Gentlemen, may I suggest that you encourage your ladies to hie themselves over to EpBot and read her post "Everything You Never Needed To Know etc."?
As a public service, my husband wants to point out that your female types can save time if they just take their shirts off before they get to the computer. Don't forget the measuring tape.
Just sayin'
Seriously gals, you want to read this.
"For all the things women will stand up for and get pissed off about, it surprises the hell out of me that no one has done anything about it yet. Instead of burning bras, they should have been tailoring them."
Preach it, sister!
Honestly, I think we have both the appeal and the natural failure of progressives in a nutshell. Righteous indignation feels awesome and it's sure fun to protest, but actually getting a bespoke bra business off the ground entails risk, work, self-discipline, and at least a passing familiarity with how the real world works.
Will it be the ongoing Gosnell trial? The failure to pass the gun-control bill? President Obama's subsequent temper tantrum? Perhaps the fact that the ricin terrorist is a Democrat? Or will it be the increasing possibility that the Boston terrorist is not a white-skinned Tea Party Christian dude?
Best choice is probably not to cover any of them.
Hey! Look over there! It's a lost dog sign!
hattip to the husband for the snark.
Hence my utter bemusement at the media chatterers carrying on because somehow, in the process of selecting a Pope, they ended up with a gentlemen who believes in Catholic doctrine, rather than a progressive Gaia-worshiping feminista.
Yes! Shocking news: Pope is Catholic!
Oy.
One of the librarians thought she'd check it out (she likes romances) as one of the blurbs claimed that the "hot cowboy" was "to die for."
Another demurred: "You know who did the best hot cowboys? Janet Daley."
Of course I had to correct that. Everyone knows that Josh Whedon did the best hot cowboys:
Amiright?
Now if I could just remember which House had those colors. Oh right: Vorob'yev or Vordarian
I could see Kareen falling for this one; or at least tolerating him For The Good of Barrayar. Hmm... I might have to re-read Barrayar; I don't remember what Vordarian looked like.
(1) Blue and gold. Also: no beard.
On the other hand, the busy-body, meddling impulse1 which attempts to take away everyone's Diet Coke is another matter. So in the hope2 that at least a handful of folks will ask "Okay, yes, but will it work?" here's the current data on the rates of murder and injury by assault weapons, the rates of murder and injury by all other guns, the rates of mass killings, and the rates of murder and injury by other weapons.
Wm. Briggs Firearm Homicides Dropping. Assault Weapons Ban Not Correlated With Decrease In Homicides.
For the reading-impaired, I will summarize. Something: cultural? legal? demographic? has caused the murder rate by any means to spike in the mid 60s. Something else caused it to start dropping in mid-90s, before the passing of The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, and it has continued to drop throughout the mid-2000s, after the ban was repealed. The most common murder (or attempted murder) weapon is a handgun, and no data exists that sorts out "assault weapons" deaths (and attack) from all other guns, including rifles, various hunting guns, etc. But go read for yourself. Please.
The main reason the First Amendment to the Constitution exists is not so silly women can write (and read) Fifty Shades of Gray, and even sillier men can get Penthouse and internet porn. We put up with them so that we can write (and read) reports of government corruption and show up at town meetings and demonstrate against incompetent representatives. It exists for us to post scurrilous cartoons mocking our corrupt boob of a President3. We undermine it at our peril.
The main reason that the Second Amendment exists is not so that our local bow hunter can shoot Hillary the Deer4 and I get tasty venison sausage. It's so we can take up arms against an oppressive government if we need to. If "they come for the Jews" (or that nice lesbian couple next door) we don't have to hide the targets in the basement, we can shoot the Nazis. And the would-be Nazis know it. It's the reason Mayor Palin could draw a line through the "rape kit purchase" item on the city budget. A rape kit isn't made out of bannanas. They don't go bad if they're not used. If you live in a state where your sisters are armed you don't have to go hat in hand to the government: Please nice Senator! Please pay so that we can (maybe) prosecute the guy who assaulted me. Pretty please?. We can just shoot the would-be rapists. And they know it.
It's probably a lost cause, but just this once, think it through: Will it work? How?
1. I still say it's more powerful than the sex drive. There exist people who've actually given up sex.
2. Probably vain. We live in a scientifically--no, make that rationally--impaired age. Worse, it's as if we've decided that the old tribal standby (which my dad has observed commonly in Islamic countries, but I expect it's cross-cultural) that having said we've done something = it's as good as having done it. If I write as if it's true; it is! Yay!
3. Plenty to chose from: the cartoons, and the Presidents.
4. You name your useless predatory parasite whatever you want; I'll name mine. I read Rabbit Hill. Stupid deer was welcome to eat the plants to the ground, just not rip them up by the roots and kill them.
- Text::City of Ember re-read with the Mite.
So let's start by acknowledgeing that elitist blood-sucking parasites who treat human beings as their due chattel, to use, enslave, or use up at their pleasure ought to be monsters, or at least villains (I'm no socialist). Even if vampirism "really" is all about sex (could modern lit. crit. be more boringly predictable?), Count Dracula is still a serial rapist. So no: Not the good guy.
Consider the dual nature of what vampires could be. In the realm of speculative fiction: are they SF or are they fantasy? Science fictional vampirism can be a kind of disease (fast zombies), or a parasitic infection (c.f. Mr. Westerfeld's Peeps), or even an alien parastic infection (Stargate). As Stargate so ably demonstrated, pace Augustine, any alien-seeming creature, whether from some undiscovered earthly abyssal depth, or a far-off star, is, if a person, capable of being a brother. That is, created by God, and therefore capable of knowing God, that is to say, the good, and figuring out how to become, say Tok'Ra. For the non-Stargate fen, that means finding a way for the mind-controlling alien to legitimately share the host's mind and body with said host's full consent. Or, as the one-track-mind literati would put it: marriage, not rape. The needing-to-sustain itself with blood, even human blood, isn't enough in and of itself for villainy. Dietary peculiarities don't justify murder. Get a job; buy the stuff wholesale: 'nuff said. If Orthodox Jewry and the vegans can manage it, so can the vamp.
Ah, but what if, they're fantastical in nature? Supernatural vampires presuppose a super-nature, and depending on the setting that means dealing with God or His storytelling equivalent. And not simply as "this is something people believe, to which the author will give a passing nod to for the sake of characterization and world-building," but as a reality the author and reader must address. (Try to remember the last novel where a character prayed, and his prayer was answered. Happens all the time in real life, but not, apparently in SF. Maybe there's a special force field) For better or worse, the traditional vampire is a kind of devil, and if the author is going to have his vampire vulnerable to crosses and holy water, the Christian God who made the world, loved it, and died for it, is going to have to be on stage too. For the most part, that leaves the door wide-open for "only bad vampires" because they're Really Just Devils, but not quite. More anon, after the obvious question: This is fantasy, right? Why shouldn't there be an imaginary world with no God, and demonic monsters?
There can: Josh Whedon's vampires in the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer T.V. series are perhaps the best-known rationalistic supernatural vampires (Jim Butcher's are the best written, but don't really apply1 here.) At the moment of near death, when the human is weak and terrified, the vampire uses blood-, fear- and/or death-magic to bring across a fellow demon to possess the body. Because humans are amphibian: both spiritual and fleshly creatures; our memories can exist both in the soul, and as cellular data embedded in the physical structures of our brain. The demon moves, as it were, into a fully-furnished apartment. Being a hate-filled devil-thing, of course, all those loving memories of family and friends are pure torture; especially as every time said family (or friends) appear, neurons fire and memories are freshly released. Gollum voice: "...it burns us, my Precioussss! Burnssss!" So one of the first things a newly minted vampire does is kill off anyone near and dear to the host. Continuing the theme, there'd be absolutely no reason for garlic to work, but any traditional defense against demons themselves ought to be just the ticket, as the vampire is a kind of halfling: partly decaying human flesh maintained indefinitely by the blood-magic of the demon, part pure demon. Mr. Whedon never really seemed to have thought this through, or perhaps it was just the inherently sloppy nature of serialized TV storytelling. What souls really are, the importance of choice/will, why the power of True Love (and not just Eros) should be effective, etc. never really had a chance to shine through. And by the time the spin-off series rolled around, the demons turned into aliens and all bets were off. Be that as it may, however, those early Buffy vampires were pure monsters, and if this were the only model of What-A-Vampire is, the notion of "good vampires" would be repugnant, too.
Only if, however the human host's soul is utterly displaced, or destroyed by a possessing demon. Because if not, then the potential for good vampires abound as the human finds a way (magically or otherwise) to regain control of his body. If only, as in The Silver Kiss so that he can force himself to walk into the sunlight. If the human remains entirely; if there is no demonic possession, then the good vampire becomes a necessity if the story isn't to be utterly banal. We're back to a mere change in diet (albeit an addictive one)both creating and justifying serial killers.
Ultimately, monsters are either monsters: devils from hell, rabid animals; or people. If they're people, then they can chose to be monsters.. or not. And it's in that space, the "or not" that hang the best stories. Some of which, as it turns out, are going to have a vampire, trying to be good. Their success or failure depends not just on the writerly skills the author brings to the table, but on his own moral clarity and perceptiveness of the human condition. It is perhaps because the "or not" is so very stark in the case of vampires, that the failings of the average modern writer (It's all sex! And oppression! Can I be more conformist and boring? Let's find out!) when trying to tell a good vampire story seem so glaring.
1. Jim Butcher's monsters use the moment of near death when the Will is weakest, to tempt a human into chosing to accept demonic possession. His is a version of the Hans Christian Anderson story about the young prince who despises Adam and Eve for losing everybody the Garden of Eden2. No matter how it plays out, it's devil's bargain: either the soul is displaced entirely and immediately (Black Court), or partially, at which point the mortal has to resist the live-in demon; one slip and then he's entirely and immediately replaced (Red Court), or partially and incrementally until he's gone (White Court). It's usually a losing battle but it doesn't have to be, which makes for the possibility of both monsters (the demons won), and "good vampires", i.e. people who've put themselves in the way of hideous temptation, but resist.
2. The Garden of Paradise
- Text::Weber's Out of the Dark: Good beginning, great middle, v. iffy D. ex. Mach. end
This post is mainly because my mom wants to see the card and the image size is gargantuan.
Since it's a handmade one-off, and not meant for reprinting, anything that looks like it might be gold or silver paint, or slightly sparkly... is.
Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, and best wishes for a happy new year (normally I'd write "happy and prosperous" but we re-elected Clueless McWeasel and the Chicago gang, so no joy there)
