Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 64

In which we feed the trolls.

Apparently, it is troll feeding time.

I'm using time_shark  's link because, really I don't feel the need to give the troll in question any more traffic, unless you're really, really curious. 

I'd love to give this little troll of a man the same I gave John C Wright, or worse, but no.  Clearly, this is not to be; where Wright had plenty of ridiculous in with his hate, which made it a great deal of fun to deflate, parade balloon by parade balloon.  Kelly is just a dour, banal troll, who has set his little manifesto up to engage in a fight.  And I do not fight on the internet.

Of course, he is demanding a fight on the internet, proclaiming that unless a certain number of people who he feels, by some set of criteria he's conveniently withheld deserve to be hurt, marginalized or offended by his poem, then he is righteous, he is brave, he is telling it like it is, and, in the words of a dismally confused and overexposed manchild, he is winning. 

This is a kind of fight I have been in before.  Where comments fly for hours, days, and claims victory by not having to get up the next morning, so he can tell you you're wrong at 4 a.m.  and spend the hours of 5 to 6 doing a virtual victory dance.

And yet, he is compelling actual good poets to respond.  Respond thoughtfully, respond with logic and reason, when they could be living their lives, and, I don't know, making actual good poetry. 

Which, by the way, here is a challenge for you viewers at home: take the following lines and make a poem to sell to somewhere for money.

a young black hispanic disabled tri-sexual
manFEM/cybiotic jewslamic skinhead.
I don't intend to speculate on how a poem with those lines made it into any publication (excepting, perhaps, one that advertises Prussian Blue concerts, and even then, I'd have to imagine that the editor is going to think twice about wasting column space on this caliber of poetry), nor attack the editor that took it.  Hell, an editor who accepts a poem of this... magnitude pretty much attacks their own damn self and, anyway, everyone else involved in the publication of this (and no, I have not seen the rest of it, and I will not totally discard the notion that the rest redeems those lines, but forgive me for my lack of faith in this matter.  I have read some really excellent poems, but I cannot think of any that would have survived the inclusion of those lines). 

From his response to time_shark   calling him out, I will give him two text blocks for a good Wrighting.  Here they come:
"I find it very telling, Mr. Allen, that no supposed 'minority group' (your words) has stood up to express outrage and indignation at the hurtfulness and hatefulness of these lines that I have written."
Except that a lot of people did.  A lot of people are.  A lot of people are taking time out of their lives to respond to your turd of a poem, Mr. Kelly.  But, of course, since none of them (so far) are simultaneously of African descent, speak Spanish, live with* a disability, are intersexed or transitioning, are semi cybernetic clones who ascribe to not one but two of the Abrahamic religions, then I suppose they don't count.  And anyone who is marginalized under just one or two of those categories, I assume has no reason to be upset, because, you know, he doesn't hate you unless you gestated in a vat and have sweet chrome. 
And even if I WAS making fun of or being hateful toward “tri-sexual manFEM/cybiotic(s)” (which, to the very best of my knowledge, don’t actually exist…since I made them up in my head) how in the hell is that hateful to the regular old hetero/homo/bi-sexual folks?


Because no homophobe has ever thought to formulate slurs against queer or transfolk using similar terms.  Because, heaven knows, I never heard anything similar in the lunch line in middle school, hurled at me or at anyone who actually turned out to be queer or trans.  Sorry, Kelly, your shit is not novel.  It's pegged at about the maturity and creativity of an 11 year old, one year away, one might note from the golden age of science fiction. 

Gah.  I prefer my bigots a little more florid in their prose.  Substantive responses have already gone out and I am sure more will come.  All this work thrown after a silly little man.

I am putting this up under heavy friendslock so as not to derail things by being nasty to Mr. Kelly. ETA
taking it live.  tithenai  has made an extremely worthy response of her own,  under which I this can also fly.  Also, it passes the waylandsmith  test**. 

 *Changed from "suffer" and thanks for the catch shadesong !
** That is, I picture him asking me "do you stand behind what you wrote?"  And I do.

Bloodless Pact: Middletown Drift

I've sent "Rise and Run," with actually very few alterations (just changing words when I read them out loud that way, really.  The story was so simple, even I managed to not make too much of a hash of the grammar).  Next: walk.  Then: clean living room.  After: scrape poems off LJ.

Also, asakiyume   is giving away copies of Mythic Delirium, and you should give it a shot!

Bicycle

Nothing like a good brisk bout of exercise in the hot-hot sun to make one feel like an ugly bag of mostly water.  All my liquids are trying to escape my pores in a way that is both distressing and repellant.  To the shower!

On the upside: BABYDUCKS (on the downside, I scared them coming around the corner on my bicycle.  poor little guys).

Run Blogging

I did make the attempt, but I did not get far.   May try again this afternoon.  May *actually* try again this afternoon instead of saying I will.

Regarding the Killing of the Psychophage (for STS)

It helps to have good breeding,
but even that will not suffice.
If you have a magic charm, say once,
then say it twice.

It's wise to bring another,
for fools would go alone,
but two won't be enough to face
so bring another one.

If you have sword and shield
even useless they will be
'less the hands and heart to weild
and hands and heart make three.

OH JESUS IT'S A READING GET IN THE CAR

Saturday July 16 2:30 PM    VT    Reading. Erik Amundsen. Amundsen reads the short story "Mote," which appeared in Not One of Us #45.

If you are going to Readercon, this is the first of shameless, tiresome begging for you to come.  If you do, and I can possibly, I will come to your reading.  I will give out art.  Or alcohol.  Or something. 

At Arisia, I only had Moss and a woman I think was the one of the other reader's moms, and that's when I learned to start blegging, cajoling and offering bribes. 

If I get enough people, I might be persuaded to read from Motherfucking Pirates instead.

Seriously, I'm not even going to try to pretend I am not desperate. 

Very, Very Thinky

I just talked to my mom, a pretty well educated and informed woman of 60 years who I just found out, knew nothing of the eugenics movement in America until this week.  It took me aback, but, now, I guess it makes sense, weirdly.  And it helps to explain a thing or two about teabaggers, most of whom seem to be in her age cohort or a little older.

Still. 

I'll admit, I might not have known but for my racist-but-I-still-love-him Uncle Howard... But still.  I forget people don't know this shit.  I forget that smart people I love and respect don't know this shit.  And realizing that bugs me.  Kind of a lot.  The generation that was adult enough to take part in that is largely gone.  Their kids, who saw where it led are dying (and a growing squirming terror over what happens when no on alive remembers the Holocaust first-hand... is squirming and growing), and now I think that a lot of their kids never got told, unless it was part of their family and history. 

I'm going to be over here, bothered for a bit.  Seems like I might ought to be involved in doing something about it.

Need to Work on Getting it Down in Under 40

Preferably while I'm still under 40. 

5K as per usual.  Much better than Tuesday.

You Do Not F*ck With the Crows [i09]

Science shows that crows are the biker gangs of the sky  

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Crows will not only remember your face and go after you repeatedly if you bother them, but they will also teach other birds to do the same. Their scolding and physical harassment can last for years, possibly for the life of the bird.

Crows are the devil-birds of the sky. Not only do they look like the kind of bird that would be perched on the shoulder of a Disney villain, they do frighteningly smart things. For one thing, they use tools to assess and find food. They even make frogs explode. (The crows swoop down and tear the frogs' livers out. The frogs swell up in a belated self-defense reflex. Unfortunately, they're used to swelling up with their livers in place to provide counter-force and so they split themselves open.) Now it's been shown that crows aren't just smart, they're organized.

Two researchers at the University of Washington trapped, banded, and released crows at a site near Seattle. They did so wearing distinctive masks - to freak out not only the crows but any poor hikers who were going by. Unlike the meek Seattle hikers, the crows started fighting back as soon as they were released. They scolded the researchers, which didn't seem too sinister until the scolding brought other nearby crows into the fray. Neighboring crows joined in, until at some release sites the researchers were being scolded and dive-bombed by fifteen crows at a time.

When the researchers put the masks back on and ventured out, they were again scolded, dive-bombed, and mobbed by crows. But not all the mobs contained crows that were banded. This meant that some of the crows that had participated in the original scolding sessions remembered the researcher's 'faces' and went on the offensive when they saw those faces again. The crows they were with joined in the mob, and the masks became known as trouble to an even larger population of crows. Researchers have only tested crow memory for five years, but they believe that the birds remember faces for their entire lives - fifteen to forty years. Get on the wrong side of one crow in your forties or fifties, and you could be mobbed everywhere for the rest of your life.

Step out of the night and into the white...

Actually, step back into the night, or, the dark world (which included mirror universes, eventually, too).

Fantasyscapes #4 is up at Black Gate.

Mirror Spock says "Go read."

Protip:  In the mirror universe, the Vulcan Death Touch is real.  Listen to Mirror Spock.