(no subject)

[gwydion]

* Syrian pro-Assad hackers are claiming responsibility for hacking the AP and causing a flash crash of the stock market, by tricking twitter people into believing the White House had been bombed and the President injured. The President is fine.

* For the most part, I'm giving the discussions of motives for ratings and attempts to capitalize on the Boson Bombing for political gain the side eye. So little is known and so much is being spun on the flimsiest of information. As a result, you may notice I've been saying comparatively little about the case. This doesn't mean I don't care about the people killed and grievously harmed in the bombing; it means I care enough to find all the spin and political hay making distasteful, if that makes sense.

However, I did think the related discussion about things like how this may or may not fit with ideas of shooters like this, balancing civil liberties vs. security, and whether or not profiling is helping or harming law enforcement comparatively grown up and cautious when laid next to the wild speculation going on most other places. As a result, I'm tossing y'all the link to the start of the discussion in case this interests you.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49263362#51639623

* Sequestration and Homeland Security:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

* I am filing the New York Post with FOX "News" and the Daily Mail as fake news organizations after their behavior in the recent crisis. As a result, this struck me as fitting.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

* This sort of bullying is horrifying and an actual felony. "Good Luck Kris!" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/04/good-luck-kris.html

* Chrissy Amphlett has lost her battle with breast cancer. I'm linking the song she's best known for below the cut, as it's now stuck in my head. Yes, it's inappropriate, but I like to remember the dead when they were full of life.

* "Gun Control & Political Suicide: John Oliver vows that never again will a political career end in a senseless act of meaningful legislation."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

* I went to bed way early last night. The Butt made the whole sleeping thing really hard, but I got some anyway. I tried to read "Secret Matters," but it was simply too slow at getting interesting. I'm most of the way through "Things Invisible to See." I turns out I'd read a number of them when they were in the sf magazines, so I'm not seeing the whole collection fresh. It's got some beautiful things in it and some of the more experimental pieces worked. Alas, some of them didn't, and one in particular made me really uncomfortable as a trans person. (There was nothing malicious in it. It just felt trivializing in a way I can't quantify or reasonably explain. It might not hit another trans person that way, but it really made me grumpy. No, it's not the Elvis one. It's the other one. If you read it, I bet you'll know exactly which one). It's also a product of it's time, with many of the stories reprints of things that were in magazines the last few years before protease inhibitors. Stories about AIDS are important, and these selections are powerful, it's just that the lesbians in the book get love stories and lust stories; the gay men get death stories and survivor stories. When they were spread out in the magazines of the early '90's they were individually powerful and intense and beautiful. Gathered together in a clump, they are a grave yard in which the lesbians are having a bacchanal. There is death and loss in some of the lesbian stories, and there is love in some of the gay male stories, don't get me wrong. It's just it makes me sad that twenty years ago is was easy to imagine a Jewish lesbian vampire love story, but no one could imagine a truly happy love story for the men. Ouch. Bush Sr.'s America sure felt like more of the long Reagan night, despite the wall coming down. (The book was printed towards the end of Clinton's Era, but as I said, many of the stories were older, and this really felt like that). I found myself seeing this story collection as a snapshot of time, a moment in amber, beautiful and terrible. Like my teen years. By the time this collection was out I was moving North to become a teacher, not in the grim cities of my teens. Every thing was brighter and full of adventure, the 90's proper. This collection feels the way I felt back east, it calls out to a person I haven't been in a long time. This doesn't make it bad or wrong. I am not sorry to read it. It's just I was the audience for the stories in this book when they were new, and I'm simply not any more. I wasn't by the time this book came out. They are old diary entries, the hermit crab's discarded shell. I can read them and be moved, but it's not with the intensity I was when they were new.

Comments

[brightlion.livejournal.com]

The last story in Things Invisible to See is the one that I love. It's the one that at the time I read it struck me as different from any other story I'd read. I saw it as a love story, not one of the passions of being young, but just a slow, gradual building of love and that to me was unique. When everywhere else seemed to be writing of lusts and two characters clashing, and screwing, I saw it as a very sweet romance story. It's up there, along with Ever So Much More Than Twenty from So Fey, as stories that hit a different note. I can't remember the rest of the collection, I have vague recollections of the Elvis story, but not the others. But I'll often read a book of short stories just for the one tale.

I agree that the collection as a whole is dated. I actually love how you phrased things, I think that's really apt. But that one story, or at least my remembrance of it, with the psychic, his visions of the future, and that last image of him, in the room, surrounded with glass, I don't know. It was a story I loved when I read it. It was one of the few short stories I could actually remember from all of the short story books that I'd read.

Ever so Much More than Twenty from So Fey. The psychic one at the end of Things Invisible to See. The fantasy murder-mystery from the fantasy Bending the Landscape, because it was fun. Steve Berman's fascinating fantasyish world which pops up in a few of his stories in Trysts. Hmm, so many different books I've read and most of the stories I can't even remember. I general think of short story collections as boxes of chocolates. If you're lucky, it'll be a high-quality box and every one will be different and special. Chances are though most of them will be caramels, a few will be just disgusting, and if you're lucky one will be incredible.

It's strange I had a dream last night you and I were speaking about the Silent Empire series. I was showing you the covers of them and for some reason there was a man riding an ostrich on one. Oh! Yeah that's another story, although damn it was sad, there's one story in the Sci-Fi Bending the Landscape, on a planet where it's actually an asset to be deaf and there's birds. Clearly my dream-brain was mixing those up. But, well, a lot of the stories have problems.

A lot of the short-story collections about and for gay men, are generally erotica, and sometimes there's love and often there's misery. If you jump over to the other side of the fence and try reading m/m, it's... ugh m/m has problems. I've read a fair bit since I got my kindle, mostly through curiosity. I accidentally purchased a few m/m short story collections. I find that the relationships are generally toxic, with one partner being cast as the 'woman' although not like an actual woman, but he's prone to crying at every opportunity. There's often rape, and rape=love. There's little building of any relationship, it's generally meet, fall in love at first sight, bang! Bang! BANG! But they do usually get their happy ever afters. There may be better stories out there, but I found all those stories I read melted into a sameness and I genuinely could not even remember, let alone reccommend any of them.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

That was actually only only story I hadn't read yet when I wrote the review. I read it today before game. It was beautiful and an interesting idea. It was a love story for grown ups which I appreciate.

I would enjoy talking about books with you, RL, but it's unlikely given our limitations.

I really I am not sorry to have rwad the collection, as I hadn't thought of some of those stories in years.

The one that bugged me was the one where Anne gets a penis. It felt like lesbian privilege in a way I'm having a hard time putting into words. The Elvis one didn't bother me as there was gender fluidity structured into the character, even though it was spoken of directly in modern terms, if that makes sense.

I don't generally mind misery, it's just with this collection, the shadow of AIDS was so long and the lesbians had a much bigger range of emotions and outcomes. All the AIDS stories were good and important individually, but they failed to give the men the range the women got. I think a collection could carry all those stories if it was mingled with stories with different notes, if that makes sense. Here, I couldn't help noticing the difference in treatment..

[brightlion.livejournal.com]

Oh good I'm glad that you liked it. It was the only reason that I suggested that book. Now I'm older I like my love stories for grown ups. I appreciate that slow gradual building as opposed to the heady rush, and it was just so very different from how you usually see love stories portrayed. But it never felt like it was about settling or making do with something that was second best. And that it came wrapped up in a bow with some psychic powers, and the whole problem of seeing the end before it begins.

I can't remember the one where Anne got a penis. I may have skipped it. I may have blocked it from my memory.

And I do understand where you're coming from.

[brightlion.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity's sake I dug out the book and had a read of that penis story. I don't believe I actually read it first time around. There was a lot of transphobia during the story, both the explicit and the implicit which I found unsettling. For a story that could have at least touched on trans and gender issues and explored more of a degree of gender fluidity it felt so terribly binary. It was an unpleasant read for me.

And yes it felt like it was trivialising trans issues. How she had absolutely no problem just going and getting herself booked in for surgery. Oh isn't it easy, she can make an appointment and just have everything fixed. How... ugh no, I did not like the story at all. I had a kneejerk revulsion reaction to it which is why I didn't read it the first time around.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

Seriously, it was upsetting. I wanted to smack somebody.

[brightlion.livejournal.com]

Yeah me too. If I'd remembered that story was in there, and had actually read it, I likely wouldn't have suggested the book.

I'm wondering, have you read Queer Dimensions? From what I remember it does also suffer from the stories with the gay men not ending as happily as those with the women do, which is why I didn't suggest it to start with. It does have a few interesting queer tales in it though. There's one which tackles a very similar issue to that stupid penis story but I thought it handled it better. That may just be my preference though.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

It's really okay. A lot of the other stories were excellent.

I'll go look into it.

With anthologies, I often forget which I've read and as I'm bad with names and titles. It gets more complicated, as I've been reading Asimov's from the first issue (my Dad's subscription. The first few years I didn't read well enough, but I went back and read them all when my reading was up to snuff. I also took Analog, S&SF, and Amazing on my own account in High School. While I dropped subscriptions for poverty at various points, I still take S & SF and Asimov's. These days, I'm often a couple of years behind as I have different reading patterns, but I still read them. The result is when anthologies contain reprints, there's a chance I've read some of the stories as happened with Things Invisible. Me: Did I read this anthology or just the stories?

Anyway, I'll go order it and see what I think.