stotangirl

This video has been cheering me up at difficult moments. I linked to it in comments the other day, but want to embed it for interested parties who didn't see it there.





Just listed several new eBay auctions: the chapbooks Would You?, Used Stories, Stay Awake, Crown of Thorns, and The Feast of St. Rosalie (a hardcover); also a hardcover copy of Antediluvian Tales. My blank journals and other handmade objects are also still available until Wednesday evening.

Also, Grey has listed a one-of-a-kind photograph for sale, and a very beautiful one, too. Angel that he is, he has earmarked his profit from the sale of this piece as my testosterone fund.

http://sarahdessen.com/3076/blog/new-and-news/

http://sarahdessen.com/?p=3076

Okay, so I’m interrupting the holiday weekend because I can FINALLY tell you guys the big news I’ve been having to keep quiet for weeks now. And seriously: I am awful at keeping secrets. It’s, like, torture. Anyway, here it is: all my paperbacks are getting BRAND NEW COVERS! This has been a long process and project, and I’m so grateful I have such awesome people at Penguin who worked so hard to get every one just right. I love my current covers so much, so I knew whatever we changed them out for would have to be SUPER special. And I think they are.

They’re going to be revealed one by one, via different awesome book blogs. First up, today, is THAT SUMMER, over at Mundie Moms: you can check it out here. Also, there’s a giveaway! And you have to love that. It’s required, right?

Okay, I have to get back out to the kiddie pool and slather some more sunscreen on my kid. I hope you are all having a good Memorial Day and remembering those who gave their lives for our country. It’s about a lot more than just summer.

Have a great day, everyone!

Happy Memorial Day. My book, War Paint: Tattoo Culture and the Armed Forces is out today. You can buy it from Amazon (pay no mind to that "4 to 6 weeks" - it's shipping now) or look for it in your local bookstore (special prize to the first person to send me a photo of it "in the wild").

A few years back I found myself looking at one of those ribbons on the back of a car that said "support our troops" and wondered what I could do to actually "support our troops" rather than just putting a magnet on my car. Soon after I met a WWII veteran with a tattoo of a paratrooper on his arm and I asked him about it. For the next two hours he told me about parachuting into France on D-Day, being wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, getting tattooed in Scotland while drunk -- I realized that nobody had asked him about it before and that we were losing these stories, so many of which had a significance so personal you may not be able to tell just looking at them, you had to ask.

War Paint is a collection of portraits and stories, there are also closeups of tattoos if you're interested in closeups of tattoos.




Click to read Nick's story


Thanks to everybody in uniform and especially the people overseas away from their families, in harms way, whether in uniform or not. Come home safe. And thanks to my publisher, Schiffer Books who saw something here. Happy Memorial Day.


And, in case you missed it, here's the talk I did at Franklin & Marshall college on War Paint. There's a long wonderfully flattering introduction, student Ann Leffel talks briefly about her tattoo photography project and I start about 12 minutes in. And I do answer the question "why should you thank a soldier if you're against the war?" which is something someone brought up here a few weeks ago.

Stories in Ink: Capturing the Art of Tattoos from Franklin & Marshall College on Vimeo.

I'd love it if you'd share with your friends.

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http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=9486

 

Somewhere on the forum some evil person says ‘if there’s no photo it didn’t happen’.  THANKS A LOT, WHOEVER YOU ARE.  I thought it was about the leg warmers, but I have just looked through that thread, and if it’s there, it’s hiding, no doubt to escape the wrath of the hellgoddess.*   So here are some photos of a Confused Early Summer Garden.   From a plant’s perspective, first it was warm, and then it was cold, and then it was warm, and then it was cold, and then it was cold and wet, and then it was very very warm and dry.  What’s a poor leafy thing with incipient flowers to do?

            It varies.**

Yes, she really is that colour.   (Long time readers–and rose growers–already know this.  I’ve posted photos of her pretty much every year, I think, because she’s kind of spectacular.)  She’s another example of a ridiculously large rose that is very happy in her pot.  She’s doing a whole lot better in her pot than she did in the ground back at the old house.   She was also about five feet, in the ground at the old house, and easily eight or nine here, the better to embrace me lovingly as I try to get into the greenhouse. 

She starts out crimson, and as the flowers get older they turn this amazing purple.  And you might notice what, if I were a tacky and vulgar person, I might describe as rose hickeys on my arm.  Speaking of loving embraces.

It’s still mostly green.  Early and confused, as I said.  That big fat pink bud a little to left of centre is Lady of Megginch (who is also happy in her pot, although this is only her third year and the Baron has been there since the beginning, which is seven? Eight? years now), and the stem of little white buds just coming out slightly to her right is what is supposed to be a pink delphinium.  Stay tuned.

She’s in a really terrible position (and a pot) without nearly enough sunlight and if she were going to flower at all she should at least do it late and sparingly to drive it home to the gardener that she is being hard done by.  But no.  She flowers early and lavishly, although there’s not a lot of flowers later.  She supposed to be a sort of repeat-flowering version of gallica offinalis.  Well, sort of.  But with flowers like these and a positive attitude, I am not complaining.

Frelling.  Frelling flowering a good eight foot overhead.  Arrrgh.  She did this at the old house too, but the garden was A LOT BIGGER and you could, you know, stand back away far enough to see all of her.  Although one of the reasons I wanted her in this little garden is that she smells divine.  Supposing you can drag her down far enough to enjoy it.  I’m so cross about the eight-foot main stem with the posy on the end I’m considering lopping it off and bringing it indoors and putting it in a vase.  (I am one of these peculiar people who mostly can’t bear to cut flowers.)  I got this photo via . . . extreme blood loss.  She’s also diabolically thorny, even as roses go.

Having a go at trying to fool you into thinking she’s Queenie.  She’s not.  (Besides, Queenie always comes out late.  Queenie likes coming on with a last-minute burst just when I’m really starting to worry about her.)  But she’s pretty fabulous.  And like several of her friends and relations, she’s doing better at the cottage than she did at the old house–although she is drastically in the ground here.  She’s also reputed to have the strongest scent of any modern-bred rose.  I can’t vouch for a lot of roses (no, I haven’t grown them all) but it wouldn’t surprise me.

You can see a small outbreak of my pot mania here.  And yes, several of those pots are empty.  There are still roses waiting to go in.  Ahem.  And dahlias waiting to come on enough not to be utterly swamped in a big pot.  There’s the last of a pink rhododendron in the lower middle, Sophie’s Perpetual (rose) just coming out slightly above and to the left, the white spots to the right are nicotiana and that small blaze of pink and pale green perched on the yellow pot (waiting to be planted in it) is a variegated fuchsia.   The flowers are standard little red and purple dangly things but the leaves are fabulous, and year-round.  So long as you remember to take it indoors in winter.

Tell me again that you can’t grow a big rose in a pot?  What’s that you say?  I can’t hear you.  Old Blush also went in my first year here at the cottage.  I will say, however, that roses are even hungrier than you realise.  I’m sure you can overfeed a rose, but it’s hard.  Poor Old Blush took a good bit of the brunt of my learning curve about roses in pots, those first few years.  But she seems to have forgiven me.

You darling.

And she is poised to be fabulous, for the first time since I put her in three years ago, in the next few days.  I’ll tell you all about it soon. . . .

* * *

* Who isn’t as young as she used to be, and her mind wanders, even when she’s doing deeply interesting/provoking things like reading forum comments.^ 

^ She finds herself wondering what Kes and Maggie would think of each other.+ 

+ Or the Silent Wonder Dog and Mongo.  Snork.  

** I’m a little worried about Mme Alfred Carriere.  Atlas and I hacked her back hard last autumn^ because she was taking over the town, and I think she may be feeling put-upon.  But she’s usually one of the early ones, and I can see one flower, hiding behind my neighbour’s chimney. 

^ I did the stuff from ground level.  Atlas did the twenty foot ladder.

For my birthday, I got ... misgendered. Constantly. Everywhere I went. And it was almost all in queer spaces, and it was all done unintentionally and as kindly as could be, by well-meaning folks, so I couldn't even work up a righteous head of indignation; I just got depressed.

I am not making progress. Part of it is that I haven't been able to afford my full doses of testosterone -- the treatment runs a little over $300 a month, which I pay completely out of pocket -- and so I've been stretching it out to half-doses, figuring some T going into my system was better than none. (Medically speaking, this isn't wholly unsound, as many trans guys start off on low doses.)

Thanks to Grey, I had a wonderful birthday weekend anyway. When we're alone together, the rest of the world recedes to the point where even gender seems relatively unimportant. And he can always boost my confidence, and he's so romantic, and he even seems to think I'm interesting. I know, the man must be deranged, but I sure do love him.

Re: misgendering, there was a good moment of comic relief at the drag show we attended last night. Local drag diva Bootsy DeVille was talking to us at the bar at Michael's on the Park before her show, and she turned to me and said, "I have a question for you. Now it's hard for me to phrase this right ... " Grey and I were both bracing for The Question, which I wouldn't have really minded answering for Bootsy, but instead she said rather hesitantly, "Did you use to be the boyfriend of a famous writer? Because we were googling Billy Martin, and there seemed to be some connection ... "

After collapsing with laughter, we explained as best we could, and only later did I realize I should have said, "Why yes, I used to date Stephen King, but I dumped him for Grey!"

All I have to offer the world is inside those books. That's it, the absolute and dubious sum total of my ability to offer aid to anyone. If what you're looking for isn't in there, you need to look elsewhere. I can't save you. I can't even help you. All I can offer is my stories. And anyone who asks more of me is overstepping boundaries they have no right to cross.

---

I've had much worse birthdays than yesterday. readingthedark came down in the late afternoon. We had dinner at Tortilla Flats. We played an absolutely abominable game of "World of Warcraft" Monopoly (and why the hell are the Draenei represented nowhere in the game?!), and, in theory, Geoffrey won. We had some frozen caramel and cashew ice-cream pie thing. I got stoned. We talked too much. I got to sleep just as the sun was rising.

My thanks to all the "happy birthday" wishes yesterday. There were something like four hundred via Facebook, and, honestly, that just freaks me right the fuck out. Thank you for being there.

---

Spooky is still having a Caitlín Was (Most Years) Actually Born on the 27th of May Sale in her Dreaming Squid Dollworks and Sundries Etsy Shop. Cool and bow-tie stuff, with FREE SHIPPING, which will run through Monday. In order to take advantage of the sale, you need to use this code during checkout: CRKBIRTHDAY. Buy something bow tie, kittens!!! No, really!

---

Looking back from -08, here is what I will say: I want such very simple things. That's actually true. Instead, my life has presented me with a baffling array of complexities. I didn't say that quite right. "Baffling complexities" isn't actually what I mean. If the cosmos had some collective consciousness, if all our gods and goddesses and demons were anything more than fairy tales, they might understand what I meant to say. Those things I wish I had, though – those things I still hope for to the point I feel ashamed and ungrateful for not being gladder for what I have instead – they are so simple they might take your breath away.

Breathe In,
Aunt Beast

I've not posted for almost a month and that's partly because I've been ill - some viral ick and then bacterial seediness that has taken two courses of antibiotics to knock out. Also writing for the Guardian - the radfem piece most of you have seen by now and the first two John Donne pieces. Also FLUTE DANCE, a short story for the second TALES FROM THE HOUSE BAND - it's another Mara story and possibly the best thing I've writted in the Rhapsodyverse. Publication looms, and a September US trip, and I still have about 15 k to write of Vol 2 REFLECTIONS. I know everything left to happen, sort of, and am getting up to speed and writing my thousand a day. So I will finish in June, and start the next critical book in July, and start volume 3 in January. If fate allows.

Poetry has gone into a fallow time, but more soon.

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http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=9574

The Story So Far…

 

THIRTEEN

The Voice of Doom was shrieking something indecipherable but clearly relating to the end of the world in my ear.  I shot awake and . . . nearly fell out of the bed I was in.  Wha’?  Where?  Huh?  Ugh.

            I located the source of the shrieking and hammered it till it shut up.  Okay.  Regroup.  I stared (blurrily—where were my glasses?  Okay, there.  Whew.  Put glasses on.  Let’s try this looking thing again) at the wall opposite, which was a sort of mottled brown with small square objects suspended on it.  These looked way too much like food squashed under glass and then inexplicably framed.  The frames looked like they were from the ‘sale’ bin of the local do-it-yourself store. I like ratatouille, but not on the wall.  A bowl of pasta dropped on the floor looked a lot like the one on the left. . . . Don’t ask me how I know this. . . . Oh gods, I’ve been kidnapped by Flowerhair’s wizard and imprisoned underground, and the wall decorations are to drive me mad with hunger.   I suppose after a few days vertical pasta will work as well as anything, but a giant poster of chocolate would be faster.

            I glanced toward the window which, mercifully, appeared to be letting sunlight in through the half-sheer curtains—around the giant toad monster squatting malevolently on the middle of the sill.  The silhouette of the toad monster looked vaguely familiar. . . .

            Oh.  It’s a Friendly Campfire.  Of course.  I knew that.

            And I want breakfast at Eats before I meet Hayley at ten.  Which means I have to walk that far before my first cup of tea (with the Eatsmobile in prospect, I was not going to essay the Friendly Campfire’s tea bags).  New life, new challenges.  Hey.

            I made it.  I didn’t get lost or anything.  I fell, to the extent that you can fall up, onto the first empty stool, and propped myself on the counter.  A sympathetic-looking waitress materialised in front of me.  “How do you like your caffeine?” she said.

            “Tea,” I croaked.

            “Special breakfast blend for that turbo-charged start to the day?” said the waitress.         

            “Yes please.”

            “Two cup, four cup or six cup pot?”

            I wavered.  “Four,” I said regretfully.  I had the rest of the day to get through, and I’d already concluded that eighteen cups a day was too many.  “You’ll warm the pot first, won’t you?”

            “Of course,” she said.  Her nameplate said Bridget.  Bridget, Mistress of Tea.

            She brought teapot, mug, sugar and milk on a little round tin tray.  The tray had purple irises on it.  The teapot had robins on it.  The mug had Pre-Raphaelite damsels on it.  The sugar bowl had red and pink polka dots.  The pottery milk jug was a sheeny, crackly teal blue.  The mug was hot too. Can you fall in love with a restaurant?  Bridget returned ten seconds later with a tea cosy.  The tea cosy had a clipper ship on it with an impressive bow wave.  It was official:  I was in love with this restaurant.  I also had the blueberry spelt pancakes with maple syrup and bacon.  If any evil magicians imprisoned me underground after last night’s dinner and today’s breakfast, I’d survive a very long time. 

            I waddled out the door, back down Bradbury, and paused at the corner of Schmitz Street.  It was a sunny, clear day, and the blue of the sky extended all the way down to the horizon in a way you don’t see in the middle of a city, even from your penthouse roof.  I looked around carefully, but all the shadows seemed to be accounted for:  buildings, stop signs, parking meters, people, including one being walked by her dog.  The dog came lunging up to me, dragging her person:  “Oh, Flossie,” said the person, in accents of resignation and despair.  I leaned down with difficulty over my stomach as Flossie attempted to bound up my leg, frantically wagging her tail and uttering little yips of, My long-lost best friend!  At last I have found you!  Terriers all have bedsprings where most other dogs have legs.  The person eventually dragged her away, no doubt to gladden the hearts and muddy the jeans of other long-lost best friends.  The Silent Wonder Dog would be friendly but reserved with everyone but me.  I of course would be the pinnacle of all aspiration, to the Silent Wonder Dog, who would behave accordingly. 

            I turned down Schmitz and stopped in front of Homeric Homes.  I took a deep breath.  I opened the door, which went, ding!  There were three desks and an open door into another office at the back.  There was a young blond woman who had been a cheerleader up until very recently, or perhaps still was in her spare time, at the first desk, standing up and stuffing papers into a red canvas briefcase.  She looked up at the ding! and smiled at me.  Nervously, I thought.  Probably because I wanted to live in Cold Valley.  “Are you Kes?” she said.  I nodded, wondering if I could talk to a cheerleader about Yog-Sothoth and the nightgaunt-shaped stain in the bedroom ceiling.

            “I’m Hayley,” she said, and held out her hand.

 

Once more into the fray.
Into the last good fight I'll ever know.
Live and die on this day.
Live and die on this day.

---

Indeed, it is my birthday. And here I am, some -08 years after my unlikely birth in the year 1964 (of the Gregorian calendar). And, oh my motherfucking god, I just fucking realized something amazing! 1964 was a leap year, so, on years that are not leap years (unlike this one), my birthday is actually May 27th. Motherfucker. Weird. Anyway, my thanks to everyone who has sent well wishes and gifts. There are truly too many of you. It makes my head swim a bit. Life may be a steaming shitstorm, but at least there's you lot, kittens.

I'm hoping that I will soon be able to make an announcement about the future of the Alabaster comic. Hang tight.

Spooky is having a Caitlín Was (Most Years) Actually Born on the 27th of May Sale in her Dreaming Squid Dollworks and Sundries Etsy Shop. Cool and bow-tie stuff, with FREE SHIPPING, which will run through Monday. In order to take advantage of the sale, you need to use this code during checkout: CRKBIRTHDAY.

---

Last night was Kindernacht, of course. After the ritual of an atomic fireball (complimentary from Acme Video), we began our double feature with Olivier Megaton's Colombiana (2011; a film made with the involvement of such film heroes of mine as Luc Besson, Ridley Scott, and Tony Scott). A very enjoyable crime thriller, and, hey, a big dose of Zoe Saldana! Also, Cliff Curtis, and I never get enough of him. The film is smarter and darker than I expected. The ending didn't flinch from the logical consequences following from it's events, a thing always and forever to be admired.

But, Colombiana paled into insignificance by the unexpected jolt of our second feature, Joe Carnahan's The Grey (2011), which I'd not heard of and picked up based on the synopsis on the box and the fact I find Liam Neeson sexy. Anyway, now, here's the director who made Smokin Aces (2002) (a good film, but...) and (**cough cough**) The A-Team (2010). The very last person on earth – okay, that's a lie. Still. Not the man I'd have expected to make the best film I've seen since Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011). I am not heaping hyperbole. This film instills one with a nigh unto indescribable sense of cosmic wonder and dread, and it is beautiful. The cinematography (Masanobu Takayanagi) and the score (Marc Streitenfeld) went a long way to setting this film on the road to brilliance, and every performance is marvelous. Okay, I'm saying too much. You simply have to see it. Please. Trust me.

And Now I'm Even Older,
Aunt Beast