right after I started playing City of Heroes back in October (I stopped playing in January or so, for various reasons). I was part of a very good rp group, and most of the characters were ostensibly female. But after about two weeks, I put two and two and four and six together and, with a little help from people who'd been playing for years, realized that almost every one of our "female" players were guys, including lots of guys in the military. Like, you know, GUYS. At first, I was sort of baffled, the way you're baffled when someone plays an especially clever joke on you. But then, then I thought, "Hey, this is really fucking cool." And I thought that because, you see, all these guys were very good a playing women. All sorts of women (most of whom just happened to have super powers), from insecure, nerdy twenty-somethings to smugly confident queens of Faerie. They weren't playing caricatures of women. They were playing women. I was amazed.

See, I can be naive and slow on the uptake. I'm old. When I was in my twenties, we had video arcades with shit like Galaga and Joust and Pac-Man, coin slots and joysticks. We didn't have gaming technology that allowed people to, virtually, become other people. People of other sexes, genders, sexual orientation, races, species, etc. So, it takes some getting used to. But, of course, a large number of the female characters in WoW and Rift are male, and, I'm willing to bet this is true of all MMORPGS. On Second Life, I'm pretty sure 95% of women are actually men. And I'm sure a lot of this is simply guys who think their chick toons are hot and a lot more interesting – but, even then, we still have teenage boys and grown men playing with virtual paper dolls. Many of these guys, though, they're acting out female characters. I just think it's very cool. I think it's a step in the right direction. Maybe a very small step, but a step, all the same. It says something if guys can get together online and openly pretend to be girls. Last night on Rift I was thinking, It's like Fight Club for the trans-curious. This is why it's called roleplaying. You play a role that is not you. You step into someone else's shoes and look through their eyes.

I'm not even going to get started on how this leads to guys' female toons hitting up other guys' female toons (or male toons hitting up "female" toons) for erotic rp. Someone needs to write a Masters Dissertation. Actually, I'm sure several people have already done so.

Anyway, yes. I wholeheartedly approve. I also approve of the women playing virtual males, though I suspect that's a rarer phenomenon.

---

I think I might have given the wrong impression when I started this Aunt Beast's Book Club thing. I don't expect people to read these books on pain of public humiliation or something of that sort. These are just books I want to promote. And, too, it's a way to push myself to finish novels I start. That's all. No one needs to explain to me why he or she isn't reading one of the selections. It's entirely and utterly casual, optional, and so forth.

Over and Out,
Aunt Beast
greygirlbeast: (walter3)
I'm all awash in randomness. Which is only a bad thing if one has spent to much time suckling at the teat of the illusion of linear progression.

And still...one after the next, the days are turning genuinely warm. The trees are going green. There may yet be an end to this long Cold Spring. So, make of this whatever you will.

They heard me singing and they told me to stop.
Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.
These days my life, I feel it has no purpose.
But late at night the feelings swim to the surface.

-- Arcade Fire, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"

Last call for the latest Question @ Hand. Speak now or, well, you know. Speak now, or don't.

A very mild, very short seizure last night. First since the last, and the last was quite some time back. I was so sick from lack of sleep, it wasn't a surprise. But, I find it so strange, looking back, how these things ruled my life for about three years. How Spooky and I built our lives around their complete unpredictability, around our fears of possible outcomes. Planning for a thing you cannot possibly plan for. Planning anyway. And now it's been almost completely reined in by 250 mg. of a drug I'd never heard of until a year ago. Ah, more intimations of a linear universe.

It's hard – not impossible, but hard – to see beyond one's biopsychological predispositions and imperatives, when there are such selective advantages to viewing the universe a given way, and the difficulty to see otherwise has been selected for down all the aeons. The ability to see things not as we see things, but to comprehend an invisible possibility. Or imagination, if you prefer.

The anger has faded a bit for now. It's no longer rage, only righteous indignation. The wheel goes round and round. Everything's fine, just as long as the wheel moves. Which is not to say that anything anywhere is fine, because it's not. Or that motion is anything but relative.

Last night, we watched the latest Fringe, and this show's wonderfulness seems to know no bounds. Then we watched two episodes of the new season of No Reservations, more or less at random (see above re: randomness). The horrors of Liberia, and then the peace of post-Franco Madrid. Because I've not yet finished my coffee, I'm not going to think about people who can't find Liberia on a map, and who've no idea who Franco was. Anyway, then we played Rift (Level 32, motherfuckers), and then we read more of Markus Zusack's The Book Thief (almost finished), a brilliant, brilliant book.

Did I mention we have a guild in Rift? On the Shadefallen shard? Well, we do. Eyes of the Faceless Man. Have I mentioned we're looking for new members? It's a Defiant guild, obviously. And it helps if you have pointy ears, but that's not an actual requirement. We also accept Eth members. We're the guild the ESRB warned you about. Okay, maybe we're not that fun. But if you wanna come out and play, just say so.

We will do what we must to survive. Some people like to gloss that over with heroic words, but it is, in my mind, as simple as that. -- The Faceless Man

There are many cool things about the Faceless Man, including his understanding of commas. And on that note, I should open the window....
greygirlbeast: (Narcissa)
0. You'd think there's a limit to how dry sinus passages can get, but you'd be wrong.

1. Yesterday, I wrote 1,044 words on "Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash." I didn't get to THE END. There were too many distractions, mainly in the form of email. Ever heard of being "driven to distraction"? Maybe that's a Southern thing.

2. Never rely on spell check. No, not even then. No, not then, either. There are these things called dictionaries. There are even versions of these mysterious dictionary things online. Use them.

3. To wit, someone should tell whoever writes ad copy at Amazon.com about the value of dictionaries (see above). I just saw this ad on Facebook:

"Do the men in your live [sic] drive you crazy? Buy this book and laugh about it, or dump him and get a puppy."

Ignoring, for the moment, the sexism and heterocentrism, focusing only on the text, you'd think that a twenty-two word ad that's going to be seen and read by millions of people would be proofed for misspellings and proper word use. Sure, I make mistakes in my blog. But I have far fewer readers, and my entries are usually about a thousand words long, not twenty-two.

4. I was sort of...I don't know...perplexed at how many people wanted to know yesterday why I hate Facebook. I mean, on the one hand, the transgressions of Facebook are the stuff of internet legend. On the other hand, it's my prerogative to hate Facebook, with or without Cliff's Notes (Really, once upon a time, CliffNotes were Cliff's Notes; the future cannot afford apostrophes or spaces between words; they're so pointless.). And, for what it's worth, I hate Twitter, too, though not as much as FB. Most days, I don't hate LiveJournal. The key is likely substance.

5. New Radiohead! (No, I don't have it yet.)

This town's so strange.
They built it to change.
And while we're sleeping, all the streets they rearrange.

(Arcade Fire)

Off to Fuck the Bozos,
Aunt Beast

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Caitlín R. Kiernan

February 2012

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