Cute as hell

Berlin Zoo's baby spiny anteater.

The Voting Rights Act was gutted by the SCOTUS today.  I'm not in the mood to read it or the ICWA case yet.  Yesterday's decision was weird.  I'm not looking forward to the next release- think they will deny standing on both.  But who knows. 

I hear Alito was very unprofessional listening to a Ginsberg dissent.  In AZ they make you take a course where you learn not to make faces when opposing counsel or party speaks.  Not the worst idea.

My online workout log is looking more like triathlon training.  Little biking guy and swimming guy alternate with running guy on the display.  It's the sweating season.  Everyone was dripping on the paths tonight, and at the Y yesterday, where the fans cool the weightlifters only.

Writing is up next.  I actually got a new idea today.  Hallelujah.  It's been a while.

You can deduce my mental state

From the fact that I am taking notes on After Liberalism, by intellectual heavy Immanuel Wallerstein, while listening to Absolution Gap by Alistair Reynolds and really actually contemplating the narrative structure of this thing I've been trying to write.  I voted.  I worked 9 hours too.  I did something productive today.  Now it's time for attention deficit to work its magic...

Nochnii Dozor

Or however you'd transliterate.  I need to make more progress in reading Russian because I found a copy of "Night Watch" in the original at the library sale for 75 cents.  I recognized the light sabery Highlanderish cover and "vampiri" reference in the back cover blurb as some fantasy novel, but had to get a dictionary to figure out it was the best selling trilogy.  Usually they have crappy old books in that section, but occasionally things like Xarri Potter or Bridget Djones Diary.

Anyway, I keep not being able to get far in The M.D. by Thomas Disch.  I got waylaid by Beauty Queens, which a friend lent me and later turned up on the Tiptree recommended list.  Surprisingly funny.  I thought the humor would get stale like in most rip-roaring satires, but it kept fresh.  Then I took out some books on prison histories, and a book on Riker's kept being more interesting to pick up. 

And then I picked up Zipper Mouth, a lesbian novel debut finalist for the Lambda Awards.  But I am letting the Dog Trainer read it first, in order to focus on The M.D.  It's not that The M.D. hasn't started well, it's just that I'm in the periodic distracted mode that comes with the change of seasons and being busy at work.  And it's a daunting length compared to his other novels.  I don't really have time for 400 pages I can't skim...

But anyway.  The running is going good, now that it's been unseasonably warm, until today.  I am shooting for an under 60-minute 10k at the end of April.  Knock wood.  For me, that slow pace would be a PR...  Progress is slow.  But lately it's been fun.  Nice to not wear five layers.  

I am making slow progress with getting back into writing.  I still feel like it's mostly throat clearing, but that's a necessary stage.  Trying to clear out more time, but work remains a demanding beast.  I'm still not good enough to not have to expend all my mental energy there... 

Oh well.  The future of writing for right now does seem to be day jobs or being a trophy wife or husband.  So I can't complain at all.  Just need to become ever more organized and disciplined.  I refuse to cede the running/exercising time, because it keeps me sane and energized, so that's pretty much the solution.  Anyway, blah blah blah.  Time to watch the Battle Kittens fight over the sunny spot of floor...

Readings, books, races

It's spring.  Like fall, spring in Minnesota means a brief frenzy of social activity.  And then the usual lull, but with dogs panting.  It's way, way early this year.  And winter hardly bothered.  But the madness is on.

I went to a bunch of readings, friend Catherine Lundoff launching her menopausal werewolf novel Silver Moon, and a lesbian writer thing at the Quatrefoil Library.  St Patty's with the pre-birthday runners.  Still recovering from my 10 mile.  Ran with friends Jake and Cara Sunday morning while the visiting grandparents provided them the rare opportunity to run together.

I ran 7 this weekend, and it was supposed to feel easy in comparison, but it did not.  Thus I will wait a bit longer to up the ante to a half marathon.  My feet and knees need more time to adjust.

I am reading too many books at once too.  The M.D. has been slow starting, mostly because I started it before finishing Through a Brazen Mirror by Delia Sherman.  The latter slips down smoothly, classic kings and sorcerors fantasy with cross-dressing.

I also went to a CLE showing of a film "Crime After Crime" about the CA in-justice system.  More on that later.  Back to work!

More on the movie here. 

Some dogs like snow

There's an interesting story in last week's  Strange Horizons.  It's sort of one of those it didn't really need to be genre except to make the twist work, but I'd probably be hypocritical to critique others for that...  Good anyway.

I'm currently reading a Steampunkish novel, All Men Of Genius by Lev AC Rosen.  I say steampunkish because it seems to be more about trappings, but maybe that's core genre, I dunno.  I picked it up because my college alumni mag made a big deal about it.  Then Strange Horizons reviewed it favorably this week.  I'm not as impressed.

I think I need a keyboard and to finish the book to explain why, but I have this question, which also occurred to me while reading Richard Morgan's Thirteen, though that was much meatier:  Why is it that when men write novels with a romance as the main structure, no one ever refers to or complains about the novel as more a romance novel than SFF? 

Here, the romance is the point, it's based on a romance of Shakespeare as well as a Wilde play, the steam is mostly trappings- they drive the story ostensibly but this is not necessary except to appeal to that set of readers (from within the genre, from the author photo).  So why isn't it getting slagged for being too lite, as similar female-authored novels do?

As the gay people are also mostly setting and props.  But more later.

Technophilia

The concept I've been mulling over the last week or so is based on a William Gibson quote from the Paris Review summer '11 interview:

"...I take it for granted that social change is driven primarily by emergent technologies, and probably always has been."

He went on to say that the SF he grew up with did not agree that tech emergence was more of a random thing.  (Of course it was heroic individualism and resourceful red-blooded young men and all that.)  And, "Today we're more likely to feel that technology is driving us, driving change, and that it's out of control."

That is reflected more in SF and certainly in cyberpunk and its offspring.  In a way, though, the more negative reaction to steampunk highlights that in earlier eras feeling controlled by technological change rather than at its helm had a distinct standpoint aspect- class, race, gender... 

Some people have said steampunk and things like Maker culture (I think of Linux, Open Source, and Cultural Commons as well) are reactions to this type of disempowerment.  Steampunk and cyberpunk both have aspects that explore and deconstruct or oppose the alienation and disorientation that come with technological change. 

I think the confusing or frustrating thing for many people about these so-called movements is that progressive social change is not necessarily the focus and primary concern of many of these explorations of alienation and subjugation of people related to technological change.  Stories in these subgenres are often more like Gibson says of some of his stories, more like a tombstone rubbing than a prescriptive text.  The endless question about fiction, its legitimate purposes and its limits.

Anyway, that's what I'm mulling over, when not thinking about work or food, or mindlessly running.

...Coming back to this in the a.m., I'm not sure it makes so much sense.  An emergent thought.  Ideas take a lot of time to percolate in my brain, and they usually come out in bits and pieces and tangles...