living breathing talking love

Nature abhors a (power) vacuum...

...but alecaustin doesn't.

Some of you have found this already. (Good God! So this is what it's like to write in a currently popular fandom, even if not for the juggernaut pairing. I can only imagine how many people would read this by now if it was about Steve and Tony.) For those of you who haven't, I wrote a short story about Clint and Natasha (Hawkeye and Black Widow.)

Shortly after the end of the end of the movie, Nick Fury sends the two of them on a very easy mission, just to make sure everything's all right between them and Clint is fit for duty. The mission is a cakewalk. Some other things aren't. Rated PG; nothing more disturbing or explicit than is seen or implied in the movie. Cakewalk.

ETA: Oh, and if you've already read it, I have a theory about Natasha's greatest fear which was impossible to get into the story itself due to it being from Clint's POV. Ask if you're curious.

Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1038121.html. Comment here or there.

http://immlass.tumblr.com/post/23234877392

(via Brand new poster for 007 movie Skyfall | Den of Geek)

I’m a sucker and I know it, but I can’t help but get excited about this.

http://immlass.tumblr.com/post/23228727848

(via HMV Dummy Store, 1985 | Retronaut)

Days of my youth!

Anything else I had to say about the Criminal Minds season finale is subsumed in ZOMG Reid knitted it himself!

He makes a pretty good Four.

Also, I'm glad they did the Emily thing the way they did the Emily thing; it's good to see Will but he should have known better; I'm pretty sure that UNSUB plan fails on usual the Evil Mastermind overclever subroutine of relying on a coincidence they could not have known about in advance; I bet that's Kevin's cousin; Penelope needs a Stern Talking To of the variety she just gave Morgan a few weeks back; I'm still the only person in this fandom who likes Strauss, but dammit I still like Strauss; and FASTER JJ KILL KILL!

Discussion in comments of parallels between JJ in Hit/Run and Hotch in 100 is open for business.

I am still having massive resistance to my writing, because the way this novel works is that I am digging up Deep Personal Painful Shit whether I intend to or not. And I took leave from BARCC to do this damn thing and I gotta. I can breathe without coughing now. Time to stop slacking.

But the thing that's got to be written now, it is a personal big bad, and I do not want to feel the way writing it is going to make me feel.

I have realized that what I need is to stop being so damn mean to myself about the resistance to writing. My hindbrain has reasons. For one, and I realize that this probably makes no sense to most people: When I'm writing Cicatrix in particular, I go into sort of a fugue state. This reminds my body and hindbrain of having seizures. My brain is perfectly aware that seizures are the thing what will probably kill me. So every time I sit down to work on this thing my brain is like JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION GET IN THE CAR.



I'm aware that this is ludicrous! Unfortunately, my awareness does not fix it!

So I freak out and don't write and then I yell at myself for not having written, and then I get upset because someone is being mean to me, but I'm the someone, so "well, just don't hang out with them anymore" is not the solution. Plus, in writing this, I'm excavating pieces of my kid-self, and my kid-self kinda went through a lot of shit and needs to not be yelled at. So I'm looking at ways to reward my kid-self, and all I'm comin' up with is puppies. The kid-self has this fixation on puppy ears. But really, have you felt puppy ears?

I can't have a puppy because my husband loves me insufficiently is allergic. So I must come up with something else.

So yes. I need to find a way to apply self-discipline that is productive and not mean, because I need to get this novel the hell done. The only way it's getting done is if I manage to sit down and self-eviscerate every day.

I am so awesome to be around when I get like this, y'all.

In conclusion, I need to work on this thing now that's gonna mess me up for the rest of the day, hooray for me. Hi. Bye.

I have been thinking back over my story, and realize that there is a lot of manly weeping in it. My understanding is that Englishmen of the 18th century, even the end of it, did not regard tears with shame.

100 years later, by the cusp of WW1, things seem to have been very different. Lots of the upper lip going on. Yet it is my assertion, that guys, and causes for weeping had not changed all that much.

Can anyone who has done more research speak on this?

The following contains discussion of fitness, health, and weight issues. If that is triggery for you, please page down now!

Ob. Disclaimer: I absolutely support anyone's right to live in their body as they choose, at any size they find comfortable. This is entirely about me, and my efforts to reclaim my health and strength after half a decade of abusing and neglecting my poor body.

---

Well, I'm wearing a pair of jeans that, based on the brand and cut, must date back to 1987 or so.

They're Chic, size 14 tall, and in high school they would have been baggy on me. Now, they fit loosely except for the waist, which is a bit snug--but then, that happened when I was sixteen, too, though the jeans were size 11 then. This is because eighties jeans were cut to fit absolutely nobody except a young Brooke Shields. They do, however, still make my ass look fantastic, a characteristic generally not shared by modern lower-rise jeans, which make nobody's ass look good. Not mine, not yours. Possibly Jessica Simpson's.

But they do let one bend at the middle without pinching one's ribcage on the waistband, which I suppose is a win.

I guess that means I am officially back in my high school clothes, generously speaking. As I also have a black bat-winged sheath dress from Chico's that I loved in high school, and have been hanging on to for sentimental reasons. I might dust it off for an eighties party later this year. If only I had some slouchy elf boots.

I suspect I will save the jeans for eighties nights at goth clubs. I think I still have one pair of slouchy socks hoarded away somewhere... ;-)

This is all prelude to saying that I'm hovering somewhere around 187, and have been for about a month now with the usual ups and downs--but I'm obviously building muscle, because I seem to be shrinking. At one point a month or so ago I noticed I had obliques, there under the slack middle-aged tummy. This week, I noticed the top set of ab muscles. Also, my thighs are no longer getting in my way during most of yoga--that stopped after scott_lynch and I walked somewhere around 40 miles in three days of NYC. I can do Hero's Pose and Lightning Pose without cheating now, and my body doesn't actually interfere with my ability to do a lunge anymore.

It's still getting in the way of twists, and my biceps interfere with Eagle Pose, but that's not new. I'm a solid girl.

I can also wear most of my beloved old corp-goth work clothes again, justifying my hoarding tendencies. Two suits are a bit tight, but they were always on the skinny end of the rack. I had to move the buttons back on a green suit I love, that I had expanded a bit when I was gaining weight. It's a size 12.

I am facing the surprising possibility of shrinking out of my wardrobe again. In any case, look for a much better-dressed Bear at conventions this summer, since I love these clothes and don't have a dayjob to wear them to anymore.

Curiously, I'm about 17 pounds heavier than the last time I fit in these clothes, which tells us about the power of rock-climbing. Muscle is heavy!

My current weight goal is somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 pounds. Which should make the same size, roughly, as when I was in high school and weighed 150-ish. I was on track and field then, and at my most muscular before now, but I'm pretty sure my upper body now dwarfs what I had then. (Shoulders! They're awesome!) Also, um. Boobs. Some cup sizes have come to roost since then. Ahem.

So I'm less than thirty pounds from my goal, which is very pleasant. My body is behaving as it should; everything physical is so much easier than it was in 2004, when I couldn't walk a half-mile without agonizing pain (now I can run five 12-minute miles back to back); and I'm enjoying the reduction in back and joint pain and the ability to sleep comfortably on my side or back again without feeling like my own belly is crushing me.

I seem to be part of a coterie of SFF writers and fans on the "get healthy the old-fashioned way; move more and eat less crap" bandwagon, which pleases me. (personally, I have been following the efforts of Scalzi, Doctorow, Lynch, Sykes, Downum, Silverstein, Connolly, Buckell, and I'm sure a few others whose names are eluding me because it's time for lunch.) It pleases me because I'd like to see a lot of these people around for a damned long time.

I'm also noticing changes in appetite, which tell me my body is adapting to its new lower caloric demands. Two whole pieces of fruit is too much to eat with lunch now; I am contented with half of each (plus some protein and vegetables and brown carbs, of course). (I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, about ten servings most days; I've finally figured out how to reach my RDA minimum of potassium, and it goes like this: a cup of fortified cereal in the morning (Special K protein plus, since I can't find Total Protein around here anymore), half an orange, a small banana, eight ounces of green coconut water, and half a sweet potato. Some strawberries or mango don't hurt either, or some beans.))

For those who are curious about how I did it (my doctor was, and she laughed out loud when I said, "Counting calories, restricting sweets and saturated fat, and getting off my ass!" She then replied, "So doing all the boring shit we tell people to do, huh?"), here's my plan, fondly called The Discipline:

It's a refined version of the Hacker Diet, which relies on good old thermodynamics to make things happen. I'm keeping my caloric intake around 1700-1900 calories a day, exercising for about an hour a day on average, drinking lots of water and not too much caffeine, avoiding refined carbs (mostly: I get 100-200 calories of "treat" a day, which could be a glass of wine or a beer, or a brownie, or... PRO TIP: Guinness is lower in calories than most "lite" beers, and tastes a fuckload better. Now you know.), eating roughly twice as many vegetables as the FDA suggests, and trying to keep my protein intake around 20% and my fat intake around 25%--and also trying to keep my protein intake above 100g a day without too much reliance on red meat, or meat at all. (I do use protein supplements--whey and soy, mostly.) I eat a lot of high-protein dairy (skyr!) and I try to limit myself to 100-200 calories a day from refined sugar, which is roughly 20-40 grams. Or, well, half a can of non-diet Coke.

Managing sodium intake is a killer. But I'm working on it.

Sleeping eight hours a night also pisses me off, but it seems to be necessary. I got six last night, and noticed the difference on my run this morning--I kept having to walk up hills I normally cruise up in second or third gear.

I also exercise six days a week--usually two days of climbing (with a little yoga); three days of running; one day of yoga. I also try to get in some vigorous outdoor time when possible--kayaking, hiking, walking the dog. Walking to the store. Picking up my jump rope for five minutes on an otherwise sedentary day.

As I said, one of the most successful weeks of the Discipline recently was when Scott and I were on Manhattan, eating every goddamned thing in sight. But we also made a point of walking two-thirds the length of the island at least once (Riverside to Chinatown, with side trips), and we walked as much as time permitted, otherwise. I know it sounds like my fitness routine is crushing, and seven or eight years ago, it would have crushed me. (Hell, I had the pleasant experience recently of putting in a Rodney Yee video that, in 2006, I could do maybe fifteen minutes of, and having the full hour workout be only just pleasantly challenging.)

But remember, when I started out, I weighed 285-290 pounds and could not walk a half mile. One good habit builds on another, it turns out--and I find myself drinking more green and herbal tea because black tea doesn't taste good after the first mug, and I find myself not hungry for seconds unless the food is exceptionally good, and even then not always. There's not actually a lot of privation; I just want more of what's healthy for me.

It's okay if I have a measured ounce of cheese on my beans and rice, instead of as much as I can fit in the bowl. It still tastes just as good! Better, since it's as easy to afford small quantities of really delicious food as it is large quantities of sort of icky food. And far more satisfying.

Who knew?

Which is so different from all my old pathological ways of dealing with food and drink that it's a little croggling.

Most of this, of course, is just basic health maintenance stuff, and not too hard once you get the hang of it. And it's not like I don't give myself days off: I will in fact have two or three drinks on a night out, for example. I'm fully planning on onion rings after archery tonight when I get dinner with the Thursday Night Shooters.

Just... not too damned often. And budget for it.

It's not the extremes that set one's level of health; it's the baseline.

• Wed, 19:01: #38 – How to pitch an idea /via @berkun http://t.co/iKHpNts2
• Thu, 07:02: Gee Whiz! http://t.co/i2p5xiDT via @BassaTheDog neat idea for a sales cart

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

That was the afternoon I started teaching Colin to play the guitar.

It was more or less a dare. “I can’t play the guitar,” he claimed.

“Sure you can,” I argued back, and that led to me teaching him.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

After reading John Scalzi’s post on SWM being the lowest difficulty setting in the game of life, and then reading the 800+ comments, I figured I’d join the crowd who decided to write a response. So I’ve dug up some information for those commenters who seemed to completely lose their minds…

I’ve done my best to find reliable, objective sources for all of the following information. Like Scalzi’s post, the following is focused on the United States, though the trends certainly aren’t exclusive to the U.S.

“[B]lack males receive [prison] sentences that are approximately 10% longer than comparable white males with those at the top of the sentencing distribution facing even larger disparities.” -Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences, 2012.

“The ratio of women’s and men’s median annual earnings was 77.0 for full-time, year-round workers in 2009 … African American women earned on average only 61.9 cents for every dollar earned by white men, and Hispanic women earned only 52.9 cents for each dollar earned by white men.” -The Gender Wage Gap: 2009.

Poverty rates in 2009, from Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States (2009).

• For non-Hispanic Whites: 9.4%
• For Asians: 12.5%
• For Blacks: 25.3%

Hate Crimes in 2010, from the U. S. Department of Justice Hate Crime Statistics.

• Race: 69.8% were motivated by anti-black bias, compared to 18.2% that stemmed from anti-white bias.
• Religion: 65.4% were anti-Jewish and 13.2% were anti-Islamic.

At birth, the average life expectancy of a white baby in the United States is four years longer than the average life expectancy of a black baby. -U. S. Census Bureau, Life Expectancy by Sex, Age, and Race: 2008.

“30.4% of Hispanics, 17% of blacks, and 9.9% of whites do not have health insurance.” -Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Nearly 1 in 5 women in the United States has been raped in her lifetime (18.3%) … Approximately 1 in 71 men in the United States (1.4%) reported having been raped in his lifetime.” -National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010).

“Nearly 1 in 2 women (44.6%) and 1 in 5 men (22.2%) experienced sexual violence victimization other than rape at some point in their lives.” -National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010).

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth “are nearly one and a half to seven times more likely than non-LGB youth to have reported attempting suicide.” -Suicide Risk and Prevention for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth (2008).

39.3% of white first-time, full-time college students complete a degree within four years, compared to 20.4% of black students, 26.4% of Hispanic students, 42.8% of Asian/Pacific Islander students, and 18.8% for Native American students. -National Center for Education Statistics (2010).

The event dropout rate for white high school students in 2007-2008 was 2.8%, compared to 6.7% for black students, 6.0% for Hispanic, 2.4% for Asian/Pacific Islander, and 7.3% for Native American students. -National Center for Education Statistics.

U.S. population vs. representation in Congress. “In the total population, whites make up 66.0%, Hispanics are 15.1%, Blacks are 12.8%, APIA (Asian and Pacific Islander American) are 5.1%, and AIAN (American Indians and Alaskan Natives) are 1.2%. In Congress, whites make up 85.8%, Hispanics are 5.8%, Blacks are 7.5%, APIA are 1.7%, and AIAN are 0.2%. Men are 49% of the total population, while women are 51%. In Congress, men are 82% and women are 18%.” -Ragini Kathail, Race, Gender, and the US Congress (2009).

There are only four openly gay/lesbian members of Congress (0.7%). -Congress gets 4th openly gay member (2011).

#

I could go on, but this seems like enough to present a glimpse of the playing field.

Now, if you say, “I don’t care about race/gender/orientation. I only look at the individual!” these are some of the things you’re looking away from.

If you say, “Why are you attacking straight white men?” then let me reiterate that I’m presenting facts and research. Are you suggesting that reality is attacking straight white men?

If you say, “But I’m a SWM and my life wasn’t easy,” I’ll tell you to take Remedial Logic. Nobody here or in Scalzi’s original post suggested otherwise.

If you say, “Women have it easier because they can use sex!” I’ll probably just ban you for being an idiot.

If you ask, “Well what do you want me to do about it?” then I’ll say I want you to be aware. I want you to recognize the problems. I want you to take some responsibility — not for historical injustices you weren’t personally a part of — but for trying to make this country better for everyone.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

( you know how these go )

http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/543516.html

Cosplay meta-problems that are harder than one might think: do you go for "what the character would wear unironically", "what the character would find fucking hysterical", or "what the observer would find funny"?

Context: as sarah has mentioned, we are putting together a genderbent Stev(i)e Rogers and Ton(y|i) Stark. I get the much easier end of the stick: all I have to do is find an appropriately snide t-shirt/tank top (and distress it properly to look like it's been labwear for years and years: grease stains, burn marks, flux spills, "I wiped the WD-40 off on my shirt", etc) and mod something to work for the arc reactor. I have narrowed down the t-shirt/tank top to one of three choices:

What Toni would wear (semi)-unironically: an Aperature Laboratories tank top, aka the corporation from the Portal series of video games, which Toni would own because a) she thinks Portal was an awesome game b) she likes to tease JARVIS about GLaDOS being his girlfriend. ("I can assure you, ma'am, I would never become involved with such an obviously flawed creation." "Do you want a girlfriend, JARVIS? I can make you a girlfriend." "You should know better than to adopt such heterocentric views." "Yeah, okay, point, I can make you a boyfriend, too.")

What Toni would find fucking hysterical: the distressed vintage-looking Captain America's shield t-shirt. Which she would have owned as a kid, of course, and which she would still drag out occasionally as labwear, and once Steve gets defrosted, she starts wearing all the time. Because she's kind of an ass like that.

What the observer would find funny: the vintage-looking, 1940s-design Stark Industries t-shirt. (I also considered a Stark Industries tshirt with the modern logo design, but I think the vintage design is funnier.)

The solution, obviously, is to buy all three and cosplay all three days of con.txt.

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Thanks to Serphimsigrist for sharing this this morning; it is truly beautiful:

I LEARNED THE GRASS AS I BEGAN TO WRITE

By Arseny Tarkovsky
Translated by Philip Metres; Dimitri Psurtsev

I learned the grass as I began to write,
And the grass started whistling like a flute.
I gathered how color and sound could join
And when the dragonfly whirred up his hymn,
Passing through green frets like a comet, I knew
A tear was waiting in each drop of dew.
Knew that in each facet of the huge eye,
In each rainbow of brightly churring wings,
Dwells the burning word of the prophet—
By some miracle I found Adam’s secret.

I loved my tormenting task, this intricate
Placing of words, fastened by their light,
Riddle of vague feeling and a simple answer
To the mind. In “truth” I thought truth appeared.
My tongue was true, like a spectral analysis,
And words gathered around my feet to listen.

What’s more, my friend, you’re right to say
I heard one-quarter the noise, saw half the light,
But I did not debase the grasses, or family,
Or insult the ancestral earth by being blithe,
And as long as I worked on earth, accepted
A gift of coldest spring water and fragrant bread,
Above me unfathomable sky still stood,
And stars tumbled around my head.

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I came across a really cool first name this morning. I was at the big-box store, waiting to pay for two bags of potting soil when I noticed a whiteboard hanging on the wall behind the cashier, listing the place's top five employees of the month.

One of them was called Theron.

Most people will probably think of actress Charlize Theron, but, for old foggies like me, who in their early years got their steady diet of F/SF thru the newspaper's daily comic strips, it'll remind them of the mentor of Mandrake the Magician.

"Who?"

Thanks, kids, for making me feel old.
Now you get off my lawn.

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Superstition is to religion as astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.

There are worse things one might do, when one is troubled, than turn to Voltaire.

The Sacred Texts of Self Preservation - I think we all have a shelf somewhere with the books we keep because they are restorative, because they keep us centered, because they help us remember who we are. Literature as life compass; we use the stories of others to keep ourselves pointed in the right general direction. An individualized canon; secularized scripture. These are books that can be read with pleasure, surely, but like all sacred literature, the pleasure is not necessarily the point. These are the stories that allow us to find a point of connection - perhaps to the Divine, perhaps to the collective conscious, perhaps we all have our own perhaps - to something beyond ourselves and our own personal experiences, where we can transcend the moment and gain a broader perspective.

Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock has an important role in my life. It tells an old, old tale - if you surrender to Story, Story will sustain you in all the ways that matter. This has been a guiding philosophy of mine; it's been rather conveniently true for me. And then last night I read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, which is an interesting and compelling look at surrender to Story taken to an extreme. It's the same story as Mythago Wood, essentially, but told through a vastly different lens. Mythago Wood let me know what was possible, and it was enthralling and likely saved my life; The Glass Castle lets me know what is equally possible, and it was enthralling, and will likely help me hold onto the life I have.

It certainly made me consider another way to view celibacy among the religious. You can not surrender to anything completely if you retain responsibility for another; the two goals are incompatible. Life requires trade-offs; there is, it seems, a continuum of devotion, and along that continuum inevitably comes a point where one is almost forced to detach from relationships, familial and otherwise, because to continue the connection beyond that stage causes more harm than good.  Jeannette Walls' parents surrendered far too much, and their children suffered. Some faith traditions support this; some do not. I'm still thinking about it, though. I'm only 2 cups of coffee into it, and that's not enough for a Thursday morning.

What are your Sacred Texts of Self Preservation?

'Magic Mike': Behind the Scenes at the EW Photo Shoot!

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