Shaken & Stirred

Bravery & Admin

First, the bravery...

Nicola has an excellent article on tasers and the taser party fad up at the Huffington Post:

Apparently, many women who go to these parties live in constant fear of violent sexual assault. And they believe that having a Taser will protect them. Perhaps they imagine a hooded stranger in their apartment or their parking lot. Perhaps they imagine that they will whip out the Taser, zap the bad guy, and a few minutes later watch as the cops march him off. Bloodless and neat. Her Taser is a "safety blanket," says Dana Shafman, the entrepreneur who started the parties; if she leaves the house without one she goes "into panic mode."

But it's not safety blankets that protect you.  You do that.

I wish every girl and woman in the wide world would read the whole piece. And the Aud novels.

(This also reminds me that she has another blog, about the writing of her next novel, which sounds AMAZING. AMAZING. Three times AMAZING.)

And now the admin...

I toggled a few new settings on Typepad. Now there's a Share This thingie under each post, which will let you easily save stuff to your various networking/bookmarky places or e-mail posts. There's also RSS feeds for the comments on individual posts. And some other stuff you shouldn't really see if it works right.

I'm sure this is all very unnecessary, but it makes me feel productive.

Me Have Troubles

Things never to do NUMBER ONE: Let your passport expire without noticing until the day before you need to use it.

If anyone has a fairy godmother who does emergency passports, please let me know. We're working on it, if we can just get to Miami in time, etc.

Updated: We think it'll work out and we'll just get there a day and a half or so later. Keep your fingers crossed for understanding airport agents (so far, so good) and passport people. Also, for passport cancellations at the Miami center tomorrow! (I have an appt. but Thursday, but we could go standby tomorrow evening if I managed to get in early.) Oh and HEY, if anyone lives in Miami and I've spaced and you want to grab dinner or something (or has a recommendation for a hotel), let me know.

Memo

to Dave Schwartz -- you need to watch this IMMEDIATELY. (The rest of you might like it too.)

Meanwhile

And while Micol and I were attending the conference, the boys visited a nearby Des Plaines gaming store (recommended by a local, natch) that just happened to be holding an elaborate auction. Noah documented the memorable experience on film, and describes it thus: The man, the myth, the passion and the triumph. In a world of demons and demi-gods, one man rose above and succesfully bought a board game....

Possibly my favorite thing that has ever been on YouTube.

Christopher asks that I add: What's going on at the end is that there were TWO copies of the game available, and that the second one had "box damage" but went for just three bucks less than what I paid for the mint condition one.

This Just In

Two extremely lovely little birdies gave me the heads up that the divine Dana (formerly of the much-lamented #1 Hit Song) is doing some bloggerino over at the Young Manhattanite. This makes me very happy, and I'm not even the one who had a birthday yesterday.

This Is Why

Maureen McHugh is a genius. A chart outlining her understanding of the novel:

Go read the whole post.

True Words

Jenny Davidson's been my fitness hero* this year, with all her triathlon training and fabulous posts about it. Today she has a wonderful post remembering a friend who died and talking about how she will remember him when she swims. In it, she says:

To earn the approval of a magically good teacher by hard work rather than by talent is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.

Yes.

(And, Jenny, I'm still terrified of clipping in; maybe someday. For now, I'm sticking with yoga, which often feels dangerous enough.)

*In addition to Christopher, that is, who's been pulling 200 mile weeks on the bike lately.

Oh, By the Way

Come visit us over at the Basement in Terra Haute. Her Pinkness is a genius.

Pretty Tape

Excellent clear tape art (via Karen and Cat Rambo, practically simultaneously).

In unrelated news, I moved all my RSS feed subs over to Google Reader yesterday, as part of an ongoing effort to have Google control every aspect of my life. (It just feels less creepy if I pretend it's intentional.) Bloglines has been superbuggy lately and not catching updates so quickly. Anyway, after a brief adjustment period, I'm really liking the Reader interface -- especially the ability to read all the new messages in one column, using the space bar to travel between entries. Sweet.

Two Things I Love

1. Brotherhood 2.0. So very, very funny. And you just don't know how far it will escalate: today Sutter Home, tomorrow _____. That is one scary blank to fill!

2. Jason Sizemore has put Christopher's story "The League of Last Girls" up as a zipped PDF. Go read it. (Some of the horror reviewers seem to be finding it confusing, but I actually think it's one of his funnier, more straightforward -- yet creeeeepy -- stories. So, penny for your thoughts.)

Two True Things

1. Maud rips Malcolm Gladwell for his apparently quite idiotic Enron piece. (I'm not sure I can stomach it, from the excerpts. And I'm more than willing to take her word for it, based on some of the other stuff he's peddled lately.) Brava, dah-link:

A friend points out that Gladwell’s piece is the inevitable result when a writer who has — literally — made a career out of hailing superficial first impressions and banal fads as the height of human endeavor tries to reckon with serious wrong-doing that has serious real-world consequences.

2. Callie on how much it sucks to go back to the grind after time for more writerly pursuits:

I am not alone, I suspect, in my loathing to leave this state behind and plunge back into the world of work and clients and deadlines and the required pacifism, patience and forced pleasantries that will ensue.  After two weeks of reading & writing, I've developed a routine that I'm loathe to change. I've begun writing in a way that has inspired more writing. I'm not eager to fiddle with the state of things.  But I've got no choice.

Drinking With Miss Universe

Mr. Cavin shares the rules for the Miss Universe Drinking Game:

In honor of tomorrow's popular intergalactic aesthetic talent event, the Miss Universe Pageant, here are the rules of the eponymous drinking game, a time-tested ritual. First, it is necessary for each player to choose a contestant from the outset (it is routine to either pick a woman representing a favored country or to just shout out "her!" during the national dress parade, the first televised event). This Miss will be your chess piece as the game advances, her performance dictates your scoring. It is important to have a contestant in play; you might need to pick another one if your first choice fails to make it into subsequent rounds. I would very much like to choose Miss Japan, whose costume is the traditional "Samurai Stripper Robot." Sunshine always takes Miss Venezuela, who will be dressed as "Spiegel Matador."

The actual rules follow.

We will be playing along here in Kentucky (home of the recently Project Runwayed Miss USA, who has not a chance in hell), and with champagne to boot.

All Dolled Up

This morning, our local paper has a big profile of the fabulous daredevil Sunshine Ison's amazing parents Cecil and Bet's place, specifically focusing on Cecil's fabulous dolls:

The first and most unsettling thing you notice about Cecil and Bet Ison's Rowan County yard is the baby dolls.

Lots of plastic dolls, or parts of dolls.

Oh, how many nights have I spent there cattily watching beauty pageants and eating ice cream? About a year ago, I realized Sunshine's probably my oldest friend; we met when we were 16ish at Governor's School for the Arts. (And now, Erin's in that category too, since I discovered she became Queen of Louisville and Poetry and we reconnected.)

So this article makes me very happy. There's a multimedia thing with Cecil talking even. And mention of Bet's unbelievably beautiful, complicated quilts (if no pictures). Check it. You won't be sorry.

OH, and related, Sunshine has two great poems in the latest LCRW, "The Posthumous Voyages of Christopher Columbus" and "And If They Are Not Dead, They May Be Living Still." Order now.

Just a Reminder

Of why Tod Goldberg rocks:

Moral decay of our culture. Let's examine that for just one moment, here on the day a crazed zombie with a taste for human flesh pushed itself from the earth to save our souls. Baldwin believes that porn is ruining our culture, whereas Bio-Dome did not? Whereas Half-Baked made the world safe for the children? Whereas The Flintstones Viva Rock Vegas edified God? (Of course, the Flintstones do make a persuasive argument that dinosaurs lived concurrently with modern man.)

That would be Stephen Baldwin by the way, otherwise known as Sleazy McBaldwin.

Yes

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus?

AMAZING. More to follow.

This Thing Called Joy

Bookninja has an RSS feed. Finally.

And a spiffy new look. (Via the people's Champion.)

On Betty Friedan

I was going to post about this amazing woman and her legacy, but Lauren's said it all. Go read her.

See also: Bad Feminist's post, which has some good links.

Pretty Pretty

So Gavin pointed me in the direction of these beautiful photos by Christa Parravani. Some of them (including the photo of Mabel Osborne at left) will be in a hopefully book-length series of Spoon River photos. Just as delightful as the photo browsing is the assertion that the photographer is often mistaken for Louise Brooks -- judge for yourself.

Styx Takes Over the World

Did everybody already know about this? Dictionaraoke. What is it? "Audio clips from online dictionaries sing the hits of yesterday and today."

Best thing since forever.

Take a hint from Tito, from who I gacked this, and listen to Liz Phair's "Fuck and Run" first.

Jeff Ford Week Continues

Over at Jeff Ford's: Present From The Past. Do. Not. Miss:

After my mother finally quit drinking, she entered a brief epoch of peace in her life. Gone were the paranoia, the accusations, the belittlements, the bitter rage of judgment, her look of fear. For years, nearly every day a lost weekend, she had been possessed by the dark amber ghast of gag-sweet Taylor Cream Sherry. Living with her back then had been like living with a vampire whose bite drained but never conferred immortality. What eventually brought about her unexpected exorcism, I can now only guess, but when she resurfaced she was quiet and ready to laugh. She was watching and listening.