In My Skin

I walked the dog tonight for a good hour. It was still hot out there (still is, 93ºF & holding) & we walk at a relatively brisk pace.

I have a numb place on my thigh. Now my numb spot itches. Only, it's not something I can scratch and make go away. For one, it feels weird to scratch it because it's lumpy and scarred as well as numb, and for two, it's not really an external itch. It's overstimulated nerves firing away for no good reason. I'm tempted to use Chelsie's Furminator on it.

Edited for annoyance: It still itches. It must have been itching all night, too, because I kept dreaming that I was looking for some cheap itch remedy in a drugstore, but all I kept finding was lilac-scented baby oil. Lilacs smell like bugspray to me.

Gentlemen, Behold! I Bring You

Meat!!!!

Pure uncut meat!!!



I liked that when I typed 'meat' into google's search engine, it prompted me with related searches: vegetables, lol.



I'm highly disappointed in one thing. I couldn't find a picture of someone shoveling steak tartare into their mouth. WtF is up with that?!





Good food, good meat, good Gods, let's eat!!!

Technicalities

In WoW's trade chat, for some reason, there's been a lot of talk about child molestation. I've learned over the years of playing WoW that trade chat isn't actually for trade at all. It's the gaming equivalent of 4chan's /b/. It's full of trolls trolling other trolls. Unlike 4chan, though, I pay $15 a month for the endless entertainment that trade chat gives me. Chances are, the people busily typing away at what they would do to kids in their windowless vans are trolls and not actual molesters and rapists. They're just trying to get a reaction out of the people reading trade chat. Like any other breed of online troll, the best response is to ignore them completely, and WoW provides its users with an ignore list to do just that. My one complaint is that my WoW ignore list only has 50 slots on it and half of those are usually filled up with goldfarmers and the other half with perpetrators of the 'anal [insert ability or achievement name here]' game. If enough people report the person who states they enjoy luring children to their house, Blizzard will no doubt ban the troll - something I wish they would do with the anal offenders.

At any rate, Rob raised an interesting question regarding the trade chat trend. Are written accounts of child molestation, sexual abuse, etc. illegal & considered child pornography at all? I've read a lot of books and online accounts, and even written my own, about sexual activity being engaged in or being done to minors. Granted, I've never seen a printed published magazine centered around text accounts of sexual activity involving minors, but a good example would be all the V. C. Andrews' books. That woman had issues. Her books made good porn that I could get away with reading in school, but damn - serious issues going on there.

Most of the legal definitions of what constitutes child pornography seem to focus on visual, and occasionally audio, depictions of sexual acts involving minors. There are some cultural differences for tolerance levels - what is acceptable teen reading (manga & whatnot) in Japan could be considered child pornography in other countries (what's weird is that I found a fairly indepth article about this dated in 2004 that states depiction of adult genitals, pubic hair & intercourse is prohibited in Japan, but the depiction of children's genitalia is not strictly regulated - which is why Shin Chan gets away with running around nekkid all the time. Japan does have laws against child porn, though). If a producer alters a photo of an adult engaged in sexual activity to appear to have the body of a child or teen-ager, is it still child porn? Then there is intent - things like nekkid babies in diaper commercials aren't considered child porn, even though someone is probably whacking off to it every time it comes on their television.

Ah, this was what I was looking for: In the United States, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed into law in February 1996, makes it a felony to knowingly transmit "obscene or indecent material" over the Internet or on-line computer services if the material may be seen by children under 18.

What all this boils down to is that Rob is well within his rights as a concerned and upstanding member of the Azerothian community to report people spamming trade with talk about child molestation.

Of course, Rob isn't doing it because someone has to think of the children, but because Rob is an asshole.

Bookends - Almost Forgot

1) What author do you own the most books by?

Stephen King

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

The concept of owning more than one copy of a book at a time is just weird to me. Unless it's something like a signed, first edition thing.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

Yes, it did. I'm trying to become a better, more professional writer. I learn best by example.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

Christian, from Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?

Watership Down by Richard Adams

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

Watership Down by Richard Adams

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

Life is too short to read bad books. I've read a shit-ton of text books in the past year, but none exceptionally bad. Just confusing.

8) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

The only thing I've really read this year, other than textbooks, is The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune.

9) If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be?

Jonathon Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

I read mostly fiction. Nothing truly earth-shattering in that genre.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

Imajica by Clive Barker

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

I don't think I've had any.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?

Oh, Gods, the porn. Porn porn porn porn porn. It's hard for me to think of any book as being 'low-brow' though. I've read some terribly written books - the Belgariad series by David Eddings is the first thing that pops into my head (she thought dryly), but books are just not 'low-brow'. Grocery check-out stand gossip magazines are low-brow.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

Ulysses by James Joyce. I don't think I finished it. I remember someone mentioning he liked kidneys because they tasted faintly of urine.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?

I don't do Shakespeare. The only Shakespearean plays I've seen are Romeo and Juliet, the bane of every high school English or Lit class I've ever taken, and A Midsummer's Night's Dream.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

Uhhh... Pirates?

18) Roth or Updike?

Updike, but only because the only Roth I can think of immediately is David Lee Roth. I know I've read articles in thick magazines about and by Updike & he seems to have a sense of humor. I tried to read one of Updike's 'Rabbit' novels, but it was waaaaay too WASPy for me.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

Dave Eggers - but only because of the book he did about the prison inmates who were wrongfully convicted.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

Milton

21) Austen or Eliot?

Definitely not Austen, at least not until someone puts zombies in all her books. A first name would be helpful on Eliot. TS Eliot? George Eliot?

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

As a purveyor of mostly fiction, it's probably 'the Classics'. Thick pedantic paperweights like War and Peace, Waiting for Godot, Moby Dick, The Good Earth, Jane Eyre, all that crap.

23) What is your favorite novel?

Watership Down. It's my perennial favorite.

24) Play?

Honestly, it's a toss-up between Les Miserables & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

25) Poem?

I liked the section in Beowulf about the last member of a dying kingdom watching a tower filled with treasure, and a dragon comes to make a lair in the tower. I know it's got a name, and that section usually gets left out of the literature books as unnecessary.

26) Essay?

( Ann Ulanov Bedford's description of a witch )

What can we learn of this witch-figure? She takes up energies out of the unconsciousness & pulls them towards consciousness to forge a link between the two mental systems. We know the roots of our unconsciousness reach deep into the non-human, archaic depths of what is humanly possible, the great silences at the edges of being. She stirs up storms that invade whole communities of people. She conducts vast collective energies to our very doorsteps. These undirected, unhumanized spirit forces are symbolized as ghosts, dead ancestors, Gods & Goddesses come up from the world beyond. What do we gain from these visions? A sense of perspective. The Witch-seer makes us see into the proportions of life… The radical impact of the Witch archetype is that she invades the civilized community. She changes it. She heralds the timeless process of originating out of the unconsciousness new forms of consciousness & society.

27) Short story?

South of Oregon City by Pat Murphy, found in the collection The Ultimate Werewolf, edited by Byron Preiss

28) Work of nonfiction?

I love Michael Moore's field guides to herbs. All of them.

29) Who is your favorite writer?

I don't have just one favorite author. Stephen King, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Richard Adams, Dale Pendell, Michael Moore (herbalist, not the other guy), Aleister Crowley, Rudyard Kipling...

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

I wish I could honestly say Laura K. Hamilton or whoever it is that writes the Twitlight series, but I haven't read any of their books.

31) What is your desert island book?

Paul Gobel's The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

32) And… what are you reading right now?

Absolutely nothing! I had a vegetarian cookbook (I think it's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) in the bathroom with me, but I ended up giving it to my husband & telling him, "Skim through this & see if there's anything in there you want me to try making". It seemed like a lot of root vegetable, mushroom & cabbage recipes & very blah. I'm looking for something other than steamed broccoli or green beans to use as creative side dishes & that particular book just isn't doing it for me.