"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Oct 23, 2012

Die At The Right Time

CT scan not promising. Have to learn to live with this reality. Ride well, for as long as you can, folks.

Oct 2, 2012

Cause and F/X

This is a living person. This image is not digitally altered. This appearance was accomplished with surgery, and daily by hand:

anastasiya shpagina

It's not my place to speak to her personally narrated reasons, or whatever justifications she's used for her own self. But, I think when feminists are discussing what they mean by conformity to femininity, this is a good illustration. It's not so much that it's extreme, it's that it's an extremely obvious example of an otherwise pervasive, but less obvious set of phenomena.

In a not unrelated pique of literary melange, a quote from Elizabeth Bear's deliciously excellent Sci-Fi novel, Carnival:

"...'The only significant natural predator that human women have is heterosexual men...Traditionally, the responsibility for safety falls on the victim. Women are expected to defend themselves from predators. To act like responsible prey. Limit risks, not take chances. Not to go out alone at night. Not talk to strange men. Rely on their own, presumably domesticated men for protection from other feral men - in exchange for granting them property rights over the women in question.''..."

I don't know if this is Bear's personal opinion, and I don't think it matters. She's using two (not randomly homosexual) characters' discussion to lay out the logic of a matriarchy they've been sent to undermine.

I can't help but see that the picture above, and Bear's character's observation below are intimately, intricately related.