Cardyn Brooks's Blog, page 36

Dodging Eros Cover Reveal Contest

Coming soon... 
Dodging Eros, Through Past, Present and Pleasure by Cardyn Brooks Cover Reveal Contest:

Participants must be at least 18 years old and are responsible for any and all applicable income declaration requirements and taxes, and for providing valid, government-issued proof of identity, age, and eligibility. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law. 


The Good to O bag of adult treats has an approximate retail value of $110.00. It contains a 100% silk designer scarf sized to accommodate a variety of uses according to your imagination and your mood, luxury lubricant courtesy of Überlube, condoms, a handheld massager, luxurious passionfruit soap, chocolate, a music CD with classic standards about love, and a signed, limited edition first printing of Seducing the Burks, Five Erotic Tales by Cardyn Brooks. 

Dates and details TBA

No Bad Sex

Details TBA

Cardyn Brooks Presents

Details TBA

What Women Want

Returning Champion: "Let's try 'Archaic Gender Stereotypes' for two hundred, please, Alex."

Confession: The media's tone-deaf obliviousness continues to astound me. Time to donate more to MissRepresentation.org. 
BATAF: All women want the same things, and sexism propagated by women undercuts the legitimacy of other people's valid outrage. 

Implausible Deniability

The Ignorance Defense
Confession: All these widely acclaimed leaders of multi-billion-dollar organizations like JPMorganChase, the IRS, and the NFL continue to impress me (in a disturbing, watching-a-catastrophe-happen way) with the unwavering strength of their audacity to use "I didn't know." and "No one told me." to shield themselves from being held accountable for the catastrophic fallout of their leadership failures. 
BATAF: Voltaire was wrong: with great power comes no accountability. 

Password Placebo

.............. STRONG! 

Confession: Password protected accounts are only as secure as the smartest, least ethical IT person's interest in accessing it. 
BATAF: User I.D.s and passwords are hackers' primary foci.  

When Art Doesn't Reflect Life

Writing Contemporary Fiction in the 21st C. Might Not Be Your True Calling If…
Every character is Anglo (or every human character is Anglo in Sci-Fi).There are no LGBTQ characters or families.There are no physically or developmentally challenged characters.Perfect is used to describe human bodies, personalities, relationships or families.Financially poor characters are inherently ignorant, lazy, and predisposed to bad actions.Christianity is revered as a legitimate religion while all others are impugned.Strong and powerful character traits are segregated into masculine and feminine distinctions.Emphasis is placed on female characters’ clothing sizes, weight, shoe sizes, slender anything; pale, milk or pearl white skin and beautiful blonde hair.References to doing something like a girl or being a woman are offered as insults.Single female characters are referred to or think of themselves as spinsters.College-educated, professionally ambitious and successful female characters are miserable and have low self-esteem.Beautiful Black female characters’ complexions are café au lait or some variation of not dark.A majority of the characters have blue eyes.Bad things happen to female (or non-Anglo or non-hetero or non-Anglo or poor) characters because they’re inattentive, careless, foolish, stupid, headstrong, lazy and/or disobedient.Female characters disclose the actual number of their sexual partners as an indication of sexual virtue—or lack of such.Intentionally childless adult characters are described as selfish.Married hetero couples with only one child are described as selfish.Non-Anglo characters embody catastrophic-circumstances-catch-all proxies, ex. a mentally ill, homeless, substance addicted, divorced, military veteran, sex worker, abuse survivor with a limp and a nervous facial twitch.The few non-Anglo characters are criminals, victims, martyrs, subordinates or servants.Non-Anglo female characters are hypersexual or asexual or masculine.All the non-Anglo characters speak non-standard English.Non-Anglo characters wish they were Anglo.Otherness in non-Anglo characters is presented as negative; otherness in Anglo characters is considered to be admirable.Reasonable expectations by readers for inclusive representation of characters who fall outside the hetero, Anglo, male, monogamous, Protestant, privileged, thin, young labels equal superficial notions of Political Correctness. This is not about bashing hetero, Anglo, male, monogamous, Protestant, privileged, thin and/or young people; it's about expanding casts of characters to reflect everyone in multi-faceted ways from different points of view that acknowledge the intrinsic value of their humanity. 

Downward Spiral

II vConfession: Geraldo Rivera's beliefs about what "... a woman brings to a marriage more than anything else, to a relationship, is her youth. Youth is a fragile and diminishing resource..." didn't surprise me. In recent years, it's been his clueless comments about wearing hoodies in the Trayvon Martin killing, his ill-advised naked selfie post (Who does he think he is--James Franco?), and now proclaiming this 18th-century attitude that have swung the media spotlight his way--not the excellent journalistic relevance of many years ago.   
BATAF: A woman's value decreases as she ages, while a man's increases.  

Mainstreaming

photo by Cardyn Brooks 2014 


Confession: Fiction books with humans on the cover almost always make me feel excluded. They rarely resemble me in skin color, body type, age or attitude.

BATAF: The growing demand for diversity in casts of characters and main characters is a fad.

Lip Service

photo snapped by Cardyn Brooks 2014 



Confession: Hearing someone (or myself) say, "Thank you for your service," to a military service member always sounds like inadequate words of gratitude for all that they risk and suffer and sacrifice to protect the U.S. The expanding investigation into VA hospitals magnifies that sense of shameful inadequacy.

BATAF: One day; one holiday weekend per year is sufficient acknowledgement for those who have died to protect and defend the United States of America.