What do Laura Ingalls Wilder, Bram Stoker, and Sigmund Freud all have in common?

At Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, there’s a saucer on the counter by the register that holds “I Buy Banned Books” bracelets. Little ceramic squares with glazed photos of the jackets of several well-known banned books on them are strung together on heavy-duty elastic. They cost fifteen bucks.

I’ve been talking myself out of spending the money, but after seeing this list over at Fetch me my axe this morning, I’m gonna get me one.

And I’m going to try to read more of these damn books - I feel like an uncultured eejit.

Banned Book Project

Fellow bloggers, your mission, should you choose to accept it:

These are the 110 top banned books. Bold what you’ve read, italicize what you’ve read part of. Read more.

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Little House on the Fucking Prairie? By Laura “Public Enemy #1″ Ingalls Wilder?

Technorati Tags: banned books, reading, freedom of speech

Mr. Wrong and Mr. Write

One of the books I’m reading about writing is called Chapter After Chapter, by Heather Sellers. In Chapter 4, called “The Book 100,” Sellers recommends reading 100 books of the kind you want to write.

Surely any advice that gives one permission to buy more books is pure genius. So I’ve started amassing my Books 100, mostly in $8 paperback form so as to keep the complaints from Kevin to a dull roar.

I don’t care to pigeon-hole my own writing into one genre, as it seems to have elements of several. But in general, if you absolutely had to call it something, it would be Fantasy. So quite a few of my Books 100 are “urban fantasy,” some are thrillers, some are flat-out horror. All of them have a paranormal bent of some kind. ¹

Many authors read “in their genre” and some studiously avoid it. I can see the pros and cons.

On the one hand, if you have chosen a specific “genre” in which to write, it’s probably because you enjoy reading it. Enjoyment in itself is good enough reason to read something, but it has the added bonus of often being emotionally and creatively motivating.

I also think that the more you read something, the more you learn about it; thus if you read a lot of successful books in a genre, you’re probably going to learn (consciously or not) many things about what makes them so successful.²

On the other hand, there’s always the risk of burn-out. (I love Anne Rice’s world, but by the time I got to the 800th book, I was pretty done with vampires for a while.) It’s also possible to read so much fiction of a certain type that your imagination can unwittingly start to follow the crowd rather than take the road less traveled.

And sometimes, at about book 75 or so, you can begin to think that Everything Has Already Been Done.  This can be discouraging or challenging, depending on your attitude, but ultimately surmountable. It’s only catastrophic when one of those things is your idea.

One of my 100 is the first book of an urban fantasy-mystery series that took the genre by storm when it first came out. It’s original, funny, well-written and a darn good yarn.

Or at least, that’s what all the reviews tell me. I haven’t been able to get past the second page. That’s where I read that the book’s main character has exactly the same primary paranormal trait as my main character, and it’s messed up her life in precisely the same way, and it plays a large role in the rest of the plot.

Catastrophe.

I’m both flattered - “great minds” and all that - and incredibly disappointed.

I will get over it; I will think of something new. In fact, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe something about this part of my story was wrong for me, and letting it go, as agonizing as it is, will clear the way for what’s right.

It’s like no matter how certain you were that it had to be done, breaking up with Mr. Wrong was still painful. But later, when you are sighing in the arms of Mr. Right, you are so glad you did.

Technorati Tags: writing, fiction, creativity

1. If you really want to see the books I’m reading, click here to see my catalog on Library Thing. [↩]
2. Whether you can implement those things yourself is a different story, no pun intended. [↩]

Ready!…Set!…Slow.

Or: The Loafer’s Way, Part 2.

Last Sunday marked the start of Slow Down Week and in the spirit of the thing, I’m blogging about it a bit late.

Before you read any further, please mosey over to the Adbuster’s home page and watch the Slow Down Week video. (Fear not, hurryaholics, it’s short.)

OK. How many of us watched that cartoon and felt the irresistable urge to start talking like Alvin the Chipmunk?

As some of you may remember, I blogged last summer about rediscovering the wisdom of doing nothing after reading How To Be Idle: The Loafer’s Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson.

I confess, however, that though I’ve reaped the many benefits of idleness since then, I haven’t always been able to resist the twin temptations Consume and Hurry, and their red-headed step-sister, Worry.

But I’m not a quitter! I mean, I really want to be. So thank dog I had a new tome from Hodgkinson to see me through the hard times. It’s called The Freedom Manifesto: How to Free Yourself from Anxiety, Fear, Mortgages, Money, Guilt, Debt, Government, Boredom, Supermarkets, Bills, Melancholy, Pain, Depression, Work, and Waste and I think one should be in every hotel bedside table. Tom’s funny, insightful essays will inspire you to sit on your ass as much as you can afford (which is much more than you think), and stop buying into the belief that Things make you happy.

Sometimes though, picking up a book is too much effort, so surf over to Slow Down Now, the Idler’s kissing cousin and home to the International Institute of Not Doing Much (IINDM). This site has several great articles, though predictably, it’s not updated too often. I am especially intrigued by one article’s plea for more compassion for women, who are naturally better multi-taskers than men and thus more morally suspect.

Far be it from me to make sweeping generalizations, but it is true that women’s superior corpus collosum does enable us to leave men in the dust when it comes to doing more than one thing at a time, even when those things are related to the same project. Virtually every month, for example, I must remind Kevin that putting the mop and bucket back in the closet is just as much a part of “Mopping The Kitchen” as taking it out.

Multi-tasking is, in fact, a very Darwinian skill. Those who could keep their babies from falling into the river (or otherwise killing themselves) whilst simultaneously foraging for food for the family were the ones who survived. (Men just rode in on their coat tails.) But I do agree that in our society this useful skill has morphed into a murderous monster, as evidenced by the staggering number of people who think nothing of getting dressed, brushing their teeth, texting their office, and pulling a cappucino during their morning drive to work.

There’s a ton of thought-provoking stuff like this on Slow Down Now and in Hodgkinson’s books, and I’ll admit that part of me - the intellectually curious, energetic part - is itching to debate them all here. But then I think, “That’s a lot of work. And what would I get from typing my fingers to the bone? Boney fingers.”

Which is not to say that there is no intrinsic value in work, productivity, or intellectual curiosity. There is. But we have gotten so far out of balance with our concept of “productivity” that what we actually DO do ends up having less and less value.

It’s the Quantity Over Quality Syndrome and the cure is three-fold: prioritization, focus, and letting go of the need to control the future - aka worry. More than anything, it’s been the not-worrying that has gnawed away most successfully at the ties that bind me.

On NPR last week, a “stress expert”¹ said that it is actually the anticipation of bad things that causes most of our stress. Studies show that when that “bad thing” actually happens, we feel virtually no stress at all.

Translation: Much of our stress is self-created. Sounds like a bad habit to me. Why not at least try to break it?

I just realized I’m exhausted after slaving over this long post about doing nothing. I think I’ll crawl under my desk for a nap. Wake me up when the Slow week is over.

1. Ominous-sounding job, don’t you think? [↩]

On writing and the soul of murder

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Demon.

I read a funny article this morning by a writer who thinks of his resistance to creativity as Brenda, the earthy, red-lipped, fishnet-stocking-clad Anti-Muse.

Well, my anti-muse isn’t quite so much eye candy but she’s definitely from the same jar. I think of her Simone, Brenda’s darker, more neurotic distant cousin.

Simone has messy hair, wears too much black and smells of faintly of brimstone. She doesn’t smile much and thinks constantly.

She has been known to scare away my muse with a single, scathing glance.

Simone’s favorite past-time is engaging me in long, circular, unenlightening discussions about Art, Life, My Navel, and so on.

When she can’t appeal to my mind, she gets physical. Aren’t I hungry? Or, if I just ate, Wouldn’t tea be nice? Or Doesn’t a walk sound good? After all, I’ve been sitting here in this very same chair for at least five minutes. That can’t be good for my back.

And finally, when these things fail and I am dangerously close to writing, Simone sits down at the piano and plays a few bars of The Insecurity Rag. Pretty soon I’m perched beside her on the bench, warbling along like a gutless chanteuse.

One¹ would be tempted to say that Simone is not just an anti-muse, but truly a demon from the ninth circle of hell.

Which ain’t bad at all, according to Ray Bradbury, who’s made a career out of dancing with the devil.

If you must write of assassinations, rapes and Ophelia suicides, speak the speech, I pray thee, poetry in your breath, metaphors on your tongue. Remember how glad Iago was to think on Othello’s fall. How, with smiles, Hamlet prepared his uncle’s death.

Shakespeare and my Demon schooled me so: Be not afraid of happiness. It is often the soul of murder.²

Since my story has, in fact, assassinations, rapes, suicides and murder, I’d say Simone and I could be very happy there together.

Technorati Tags: Ray Bradbury, writing, creativity

1. OK, I. [↩]
2. From “My Demon, Not Afraid Of Happiness, in Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars, essays by Ray Bradbury. [↩]

“When Big Momma made the world, she didn’t mess around.”

I got the best birthday present this year: Big Momma Makes the World, by Phyllis Root, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.

Then she looked at the light and she looked at the dark
and she looked at that little baby looking at the light and the dark, smiling and cooing,
and Big Momma said, “That’s good. That’s real good.”

Last night I read Big Momma aloud to Kevin as he made dinner, and in between the lines, I marveled that such a book - a creation myth starring a big momma with a baby on her hip who don’t mess around - hadn’t been published sooner.

Because in a way, the Christian creation story is why, at the tender age of twelve, I became a feminist.

It was my first Catholic Sunday service. I remember the priest up at the pulpit talking, then doing his communion routine. His outfit, his choreography, his attitude set him apart from the rest of us, the rabble in the pews.

I don’t remember the finer details of his sermon, just that it was something about how since God the Father went to all the trouble of creating the world, we should just shut up, give thanks, and do what we’re told. After the service, the priest stood smirking faintly in the doorway as the congregation filed past him.

I’d been to church before, but for some reason this time it seemed strange to me that grown adults would willingly gather to hear some guy they barely know lecture them about how to be “good.” Even stranger was how people treated this guy like he was better than they were, though as far as I could tell, he was just a man in a dress. Folks seemed sheepish around him, deferential, but I couldn’t figure out why.

So I did what I discovered later is quite frowned upon by the church: I went in search of information and found the priest had no clothes.

Throughout the next several weeks of research, I discovered that part of the reason for the deferential treatment was because the priest had a weenie, and according to the Bible, those with weenies are better than those without. It’s God the Father, ya know, and there are lots of stories in his book that explain how women are second-class citizens because he created them that way, although their inherently “sinful” nature helps.

Ah well - a story’s just a story. Right?

Would that that were so. Because although there is not one tiny shred of evidence that the stories in the Bible were written by a divine, supernatural entity - rather than just some guys with parchment, Oedipal tendencies and too much time - at some point somebody told us they were true. And not just true, but God hisself’s actual “Word.”

And we bought it! I realized with amazement. Hook line and sinker.

But what really worked my tits was that it wasn’t just the men who bought it (and why wouldn’t they?) but the women as well. We even gave the thumbs-up to the Father-who-created-the-universe story - the ultimate attempt by men to deny their if not unimportant, essentially side-kick role in the creation of life.

I smacked my youthful forehead. What were we thinking? Something had to be done.

Thus from the womb of religious disillusionment was born that Uppity Rib: terrorizing the patriarchy since roughly 1980.

So now you see why, twenty-seven years later, I am so delighted by my birthday present. This generation of little girls doesn’t have to wait for some stultifying church service to annoy them into feminism. They can be led there gently and easily, from the comfort of their mothers’ arms. Growing up with Big Momma, their own goodness and power will seem as natural as the light and the dark.

And that’s good. That’s real good.

Technorati Tags: creationism, Christianity, mythology, gynophobia

Voldemort sucks. Harry rules.

For more photos of the Midnight Magic soiree, click here.

There’s something about Harry

Unless you are only just visiting this solar system on holiday from your home planet of Alderan, you know that this summer is The Summer of Harry Potter.

The latest film, “Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix,” came out last Wednesday. (Saw it, loved it.) That’s exciting enough for fans, but the real frenzy is about the release of the last book in the series: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows.

As you might have deduced by the count-down banner I’ve had on this blog for several weeks as well as my link to the book on Amazon.com, I am a fan.

I know this may seem odd. In life-experience, let’s just say I’m way outside the target audience for Scholastic Press. I also have no children of my own to inspire me to sympathetic enthusiasm for a fantasy about a boy wizard whose destiny just happens to be to save the world.

Ah, grasshopper. There are many fans like me, a fact that still amazes me. I’ve spent a fair amount of time pondering why grown adults all over the globe should be just as hooked on Harry as their eight-year-olds.

I could opine it has a lot to do with J. K. Rowling’s magical world, the fantastic product of an imagination so rare, as Stephen King said, it should be insured by Lloyds of London. I could suggest it’s due to Rowling’s uncanny ability to capture the idealism, joy and pain inherent in every childhood and coming-of-age. I could insist cynically that it’s all about the marketing - from Legos to lunch boxes, the merchandising machine has simply burned the brand of Harry Potter into our brains.

I think all of that is true. But I believe there is something about Harry that gives him the edge, something about his story that gives it the power to catapult from good story to global phenomenon: a direct line to our collective unconscious. Harry’s is the universal story of good vs. evil, with the classic hero’s quest and Unconditional Love in all its divine faces: wisdom, compassion, loyalty, bravery, truth and friendship. Combine all this primordial goo with the aforementioned creativity, insight, and marketing, and you’ve got a potent psychological speedball.

And now we are all down to our last fix.

It’s clear to even the youngest of fans that Harry might actually die in the final battle. It’s arguable from a literary standpoint that an ultimate sacrifice is the story’s most natural conclusion. But I don’t put a lot of stock in literary tradition; it ain’t like Harry’s been particularly high-brow up until now, and JKR pretty much does whatever she wants to do, traditions be damned.

Personally, I’m betting Harry doesn’t have to die to save the world, though I’m not really sure why I’m so sure. Naturally I don’t want him to die; I like Harry. But I guess I’m also fed to the teeth with the whole sacrificial lamb thing. Martyrdom is melodramatic as a literary device, overused as a plot climax, and misguided as a spiritual cornerstone. Don’t we have enough Christ figures? I hope JKR dreamed up a more creative conclusion to the classic conundrum.

But enough with the speculation, as I’ll find out in a mere three days anyway.

This Friday night, I will be at the Midnight Magic book release party at my local Barnes & Noble, making wizard hats and playing Pin The Tail On The Pettigrew with my nephews.

And Saturday will find me back at Hogwarts, fighting the good fight with Harry and friends.  I don’t intend to stop until I turn the last page.

Will I see you there?

Technorati Tags: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, fiction, fantasy, collective unconscious, sacrifice

The Loafer’s Way, Part 1

I went window shopping at the pet store the other day to see all the cute kittens and puppies that I, Bubble Girl, can’t have. It’s been pretty warm here, and Kitty is sensibly drowsing in her food bowl.

I’m reading the perfect book for summer: How To Be Idle: The Loafer’s Manifesto, by Tom Hodgkinson. If you are a workaholic, this book will show you the error of your ways, how working your fingers to the bone really does just get most of us boney fingers. If you are a would-be idler with one foot in the office and one in the hammock - c’est moi - this book is all you need to convince you to take the plunge.

Why exactly do we work so hard for so very, very little? Because we think we want stuff, need stuff, care about stuff. It’s true that certain stuff, such as food and a roof over one’s head, are important, and thus jobs have their place. But how much consumption do we do that is ultimately pointless?

How much crap do we buy because we think it will bring us happiness - “This is the lipstick that will change your life!” as a friend of mine jokingly said to me once - only to find we’re simply that much more in debt, waiting for the next new crap?

Constant consumption seems to me to be an attempt to fill from without the creative void within. With no time or support for nurturing our own creativity, we consume someone else’s. Chuck the plastic wrapper into the landfill and move on to the next thing. Work, consume, die.

If you really think about this, be careful, because you could end up doing serious self-reflection and reorganization of priorities, a subversive act which, the Idle author argues, is precisely why the “hard work” ethic was created by the ruling classes in the first place. Convince the rabble that they are morally obligated to work their asses off, and they’ll never have the time or energy to figure out you are full of shit.

Technorati Tags: idleness, The Idler, work, kittens

One Thousand Words

I must be doing too well with this Rib Eye thing, because recently a few of my loyal readers have asked if I’m going to quit writing altogether.

It’s very gratifying and encouraging to know that my readers look forward to my writing. Uppity Rib is, of course, just another rock orbiting the vast blogosphere, and its wonderful to know it’s made somebody’s blogroll when there are so many others to choose from.

Believe me, I would write way, way more than I do if it weren’t for one significant obstacle: my job. To bring home the bacon, I sit in front of a computer eight or nine hours a day, five days a week. I get up from my desk as much as possible during working hours, making roughly 87 trips per day to the kitchen and bathroom. I’ve even gone so far recently as to join a gym down the street from my office so I can lift weights on my lunch hour. Nonetheless, I’m pretty burned out on the ol’ ‘puter come quittin’ time.

Which is really too damn bad, because I am more inspired than ever to write. I recently read two really useful, inspiring and entertaining books on writing: How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights by Ariel Gore, and Making A Literary Life by Carolyn See.

Gore’s book is one of the best books I’ve ever read on the DIY perspective of writing and publishing. She’s funny, intelligent, and unpretentious, not to mention a living example of how you don’t need to kowtow to the Literary Establishment to be successful in the industry. Her book has single-handedly restored my faith in the idea of writing for fun and profit without losing your soul in the process. Seriously, I love this book so much I wanna marry it.

Like Gore’s, See’s book is also excellent, also unpretentious (can you tell that is a big deal for me? Stick that in your New Yorker and smoke it) and very, very useful to the aspiring published author. More on this to come. (See, foreshadowing! Literary devices! Can I learn, or what?)

Thus I have quite the quandary. I’m burning with desire to write, but the idea of plunking my ass in front of a computer to do so is a total buzzkill. What’s a desk-jockey to do? Barnes & Noble would probably take me, but I don’t know that I could take the pay cut. Construction pays well, but it’s hell on my nails. (Ok, I don’t have nails. It’s just funnier than ‘but I can’t drive a forklift.’) I guess I could sell crack but I only have one strike left.

So here’s a thought: One of the suggestions See gives in Making A Literary Life is to write one thousand words a day. Just any thousand words. Anyone can write one thousand words, See opines. Just write ‘em - then you can check it off your list for the day. (And it better be at the top of your list, because as Ariel Gore says so sagely in her book, no one ever does the last thing on their list.)

Well, I am not sure I can crank out a full one thousand words each and every day. I mean, I could, but they would not necessarily be worth reading. Just what I’ve written here tonight so far is 550 words and they’ve taken me half an hour in front of this computer to write and my eyeballs are about to fall out of my head they’re so dry and it’s ten-thirty at night and I have to get to bed so I can get up and go to work and sit in front of a computer for eight hours.

But I really, really like the idea of at least giving daily writing the old college try. So here’s my compromise - Making An Uppity Literary Life, if you will: five hundred to one thousand words per day.

And now for the fine print:

I’ll write ‘em, but blog ‘em only if they are at least vaguely presentable. Don’t worry, I won’t be overly picky in my definition of “presentable.” (Why start now?) I will continue to share my thoughts on those things nearest my heart (feminism, human rights, cranky geriatric tomcats), and probably those not quite as near such as my overflowing dryer lint screen. But I draw the line at posting five hundred to one thousand words of stream of consciousness blather. At least, not until my first book wins the Pulitzer.

My friends and family will need to accept that five hundred to one thousand words every day will necessarily cut into my already meager, indeed, nearly non-existent, email correspondence. What email you do get from me is likely to be furtively composed in a few stolen moments at work and may suspiciously resemble a form letter. But just remember, I’m doing this for you!

Finally, I can’t say for sure yet, but I may end up needing to ditch Rib Eye if I want to write every day. Or maybe not ditch it entirely but rather scale it back to, say, Rib Eye Tuesdays. (Eesh, that sounds like a meal at Denny’s.)

And on that note, 905 words, and 70 minutes, I bid you good night. Nine hundred and five words… so close, and yet, so far.

Technorati Tags: writing, Ariel Gore, Carolyn See

You’re My Alternative Bridegroom

Today my workaday partner in crime, Lachlan, and I went to a book reading. We got there early, sat in the front row and chatted up the author while we waited for everyone else to show up.

We talked about all-night raves in the woods where people pooped in buckets. We asked ourselves sticky questions, such as “Do I want fingers in my pie?” We pondered thoughtfully the tenacity of sexist gender roles, the fluidity of outmoded traditions, and the subjectivity of tacky cake decorations.

In case you haven’t guessed yet, we went to a reading of Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides, by Ariel Meadow Stallings.

I guess I should back up a little.

If you have read my Uppity Me page, you know I’ve stated quite bluntly that I don’t think much of the institution of marriage. But like Oprah, I don’t mean that in a bad way. Some of my best friends are married.

It’s just that I think many people get married for goofy reasons. Oh, they rhapsodize about celebrating their love and commitment, but give them a few beers and it’s clear that it’s really about security, babies, familial or societal expectation, keeping up with the Joneses, or even just the desire to be King and/or Queen For A Day.

And until gay folk can marry, the benefits of legal union are also highly prejudiced.

So getting married has never been high on my priority list, even as a youngun dreaming of my future… even as a twenty-something, Always A Bridesmaid in countless weddings and Designated Shoulder for the tearful divorces… even when I fell ass-over-tea-kettle in love and moved to Kevinsylvania for ever and ever and ever.

I only seriously considered marriage when Kevin, as an Air Force reservist, was called to active duty shortly after 9/11. Granted, he was going to Thailand, not Clusterfuckistan. But still, he was supporting Marines that were doing anti-terrorist missions - not exactly saving kitties from treetops. It was heart-stopping to think that if something happened to him in Thailand, I would be denied access to him because we are not legally married. I don’t think so.

But this occurred to me after Kevin had already gone (Hello Stupid Syndrome, it’s common in times of war, you can google it for more info). Once he came back, I told him if he’s ever called up again, his ass and mine are at the courthouse within 24 hours. Or if we have more time, the Church of Elvis in Vegas.

Threats of bodily harm on foreign soil aside, Kevin and I have been happily living in sin for many years. As Joni Mitchell said, we don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tight and true, no.

Occasionally, Kevin or I will say “You know, we should really get married. We need a new set of plates” or “It’s been ten years and my mother has never met your dad. Or your brother. Or anyone related to you. Yesterday she accused you of being a member of the Witness Protection Program. We need a wedding reception.”

Cut to Uppity, front row center at Indy Bride Live, with my lesbian friend as my date. Natch.

It was an awesome reading, Ariel being a warm, engaging, funny speaker and a PNW homey to boot. I got a free copy of the book, which is part DIY wedding planning tips and part memior. It promises to be a fab read. I mean, with chapters like “I Am Woman, Hear Me Order Monogrammed Napkins: Is ‘Feminist Wedding Planner’ An Oxymoron?” — how could it suck?

I was bummed not to win the raffle for the (truly inspired) “Fuck Taffeta” t-shirt, but the free copy of the book made up for it.

One slightly distressing event marred the otherwise happy hour: While standing in line to get my book signed, I found myself next to the gal who had announced during the post-reading Q & A that she was “never getting married, ever” and then of course ten minutes later won the raffle for the t-shirt.

“Well,” she proclaimed to all of us, “if I ever DO get married, I’m not wearing a white dress. I’m wearing jeans!” She giggled like this was the most subversive, rebellious thing imaginable.

I smiled. “Well, Gloria Steinem got married in jeans.”

She looked at me and said, “I have no idea who that is.”

“She’s the reason you get to wear jeans, sweetheart.”

I’ll tell her that as soon I as I finish removing the stake from my heart.

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