FRANZ KAFKA

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

WELL, AFTER I DID THE PREVIOUS POST

I realized it was kind of dark for the holiday season! So never mind that poem for now, check it out later. In the meantime, on a more holiday season note, here's a pic of one of the Christmas prezzies my Sweetie gave me.

I don't build a lot of aircraft models, and I've never built a Zeppelin before, so this will be an interesting change for me.

And note it's not the Hindenburg. That would be bad Feng shui! Not that I'd rule out a model of the Hindenburg in the future . . .

POEM 1 (I Hated You Because)

I Hated You Because

your shit did not smell;

neither did my roses;

you stood in my light and complained I was blocking your shadow;

you forgave yourself with shocking ease;

of all the many times you said no
when I hadn't asked and was on the far side of the street, in dark glasses, only looking for a moment while checking my grocery list and you were facing the other direction and
couldn't possibly have known;

of your right to be seen and my absence thereof;

of the authority of your eyebrows;

whether I agreed or disagreed with you I was ever only a foreigner;

you could both keep an eye on and ignore me at the same time, if you wanted;

whatever I wanted, it was only you who had the right to it;

of how easy it was for you to be courageous -- you had no idea;

you could wear symbols of your failure and make them look like someone else's;

you were a hero in victory, a martyr in defeat -- Wuotan and Yahweh your admiring uncles;

I was a bully or a weakling, no matter what the truth was (hah! even both);

of the respect strangers had for you;

faith was yours for the asking -- works didn't matter;

your works were more than enough -- faith didn't matter;

you could judge and not be judged;

your judgement was itself the sentence -- how I writhed! No impotent guards and prison walls for you!

you did not need the last word -- it was yourself;

of your superiority;

of your inferiority (so much better than mine);

you could despise weakness when strong, strength when weak. How did you manage it?

you were whatever most undermined me -- without knowing it, without caring;

you were ever looking over my shoulder -- without knowing it, without caring;

of your clear eye which feared nothing.

And now that you are dead I sing your praises thus and kill you again before the world, you bum-sucking vampire!



Roxy Katt

NEVER FORGET

that the birth of Christ in the world is not only a religious miracle but a political one. Christ's life on earth was like the battle of Kursk: the turning event in a great war, the beginning of the protracted and agonizing end of the Enemy.

The war I speak of is the war against sin and suffering and death, and it is fought out in the heart of every individual and in the political and economic structures we live in.

The birth of Christ is the promise of salvation to the suffering and forgiveness of the wicked (and all of us are some of both).

This is also a time of great mystery, a time which religious doctrines can to some extent elucidate, but not explain.

This is the time when God begins to retake His lost creation. How could She ever have lost it? Why the immeasurable distance between us and our Creator? No one can understand, and for some this very question is the death of anything that might be called religion.

But it need not be. And on both sides of the great divide God acts and sees and loves.

WOMEN'S FASHION MAGAZINES AND HOBBYIST MODELLING MAGAZINES (#1)

The similarity is simply this: both present the ideal. Fashion magazines present the perfect woman (or at least, what we are to take as such) as opposed to something less. Hobby modelling magazines (such as Finescale Modeler or Military Modeller) present the reader with pictures and articles of kits built by people who are very good at what they do.

But where are the ordinary Joes and Janes? (and it's almost entirely Joes, by the way). These are the people who build to a much inferior level, like the not quite completed Soviet BA-3 armoured car above built by yours truly. Granted, I don't see why anyone would regularly want to see large numbers of pictures of or articles on such pedestrian accomplishments in their monthly model magazine. But here's my point: one gets the strong impression that the only people who build like I do are children. Is this really so? Are all the adults out there building musuem quality planes, ships and tanks? Somehow I doubt it.

If I had the time and the desire to build to the level displayed in your typical modelling magazine, perhaps I could do so. But to me, that means less fun and more work.

Am I the only one in the hobby who thinks this way? Something for the modelling magazines to consider: maybe if you had a monthly column (say, one page long) devoted to the thoughts of less accomplished builders you could actually make your magazines more interesting.

CALAMITY JANE MEETS KATIE BROWN

Here's a little Youtube clip I found, which features Calamity Jane (Doris Day) and Katie Brown (Allyn Ann McLerie). I like how innocently aggressive the boyish Jane, in her ignorance, gets with the tight-laced showgirl: a sharp clash of butch and femme, I'd say. I get an enticing sense of how vulnerable Katie might be if Jane were to let go of herself. (Yeah, I know she's supposed to fall in love with a guy in that movie, but I think that was a mistake.)

JEALOUS MRS. CLAUS WINS A CATFIGHT

with a rival by jamming her head into an oversized Christmas ornament.

What next? A good spanking, maybe?

I DON'T KNOW WHAT SHE'S SAYING TO HIM,

but I'm pretty sure she's just asking for a spanking. And even if she isn't, she should get one anyway.

What could be more humiliating than to be Catwoman and get a spanking?

That's what I love about bun-gripping catsuits: they make you free and powerful, but oh so strangely vulnerable at the same time!

EACH CLASS HAS ITS OWN FORM OF NASTINESS.

I sometimes think the middle class, the class that most loved and supported Hitler, is nasty in part because it feels itself so terribly judged by the reality of the class spectra above and below it. The middle class's capitalist belief that the cream inevitably and justly rises to the top and becomes rich makes the middle class feel inferior to these wealthier persons, but its lingering Christian faith that God will take the side of the poor and turn the tables against those better off than them makes the middle class aware of some great nemesis deservedly coming its way. It therefor sees itself as a class of ne'er-do-well losers and over-privileged gluttons at one and the same time.

A poor person might trust in God's vengeance and a rich person in the authority of her bank account, but the person in the middle is damned whether she worships God or Mammon. Hence the bile. She can't win -- short of giving up what she has to the poor or clawing her way to the top of the money mountain. Her only road to a kind of shaky self-respect is to see herself as the inexplicable victim of both rich and poor. But she, like Hitler, is always fighting a two front war, and that is a very unstable proposition.

A MISTAKE

Home alone, the internationally reknowned fashion designer foolishly tries on her stunning new latex "fish dress" costume. After 30 minutes of exhausting effort she is finally in -- and then discovers she is hopelessly stuck!

I HAVE BEEN READING THIS LATELY

Mission of Folly is by James Laxer. So far, so good. I'll keep you all posted. What I've read so far is that the war in Afghanistan was rammed down our throats by the government with no consultation. Why does this not surprise me?

WRITING LITERARY FICTION

is one of the few specialized activities where the non-specialist tends to take precedence over those who really know what they are doing. When somebody wants someone to fly a plane they hire a pilot. If someone is needed to perform surgery a surgeon is called, and if a new office building is required you generally get people with the right know-how to design and make these things. But when it comes to publishing novels the first and best opportunities tend to be handed to celebrities, friends of clebrities, well connected individuals of one sort or another, people who are very good at and recognized for something other than writing, people with whatever problems are fashionable at the moment, and literary apparatchiks who have spent more time and energy on self-promotion than actual writing.

If there is anything left over after all the above groups have been satisfied, once in a while an actual writer without anything to commend her but the quality of her work just might squeak by the censors and get a book published.

HOPLA! ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH, OR WHAT?

Okay, so ordinarily I think I get an average of about 8 visits a day here. But last November I suddenly had a day where I got 160 visits.

Well, this must be because about that time I recieved a positive review and rating from Jane's Guide. See the new icon at left. Thank you, Jane!

And here I've been asleep at the switch and not posting! Blargh! Stay tuned.

OKAY, LIKE IT'S BEEN OVER A MONTH

since I've blogged here. I am not the most regular blogger in the world, though I am a fairly enduring one. When I have some time not taken up by my day job or the exasperating folderol of daily life I am more likely to spend it writing fiction rather than blogging or taking care of my presence on the web. Perhaps this is the reason that literary agents and publishers (other than in the erotica presses, which are much more democratic) have nothing for me but form rejection letters: I am not a celebrity.

But I'm also a stubborn little bitch. So I'm going to make it anyway.

SO IT TURNS OUT I DESERVE TO DIE

because I am against Canada's war in Afghanistan. How do I know this? I saw a bumper sticker recently that read,

"If you don't stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them."

Damn! That's clever. Whoever said everyone on the Right is stupid? Now suppose I had a car, and suppose I put a bumper sticker on it that read as follows:

"Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan deserve to die."

Yeah, I know the naked nastiness of this would not have any wit to make it look like wisdom, unlike the politically correct bon mots of whatever militarist Voltaire is writing bumper stickers for our solid citizens these days. But ask yourself this: how would my hypothetical bumper sticker be any more vicious, or any less just than that of whatever perspicacious lemming (quoted above) formed his magisterial judgement of the peace movement?

Canada, watch out. You are allowing militarism to make the civilian feel small and unworthy to criticize. These feelings are always useful in the service of reaction.

NOVEMBER 11 IS APPROACHING . . .

and while we all obediently gush about the unquestionable virtues of young Canadians who unwittingly (one can only hope unwittingly) died in the service of British Imperialism in World War One, let us consider the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. These chaps were the sort of people who were more likely to think about what they were doing before risking their lives and killing others. They fought fascism in Spain while so much of the rest of the world was just hoping fascism would go away. These Canadians did not wait for their governments or the bourgeois press to tell them what to think or what to do.

But are they ever remembered on Remembrance Day? Alas, they were Leftists. And Leftists who go to war without state sanction must be sent down the memory hole. Doubtless they would be called "terrorists" now: the bourgeoisie's pet word for violence not sanctioned by the governments of alleged democracies.

LEFT WING CANADIAN NOVELS

Do they exist?

NO. There are none (except for mine. But I have not been able to get any publisher or agent to look at it yet.)

I repeat: there are no Left Wing Canadian novels.

Somebody tell me (please!) that I'm wrong. I've got to be wrong. I must have missed something somewhere. My search has been by no means exhaustive. I know of Left Wing Canadian poetry (e.g. Milton Acorn) Left Wing drama (e.g. David Fennario) but novels?

I write to provoke thee!

Have at thee, I say, oh vacuum land! Canada has produced no Lefty novelists at all. Somebody please slaughter me (verbally). It's the only way I'll learn.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS SAYS

the gentleman pictured to the left here was not a Christian.

Oh dear.

Dear me, Chris, deary, deary me. What are we to do with you? I'm at a loss. Anyway, here's a little poem on the matter:

There was an angry atheist,
who with the Lord was greatly pissed;
religion burned him up as well,
because it talked too much of hell,
but when a man of Christian mission
turned out not to be a villain,
spoke of peace and not damnation,
Hitchens did a thought negation,
fiddling with the definition
of what made a very Christian.

Damn his fustimystication!
And mendacious truculation!
Words are public property,
dithering dishonestly

by changing meanings at a whim,

and flexing them aback again,
to sate your ego,

serve a grudge,

will turn you into a soggy pumpkin.

(Osama Bin Laden, I've heard tell, is actually a Freemason. No, really.)

YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED

a new button just to the left here with a maple leaf and the word "progressive" on it. This will take you to the Canadian "progressive bloggers" site and its many links. I just registered with this group and there are a lot of terrific blogs out there. Check it out.

CELEBRITY

The existence of the Celebrity is the result of an imposed ontological competition: one cannot BE unless one IS more than another IS. Just as in capitalism prosperity is not possible for all because capitalism necessitates the exploitation of many, in capitalism there cannot be anything like universal wealth of being. In capitalism people are pushed into self-contempt just as they are pushed into poverty; both self-contempt and poverty are built into the system.

Wealth in capitalism is generated by poverty. Being in capitalism is generated by feelings of worthlessness. In capitalism, if one wants prosperity one must emulate the capitalist and exploit workers. Likewise, capitalism pressures one to enjoy peace with the self by finding a way of consigning the masses to the role of inferior and spectator. Hence, genuine love of self and of other are always, even if not consciously or directly, at war with capital.

What I am criticizing here is the very structure of pride, in the worst sense of that word. Beware the eyes that take in the light and give none back.

THE BOURGEOISIE CALL US "EXTREMISTS"

and themselves "moderates." It is as if some political position, by virtue of its being in the middle (however "middle" is defined) is automatically true. You know how intolerably stupid someone on the radical Left would sound if he were to say "my opinion is further to the Left than anyone's! Therefor it must be true!" However, the "moderates" think that just by being in the middle somewhere one is automatically holding the truest position--or at the very least, a respectable position. Why is this? When did the truth commit itself to moderation? Does it never occur to these bourgeois that looked at from their perspective, the truth might turn out to be radical? Did it consult human proclivities before coming into being?

Consider as well the exalted Henry Kissinger. Was he not always portrayed as a master of calm and reasoned moderation? Yet he was a genocidal maniac.

"Right," "Left," and "Middle" are vague though useful terms which categorize various ideas and attitudes with relationship to each other. But none of these terms has by definition any inherent relationship to the truth. They cannot measure the truth. It is the truth that measures them.

WOOHOO!

Spank! is book of the day at author island. Check it out. Grab your chance to win a free copy there.

MISANTHROPIC INTERLUDE...

I walk down the streets of this city and increasingly I see people who remind me of Wells's Morlocks and Eloi, except that the two types are combined in one: a person who has all the ugliness and lowliness of the Morlock, but at the same time the pathetic helplessness of the Eloi. These are people you can see buying things but you can't imagine them making anything or engaging in any kind of humanly challenging labour. Look at the physical manifestations of the civilization around us -- giant buildings, computers, automobiles -- and ask yourself this: did such a race of schlemihls design and run all this? How is it possible? It's like discovering a sophisticated space station built, inhabited, and maintained by absent-minded chimpanzees. We seem to be too small for the world we have made.

WHENEVER I GET BITTER

about not being able to grab the attention of any publishers or agents for my literary fiction I troll the net for bitchy comments about the Canlit establishment. I find this quite comforting.

I know the correct response for the rejected writer is supposed to be "gee, that's the way it goes," or "I'll just have to try harder next time" or "time to become best friends with Margaret Atwood, because God knows, if you don't know a great writer personally you couldn't possibly be one." But the simple fact of the matter is that the finest fiction and the best crafted query packages must come to nothing if they are sent to some unimaginative bourgeois twerp who spends most of his waking hours hunting down the latest celebrity to publish. No, I am a complete failure at glad-handling and networking and all that shit. As the saying goes, "I don't dance, I just sing." I spend my time writing, and yes, I DO look down at writers who spend more time studying self-promotion than literature. If it comes to that, I've written query letters that could not possibly have been better unless I could literally read the minds of those I was sending them to.

Let me recommend, therefor, an article by Darryl Whetter called "Canada's an Urban Nation. Why is Our Literature Still Down on the Farm?" No, it's not about query letters, it just shows disrespect towards the Canlit establishment, and that's all to the good.

You really have to wonder whether the grand panjandrums who decide what gets published in this country have a clue.

RE THE SPANK! ANTHOLOGY: JUST FOR YOUR INFO...

The photographer who did the cover art is Stacie Joy. Cassandra Park wrote the intro. The editor is D.L. King.

Also, don't forget my earlier post here which will tell you what writers in the anthology will be doing their part in the SPANK! blog tour next. There will be six more in the next six days, so be sure to check them out.

WHY DO I LIKE SPANKING?

Simply put, because it is humiliating. And I identify with the spankee more than the spanker, frankly. If you check out my story in the SPANK! anthology, you will find I have added my own characteristic twist to the situation: getting stuck in something. This may be a more unusual fetish than spanking, but it's a big part of what turns me on.

And for your viewing pleasure, here is a very attractive woman who is not in the anthology, but who does look like she might be about to get stuck. And if she does, who's to say she won't get a spanking?

I JUST FOUND OUT SPANK! IS NOW ON AMAZON

So you can check it out here!

HOW DID I GET STARTED WRITING EROTICA?

Well, I guess just plain horniness! Actually, I probably started out drawing odd little pictures before I wrote much, but my drawing has never been very good. I think when I originally started writing erotica I had no intention of publishing it. Then I tried to get it published on the net. I found this harder than I had thought at first, but then I made a breakthrough or two and have been finding it much easier since.

AND WELCOME TO MY PORTION OF THE SPANK! BLOG TOUR...

My contribution to Logical Lust's latest anthology (to be released tomorrow) is called "The Trumpet of Destiny." Thought I'd just post a wee excerpt here:

Take her ass, for example:

Still walking behind her, I noticed her magnificent skirt-stretching derriere was actually a little large for the rest of her skinny frame. Not fat, but well rounded and very wide-boned -- and very firm. This was not surprising, given that Hank, I knew, could never go for a woman not built to receive a thorough spanking.

It had been a long time since he had given one to me. Yes, doubtless this leather-lapped backside before me was the one that had been reddening under his masterful mitt while my own bottom had been languishing in neglect. I remembered when I used to wear pleated cheerleader skirts -- knowing how much an older woman in a pleated cheerleader skirt provoked him to madness -- and then feigned astonishment when, in some public place but at a moment when nobody was looking, he would hoist the back of it and give me a terrific smack right on the heinie. I would go cross-eyed trying to stifle my yelp of delight and pain, stand there knock-kneed rubbing my ass, while he nonchalantly pretended that absolutely nothing whatsoever had happened.

God, it had been fun. And now he was a bastard. An absolute, fucking bastard. And she, the one the bastard was fucking, she was hot; no doubt about it. I didn't know whether this should make me feel better or worse. And she had good taste, I thought, glancing about the house, no doubt about that either.

In Godfather II Frank Pentangele says this to Michael Corleone:

"Your father did business with Hyman Roth,

your father respected Hyman Roth,
but your father never trusted Hyman Roth."

It occurred to me one might say the same thing with regard to John Calvin's attitude to God:



John Calvin did business with God,

John Calvin respected God,

but John Calvin never trusted God.

THOUGHT I'D REMIND YOU ALL

today is D.L. King's day for the blog tour (see schedule in my previous post) for the Spank! anthology.

BLOG TOUR DATES FOR SPANK!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

SPANK! AN UPCOMING ANTHOLOGY I WILL BE IN

Spank! is published by Logical Lust to be released on September 15.

Here's the table of contents, featuring some mighty fine writers, including yours truly:

1. Just a Spanking by Lisabet Sarai
2. Apple Bottom Hard Cider by Kathleen Bradean
3. Anthropology by Donna George Storey
4. Anything But Ordinary by A.D.R. Forte
5. The Royal Montague by Cervo
6. Elementary, My Dear Sir by Anna Black
7. The Accidental Spanker by Sean Meriwether
8. Necessary Roughness by Beth Wylde
9. The Good Soldier by Sacchi Green
10. The House on Oxford Street by J.Z. Sharpe
11. Finally by Jessica Lennox
12. Fit to be Tied, Bound to be Gagged by Allison Wonderland
13. Thin-Skinned by Jean Roberta
14. Slippering by Lee Ash
15. A Well-Red Bottom by Maggie Morton
16. Just Rewards by Tara S. Nichols
17. Sugar by Sommer Marsden
18. The Trumpet of Destiny by Roxy Katt
19. Richard's Reward by D. L. King
20 What Jackie Gives Me by Evan Mora

DIANA RIGG, I ASSUME

Just bridle me and ride me, dear! Ouch!

TANKIETKA, ANYONE?

You may be waiting a bit. Most of what's in my two story house has had to be moved down to the main floor, so there's no room for model building just now. Bugger! This experience has made me want to go more Zen, if that's the right word, and just throw a lot of my stuff out.

YEAH, I KNOW, I KNOW...

I didn't do the twice a week blogging. Well, the house has been under renovations: not renovations to make it a really nice house, just renovations to stop it from falling apart or burning down. Structurally it's not a bad house, actually, just one of those poor structures that seems to have been victimized for years by one or more "handymen" who could never do anything quite right.

RPM TANKIETKA TKS - Beginnings of a Kit Review

Okay, let me admit to indulging in one of the nerdiest of hobbies. Yes, building plastic model kits. My little post ages ago of a picture of "Takeshi and Ichizo" in a Japanese military car was no accident. I got it from a modelling magazine.

Anyway, to your left is my somewhat blurry pic of the contents of the RPM 1/35 scale Polish Tankietka TKS.

I'm going to be doing a review of this kit. Now this will be a somewhat unusual review, because I'm just not that good at building model kits -- I'm lazy. It's more fun that way. If you look at most kit reviews you will find the builder is very adept with airbrushes and aftermarket parts and expensive resin or aluminum add-ons, but I just build out of the box and use the same techniques -- more or less -- as when I was a child. I've tried an airbrush, for example, and I just found it a nuisance. I paint with regular brushes.

THROWING MY HAT OVER THE WALL...

Okay, this is it. I've decided I'm going to blog now at least twice a week. And I am asking all of YOU out there to scoff, ridicule, and mock me mercilessly if I do not keep to this promise. The fact is, I've got things to say. But I always end up jotting them down on bits of paper or in my Byzantine, Kafkaesque file and folder system on my computer notebook, and very few of these writings see the light of day. Enough! Ya Basta!

QUOTE OF THE DAY -- WILLEM DE KOONING

"The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time."

Willem de Kooning

"The trouble with being rich is that it takes up everyone else's," adds Terence Davies (and I don't think he's quoting anyone here) in the film, Of Time and the City.

WHERE THE GIRLS ARE:URBAN LESBIAN EROTICA -- CHAT

Drop by for a Where the Girls Are chat as part of Pride Month on Tuesday, June 29. This will be at Beth Wylde's yahoo group.

Come and chat with editor D.L. King and the writers from the Where the Girls Are anthology!

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Gustave Flaubert

A RAMBLE ON RHETORIC

Many controversies are billed by respectable opinion as very complex, hard to understand and cast in "shades of grey." The same worthies often call for a repudiation of "partisanship" in favour of "moderation" and "respectful dialogue." This all has the air of something only an ass would question. But it is often a cloak for hypocrisy the so-called moderate may or may not be aware of.

It is a good idea in such situations to ask yourself whose story is not being told from her own point of view, who it is who is not being heard from. Finding this story, in fact, just trying to find this story will often tear the mask off the smooth-faced "moderates" to show a face contorted by visciousness or ignorance.

Why, after all, do some people scream in such an ugly manner? It is often because they have already tried the measured tones the moderates affect to admire, and have not been listened to by them.

And what if, for example, a "moderate" parks a tank on somebody's foot and affects astonishment and dismay when the victim shouts and curses? Is it not obscene for our smooth-faced gentleman to prattle on at this point about "moderate dialogue" or the conducting of discussions "in a tone of mutual respect"?

AND AGAIN I POST RAQUEL FROM NAKED GUN 33 1/3...

. . . for the simple reason that she's just so darned gorgeous -- especially in what must be the sexiest dress of all time.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"To write is certainly not to impose a form (of expression) on the matter of lived experience. Literature rather moves in the direction of the ill-formed or the incomplete... always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience." -- Gilles Deleuze


source

"TRAGEDY" AS A WEASEL WORD

What do you do when some party you greatly favour has done something evil and you do not have the courage, honesty, or integrity to criticize? How do you refrain from giving honest blame but at the same time assure the world you are no monster and that you take seriously the terrible loss or suffering involved?

You solve the dilemma by calling the situation "tragic." You pull a long and sombre face. You are so deeply impressed with the gravity of the situation, in fact, that you can not do anything so small as to blame anybody for it. This is no time for partisanship, is it? That, yes, would be to trivialize everything, wouldn't it? "Tragedy" here implies a great mystery which serious and responsible people do not profane by anything so silly as an explanation. The issue of personal responsibility has been transcended altogether in this august view of the situation, or at least rendered too complex for the obscenity of a moral judgement.

TRY THIS IDEA ON FOR SIZE . . .

Envy can be an act of faith. I am not talking about envy that says, "you have something I want and don't have. Therefor you must not have it." I mean the envy turned on its head that says "if God has allowed you to prosper, why not me as well? My time must therefor be coming." To stare in astonishment at another's good fortune need not be a sickening revelation of one's own preterition. It can be a message of hope and divine love. The sickly sweet taste of envy need not be the sickly sweet taste of sin and revenge, but a precursor to a higher desire's fulfilment.

LESBIAN COWBOYS WINS 2010 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR LESBIAN EROTICA!

Yeehaw! And one of my stories, "Fancy Pants," is in this anthology! Congratulations to Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia, who edited it, and to all the writers in the book.

For those of you who don't know, the Lammys are the top queer literary prizes in the world and include works in some 23 categories.

Now if only I could get Facebook to work for me so I can go and talk about it there! I've been dealing with some computer oriented problems that have been slowing me down on the net and reducing my posting and such considerably. But it will all get cleared up shortly.

WHAT IS AN ARTIST?

Here is one conception: Abbie Hoffman once said, apparently, that trying to change the world without a counterculture is like trying to ski without snow. Exactly. Artists help to produce the counterculture in which change is possible. Never say to an artist, "your book (painting, play, music, whatever) is all very well but what are you going to do to change things?" To ask such a question is to oppose art to "action," as if we could take it for granted that art is not a form of action.

IF ANYONE HAS BEEN TRYING TO FRIEND

or contact me etc. at Facebook, my apologies. I don't seem to be able to access my Facebook account much, due, I think, to an old browser. Hopefully I can get this all straightened out.

A NEW STORY OF MINE TO BE PUBLISHED!

The story is called "The Trumpet of Destiny" and will be in Logical Lust's Spank! e-book anthology, to be released probably some time this Fall. Just a heads up. I don't have yet a cover illustration to show you, but stay tuned.

A CHEAP, SOPHOMORIC, BUT CURIOUSLY AROUSING PRANK

Or so I find it, anyway. But to each her own!

CYNICISM IS OBEDIENCE

"Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience. What's really radical is being willing to look right at the problems we face and still insist that we can solve them. A stubborn commitment to solving problems and a faith in our ability to do so doesn't need to be naive."

Alex Steffen in "The Bright Green City," The Sun, Issue 412, April 2010

COOL BLOG POST ON MARGARET ATWOOD

Check out Read Red's blog on Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. I haven't read this book myself, but it sounds like there's a lot of things going on here that you can find in other Atwood work.

ON "NOT SUFFERING FOOLS GLADLY"

Have you ever noticed that the sort of person of whom it is said that he or she "does not suffer fools gladly" is almost invariably a pompous jackass? some kind of Samuel Johnson clone? The one said to "not suffer fools gladly" seems somehow to find ten times as many fools as anyone else does. In fact, the "fools" seem to have a peculiar desire to throw themselves at these worthies like moths to a flame. And with similar results.

Why is this? Could it be that the distinguished ladies and gentlemen of whom we speak should be noted not so much for their abhorrence of fools as their need to feed upon them? And could it be that when no genuine fool is present someone must be manipulated into playing that role and then rebuffed as if in revulsion?

Behold! A vampire of the spirit!

MORE GOOD NEWS

A story of mine has been accepted for Logical Lust's Spank! anthology, edited by D.L. King. This will be an e-book to be published in late Summer or early Fall. It might become a hard copy anthology as well!

ACH DU LIEBER! LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDS FINALISTS

Yes, two of the books in the Lesbian Erotica category of the Lambda Literary Awards 2010 are anthologies with stories of mine in them! Lesbian Cowboys edited by Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia, and Where the Girls Are edited by D.L. King, are both finalists. Yeehaw!

A FANTASY OF MINE

This is a favourite phantasy of mine. I guess it has something to do with the idea of being completely helpless precisely because of one's own supposed power and invulnerability.

Frankly, I would like to be this woman: an armoured knight desperately in need of rescue. And what if the only one available to assist was a "helpless" damsel type who would take full advantage of the situation? How could a proud warrior queen ever live this down?

There is something about a woman in a suit of armour that is irresistable to me! I've drawn dozens of pics like this one, some finished, some partially finished, and some I just keep changing my mind about when it comes to what captions to attach.

PLACE HOLDING POST

Bloody Hell! How does this happen? I haven't posted in more than two months. Comrades, do not forsake me. I must maintain my web life! I don't know where the time goes.

MEA CULPA! MEA MAXIMA CULPA!

etc.

The good news is, I'm still writing my second novel. It moves slowly but surely. Trying to average one hour a day through the course of the year That would come out to 10 full time weeks per annum. But with any luck I can do more than that.