HSU IT Department

I did this last year (through a different venue, not LJ) and it worked pretty well, so here we go again. I have weeded my bookshelves and have the following items FREE to good home(s)! All you have to do is comment naming the book(s) you want and I'll send them to you. You don't even have to pay shipping, that's how much I love giving books away. All are paperback except the starred ones, those are HB.

First come, first served, so post away :)

Fiction
The Lord Next Door (Cullen) - trashy romance, signed by author (oooooooh)
*Everything on a Waffle (Horvath) - YA, humor
Flan (Tunney) - kind of weird F/SF
Shutter Island (Lehane)
*The Sirian Experiments (Lessing) - aka Canopus in Argos III; literary sci-fi
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone (um...Smith LOL?)
The Folk Keeper (Billingsley) - YA, fantasy
Heart of Gold (Shinn) - SF
Gateways (ed. by Hull) - SF short stories, various authors
Aftershock& Others (Wilson) - mild horror/sci-fi

Non-fiction
Reframing Bodies (Hallas)
Stick Figure (Gottlieb) - YA, anorexia (has wine stains, sorry!)
Why Girls Can't Throw (Symons)
*How to Never Look Fat Again (Krupp) - clothing/fashion; my mother gave me this...is there a subtext, do you think??
Microsoft Visual Basic 5 - no idea whether this is obsolete; probably
Ugly War, Pretty Package (Jaramillo) - how CNN and Fox sold the Iraq War as a
high-concept media event; really excellent if a bit disturbing

A proposed law in Arizona would apparently allow ANY employer, not just religious-affiliated institutions, to deny contraception coverage and possibly even fire female workers for using birth control pills for a "non-medical" purpose. The Republican-backed (oooh, color ME surprised) HB 2625 bill would allow bosses to ask female employees whether they are using contraception and request proof they are using the pills for non-sexual reasons, if the employer is morally or ethically or religiously opposed to...well, to sex, I guess. It doesn't mention any exemption if you're married, meaning it can't be premarital sex they object to, so it must just be sex in general. WTF???

I really don't understand what's going on around here. How can anyone not think this is absolutely nuts? And why can't the GOP go back to focusing on the economy and leave all this moral stuff to people's individual consciences???

There's more here and here, if you can stomach it.

Optimistically overlooking my inability to crank out acres of fabulous words for SSIAW, I've signed up for luciusbigbang. Eek. I have no plot bunnies gamboling about, no drafts lurking in drawers awaiting rescue, no idea what I will do, so it's anybody's guess what the outcome will be. (Sadly, I've already written my Modern Major Death Eater piece, so that's out.) I like Lucius as a character but I find him more difficult to write than Severus, possibly because he's not as complex a character. Of course, as we all know, "It does not necessarily follow that a deep or intricate character is more or less estimable..." etc etc etc.

Other Notes of Note:

SSIAW week 3 is in full bloom, but my buds thus far remain tightly furled, alas. What with words like "doxy" "perdition" and "inoculate" staring me in the face, it's going to be a hard slog. (The moderator CLAIMS she chooses the words randomly, but one can't help but wonder...)

Wrote to my newspaper today as they have cruelly disappointed me by bailing on the Doonesbury/ultrasound story arc. They ran Monday's and Tuesday's, which got my hopes up ("Yay, my hometown paper has GUTS!"), then suddenly replaced today's with a re-run from months ago. Grrrrrr.

Fab article in the New York Times about "the slam-bang world of pulp magazines" exhibit. Since pulps were the original publishers of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction they hold a special place in my heart, so I really enjoyed this piece. Hope to get to NYC in the next few weeks (Alan Rickman, my love, I know you're waiting for me!!) and maybe see it.

If you're having difficulty persuading your friends to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with you, try the following:

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I did the rainbow meme and it came out totally inaccurate, so not even bothering to post it. Have been engrossed the past few days in re-reading Sharon Shinn's Samaria series; I literally did not get off the sofa all day yesterday, just slurped cup after cup of tea and devoured page after page after page. Such an excellent mix of fantasy, high-tech SF, sociocultural commentary, and just plain damn good story-telling.

Then we went to dinner (scallops, gnocchi w/wild mushrooms, nom nom nom) and to see Red, a play about artist Mark Rothko. I'm of two minds about abstract art. On the one hand I quite like some of the pictures, they're like big splashy colorful rugs you hang on the wall. On the other hand, it irritates me because it seems like the artist couldn't be bothered to make his point clear, instead relying on the viewer to supply the meaning. If it engenders an emotional reaction in the viewer/listener, does that mean it qualifies as art? What if the reaction is annoyance? Also, so many of the abstract artists seem terribly pretentious and self-important; if you don't understand their work it's due to some flaw in you, some lack of refinement or spirit. "If you don't understand what it means, I couldn't possibly explain it to you." Um, if you can't explain the meaning, isn't that a failure of communication on your part? Or perhaps because it's meaningless?

For example, John Cage's "composition" which consists of nothing but silence, or the one created by rolling dice. Is there musical skill and effort in that? Creativity? He may be making a statement about music, but is it actually music, or some sort of music criticism that makes you debate the question of what music is? In the same way, is a giant canvas covered with blocks of red (Rothko) or splatters of random paint (Pollock) art? Or is an illustrative form of art criticism that makes people think about what art is?

Still, the play was quite entertaining, especially Rothko's rant about things being "fine":

ROTHKO: (Explodes) 'Pretty.' 'Beautiful.' 'Nice.' 'Fine.' That's our life now! Everything's 'fine'. We put on the funny nose and glasses and slip on the banana peel and the TV makes everything happy and everyone's laughing all the time, it's all so goddamn funny, it's our constitutional right to be amused all the time, isn't it? We're a smirking nation, living under the tyranny of 'fine.' How are you? Fine.. How was your day? Fine. How are you feeling? Fine. How did you like the painting? Fine. What some dinner? Fine... Well, let me tell you, everything is not fine!! HOW ARE YOU?!... HOW WAS YOUR DAY?!... HOW ARE YOU FEELING? Conflicted. Nuanced. Troubled. Diseased. Doomed. I am not fine. We are not fine. We are anything but fine.

Now that's brilliant. If his art said that to me, I'd love it. Sadly, it doesn't; all it says to me is "Hi, I'm a giant canvas with quadrilaterals on," like some sort of geometry exercise. If I want to see cleverly and skillfully assembled quadrilaterals in pretty colors, I'll look at an Amish quilt, thank you very much.

So unless you've been a hermit on a Montana mountaintop, you've probably heard all about Rush Limbaugh's latest horrorshow. This response to it is fabulous, and I'm very pleased to post it here tonight. This woman's voice is like fireworks, and the signs are BRILLIANT :D

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As I said yesterday, I went back and forth on the second volume (Catching Fire) and ended up suspending judgment on it until I read the third one. Now that I've read the third one...wow. It isn't perfect -- the author's reliance on the main character losing consciousness at crucial moments and waking up rescued is a serious flaw -- but overall I found this a tremendously powerful and disturbing book.

Recently I read Ugly War, Pretty Package: How CNN and Fox News Made the Invasion of Iraq High Concept, an examination of how the media packaged and marketed the Iraq War as a media event. There were entirely too many parallels for my comfort here. From being marketed as a tribute in the first book, Kat goes on to be packaged and sold by Coin as The Mockingjay, only to be discarded when her usefulness is over. One reviewer here on GR complained that Kat's having a camera crew and a prep team constantly with her was distracting and stupid. But that's the point: Kat is never allowed to be a genuine heroine because that's too messy, too unattractive. Too real. She has to be "on" and "in character" (not to mention in costume) all the time, no matter what her personal feelings are.

If she'd chosen this part -- if she were by nature a leader, driven by a desire to inspire people, or a born martyr like Joan of Arc -- that would be one thing. But she's not, she's a seventeen-year-old girl whose had to slaughter people she's made friends with, whose entire village has been destroyed, whose family has been threatened, who's been forced by everyone around her to be something she's not. It's no wonder she doesn't deal with it well. The role of Mockingjay isn't what Kat wants, but it's the only path left to her. Her bargaining for the cat, for the captured tributes, for the right to go hunting with Gale all speak to the fact that this isn't a role she takes on willingly but rather one she demands payment for. Not because she's mercenary, but because she can sense the wrongness, the falseness in it, and wants to extract something from it that's meaningful to her.

In the first book, Peeta says that if he's going to die, he wants to die as himself. Kat's never given that option -- no matter what happens to her, someone else is pulling the strings. Someone else "owns" her. Like the Mockingjay, she can only echo the wishes of others. I ached for her, constantly being manipulated by the people who she's supposed to be able to trust.

Which brings me to the one thing that really broke my heart: ( major spoilers )

In the acknowledgements, Collins thanks her father (I think it was) for having taught her about war and peace. Certainly as a statement against the horrors of war, all three books work well and the last one best of all. There are no winners, only survivors.

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Well, it's SSIAW (Short Story In A Week) time again. This is a challenge posed twice a year, March and September, by a writing group I belong to. At the end of April and August respectively we all throw as many great words as we can think of -- enticing adjectives, vigorous verbs, intriguing nouns -- into the pot. Starting on the first of the month, we're given two lists of five words each; you choose one list, and have to write a complete story (beginning, middle and end) in no more than seven days. Then the next two lists are posted, you have another seven days to write another story, and so on until the end of the month and we all expire of brain failure and exhaustion.

It's basically a chance to practice wrestling your muse into submission instead of waiting around until the fickle bitch decides to visit you on her own. Each time I firmly commit myself to doing four stories, one each week (we always have a few overachievers who use BOTH lists and do TWO stories every week; how slacker-y they make the rest of us feel can easily be imagined). So far my best achievement is two completed stories and one half-completed which I finished the next month.

SSIAW always seems to fall during a very busy point in my life, but damn it, this time I'm making it a priority and I will do no less than four stories. I will, I will, I WILL.

This week's lists include such gems as cistern, quincunx, and insouciance. I have no idea where I'm going with those, but I'll keep putting one foot in front of the other until I get there...

I love the way she wins while doing absolutely fuck-all. Tracks pretty much exactly with the books.

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Perhaps now is a good time to say that heroines that DO NOTHING annoy me. They annoy me worse than Mary Sues. OK, Mary Sues are unrealistic in every way and break the fourth wall, or whatever it's called in books, because they're basically the author guest-starring in her own fantasy (I say "her" fantasy because although men write Mary Sues, they get to call them superhero comic books and they sell like hotcakes; not at all the same thing).

But at least Mary Sues usually DO SOMETHING. They may have grown up as salt mine slaves in darkest BFE and yet are master fencers, ride like Diana, and can cook a rabbit that tastes better than your mother's brisket, all while defeating legendary dark sorcerors/generals/plot bunnies. No, it's not credible. But at least they're ACTIVE. You can't be a heroine if all you do is a) get watched while you sleep b) get protected c) get impregnated and d) get turned into a vampire (I hope the English majors in the audience noticed all that passive verbiage).

I'd argue that not only do you fail is a heroine, you can't legitimately even call yourself a protagonist, much less an antagonist. All that leaves you with is "agonist" which, yeah, given the agony I feel when I read about you is quite suitable.

*snicker*