I assigned the Nora Ephron essay “A Few Words About Breasts” to my essay-writing class (Bulgasari helpfully provided a link to that essay in this comment), and the reaction was quite interesting. Some of the students claimed they were so shocked that teenaged American girls are so anxious about breast development, claiming adolescent Korean girls aren’t. (Lime calls bullshit on that, however.) Others admitted they were — and in a couple of cases, still are — anxious about it. Others found the myths Ephron discusses amusing, like this one about her friend’s response to the failure of young Ms. Ephron’s …
Month: September 2008
“Realer” vs. Real Life
Real life is nuts, is screwy, and I just don’t feel like writing about it now. Except to sigh. But I did get some editing done, and finally, a story I started in 1999 is ready to go out the door. The title is “Realer,” and it’s a far different story than it was when it started out–but better, at once more brutally real and more hopeful. I think, anyway. That’s one more story to put into my send-pile, I guess. Since it’s appropriate for all ages, I think I’ll be saving it till I hear back about “Vortex, Inverse” …
Reading Now, Reading Then
These days, I’ve made a holiday project of finishing all the books I started prior to 2012, or at least trying to finish them — though I am also trying to get better about setting aside a book when I truly don’t like it after 100 pages or so. Discussing my reading beyond that is a slightly uncomfortable subject, for a few reasons. One of them is that I am not a reviewer, and don’t find it particularly politic to slam stories I don’t like in public. I am all for praising the ones I did like, but that also …
In Case You Couldn’t Login…
It was because of a plugin I’d installed that thought you were an evil spambot bent on ruining my website. Apologies; it didn’t mean to misconstrue. It’s just your haircut. It knows better now. Won’t happen again. We promise.
Matt on Symmetry in The Host
For those into Korean cinema, Korean SF, or both: Matt’s written up a good post on The Host and the role of symmetry in the film, and linked my posts on the Host (starting here). I’ve commented to expand (slightly) on his observations. Check it out! As for me, I’m planning on working on a paper on the film and its political elements, somewhat expanding on my observations in the posts I’ve made here, and on the paper I’ll be presenting in a couple of weeks. I’ll be working on that sometime in the next couple of months, time permitting, …
Sorted Update
An update to this… The guy who turned up today came a few hours later than I expected, but got the reconstruction part of the closet-fixing done, and a trapdoor installed, all in two hours flat. The higher-up who was supervising him also showed up, and was very professional. And the killer was, he very conscientiously swept up afterward — not just in my closet, not just the floor beside it, but even out in the hallway where a bunch of sheetrock dust had ended up. I’m hoping that the guy who shows up tomorrow morning for the wallpapering job …
Shepherds and Sheep
Those of you who knows your Canterbury Tales well don’t need the exact line I’m thinking of in that title, so I won’t give it here, since it would be overstatement. Or, well, no, not really, but it would be not-nice understatement, anyway. I’m struck, in reading the work of schoolteachers who are trying to write an English text for students of the level they teach — and trying is the word, indeed in a couple of senses — that maybe some of the content just shouldn’t be in there. The problem isn’t total incompetence on their part. A lot …
Sorted (I Think)
Well, I’m glad to say that after a weekend of stress and even a certain amount of impotent rage, things seem to be sorted. The whole mess could have been avoided if the guys on Friday hadn’t been utter dolts, but at least someone higher up intervened and rendered their dolthood less than all-powerful today.
For the Two People Waiting with Bated Breath…
For those who are interested, the Fictionwise eMagazine edition of the current Asimov’s SF (October/November 2008 double-issue), with my latest fiction publication in it, is available here. I am not so fond of DRM, but Fictionwise does offera PDF option, which is about as non-invasive as you can get. (I’m pretty sure the PDFs are printable, for example.)
I Need My Own Everything
… because too many people in this world are moron, and those morons seem to be the ones tasked with making sure things don’t fall apart. Yes, my closet is still subject to a huge water leak from the floor above, the Housing Office people remain idiots — and potentially larcenous idiots, given how they went through the apartment above looking for loot to steal (to the point of unwrapping a present left on the counter), the old, junky washing machine ruined a shirt I’d just gotten and had worn twice — because it’s so old and crappy that the …