This post contains language you might not want your boss to read over your shoulder. It’s a comparative taxonomy of two subspecies of four-letter excrement. You have been warned.
Continue reading ‘On Equine Excrement’
So, Megan Cox Gurdon of the Wall Street Journal is concerned about the darkness in YA literature. It seems that such stories (written, as they are, for teenagers) might introduce unnecessary dreariness and misery into the otherwise sunny time of adolescence.
It raises the obvious question: At what age does an adult undergo a mandatory brain wipe and forget about what it’s like to be a teenager? Even teenagers with nothing evil happening in their lives directly know friends who have awful things going on. More than that, teenagers are coming to grips with mortality and sex in two important respects: in both cases, they are confronting both the knowledge that they can make decisions that will give them power over the death and over the sexuality of other people, and with the equally uncomfortable realization that other people can have that kind of power over them (and that, at least with death, there will eventually be nothing they can do to stop it). This is to say nothing about their own desire both for sexual gratification and for some (safe) experience of violence and danger. Sex and death, folks. It don’t get more real, or dark, than that.
Continue reading ‘Unsuitable for Children?’
As a human being, I am entitled to my goofy ideas–and boy, do I have a lot of them. I can’t help it. I have a brain, and it has to do something while it’s waiting for the teapot to boil. Some people think about knitting, some people think about sex, I tend to think about things far beyond the norm. Hey, I write science fiction, right? It’s kind of my job.
You have goofy ideas too–I know you do, because one of my goofiest ideas is that reality is to some extent knowable (which puts me two goofy steps out from the perspectives of certain Hindus and Buddhists I know personally), and in a universe this big the statistical likelihood of anybody actually having all the right answers to all the possibly questions is pretty much zero.
Still, it’s kind of rude to say someone has goofy ideas, isn’t it? Particularly when you use words with more bite than “goofy”–words like “screwy,” “stupid,” “false,” “questionable,” or worst of all, “wrong.” It rubs a lot of people the wrong way, like it’s contrary to the spirit of tolerance–or, maybe, it devalues the person who holds the goofy idea.
Continue reading ‘The Doctrine of Goofy Ideas’
It’s mid January, and time for your vegetables. This year’s first link salad is here–I hope you enjoy this sampling of my weidrness and wanderings from around the web!
Continue reading ‘Link Salad, Jan 10, 2011′
Demographic disclosure: I am an American who likes good adult (note the lack of euphemistic quotation marks) entertainment, and I am disgusted and ashamed at what thirty years of cultural conservatism has done to my country. Perhaps I’d better back up and explain…
Continue reading ‘Blood, Guts, Breasts, and Insanity’
So, with Steamcon coming soon, and me sitting on a couple panels, I’ve got to bone up on a genre that I’ve hereto only been passingly familiar with. This involves an extensive reading list, which I’m honestly not going to have time for. Fortunately, I’m not giving a talk on writing in the genre, I’m merely sitting on a couple of panel discussions. One of them is about Victorian science and tech, which I’ve loved for years. The other is about Steampunk film and multimedia production. The “Multimedia Production” part of this I’m well versed in. The “Steampunk” part, not quite as much.
So, this week, in between evaluating the Trinity Indamixx (initial impressions – favorable but with caveats), which I’m blogging on right now using an external keyboard (I could seriously get addicted to this thing), I learn all about Steampunk Films!
Continue reading ‘Steampunk Education, part 1′
Why is “Sex” capitalized in the title? Well, because it’s so much fun – and scares the hell out of so many people. The latest episode of Apologia features your humble narrator going toe-to-toe with one of my friendly neighborhood evangelicals, Apologia’s own Kevin Harris, on the topic of sexual ethics – what they are, how they’re formed, and why people get so worried about something that’s supposed to be enjoyable. A vigorous but congenial discussion, suitable for anyone with genitals.
And join us for the after-show conversation at the Apologia blog!
