China Mieville Talks

...and says what I wish I'd said.

Living in an Alternative Reality

Seriously, GOP?

I'ma write a post for my other blog today, FANSCI, and it's not even gone be about SF, I mean not directly. It's going to be about straight fiction which has left the bounds of reality so enormously that it might as well be alternate reality.

That's where the GOP is today.

I spend a lot of time in early fiction workshops -- the first several weeks I have new students, introductory workshops, convincing young writers that yes, it does matter that you get basic facts right: that you can't have people hunting squirrels with Henry rifles; that you can't make Jupiter have 1/3 Earth gravity; that no, it is not okay to have someone order a Perrier at the Cafe du Monde by the Jackson Square in New Orleans, and that yes, you really do need to get the dialect right if you are writing a book set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1952. Even if this is fiction, and therefore you are "making it all up."

Today's GOP has apparently decided they can make their entire world up, and live in it. Well, okay, that's fine. Isolated communities (I guess) do that. Cults, SCA, Conservapedia. The difference is, these folk don't usually expect the rest of us to participate. The GOP -- many of whom have been home-schooled, home-churched, educated at Christian churches, carefully isolated from the contaminating influence of modern culture's movie, TV's, wicked fiction and discourse (they shop only in Christian bookstores, read only Christian texts, are kept from the internet as adolescents) -- raised in a cultural diving bell, in other words, who have known nothing but that isolated community -- now expect the rest of us to believe what they believe: that their invented world is reality.

At least that's the only explanation I have for why anyone would think we'd believe this insane crap they're saying these days. They have no reality check -- Fox News repeats whatever they say; their candidates, preachers, senators, and blogs back them up. So far as they know, this is the real world, where using birth control makes you a whore; where wanting to use health insurance is the same thing as forcing Jews to eat pork; where the President is a Kenyan invader who wants to destroy America; where supporting universal health care is exactly like hating America; where gay marriage will destroy straight marriage; where unions are evil and OWS is filled with rapists and lunatics, but Andrew Brietbart was a hero.

Hey! But Here's Another Post!

While we're on it...

What the shit is UP with the GOP? I mean, I thought my university administration had gone insane, but that was before I started watching the GOP try to run a candidate for the White House.

I can't decide who's fucken crazier, Santorum or Ron Paul. Romney ain't crazy, of course, he's just a bootlicker, trying to suck the ass of everyone he can if it will get him into the White House. And Gingrich, ha, he thinks evil is smart, which, I guess that's sad. I'd feel sadder about him if the crap he thinks is so smart to say didn't have real world consequences.

MEANWHILE: here in Arkansas, I actually have students who think some of these guys are viable candidates. Now that's depressing.

Bad Days

I've been posting very lightly lately (I know, like you need to be told that!) because most of the news here has been so rotten.

Well, obviously some is good! Stories get published! My novel comes out! My kid is great! The classes I'm teaching are great. And I am, in fact, writing really, really well these days. Those things help a lot.

It's mainly work, politics, and the economy (in that order) which suck so badly. I obviously can't say much on this blog (which although it's sort of anonymous isn't really anymore) about what's going on with my university, but it's been getting steadily worse over the past year, and Thursday something came down which surpassed anything I thought even this administration would be capable of. (Yes, I know, AHAHAHA! I'm so naive.)

It's kind of like with the GOP, I guess. You keep thinking, well, crap, they seem so crazy and mean, but they're human beings like us, right? Doing reasonable things that look reasonable from their side of the ditch? Surely we can work something out. Surely we can live and work together?

Then something like this contraceptive mess comes down, and, wow.

I guess we really can't.

Anyway, so we've been really broke, depressed, and desperate here at the delagar household, and now we've just found out we're going to be more broke, more desperate, and more depressed.

A bad week.

That Time of Year

I'm doing my annual review (late, as usual) which requires me to download my student evaluations and, uh, evaluate them.

The evaluation form, which I turn into the dean (and then we meet and have a friendly chat over it) has a space for me to construct a "reflective" paragraph about the evaluations. I think I'm supposed to learn from this experience.

Mostly my evaluations are really good. I'm not kidding, they are. Like one of my classes this semester, all of the students gave me all 5.00s (which has never happened). I think they must have gotten together and agreed to do it. I can't think how it would have happened otherwise.

But generally I get some sweet comments that allow me to say something to keep the dean happy. (You have to give administrators something to piss and whine about, in my experience.)

My favorite evaluation ever, for instance, was several years ago when a student accused me of "favoring the smarter" students. Um, yeah? And a couple years before that, I got a student get all righteous because I "brought my feminist issues" into the classroom.

Guess I said, "Shut up and make me a sandwich, bitch," once too often.

This time my favorite is, "I love Dr. Delagar. But I wish she would stop saying f#@! quite so often in class."

I said solemnly in my reflective paragraph that I would try saying cocksucker instead.

(NO NOT REALLY!)

REBUTTAL

(A Guest Post from the Kid, Who Feels Slandered.)

Okay, that last post about how me and Dad Delagar would starve to death if Mom Delagar left is a LIE! We got along very nicely.

Dad Delagar took out the trash once, and I also did the dishes and filled up an ice cube tray when it was empty!

Plus, I can make ramen noodles without help now! I can survive college!

And Dad Delagar and I went to Fayetteville! He didn't get a guitar but he would have if he had found one he liked.

And Dad Delagar was all like 'do you want some dinner?' and I was all like 'nuuu I don't need your food!'

So basically the only bad thing was that one day Dad Delagar watched war documentaries from dawn till dusk.

I'm baaack!

I'm back from Boskone & trying desperately to re-integrate myself in my life, which, yikes. I swear I was only gone five days. But my life! It crashed and burned without me!

"Didn't y'all do anything while I was away?" I asked the kid, surveying the heaped up dishes and empty fridge.

"Yes!" she said. "I filled an ice cube tray!"

She was kidding. And I exaggerate. It's not that bad.

But apparently if I ever die or leave the two of them will be dead in six months.

Laundry? What's That?

I am off to Boskone this weekend -- leaving on Thursday, flying all day.

This requires me to do laundry today. Well, only if I actually want to have clean clothing to wear at the convention. Which I suppose I do.

(Picture our house, heaped with piles of undone laundry. Towels, we have managed to keep up with, and dish towels, because those are vital, and usually socks. But jeans? Shirts? We just pull those from the least filthy pile...)

I'm also doing dishes, since it's Valentines and I'm Being Kind To Dr. Skull.

And prepping for Chaucer, some time in here...

All those things I don't usually do (except teh Chaucer) because I am busy being a writer.

Snow Day!

First, and only I suspect, snow of winter 2012 here in Fort Smith has resulted in a snow day -- classes cancelled at UA-FS. I had to take the kid to the orthodontist, and the dog escaped, but all my adventures are concluded (I hope) and now I am holed up with the cat asleep on my feet, drinking ginger tea with honey and milk and writing my novel.

More sleet tonight.

I love snow days.

Reading List

I've mostly been prepping for classes these days, reading Chaucer and for my American Epics class this summer; but in my infrequent free time I've discovered a couple interesting writers.

1. John Green. YA. Start with Will Grayson, Will Grayson, a book he co-wrote with David Levithan. But don't stop there! I've read nearly everything he's written now. All winners. His plots are interesting enough, but it is the cast of characters that keep me reading -- always a small group of friends in their late adolescence, slight misfits, smart, deeply attached to one another. And! Real women characters! Always a plus.

2. Nisi Shawl, Filter House. I'd actually read this one before. But we published a story by Nisi, "Black Betty," in a recent issue of Crossed Genres, and my kid liked it so much that I recommended Filter House to her; she liked the book so much I read it again. I'd forgotten how good it was. It won the Tiptree Award in 2009. Science Fiction stories, but not the time-anchored sort.

3. Inhuman Bondage, by David Brion Davis. Slavery and slave revolts in the New World. I'm not done with this one yet, but yowza. Found it via TNC, who makes me smarter every time I read him.

Now if I only had an extra month every week, to get all my work and writing done, and time to read as well...

Fly Our Fascist Skies

So I'm getting ready to fly America for the first time in about ten years.

My long hiatus is due partly to the fact that flying tends to give me migraines and mostly to the fact that I object to being treated like a criminal because for the sake of security theater.

(Deleted: about three hundred words of ranting on civil liberties and the idiocy of surrendering them for putative safety, etc.)

Not to mention how uncomfortable airplanes are these days.

BUT IN ANY CASE. I haven't flown for a long time, and now I am flying to Boston, to attend Boskone, and (among other things) reading from Broken Slate.

Anyone have any tips for how I might make this adventure less adventuresome? Shoes not to wear? Things not to include in my pockets? Things not to say to airline security dudes? The sort of carry-on luggage that works best?

Any & all help appreciated.

What's This?

It's cold here. Overcast. GREY.

Like an actual winter day.

How odd.