This is nothing but today.

I'm thinking of deleting my Facebook account.

I almost never look at Facebook at all anymore; the rare times when I do, it doesn't take more than a few minutes for me to lose patience with either the UI or the content or both. Honestly the majority of my Facebook time is spent answering people who send me Facebook messages despite the huge letters in my banner image and profile that say PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME FACEBOOK MESSAGES. I'm kinda starting to wonder what is even the point.

There were reasons I kept it around for so long, but the reasons don't seem to apply anymore. Keeping in touch with family? I don't really. The family I'm in touch with, I interact with more often in other ways. Event invites? Since I'm rarely there anyway, the only ones I really pay attention to are the ones happening at my house, and I usually know when those are going to be anyway. Professional presence? The Vixy and Tony page is our professional presence. And I'm not looking to be a professional musician; I never was. (My mother was. I've seen how much hard work that is. I'm far too lazy to want that life.)

There's sharing petitions and political action items, but lately I kind of feel like I'm shouting into the void there. I can share those here and on Twitter and probably have about the same effect. 

And none of that seems to outweigh the endless stream of horribleness that is Facebook's business model. Every time some fresh hell hits the news, I wonder why I haven't given up on it yet. Inertia, I guess. Feels weird to get rid of something you've had for years, even if it's a digital rather than a physical something. But having already done that with Livejournal kinda makes that seem easier now.

I dunno. Maybe this week.

Ah, spring. The daffodils are up, the crows are nesting, and the annual Sour Grapes about the Hugos posts are going up.

This year's first one is especially nasty. I'm not going to link to it, and I'm not going to mention the author (I actually don't know who it is; there's just a first name on there). I just want to throw my thoughts out here.

(Obviously I'm biased by there being a number of people on the ballot that I consider friends. Take whatever quantity of salt you wish from that.)

So what's oddly telling to me about the blog post and the supporting comments that I read are the inherent contradictions.

We have a blogger vehemently and scornfully deriding various nominated works and writers as average, laughable, and quite a few other insults, and then turning around and saying virtuously, "oh, but I'm not criticizing the individual works! Just the broken system!"

Over the last few years we've had record numbers of women nominated in fiction categories, works of pure urban fantasy, works by trans* authors, and an increasing number of works by authors of color and presenting something other than western European viewpoints, and yet we have bloggers complaining "oh, it's the same nominees over and over again, it's always the old guard of SFF represented!"

We have the first ever self-published (online) fiction work nominated, several online works, fan writers and fanzines, and a freaking podcast category, and yet we have bloggers complaining "oh, the problem is we're nominating based on outdated publishing methods, the Hugos don't acknowledge online work!"

This is why I feel pretty confident dismissing these complaints as sour grapes. When your criticisms are either self-contradictory or just flat-out ignore the facts, I'm not going to take them very seriously.

I'm sorry if the stuff you like didn't get nominated, but some of the stuff I like didn't get nominated, either. You're upset that the Hugo Awards are a popularity contest? So are all awards. So is pretty much anything that's decided by a popular vote. That doesn't make it a "broken system". If we're looking for some kind of objective absolute value of "best", we're going to need a declared, agreed-upon and publicly-posted scoring rubric (and how we're going to get the entirety of SFF fandom to agree upon it is something I don't want to contemplate, let alone how you're going to ensure its reliability and validity), a jury of evaluators trained in that rubric, and some kind of financial support for the jurors, since they will be doing nothing all day every day but reading every single published work of sciene fiction and fantasy throughout the year and scoring each one according to that rubric. Ridiculous? Yep. So is complaining that not every work was represented. So is complaining that only the "popular" stuff ever gets nominated for any award.

But seriously, I want to focus on just one aspect of this topic for a moment. Science Fiction has, for a very long time, been the genre of, by, and for men. Women and girls were (and still are) told it wasn't for them, made fun of for liking it, or outright denied the right to participate. Tiptree (a female author) used a male pen name to get published, and female authors to this day get told that they should consider using male pen names to "appeal to a broader audience" (that's a direct quote). And we still have the myth of the "fake geek girl" going around. Women wearing science fiction shirts or costumes or merchandise still regularly get asked by male fans whether they know enough to have the right to wear those things.

Think about that for a minute. Today, not 50 years ago but right now, women science fiction fans actually get told that they don't have the right to like what they like.

And in that climate, we have a record number of female authors nominated for Hugo Awards, and the first female author to be the one to set an "x number of nominations" record. (i.e., previously all "first person to have x nominations in one ballot" records were set by men, and later had a woman match that number.)

And that's not even getting into the increasing recognition of authors of color, LGB and/or T authors, newly-explored subject matter, and very possibly other new things happening that I haven't thought of or addressed here.

This is a fucking exciting year, and a fucking exciting time for SFF. Things are changing. I want them to change faster, but they are changing. And anyone who can look at all that and claim that it's the same old thing over and over? I don't even have the words for how divorced they are from reality.

Okay, we're nearing election day, and I'm going to go beyond just reblogging and retweeting people more eloquent than I am, and rant a little. Or a lot. I'm having trouble starting, because there's something that makes me so angry I can hardly find words.

*deep breath*

People who are saying, "Don't vote." You make me angrier than I know how to express. You're doing more damage than you realize. "Don't vote, because the candidates are equally bad. Don't vote, because you're lending your support to a corrupt two-party system. Don't vote, because they're not listening anyway."

Okay, let's take that on.

The easiest one first: the two-party system. There's a lot wrong with our system. I wish we weren't locked into two parties. I wish the Republican party hadn't been hijacked by the Neocons and the Tea Party. I wish a lot of things. Still, I try to base my actions on results. Not voting isn't going to actually do anything to change the two-party system.

And if you think the politicians aren't listening to your vote? They sure as hell aren't listening to you NOT voting. That doesn't even make any kind of sense. What change to the system do you accomplish by not voting? Exactly nothing.

Now on to the more complex one: "The candidates are equally bad."

This is such a gross falsehood that I can't even understand how anyone could utter it. This post breaks it down possibly better than I will, but here are my thoughts.

It definitely sucks to feel as if you're having to vote for the "lesser of two evils", or the candidate which is "less bad". Unfortunately, sometimes that's the reality we live in. I personally don't think that President Obama has been a bad President, but I'm aware that some people do, so let's argue from that starting point.

"Less bad" is still an IMPORTANT FUCKING DISTINCTION.

Every criticism of Obama that I've seen from the "don't vote" crowd is something that Romney will do, too. But there are oh, so many ways in which they are critically, life-threateningly different. In particular, health care (which is something I have a separate rant about), women's rights, reproductive rights, gay rights, trans rights.

Obama hasn't been as aggressive as I'd like on gay marriage; however, he's expressed support of it, and has let DOMA die. Contrast that with Romney, who explicitly favors a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage. An amendment denying a group of people their civil rights. And remember, the next President will most likely be in a position to appoint at least two Supreme Court Justices. That's a HUGE difference.

I wish Obama had done more for trans rights. But I guarantee you that even the little he's done-- first President to appoint a trans person to public office, first president to have a meeting with trans activists regarding trans rights, banning job discrimination based on gender identity in the federal government, and more-- is more than Romney/Ryan would do. (And again: Supreme Court Justices.)

I wish Obama had been able to do more on health care (again, a whole separate rant of mine), but what has become known as "Obamacare" has meant many more people with coverage, and in particular, people not denied for pre-existing conditions. That's HUGE. Here's an example: I read a story about a little girl wtih an inoperable tumor in her spine. She received chemo to manage it, but will need MRIs every year for the rest of her life to monitor it. As she grows up, every time she changes jobs, or applies for individual health care, without the Affordable Care Act, she'd be denied coverage because her tumor would be a pre-existing condition. And thus, no scans, which she probably couldn't afford to pay out of pocket. Anyone with a pre-existing condition is in that same boat. Contrast that with Romney, who has stated that he'll dismantle Obamacare as soon as he gets the chance. That's an ENORMOUS FUCKING DIFFERENCE.

And then there's women's health and reproductive rights. This article is longish, but a good read, and contains citations for every one of the scientific claims the author makes. Guess what? Even if you are anti-abortion because you believe abortion is murder, you should be in favor of legal abortion and covered birth control. Countries with the LOWEST rates of abortion are the ones where it's legal and available; countries with the HIGHEST rates of abortions are those where it's illegal. Yep, outlawing abortion actually makes abortions go UP! Furthermore, abortion rates can decline up to as much as 75% if hormonal birth control is fully covered by insurance policies. (By INSURANCE POLICIES, not by taxpayers. That whole "taxpayers paying for birth control" thing is a whole lot of lies and bullshit still getting repeated ad nauseum by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.) To say nothing of the fact that there are serious medical conditions for which hormonal birth control is the treatment. (Go and google PCOS.) And more. Seriously, go read that article; she links to all the research articles she's quoting.

I don't have to tell you which candidate supports women's reproductive rights and which doesn't.

As a subset of that, Planned Parenthood. A very small percentage of what they do is abortions. A very large percentage of what they do is provide cancer screenings and other health exams and birth control to women who could otherwise not afford it. I know, because they were my health care provider when I couldn't afford anything else. Cervical and breast cancer can be treated if caught early enough in screenings. They can kill if they are not. My aunt died of cervical cancer that spread because she didn't get screenings. Romney and Ryan have stated that they intend to cease funding for Planned Parenthood. No more cancer screenings for low-income women equals higher death rates due to cancer. Period. This is actually a life or death issue.

And don't even get me started on how little a Romney administration would do for assisting the poor. The Tumblr post I linked earlier gets into the military and potential wars as well, which I'm not getting into here. The list goes on.

I'm not discounting the valid criticisms of President Obama. Drone strikes. Gitmo. I'm not saying those don't matter.

It sucks to say this-- I HATE having to say this-- but do you think any of those things will cease under Romney, if you allow him to become elected by not voting?

I'm also not saying "be quiet and ignore those things." I'm saying, please vote for the candidate who will actually do the most good and the least harm. Then be LOUD about the things you disagree with. Get out with petitions, stage protest marches, call the President's office, call your congresscritters, write and speak out and YELL. Cynics might say "that won't change anything." I say it will do more than staying silent by not voting ever could.

Here's why the "don't vote" thing makes me angry. It is speaking from an incredibly privileged position to say "oh, they're both the same, so I don't care, I'm not voting." It is STAGGERINGLY privileged to believe that since gay and trans rights don't affect you, reproductive rights don't affect you, low income health care doesn't affect you, poverty relief doesn't affect you, you don't have to care which candidate wins. Y'know what? I fucking well have to care which candidate wins.

If you say you don't care which candidate wins, you're basically saying you don't give a shit about my rights, about the rights and health of any woman in your life. You don't give a shit about the poor. You don't give a shit about people who can't afford health insurance policies, or who HAVE health insurance but still can't afford the things that aren't covered. You don't give a shit about civil rights for LGBT individuals. If you care about these things, and you don't vote, you're one more vote that could have prevented Romney/Ryan from winning and instead allowed them to get that much closer. No, that's not hyperbole. Everything I've stated above are facts. If you don't care enough about any of those groups of people to vote for someone who has made their lives demonstrably better, to vote to keep out someone who will make their lives demonstrably worse, then seriously, fuck you. Don't follow me anymore and don't speak to me again.

Remember how close Florida came down to, once upon a time? And have you SEEN the voter suppression tricks the Republicans in various states have been up to? Printing incorrect election dates on Spanish-languge ballots; illegal/unconstitutional voter ID laws; Republican voter "helpers" instructed to give out misinformation; voter registration forms in Democratic districts thrown into dumpsters. The side of actually giving a shit about your fellow human beings needs all the caring votes it can get this year.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that fear of the bad things that will happen under Romney should be an impetus to vote for Obama even if you don't like him. I agree that it sucks. I also acknowledge that it's reality. Do your research. Read stories of trans people suffering discrimination, of people denied access to their dying partners in hospitals because they're gay. Read stories of people without access to health care; read stories of what women's lives are like in countries where abortions are illegal. Read stories of people in poverty.

I could refuse to vote, throw my vote away in a futile protest that literally nobody in power will be aware of or care about. I choose to take the action that has the most positive effect and promotes the least harm.

I beg you to do the same. Don't stay home, don't think that voting doesn't matter. IT MATTERS. Please.

It's that time again! The nominating ballot for the Pegasus Awards is up. What's the Pegasus? The Pegasus is an award created by the filk community, to honor and recognize excellence within the community.

From the ballot itself:

Please keep in mind that the Pegasus Awards are for excellence in Filking, not in music in general, or even funny music in general. Nominated songs should be part, one way or another, of the music of the filk community, and for "Best Performer" and "Best Composer", people you nominate should be participating members of the filk community.

By the same token, voters should also be participating members of the filk community.

There are any number of amazing, delightul nerdy, geeky musicians around these days. Are those musicians members of the filk community? They are, if they consider themselves to be. If they don't consider themselves to be, then they're not.

What about you? Are you a member of the filk community? I think you are, if you consider yourself to be. We don't have a member roll, we don't have dues, we don't have a minimum time or attendance requirement, you don't have to sing or play an instrument or make an album. The highest principle we hold is that everyone is welcome and no one is excluded. You just have to genuinely want to be part of the community of people who share filk music.

It's important to remember that "filk" isn't simply a synonym for "geek music". Filk is so much more than just a genre of music. Filk is people. ("It's peeeeoplllllle!" er, ahem.)

Here's a post that I wrote a while back on the filk community, the Pegasus Awards, and what they mean to me.

From that post:

The filk community accepted me wholeheartedly over a decade ago. I had never before felt so unreservedly accepted, so welcomed, and with such a wonderful place to share music. This community means more to me than I can possibly explain, and the award is meaningful to me because of the community. I've received three Pegasus Awards, two jointly with Tony, and each one has touched me deeply because of where it comes from and what it means. The Pegasus Awards are meant to be the filk community saying to some of its members, "we honor you and your music."
...
...campaigning is likely to result in ballot-stuffing; not maliciously, but just by people who won't know it's a community award (they can't know if nobody *tells* them, after all), who see just a name and a URL and say "oh I'm a fan of X and they're up for some award I've never heard of, I'll vote for 'em, sure!" If you have already been campaigning, please consider explaining the award to your readers, and asking them to judge for themselves.

It's important to me that the Pegasus Award remain what it was intended to be: an award given by the filk community in recognition of its members. That's tricky, because membership isn't restricted, as with an organization like SFWA. The filk community isn't an official organization; it's just a community of people, open to anyone who wants to be in it, and that means the ballot has to be an open ballot, or else we'd be betraying our own principles. So we're basically on the honor system.

Let's use the Hugos as an example, because they're coming up too. Let's say I wrote a short story that's up for a Hugo. I'd be totally comfortable going on Twitter and saying "Everyone vote for my story for a Hugo because it's awesome!" Why? Because the Hugo is an award *meant* to be awarded to the work with the most SF fans who think it's awesome. Hopefully all the voters are *reading* all the entries, but given that, the Hugo is intended to be voted on by all SF fans, worldwide. There's nothing wrong with that kind of award. That's how it's defined.

I would not, however, go on Twitter and say "Everyone vote for my song for a Pegasus because it's awesome!" Because the Pegasus is not meant to be awarded to the song/band with the most fans worldwide who think it's awesome. I have fans who are not members of the filk community. If I start campaigning on the internet at large, then I may get votes from people who a) have never heard of and b) don't care about the filk community. Even if they are dutifully listening to all the song samples before voting, it's still not okay, because the Pegasus is not that kind of award and that's not how it's defined.

Those people would mean well! They'd just be trying to express their love for one musician/band! But they'd inadvertently be taking the award away from the community that created it and from its intended purpose.

The Pegasus is not an award for the nerd-band with the most fans. It's not the Grammies of geek-music. It's a community award, and it's meant to be both voted on by and bestowed upon community members. It's meant to represent the collective voice of the filk community.

If you love a geek musician's work and you're not sure whether they're filkers, then hey, why not ask them? "Do you consider yourself a member of the filk community?" If their answer is no (or if their answer is "huh?"), then please consider not nominating them for a Pegasus and not campaigning to get their fans to vote.

I believe the key here is self-identifying. Jonathan Coulton, for an obvious example, isn't a filker-- not so much because he's a professional musician, in my opinion, but because he specifically does not self-identify as a member of the filk community. (I do mean specifically. as I understand it he's been invited to filk cons and has politely declined.) Being a professional doesn't mean you're not a filker; there are lots of working musicians who are a part of the community and have been honored by it. Heather Dale & Ben Deschamps. Tom Smith. Chris Conway. Wild Mercy. Many more. Some are even in the Filk Hall of Fame (an award for long-term contributions to the filk community, not primarily in terms of performing.)

If you're not sure whether you're a filker, there's nobody to ask but yourself. I don't get to answer for you and neither does anyone else. Have you been to any filk cons or filk circles or house filks? Have you really wanted to go to one even though you haven't been able to yet? Do you hang out with, or listen to music by, or play music with, or help organize & support, people who consider themselves filkers? Do you genuinely want to be part of the filk community?

If you want to, then I say welcome! If you don't want to, then that's okay too! Just... please, I ask that you recognize our community award for what it was intended to be, and make your nominating/voting decisions accordingly.

Thank you.

Mother's day is coming up. I have been having anxiety dreams. I haven't quite figured out yet whether those two things are related.

You may know, if you've followed me a while, that my mother died in January of 2011. Mother's day last year was when we scattered her ashes. So Mother's day may be a bit problematic for me. If you're like me and you find the need for a bit of a defense mechanism against all the Mother's Day ads, I recommend my technique: respond to the ads mentally (or verbally) with a good "yerMOM". Example: Ad email I just received: "GIVE YOUR MOM WHAT SHE REALLY WANTS." Response: "I'll give YOUR mom what she really wants!" (Bonus: works for Father's Day too! "Give your Dad something special!" "I'll give your MOM something special...")

Defensive silliness aside, I thought on the anniversary of scattering her ashes, I'd write about her a bit. Because I've written about the disease, the dementia, the loss... but I never wrote much about herself. (I hope it doesn't sound like an obituary. I already wrote one of those.)

My mom was hilarious. She was a giant goofball. Out of the blue she'd bust out with things like "Well, you know what they say, don't you?" "No, Mom, what?" "I dunno, I was hoping you knew." Or she would randomly sing bits of conversation to the silliest tune she could think of or to a tune she made up, or as if it were a dramatic movie score. "She's goinggggg... to cleeeeean... her ROOOOOOOOM!" Or in a bit of banter with someone-- the kind of situation where you'd jokingly tell a friend "oh shut up already"-- she'd sing, to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus, "UUUUUUP your buck-et! UUUUUUP your buc-ket! Up your buc-ket! Up your buc-ket! Up your BUH-UH-UH-UC-KET!"

She cracked us up a lot. And she had this great laugh, like she was just laughing all the way down to her toes. She was especially hilarious when she swore, because she didn't swear often, so whenever she did it was kind of adorable. And she'd sort of lean back a little bit whenever she said "fuck", as if blown back a little from the sheer force of the word. I'm pretty sure she did it on purpose.

My mom was beautiful. That didn't really register when I was a kid-- I mean I just never thought about it, even though I heard people say all the time how pretty she was, and most especially how much younger than her age she always looked. She went silver-grey in... maybe her late thirties or early forties I think, and people said if she'd dyed her hair she could've looked much younger for much longer. But she just didn't care. I didn't think about it when I was a kid, but when I look at photos now, I think, my goodness, she was pretty.

(I went looking for some photos to go with this post, and found the memorial site that her good friend and drummer made. A lot of the photos I had in mind are there in the photo collages and "A Life in Photos" video that he made for the memorial service. There's also audio of her own songs, her cover tunes with one of her bands, and her a capella quartet with my dad and best friend's parents. There's also video of her on Australian TV with the vocal jazz group and a local deaf children's choir, and a couple of other performances, and photos and video of the memorial service itself. Whew. (WARNING: contains 1970s. You may encounter behbeh!Vixy. Also sideburns. (No, not on me.)))

My mom was a musician. All her life. She never wanted to do anything else. She had a BA and MA in Music Education from the University of Washington; she told me once that she'd been offered the full scholarship for the Master's degree when she was finishing her Bachelor's, and she'd asked her dad whether she should take it, since she hadn't planned on going to school more. He told her that you should never, ever turn down free education. So she went straight into grad school from undergrad at the same school, which I hear they mostly discourage these days.

She taught music at every grade level at different times in her life. During most of my childhood she taught at Bellevue Community College (they've dropped the 'Community' now) and was accompanist, assistant director and then director for their vocal jazz group, Celebration, and toured Mexico and Australia with them multiple years. Eventually she directed BCC's concert choir too.

Part-time at a community college didn't really pay enough for a single mom with two kids though (my parents split when I was 6; my dad helped a lot, but he only had so much himself) so she made money other ways; she directed one or two other independent local choirs, gave private voice lessons in our house, and she performed solo and with other musician friends anywhere and everywhere: weddings, funerals, and a wholllle lot of nightclub gigs. My bedroom shared a wall with the garage, so some late nights I'd stay awake until I heard the garage door open and knew she was home. In later years she mostly worked for churches, directing their adult and/or children's choirs, and writing an awful lot of original music for them to use.

She wrote hundreds of songs. I still have her demo tape of original songs that was recorded in our house by friends who had a studio; I barely remember, I couldn't have been more than seven or so, but it was such happy chaos. The VAST sound board was in a Winnebago parked out front, with cables snaking in the front door; the main recording area was a forest of mics in the living room; one of the guitarists was in an improvised sound booth aka the downstairs bathroom ("Ready for another take, Roly?" *flush* "Yeah!"); there always seemed to be crowds of people, and we all provided backing vocals and percussion on a few songs.

That's what life with mom was like most of the time-- full of music and musicians. There were always some of her college students around the house, one or two renting our spare rooms and some rehearsing and some just hanging out, and there was pretty much always someone making music. I wrapped cords and carried mic stands and music stands at Celebration gigs. The amp and the giant Pevey speakers and the mic stands all lived in the living room with the upright piano and the electric keyboard and the four-track reel-to-reel Teac and the big ol' stereo. There was a box full of percussion instruments, claves and güiros and triangles and maracas and I forget what all else, that Mom called "the toy box". There were sing-alongs at every family gathering, and a lot of nights I fell asleep to the sound of the a capella quartet rehearsing, or one of the smaller vocal jazz groups rehearsing, or just someone sitting around noodling on an acoustic guitar.

I learned pretty much everything I know about singing and performing and songwriting from my mom.

My mom was creative and talented in other ways too. She painted with acrylics; I still have one of her paintings, and photos of a few others (I wish I had more of her originals). She loved doing arts & crafts with us kids-- papier-mâché, baker's clay (aka "dough dolls", which we'd paint with her acrylics and sometimes make Christmas ornaments out of), Shrinky Dinks, Fimo, whatever we wanted. She did theatre; my favorite was the Village Theatre production of Godspell. She learned to tap dance from her father, and how to cut hair (sort of). She raised a vegetable garden for a few years, and after she no longer had time for it, we still had the raspberry bush and the strawberry patch that got bigger every year. She made a whole lot of my clothes when I was little, and would sew me any Halloween costume I could dream up until I got too old for trick-or-treating (and sometimes sewed costumes for my friends too).

My mom was brave. I didn't realize that until a lot later. I know now that she was terrified of being alone, but she pulled herself together and headed our family because it just had to be done. She played a lot of nightclubs and bars alone, serving as the mostly-background entertainment, and I remember her explaining things my sister or I would need to know if we were ever going to try that work, like how to handle heckling, how to deflect inappropriate song requests, how to refuse men who would inevitably proposition you for a drink or more after your shift.

One time, one of the college students who rented a room in our house had an ex-boyfriend who turned angry and violent. I remember him pushing the front door open trying to get into the house, and my mom physically holding the motherfucking door shut against him while yelling for one of us to call the police. I was petrified but I think either my sister or the college student (who became one of Mom's best friends) made the call. I remember mom held the guy off until he went away, and I remember how calm she was explaining what happened to the police when they came.

She tried not to transmit her fear of the world to me. I picked up on some unconsciously, I'm sure, but she tried to teach me how to live on my own. You know those stories of kids going away to college for the first time and having no clue how to do anything? No kid of my mom's! I remember being eleven or twelve or so, and her explicitly teaching me to cook some simple things, do laundry, unclog a toilet, "come here, you're going to need to know this." One or two of the years that she was on tour with the vocal jazz group and my older sister went too, I got to stay alone in the house with my best friend (with friend's mom checking on us every day). Mom left me signed blank checks and taught me how to fill them out and mail them when the bills came, because she was going to be gone during some of the due dates. (I was SO EXCITED to be PAYING BILLS LIKE A GROWN-UP OMG. I think I was maybe thirteen.) She insisted I get a checking account when I got my first job, and insisted I get on the pill when I got my first boyfriend, and talked to me like an adult about drinking and drugs and sex and abortion and trusted me to make reasonable choices once I was as well-informed as she could possibly make me.

One of the turning points for me in dealing with Mom's death was when I thought back to how brave she'd always been-- mostly quietly, mostly in hidden ways. When something had to be done, even if it was something that terrified her, she sucked it up and just fucking did it. My mom was not very physically powerful, but in life terms? My mom was kind of a badass.

My mom was loving. One of my earliest memories is of my mom sitting me down to tell me: "Now remember, sometimes people get mad at each other, and sometimes they even yell. But even if I get mad, no matter what happens, remember that I always, always love you." That might not sound like much-- it might even sound obvious-- but after I started encountering adult after adult in my relationships who thought that if someone got mad and yelled it must mean that someone didn't love them anymore, I stopped taking that particular moment for granted.

I grew up thinking that your mom's job was to believe you were the best one in the chorus, the dance troupe, the band, the play, the game. No matter what happened, she thinks you're the best and the prettiest and the smartest, because that's her job. When I was in high school I kind of went "aw mom geez you always say that" and dismissed it, but she never stopped, and I learned pretty soon after how lucky I was, and how much I'd always relied on that from her. I've met people whose parents thought they should "toughen them up" or teach them that life will be hard or whatever. My mom's opinion was, fuck that. The world will do that to them soon enough. Home and your family should be where you can go for a respite from the world, where you can go for comfort and reassurance and support and belief in you no matter what you do. I could always count on my mom. She always said she was our biggest fan.

My mom wasn't perfect. She made a lot of mistakes. But on the whole? She was pretty awesome.

So I'm only working two days this week (how did that even *happen*??) because tomorrow morning we are off to GaFilk, where we are GUESTS OF HONOR WOOHOO! This kind of snuck up on me.

And because it kind of snuck up on me, and because I'm only working two days this week, I made an effort to get a lot of work done yesterday, and decided not to open Twitter (or MOO or my browser session filled with interesting things to read).

And lo and behold, I got a lot of work done!

And that felt really good, actually.

I've been feeling guilty for how much time at work I spend on the internet, getting lost for hours in clicking and reading one interesting thing after another. I really do like the people I work for a *lot*, and I have been feeling like I'm not giving them my best. I think I've become addicted to the glorious infodump that is the internet-- I can't stand the idea of MISSING anything!

I think one of my genuine New Year's resolutions this year is going to be: no more Twitter while I'm working. Sounds like kind of a "duh", doesn't it? News flash: you get more work done when you don't poke at the internet for hours a day!

It's just that I have a very strange and limited kind of willpower; if Twitter's not open, I can refrain from opening it. But if it is open, I *can't* refrain from looking at it, and clicking interesting links, and scrolling back to read earlier posts, and following the thread of people's conversations, and and and. I tell myself I'll just leave it open and glance at it in between work tasks, but that never winds up being the case. There's always just one more thing, and just one more, and just one more... especially if there's something I'm avoiding that I don't want to do.

I was like this with Livejournal until I stopped having time to really follow my LJ friends list because... well, because of Twitter, really. And Google+ and Facebook and Google Reader and so forth. (I truly have no idea how all of you manage to keep up with one another on the various social media *and* read blogs *and* have full-time jobs.)

So, no more social media and internet surfing during work. Also no more opening the Giant Firefox Session of Doom (tm). Only on break times. Which means I'm going to be missing a lot of things. A lot more things than I already do. But I think I'm okay with that.

(A side note though-- do please be kind to anyone who didn't see something important on your blog/twitter/whatever. Your friends are not obligated to read your blog. It is not actually rude of them not to have time to scroll back over your entire Twitter feed, or to just not like using Facebook, or to not read what you write for *whatever* reason. Let's be nice to each other.)

And I've spent too much time writing this already. Onward! :)

THE INTERNET: Where we assume the worst until proven wrong and then simply pretend we never said anything at all to begin with. --Adam P. Knave

Which is to say that, yeah, after all that ZOMG-ing and hand-wringing, I'm still posting to DW and crossposting to LJ, as before. What I'll do when my paid LJ account comes up for renewal, we'll see. Meanwhile, I've decided that if I've made myself look like one of those drama queens who used to delete their LJ in a huff every month or so and then undelete and start over (remember those?), well, I shall just have to suck that up and carry on.

Hey, that reminds me of this awesome thing by one of my favorite Etsy sellers.

Anyway.

This is a post about crows!

It's autumn, and that means the crows are getting WAY more aggressive and anxious when I feed them. When I get off work it's too dark now; they're already overhead in masses flying north and east to wherever they spend the night. For a short while there, though, I was getting more than the usual half-dozen to a dozen; I was getting twenty or thirty, both to and from work. (Now I just get them on the way to work.)

Torrey saw me coming home from work one day last month and texted "my GOD woman I thought we were in a Hitchcock film!" So I thought I'd enlist help to try to get video of me walking along with my army of crows.

It's kind of difficult; they won't come as near me when there are other people around. They trust me only to a very small degree; they don't trust strangers at *all*. When I get near the person taking video, they all retreat up to the power lines. And they're not keeping up with me in these videos quite as much as they usually do when I'm alone, contrary brats that they are; usually it's like walking around inside a roiling, swirling, black feathery cloud. Me and my army of crows! Sometimes we scare people. Sometimes I reassure the kids waiting for their school buses that the crows would never hurt anyone (unless you hurt them first).

So it looks like embedding this video would work, but it turns kind of tiny by default, so I'm linking instead:

Coming at you - I'd texted Tony and asked him to wait by the park for me. He says he knew I was coming before he saw me, because the army of crows came around the corner first. :) When he pans up you can see how many of them just hang out on the wires up and ahead of me, making sure I see them.

Walking away - Not as many here, though it's the same walk home. They won't come near me while Tony's so close.

From far away - From farther away, but you can see how far they'll follow me. Sometimes all the way to the house (Lauren once knew I was home because she heard them landing on the roof.)

What you can't really tell in the videos is that sometimes they'll get REALLY close to me. Some will land on the ground near me and get as close as they dare, and sort of shy away like nervous cats if I turn or move toward them too fast. Often I'll feel them go SWOOSH past my head-- or sometimes they'll fly in circles around me-- once in a while they'll even get close enough to ruffle my hair. Sometimes they'll let me approach really close to them if I do it slowly. Mostly that's the ones by my office, who see me on a more regular basis.

What you can't *hear* in the videos is what I hear-- the sound of wings. I walk home surrounded not only by all that cawing, but by the constant sound of wings, all around. There's nothing quite like it.

And they're *hilarious*. The ones perched on a wire do this little hop-swoop when I toss Wheat Thins, and the wobbly way they glide in to land is just adorable. The way they'll run right up to me and then run away again, or sometimes sort of siiiiidle up like they're trying to look nonchalant about it. The way they sometimes hop on two feet and other times run in a little lopsided gallop. The way the ones near my office will march right up to the front door and peer in the glass, or perch on the planter out front and look expectant. (I'm pretty sure they know Tony's car now.) The way they'll stick a whole Wheat Thin in a crack and use the leverage to break it up. The way they'll try to gather as many as they can at once, stacking them in their beaks. (This is funny with flat things like Wheat Thins but especially hilarious with grapes.) And there are still few things funnier to me than the sound of a crow cawing with its mouth full. They never fail to make me giggle.

It's a shame they've got a reputation for being harbingers of death and all that. They're such a bunch of feathery little clowns.

Okay, new rule: Vixy is no longer allowed to purchase clothing at cons.

At the *very* least, Vixy is no longer allowed to purchase clothing at cons without trying them on first.

I've just spent an extremely depressing evening with the contents of my closet. I have waaaayyy too many things that I bought because they seemed like a good idea at the time, and have subsequently never worn. And I have waaaaaayyy to many things that I keep putting on, being unhappy with how they look on me, getting frustrated, and putting back in the closet.

I've kinda realized something. Somewhere along the line I decided that a certain aesthetic was what I considered "con wear". Then I got the idea that this was what I considered performing wear.

Except... *nearly* all the things I own in this particular aesthetic, I don't think look very good on me. I try dozens of things on and angst and get frustrated and burst into tears about how terrible I look, and usually finally settle on *something*, if I can make myself forget the image in the mirror long enough to get out of the house.

But really... I don't quite know when I started trying to cram myself into an aesthetic that didn't suit me. Maybe it's that it used to suit the body I used to have, and not the one I have now, but I kept on thinking this was the way it had to be. I came up with several outfits tonight that look *really* cute on me, and, more importantly, that make me feel really confident, and they were *totally* different from what I have been by default thinking of as "con wear" and "performing wear" for *years*. And even as I decided to go with those things, I *still* kept catching myself going "but but but... all these other pretty things over here! I should wear those! I should..." *sigh* So many pretty things that look great on the hangers, and not really very great on my person.

So... dear Vixy: quit that.

A bit of hospital miscellany. Just some things I found interesting while wandering around the labyrinth.

( I believe in the cut-tag. )

I posted this link two years ago. I thought of it again today as I filled out my mail-in ballot.

One solid historical reason why women should vote.

It's a blog post about a group of women who were jailed for picketing the White House, seeking the right to vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.' They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the Night of Terror on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

I'll be honest. I'm not sure I could have been one of those women. I'm not sure I would have had the courage to stand up for the right to vote, had I lived in that time. I can't honestly claim I wouldn't have just kept my head down and let my husband do the talking and the thinking.

I'm not sure I would have had the guts to risk violence and torture. I sure as hell hope I never take for granted the fact that I don't have to.

There was a time when I did take it for granted. It's not a presidential election, so it doesn't matter all that much anyway, right? Wrong. It always matters.

The author of the blog post talks about viewing a movie, Iron Jawed Angels, about these women and their story.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote?

I still haven't gotten around to watching the movie. But I'm voting. I wish they could hear me across time. I'm voting, ladies. You did it. I'm voting.