You know what to do!
Some things to remember
And finally:
Friday Five (you have to vote edition)
Last weekend I posted about the mad bomber than ran off to Geek Girl Con and only learned about the mass shooting at a synagoge when I checked news later on my phone. I… I am still so angry about that. I’m not Jewish, okay, but dang it, I’m a human being and you shouldn’t have to be a member of a community to be infuriated when people murder members of that community while literally shouting things that the alleged president of the United States has said. Please scroll down and read about the eleven people who were murdered last weekend in my In Memoriam section. And please, if you can, donate to a cause that fights hatred. Even more, if you haven’t already voted, please, please, please vote. Vote for candidates who will crack down on hate crimes. Vote to take our country back from the Nazis and white supremacists who currently control the White House and both houses of Congress. This isn’t the last chance to stop the evil, this is rather the first chance to fight back at the ballot box against the evil that already controls the nation. Vote!
Welcome to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week and five videos (plus my blog post and notable obituaries).
Stories of the Week:
A World Leader Forcefully Condemned Anti-Semitism and Neo-Nazism Yesterday. It Wasn’t Trump.
The Ingenuity and Beauty of Creative Parchment Repair in Medieval Books.
London Library today unveils 26 books that are almost certainly the original copies that Bram Stoker used to help research his enduring classic. Not copies: the actual physical books of which he scribbled notes in the margins.
The US has an HIV epidemic – and its victims are gay black men.
In Memoriam:
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: Portraits of the 11 victims.
Who Is Danye Jones? Ferguson Activist Says Her Son Was Lynched To Death.
Things I wrote:
Weekend Update 10/27/2018: No one should be surprised….
Once again, time to start your word processing engines!
Looking forward to/hoping for some trick or treaters….
You should be writing — whether you join us in NaNoWriMo or not!
Videos!
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? | Official Trailer [HD] :
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
François Sagat / Igor Dewe – Trust Me (contains NSFW language):
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Carly Rae Jepsen – Party For One:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Jake Shears Has Slept With a Lot of People:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Rufus Wainwright – Sword of Damocles (Official Music Video):
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
You should be writing — whether you join us in NaNoWriMo or not!
I’ve discussed this topic many times both on my various blogs, on convention panels, and in personal conversations. The person thinks they can’t write because the idea they have isn’t perfect, or they aren’t being creative/original enough, and so forth. One very specific form of this issue I’ve heard many times goes something like this: “I’ve read about how plotting and so forth works, and when I’m analyzing a book or show or something I can often see where the tale went wrong, but I’m not able to apply that skill to writing something new.”
At which point I usually launch into my rant about how writing is not the inverse of literary criticism?
What do I mean by inverse? Well, let’s first consult the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. The relevant definition is: “ Of two operations, relations, etc.: such that the starting point or antecedent of the one is the result or conclusion of the other, and vice versa; (of one such operation, relation, etc.) opposite in nature or effect (to the other).” So, for instance, untying a shoelace is the inverse of tying it, while tying the shoelace is likewise the inverse of untying, right?
So, what do I mean when I say that literary criticism isn’t the inverse of writing? I mean that if one imagined the process of analyzing and deconstructing a story as a series of tasks, performing those tasks in reverse doesn’t produce a story. And when you compare your ability to find flaws in a story as being a necessary skill to creating a story, you are misunderstanding the creative process. Also, knowing how to perform literary deconstruction doesn’t guarantee that one understands stories—it means one understands paradigms that some authorities have proclaimed about stories.
Another way to understand it is to think about music: literary criticism and the like can be looked at as similar to understanding the mathematical equations that describe sound waves. Understanding those equations doesn’t mean you can think up a catchy tune. Which doesn’t mean that studying music theory might not improve your music making, but it doesn’t guarantee you will make compelling, or even mildly interesting music.
So, for instance, when a story teller begins working on a story, they don’t make lists of the metaphors they intend to use. Likewise, we don’t usually think about what the theme of the tale is and so on. I, personally, virtually never know what any of my metaphors are in a story unless someone points them out to me.
Everyone’s process is different. Most of my stories begin as a question, and the process of writing is how I try to find the answer to that question, and to the subsequent questions I uncover while working on the first.
Analysis is very useful during the editing and revising. Studying some of the things we can quantify about how stories work isn’t a waste of time. But don’t focus on that. Certainly not when you’re at the first draft stage.
Or, as Gandalf observed: “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
Looking forward to/hoping for some trick or treaters…
This is our second Halloween in the new place. Last year we didn’t get any trick or treaters at all, but then last year there were only two other places in addition to ours with any Halloween decorations up, so I suspect our apartment building didn’t look like it was worth stopping at. Several more of our neighbors have lights and jack o’lanterns and such visible, so maybe we will get some this year. The magical-thinker in me also points out that we bought less candy this year than last, so maybe that will cause us to get swamped. We can hope. Keep your fingers crossed for us.
I had planned several more blog posts last week and this week leading up to this, my second favorite holiday, but things have been really weirdly busy. It also feels as if fewer people are doing Halloween stuff. I thought maybe I was just being busy and distracting, but I saw a few posts floating around tumblr where a lot of people were feeling as if there is a lot less Halloween enthusiasm in their social circles, and so forth. A few posts specifically noted that the silly Pumpkin Dance video had not showed up in their social media stream. Which made me realize I hadn’t seen it being posted and shared, either.
I’m planning to stay up a bit after midnight to make at least a symbolic start on NaNoWriMo (since I have to get up and go to work in the morning). Usually long before this we discuss what spooky movies we’re going to watch while hoping for trick-or-treaters. Last year was watched Hocus Pocus and Witches of Eastwick.
It’s been a number of years since we watched Ghost and Mr. Chicken and I can’t remember when we last watched Elvira, Mistress of the Dark; for that matter, I can’t remember how many years it’s been since we watched any of the classic Universal monsters, such as the 1931 Frankenstein, and we have all of those in the collection. On the other hand, I should look through our movie database and see if there is anything spooky that we’ve bought in the last couple of years. I don’t know. Our usual Halloween fair isn’t slasher movies and the like, and tends toward comedies… and this year I’m feeling much more like a good laugh than typical. I suspect we all know why that is…
Anyway, I hope you have wonder Eve of All Hallows!
Once again, time to start your word processing engines!
In just a couple of days November will be here and that means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! In case you aren’t familiar with NaNoWriMo, let me first quote from their website:
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.
On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.
There are rules, but for years I participated as a Rebel, until a few years ago when they dropped the one rule that kept making me a rebel.
- Write one 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
Start from scratch.- Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction.
- Be the sole author of your novel.
- Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
That second bullet is the rule that they changed. Most years I use NaNoWriMo as a motivation to work on some stalled or otherwise unfinished projects rather than starting from scratch, which is why I was always over in the Rebel category. NaNoWriMo is a lot of fun, and I find that having a few friends participating and mutually cheering each other on (and in a couple of cases to try to race against, word-count wise) helps me get a lot of work done.
NaNoWriMo isn’t for everyone. But I’ve seen people who didn’t think they’d like it come out happy that they’d given it a go.
If you’ve ever wanted to write and have trouble finishing, give it a try. Particularly if the thing that is holding you back is a feeling that whatever you’re writing isn’t good enough, there is something freeing about just focusing on getting the word count up. Leave editing for later. you can revise and correct a horrible draft, but you can’t do that to a blank page.
And it is supposed to be fun, not a chore.
I think I know what I’m going to work on this year. But I’m leaving myself the option to change my mind at the last minute.
Let’s make some fiction!
Weekend Update 10/27/2018: No one should be surprised…
Every news site on the web was able to obtain pictures of the suspect’s van because it has been notorious since 2016 in that region. People have been taking pictures of all the hateful stickers plastered on the van and sharing the pics on social media for a couple of years. He is extremely pro-Trump and extremely anti-Obama, anti-immigrant, anti-women’s rights, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Which is exactly what anyone with any sense at all had been saying. Even at least one pundit who usually is virulently pro-Trump that I quoted yesterday: “If your first reaction to some evil person sending bombs to a variety of politicians on one side of the aisle is ‘FALSE FLAG,’ you are officially deranged.”
But don’t let any one paint him as an anomaly or a nut job. Remind people of the facts: Study shows two-thirds of U.S. terrorism tied to right-wing extremists. Two-thirds of the terrorist acts that happen in the U.S. are by republican supporters who aren’t immigrants and aren’t muslim.
- The suspect is a native born U.S. citizen.
- The suspect is registered Republican.
- The suspect has proudly declared himself not just a Veteran for Trump, but a supporter of many of the most extreme Republican policies.
- The suspect has been publicly calling for and echoing Trump’s calls for violence against liberals, immigrants, and so forth.
Make America hate again: When political rhetoric turns violent . And the blame needs to be laid at the feed of Trump and all the Republican politicians and rightwing pundits who have been fanning the flames of hate for years and years.
And in case you have forgotten how many times that Trump has fanned those flames this year: This montage of Trump calling for violence shows him as a stupid thug rather than the president .
Friday Five (five by five edition)
It’s Friday! The fourth (and final) Friday in October! Are you ready to get your spooky on? And by this time next week, will you be joining me in National Novel Writing Month?
Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of the first edition of Friday Five, which replaced my previous Friday Links. I have not, over the course of this last year, stuck strictly to my original redefinition of the post: only the five top stories of the week, plus notable obituaries, links to my own posts, and five videos. Some weeks I have two or three categories of links each of which contains five stories. But my goal of limiting how much time I was spending assembling a post which fewer people have been reading since the inauguration of that which has put many of us into compassion fatigue and so forth, has been obtained. So, since I find it impossible not to read the news and bookmark stories I find interesting, this is going to continue!
Which brings us to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week featuring good news, top five stories, top five stories of interest to queers and our allies, top five sci fi stories, the bottom five awful news stories, and five videos (plus my blog post and notable obituaries).
Good News:
Free rent in Seattle, no catch: Landlords’ faith inspired a gift for tenants.
What Would Jesus Pod? Episode 20: Politicon and Christians Against Trump.
Judge rejects conservative Christian group’s request to halt Drag Queen Story Hour.
This one needs explaining: usually Shapiro is the one making deranged attacks on queer people, women, racial minorities, and the left in general. So I have to acknowledge when he says something good: Shapiro criticizes conspiracy theories about bomb threats to Dems.
Wild bear trapped in a Chinese hydropower station is saved after a dramatic 14-hour operation.
Stories of the Week:
Did the Maya create the first ‘comics’?
Op-Ed: Cis People’s Feelings Must Not Take Precedence Over Trans Rights.
How I Accidentally Wound Up Running a Outlaw Biker Gang. Undercover ATF agent tells all.
New York City Cops Arrest Three More Proud Boys.
Queer stories of the Week:
Can Trump Actually Erase Transgender Rights? Two Legal Experts Weigh In.
Human Rights Won’t Be Erased, We Support You. We Fight With You.
Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls Being Gay a Gift From God.
LGBTQ characters on television reach record high.
Science Fiction and Fantasy:
LEV GROSSMAN: WHY WE’VE ALWAYS NEEDED FANTASTIC MAPS.
My Genre Makes a Monster of Me.
Can Science Fiction Save the World?
Aliette De Bodard: Cannibalizing A Draft (Or: The Art Of Rewriting).
Awful News:
Conspiracy theories about Soros aren’t just false. They’re anti-Semitic.
Older People Are Worse Than Young People at Telling Fact from Opinion .
Saudis admit killing of journalist was premeditated.
Suspicious packages: Who were the targets, when were they discovered, who intercepted them?
Trump’s anti-trans memo joins a long list of attacks against transgender people.
In Memoriam:
The Funeral Crashers of Seattle – A pair of uninvited party guests used to show up at Seattle events back in the day, steal slices of cake, and get into fights with each other. This story is weird and cool and have a very bizarre surprise midway through!
Dorcas Reilly, inventor of the green bean casserole, a Thanksgiving favorite, has died at 92.
A moment of silence, please, for the mother of green bean holiday goodness.
Gay Games co-founder Paul Mart dies.
Joachim Ronneberg: WWII hero who thwarted Nazi nuclear plant dies at 99. They parachuted into the mountains, skied to the base, blew it up, then eluded 3000 Nazi soldiers to escape to Sweden. In later years, Ronneberg liked to describe his team’s harrowing escape as “a good skiing weekend.”
Joachim Ronneberg: Norwegian who thwarted Nazi nuclear plan dies.
Things I wrote:
Transforming Otters and Traveling Trees.
Pure unbounded love thou art, or an ex-evangelical looks at trans hate in the church.
What’s spooky for me may not be spooky for you.
Videos!
Courthouse security footage shows Lewis County Judge R.W. Buzzard chase after two inmates who attempted to escape his courtroom in Chehalis, Wash., on Oct. 16, 2018:
https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/state/washington/article220552130.html/video-embed
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Man sets fire to parents’ home while trying to kill spider with a blowtorch:
https://abcnews.go.com/video/embed?id=58728855
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Ghostly Grimpoteuthis Octopus Glides By ROV Hercules:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Panic! At The Disco: It’s Almost Halloween:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Ty Herndon: “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” Official Music Video:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
What’s spooky for me may not be spooky for you
I was reminded of this incident by two different events recently. First, after a few weeks of working on my Halloween playlist, I took a dip into a couple of music streaming services to see what they were serving up on various Halloween channels. The other was a series of disturbing dreams I had in the wee small hours of a recent morning.
Quick digression: the psychological definition of a nightmare is an unpleasant dream evoking an emotional response which disturbs the sleep cycle. It doesn’t necessarily have to be scary to be a nightmare as far as psychologists are concerned, but it does have to actually make you wake up to qualify as a nightmare. So while colloquially we usually think of nightmares as bad dreams, usually invoking fear or despair, other kinds of emotions can be involved.
So, I’ve more than once had a nightmare where I woke up extremely angry. And that was very disturbing, especially during those initial moments of waking up where you don’t quite realize it was only a dream. I had a new one, this time, I woke up extremely annoyed. Three times in one night. The first two didn’t really have any element most people would think of a spooky: I was trying to set up some sound equipment for some kind of party or concert, and someone kept moving my toolbox full of patch cables. There were a number of people in the dream, most of whom I haven’t seen in person in many years. And they were all being uncharacteristically unhelpful. The second one involved someone I didn’t recognize who kept trying to make me go to this place I also didn’t recognize and pack up things that had been left behind by someone. Oddly, once I gave in, I recognized all of the blankets and towels (which were only a subset of the items) as ones that had belonged to my family when I was a child and a teen-ager. The third one was like a combination: I was walking somewhere intending to retrieve something I needed, and I noticed an open door of an apartment, I think, and inside I saw scattered around clothes that belong to me. When I was checking out the place and gathering things, people kept wandering in to try to take stuff from me—and they people each had these weird glowing eyes and I was absolutely convinced that they were undead or something similar.
Even then, when I woke up, I wasn’t feeling fear, but extreme annoyance that I had to deal with weird creatures and someone stealing my clothes when I really just wanted to go get the thing—whatever it was—that I had started out looking for. (And no, I don’t need any dream analysis. My subconscious is never subtle. I know what I’m feeling anxiety about right now.)
The thing was, even though my feeling at each awakening was annoyance—neither anger nor fear—there were still moments while I was waking up where I felt that disturbing confusion about what was real and what wasn’t. Which is its own kind of spooky.
Many Halloween playlists I see on various streaming services or that people post often contain songs that I don’t think are spooky at all. Many seem to be chosen because the title of the song has a tenuous connection to some spooky concepts, while the lyrics of the song are often just standard pop fare.
I happen to believe that a Halloween playlist should consist of tracks where the content of the track has some connection to ideas, moods, et cetera, that people associate with Halloween, trick or treating, monsters, and so forth. I make exceptions for instrumental tracks from movies and such that I personally find spooky. I realize that most of those don’t seem spooky if you don’t recognize where they are from (but some are very eery and really set a spooky mood even when you don’t recognize their source). Anyway, here is my 2018 Halloween playlist:
1. “It’s alive!” From the Young Frankenstein soundtrack. This isn’t a song, it’s the dialog for one of the funniest scenes in the movie, when Dr Frahnk-in-steen finds out that he put an abnormal brain in the body of his creation.
2. “Monster Mash” A blue grass cover of the classic Halloween song by a band called Hayseed Dixie. It’s quite fun.
3. “Science Fiction Double Feature” From the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the campy lyrics describe several classic sci fi thriller movies.
4. “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” by Julie Brown. “Everybody run! The Homecoming Queen’s got a gun!” and “…it’s like the whole school was totally coked or something!”
5. “Anything Can Happen On Halloween” by Tim Curry from the movie The Worse Witch. A fun song.
6. “Thriller” by Michael Jackson (with narration in the middle by Vincent Price). A classic for Halloween. And you can dance to it!
7. “GhostBusters (I’m Not Afraid” by Fallout Boy. An interesting cover/re-imagining of the original Ghostbusters them recorded for the new GhostBusters movie.
8. “Rest in Peace” from Once More, With Feeling, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode. “Whisper in a dead man’s ear doesn’t make it real.”
9. “Bad Moon Rising” by Mourning Ritual. A very creepy re-imagining of the old Creedence Clearwater Revival hit that I first heard in one of the spookiest, creepiest episodes of the Teen Wolf TV series. I can’t hear this song without reliving the scenes where Void Stiles was doing various horrific things.
10. “Monster Mash (featuring Black Magic” by Halloween FX Productions. A cute cover of the Halloween classic.
11. “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space” from Little Shop of Horrors just fun!
12. “Haunted Honeymoon Main Title” by John Morris. A spooky instrumental from one of my favorite comedies ever. Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, and Dom DeLuis in a hilarious send-up of 30s mystery radio shows and spooky forties movies.
13. “Teen Wolf Main Theme” by Dino Meneghin & Bloody Beetroots. The theme for the Teen Wolf series is just some really dramatic music.
14. “Theme from the Ghost and Mr. Chicken” – if you aren’t familiar with this comedy send up of various Hitchcock-esque movie tropes starring Don Knotts, you really need to Netflix it or something. And the organ music is suitably spooky and silly, at the same time.
15. “”Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” Yes, the theme song from the original cartoon series.
16. “Dark Shadows” the original eerie, spooky, haunting theme song from the ’60s gothic horror soap opera.
17. “Funeral March of a Marionette” an orchestral piece which was used as the theme for the old Alfred Hitchcock show.
18. “The Munster’s Theme” by Jack Marshall. A tiki-fied cover of the them song for the 1960s horror comedy series.
19. “Mamushka” by Raul Julia and Marc Shaiman. The silly show-stopper song from the theatrical Addams Family movie.
20. “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers. The original, classic Halloween Novelty song.
Pure unbounded love thou art, or an ex-evangelical looks at trans hate in the church
Before I get further, let me get a couple of disclaimers out of the way: I have considered myself an ex-Baptist and an ex-Christian for a long time, so some people will want to dismiss anything I say on these topics out of hand. On the other hand, I learned my deep sense of social justice from that church and more specifically their holy book. I was the kind of nerd who read the Bible, on my own, cover-to-cover more than once (and had rather large swaths of it memorized). I have often said I didn’t leave the church, the church drove me (a gay man) away.
One of the big problems I had, again and again, was the many times that teachers and leaders in the church would insist that god’s love and mercy were unconditional—and then they would lay out a whole bunch of conditions that one must meet to earn that love. At first they said you had to believe in him order to get his love and mercy. And don’t forget obey him, or you won’t receive his love. And obey him in the right way, not the way other churches say to do it, or you won’t receive his love. And ignore these parts of the holy book, but these other parts you must interpret exactly as we say, or you won’t receive his love.
That’s an awful lot of conditions one must meet to qualify for supposedly unconditional divine love.
It’s not just unconditional divine love that the fundamentalist evangelicals don’t understand. They have a similar misapprehension of civil rights. Tony Perkins heads to Fox News to defend Trump administration’s latest attack on trans rights. This takes a little bit to unpack. If you missed the news this weekend, the New York Times got hold of a memo from the department of Health and Human Services that outlines how the government could erase all trans rights: ‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration. More details became available quickly thereafter: The Trump Administration Wants to Define Gender as Biological Sex at Birth.
An important clue in this memo is the assertion that previous definitions of sex “allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.”
Tony Perkins mention above is the leader of the Family Research Council, an evangelical fundamentalist hate group that spends all its time an energy not on helping families, but rather on attacking gay rights and transgender rights and so forth. And he has made a very similar argument for years: gay, lesbian, and trans people don’t deserve civil rights protections.
Which means he doesn’t understand what a civil right is: rights aren’t deserved. You have them because you exist, period. They aren’t privileges. The Declaration of Independence referred to rights as “inalienable”—they can’t be transferred or removed. We can argue about what is or isn’t a right, but not who has them. Everyone has them. The moment you argue that some categories of people shouldn’t have their rights protected, well, that’s taking you a very long way down the fascist road.
And it isn’t something that Christians should be fighting for. They are commanded to love everyone, including their enemies. And as the Sermon on the Mount makes clear, love isn’t just about warm fuzzy feelings, it’s action. Love means lifting people up. Love means standing up for people. Love means doing good for people who disagree with you. Love means not just taking care of your own, but taking care of everyone who needs help.
Perkins and his ilk justify their opposition to the rights of transgender people by frequently making the claim that the Bible clear says that there are only two genders. It is true that the Bible frequently refers to two genders, but none of those references say that those two are the only possibilities, nor does it give a definition of those genders. While some portions make a big deal about what sorts of behaviors are appropriate for one gender or the other, other passages contradict those notions. And there there are a few places where the text asserts very insistently that gender is unimportant. Such as:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
—Galatians 3:28, Holy Bible, King James Version
Which seems to back the notion that god’s love really is unconditional, so maybe his so-called followers should stop trying to enforce divisions.
Note: The title comes from the hymn “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” by Charles Wesley, #2 in the 1956 Baptist Hymnal
Font Folly 