JanerBlog

Signal Boost

Via Vito-Excalibur, there's a fellow LiveJournaler named Liz, who also goes by Denelian, who could really use some help right now:

Liz is wonderful. She is funny, creative, a talented writer, and one of the smartest people I know. She has a slightly warped sense of humor, an incredible imagination, and a healthy appreciation of the absurd. She's currently attending OSU and working on a dual degree: a BS in Journalism and a BA Political Science. In the time I have known her, she has been an amazing source of support and sanity-checking.

But now, Liz needs help.

She has some serious medical problems, which I am sure she would not be comfortable having listed publicly in detail. The combination of them, however, has taken a huge toll on her - she basically cannot lift or move one of her legs, and can no longer get dressed, bathe, or go anywhere without help. She is only allowed to walk 50 feet, and that with a cane or walker. She can only sit up for up to 30 minutes before the pain becomes unbearable. Despite several surgeries, her hip is not improving. She is in severe and chronic pain, even with heavy medication - when I asked, she said her usual pain level starts off at about an 8 out of 10 each day, and only goes up from there.

And somehow, she has been managing to pass her college classes. Even to do quite well in most of them. Until the last few quarters, when the lack of accessible classrooms and university facilities has made it literally impossible for her to get to her classes. Her hip problems mean that even if she can get to a class, she cannot sit up through it.

Her health problems have forced her to drop a lot of classes, the last few quarters, because she literally cannot get to the lectures, and cannot remain sitting through them. This has caused her GPA to drop from a 3.5 to a 2.8. But that is not the biggest problem.

See, the financial aid Liz has been getting for school is based on how many units of classes are taken. Not the number completed, but the number scheduled. So if a class is dropped, or a Withdrawal is filed, it still factors into the total units counted for financial aid. Liz has had to drop at least one class per quarter since the beginning of 2008, partly due to unanticipated complications (MSRI) after one of her hip surgeries, which cost her an entire quarter's worth of classes.

[snip]

And that's bad, but there's worse. You see, the only medical insurance Liz has is through her enrollment in the university. So when she is no longer enrolled, in a month or so, she will have no medical coverage. Her university allows students to purchase medical insurance for one quarter after their enrollment ends, so she has the option to buy another three months' insurance.

Go have a look at the whole entry. If you're able and so inclined, you may want to consider bidding on something in her charity auction or just using Paypal to donate a couple bucks her way.

New Pinup!

Over the last couple of months, I've been doing some pinups for folks. I don't want to share them all quite yet because I want the giftees to have the right of first post. Ironically, the last one gifted is the first one to make it out on the intertubes, so I finally get to post it!

Guy Davis is hard at work on the third graphic novel of his creator-owned series The Marquis, so I made him a pinup to celebrate.

(click to embiggen)

I can hardly wait to see what fresh new horrors crawl out of his wonderfully twisted brain. If you're not familiar with Guy's personal work, you may know him from his long run on Mike Mignola's BPRD from Dark Horse. A whole bunch of other folks are doing really gorgeous Marquis pinups, and Guy's collecting them on a special blog. Go have a look!

My Husband is the Awesomest

So Paul is a darn good designer, and recently, he's had a couple of really major coups. Some of them are still in the pipe, but here are a couple I can tell you about.

First, a while back, Thomas Dolby had an open contest on his blog to design the tee-shirt logo for a one-shot concert he was giving in London. Paul won, and you can see the logo being used in the concert here and here and here.

And secondly, Paul's a regular visitor to Warren Ellis' Whitechapel Message Board, where each week, Warren posts a new "Remake/Remodel" challenge, where artists and designers take a crack at re-imagining old, forgotten (and usually public-domain) characters. Paul usually does at least one design a week if not more, and his submissions are usually really well received. Fast forward to this week, when Warren gave the following challenge:

You are an artist/designer. You have to put together the cover for a comic called SUPERMAN. It is issue 1 of this book.

You have been told that Superman is a man who dresses predominantly in a shade of blue, and wears a red S symbol. You know nothing else about the character.

The cover must include a logo and the text THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE DARING EXPLOITS OF THE ONE AND ONLY SUPERMAN.

And that's it.

It's up to you what kind of company you're at. What kind of comics you make. How you translate that description of Superman. What era you're in. Who you are, even. Go nuts with it.

You have one week. Go.

The story's received quite a bit of press in the last couple of days, and guess whose image is getting shown far and wide?

Yup. He is my husband. He is full of awesome.

I should have linked to this sooner, but --

-- Kudos to Pam Noles for this post, responding to an interview with Kevin O'Neill. I realize the possible hypocrisy of me criticizing Kevin O'Neill in this instance, given that my last story also contains a racist doll, but at least I don't deny that when the automaton was created it definitely had racist overtones, regardless of how many other ways it was used or how else it contributed to scientific discovery.

It also bears mentioning that in her earlier essays, Pam never said "Don't use the Golliwog." What she did say is this:

As I've said before, writing is research, empathy and effort; anything in the world is on deck as potential source material. But if you're going to take on something as culturally loaded as blackface or minstrelsy, a footnote needs to be included - you've got to have your A-Game on. Like dealing with a select few other extremely thorny topics, this is not something one should go into without awareness. If you are a current day person choosing to toy with this construct, going into it with scant knowledge of or ignoring the big picture, is so unwise. If you choose to work with this trope willfully blind and you screw it up, you deserve whatever level of invective comes your way. You must proceed with awareness.

And this is why I love Pam's big beautiful brain so much.

I know I've linked to it before, but it's worth the redundancy: go read her full series of essays on the Golliwog in the Black Dossier.

Yet more skiing

Spent about three hours out skiing today. The weather was very warm for skiing, nearly 40F, and if we'd had to break trail we'd never have been able to move. Good thing for us that the trails were so well tamped down from constant use, and the track was a delight to use.

Last night was a similar story; I rounded up a few friends and we went to Kleinstuck nature preserve, which was icy as a luge track. We only got in two laps because it was misting light rain. Sadly, it was so overcast that we didn't see the full moon, and probably won't see it tonight, either. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I got to put my new headlamp to good use.

Olympic commercials

Is it just me, or is it very disturbing yet somehow oddly fitting that a telecom company is using a song widely acknowledged to be an ode to heroin addiction as bed music for its commercials?

Kayak Navy

I think I've started something. In the last three weeks I've convinced three other people to buy kayaks. We're gonna have a flotilla, come spring.

Went down to the kayak shop today so that J could put his boat on layaway and Paul could sit in a bunch of other boats to find one that fits him. He found one that he liked a lot -- ironically, the same one he test-drove a few months ago. When the weather warms up he's going to see if he can borrow it again for another test drive.

When I walked in, the owner of the shop was telling Paul about two creek trips that I had already plotted out with Google maps, and said they were both really fun runs.

I'm currently pricing out dry-tops and wetsuits so that I can get out as early as the end of March.

C'monnnnn, spring.

Skiing tomorrow, maybe twice -- but I so cannot wait for paddling.

Guilty pleasures

I have a guilty-pleasure confession: I love chicken wings. Love them. I love the tactile pleasure of getting every last bit of meat off the bones, and as such, I rarely eat them in public (I have the exact same problem with rib tips, my preferred form of barbecue) because I am such an embarrassing, gnawing carnivore. It's a bit like that scene in Splash, where Madison eats the lobster (sorry, no clip -- The Youtubes have failed me).

So I tend to eat my wings at home. Which brings me to the problem.

There is something in chicken wings that drives our pets completely insane. They will not leave us alone when we eat them. The cats swarm, leaping into laps. The dog shoves her snout directly into the bowl. We cook meat all the time, and nothing has ever produced a reaction like this -- all other meals are ignored as though they don't exist (okay, except for our older cat, who loves yogurt).

So I literally have to throw all the animals out of the room and shut all the doors to eat my wings, unless I want sauce-sticky fingers covered in pet hair from shooing them away. And as soon as I carry the bones to the garbage, they're on top of me again.

The wings are sizzling now -- off to start the kitty-viction.

Recipe for venison chili

Soak three cups of kidney beans overnight.
Go to basement and find two quarts of jealously guarded, organic, home-grown, home-canned tomato sauce.
Wash crock pot. Add beans and soak-water.
Dump in both quarts of tomato sauce.
Fill jars half full with water to remove every last molecule of sauce. Slosh around, prepare to add rinse-water to crockpot.
Notice with horror that there is a crack running the entire length of one jar.
Pause to consider. Both jars still had seal.
Haul out colander. Think about trying to save beans. Rinse beans.
Realize there's no way to get the beans all the way clean. Consider boiling beans. Think about tiny shards of broken glass.
Chuck beans. Wash crockpot thoroughly.
Return to basement, find two more quarts of jealously guarded, organic, home-grown, home-canned tomato sauce. Carefully inspect jars. Thump seal on both. Return to kitchen.
Dump in both quarts of tomato sauce.
Fill jars half full with water to remove every last molecule of sauce. Slosh around, prepare to add rinse-water to crockpot.
Notice with horror that there are multiple small cracks, previously invisible, around the bottom of one jar.
Invent new swear words. Dump sauce down drain. Wash crockpot again, this time with bleach and boiling water, just to be sure.

Send up a prayer of thanks that this little kitchen nightmare constitutes only an inconvenience, and not a financial disaster. Remember times when losing so much food would have meant cadging dinner from friends. Remember thousands of other families who would go hungry, or make different choices based on fewer options.

Return to basement. Stare mournfully at four empty slots on shelf. Count remaining jars, heave sigh of dejection. Select two more quarts of jealously guarded, organic, home-grown, home-canned tomato sauce. Carefully inspect jars. Thump seal on both. Return to kitchen.
Find black turtle beans that do not require pre-soaking. Rinse, add to crockpot.
Obsessively check quart jars. Thump seals again.
Dump in both quarts of sauce. Add rinse-water. Sigh with relief when both jars are sound.
Fry pound of ground venison until dark brown and add to pot.
Scavenge fridge. Chop and add celery, onion, garlic, sweet corn, green bell peppers.
Add cumin and chili powder to taste, along with fresh-ground black pepper and healthy dollop of Rooster sauce.
Cook in crockpot for five hours.

Makes five quarts; serve with side of gratitude.

Watching the Olympics, part 2

Me: Yay women's speed skating!
Announcers: Oh noes! The ice machines are broken! The speed skating track is ruined! Delays! Spare machines brought in from Calgary!
Paul: This is Canada. They had to go all the way from Vancouver to Calgary to find a zamboni?
Me: They should've started with the neighbors' garage.
Paul: Or Home Depot. Cryin' out loud.

ETA: Actually, the better punchline would've suggested Canadian Tire. Our USA is showing.

Kalamazoo Peace House

Speaking of overdue blogging, here's a report that ran back in December about Kalamazoo's Peace House, a place where I occasionally volunteer (though nowhere near enough; I have to get to work on fixing that...) and whose caregivers are friends of mine. These folks are the absolute real deal, and it's a blessing and a privilege to have them in my life.

Beyond Victoriana

Man, I am so behind on my blogging; the more posts I write tonight, the more posts I remember I've intended to write for a long time. This one is probably the most overdue: The Beyond Victoriana Project.

This series is so incredibly amazing and I am so, so happy that Ay-Leen is writing and sponsoring them. It's a fantastic resource, and shows the vast, beautiful, fantastic possibilities that the steampunk genre can encompass -- but only if we stretch the fandom to allow room for more than just the basic Brit-centric faux-Victoriana, and be welcoming while we do it.

Here's an index. Go read! It'll crack your imagination wide open.

More amazingness from Bossymarmalade

Here's another amazing essay from BossyMarmalade. It's part of the fifth Asian Women's Blog Carnival -- and since I was a big doof and somehow missed the third and fourth installments, I'm going to be checking all three out over the next couple of days.

If you haven't read these before, please, please go and read them. They're powerful, important stuff.

Ski ski ski

Had a too-brief skiing expedition this morning, hoping to get some more in tomorrow. Also currently recruiting for nightskiing on the full-moon weekend of the 27th-28th, provided the snow sticks around. If you're in the area, and interested, drop me a line.

Smile!

Raina Telgemeier has a brand-new graphic novel out this week, called Smile!

Raina and her husband Dave Roman are such wonderfully awesome people, and Paul and I owe them both for our Avatar: The Last Airbender obsession. Further proof of their awesomeness is found in this awesome trailer they made for the book:

Go! Buy! You will not be disappointed.

Watching the olympics

and discovering that one of the new kittens likes to watch speed skating. For serious. She keeps tracking them as they run off the edge of the screen. We'll try to get video of it, but as soon as we haul out the camera she gets all shy.

On the Superbowl Ads

Didn't watch them myself -- and after reading some commentaries, am very glad I didn't -- but I really liked this post from Cat Valente, and this followup from Jim Hines.

A post on Avatar from Delux-Vivens

that you should read.

Another Haiti link

Haiti: a survivor's story

From Salon, via Feministe.

Nora K. Jemisin tells it like it is

Remember that N.K. Jemisin post I linked to a couple days ago? Livejournaler Delux-Vivens linked to one of Jemisin's later comments that I hadn't seen, and I want to make note of it, because I think it's a really excellent rebuttal to "The Tone Argument":

Yes, I think the "quiet reasoning" would've been missed without the "angry" posts. But I'm putting scare quotes around these for two reasons a) because the "quiet reasoning" posts were angry too; very likely every cogent and persuasive post you saw was written by someone trembling with fury and struggling to be coherent. And b) because I don't recall seeing a single "angry" post that didn't make a reasonable point...

<snip>

As for the danger of alienating people with good intentions -- well, one of the things that I learned from RaceFail (and also from general experience) was that people with good intentions are the ones to fear most. The overt racists are easy to deal with. You can spot them coming a mile away. But the well-intentioned people are scarier. They might not intend harm, but in most cases they haven't thought about all the racist (and other "-ist") messages they've absorbed from society. They haven't done the basic groundwork necessary to purge themselves of that passively-absorbed "-ism". So they say the most incredibly hurtful, self-absorbed, and utterly useless things, then compound the problem by getting upset when they're called on it. I liken these people to sleeper agents -- they seem OK at first, but then they suddenly "activate" and stab you in the back, and then they come out of their fugue and freak because there's blood on their hands and they don't know how it got there and they refuse to accept that they're the ones who put it there, OMG, OMG. Meanwhile, you're on the floor bleeding out, unnoticed because of their histrionics.

I oughtn't quote the whole comment here, but you should really go read the response in its entirety -- and read this similar post as well. It's yet more proof that Ms. Jemisin is a really smart and very talented writer, and gives you all the more reason to go buy her book. Not convinced yet? She has three sample chapters online at her blog.