02.08.10
Posted in Writing at 11:47 pm by JC
Last week I had two days of fabulous writing goodness pouring from brain to page, and today it’s back again to writing by mental cheese grater. I don’t know why sometimes it’s easy and there are words and words and words and sometimes it’s painful and there are no words to show for it. Or at least no good words to show for it. The good news is I’ve passed the halfway mark on novel three (woo…) and if I can only finish before angels and dragons become the next big thing (too late) I’m hoping it’ll do well querying.
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02.03.10
Posted in Reviews, Society at 6:28 pm by JC
In a New York Times article from awhile back (like May), Steve Jobs said in regards to the Kindle:
It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.
I didn’t realize that I didn’t read anymore. But now I’ve been reading about the iPad (and I’m really going to resist commenting on the name, other than this aside in which I remind everyone that the name is infinitely commentable) and the pricing wars between Amazon and Mcmillan, and have decided that the modern world of book publishing, particularly in regards to the e-book market, is all fascinating and somewhat confusing and frustrating.
I own a Kindle. I love it muchly; it’s easy to use, carries more books than even I can read on vacation, is lightweight and very portable, and I was shocked by how much I just didn’t miss trying to read paper books in which the type was so close to the spine I had to practically rebreak the cover every time I turned a page. If, on the Kindle, I could organize my books into digital bookshelves (like I do at home – I have my own whacked out system that they will not come up with on their own), loan the books to friends, flip to other pages easily, and see the covers (and no, Nook’s “if I squint I can almost tell what that is” inch tall cover display doesn’t count), it would be perfect. Oh, and if I didn’t have this sense of impending doom that eventually I won’t be using a Kindle anymore (either because of tech envy or Kindle just goes the way of the 8track) and I will have lost a few hundred books that can only be read on an obsolete device. But, in the meantime, my bookshelves are staying at a comfortably groaning stasis, which makes my marriage a far better place to be. So the Kindle will stay.
Who knew? Technology and literature together make a powder keg. Oh. Wait. They always have by themselves; why would conjoining them make a difference?
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01.20.10
Posted in Reviews at 9:00 pm by JC
I’m about half way through, and haven’t had this much fun reading in… well, in many many novels. Example line that made me put the book down I was laughing so hard:
“He tore his eyes away from the tops of those remarkable breasts of hers and tried to think unpleasant thoughts of particularly horrible things, like overcooked vegetables and cut-rate wine.”
See? You can’t not laugh. Or, at least you can’t if you think Victorian England, gastronomy, dry humor, and urban fantasy are some of life’s greatest wonders… but didn’t think you’d ever get them in one book. And since those are four of my favorite things, it was like Ms Carriger wrote this book for me.
It’s fabulous! Go buy this book! You need it!
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01.18.10
Posted in Personal at 11:15 pm by JC
I find myself defending this too often, so I’m posting online my thoughts on food and eating healthy. I’ve been thinking and reading and listening a lot about this since I quit my job in an effort to become a more healthy person, and food is an integral part of that. Here’s what I’ve learned:
1. Holy cow, everybody says something different. You can find a statistic, a doctor, a study, and a politician to tell you anything is satan in food form… and that anything is healthy.
2. So… you have to pick out what makes sense to you, do that, and pay attention what happens as a result.
Kinda like… everything else in life.
But here’s some things I’ve gleaned from my Mission: Impossible – figure out what’s healthy.
- There’s vitamins and minerals that make your eyes and skin and teeth healthy. Those are important. But that’s not got much to do with weight. Weight has to do with how your body uses and stores energy, and that’s a combination of 3 things: protein, fat, and carbohydrates.
- You need all three of these things. Protein builds muscle, fat allows your joints to move smoothly, carbs provide blood sugar for your brain.
- Different types of carbohydrates produce different insulin responses in the body, and this is where things get complicated and everybody tells you something different…
“When you eat a food containing carbohydrates, the digestive system breaks down the digestible ones into sugar, which then enters the blood. As blood sugar levels rise, special cells in the pancreas churn out more and more insulin, a hormone that signals cells to absorb blood sugar for energy or storage… A new system, called the glycemic index, aims to classify carbohydrates based on how quickly and how high they boost blood sugar… Foods with a high glycemic index, like white bread, cause rapid spikes in blood sugar. Foods with a low glycemic index, like whole oats, are digested more slowly, causing a lower and gentler change in blood sugar.” – Havard School of Public Health
If you want to read arguments that will last until forever, google “glycemic load.” Basically I’m going with two things:
- Carbs are not evil; they are healthy and we should eat them. Just most people in America eat too many carbs per day and double the pain by eating the kinds that cause glycemic index freakouts.
- Vegetables are carbs, and for the vitamin and mineral content as well as low glycemic load are a much more fabulous way of consuming those necessary carbs than flour, regardless of whether or not that flour is “whole grain”
I’ve read in several places now (and been told by a homeopathic dietitian, but my cautious fandom and loving distrust of homeopathic anything is another post) that a lot of people who aren’t necessarily gluten intolerant or have celiac’s disease are still gluten reactive. (My personal take on this goes with the idea that man was around a long time before we became farmers, and a lot of us still haven’t evolved into grain-eaters, but that’s just the theory that sounds logical to me.) Basically, there are theories that say that in a lot of people, gluten can cause minor inflammation on a cellular level. So, from what I understand, a small part of the population was born with a body that handles gluten, no sweat. A small part of the population was born a body that flips a gasket when fed gluten. The rest of us have bodies that don’t keel over, but would run more smoothly without gluten.
So, to sum all that up, if I’m getting my very necessary carbs from bread instead of spinach, I’m not getting the vitamins and minerals, getting a higher insulin spike, and, as I’m gluten semi-intolerant, causing my body minor internal havoc.
Back to my title.
So, I’m not low-carb. I eat apples every day. And vegetables. And sometimes I eat pea soup (which is a lentil, not a vegetable). But I can’t remember the last time I had pasta, whole grain or otherwise. At first I thought this was a big deal, a huge sacrifice. Then I went Paleo for a month and that really did change the way I think about food. It was amazing how much in week two I thought I couldn’t live without a Snickers bar (but I did). But what was more amazing was how I came out the other side not caring that much about cookies, candy, sugary-drinks… pretty much the only things I still wanted that I’d been denied was alcohol and cheese. The whole experience made me a firm believer in the idea that sugary carbs mess with our brains in a serious way. 30 days of Paleo made eating healthy seem not like a chore, but something that I want to do. Bok choy tastes better than pizza, and right now if you asked me which one I want, I can with no hesitation tell you bok choy. A month of paleo a pain in the butt to do, but from a having done it perspective, I can’t recommend it highly enough. (Just don’t cheat… there seems to be a very strong correlation between the people who cheat and the people who don’t get it after it’s over. Week two is freaking hard. Put the cookie down.)
In the end, it all comes down to that commercial from the 80s… sing with me now!
You are what you eat from your head down to your feet
Things like meat and fish and eggs you need to build up muscle tissue
Uh Oh! Appitite control? More Protein! We need energy.
All the motors in your body need a lot of fuel to go on
Things like carbohydrates fats and proteins, vitamins and so on.
What’s left over forms the building blocks you need, indeed, to grow on!
Yes you are what you swallow so the next time you feel hollow
Don’t just fill your face with any old kind of treat!
This goes for every kid or 6 foot athlete
Yes you really are is what you eeeeeeeeat!
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01.16.10
Posted in Society at 3:14 pm by JC
The key to literary success? Be a man — or write like one. – By Julianna Baggott
Interesting article on an issue near and dear to my heart: misogyny within the storytelling community. Baggott touches on the side of the issue that I find the most disturbing, that recognized books “are not only written by men but also have male themes, overwhelmingly… war, boyhood, adventure.” As if writing about childbirth, love, community, and other “women’s issues” are somehow unworthy of praise. Not to say that women don’t go to war and men don’t fall in love, but I am sick of living in a world in which to be considered equal, I have to live up to a man’s definition of strength – be physically strong, fight well (kick-ass heroines anyone?… which, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE them, but that’s not the only way to be a strong female character), earn a lot of money, be a CEO…. If I’m strong because I’m mystical, compassionate, and good at working with people instead of mowing them down, clearly I’m not a feminist, or at least not equal to somebody logical, authoritarian, and violent.
James Cameron Hates America – by Tom Shone
Dude, the man who wrote Rambo and Titanic? Did you know he’s a Kanuck?? Yup. And he hates America. At least according to extreme right wing sites such as Movieguide (which I’ll get to in a moment. This might be my new favorite website to mock). I haven’t seen Avatar yet, but so far I’ve heard that while it’s stunning fabulousity is earning bajillions of dollars, it is a desecration of all known human values for its (a) America hating, people hating, God hating, capitalism hating left-wing madness and its (b) white-messiah-complex same old right-wing-racist-in-liberal-clothing storyline. Dude. I totally need to see this movie for myself. How can that many people possibly be offended all at once and it not be a South Park episode?
Movieguide
Umm… Let me start this by saying that I don’t agree with the way movies are currently rated, including items like two uses of “fuck” isn’t, in my opinion, less appropriate for children than decapitated heads being tossed over a castle wall (see http://www.mpaa.org/Ratings_Rules.pdf pg 8 for ruling on cuss words; see LOTR: Return of the King for a PG-13 movie with decapitated heads being catapulted over a wall) and how is it possible that Cassanova and Inglourious Basterds have the same rating? And how is Hostel not NC-17… while Clerks had to appeal their original NC-17 designation to get an R?
So… a new rating system would, in my opinion, not be inappropriate.
However.
Movieguide has a very special rating system for people who want to know if watching this movie may torpedo their chances at heaven. Again, I’m actually cool with this (I certainly wouldn’t mind if somebody put together a pagan movieguide to help me decide what to see and what’s going to just make me angry). What I don’t understand is, why in their Christian guide, they felt the need to warn people if the movies have themes that are: communist, environmentalist, feminist, internationalist, politically correct, and/or socialist. Does Christ hate the environment and love capitalism? I don’t remember that part of the Bible where Jesus said “you’re welcome for the healing; that’ll be $200.”
But what I really love about this site is the rating system they use, a shorthand involving 29 different elements like ‘O’ for “Occult worldview, occult elements or Satanism”, all of which can be increased by adding Os, so “OOO” means it REALLY ups the Occult, as opposed to O which has some occult and OO which is… fair to midlin’ occult? So you can have a movie with a rating that looks like: PaPaPa, PCPC, EE, FRFR, CoCo, AcapAcapAcap, C, B, O, LLL, VVV, S, NN, A, DD, MM (yes, that’s an actual rating… for Avatar) which translates as:
* PaganPaganPagan,
* 2xPoliticallyCorrect,
* 2xEnvironmentalism,
* “Strong Non-Christian worldview, heresy or false religious elements”,
* 2xCommunism,
* 3xAnti-capitalism/anti-wealth/politics of envy,
* “Mild or light Christian worldview or elements, Gospel witness, redemptive elements, or positive reference to Jesus Christ, Christianity or a Christian church or service” (apparently the movie gets confused at one point?),
* “Mild or light biblical or moral worldview, principles, perspective, or character” (continue the movie’s self-delusion that it isn’t hellbound)
* Occult
* “Numerous obscenities and profanities (more than 25)”
* “Very strong, extreme or graphic violence”
* “Implied adultery, promiscuity, sexual perversion or sexual immorality”
* “Partial or brief nudity”
* “Light, brief or some alcohol use”
* “Smoking and light illegal drug use and/or illegal drug selling”
* “Strong or much miscellaneous immorality” (for those times when the above list isn’t long enough)
Unfortunately, Avatar doesn’t have my favorite shorthand designation, which is Ho for “homosexual worldview or homosexuality (incl. sodomy & lesbianism)”. I’d really love to see a movie with a HoHoHo rating; that would totally make my day.
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