Sometimes it's just so obvious.

So on a political message board I frequent (I know, I know) a flame war actually broke out about the Save the Ta-Tas breast cancer foundation, and whether it's offensive or not. (I know, I know.)

One of those "WHAT ABOWT TEH MENZ?" types demanded to know if there's anything equivalent to do with testicular cancer, and if so, what should their slogan be?

I wish everything in this life were so easy: "Always Mind the Bollocks."

That's Ent-ertainment!

I have a habit of observing some fannish holidays.

March 25 (translated to our calendar of course) is marked the First Day of the Fourth Age in Middle-earth, because that's the day that the age of the Rings of Power ended with the One Ring taking its fateful lava bath at Orodruin.

Members of the J.R.R. Tolkien-related fanfic writing clan online - a subculture I refuse to be ashamed of belonging to - honor all of March as "Return to Middle-earth Month," in which, at least once, you stop what you're doing and reflect on your love of all things Arda.

Even lots of LOTR geeks who love the book still try to hang on to some sense of not-yet-totally-submerged pride by insisting, "But the poetry in it sucks, of course I always skip that." Well, I don't. I'll spare you my stubborn Bombadilatry, but here's something bittersweet for spring, from that most cold, pale spring of segments, The Two Towers:

ENT:

When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

ENTWIFE:

When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade;
When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid;
When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,
I'll linger here and will not come, because my land is fair.

ENT:

When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold;
Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold;
When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!

ENTWIFE:

When Summer warms the hanging fruit, and burns the berry brown;
When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;
When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West,
I'll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!

ENT:

When Winter comes, the Winter wild that hill and wood shall slay;
When trees shall fall, and starless night devour the sunless day;
When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain,
I'll look for thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again!

ENTWIFE:

When Winter comes, and singing ends, when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past;
I'll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again;
Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain!

BOTH:

Together we will take the road that leads into the West
And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.

(JRRT)

***

The Tolkien Ensemble of Denmark does a musical setting of this that once reduced me to about half an hour of full-bore, unstoppable sobbing, no lie. Because I am a complete SAP, pun intended.

Returning to Nothing Regularly Scheduled.

You might have noticed, for all that I spent more than a decade as a more-or-less full-time music writer, I haven't written about music very much here. That will come, I'm pretty sure. But towards the end of my Reader tenure, I was badly burned out, still going on every week out of a sheer dogged determination to keep going and not much else. Well, OK, there was guilt and anxiety too. I have to be honest and admit that I don't even listen to music every day anymore.

When I do, though, it's good again. For the most part.

I'm in recovery from something, alright. Or growing into something new. So I leave you with this thought from "Or All the Seas With Oysters" by the late Avram Davidson:

***

"Maybe they're a different kind of life-form. Maybe they get their nourishment out of elements in the air. You know what safety pins are--these other kinds of them? Oscar, the safety pins are the pupa-forms and then they, like, hatch. Into the larval forms. Which look just like coat hangers. They feel like them, even, but they're not. Oscar, they're not, not really, not really, not..."

He began to cry into his hands. Oscar looked at him. He shook his head.

After a minute, Ferd controlled himself somewhat. He snuffled. "All these bicycles the cops find, and they hold them waiting for owners to show up, and then we buy them at the sale because no owners show up because there aren't any, and the same with the ones the kids are always trying to sell us, and they say they just found them, and they really did because they were never made in a factory. They grew. They grow. You smash them and throw them away, they regenerate."

Oscar turned to someone who wasn't there and waggled his head. "Hoo boy," he said. Then, to Ferd: "You mean one day there's a safety pin the next day instead there's a coat hanger?"

Ferd said, "One day there's a cocoon; the next day there's a moth. One day there's an egg; the next day there's a chicken. But with...these it doesn't happen out in the open daylight where you can see it. But at night, Oscar--at night you can hear it happening. All the little noises in the night-time, Oscar--"

Jolie Laide, Grandeur, Extinction, and you.

I've always thought Jolie Laide would make a great nom de something (artsy porn?). I've also always loved the concept. (In a self-serving way, of course - no one would ever call me conventionally beautiful, but I think I've often proved to be, I dunno, charismatic?)

But why think so small as to limit this concept to the human face? The animal kingdom excels at jolie-laide, as it does at most other things in one way or another.

Look at this face:





Woof, right? The visage isn't improved if you know that it has a bald head so that the stanky maggot-ridden carrion it eats doesn't get stuck all over its face feathers.


Now look at this wingspan:




That's what these awesome beasts look like when they're doing what they do best (aside from eating carrion, that is): soaring. That's a ten-foot wingspan on a bird that's occasionally mistaken for a small airplane from a distance.

We came awfully close to living in a world without California condors in it, and that would be really fucking depressing. We already live in a world that's lost a lot of truly awesome (in the meaningful sense of the word) things. Once I got to visit the La Brea Tar Pits museum in Los Angeles, which was kind of a thrill of a lifetime because I had a bit of a tar pit fixation as a child. The best part? The museum was having a power outage, so we crept through the giant skeletons and reconstructions of mammoths and saber-toothed cats and the like in semi-darkness. There was a ancient giant condor there with a breastbone and wing structure like some kind of steampunk military flight experiment.

That's the ugly-beautiful thing about the California condor; it's primeval. You look into those beady eyes and you see those massive wings and you remember, in your species memory, when you were prey, and even the leavings of your carcass would be food for something else and you can see them waiting. It's not a reminder of a world where humans didn't exist. It's a reminder of a time when we were insignificant, and for many people, that's far worse.

But we're not. We took the California condor to the brink of extinction, and now we're bringing it back. Personally, I wouldn't mind being fed to them when I die. They couldn't care less that I'm admiring them for their sheer audacity in bald-faced FUG, yet impeccable fashion sense and grace of bearing.

More wild felinity

This striking kitty isn't an alley cat who works out regularly. It's a Scottish Wildcat, a subspecies of the European Wildcat nowadays found only in the moors and glens of the Scottish Highlands. A rugged, handsome and famously untameable cat, it's the source of the clan motto "Touch not the cat but with a glove." Words of wisdom.

There are estimated to be only about 400 of these terrible beauties left. Nowadays, the biggest danger to the species isn't hunting or habitat destruction - it's hybridization with the domestic cat.

You can see how this happens. You're a pampered housecat in a safe place, sheltered and protected, with everything provided. You have so much cat food and cream, and so many safe and clever toys, that maybe you've never even killed a mouse. Life is so easy. You are so lucky. And yet...and yet...sometimes, in the middle of one of your six-times-daily naps perhaps, you wonder. Is this all there is? You dimly remember that you come from a proud line of predators. Your bones and your blood remember the joy of stalking, of hiding in the wild long grass and scaling trees for birds. Across the manicured yard, one day you catch a glimpse of this handsome stranger, whose piercing eyes and untrimmed claws call to you. Like the ghost of Cathy after Heathcliff, you bound across the moor, the mere scent of this dashing, untamed rogue making you yowl with longing and lift your tail wantonly....

Wow. That made me sound like a total fucking furry, didn't it? Oh well. I care not - I love him! Go to the link and help save the Scottish Wildcat! The genre of feline bodice-ripper romance demands it!

It's a good thing "blog neglect" isn't an actual crime...

Let's ignore the lacuna and talk about CATS.

Tomorrow is my torrid tortie Madimi's first Adoptionversary. A year ago today, Martha Bayne went with me to Anti-Cruelty Society and swallowed her justified reservations as I went for the yowly little shredder with an attitude problem. She (the cat, not Martha) thrashed so hard when placed in the cardboard box carrier they usually give out that she ripped right through it; I saw a little mottled black-and-orange paw poking out the bottom. They gave me an actual classy plastic one instead.

I have lots of pictures of my bratty darling, but wow, that's trite. The little guys in the picture are baby Manuls, AKA Pallas' cat, a rare type of long-haired wild cat native to the Eurasian steppes from the Caucasus to China to the Himalayas.

Like it seems all beautiful things are these days, manuls are endangered, but not desperately so, as much of their range is extremely remote and not terribly human-encroached yet. Here's their page at Wildcat Conservation.

Because you can't live on rage ALL the time...

It's delicious, but not nutritious.

It's been said (can't remember by whom, if you know, please tell me) that writing is a process of breathing in and out very slowly - your mind is always taking in stimuli, percolating it in the secret workshop even you know very little about, and expelling a different kind of gas than you took in. Gradually. It can't be rushed. Writing professionally every week for 14 years was a little like the forced hyperventilation kids do with a paper bag to make themselves faint on command.


So I tell myself it's OK to be introverted and not terribly productive right now. I'm breathing in. I get very protective of my mental space and don't want any stimuli that I didn't choose if I can possibly help it. I walk around in the city enjoying a certain isolation. I have frustrating days, I ask the universe for the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised by something, and I find myself a captive audience of Ray St. Ray, the Singing Cabdriver. Gee, thanks, universe. You can't be guarded and quiet and lost in your own headspace when you're in his cab. First off, I find I simply can't say "No, I don't want to hear a song," because he's so relentlessly cheerful and courteous it would be like kicking a puppy. Then, from his list of subject matter, I have to make sure I don't choose a sex song because, well, just no.

I really, really like his latest obsession, which is the space program and why we never went back to the moon, and how his late-Boomer inner child feels betrayed by all the promises of cool spaceships and Mars vacations. It's sad, it's funny, it's real, it's persistent, and it's really, frankly, a hell of a lot more interesting than the tedious crap I was brooding about before he came along and picked up me and my grumpy groceries.

His blog is cool too, but it's harder to be surprised by it.

Still alive...

Though I am sleeping a ridiculous amount, and still don't quite feel rested ever. I am told this is a normal phase in the post-layoff process. I can't wait for it to end.

Strangely enough, I am still consumed with simmering rage. I'm still trying to process this bit of information from my former colleague Mike Miner's blog (which is excellent and you should read it): not only the news of the new offer for the Creative Loafing buzzword-speak dungheap, but the titbit buried in the comments from John Sugg. That Ben Eason's 10%-for-editorial budgeting is significantly below industry standards, whereas of course the original Reader had it significantly above. (As if you can't tell that just by comparing). And that the interest payments on his loans exceeds the editorial budget for all of his papers combined.

I don't know what to do with this information. I don't know who to scream at. I want to write an urgent letter, a telegram, a smoke signal, an owl-delivered Howler written in blood to the President wailing, "Barack, do you realize you are dealing with a whole country full of Ben Easons? People addicted to the grimy, sleazy little thrill of pushing fictional numbers around on paper, to the extent that the actual business or industry they claim to be involved in is irrelevant? And if you had understood this fully, would you still have wanted to be President? Or would you be looking into your options with regard to emigrating to a country where they actually still make real stuff?"

I used to know how to curse people. The knowledge lapsed 'cause I never used it. I just never really wanted to. My anger is usually very short-lived and I'm too disorganized to hold grudges. Now I want to get back "in shape."

It's a wonder I can sleep at all, much less too much.

Now reading: To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust. A retelling of the fall of the rebel angels from a non-judgmental fantasy perspective. I'm not that far in yet, and so far I'm loving his idea of the conflict being largely about order versus chaos and a desperate attempt to for beings of order to survive in a hostile environment (Yaweh originally intends to create Earth as a safe haven). I'm not a huge fan of the sparse, dialogue-driven style - my bias is towards more descriptive, setting-based writing, and I wish I had a better sense of what Brust's fragile, unstable Heaven really looks and feels like. But the story and characters are keeping me loping along anyway.

And the lion will lie down with the...er....

Just doing my part to pimp Lemmy the Movie, allegedly coming out this year. I don't need to yammer on about how awesome this could be - why belabor the obvious?

I will share my secret hope, though: that the appearance in the documentary by Lemmy's old Hawkwind pals Dave Brock and Stacia will lead to a resurgence of interest in Time of the Hawklords, Michael Moorcock's breathtaking 1976 period piece, which is unforgettable and yet somehow still unjustly forgotten. Perhaps Moorcock wanted it that way. Nevertheless, I will never let the world forget this book. How could I? It features the members of Hawkwind as reluctant heroes in an apocalyptic, hallucinatory science-fiction story of sonic warfare. And as Moorcockian heroes go, they're a lot more fun to spend page time with than, say, Elric.

You Can't Say 'Frak' on TV, Except All Those Times When you Can

This one goes out to the Battlestar Galactica nerds in the house. How can you spot a BSG nerd in the wild? Well, when she drops something heavy on her toe in mixed company, she just might yell, "Frak!" That's because "frak" is every third word spoken on the gritty SF/military/political drama, and it's obvious from context that their language evolved or devolved an f-word that means exactly the same thing as ours, with both swear word and sexual functions (and Katee Sackhoff managing to make, "I wanna frak" sound hot means she's a better actress than I'll ever be). I seem to remember this word being in existence in the original 1978 version as well. Anyway, pretty much the whole point is that you can't say "fuck" on TV, but you can say "frak", and the actors relish doing so as often and emphatically as possible.

Enter KFC, which stands for Kompletely Frakkin' Clueless, who joined with the Sci-Fi channel for a promotion where you sign up for a contest and win, in addition to BSG swag, something originally called a "Frak Pak," which is basically a big ol' bucket of chicken.

Somewhere down the line, somebody dropped a dime, so the contest is now the "Can't Say That Word on Television Sweepstakes." Especially hilarious when those frakkin' commercials run during the frakkin' show itself.

Topless Robot broke the story last week, hilariously.

I got 96 tears and 96 eyes.

I had something funny I was going to post, but it'll have to wait since Lux Interior died.

Did you get that?? Yeah.

Do you believe it? Me neither.

Alas, here's the Pitchfork article. He was 62 and had a heart condition.

Watch the videos there, take a moment of noise, send good thoughts to Poison Ivy and the whole Cramps family, and remember; THIS is how he'd like to be remembered:

I don't dance BUT

Sooner or later, the question of what I think is good dance music will come up.

I give you:

The Roan Mountain Hilltoppers (from my home region):



and Olodum (from my mom's home town):



For stuff up to this standard, I'll gladly move. But I'm not EASY.

Half-time is BOSStime!

I know there are some people out there who wanted Bruce to get all righteous and political on his Super Bowl platform...and if they're like me, they still have to step back and remind themselves...oh wait. The guy he (we) backed won. He's President now. Disneyland indeed, Bruce. Yes, let's.

I've heard all sorts of persuasive anti-elitist cultural arguments about why I ought to care about football--and you know what, I've tried, and I just can't. Watching this for fifteen minutes reminded me of when I was a kid and I wanted to write letters to all the TV stations because I couldn't understand why there was always a sports segment and never a music one - isn't music just as newsworthy?

Winter's lock is shuddering

I heard children playing outside today. I was struck by how unusual that seems these days.

Winter is reading time. (Well, it's always reading time. But especially in winter.)

Now in progress:

Scar Night by Alan Campbell. My tolerance for dystopian SF/F isn't what it used to be. When I was younger, I liked things dark, and so edgy you could cut yourself. Now, no - when I go off into a fictional landscape, I find the noir starts to get monochromatic and monotonous when laid on with a trowel. I like this book so far, though - it reads like the baby generated by a back-alley bang between China Mieville and Neil Gaiman (perhaps surprisingly, Neil tops) and the baby is then circumcised in a bris straight out of the ritual books of Gormenghast. Pirates vs ninjas? Played out. How about angels vs. assassins?

London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd. Years ago, I read Mike Wallace and Edwin G. Burrows's Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, and loved it madly--in part because it was comparable in size to a Manhattan phone book, and so utterly thorough. I also loved it because I know New York's streets well as they are now, and I love being able to visualize the ones no longer there. London's a much older city to fit in a big book, and the reading experience is different because I've never been there. But the prevailing sense of love and interaction is similar, because the authors understand the way cities are beings in their own right, and for a person to try to comprehend their vast lives is a lot like one of my red blood cells trying to understand me.

...this thing on?...

Hi all, I'm Monica, recently cut loose from the Chicago Reader (where I spent nearly 14 years), and now rambling as a free agent. Now, here's an icky issue we laid-off writers contend with: when it first happened, although it came as no shock, I was so frakking angry. Not at the Reader editors, no, they had to make the best of a shitty situation. The only employment-hell-related thing I can think of that's worse than being laid off from a job you loved is having to be the one who lays off longtime collaborators and friends, because the incompetent hacks who bought your company aren't willing to do the decent thing and come do their dirty work in person where we can throw shoes at them.

I am bummed about my industry dying because, in part, there are an infinite number of monkeys on the Internet willing to do an infinite amount of typing for free. (Or stealing other people's typing - no, I won't forget, Huffpo). So what do I do now? Contribute to the problem? Be a scab?

Problem is, I'm a writer. It's what I do. When I'm not blocked, I'm typing and I can't shut up.