Budgetary Woes: The Crazy World of Grad School and My Stupid Ideas
(This post is a temporary aside. Don’t worry. You’ll have science fiction and fantasy nonsense again soon. I promise. Three manga reviews are coming up, plus my thoughts on the first three episodes of A Game of Thrones from HBO will hit the waves next week. For now, enjoy this random nonsense about my life.) I am an occasional idiot, depending on who you ask (some might say I’m a frequent idiot, but that’s really not relevant to this post). Graduate school has taught me a number of rather amusing things: the value of green tea, good conversation, and budgeting. It’s the last of these that has me rather perplexed this summer, since I, in fact, did a piss poor job of budgeting, leaving me in a rather compromised position for July. The issue isn’t that I won’t have enough money, just that I won’t have it in time. It’s a fun predicament. I’d love to tell you all about how we grad students don’t get paid much, but you already know that, either because you are a grad student, you’ve been one, or you have friends who are or have been. But I don’t want to get into that. The purpose of this post is to lambaste you all with my ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes, after which you are free to say “yeah, that’s dumb” and “don’t do it.” The ideas are as follows (after the fold): Convert The World in the Satin Bag into an ebook and sell it on all the ebook sites for $0.99 The problem? It’s an old book. It’s a rough book. And should I really be selling fiction to make money? Probably not, but there it is. Place some short fiction on this blog and ask for donations I’ve thought of doing something along these lines recently, but not necessarily for monetary reasons (see the previous idea too). Something tells me that a lot of you would like to actually see my short fiction, since some of it is supposed to be quite good. It’s also started to feel rather ridiculous to me to offer up my fiction to publications that pay next to nothing when I have a larger audience built in here who might give me their time, comments, and (maybe) money. But that’s also a side issue, I suppose. The idea still stands, though. I have a blog. I have you folks who read this, and maybe you all would like to read the things I write and give me a buck if you like it. No? Get a part time job Lucky me, there is a job at the local Books-A-Million that I am qualified for. Working in a bookstore you say? I’ve never done it, and I love books. Oddly enough, Books-A-Million actually asks if you read, unlike some stores that shall remain nameless. Sell my soul to a Tytherian warlord Why not, right? They’re buff, hairy, full of spunk, and in good need of souls so they can wield unspeakable magic and what not. And that’s it. I’ve got nothing else in my repertoire, beyond attempting to make something of my freelance career. The problem with the first two is, as I’ve pointed out, that it feels somewhat wrong to want to place fiction on this blog or in stores with the express purpose of earning money. It’s also a rather dumb idea when you get right down to it. Very few people actually make money selling fiction, but I’ve got a lot of great stories in my story folder and the first thing that popped in my head was to put it up here and see what would happen. But let’s face it, I’m probably going to try to get that part time job, because it’s in a bookstore and I like books. What do you think?
A Disturbing Vision of Womanhood
Teaching is a strange thing. Last semester, I taught a small unit on the women’s rights movement, during the course of which I discovered some rather strange and/or disturbing things about how young people (in Florida, I should add) view women’s rights and women in general. Most views are understandable: they don’t quite understand what the feminist writers I present them with are complaining about; after all, they live in a world that doesn’t feel like the places Dale Spender and others were talking about, even though, as I try to point out to them, things aren’t as good as they want to think they are (women still get paid less than men and high-power positions are still dominated by men even though it appears that more women are attending college). But it’s crucial to explain to these students that things are not as they should be — that equality does not yet exist. Most of them are simply ignorant, as we all are at 17 or 18 years old. They just don’t know what the real world is like in the United States, and you can’t blame them for not understanding Dale Spender’s irritation or why feminists (those evil, dirty feminists) are still fighting for things like pay, rights, and so on. But then there are those with views that make me wonder about the world in which we are raising them. These are the kinds of students who say we should accept the world as it is and stop worrying about it. They don’t see the point in anything Spender is saying. Most of these students are women. While some men in my classes do criticize Spender or other feminists for the ways in which they make their points, only a couple of male students in my classes have expressed sexism in explicit terms (one student turned in a paper which contained five pages about why women should know their place and let men run things). The women are who I’m most concerned with, because nothing I say to the sexist males in my class is going to change them, and it’s not my responsibility to change them. I can only give them the facts and hope they do something good with them. The female students who resign themselves to the world-as-it-is, however, are part of something more disturbing. Maybe they’ve lost hope. Maybe they’d grown up in a community where women’s rights are trampled on and the world doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Maybe they see the slow crawl at which rights movements succeed as a sign that things just aren’t like they used to be (even if that is an illogical position). Regardless of the reasons, it’s a situation I’ve yet to find a good way of dealing with. How do you explain to a young woman that she doesn’t have to settle for second best? That change will come, even if it’s slow, and that without more voices demanding that change, it’ll only take longer? Connecting this to SF/F is fairly easy. We’ve had enough discussions in the community about the representation of women in SF/F to last a lifetime. We need to be having those discussions. But the reality is that there are young people growing up who aren’t getting involved either because they don’t think they can make a difference or because they’ve resolved themselves to the way things are. These are people who won’t push for better representation of women in SF/F or in other avenues of “civil” engagement (whatever those might be). This is all led me to wonder what can be done. Would comprehensive “rights” education change things? Should more be done on the civil level to show people that they can make a difference? The question is: what do we do? What do I do as their teacher? It doesn’t feel like it’s my place to play activist, but at the same time, it’s hard to let things stand. A generation of women growing up thinking that it’s okay to accept what they’ve got, rather than asking for what they rightfully deserve…that’s a future I don’t want to live in…
In Defense of Signs (That Shyamalan Alien Invasion Flick)
Every few months someone says something to the effect of: “Signs is such a dumb movie. Why would aliens invade a planet covered in stuff they’re allergic to?” Why, indeed. John Scalzi is the latest in a sea of Signs haters. In a recent AMC column, Scalzi talked about the numerous alien invasion movies we’ve seen over the last few decades and gave each a grade on the A to F scale. He had this to say about Signs: Really, aliens? You invade a planet that is made up of stuff that can melt flesh off your bones? You deserve to be defeated by Joaquin Phoenix and a baseball bat. Stupidest invasion ever. Invasion score: F Well, actually, it’s not that stupid after all. There are two reasons for this: 1) habitable planets are not as common or as easy to get to as we would like, and 2) humans, who consider themselves to be intelligent creatures, routinely invade or inhabit lands that present serious challenges to our well being. I’ll expand these two points below: I. Habitable Planets There may be billions of habitable planets out there, but we also have to remember that those planets are far away from one another. Even an intelligent species with technology far surpassing ours would have trouble traveling between the stars. Their access to other habitable worlds, then, would be severely limited. They might have a few hundred to work with in a reasonable amount of time (even if they do happen to have FTL drives). With this limitation on an “empire,” it’s not unrealistic for aliens to shrug off the dangers of a world covered in materials they are allergic to — water — in an attempt to grab resources they can use — land, metals, fuel, air, and so on. Earth may not be an ideal target for the aliens of Signs, but it is certainly the result of limited options. If you need more space to inhabit, then you’re going to go where such things are available. Humans do this all the time. We live in deserts and places where it gets so cold we have to cover ourselves in layers and layers of clothes. We’ll get back to that in a minute. For now, on to point two. II. Humans Are Dumbasses Too How many nations have tried to invade Afghanistan? Enough that people look at U.S. attempts to conquer the nation and see pending failure. All kinds of countries have invaded other countries and quickly found themselves on the losing end because the “enemy” proved to be more formidable than originally thought or was smart enough to use the terrain to their advantage. In the case of Signs, we can assume that humans figured out the aliens were allergic to water pretty quick and started loading up fire engines and sending civilians to lakes and rivers with super soakers and water balloons. The fact that none of this was in the movie is a separate issue from the criticisms about water allergies. It’s also worth noting that the aliens are not deathly allergic to water. Some people assume that they are because the one alien in the movie gets killed more or less by water, but remember that he was hit with quite a bit of the stuff. One glass or two weren’t involved. Dozens of glasses of water were sprayed all over his body. This would be like getting stung by hundreds of bees, which would kill most humans anyway. Yet, remarkably, we still live in all kinds of places where bees and other stinging/biting/spraying creatures are prevalent, and even where dangerous and aggressive bees (i.e., Africanized bees) have made their homes. To be fair, we created the Africanized bee, which is now “colonizing” northwards; the aliens in Signs were working in the opposite direction. Regardless, the fact still stands that humans are not all that smart either. But on to my third point! III. Maybe It’s in the Clothes While many people have criticized Signs for the fact that the aliens invaded a planet full of stuff they’re allergic to, few have actually talked about the issue of dress. The problem, as it appears to me, isn’t that the aliens are allergic to water; it’s that they came to Earth dressed for the wrong occasion. There may be a lot of interesting (though not necessarily good) reasons for this, but none of them are present in the film. It’s possible the aliens have no sense of nakedness, which would align them more with “the animals” than it would with humanity, but this seems to me to be a somewhat absurd argument to make precisely because they do have some understanding of survival in hostile environments (i.e., they have spaceships, which protect them from the vacuum of space). The question, then, is this: why don’t the aliens in Signs wear something approaching a protective covering? Whether this be in the form of armor or some kind of special wet suit, you’d think these creatures, who have the ability to travel great distances in what seems to be a reasonable amount of time, would have developed something to protect them, at least temporarily (during battle), from materials they are allergic to. This logic would also prevent the immediate revelation that they are allergic to water, which would give the aliens more time to secure themselves on Earth and strategically take down our defenses and leadership. But they don’t wear protective covering at all. Why? I would hazard to guess that they don’t because they intend to mount an immediate and swift attack on our infrastructure — a fact that is also believed by the characters in Signs. Doing so in armor might present challenges. But there is so little that we actually do know about the aliens that it’s hard to say what kind of logic they were operating on. And that’s really the crux of it: Signs never was a film about an alien invasion. Not really.
An Addendum: “Colonizing Space” — It Really Is That Bad
Several days ago I wrote a post called “‘Colonizing Space’ is a Dirty Word: Stop Using It,” which sparked a handful of amusing debates. io9, for instance, essentially plagiarized me on Facebook by not providing attribution for the problematic I initially set up. I say that jokingly, of course. The more interesting response, however, came in the form of a refutation by Larry of OF Blog of the Fallen. His post, and the comments to it, will be the focus of this addendum. Larry’s primary refutation is on the grounds of etymology. When one looks at the creation of the word “colonization” and its roots in Latin, it does, in fact, appear to have a fairly benign usage (“to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect” refers to the Latin root, colere). The modern definition, however, is only benign if you take it literally. To colonize means to settle in a colony (a colony being a group of people who have settled far away from home, but maintain ties with their home country). When taken at face value, that definition appears to have no negative connotations. What exactly is negative about settling far way from home? That’s where the problems arise. Colonization never involved settling uninhabited areas (unless we count the two poles in the mix; but we’d then have to consider the impact on the environment, which humans are adept at destroying). It always referred to the seizure of native lands from native peoples, almost always by excessive aggression, and almost always alongside the formation of racist ideologies and an intensive “civilizing” mission which sought to eradicate indigenous culture, indigenous people, or, more likely, both. Even when one looks at the time period in which the root form emerged, the processes which it referred to were not benign, but in fact involved the same colonialist practices I’ve just described, usually followed by violence in the form of war. When one looks at the barbarian tribes the Romans sought to squash, it’s hard not to see the precursors of what would become European colonialism (and American imperialism). And when one looks farther back in time (the ancient Egyptians, perhaps), one sees that colonization has always been tied to its good friend, conquest. To suggest, then, that “to colonize” can, in fact, be benign is to wash away the extensive history of human aggression towards other human beings which is tied up into the word’s very history. It matters not whether the word was invented with a benign definition, since what it always refers to is not a benign process. Taken farther, the word itself is as much a part of colonialist suppression of complicity as we are seeing today in Mike Huckabee’s absurd claim that Obama’s supposed anti-British-colonialism is somehow a bad thing. Colonialism never wants to be responsible for its own actions. We know this because we’ve seen the U.S. government repeatedly fight against reparations for the various Native American tribes we’ve decimated, stolen from, irradiated, and so on, even to the point of denying some of them the right to be tribes in legal terms. This is a never-ending process of suppression, because complicity means something very troublesome for the human “soul.” But perhaps Larry’s greatest failing is when he moves away from the deep past to a more immediate one (the same colonialist past he accuses me of appropriating “colonization” for): I have to question here if his passion got in the way of his intellect, as with that single sentence, there is the appearance of a curt dismissal of the transformative aspects of colonialism. One might be pardoned if s/he is thinking at this point that Duke is coming close to a paternalist attitude of having to defend the besmirched colonized peoples’ honors whenever that nasty “colonize” word is employed. I do not believe for a moment that is what he means to do, but it can be rather insulting to some to see their own hybrid cultures, which are not clones of the mother country but which instead reflect the complex, myriad ways in which different ethnic groups acted upon one another to transform the colony into something that wasn’t wholly a product of the purported motherland. Perhaps I’m insufficiently Cherokee in my heritage to feel all the outrage conducted upon my people by my other people, the Irish colonists/settlers who moved into the Tennessee River Valley over two centuries ago. All I know is that there was quite a bit of intermarriage and exchanging of foods, products, and ideas between the groups; exploitation certainly took place, but it was far from the only means of cultural interaction. There is a great deal of academic research out there on hybridity and the ways in which indigenous people manipulate culture and so forth for their own uses. Larry’s desire to focus on the transformative qualities of colonialism, however, is misplaced, not least because his rhetoric paints a rather disturbing picture of indigeneity by nearly dismissing the extensive levels of subjugation, extermination, cultural annihilation, etc. in exchange for a softer, if not sanitized, vision of indigenous interactions with colonists. His argument is akin to suggesting that we should focus more on the transformative aspects of a woman’s interactions with her rich, but physically abusive, nearly-rapist husband. Could we say that some good might come out of that relationship? Sure, but that would be a sanitized version of reality, since it gives far too much credit to the side of the story which wouldn’t have existed if the first side had never occurred. For indigenous peoples, this analogy holds true. Nobody asks to be colonized. Nobody asks to have their lands stolen, their people exploited, their cultures suppressed, or their rights denied. These are things that precede all those transformative qualities Larry wants to talk about. Should we talk about them? Certainly, but never without acknowledging that their very existence is predicated upon the destructive impact of colonialism. Even to use Larry’s mention of the Cherokee is
My Post-Oscars Thoughts
The short version of my thoughts would be “grave disappointment, with a side of expected.” I knew before turning the show on that the Academy’s bias against innovative filmmaking would persist. Even the inclusion of special awards for animated pictures only highlights the fact that the Academy is completely unwilling to consider great works of animation as actual movies. There were, of course, a handful of moments where justice was served, but in the end all I could think was: “well, I saw that coming.” Now on to the individual awards: Art Direction Went to: Alice in Wonderland Should have gone to: Inception Why: Because Tim Burton’s film is the same oversaturated crap he’s been producing for a decade. Inception at least attempted to merge the mundane with something seemingly new. That may not be a good argument for Inception, but that still doesn’t change the fact that Alice in Wonderland was little more than a rehash of a familiar form with massive oversaturation of color and a complete lack of originality. Cinematography Went to: Inception Should have gone to: Inception Why: Because the film was bloody beautiful and the things they filmed were so technically amazing as to blow everyone else out of the water. You can probably detect a hint of a bias at this point… Best Supporting Actress Went to: Melissa Leo (The Fighter) Should have gone to: Anyone else. Why: I really can’t stand poor use of accents in acting. Best Animated Short Went to: “The Lost Thing” by Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann Should have gone to: “The Lost Thing” Why: I have no reason. It’s just nice to see one of our own get some recognition by the “big boys.” Best Animated Feature Went to: Toy Story 3 Should have gone to: How to Train Your Dragon Why: Honestly, I think it is a close match, but I prefer the latter simply because I thought the story was heart warming. I like me a feel good movie sometimes. Best Adapted Screenplay Went to: The Social Network by Aaron Sorkin Should have gone to: The Social Network Why: It’s poignant. That’s pretty much all I’ve got for this category. Best Original Screenplay Went to: The King’s Speech by David Seidler Should have gone to: Inception by Christopher Nolan Why: Inception is actually an original screenplay. The King’s Speech isn’t. It’s about people that actually existed. It’s about real events. It’s an adaptation of history books. Inception, however, is not rooted in an actual historical figure, but in mythologies and ideas. The screenplay, as a result, is powerful, well-written, and stunning. Hollywood rarely sees such quality. They seem to like celebrating mediocrity, like The Hurt Locker from last year, which was hardly a decent film at all. Best Supporting Actor Went to: Christian Bale (The Fighter) Should have gone to: Jeremy Renner (The Town) Why: I think Bale is massively overrated, and I don’t think Renner gets the credit he damn well deserves, particularly for The Town. The Hurt Locker may have been a shitty movie, but Renner really did carry it. Best Original Score Went to: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Social Network Should have gone to: Hans Zimmer for Inception Why: The music for Inception is bloody brilliant. It’s as perfect a compliment to the film as any music ever has been. It’s so interwoven into the film that you can’t ignore it as a intimate part of it. So screw the Academy on this one. Hans Zimmer totally got screwed. Best Sound Mixing Went to: Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo, and Ed Novick for Inception Should have gone to: Inception Why: The film sounds wonderful. Have you seen it? No? What’s wrong with you? Best Sound Editing Went to: Richard King for Inception Should have gone to: Inception Why: The same as above. Best Makeup Went to: Rick Baker and Dave Elsey for The Wolfman Should have gone to: The Wolfman Why: The film has some pretty makeup. That about sums it up. Best Costume Design Went to: Colleen Atwood for Alice in Wonderland Should have gone to: Alice in Wonderland Why: Pretty much all of the other options didn’t really offer anything worth recognizing, since they were just reproducing things we’ve already seen (The King’s Speech and True Grit). I’ve never been one to appreciate costume design when it’s only showing me things that already existed. I like originality, which is why I think the award was well placed, even if the film was an awful pile of crap. Best Short Documentary Went to: “Strangers No More” Should have gone to: No idea. Why: I’m not familiar with most of these films, but they all seemed like really important flicks to see (which I’m now going to do). Best Short Film Went to: “God of Love” Should have gone to: No idea. Why: The same as above. The guy who won is a little goofy, though. Best Documentary Feature Went to: Inside Job Should have gone to: Inside Job Why: Anything that points out who was responsible for screwing over the country deserves recognition in my book. Wall Street can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. Best Visual Effects Went to: Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb for Inception Should have gone to: Inception Why: Have you seen it? It’s visually gorgeous, man! The other nominees were decent, but most were a little lackluster (like Harry Potter). Best Film Editing Went to: The Social Network Should have went to: Black Swan or 127 Hours. Why: Honestly, I don’t really care about this category. Best Original Song Went to: “We Belong Together” by Randy Newman (Toy Story 3) Should have gone to: Something someone sang in the gutter somewhere. Why: Randy Newman is to song making what arsenic is to healthy food. He’s awful and his latest song is nothing more than moving lyrics around. It’s awful. Just awful. Please, Mr. Newman, go away. Best Director Went to:
Dastroyanish: A New Boredom-Induced Fantasy Language
Things I do when I get bored: Play stupid flash games on the Interwebs Argue with people about literary conventions and subgenres, like New Weird or Scifi Strange Invent languages on the spot. Thus comes Dastroyanish, a new fantasy language with a current vocabulary of about fifteen words. The funny thing about the language is how it all started: I misspelled a word in another language and decided to roll with it. The word? Hola. Thus comes “hoal,” which obviously means “hello” in Dastroyanish. There is also “anto,” which means, more or less, goodbye. Other phrases: Nan. Van er teuopo. (No. Not a typo.) Puesa er verd da “Hello” is-Dastroyanish. (It is a word for “Hello” in Dastroyanish.) Puesa er langor ist minen mun-fantika. (It is a language for my fantasy world.) Denen eser urprisen. (Don’t be surprised.) Ot: Puesa er langor nomen “Dastroyanish.” (Or: it is a language named Dastroyanish.) Anto, Bilbo. (Goodbye, Bilbo.) Puesare er masr-corios, ect Bilbo. (He is a curious man, that Bilbo.) Dormis-varm. (Sleep well?) Whether I keep up with it is up to speculation at this point. Thus far, I’m having fun. Now the big question is this: have you ever invented a language under unusual circumstances or conditions? Let me know in the comments! The other big question: where the heck does Dastroyanish come from? I have no idea.