Marcus Aurelius

I'm up to Chapter III of Meditations... read it all in one sitting. (Which isn't a great deal by page count, but is by how much is said.) This chap is pretty good. Keeps his eyes open, has ample quantites of common sense, is unfailingly courteous. Actually, the extent of his courtesy astounds me. The whole of chapter one consists of a paragraph each on many people he knows and what he has learned by observing them. Not once does he take a backhanded shot at any of these people in a piece of writing that would have given him aple opportunities to do just that. I mean, when you spend a whole chapter saying things like, "From my friend Maximius, [I have learned] blah blah blah...", it's only natural to say something like "From Senator so-and-so, [I have learned] the consequences of being corrupt." I kept waiting for something like it to crop up, but nada. Apparently this man was 100% serious about writing a book of his meditations. I like that.

More when I finish more of it.

Tags:

• reading

Dance Dance Revolution

I downloaded this little dancer today (just the trial version). Whew. Hypnotic! Sometimes I feel like an old fart, all this technology leaves me utterly astonished.

Tags:

• weirdness

Photos!

(More here)

Tags:

• misc

Feminism Sucks

It really does.

I'm sitting at the comp right now, avoiding massive amounts of hard physical labour that awaits me (repainted living room bookshelves, can't walk without tripping on piles of books, must pack most of them away to storeroom), and because I must have an excuse to avoid that labour, I am browsing www.thefword.org.uk. (Don't ask me how I navigated my way there.)

Hey. I'm no enemy to women. Many of my friends are women. Oh, and I'm one myself (though this guy at the flea market I went to couldn't seem to decide - "I just sold this picture to that woman - er, girl... er, woman? - over there!").

But let's take a look at some of this stuff, shall we?

The Tampon Article
In this article, Leonie Brooke is disappointed when a bunch of her female friends refuse to be excited over what she thinks is a revolutionary product: the permanently reusable tampon. (Yes, you read that right. Permanently. Reusable.) The reason, she fumes, is women have been "socialised" to be grossed out about menstruation, and as a consequence, find washing their blood off a used tampon icky. Those male chauvinist pigs! They have contaminated our love for our bodily emissions! TEH EBIL!11!!1

On the bright side, I think those guys who invented reusable toilet paper might have a customer at last.

The Rape Article
What, you knew there had to be one. These are feminists talking!

So. Drunk girl does the bonkity-bonk with drunk guy at a party, then wakes up in the morning and cries rape. Guy says it was consensual. Girl doesn't really remember much of anything that happened that night. (I guess her entire case consists of "I'd never willingly sleep with that guy no matter how drunk I was - look how ugly!") Anyway, the judge dismisses the case, and the prosecutor is quoted as saying "drunken consent is still consent", and making remarks to the effect of, "women are adults, and must bear responsibility for their own actions". Meanwhile, the guy is getting back to his life, trying to come to terms with being the butt of his friends' jokes for ever and ever and evermore. ("I'll bet she wouldn't even remember you bonked her if she hadn't woken up naked next to you, eh, Jimmy boy?")

Ellery, the Modern Feminist, is pissed. Oh looky, the big MCP prosecutor guy with his curling moustache and offensive Italian suit (because Italians are all misogynists, of course). He's blaming the victim! (er, victim of what?) How about suggesting the men take responsibility, too, huh? How about we tell everyone never to drink too much, huh? The guy was equally to blame! (er, for what?) Where's the equal treatment?

Really, check out the website. It's a hoot. And I, I shall begin to tackle those infernal books. Tata!

Tags:

• rants

She's Back

Yes, she is.

I've been to Niagara Falls, to The Land Of The 180 Completely Finished Pages Of My Long-Suffering Manuscript, to Redecoration Valley and Sloth Junction. It's been fantastic. But I'm back, baby.

Expect regular blogging. And in the meantime, feast yer eyes on these.

Tags:

• misc

Pity Kaavya?

So Kaavya Vishwanathan plagiarised passages in her Opal Mehta book. Having read examples of the rip-off, there is no doubt in my mind she did it intentionally. I understand the instinct to plagiarise, I truly do - the temptation is sometimes almost irresistible: here you are, struggling to put two words on paper when on your bookshelf lie in great abundance opulent words of other writers, just begging to be looked at, appreciated, paid tribute to... Oh, the mind can rationalise anything. The instinct makes me want to check and double-check my work in an almost paranoid fashion to catch anything that might possibly be an "influenced" word or phrase or structure... whereas Kaavya just took the velvet-lined road instead. OK. Understandable.

Now she gets pelted with all this negative media attention (my favourite being this; you bet I'm entering!) - but that's only fair what. Suck it up and move on, is what I say.

And as you gullible saps who're going around telling everyone "cut her a break" or "maybe the editors put those passages in" or "Kaavya's not really to blame, our culture is" - open your eyes. The truth is, Kaavya's gotten her half-a-mill advance that isn't going anywhere. Her two book deal is still on, and even if it isn't, there are millions of publishers clamouring to get a piece of her pie. Her name is gold. And even negative publicity drives sales up - just look at James Frey. Mark my words, she'll be hitting platinum soon.

So do I pity Kaavya? No, you poor sods, I certainly don't.

Tags:

• misc