I love bookshelves. I look at this instead of naked men.

Bookshelf Porn

FULL DISCLOSURE: I already  blogged this on my work blog, HERE. It’s very important to me and I LOVED THOSE BOOK TRAILERS so I’m doing it again!

I was going to write a snarky post about this Onion article and how I’m totally sick of the tired old copy about how “it’s a new way to connect in meaningful ways! Content! Connect! Blah blah blah!” and how I would like one of these new social network upstarts that claim to be revolutionary and provide real-world results to do something that actually translates to the real world…

But then I saw this HILARIOUS book trailer for Meg Cabot’s new novel, Insatiable, and my snarky mood vanished! The trailer manages to describe the plot of the novel while making fun of itself and the genre of teen-hormone-fueled vampire fiction spawned by Stephenie Meyer and her (bloodcurdlingly awful) Twilight Saga. This trailer does two HUGELY AWESOME things for me:

1. It makes me want to read the book. And I haven’t read a Meg Cabot book in 10 years (sorry Meg, I burned out on Princess Diaries).

2. It makes me believe that publishing is not dead. People will want to read this book. They will buy it. Hardcover, paperback, Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Nook, and every other format you can think of. They will buy it. They will read it. And they will want sequels.

So what’s the problem? Why are you worried?

Because so few people are seeing them and even fewer books are using them. If publishers spent more time and energy creating deliciously exciting, funny, enticing things like this, and empowering their authors to do projects like Cabot’s crowd-sourced zombie-couture Fashionably Undead audiobook (co-written by the author and 50 of her Twitter followers, for BBC Audio), instead of having conference after conference bewailing the end of the industry as we know it, they’d be doing just fine. Readers would be excited and engaged, and above all, they’d KNOW about the fabulous books being written ALL THE TIME instead of drooling endlessly over Robert Pattinson fansites.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some FANTASTIC transmedia projects, book trailers, and crowd-sourced book clubs:

It’s a Book! Trailer, explaining the difference between books in dead-tree vs. ebook form.

Neil Gaiman’s Instructions trailer, narrated by the author.

Meg Cabot’s magnificently insightful blog entry about her Insatiable trailer.

Meg Cabot’s celebratory online Dracula reading group, working up excitement for the new book, complete with prizes!

My personal favorite, the #1b1t discussion group, the first Twitter-wide book club, currently reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, started by Jeff Howe, the inventer of the term “crowdsourcing.”

Hear that, publishers? Quit sending your people to nonsense conferences and quit writing articles about how the industry is dying and DO SOMETHING TO SAVE IT.

Or get Zach Galifinakis to be in your book trailer.

Check it out! I finally got something in my Etsy shop. I’m selling a beautiful 1933 Georg Jensen silver tray for my folks. You can see the listing HERE.

I’ll be listing some Edna Hibel artwork later this week, and as soon as I get my license from Sublime Stitching, I’ll be listing my OWN ARTWORK! Click on over and check out the Jensen tray and bookmark the shop for later!

love this damn cinematography

I fucking love this movie. It’s like Guy Ritchie but with heart and thought and beautiful cinematography. That’s what happens when you get a real writer to write the script. Also, I like to pretend that the ending is happy. It’s a bit weird that I’m watching this very violent bloody movie while making little fabric flowers to pretty up with pearls and rhinestones. Fascinators will be up shortly on the Etsy shop. Links and photos to follow when they’re finished.

Either way, you can find my Tumblr page here: http://theroseinbloom.tumblr.com/

Meanwhile, I’m finding that I am really missing teaching. I knew that I loved teaching and that I would miss my students when I finished my student teaching, but I am really HATING not having the instant gratification of knowing that my work is directly affecting someone. With teaching, I get to see the students light up when they have an “aha” moment, and I get the satisfaction of being able to help them when they come to me with problems. Right now, I’m in a corner at a desk doing things I know people will eventually see, but it’s all business. I don’t have that heady sense that my daily activities could change somebody’s life. I also don’t feel like I’m learning anything or helping anybody else to learn anything.

I MISS SCHOOL.

If it weren’t for crafting, I might be very unhappy. As it is, thank goodness for my Sublime Stitching patterns and the new glue gun I bought last week. Also thank goodness for Ravelry.com and its easy access to tutorials and patterns so I can teach myself to crochet. Very soon I will have things to put in the Etsy store, at long last!

This teeny wee piece was later turned into a teeny wee pillow with black velvet backing. Thinking of adding a ribbon strap so it can be used as a "Do Not Disturb" sign.

For now, I’m in a holding pattern. Somebody please give me a job where I can see direct results!!

I'm working out how to turn this into a journal cover.

This is a TERRIFYING STORY. I can’t believe that this happened to you, ESPECIALLY not from another woman. I’ve experienced and come to expect this kind of treatment from male gynecologists (in most cases, never having had a period or a uterine cramp seriously diminishes the ability to empathize and assist someone who is suffering from them, although I’m glad to hear Dr. Kim is not like that), but to hear this from a female practitioner who presumably went into this profession to HELP women is unconscionable. I’m so glad to hear that you filed a complaint against her. I hope it’s taken seriously.

The frightening thing is that, although this seems to be a problem most frequently with OB/GYNs and issues relating to women’s health, it’s not limited to us. It’s terrifying to think that the vast majority of people know little to nothing about their own health care and simply trust to their doctors to give them “THE ANSWER.” People need to come in as well informed as possible, armed with every possible question to ask their doctors. They should never be made to feel bad for asking or being “worried about nothing;” it’s the health care provider’s JOB to find the best solution for EACH, INDIVIDUAL PATIENT, which includes keeping them calm, being polite to them, and TREATING THEM LIKE A PERSON in addition to simply keeping them alive. Shame on Nurse Practitioner V.

This is all very reminiscent of 19th Century novelist Frances Burney’s mastectomy in 1811, performed by “Seven Men in Black” without anaesthesia. A partial account can be found here: http://scribalterror.blogs.com/scribal_terror/2005/05/frances_burney_.html but is NOT for the faint of heart. When one of the seven men asked of his colleagues (while Burney was hidden under sheets, fully conscious and totally silent), “Who will hold this breast?” Burney sat up and replied, “I will!” and proceeded to explain in excruciating detail the exact extent of her pain and problems. Even then, the men didn’t listen to her wishes OR her needs. You’d think we’d have come a little further in 200 years.

Sorry for the long rant, but this is an issue that strikes painfully close to home for me. Thankfully, I have never been in a life-threatening gynecological situation like an ectopic pregnancy, but any threat to your reproductive health is scary, and to have that dismissed as something that doesn’t merit real attention from your doctor is HORRIFYING. When I was just fifteen, I was seeing a male general practitioner. I had always had heavy periods, but I went on birth control pills to even out my cycle and relieve the debilitating pain and two-week bleeding, and that sufficed for a couple years.

But then the problems started coming back again. And they got worse. It got to the point where the bleeding didn’t stop. Some days (the days I shouldn’t have been bleeding at all) were lighter than others, but it NEVER STOPPED. LITERALLY. After a month of this (I waited that long to see if it was just one fucked up cycle–that’s happened before), it hadn’t abated, so I went to the doctor to see what was wrong. After listening to me with one ear for a minute or two, he made me take a pregnancy test (despite my TRUE assurances that I was a virgin), then told me there was nothing wrong with me and that there was nothing he could do. I’d just have to live with it. LIVE WITH HAVING A PERIOD EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. CRAMPS. BLEEDING. SORE BREASTS. HEADACHES. WEEPINESS. INTENSE FATIGUE. FOREVER. WITH NO RELIEF. I left the office in tears, clinging to my mother’s hand. Remember, I was only 15.

As we walked toward the elevator, my mother looked at me and saw how miserable I was and said, “No. We’re not leaving it like this.” and dragged me back into the office, ignoring the medical assistant trotting after us, screeching, “YOU CAN’T GO BACK THERE, IT’S HIS PRIVATE OFFICE.” She pushed the book he was reading down on his desk and made him look at me and said, “This is unacceptable. Danya, tell him again what’s wrong.” I did, sobbing into a soaked tissue the whole time. He looked a bit miffed, then said, “I can’t help you if you don’t stop crying…” I stifled my sobs and he said, “Maybe we can try putting you on a stronger dose of birth control pills. But I had to make sure you were really serious about dealing with this problem before we took that step.”

I had to make sure you were serious.

My doctor. The man who was paid to take care of me. The person who SWORE AN OATH AND WENT THROUGH SEVEN EXTRA YEARS OF SCHOOL to make people feel better. He refused to take my word for it that I had a problem, even when confronted with the physical, blood-soaked evidence. To this day, I am certain that the only reason he did anything at all is because he was afraid of my mother, who just happened to work for the hospital who owned his building. If it had been just me, or some other poor parent with no influence and no knowledge of the world of health care, a sobbing, bleeding child would have left that office and spent the next several years, maybe her whole life, being miserable.

Fortunately, my mother is amazing, and so Dr. W put me on a higher dosage of birth control. I had morning sickness for three months, but the bleeding eventually slowed. I was happy.

Until three years later when it started happening again. By this time I was 18 and in college. I went to student health and related the story to the very nice, FEMALE nurse practitioner and requested a new, stronger pill. She looked at me for a minute or two, then looked at my chart detailing a family history of heart problems, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and a host of other problems. She had begun looking increasingly stern as I told her my story, and now she fixed me with a beady eye and said, “did your doctor tell you you have to take the pill within an hour of the same time every day?” “No,” I replied, shocked. “Does that matter?” “Yes it does. Each pill lasts only 24 hours and you need to overlap them so that you always have the same amount of hormone in your system. Otherwise, you can have exactly this kind of breakthrough bleeding, not to mention unplanned pregnancies! I CAN’T BELIEVE HE DIDN’T TELL YOU THIS!” I stared at her in disbelief for a few minutes, until my eyes began to sting. A few tears rolled down my cheeks, from sheer relief. The NP hugged me, handed me a tissue, and said, “We can figure this out. For the next month, I want to leave you on your old prescription, but I want you to set your alarm and take it at EXACTLY the same time every night. Then come back and tell me how it went. If that doesn’t solve the problem, we’ll figure something else out. But don’t worry,  YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS.” I hugged her again, thanked her profusely, and went my way home. I did what she said, and lo and behold…

I WAS CURED. My “unsolvable problem,” according to Dr. W, was solved. Just by taking my pill at the same time every night. I didn’t need to go on a higher prescription when I was 15. This shouldn’t have happened at all. A good doctor would have been able to tell me, when I went on the pill at 13, that I HAD to take it at the same time every night or it wouldn’t work. I’d bleed through and maybe get pregnant if I became sexually active. I could have been spared years of pain and resentment and worry that my reproductive system wasn’t normal.

A good doctor would have listened when a patient came to him in pain and humiliation and tears. Not just a female patient. Not just a young patient. ANY PATIENT. A good doctor would have made it his first priority to listen and solve the problem. A good doctor would have treated me like a person and not an annoyance. At the very least, a mediocre doctor would have remembered that I was paying him and done the best he could to keep the customer satisfied.

Once I found out the truth of the situation, I wanted to file a complaint against Dr. W, but luckily for the young people of my hometown, he had retired. But from that moment on, I made it my business to be the best informed person about MY health, and I made it my business to make sure my doctors and health providers paid attention to ME. All of me. And now I make it my business to educate as many other people as I can to self-advocate and be their own primary care physician.

I’ve since met (and worked for) and been a patient of many excellent doctors and nurse practitioners, and I am thankfully mostly healthy. But I no longer believe that a diploma, a lab coat, or a Hippocratic Oath are a guarantee of medical expertise.

That being said, I’m going to give my two cents about the Evelyn Evelyn going on around Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley.  The short version is that the two musicians created a fictional singing duo, two conjoined twins, both named Evelyn. The fictional pair is played by Palmer and Webley in what is being referred to as “crip drag”. The band’s backstory involves freak show exploitation, abuse, and all the other sordid things you’d expect from an “escape from the circus” story. Now, disability bloggers are upset and feeling betrayed and misrepresented. Before we get started, read the links below to get yourself fully caught up.

http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/392050312/the-story-behind-evelyn-evelyn

http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/02/09/evelyn-evelyn-ableism-ableism/

http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/396762227/evelyn-evelyn-drama-drama

I can easily see how people would be offended. I am not writing this post to discount their opinions or say “OMG AMANDA PALMER IS WONDERFUL HOW CAN YOU CRITICIZE SHUT UP YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.” I am writing this because I genuinely want to understand the issue and get involved in intelligent conversation (please don’t bother commenting on this post if you want to tell me I’m an idiot or that I’m going to hell or “Fuck you you’re a terrible person.” I’m interested in reasoned discourse).

The thing I don’t understand is where Annaham (author of the Ableism Ableism post above) immediately jumps to the conclusion that Palmer and Webley saying they’ve been helping the twins is a comment on their disability–any up and coming singing group, disabled, abled, invisible, whatever, would KILL to have help and support from someone who is already famous, someone who already knows the system. I don’t see that that statement reflects any ableism; if anything it reflects being a bit proud of being successful, a mentor complex if you will. Which, as a teacher, I don’t see as a negative thing.

The other thing is that I don’t see anything wrong with narratives about moving beyond a history of abuse, exploitation, disability, or any other obstacle. I have dealt with abuse (thankfully not from within my family or caregivers), disability, and a variety of other “differences” that have led others to attempt to marginalize me. So have most of my immediate and extended family, as well as most of my closest friends (no, I’m not going to explain them in detail, I’m not here to justify myself to anyone and I don’t expect you to, either–although if you want to tell your story I’m delighted to listen and learn). The people I love and respect have never let their disabilities or their history of abuse or obstacles like poverty, ignorance, obscurity, or whatever, prevent them from living their lives. It’s been hard for everyone, but the ones with the happiest lives are the ones who look beyond their problems, who find a way to laugh at the thing causing them trouble and thereby make it something they can wrap their heads around, something they can separate from their innermost being and work around. It doesn’t go away, but it doesn’t control their lives. They are people WITH disabilities, or people who HAVE BEEN abused, not disabled people or abuse victims. Addressing their problems with humor or with art or whatever other coping mechanism works allows them to take a potentially life-destroying issue and live with it. It shows others that they don’t define themselves that way and so NOBODY ELSE gets to, either.

That being the case, I’m all for narratives that show that kind of hope and mental and emotional fortitude. Use it to make art. Use it to do something positive in your life and those of others. Make people feel hopeful and empowered, not small and guilty. A beautiful example of this spirit is artist Andre Jordan, whose struggle with extreme depression fuels most of his art and his work for the BBC’s disability blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/play/

I can easily see why people would want this kind of issue treated more delicately, but I think that allows it too much power. It makes the disability the defining characteristic, not the artistry or the mind or the spirit. But that’s just my perspective. As for Evelyn Evelyn, I’m reserving all judgment until I see the completed work and how they treat the issues at hand.

I invite and implore you to provide any disagreement (nicely), personal stories, questions, or any other issues that have arisen from other pieces (Big Fish, Stuck on You?).  Thanks for your patience.

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/im-significant-screamed-the-dust-speck/

It seems to state that I’m the featured post for the tag “I’m significant screamed the dust speck.” Really? Is there really a featured post for that tag?

Either way, groovy. Stop by and say hi!

It's amazing what they can do with cardboard these days.

Can somebody please explain to me what is going on with that knight? Can somebody also explain where a girl is supposed to get an online fix of Calvin and Hobbes now that transmogrifier.org is defunct? How am I supposed to remind myself that dust specks are significant and math atheism is a valid excuse without Calvin and Hobbes?

No, seriously, this actually turned out to be a pretty romantic movie. Traditional werewolf story–boy loves girl, dad loves same girl, dad bites boy, boy kills dad, girl loves boy but shoots boy to save boy from eternal damnation, boy dies gratefully. Awww.

I enjoyed the film a lot. The visuals were impeccable. Dark, shadowy, cobwebby. Lots of decaying elegance and Dickensian gloom. Lovely cinematography, gorgeous costuming, perfect period setting. The best part, however, was the acting. Benicio del Toro was perfect as the tortured, wounded, SEXY hero. I’d love to see him actually play Hamlet, as his character does early in the film. Anthony Hopkins was SUPER-SCARY as the evil-and-loving-it papa wolf. Emily Blunt was lovely, as always. Hugo Weaving was delightfully dark as the fatalistic, mysterious Scotland Yard inspector. So far, fantastic.

The problems are in the script. I thought all the dialogue, exposition, and characterization actually in it was great, but I felt that there wasn’t enough. The film seems to hop from one climactic action sequence to the next with very little in the way of relationship explanation to help it along. The actors all do a beautiful job of making their characters seem rounded, helped along by excellent cinematography, but what needs help is the relationships between characters. The troubled, terrifying father-son dynamic is merely hinted at (a major waste when you have Anthony Hopkins and Benicio del Toro to play with), as is the growing attraction between del Toro and Blunt. The character of the mysterious Scotland Yard inspector and his dubious handling of the Jack the Ripper case is barely touched, a mistake considering the filmmakers went to the trouble of putting Hugo Weaving’s face on a few different monsters and hinting that the real monster lies within the human mind and institution. What the film needs, in my opinion, is a lot more dialogue in between action scenes–a few quiet moments where we get to eavesdrop on father and son, on wolfman and girlfriend, and on girlfriend and creepy father. The whole film feels like a summary; it’s almost like watching the highlights real of a longer film, which is a pity considering how excellent the finished material is. I left the film on a major adrenaline high mixed with a subtle undercurrent of disappointment. I kept wanting to stop and rewind or slow down the film.

Bottom line: I’m hoping for an extended, director’s cut edition to come out on Blu-Ray before I pass my final judgment on this film. I LOVED what was there…I just needed more.

That being said, there were a lot of really innovative moments in the film. The scary bits didn’t involve wolves, for the most part, although the film had more than its share of spurting blood and tangled intestines. The scary bits mostly took place in the London insane asylum, which looked more like a medieval torture chamber than any kind of “medical facility.” Talk about the beast within…I also disagree with Roger Ebert that the wolf looks too animated and moves too fast. I think the lightning-fast motion makes perfect sense. This is a werewolf movie, not a zombie flick. If the werewolf moved at the same speed as an actual wolf, it wouldn’t be scary and it could easily be shot down by one of the angry villagers. Where’s the fun in that? I think the look of the wolfman is just peachy…much scarier than the decidedly sleek and cuddly wolf in  Van Helsing or the weird mangy thing in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It looks plenty bestial and slavering but retains enough human shape to make it look perverse and terrifying. Suck it, Ebert.

There, I think that’s it. I’ve been struggling to define this movie to myself ever since I walked out of the theater yesterday at 7:00ish and that’s the closest I can get to it.

Now, since it’s officially February 14th, instead of wasting money making Hallmark richer or whining and moaning because you’re single, DO SOMETHING WORTHWHILE and participate in V Day. Not Valentine’s Day–V Day. Do something to help stop violence against women and girls. Find an event or performance of The Vagina Monologues in your area: http://events.vday.org/.

You heard it here first, guys–the way to make a woman of substance feel (ahem) cuddly is not with flowers or teddy bears or chocolate or champagne (okay, the champagne helps).  The way to turn on a real woman is by doing something good with your time. Show you respect women rather than insulting our intelligence with cheap cards and tacky balloons. If you take your girlfriend to a performance of The Vagina Monologues, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll BOTH come home feeling all warm and fuzzy.

Vagina is NOT a dirty word.

Happy V Day.