Dumbness On A Saturday

I was playing the “Three Facts And A Lie” question with a friend the other day, which is a fun get-to-know-ya game: you give three strange facts about your life, and one that is a lie, and the person has to guess the lie.
I gave what I considered to be a gimme for the first round, but she did not get it.  I’m curious to see how long-term readers would spot the falsehood here.  Lemme know which one you think is fake, and why.  No cheating and reading the comments first, which will doubtlessly have the answer in it long before I get to it.
1)  I once had sex for eight hours straight.  It was not pleasant.
2)  I saw Star Wars fifty-seven-and-a-half times in the theater when I was a child.
3)  I have never seen a movie in the theater more than fifty-eight times.
4)  I have seen a ghost, precisely once, when I was a child.
Hrm.  Typing this out, I think it’s easier than I thought, as there’s two independent methods of arriving at the correct answer… but you go.

Posted by on Apr 13, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 0 comments

Why The Fuck Did You Follow Me On Twitter, Anyway?

I think, before I can blog one word further, I need to discuss the definition of “self-promotion.”
The reason I do this is because Seanan McGuire has been accused in some quarters of “excessive self-promotion,” by which people apparently meant “she mentioned that she had fiction eligible for various nominations.”  Not a whole lot, mind you: twice.
Twice, among a welter of probably seventy lengthy blog posts and literally a thousand silly Twitter statuses.
And then, when I talked with her on Twitter about the irony of seeing her blog post linked everywhere but from her Twitter status, she said, “I know, I just feel …ishy and wrong tweeting everything I say on LJ. I try to do it only on special occasions.”
Which, as someone who followed her on Twitter, struck me as being insane.  I clicked that “Follow Seanan McGuire!” button because I specifically wanted to hear what she had to say. It’s not like Seanan followed me home, broke into my laptop, and signed me up against my will for the Spammin’ McGuire around-the-world newscast – no.  I’d liked reading two of her books, was curious about her as a person, and so I said, “Hello, Seanan, please tell me about yourself.”
Is Seanan telling me what Seanan is doing in the Seanan-specific area of the Internet self-promotion?  I say thee nay.
I call it providing the service people signed up for.
Now, if Seanan was running around forums posting “YOU KNOW WHAT POUNDS THE PISS OUT OF MARTIN’S LATEST DOORSTOP?  MY NEWSFLESH SERIES, AVAILABLE FOR A MERE $3.79 ON KINDLE,” then I’d have a problem.  Or if she was shouting down panels to say, “You know what happens in my book?  Something way better than that Neil Gaiman shit you’re yammerin’ on about!”  But no.  I specifically went to the Seanan McGuire Museum of Fine Filk and paid my entry fee, and by God I expect to see some fucking Seanan McGuire.
Which is how I treat my blog.  I cross-post most of my entries to Twitter because I learned a while back that about 70% of my Twitter and Facebook followers don’t read my journal regularly.  It felt weird, but I came to think, “Well, they followed me on Twitter because they presumably wanted to hear what I was writing about, so… here’s what I’m writing about.”  And people have responded positively.  Traffic’s been up.  I suspect many former blog subscribers actually prefer the Twitter service,  because this way they only get the entries I deem significant.
Is that self-promotion?   I guess, in some sort of saggingly flabby definition of the word.  But my logic is, people asked specifically to tune into the Ferrett Channel.  They did so because they want to hear what I’m doing – which includes my fiction, my blogging, my polyamory, and my personal life.  And maybe after it turns out that they don’t actually like all of that, at which point they can feel free to unsubscribe without one whit of malice from me.  (I’m a depressive.  I hate myself two months out of the year.  Why should you be any different?)
So I’ll say it here: telling the world what you have done is not self-promotion in the world of Twitter.  Or blogs.  It is when you go abroad to other places to tout yourself, or to beg your followers “Please RT” a billion times, or to carve your bibliography into the flesh of willing fans.  But mere informational service?  Fuck that.  People signed up to get a glimpse into your personality.  And maybe if you do Twitter or your blogging wrong, then your personality is nothing but a stream of “HAY GUYS I PUBLISH DIS,” in which case the problem will automatically solve itself as people wander away, in which case you’ll be promoting yourself to an increasingly smaller subset of disappointed people.
But for the rest?  Please, Seanan.  Talk.  It’s why I showed up.

Posted by on Apr 13, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 1 comment

Open-Source Book Pitching, Or: Any Feedback On This Preliminary Table Of Contents?

So in my spare *cough* time, I’ve been compiling my best polyamory essays to see if I can pitch them as a book.  As it turned out, there have been a lot of critical poly topics I haven’t written upon, and some considerable editing needed to knit them together into a coherent whole.
But since a lot of the best essays have been inspired by feedback from all of you, I figured I’d throw a tentative table of contents out to you guys, to see if there were any obvious topics on polyamory that I’ve missed…. or if there’s something you think I should go into more depth on.  So here it is, with the understanding that:
a)  I’m looking to improve the book, particularly for people who don’t know much about polyamory in general, so please feel free to discuss topics you’d like me to see:
b)  I’m not going to discuss polyamory and child-raising, if only because I don’t think I have the necessary skillset to discuss that in-depth, and that could be a whole other book;
c)  That each of the essays will probably be edited a bit, to make it feel like less of isolated essays and more like a, you know, book.   (Though the end goal is that each section is quite readable on its own.)
The Basic Concepts of Poly

How To Find A Poly Partner (Or Open Up A Relationship Into Polyamory)

  • “So, Uh… Do You Wanna Fuck Other People?”
  • You Don’t Necessarily Have To Be Polyamorous: Other Types Of Ethical Non-Monogamy
  • Thanksgiving Dinner vs. Scarfing That McDonald’s Burger, or: Sex !== Love
  • What Kind of Polyamory Makes You Comfortable?
  • Today’s Rules Are Not Forever’s Rules
  • Love, But Verify –
  • Dating Ghosts (on dating who’s actually there, and not some illusion you’re chasing)
  • The Necessary Exercise, Or: Building Social Networks
  • The Internet: The Introvert’s Paradise
  • A Rant On The Understandability of Women –
  • I’ve Had Sex With Over 100 Women, Because I Didn’t Care
  • STD Safety, Or the Bare Minimums
  • I Do Not Have Herpes.  It Should Not Matter If I Do.
  • “Please Don’t” (On Coming Out To Your Family) –

How To Have A Functional Poly Relationship: Owning Your Shit With Your Partners

How To Have A Functional Poly Relationship: Adding New People

  • It’s Better To Beg For Forgiveness Than To OH SHUT UP YOU SELFISH, STUPID FUCKER
  • The Giniweasel Rules of Poly –
  • Coke vs. Pepsi, Or: Why New Partners Will Add Pressure (And That’s Good)
  • Polyamory Shapes, Or: Why I Fucking Hate the Term “Secondary”
  • Why Would He Date Someone Like You When He Has You?, or: Your Partner’s Other Partners Will Be Strange And Confusing
  • NRE: More Dangerous Than Heroin (Or, why people stop trying when the NRE hits)
  • Why Every Quick Fuck Might Blossom Into NRE, And What That Means
  • Harnessing NRE, or: Useful Methods Of Comparing Partners
  • Poly Paperwork, and the Frustrations Therein
  • How To Veto Your Lover’s Partner
  • How To Grit Your Teeth And Endure A Partner You Can’t Stand
  • How To Be A Secondary Partner When It Gets Lonely
  • The Butterfingers Discussion –
  • First, Do No Harm? –

Bad Poly Smells: A Rogue’s Gallery Of Potentially Regrettable Relationships

Advanced Poly Techniques For The Long-Term

 

Posted by on Apr 12, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 10 comments

Three Sales In The Same Week? Crazy!

I’m a little short on short story sales these days because my writing time has been consumed by NOVELS NOVELS NOVELS, but I still manage to squeeze in a few where I can.  And the good news is, I’ve (re)-sold two stories to my favorite audio markets!
If you remember “Dead Merchandise,” my story of the upcoming Singularity coopted by advertising bots, the good news is that Escape Pod has purchased the rights to do an audio presentation of it.  This was a story I pretty much intended to be read out loud, and Escape Pod’s people have knocked it out of the park with their past interpretations of “Devour” and “‘Run,’ Bakri Says,” so I look forward to seeing what they do with it.
If you remember “Riding Atlas,” my hideous BDSM-themed interlacing-of-circulatory-systems-as-crazed-drug-trip-tale, then you’ll be thrilled to note that horror podcast PseudoPod has picked it up.  They’ve done me right before on my tales “The Sound of Gears” and “Suicide Notes, Written By An Alien Mind,” and “Riding Atlas” may be one of the most intense things I’ve ever written… so I want to see how this comes off when you have that glorious 1940s-style Old-Time Radio readings that PseudoPod so gloriously delivers.
(There may be a special bonus on “Riding Atlas,” since I told Three-Lobed Burning Eye that I might read it myself if I could ever find my podcasting equipment… so after Pseudopod gets done with it, you may get to hear how the author thinks it should sound, which could be a fascinating comparison in professional vs. amateur readings and in author-emphasis-vs-outside-narrator-emphasis.  But that’ll be many months from now, as I think Cat Valente inadvertently absconded with my microphone.)
As far as the third tale, I don’t have that many details yet, but Nayad has picked up my story “Black Swan Oracle” for her upcoming anthology, “What Fates Impose.”  That’s probably my favorite tale I wrote in 2012, and it packs a wallop, so I’ll definitely keep you updated.

Posted by on Apr 12, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 0 comments

Why Superman Never Sells As Well As Batman: What Can Superman Learn?

Saladin Ahmed said on Twitter that Superman was more interesting than Batman: “He’s a ‘transracial’ adoptee immigrant kid, has an actual job, etc.”  And you hear that defense a lot from Superman fans – no, seriously, he’s really interesting!  He’s got all that backstory!
The problem is, Superman’s only interesting choice was made long before he steps on-screen.  He decided not to use his powers for personal gain, but to selflessly use them to help the common man.
That’s awesome.  That’s why people like Superman – as an ideal, he’s perfect.  But unfortunately, having made that decision, he then never makes another interesting one again.  Because the whole point of Supes is that he’s not tormented about that choice – if you have a Superman who really wants to have a billion dollars, or really needs to shed his Clark Kent identity to show the world how awesome he is, or to just tell that old lady with the cat in the tree to fuck the hell off because he’s tired from saving Peking, well, an angsty Superman is not really Superman as we understand him.  Superman is comfortable with who he is, because he’s that awesome.
Which means there’s nothing significant that Superman can learn, emotionally.  The only things he can learn are things that make us look bad: stories in which humans just aren’t as good as Superman, and Superman is sad about that.  (But still filled with hope.  Superman is always hopeful.)  So the most significant Superman stories are the ones where it turns out you, you petty humans, are pretty shit-tacular.  And then maybe you have a story where Superman justifies not taking over the planet to rule it as a benevolent dictator, which isn’t a terribly comforting thought either.
So most of the thousands of stories told about Superman are pure status quo: Superman saves other people from a big bad guy.  What’s at stake for Superman?  Well, he’d feel bad if those people died.  Not a really gripping moment, and of course Superman isn’t going to lose anyway.
Oh, writers have tried to get around this limitation.  Some writers do it by switching to other parties, showing how Superman transforms everyone around him… but of course, that’s not really a Superman story, but “Touched by an Angel.”  Morrison did it by having Superman be the face of futurized wonder like he was in the 1960s, where Superman wasn’t really a hero but the gateway to an endless Narnia-like wonderland of alternative universes and weird shit.
But again, what’s Superman learning?  Not much.  He’s got a lot of tension between his Clark Kent and Superman world, which is interesting in theory, but you can’t make it interesting in practice without unravelling who Supes is.
Every great superhero has a couple of iconic arcs that define who he is, and usually one of them is the origin story.  For Spider-Man, it’s abandoning Uncle Ben, having Gwen Stacey die, and throwing aside his costume to walk away, only to discover that he really can’t.  For Iron Man, it’s his battle with the bottle.  For Batman, it’s having his back broken and still coming back for more.
For Superman?  His iconic moments are first of all his origin story, which makes sense.  All the stuff leading up to that decision are fascinating, a look inside pure American idealism, saying a lot about what we think of our country.  But after he makes that decision?  His most iconic moments in comics are his death stories, one by Alan Moore and one by DC Marketing… both of which are fascinating because once Supes has made his choice, the only other interesting thing that can happen to him is that we see how he ends.
There’s one other iconic story, which the movies had to bring out: he gives up his powers, and has three Kryptonians come to town.  Which, in the end, is the only story Superman can learn: giving this power up won’t make him happy, not because he wouldn’t be content with Lois Lane, but because the world will suck without him.
Superman is a great character in theory, and people like him because of what he represents.  But that representation means he’s a static character, one who cannot learn because he made the proper decision before he put on the damn suit.  Abandoning that means, well, he’s not actually Superman.  Contrast to Batman, who can learn all sorts of lessons about how he should fight crime and his own mortality and the limits of extremism and the toll his relentless battle takes on his loved ones and how best to inspire people, all without compromising the fragile core of his concept: he fights crime because he is driven.
Superman?  Great on a poster. Not so good in an ongoing saga.

Posted by on Apr 11, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 9 comments

The Science of the Surprise Penis

So there’s been a study on exactly what kinds of penises women prefer, and it turns out the average is around 12.8-14.2 centimeters… Flaccid.  Which has caused much debate over what sort of evolutionary factors have gone into shaping the male penis.
It’s an interesting discussion, because there’s a lot of factors to consider.  I mean, in primitive times we didn’t have all of this clothing shielding our willies, and so the goods were on display for any woman to see – sort of like plumage.  And the question arises of whether women were selecting men not by their ability to feed their family, not their ability to protect them from carnivores, not for their ability to build useful tools or their charm or their deep skill at Foosball, but… the penis.
I dunno, man.  I think that biology has a lot of influence, and certainly evolutionary traits do, too.  But this particular study seems to be feeding into the male idea that COCKS ARE EVERYTHING, and that women in old cultures spent so much time weighing wang into their decision – and flaccid wang, at that – that it’s literally given us all an excuse for small cocks.  “Hey, man, what I’m packing?  It’s the biological imperative.   Generations of horny Neanderthals thought this – ” *grabs package* – “was the perfect size for mating, baby!”
Whereas I think they were more concerned about other factors.  I’m sure peen was a part of it, absolutely.  But enough that their preferences actually evolved us to the shapes we have now?
Oh, I’ll cop to a lot of evolutionary pressures on penis size and shape – I found out the other day the reason the cock had a head was so it could squeegee back the other, competing sperm in preparation for ejaculating its own bunch of fresh Mini-Mes.  That’s awesome.  And I don’t doubt that other, similar, factors go into controlling the overall size of penis in human beings.
But is the penis such an amazing feature that women literally chose flaccid penis size over, say, nice breath and the ability to cuddle?  I think not.  I think that’s just scientists in a lab, going, “Aw, man, the cock changes the course of history!”
Plus, there’s all sorts of weird issues with this study – it’s only 100 Australian women, who it must be noted wear clothes and probably don’t see flaccid cock from day to day.  So it’s probably a little skewed, trying to extrapolate the behavior of the pre-Sumerian hunter-gatherer mom from some Australian Starbucks barrista.
Yet let us assume that this is true.  That, for generations, a significant factor in humanity’s overall fitness was that women were choosing mates based on the right shrunken cock.  That means that pants are a travesty, a biological block, a horrible thing that actually weakens our species.  Whoever invented the loincloth?  A traitor to his cause, and probably possessed of an evolutionarily-unattractive Shvanstucker besides!
I joke, but I’ve always felt bad for women when it comes to dating.  I am a fan of full lips, large breasts, and long hair.  All of these are turnons for me, and I know within seconds of meeting a woman if she has these qualities.  Whereas if a woman likes large penises, or small penises, or bent penises, well… every guy is a Cracker Jack box waiting to be opened.  Which, as a guy, seems like yet another of a thousand disadvantages women face in getting good sex; if you need a specific kind of penis to get you off, there’s no way to know for sure until it may be awkward to break it off.
I dunno.  It’s all food for thought, and if you think I’m going to wrap this meandering up with some unifying theory on the evolutionary advantages of penis size, well, I got nothing.  I just think that while there may be advantages to various sizes when it comes to producing children, I’m doubting that penis size was significantly altered by mere aesthetic preference.  I could be wrong.
But though it bears investigation – SCIENCE! – I don’t think 105 Australian women are enough to say one way or another.  And I think our obsession with penis size is something that’s not totally ahistorical, but the increasing focus on it is a modern reaction to some dysfunctionality we have yet to address as a global society.  It smells a bit of taking our modern values and trying to apply them to the past, to make it a universal thing across all humanity as opposed to a small subset of people.  Which, as Westerners, is something we do on a disturbingly often basis.

Posted by on Apr 9, 2013 in Current Ramblings | 2 comments