One Of Those Days

So, for a whole lot of reasons I won’t go into, today kinda sucked. Like, crying-at-my-desk-after-getting-off-the-phone, oh-look-another-invoice sucked. There were also some good bits! I feel obliged to point this out, primarily because I feel guilty about scaring the work experience girl by telling her that the most important skill she could have post school was knowing how to work a photocopier. So I phoned Toby in the middle of the day and established that, in order to compensate for the aforementioned suckness (which had also afflicted him), I would bring home the final two disks of Avatar: The Last Airbender, because not only is it awesome, but it’s so good that the narrative actually has the power to redeem the suckitude of everyday humanity. Being as how I work in Port Melbourne and getting to the city of an evening by bike is problematic, I rang the only local store known to stock the series for sale, viz: Blockbuster Video.

Now, for those of you who’ve been living in a hole, Blockbuster is primarily a DVD rental store. However! The Blockbuster in Port Melbourne dedicates an easy 50% of its floorspace to the sale of games and movies. Given my lack of a membership there, this has always ensured that I think of it as a place to buy things, rather than rent them. So when I rang up at lunchtime and asked if they had discs 3 and 4 of Season 3 of Avatar, and they said they’d reserve them under my name, it never occurred to me that they would, by default, assume I was after rental DVDs – especially as the sales dude never asked if I wanted to buy or rent, as is traditionally the case with every other movie store on the planet.

So, having endured a stressful day, I cycled out of my way and walked up to the counter to collect my purchases, only to find that, yes, they had reserved the rentals for me. Distressed, I explained the error and walked over to their For Sale section, where I found disc 4, but not disc 3. On asking at the counter whether or not they might have a 3 lurking elsewhere, I was told no. At that point, I sort of lost it. I’d had a hard day, and the only thing that had kept me going since lunchtime was the thought of watching something good when I got home. On the brink of tears, I dropped the disc 4 I’d picked up and rushed back outside to my bike, where I lurked for a minute or so until I’d calmed down. Then, hat in hand, I went back inside and asked whether or not I might be able to rent the DVDs in question.

Now: the reason I hadn’t considered this as an alternative straight away is simple. I can’t drive, and therefore have no valid photo ID, which is necessary in Australia to sign up with any DVD rental store. My only photo ID is my passport, which – of course – was at home. I told the guy this, but at his request, was able to produce an official document I had stuffed in my bag with my name and our current address on it. In a move that was clearly motivated by my obvious ditress, he even let me hand over expired photo ID in lieu of the valid sort, allowing me to sign up with the store.

All documents signed, I rummaged around in my wallet to pay – only to realise I didn’t have the $3.50 in change the transaction required. The ever-compassionate clerk explained that, if I wanted to pay by card, the store had a $5 minimum charge. Happily, one of the items prominently displayed at the counter was a small, metal tin of lollies in the shape of a Mario Bros 1-up mushroom. Together with the two DVDs, the cost was now eight dollars. I handed over my card, and the charge went through.

As he handed the DVDs to me, the clerk took it upon himself to explain when they were due back.

‘Disc 4 is a new release,’ he said. ‘You need to return it tomorrow.’

I stared at him.

‘Any time before 10pm is fine,’ he added.

‘But I won’t get to it tonight. I’m not up to it yet. I’ve got a whole other disc to watch first,’ I said, pointing to disc 3. ‘If you’d told me beforehand that it was an overnight rental, I would’ve just bought the disc 4 you’ve got here along with the disc 3 rental.’ A pause. ‘Can we do that, then? I know you’ve just put it through, but can we change it?’

The glare he glared at me could’ve melted glaciers.

Seriously.

I have worked as a waitress. I have even been one of those quasi-annoying students who stands on a street corner and tries to get random strangers to sign up to World Vision knockoff charities. I don’t like to be a difficult customer, because I appreciate the suckness of low-wage jobs. But I really felt like I’d been dicked around: admittedly, I hadn’t specified that I wanted to buy during the original phone call, but the guy on the other end – and I was pretty sure he was the same guy who ended up serving me – hadn’t asked which type of disc I wanted; he’d also waited until after the transaction went through to point out when the DVDs were due back, which, as a new customer, and given also that I hadn’t even held the cases until he pushed them across the counter, I couldn’t possibly have known beforehand. So even though he was clearly pissed off at the extra effort, and even though I still felt guilty, I had him go back on the computer, remove the charge for the second disc, then ring up the cost of buying it instead.

‘Do you want to keep the mushroom candy?’ he asked.

I looked at the mushroom. It grinned at me.

Fuck it.

‘Why not?’ I said. And then, in an effort to ameliorate my being an annoying customer, I explained that I’d had a shit day, and that I was sorry for taking up his time, but that I’d really just been looking forward to watching something good when I got home; and to his credit, he didn’t seem entirely unmoved, although he did simlutaneously appear fed up with dealing with me, for which I can’t really blame him.

Half an hour later, I finally exited Blockbuster with one rental and one purchased DVD in hand. The former has now been watched in its entirety, and will be returned forthwith. The other remains dormant, until tomorrow.

And the mushroom? Contained sour apple candy. It was delicious.

Also, the container is just awesome.

So I guess it worked out OK, after all.

Meet The Cats

We have two of these. They are dearly loved, and much on my mind of late, as we are in the process of figuring out how to move them from Australia to Scotland with the minimal amount of fuss. So, here they are.

Name: Quill, aka Quilleth, Quilliam, Quilderbeast, Quillfish, Quoo, Owlcat, Fish, Emopard, Panther, Sook, Pest, Large Cat, Bigness, Bigbeast and Pineapple.

Current Age: Sixish.

Rescued From: A creepy albino stoner living in Newtown, and also a warehouse full of crazy recreational stoners who had his stillborn sister encased in resin to use as a paperweight.

Likes: Sleeping, eating, sunbeams, tall places, uncomfortable nests in improbable locations, slinking, aluminium foil, hugs, grooming, licking the ears of the Small Cat, and watermelon.

Dislikes: Sudden loud noises, car trips, going in a cage for any reason, being Off The Map, and rain.

Special Skills: Strategic immobility, forming a hemisphere that slowly expands into whichever region of the bed you happen to vacate, stretching to extraordinary lengths without actual dislocation, picking fights with dogs, knocking things over, clumsiness, playing fetch, and singing to rats.

Name: Indi, aka Indipard, Tinypard, Daintypard, Smoo, Duchess, Littleness, Midget, Smidget, Mooj, Bunnet, Munnet, Small Cat and Tinylion.

Current Age: Fiveish.

Rescued From: A knee-deep patch of ivy between three adjoining fences in the middle of a storm.

Likes: Tall places, evading insolent humans, colonising sedentary humans, food that goes crunch, sunbeams, glaring, sharpening her claws, destroying the Large Cat, and mice.

Dislikes: The vacuum cleaner, birds, unfamiliar humans who don’t sit still, being thwarted, being hugged, using the litterbox at night, being kicked off the end of the bed, and dogs.

Special Skills: Eating an entire dove in one go, vermicide, precision bopping, an extremely loud purr, velcronic claws, the ability to furl into a perfect circle, riding on shoulders, getting out of a completely sealed house while leaving no visible exit point, and base cunning.

They really are very sweet beasts.

Of Asshats, And Money, And The Immorality Thereof

So, people. Have we all heard of James Frey?

Neither had I, until I checked my Google reader yesterday eve, and saw John Scalzi explaining at length why Frey should be kicked in the balls. Since then, I’ve read the original NY Times Books piece on the unimaginably sleazy contracts being pimped by his company, Full Fathom Five; writer Maureen Johnson’s take on said asshatery (spoiler: it involves criticism!); Lili Wilkinson’s POV and a redux by local blogger, Megan Bourke. All of which makes me want to put Frey in a cage fight with Nicholas Sparks, and then throw in a few rabid wolves, and then set them both on fire. With napalm. (The wolves will be spared.)

So, for those of you too lazy to click the above links, here are Frey’s crimes in a nutshell. Note that I’m stealing this summary verbatim from Maureen Johnson, partly because I, too, am lazy, but mostly because her summary is awesome. Thus:

“A few years ago, James Frey (author of “A Million Little Pieces,” the book that was claimed to be a memoir, was picked by Oprah, then turned out to be fictional, ending with an appalling session on Oprah’s couch) decided to put together a company in order to grind out YA books. The writers who sign up to this company sign mind-boggling contracts that essentially pay them more or less nothing and offer them zero protection …

“The contract says that the company can give you credit or not give you credit, as it desires. They can force you to write another book, or they can drop you like a hot potato, for no reason.

“The contract has no audit provision. What does that mean? It means that they can pay you ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY and you just have to accept that the percentage you’re getting is the percentage you are due, and that you are getting an accurate reporting of the number of books sold. And let me tell you, even on good and honest contracts, human error is common. Companies make mistakes on their reports all the time. It’s not necessarily malicious—things just get messed up. So in James Frey world, his company could provide you with statements saying the book sold one thousand copies and that the advance was fifteen dollars, and you might know that the book has sold many thousands of copies and the advance was a hundred thousand dollars, but there would be nothing you could do about it. You will literally never be able to verify the advance the book sold for, the foreign rights deals, or the sales.”

So, yeah. Urge to stab, anyone?

Now, this whole thing ammounts to an exercise in weapons-grade asshatery. And I am outraged! But what really made me crazy was the following paragraph of the NY Books piece, which itself was written by one of the MFA students approached by Frey:

“It appeared that putting out my first book wouldn’t be as easy as Frey had made it seem. But Full Fathom Five was proceeding apace. In June, Almon put out word that they were looking for new writers for four untitled young-adult projects: a project about a girl raised in a cult who “suddenly begins to remember her previous life”; an “untitled paranormal love story” about teen lovers, one dead, in which “we watch the couple struggle to communicate: he miserable in heaven, and she understandably distraught”; an “untitled apocalypse idea” about a girl who enrolls in a summer camp and “finds herself in for a hell of a lot more than rope climbing”; and a “high-school revenge project” in which “four girls from separate cliques at a high school discover they’ve all been date-raped by the same guy and team up to plot vicious revenge.”

Now, look. In the right hands, all of those ideas could be awesome. In fact, being as I am both a YA fantasy/SF reader and writer, there is every chance that if I picked up a book espousing one of those plots under different circumstances, I might buy it. Neither am I some sort of crazed artistic purist, viewing the relationship between creativity and money the same way a hardcore Calvinist might the relationship between the physical body and sex, viz: as two interrelated entities that can only interact at the junction of shame and pragmatism. I get that writers want to make money – I am among them! – and I also understand that this can involve assessing what sells and what doesn’t, and then acting accordingly.

But when I see someone laying down such a seedy series of contracts as Frey has done, given his history of shameless lying for sensationalism, and in the context of creating so-called marketable concepts with the aim of outsourcing them to as-yet unnamed writers, I throw up a little in my mouth.

I mean, a story about a group of teenage girls who’ve all been date-raped by the same guy and their subsequent revenge? That synopsis ought to have a restraining order issued against the phrase “wacky hijinks ensue”, and yet in the context of Frey’s production, that’s exactly what I hear next. Let’s not even go into the idea of yet another paranormal romance about the problems of one dead teenager struggling to love a live one; or rather, let’s not go there when the concept, instead of being someone’s beloved brainchild, has inevitably been chosen for its perceived marketability by Frey and then foisted off onto a different writer who, given the contract they’ll be offered, will have no artistic control whatever.

Bottom line: at this point in the proceedings, the only thing I’d pay for in relation to James Frey is to watch him be strapped down in an arena while John Scalzi, Lili Wilkinson and Maureen Johnson kicked him in the balls, over and over again.

Goddam asshats. Must they ruin everything?

The Spirit Of Inquiry

Prior to seeing The Social Network today, my beloved and I were lunching in the Crown Casino foodcourt. Apropos absoluely nothing and after a long silence, Toby looked up from his Grand Angus burger and spake thus:

TOBY: I have a strange question.

ME: Mm?

TOBY: What if you had an implant or something – a microchip under your skin – that worked as a wireless internet network. Would you say you had a wireless network, or that you were a wireless network?

ME: *stunned silence, followed by helpless laughter*

TOBY: But it’s a relevant question! Because you might say, I have a guitar, but you’d also say, I am a doctor.

Such are the everyday perils of being married to a philosopher.

The everyday perils of being (a) geeky and (b) a writer mean that I eventually gave a serious answer, once my ribs had stopped shaking.

But that’s another story.

(Steam)Punked

There has been some controversy on the internets this week. Specifically – as this is otherwise a useless and self-evident statement akin to pointing out that the Earth revolves around the sun – on the subject of steampunk.

Now: I get that it’s in the nature of human beings to be critical. We all have little mental pressure valves that sometimes need to be vented in full, no matter how slight the final provocation. The results of this are not always entirely rational, and don’t even necessarily represent our day-to-day views; or, if they do, then in a more polarised, less compromising format. For instance: when my husband and I were cycling along the Otago Rail Trail in New Zealand in the first week of our honeymoon, a territorial magpie flew right into the side of my un-helmeted head, causing me to fall to the dirt, cry just a little bit out of shock, and – once I straightened up – to bleed from the temple. This prompted my significant other to launch into an angry, fifteen-minute long tirade about how all magpies were basically just flying rats, they’re bloody dangerous and their singing’s not even that great, fucking magpies, flying around like they own the place, and so on until I had a little less blood streaming from my head and had recovered enough to point out that, one, the magpie had gone; two, I didn’t think it had actually meant to hit me, if its stunned retreat was anything to go by; and three, magpies are actually pretty cool, when they’re not defending their nests.

Thus assauged by my recovery, my beloved came to see the humour in the incident, and returned emotionally to his default state of Magpies Are Fine, Or At Least Not Worth Getting Constantly Worked Up About. And thus, the point: while a little vitriol from time to time is both healthy and human, the important thing is to recognise when the rage has passed, and to compensate accordingly. Which brings me to Cat Valente’s recent blog on the problems of steampunk, a post that was clearly written while in the throes of anger, and which she has subsequently followed up with both a concession to that fact and a list of ten things she actually does love about steampunk. My reactions to her initial post aside, these efforts at conciliation are worthy of respect, in that Valente has been both brave enough, while impassioned, to share her views publicly, and then adult enough to try and engage afterwards in a more constructive dialogue. So, points for maturity.

Charles Stross has also written an anti-steampunk post, one which predates Valente’s and to which she makes passing reference; and then, in seeming response to both these views, but specifically to that of Stross, we have Scott Westerfeld’s defence of steampunk. In case you have been living in a hole, it is not unrelevant that Westerfeld’s two most recent novels are themselves works of YA steampunk: Leviathan and its immediate sequel, the newly-released Behemoth. There have also been other sundry responses lurking about the webnologies, notably this piece by Kirstyn McDermott, who agrees with Valente, and a critique of the anti-steampunk position by jadegirl (props to marydell for the link). But in case you’d rather skip the links, here is my breakdown of both camps:

Anti-Steampunk

1. As a sub-genre, steampunk is more concerned with the visual aesthetics of sticking goggles and cogs on top hats than dealing with the actual, complex and fascinating social issues of the era in question, a complaint which is best expressed by this comic. (Sidenote: no matter who you agree with, Kate Beaton is awesome.)

2. That this preoccupation is not only detrimental in terms of encouraging the production pulp, adventuristic works rather than meaningful narrative, but actively problematic in terms of glamourising a deeply flawed Empire: a Dickensian time characterised by the oppression of women, minorities and anyone not actually an Earl; an expansionist and militarised culture; the gruesome rise of industrialisation and crippling factory-work as was frequently undertaken by the disenfranchised masses, especially children; and prohibitive sexual mores. Furthermore, the -punk suffix of the genre itself should imply an innate receptivity to counterculture, and that by ignoring these issues, steampunk is effectively betraying itself.

3. That the end result of all of the above is yet another fad being pounced on by the Great Marketing Machine, resulting in the premature cheapening of something that could have been good, if it had only been kept in the hands of those interested in doing it well, but which has instead become a cheap, conglomerate, prepacked affair with as much sub- and counter-cultural cred as Ronald McDonald, pandering to steampunks who all dress the same while trying to be different. There are no more heroes, etc. (See again Kate Beaton, re: hipsters ruin everything.)

Pro-Steampunk

1. Yes, there is a visual element to steampunk. And it involves goggles! But the presence of a coherent aesthetic style does not prevent meaningful social discussion within the genre, any more than wearing a pretty pink dress prevents a woman from holding intelligent opinions. By critiquing steampunk foremost on the basis of how it looks, rather than providing concrete examples of what it does – and by using aristocratic female fashion as the lynchpin of this argument – its detractors are committing the same sin against which they are endeavouring to protest, viz: the use of corsetry to conceal a lack of substance.

2. Examining mainstays of the current canon, such as Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age or Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius, it is undeniable that steampunk is far from inimical to adventure. However, these are also stories with a strong focus on female characters negotiating the perils of Victorian society, which question militarism and the potentially perilous uses of science, the consquences of poverty and industrialisation on children, and the place of minorities within that society. On this latter point, it is also important to note that steampunk afficionados are by no means exclusively white/privileged, and that there is a great deal of discussion on all of these issues within the community itself.

3. All genres have problems. To contend otherwise is ludicrous. Specifically within the wider fantasy/SF subset, however, to act as though issues of class privilege, race and suffrage are unique to steampunk purely by virtue of its relationship to Victorian society is deeply inaccurate. Beginning with the works of Tolkein and moving forward from there, these are questions that the entire SFF fandom is concerned with on all fronts, and has been for some time. That doesn’t mean that none of the criticisms leveled specifically at steampunk are invalid, but in the current climate of people claiming genre fatigue, such apostasy begins to smack of the elitist proposition that once something has become mainstream, it is made fundamentally irredeemable, or at least deeply untrustworthy, and therefore void of meaning.

So!

Allow me to lay my own cards on the table. Some of my favourite stories of recent times have been steampunk – not only the titles mentioned above, but also Michael Pryor’s fabulous Laws of Magic series (featuring a female character who is both a suffragette and a ninja); Stephen Hunt’s ongoing Jackelian sequence, which begins with The Court of the Air; and Sydney Padua’s brilliant and stunningly researched comic 2D Goggles, about the further adventures of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. There has also been Gail Carriger’s Soulless, which is unashamedly a lighthearted mashup of romance, steampunk and urban fantasy; and, at the other end of the stylistic spectrum, Kate Elliott’s brilliant Cold Magic, which the author describes as an “Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy with Bonus! airship, Phoenician spies, and the intelligent descendants of troodons.”

Re this last, and specifically the word icepunk: it is not uncommon nowadays for certain members of the geek community to flinch and/or start foaming at the mouth whenever -punk is appended to something else in order to – hopefully – coin a new genre term. Others, like Valente, have no objection to the practise, so long as the work in question, in her words, “is as punk as it says on the tin.”

Which is fine: but as many a pub debate about the motion of linguistics has long since made clear to me, what a word means originally and how it develops over time are two different things, and while there are some instances where fighting against the change is a fine and noble thing, there are some battles better left unfought. I’m not yet sure into which category steampunk (and all the other suffixd -punks) will eventually fall, but being as how I’m not consciously a fan of punk music and have never particularly noticed any connection between the one and the other – unless we’re talking in a generic, rebelling-against-the-norm sort of way, rather than as is specifically relevant to stories about countercultures fighting the dominant trend – then my money is, for now, on the former. The point being, I’m not really fussed about the whole suffixing issue in this instance, because for whatever reason, it’s never flicked my Rage Switch. But I get that it does for other people, and so am willing to credit their outrage as something more than just preferential aggravation. (By way of solidarity, the record is fairly clear on my hatred for -gate being appended to not even mildly shocking political scandals. I mean, seriously. GAH!)

All of which, to come to a point, puts me in the pro-steampunk category. Yes, there are problems. Authors and fans alike are working on them, thinking about them and generally paying attention. Yes, steampunk often involves adventure. That’s not a sin! Part of what I love so much about fantasy is its versatility in this respect: that what would otherwise be a purely issues-based story if set in the real world can take on a dimension of swashbuckling, humour and magic to balance out the social grief and piercing moments of inequality. Also: the fact that Tor.com has struck its flag is less a sign of the Apocalypse than it is the turning of the world. What was once an obscure subgenre is now a more well-known and popular subgenre, with all the attendant perils and pleasures that implies. That’s all.

And you know what? I like the goggles.

News!

So, I have this whole half-written blog about the internet scuffling over steampunk this week that I want to post, but right now, I just don’t have the energy to finish it, because in less than two months, Toby and I will be moving from Melbourne, Australia to St Andrew’s, Scotland, where he has accepted a job. So, huzzah! But also exhaustion. Because two months is not a particularly long amount of time, and there are a hojillion billion things which must be done before then. The most significant of these involves teh visas, acquisition of which is guaranteed to break the human spirit faster than a crash course in waterboarding. Also, selling our unwanted possessions on eBay, figuring out what to do with our cats (who will eventually be coming with us, once the 6 months it takes to get them pet passports are up), buying airline tickets, looking at accommodation, getting those things we do want to keep freighted over, attending my sister-in-law’s engagement party, travelling to Sydney for an early Christmas and my mother’s 60th birthday, dealing with the next round of edits for The Key to Starveldt, finishing up my job and ending our lease, to say nothing of the fact that, prior to learning Toby had got the job, I signed up for NaNoWriMo.

So, a bit busy, then.

Having only found out about the job a week ago, it’s taken until now for the full reality of it to sink in. We’ve been running around organising things, telling people and trying to figure out what to do next, with the result that only today did it actually hit us that we are moving to Scotland. This resulted, not unappreciably, in a form of localised collapse, viz: multiple naps, a trip to Max Brenner’s for chocolate frappes, the renting of the new Sherlock Holmes movie (because action films starring Robert Downey Jnr are soothing unto my soul and, yea, also pleasant to look upon), and a world-first decision not to attend a friend’s karaoke party on the grounds of exhaustion.

By way of properly comprehending the import of this last, know that I will happily walk over poisonous snakes and swallow hot glass if it means I get to sing Kiss By A Rose in front of other people, many of them strangers. Because I love me some karaoke.

So, yes. Busy! But just for tonight, we will revel in a glorious state of pretend un-busyness. With Nicoise salad.