My Pretty Pretty Princess Nails, Gone Global

In case you were hoping to share my essay “How Kids React To My Pretty Princess Nails” but were blocked by work because it’s adult content, the Good Men Project has reprinted it in a slightly changed format.  Go check it out, comment, love, whatever you crazy kids to do it.  Also, it gives them traffic, which I support.
I really wish I knew who to petition to have my site taken off the “adult content” lists.  I put it on to be nice because I swore a lot and occasionally wrote about the vajayjay, and I thought being scrupulous would protect my site from kids.  Now the whole Internet is 4chan, and I wish I could say, “Hey, all I do is words, you don’t need to treat me like I’m cow-felching porn,” but I don’t know to whom.  There’s plenty of links to put yourself on the porno lists, but few I’ve found to get off.
(…so to speak.)
In any case, my essay is live and has pictures of me and more shareable, and on a larger website to boot.  So check it out.

Do I Read Enough Female Authors?

It started innocuously enough – when long-time reader Snippy left a comment on my Christmas List:

I’m curious: aren’t there any women writers whose work you’d like as a gift?

To which my snap reply was:

No, because I bought them all. (Or, in the case of Ann Leckie, won the relevant one I would have bought.)

Which was true.  My Christmas list rarely reflects what I actually like, as I am a man of little restraint and tend to rush out and purchase what I want now, now, now.  So when I heard Holly Black had a new book, I immediately zipped out and purchased that, and was literally about to purchase Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice when she announced she was holding a book contest, which I won.  (In retrospect, Ancillary Justice was so good that I wish I’d purchased it just to give her money.)
My Christmas List was, in fact, originally developed as a defensive mechanism for friends and family, because before I started locking everything off, I bought ALL THE THINGS.  So the Christmas List isn’t necessarily what I’m lusting to read – which are usually in my hot little handles – but rather what I’m curious about but not so rabidly curious as to get it that very moment.
Still, it’s a valid question.  Do I read enough female authors?  Certainly the books I’ve enjoyed the most over the last four months skew female: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl In Coldtown, and Joe Lansdale’s The Thicket are my favorite books, so 66% wimmen.  I’m reading Alethea Kontis’ Enchanted, and that’s lovely enough that it’s going to be the topic of one of my upcoming podcasts.
But I don’t know.  I tend to be more enthusiastic on the whole about my female authors than male authors – I’m a big fanboy for Nnedi Okorafor and N.K. Jemisin, so much so that there’s actually a hidden reference to them in the novel I’m writing now, and that novel is heavily inspired by Kij Johnston and Suzanne Collins.  And while Daniel Abraham is my latest big fantasy crush I’m really kinda psyched to get around to Kameron Hurley’s God’s War, who I love as a blogger.  (I’m actually sort of irritated that that’s not on my Christmas list, as I accidentally marked that as “purchased” on my wishlist when I didn’t mean to.)
I don’t know.  It’s a tough call.  Of the books on my to-read shelf, there’s only two females on it right now out of about ten books (hellooo, Seanan McGuire and Jo Walton), but I do tend to read more books by men because I have old and accreted tastes.  Which is to say that ZOMG NEW STEPHEN KING BOOK and ZOMG JOE LANSDALE BOOK and ZOMG TERRY PRATCHETT and ZOMG OTHER DUDE I GREW UP READING do tend to clog the ol’ bookshelves, as I have a long history of acquiring my reading tastes during a time when women were not well-represented.  And I love those guys severely.  When they have new stuff, I get it reflexively.  There’s nothing wrong with that.
But they do tend to get in the way of reading newer authors.  Every book by an old favorite I’m reading is time I’m spending not reading some new hotness.
Plus, my old tastes had been reasonably constricted for the past decade or so.  I used to read very widely, when I worked at Borders, and then there was a long period where I wasn’t as in-touch with the book industry, so what I read had calcified a bit into old favorites.  Now, with Twitter and Facebook, I’m constantly hearing my friends micro-squee about awesome books, and my tastes have become much more catholic.  There’s just a lot more authors I’m hearing about, period.
And those new tastes tend to skew very equal, if not actually biased towards women, as I read more women bloggers than men and as such I’m more likely to stumble across a really exciting female author.  I think in about ten years that to-read shelf will have adjusted towards gender equivalence, as eventually I’ll have accreted enough new and exciting female authors that I’ll have to have their latest on the shelf, too, clogging up the path for even newer writers who I feel guilty about not reading.
It’s a good question to ask.  I mean, the ultimate goal is to ensure that I’m reading good books, regardless of the author’s gender.  Picking several books at random from girl-writers just to equalize the playing field would be crazy.  But it is good to stop and analyze your reading habits occasionally, to see whether the new books you’re reading could be chosen a little more widely.  And I’m glad to say that I think they are.  I’m still reading probably about 70% guys at this stage, but a lot of those guys are – ahem – grandfathered in.  But of my new and squeeing fandom-reads, a lot of them are women, and I think that ultimately balances out over time.
I won’t read a book just because someone’s a woman, just as I wouldn’t read a book just because someone’s a man.  But questioning what you’re reading?  Questioning what slices of life you choose to experience?  It’s good to be called on that, and even more pleasant to come to the conclusion that you’re well on the path.

A Child Is Worth More Than A Cartoon Dog

My goddaughter Rebecca has brain cancer, and may pass on before she sees her seventh birthday.  So naturally, this fact sent me spluttering into rage:
There are 120,000 signatures to bring back Brian the Dog on Family Guy.
There are 1,500 signatures to increase funding for children’s cancer.
And, no; no.  I don’t want to hear it.  There are all sorts of understandable root causes as to why a cartoon dog gets more attention than dying kids, and I’m sure you can make excuses for humanity, but I’m not going to listen today.
I’m going to fight it.
Here’s the deal: For every donation you make to the Cure Search For Children’s Cancer Fund in Rebecca Meyer’s name before December 31st, 2013, I will match that donation.  (Up to $500.)   The thing about children’s cancer is that we think we’ve whipped it, but in many cases mortality rates for kids are worse than for adults.  And nobody likes staring into that abyss.  Much more pleasant to watch Family Guy, which at least gives you a few laughs along the way.
But kids need the damn help.  So if you donate, I will, and we’ll make the world a better place.  (And while you’re at it, take a few moments to sign the petition to increase funding for children’s cancer from its current small base of 4% of total funding.)

The 2013 Annual Greed List!

The time has come for my Annual Greed List – the large (and, yes, uncut) list of things I desire for Christmas in 2013. Why do I do this? If you’re really interested, here’s a brief history of the Greed List.
The briefer version, however, is that I think “What you want” is a reflection of “Who you are” at this moment – your music, your hobbies, your fandoms, who you are as a person.  I find it fascinating as a history, watching how what I’ve desired has mutated (the shifts away from physical objects is so bizarre, as I used to want tons of CDs and DVDs and now that’s mostly a computer file somewhere), and remembering what I thought I wanted so badly but turned out to be too much effort to turn into a hobby (last year’s fire poi), and the things I did want that became habit (last year’s straight razor).
And while I guess I could just toss all this on an Amazon Wishlist and send you over, why bother?  I want you to know who I am in this moment, and so I not only list what I want, but explain why I want it.
So here it is.  Here’s who I am this year, expressed in what I want, in descending order of most-lust to least-lust.
The Xbox One.
I’ve gone back and forth on this one, as I want to like the XBox One, but have listed the reasons I probably won’t buy it right away.  And it’s early in the days of the Console Wars, and maybe the XBox One will turn out to be the Nintendo Wii-U – an embarrassing, underpowered platform.  And that’s why I won’t drop $600 on the sucker.
But if someone wanted to get it for me as a gift….
I don’t know who would, honestly.  The only person who might conceivably splurge that much is Gini, and she’s made it clear she won’t.  (I can’t blame her.)  But if someone out there has a spare $600 and wanted to drop it on a random blogger, well, I’d definitely play it.  Probably.  I promise I’d be extremely excited about it.  At least on Christmas Day.
Okay, maybe not your best idea.
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, by Greg Sestero
At our house, we have a tradition: we lure people into watching The Room, the worst movie ever made.  Most of the so-called “bad movies” are a little sad, and a little monotone – I don’t like MST3k because they mock guys who were doing their best with no budget, on one-joke films.  After about ten minutes of these bad movies, we get that they can’t act and there’s no SFX budget and oh ha ha I am bored.
The Room, however, is a chameleon of suck, mutating into an entirely different terrible movie every ten minutes.  When you think you can’t take enough terrible soft-core porn, it becomes an incomprehensible drug family drama, and then a crime thriller.  Sorta.  It’s amazing.  And they had $6 million to make this fucking thing, and it looks awful.  I have watched The Room at least ten times, and its charm has not faded.
So an inside story by one of its lead actors?  In a book that is well-reviewed?  Be still, my beating heart.
The Black Guardian Trilogy, on DVD
This is where I fell in love with Doctor Who.
I hadn’t really seen Doctor Who before, but my friend Mark Goldstein had them all on tape.  And I watched this show where a man in a weird suit woke up in the cellar of a ship, a big 17th-century schooner, then walked out on deck to discover that the ships were sailing through space.
That is an iconic image for me.  It is all of sci-fi for me, this wonderful blending of tropes.  And I hadn’t really known you could do that, until Doctor Who showed me how.
And it is not a good series, Lord knows.  Even in terms of mid-1980s Doctor Who canon, Peter Davison fighting the Black Guardian isn’t his high-water moment.  But this is out on DVD now, and I want to recapture that magic, even if as with most old-school Doctor Who it is wrapped in tons of padded storylines and recycled “Oh, the Doctor has been captured again” moments so they can get the most usage out of the few sets they managed to build.
I do not believe in guilty pleasures, only indefensible ones.  My heart longs for this.  I know it’s not good, but it is fundamental to me, and I must have it.
Tangled, on Blu-Ray.
One of my favorite movies of all-time, right up there with The Princess Bride.  And we have the boring old regular DVD, which has no extras.
I wish to see the extras for one of the best movies of the last decade.  (Frozen may be better, but it’s not our on DVD yet.  I’ll just sing along with all the songs until Gini bashes me in the head with a frying pan.)
Elliptical Bike.
I don’t know a better way to put this, but it’s the kind of bike that has two handles so that you can work your arms out while you work your legs.  I use one of these at the cardiac rehab center, and it is so much better than a stationary bike.  And it’s so much better than a real bike, where you have to go outside and get sweaty and have people watch your ugly flabbiness carted around town, when I could just stay in my basement and watch Batman: the Animated series that I got last year for Christmas.  (Thanks, Dad!)
This doesn’t have to be new.  One suspects we could pick one up on Craigslist for $75.  I’d be happy with that.
Better Angels, by Greg Stolze
One of the unexpected benefits of getting into podcasts – which I did because we got a dog, and to walk the dog for an hour a day involves needing some auditory distraction – is getting back into RPGs.  And so I discovered this gem from one of the creators of Unknown Armies, which may be my all-time favorite RPG (and a larger influence on my current novel than I’d like to admit).
Better Angels asks the question, “Why are supervillains so evil and so smart yet so incompetent?”  And the answer is that there is a secret organization that imprisons demons inside the bodies of the noblest men.  These noble men (and woman!) agree to harbor the demon so it will do the least amount of damage – but the demon needs to be appeased.  And so these poor sacrificial lambs enact huge plans they know are doomed to fail, big splashy things to make a demon happy yet easily toppled by the right people.
They are the supervillains.  They are the heroes.  And you play them.
Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone
Again, listening to a lot of podcasts – which are mostly roleplaying and book-related ‘casts for me – puts me in touch with a lot of really good books I want to read.  Max Gladstone was nominated for the Campbell this year for his debut novel, which mixes law school with magic.  That’s an interesting combo I hadn’t seen, and so I want to read it in the tub.  I need physical copies of all my books, man.  The tub is where my reading gets done, and I can’t risk my iPhone in there.
…Okay, I can.  And do.  But I like being able to put my electronic instruments of text-distraction aside for a while to just turn pages.  There’s a quiet beauty in that that I still like to experience.  It’s a joy that will doubtlessly be old-fashioned in another twenty years – is now, I guess – but I’m not willing to give it up, and so I want the dead tree editions.
Hamlet’s Hit Points, by Robin D. Laws
Robin Laws is one of the better RPG designers out there, and he wrote a book on plot structure – from an RPG point of view.
Now, I’m actually terrible at plotting.  Or, actually, I’m good at it, but I can’t outline to save my life, and I don’t think like other plotters do; I’m very organic.  I stumble across all my plots, and when I hear people saying things like “A scene is where two people walk in with conflicting motivations, and one is successful in achieving that,” I think of my own stories where that often happens, but it’s inevitably by accident.  I don’t think in terms of setting people up like some sort of mechanical clockspring.  I just put them in a room and they do things, and mostly those things result in a story.
And so I’m fascinated by the people who do get the internal structures of plotting, as Robin does.  I’d like to see his take on it, because I don’t know that it helps me write but Holy God is it neat to see.
Yurbuds Ear Plugs
My earplugs fall out all the time.  These come recommended, and I can wear them under my sweet hat.
Shadowrun 5th Edition Rulebook
Shadowrun is one of the classic RPGs, a mixture of fantasy and cyberpunk.  It’s known for being intensely flavorful, and almost utterly unplayable thanks to FASA’s traditional love of really complicated rules for little upside, and also for having characters interact in planes where the rest of the party is utterly useless.  (You’re a hacker, huh?  Well, you get to go play in cyberspace, where none of the other PCs can venture!  Oh, and the mage has kipped off to the astral plane, similarly masturbating!)
Still, I have a lot of fondness for Shadowrun, and they brought it back thanks to a successful Kickstarter, and I would love to see what they’ve done with it.  Maybe the rules don’t suck quite as much!  Maybe the guy who drives the car can do something other than cowering in every firefight until it’s time to peel out!  And even if I never play it, it’s still fun to read!
Beyond The Rift by Peter Watts
Peter Watts wrote the most mind-blowing novel I have read as an adult: That would be Blindsight, which is actually a cleverly-concealed argument that mankind is…
…oh, I’ll let you read it.  But really.  It changes your view of life.  Itself!
That’s because Peter Watts is a biologist, and so his aliens are really alien.  And unsettlingly plausible.  And his story “The Things” is also awesome, and so this short story collection of his is something I covet.
But don’t read Blindsight unless you want to know something about your biology you may not want to know.  It’s that good.
The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson
Brandon, I know mainly for being very nice to me at a convention when he didn’t have to.  He’s a big author, huge, and yet was very nice to this short story writer and offered to play Magic with me.  So I like him.  And he’s great on panels, as he would be because his podcast Writing Excuses (well, his podcast with several other smart writers I admire) is awesome.
He’s also famed for really consistent magical systems, so much so that his fans have actually hypothesized (and correctly!) what had to happen in future books because according to the physics of his spells, X would have to happen… and it did.  So when I hear he has a YA book out with a new magic system, I want to try that.
The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
Speaking of Writing Excuses, I heard Wesley talk on there, and his background as a martial artist and stuntman sounded fascinating.  The only other guy I know who is a martial artist who writes is Joe Lansdale, and Joe is one of my pantheon of Godly authors.  So that’s intriguing.  Then you throw in the idea that Wesley wanted to write a story about a pudgy, middle-aged nobody who, via alien possession, becomes a badass, and that character arc snapped me right into “interesting.”
Muppets Animal Underwear
Do I really need to give an explanation of my deep need for this?
Cloud Atlas on Blu-Ray DVD
Cloud Atlas was a very underrated movie about reincarnation – while it’s beautiful and ambitious, the horrible makeup pretty much killed it.  Yes, you can turn a South Korean woman into a ginger, but the results are kind of eye-searing.  And I know, they were trying to show how people can change races and sexes through their various lives, but by God that horrible yellowface makeup on Jim Sturgess did not help.
Still, I have a long habit of loving movies that are more about the idea than the execution, and this is no exception.  Cloud Atlas has been on HBO several times, and I’ve enjoyed it more on each watch; I’d love the bonus features, and I’d love to watch it whenever I see fit.
Dishonored, for the Xbox 360
I’ve heard good things about this game, and I need a shoot-’em-up to occupy my time.  (Note: Good games are thin on the ground this year.  This may be the first time in recorded history where a videogame didn’t make my top four.)
Microphone Pop FilterI’m getting into podcasting, and I’m told this is nice to stop all my plosive “P”s from bursting people’s eardrums.  Though the first podcast I recorded sounded pretty good to me.  Thankfully, this is cheap.
Hereville: How Mirka Met A Meteorite, by Barry Deutsch
The first book in this series promised: “Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl.”  And lo, they did fight.  This quirky little graphic novel was charmingly unpredictable, and I’d like to see if the second in the series is as good as the first.

Brave (Feminism 101) vs. Frozen (Feminism 102)

Watching Brave’s fumbling attempt to put a girl front-and-center becomes weird when you see the real feminism in Frozen.
Now, the thing about feminism in kids movies (and in general!) is that it’s all about the encoded messages.  And a movie can have a strong woman and still have some pretty terrible role models buried in there.  And Brave, well… it means well, but in the end the messages it sends aren’t really terribly interesting.
Because the message of Brave is kinda feminist, but first-layer thinking of feminism.  Merida wants to do boy things!  This is why she’s interesting, becoming a boy!  Otherwise, she’d be like all of those other useless icky girl princesses.  And her mom wants to keep Merida down, and what a mean mom she is for refusing to let Merida have her dreams!
And in the end, Merida sees that Mom has her reasons for wanting Merida to be a princess… but that sense that women who don’t act boyish are somehow less interesting permeates the picture.  Is Mom as compelling a character when she’s not a bear?  Not really.  Is it implied that maybe some women would be happy being a princess and doing girly things?  Not really, no.  Is Mom pretty much wrong And so to my mind, Brave is largely a lesson of “Follow your dreams, as long as they’re active violent boy dreams.”  Maybe with a little dash of “Pretty isn’t strong.”
That doesn’t make Brave a terrible movie, mind you.  I found it a C-lister Pixar hit, in the same realm as A Bug’s Life – perfectly watchable, but not something I go back to the way I do Finding Nemo or Monsters Incorporated.   Yet many love it, and that’s fine; having mundane or even harmful messages is not at odds with you loving a movie.  (Or else my adoration of Gone with the Wind and Dumbo are deep trouble.)
Whereas Frozen is, like, next level.
Frozen features two sisters, each radically different, with two beautifully-devised motivations.  And I’m not going to give too much away, as part of the joy of Frozen is following the plot where it goes – but unlike Brave, where Mom has a point but really is actually wrong on pretty much every major point come the movie’s end, both sisters have compelling arguments. Neither understands the other’s experiences in life. That misunderstanding drives the narrative.
And they’re so strong that really, either could lead a movie on their own; it’s hard to imagine an exciting story about the life of Merida’s Mom in the absence of Merida, a sort of bland film about motherly drudgery.  The subtle message of Brave is that boyish old Merida is the interesting one, a quiet slam against motherly love – it’s worth having around, sure, but is it anything you want to do with your life?  The argument is severely weighted against one side of the frame.
Whereas Frozen is so perfectly balanced.  Both sisters are girly in their ways, living beautiful dreams and seeking romance – and yet they remain active and flawed protagonists.  They’re heroes.  And they don’t have to squirm out of their dresses or muss their hair to be valid – though mussed hair does result when they’re out in action, of course.  It’s like watching an argument between two equals.
Plus, the songs are incredible, and the plot is wonderfully curveballed, and the voicework is great.  To reiterate: Brave’s message isn’t a bad one, and it’s not a bad movie.  But on the whole, I give the nod to Frozen.  But if, as others have noted, a children’s movie is basically a way of injecting morals and cultural mores directly into kids’ heads, I think I’d by far rather take the message of Frozen.  It’s a message of sisterhood. And really, really beautiful.
(Also see this beautiful link: A Feminist Defense Of Princess Culture.)

Black Friday Experience Is So In Tents

I went out for Black Friday, once, because we hoped to get a laptop for our daughter. Gini and I got up at 3 a.m. – “dark o’clock,” as we called it – groaning and complaining all the while.  We drove to Best Buy.  We discovered a line of people stretching around the block, like an impromptu city, families who’d clearly settled in for the long haul: tiny houses of tents with children sleeping inside, playing music on boom boxes, sitting in front of their reading books.  They’d brought equipment for the journey.  Some had coffee makers, space heaters, little generators.
We were clearly outmatched.  We went home.
A similar thing happened when Chik Fil-A opened up across the street from us: FIRST 100 CUSTOMERS GET FREE FOOD FOR A YEAR! And it was a bawdy thing, with a DJ playing Southern-fried rock, the same crowd of campers, looking quite enthused about the whole thing.  And when Piada opened up down the street with the same deal, again, that tiny town of patient waiters.
To me, Black Friday is an abomination.  It destroys the retail workers’ day off, encourages the worst kind of consumer behavior, and it’s not even a real deal.  (You frequently get better deals before or after; they jigger the numbers to make it look better.)
And before I started looking, I had always assumed that Black Friday shoppers were desperate poor people – the kind of folks who, if they couldn’t get that laptop for $399, they wouldn’t get it at all.  Why else would you be motivated to spent the night in the cold, waiting endlessly?
But what I suspect is that Black Friday and Opening Night have become codified experiences.  There’s people for whom Black Friday has become a tradition, a weird hunting expedition, where the entire family packs up and gets prepared and has all the fun of defeating this absurd challenge that capitalism has laid out for them.  For these guys, it’s a thrill to get the tent up and running, to stake out the good space in front of the store, to spit in the eye of what’s obviously intended to be an uncomfortably ugly experience and make it a place where there’s hot cocoa and laughing and dancing.
They bond.  And I’m absolutely certain that there are people who only exist as Black Friday Friends – they’ve staked out their turf at Best Buy every year, have a jolly rivalry with last year’s neighbors as this year they’re two spots closer to the door, exchange duties on McDonald’s runs as they go get the food.  The point isn’t whether it’s the best deal or not, the point is that they’ve beaten the system.
And I’m not sure how to think about that.  Viewed in that light, it actually seems kinda fun.  But the sort of people who have all of the equipment for the good tent and so forth are probably not the people who really need the deal, and so Black Friday becomes weirdly more abhorrent to me – you’re forcing all of these poor retail workers to leave their Thanksgiving dinner earlier and earlier so you can have the thrill of beating them.
Black Friday, one suspects, is actually a sports challenge wrapped in consumerism.  An endurance contest with a prize built in.  And that’ll just make it that much harder to eradicate as a tradition.