but bitching about it makes me feel so much better

I heard a quote, attributed to Mia Farrow in her later years, yesterday: "I get it now. Life is about losing."

I don't think she means that in the competitive sense. I think she means that as you get older, things that you value fall away from you -- friends, your health, possessions -- and getting through means accepting that as the natural course of events, with as much grace as you can muster.

Mia Farrow would probably hate my guts.

page 285

is going to be the death of me.

it's not you, it's me

People aren't really awful, they're just people. It's me who has trouble with the world as it currently exists (and its inhabitants). I decided a long time ago that the sense of isolation I constantly feel is part of the price I pay for being what they used to call a "free thinker," but sometimes I wonder if I've just got a really bad case of terminal uniqueness.

have people always been awful?

I notice something today upon which I feel moved to remark. As a card-carrying weirdo, I have, many times down through the years, sought groups of other weirdos with whom to commune, but have never maintained a membership in said groups, because said groups (with one rare exception) all seem to spend the entirety of their collective energy on how stupid / misguided / evil non-members are. What, I ask you, is up with this?

For example. I made the decision at an early age not to reproduce. Some years ago, I looked into the "child-free by choice" groups, curious about other peoples' motivations and experience with that decision. What I found instead was a bunch of supercilious child-haters who spent all their time talking about how great it was not to have children, how stupid people who had children were, and what a raw deal they got from the world because they were so special. What the hell?

Same thing with the atheists. No real discussion of non-religious concepts and how to get along respectfully in a majority-religious world, just an endless savaging of religious ideology and its adherents.

For the record, I actually sort of like religious people and children. I'd go so far as to say that there are some of them in the world that I even love and respect. Yes, I do my share of pissing on people who don't share my world view, it's just that -- I dunno, when I go looking for community, I hope to find something more than my own limited frustration reflected, and I've been uniformly disappointed.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of bitching about how wrong these people are. I throw myself upon the pyre in order to point out the greater irony: groups formulated to support a separation from something shouldn't spend the entirety of their existence focused upon that something.

and they're off

I'm feeling manifesto-ish. Too bad I don't have time to write it down.

those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it

I went back in to re-start the final edit at page 320 after a break of several weeks, and couldn't get anywhere. Momentum lost. So I tried starting again from the beginning and worked on it a bit yesterday, but today I got roadblocked again. Will I ever get all the way through in one go? On the plus side, I still enjoy reading it. Maybe it's pure hubris, but I really think it's a good book. Today.

Shit Of Which I Have Officially Become Sick This Year, First Revision

Already listed these:

1. Question mark headlines
2. Attempts to reclaim the word 'slut'
3. The Stocking Cap Look
4. Any "celebrity" anywhere "opening up about" anything
5. "Rocking" as a synonym for "wearing"

Today I add:

6. World-class athletes dressing like hookers
7. Starting answers to questions with the word "so"

sticks and stones

Back before he invented The Simpsons and joined the 1%, Matt Groening was less-famous as the author of a comic strip called Life In Hell, which was almost solely responsible for my surviving the 1990s. Every December, as part of that strip (which is apparently still running somewhere on the planet), Groening publishes his "forbidden words" for the upcoming year. As an homage, I hereby present my own (hopefully annual) list:

Shit Of Which I Have Officially Become Sick This Year

1. Question mark headlines
2. Attempts to reclaim the word 'slut'
3. The Stocking Cap Look
4. Any "celebrity" anywhere "opening up about" anything
5. "Rocking" as a synonym for "wearing"

There will be more. Oh, yes. There will.

Meanwhile, let's hear yours.

still not dead

It's sad when a Fine Arteest has to abandon her Art to make a goddamn living. I haven't worked on the edit in what seems like forever, to the point where I'm starting to get a complex about it -- but when paying work comes my way I gotta take it. Maybe the break will be good. Maybe when I get back to the edit I'll have a fresh perspective^TM, and Nine Days will finally become the groundbreaking bestseller that turns me into a member of the 1%.

maybe it's just me

You know how, when you encounter a philosophy out there in the world, if there's any truth in it, you have that little "aha!" moment? And then, as you learn more about the rest of the philosophy, you sometimes find yourself going, "What the fuck?" The philosophy was so right about that one little kernel of truth that you just can't believe that the edifice of other stuff its adherents have built up around it could possibly be bullshit. The more you look at the collection of bullshit built around that little kernel of truth, the more you start to doubt your original "aha!" Finally, you get exhausted by the contradiction and do one of two things: accept the philosophy whole hog, figuring you can live with the questionable bits because that one kernel of truth is so valuable; or you just reject the whole thing.

I think that this explains most of what goes wrong in human lives.

i'm not dead

All of the sudden I got a shitload of paying work, none of which I felt like I could say 'no' to, considering my current state of abject poverty. Ergo, I haven't had time to work on the book much lately. However, I will be able to pay my bills for a couple of months, which means that I will keep sucking air for a while, which increases the odds that I'll be back to the edit at some point in the future.

In other news, I've had a sciatica relapse -- spent too much time sitting up in some bleachers without back support a couple of weeks ago and woke up in agony again the next day. This shit blows. It blows in so many different ways that it makes me tired even thinking about how to explain it. It wouldn't be very interesting anyway.

mice roaring

Yeah, it's probably pointless, but I'm petitioning reddit.com to remove their lovely instructional subreddit on how to rape women. If you'd like to sign the petition [NSFW], please do so here. And tell your friends.

is this how Newton felt?

As we've discussed, I have Major Depressive Disorder, for which I have been successfully treated with a combination of medication, talk therapy, and world-view modification. The other day I accidentally discovered something else that really helps -- skepticism. By which I mean demanding that the conclusions my brain comes to be supported by verifiable factual evidence.

For example. The last couple of years have been really difficult, financially. I own and run my own one-woman business, and as you might expect, people like me are the dying canaries in the economic coal mine of this New World Order. Because my brain is the way it is, somehow I had gotten my options narrowed down to 1) keep doing what I'm doing or 2) get a job. This nicely reductive thinking brought me efficiently to the brink of driving off a bridge, until I realized that I was forcing myself to consider doing something that made no rational sense. I have never, in my 51 years on this planet, been able to successfully hold a standard nine-to-five job. That is, the verifiable factual evidence tells me that it shouldn't be included in my list of options. So I chucked it out, and now I don't feel like driving off a bridge anymore. Now the goal is 3) find a way to make more money. That, I can live with.

Similar situation with a sick cat this weekend -- because of the financial situation, I'm broke. However, I have the good fortune to be married to someone without MDD who can hold a standard job, and thus, has some actual money. He's told me precisely 47,305,634 times that he doesn't mind giving me some when I need it, yet every time I ask him, I feel like a big fat loser. FOR DAYS. Factually, that makes no sense. In spite of the MDD, I'm not actually a loser -- I'm a licensed architect. I brushed my teeth this morning. I wrote a goddamned book. Maybe that doesn't look like "success" as somebody else defines it, but it's pretty fucking good for somebody who shouldn't really be able to get out of bed every morning.

In other words, looking at reality -- things that are factual -- seems to help short-circuit the trip my brain always wants to take into the Depths. Interesting.

and for my next trick

Well, ladies and germs, it appears that the sequel to Nine Days has started writing itself, whether I'm ready or not. It's calling itself Samsara for the time being. This means that I will be perfecting Nine Days and writing its sequel at the same time. Will I go (more) insane? Place your bets.

yer doin' it wrong

Damn it, I have work to do, but as usual, a discussion over at IBTP got me started on a topic near and dear to my heart and now I gotta process. Which I do, as you know, right here on the old blaugh.

It's about this whole sex-positive feminism thing. Which, I have decided, is a misnomer. In my experience, sex-positive feminism isn't actually SEX-positive, it's performing-femininity-positive. Performing femininity, for those of you who don't know what that means, involves behaving in ways that are culturally coded "feminine," such as wearing dresses and make-up, declining to swear like a sailor in mixed company, and/or removing perfectly serviceable body hair. In the patriarchy, it is composed mainly of refusing to "let oneself go" -- i.e., maintaining, at all costs, one's body's compliance with culturally accepted beauty standards.

Now. If you google "sex-positive," 99.9% of the hits you get will be by, or feature, women. There will be pictures of women in their sexpoz outfits, blog posts by women about their sexpoz experiences, videos of women being sexpoz in bed, et cetera. The accompanying explanations will discuss how these women are exercising their right to choose how they want to be sexual, which is why they think that it's "feminist." It's not. Here's why.

In all of these "sex-positive" performances, it's the women who are central. That is, they are the subjects and objects of attention. However, if "sex-positive" was really about women's sexual interests (I'm speaking from my own unfashionably heterosexual perspective here), there would be some MEN involved. As currently practiced, "sex-positivity" is all about women's sexual performance, and thus, it perpetuates the cultural primacy of the male gaze, which cannot be feminist.

Oddly enough, though, I suspect that this failure points the way to a truly feminist heterosexuality, a female gaze feminism, in which women finally obtain the crap-free privilege to act as viewers rather than performers. As it stands now, a woman may only (publicly) view a man sexually if she agrees, either overtly or covertly, to perform for him sexually. She must be wearing a sexy outfit, or perform femininity adequately enough that her observable interest doesn't compromise his performance of masculinity (yeah, baby, that knife cuts both ways).

When women can, without cultural opprobrium or expectation of reciprocation, lie fully clothed, hairy, and makeupless on the sofa and passively watch attractive men performing to our taste, then we can talk about sex-positive feminism. Until then, it's just sexism in a skirt.

makes me proud to live in Austin, Texas

today's WTF

I've been following, with interest, the story of this attress who is trying to sue Amazon for publishing her real birth date. As some of y'all know, I was involved in my own version of this recently, and it blows my lobes that people have really become this stupid.

I know, I know, calling people stupid on the internet has become, like, the national pastime over the last couple of years, but check this. The attress argues that publishing her real birth date caused her to lose work, because of age discrimination in the entertainment industry. She's not suing the people who refused to give her work because of her age, she's suing the people who told everybody how old she actually is. In other words, she's HELPING THE INDUSTRY DISCRIMINATE. She wants Amazon (IMDB in this case) to help hide her true age, and perpetuate the fiction that she's younger than she is, so that directors can continue to think that they're casting 'young enough' attresses in all their shit. Can I get a WTF?

And for the finishing flourish: she says that the only way IMBD could have gotten her real birthdate is from her credit card information, which she used to buy her membership with them. Lady, do you even know what the internet IS? I can find out your blood type, shoe size, brand of toothpaste and last meal for five dollars. I found my closeted movie star's birth date by accident, for cryin' out loud. Anybody who knows your real name can look up anything about you and submit it to IMDB. This isn't called the Information Age because people just like the sound of the words.

I know my over-fitty homeskillets out there are all going, "Who the hell cares?" and I hear you. It's Hollyweird. It's not Real Life. Twenty years ago -- ten years ago, even -- I might be saying the same thing. Nowdays, though, we spend so much time plugged into media of one sort or another that who and what we see in it occupies a great deal more of our consciousness(es?). Used to be, you'd go to a movie once a week, and the separation between Real Life and the young, white, beautiful movie stars was clear. Now, you don't know whether the person on the other end of your videosmartphonepad is a 'real' human being or an attress. So it matters whether she's pretending to be 30 when she's really 45, because if we never see frankly 45 year-old women (or men) making a living and being celebrated for their accomplishments, the 45 year-old women (and men) of the world are going to start to feel -- and be treated as -- useless. Which they aren't.

What really, really gets me about this, though, is that the case somehow made it all the way to court without somebody involved completing the thought process outlined in the second paragraph above. I don't want to even entertain the idea that humans with that many resources are that stupid, so I'm going to believe instead that this is some kind of publicity stunt, or that the lawyer involved is desperate for work.

What do you think?

spectacular in my laziness

One less rant I'll have to write myself.

mean woman blues

duh

It just occurred to me that I don't have to wait for The Agent to respond before starting the 4th (and, I hope, final) edit of Nine Days. So I have.

Dear Mr. Letterman,

I don't have a problem with you calling Chris Christie fat. He is fat. Simply saying so is the equivalent of me pointing out that you have gaps in your teeth or are losing your hair.

The problem I have is that you're not just objectively describing him. You're ascribing personal characteristics to the man -- gluttony, laziness, stupidity, lack of self-control, etc. -- based on his appearance, which is the equivalent of me deciding that you have a low I.Q. because you're tall, or thinking that the knots on your skull indicate psychopathic tendencies.

Please remember that making judgments about people's characters based on how they look has led to dreadful historical consequences in the past. Also, I won't bore you with a lecture about the science, since you presumably have access to the internet, but simply remind you that the factors influencing individual body size are complex and varied. Everybody's different. Mocking the evidence of that difference is narrow-minded and petty.

You're better than this, Dave. I know you are.

Love, Minerva

torture porn rides again

So I came across a provocative teaser for a self-published thriller the other day. The author claims to be a feminist, and the writing was good enough to convince me to drop $3.99 on the Kindle. Six pages in, I'm treated to a graphic rape scene. Sorry, hon. You're doing it wrong.

it's over

I'm done with Facebook. I can't even joke about how stupid it is anymore. What's the point?

now's your chance

Do me a favor. Read this, then take the poll. It'll be good for your Karma.

et tu, Jane Austen?

OK, this is frustrating. The Indian Mystery story is shaping up to be a pretty interesting plot, but the voice isn't working. I'm a Modern Gal and tend to write in a somewhat "hard-boiled" style -- I figured I would have to moderate that somewhat to write something set in ca. 1820, but it's coming out in this annoying bodice-ripper voice that I hate. I'm gonna try using my normal voice with it and see what happens. Wish me luck. It could get ugly.

headlights off

Apparently, I need a little entremet between Nine Days and its sequel, because it occurred to me the other day to try out the Indian Mystery as a short story (to help me decide whether or not it's novel-worthy), and now the thing is taking on a life of its own. Stats are over there → and I have no idea how long it's gonna be, I'm just going to write on it until it feels finished. Or until I decide it's not worth working on anymore. Either way.

every night is date night when you're child-free

It rained a couple of minutes ago, so I figure the apocalypse is upon us. Better get my random thoughts down on paper (sic) before everything blows up.

I've been hanging out over at reddit, the atheist-socialist alternative to bookface, lately. The culture of the site is driven by its primary demographic, twenty-something male computer geeks -- lots of fart jokes and college-level philosophizing. However, there's also a growing community of radical feminists on the site. I kind of like some parts of radical feminism -- the concept of patriarchy, in particular, strikes me as a more useful way of looking at the history of female oppression than "men suck." Unfortunately, however, in the common parlance, radical feminism seems to have become shorthand for man-hating, so you can probably guess how it goes down with the twenty-something male computer geeks. It's like the goddamn internet Wild West over there most of the time. Highly entertaining.

In other news, I don't have pernicious anemia, I touched the floor yesterday without bending my legs (for the first time in exactly six months), and a sequel to Nine Days has begun to percolate around up in the old lobes. The Agent has had Nine Days for a little over two weeks now -- he's reading it as a favor, so I have to keep reminding myself that it's probably at the bottom of his pile. Otherwise I start thinking it's going to get published and make me a millionaire, and I don't need that kind of disappointment. My little seester, the inspiration for Julia Kalas, read it last week and liked it. I know family members don't count, but it's nice to have the blessing of my protag's namesake.

i've gone to the dark side

I love the internet. I love the whole id-driven, troll-laden, nigerian-prince-scamming mess. I worry sometimes, though, about what's going on in meatspace while I try to get my chess.com rating above 1100. I have observed lately that The Kids These Days -- people born in the internet era -- have a really odd relationship with reality. So many seem to think that signing an online petition or posting in an internet forum is equal to physically showing up at a protest rally or walking an abortion patient through the Hate Line. And ya know, maybe it is. What the fuck do I know? I'm old.

It's just, I get suspicious sometimes. Remember 1984? How we shuddered at the idea of those TV screens everywhere? The reality turned out to be much, much worse. We not only have TV screens everywhere, we carry the damned things around in our pockets. I'm not saying there's some kind of grand unified conspiracy to stop us paying attention while the megatheocorporatocracy rapes the planet and everyone on it, but if there were... wait a minute...

we don't need no stinking badges

Too much conflict for the last couple of days. Under my Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm exterior (HAR) I'm actually kind of vicious, I think. When my blood gets up, it's hard to get it back down again. Not proud of this. I haven't been behaving well lately.

sixteen tons

Been working on the book teaser. Does it make you want to read it?

bleah

Ever have one of those days where you're just sick of yourself? Yeah.

today's angst

Just because I can't go twenty-four hours without torturing myself somehow, I've started worrying about what The Agent thinks of Nine Days. It wasn't 'perfect' when I sent it; I had sent a second draft to several beta readers, just because I was getting frustrated and wanted some other opinions about whether I should keep working on it, or put it in a drawer and start something else. The vote was two to one to keep going, with one of the two coming from the illustrious Ed Ward, who most generously mentioned liking it to his agent. Agent expressed an interest in seeing it, and I wanted to strike while the iron was hot, so I did another quick edit and sent it off. Now I'm worried that I shouldn't have -- but the alternative would have been to make the guy wait six months or a year while I polished the thing to within an inch of its life. They say that not getting immediate feedback is good -- it means the reader is taking the thing seriously -- but I'm starting to get antsy. It's only been a week. I should just chillax, right?

A bit of a nice surprise yesterday -- I wrote to Tana French about a year ago, telling her how much I loved In The Woods, and yesterday she wrote me back! Just a quick thank-you note, but still. Since I wrote her I've had occasion to read her other two books, Faithful Place and The Likeness, both of which were similarly outstanding. She is truly a gifted writer. You should read her stuff. I wrote to ask her if she'd ever tried writing a novel before In The Woods, which she says she hadn't. So it's possible to really hit a home run your first time out. Nice to know. Of course, it helps me worry, too -- Nine Days isn't nearly that good. Damn it! I should have worked on it more before letting Agent read it! Ugh... the inside of my head... sometimes it's not so pretty...

this is what happens when Rick Perry tries to run for president

That's right. Texas bursts into flame.

fire? what fire?

A new wrinkle on the health front -- the Momster has been diagnosed with what used to be called "pernicious anemia," which is often caused by a genetic condition that makes your body unable to absorb vitamin B12. If that turns out to be the cause of my mom's anemia, I and the sibs will also have those genes. It's hard to diagnose in younger people because the symptoms are sort of nebulous and mild, but over the years they can add up to some serious shit. Will know more when her tests come back. Stay tuned...

page hit madness

If you're looking for the posts about my Brush With Infamy, they have been taken down. The people who needed to see them saw them. But hey, while you're here, why not have a read of my stories? I could also use a couple more 'likes' on Nine Days' bookface page -- when it hits 30, I get to use all the analysis tools.

look over there! ---->

OK, I've done my worst. It's up to The Gods now.

if you make it to 100, do they give you a prize?

Large Thoughts have been bothering me lately, the life and death kind. I dunno why. Maybe it's the heat. I think it's actually my age, though. Did some calculations while trying to fall asleep the other night -- I estimate that I spent my first two decades getting irrevocably damaged by the Drunken Wolves, another two recovering from that, and then this last decade, my fifth, has been relatively OK. Only, now I can't imagine things going anywhere but down. I mean, I'm fucking FIFTY. My joints hurt. I'm set in my ways. My patience wears thin. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Is this what they mean by midlife crisis?

two things

One:

Insight into "write what you know," courtesy of a random conversation with The Spouse about why garage door manufacturers give their products such stupid names. They do it because they think it will make (other) people more likely to buy their product -- i.e., they know the names are stupid, but they think that their consumers are different than they are, and won't look at a garage door called The Algonquin and roll their eyes. They're guessing at what's in the minds of other people, and are sure that it can't possibly be the same thing that's in their minds.

Why is this? I don't know. However, it's what made me write Nine Days. For some reason, mystery writers stopped writing books that I like to read. Every one I tried seemed to devolve into the same tired prostitute / supermodel / stripper-with-a-gun or soccer mom / herbalist / cat whisperer-stumbles-on-a-corpse story. So I decided to write my own damn book, one that I would like. Publishing was not on the radar -- it was just something to do with the time I used to spend reading -- so I didn't try to follow any rules except the ones I (mostly) agreed with.

As I got into the thing, I realized what was wrong with those other books -- the authors weren't writing what they liked; they were writing what they thought (or maybe what their agent or publisher told them) "other people" would like. At least, I hope that's true, because if all of those writers really like the torture porn that they're writing, we're headed for the apocalypse more quickly than I feared. That's when I realized what people mean by "write what you know." Really, it should be "write what you like." Write what you want to read. That's what it means.

Two:

It costs NINE DOLLARS to get into the new Blanton Art Museum (no link for those corporate bastards). When did art become something available only to the monied? Not just art, either -- it's $7 to get into the Bullock History museum. Last time I went to a museum, which was, admittedly, quite a while ago, it was free. There is nothing free to do in American culture anymore. The Revolution has been Privatized.

rant-o-matic

The edit has been cooking with gas, which is how I got totally obsessed with it and forgot that I run a business. Realized yesterday that I'm WAY behind on paying work, and am now madly playing catch-up, which means I haven't had much time to write. Except, I did write another book a few nights ago, IN MY HEAD. It's kind of a science-fictiony concept, so I don't know if I'd be the best person to put it on paper, but it was fun to think about. Then there's the film script I have an idea for that will change the porn industry as we know it forever.

I'm really only posting because I want to rant about cat food [RANT REMOVED FOR BEING BORING].

rhino hide

I've always been super-sensitive to criticism, so when I sent The Book off to my beta readers, I was prepared to descend into the usual agony after their comments came back. Oddly, though, when they did, it didn't hurt. Of course, it helps that I got some pretty positive feedback, but even the negative stuff didn't pierce me to the heart the way I expected it to. It's as if Nine Days were a separate being from me, with a life all its own. I'm somehow able to see the criticisms of it as not being about me personally, which is, frankly, unheard of. I mean, I can take the goddamn weather personally.

Also, as I'm working through this edit, I'm seeing how accurate most of the crits were. They're making this into a better book, so THANKS, YOU GUYS.

uncle, already

Damn it, the heat is killing me. It was only 101 today, five degrees down from the high of (every day) last week, yet still I lie motionless in the A/C, subsisting on a diet of ice cream, popsicles, and chilled water. Not that that varies much from my usual summer routine.

It's just, my brain feels absolutely cooked. I've made a pretty good start on revision 3, which I want to get done quickly, since there's an agent (!!!!!!) waiting to read it -- but today I crashed and burned. Spent the afternoon drawing construction details instead, the only thing my mental faculties were equal to, and now am drowning in enuii. Life feels like too much trouble.

My leg's a bit better lately. So there's that.

sexist cliche roundup

So this new Masterpiece Mystery series, Zen. Gorgeous production values and Rufus Sewell perfectly cast as the lead -- what's not to like? Well, just about everything else, sadly. First episode, five female characters: secretary/love interest, mother, prostitute, slutty ex-wife, slutty scheming female prosecutor. You never saw so many stilleto heels and push-up bras in your life (except, of course, for Mom). Male characters: all "regular" guys, including the playboy foil meant to make Zen (the "ethical cop") look good as he hits on a subordinate while still legally married. And that name. Aurelio Zen? Please. Yeah, I watch it, for Rufus and Rome, but I have to roll my eyes a lot.

drafted

I admit it, I've been procrastinating. I'm kind of scared, after getting positive reviews on the 2nd draft, that I'll completely screw it up if I work on it any more. I wonder if other writers feel like that?

Anyway, I've convinced myself that I DON'T CARE again. I'm going in. Cover me.

treasure hunt

There's something new on the site. Can you find it?  

[Edit: FINE. BE that way. It's here.]

hey mikey!

The votes are in, and the answer is: keep going. Got a really heartwarming positive response from my 'celebrity' reader, who has also generously offered to help me find an agent. I dunno what I did to deserve his help, but it has really made my day / week / year / lifetime.

LOL of the day

MSNBC says that all us creative types are arrogant jerks. Like I care what they think. Cretins.

bored?

Forget World of Warcraft, or whatever the hell alternate reality thing everybody's into these days -- if you really want to experience another plane of digital existence, just start editing Wikipedia.

involuntary editing

Oh, man! I just had the mother of all brainstorms about a new opening for The Book. One of my beta readers opined that there's not much hook at the beginning, which I agree with -- part of that was just creative rebellion, not wanting to be "too commercial" (that's my story and I'm sticking to it) -- but there's a way to move a fairly crucial part of the story to the very first paragraph, and include some whiz-bang-exploding-monkeys in the process. This thought process also led to another idea, how to develop one of the secondary characters in a way that will also help solidify some of my lead's situations and actions.

Obviously, I'm still writing this book.

same shit, different day: the sequel

I'm sick to death of people wasting their brain cells dissecting popular culture crap, but this Codie Young business is sticking in my craw.

As I've made clear elsewhere on this blaugh, I am a fat broad who thinks fat broads should have a right to exist without being harrassed about being fat. This puts me in the 'fat acceptance' camp on a fairly regular basis, and I find myself rarely at odds with this conglomeration of folks. However, some of the commentary regarding Ms. Young, in the guise of 'fat acceptance,' is rapidly going beyond the pale. 

Where is the difference between dissing this thin woman for being "too thin" and dissing fat broads for being "too fat?" Both spring from the same fetid stream -- the idea that strangers are entitled to broadcast their opinions about other peoples' -- usually womens' -- bodies. For the record, having an opinion may be unavoidable; subjecting the rest of us to it is not. In fact, if you find yourself feeling so strongly about someone else's appearance that you simply can't keep quiet about it, that should clue you in to the fact that you have a mental problem. Seek professional help.