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.