March 13, 2010
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.
March 12, 2010
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!
March 6, 2010
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.
February 28, 2010
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.
February 16, 2010
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.
February 14, 2010
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.
February 4, 2010
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.
February 2, 2010
January 21, 2010
A year later
Well, it's been a year since RaceFail started. It's been a rather difficult time for me; I've been uncharacteristically quiet because I've been learning an awful lot about myself (and my own work) that I'm still processing through. This isn't a moment for feeling particularly good about that, for reasons that Avalon's Willow and Deepa point out in their excellent posts -- but there is reason for hope, and I'll let N.K. Jemisin explain why.
January 17, 2010
On Haiti
As usual, Jay Smooth says it better than I ever could:
There are apparently some concerns over Wyclef Jean's Yele organization (ETA: Jean responds here), but if I had to pick, there is hardly a better charity to donate to at this moment than Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontiéres. I already give to them annually, and will be sending another boost as soon as I'm able.
November 4, 2009
Help Pam Noles support the Interstitial Arts Foundation
Work's been kicking my butt lately, so I'm a day or two late on posting this, but this needs to get signal boosted:
Pam Noles (who is Black, Geek, and Fine With That), has quilted the most amazing wrap skirt and is donating it to an auction for the Interstitial Arts Foundation:
In addition to being gorgeous and twirly and a genuine hand-sewn work of art, it's also inspired by a short story, "Berry Moon," by Camilla Bruce. Those of you who know me well know how much I dearly love cross-pollination like this. Songs written for poems written for artwork based on photographs. Fabric Arts made for short stories. Dancing about architecture. You know the stuff: It's wonderful, and inspiring, and it makes the world a much better place.
As if all that weren't enough, Pam will custom-size the wrap-skirt's buttonhole for you.
So what're you waiting for? Go forth and Bid! It's for a good cause!
October 21, 2009
Oh hell yes.
86 year old WW2 vet says of gay marriage: "What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?"
October 17, 2009
Signal Boost: Project POORCRAFT
Hey, everybody: my buddy C. Spike Trotman is starting up a brand-new project and needs your help! It's called Project: POORCRAFT and it's going to be a guide to living frugally in urban and suburban areas, told in comics format. But don't take my word for it; head on over to Kickstarter and hear Spike tell you about it herself.
October 14, 2009
Mental war for superiority
I met Haddayr Copley-Woods at WisCon this year. She and I hit it off like nobody's business.
Her blogpost today reminded me why, all over again. 100% pure awesomeness.
September 16, 2009
RaceFail Meta
For those of you who skipped RaceFail 09 (and all its subsequent iterations, including MammothFail and EllisonFail, amongst others), Transformative Works and Cultures has an online symposium featuring a number of RaceFail participants. It's a meta discussion (a discussion about the discussion), but unlike previous meta, this one is less about the what and who and more about the why and how -- it outlines a lot of the types of reactions and arguments, and explains why they're either successful or stupid and irritating. Or both. As such, it's still a very good read even if you don't know any of the writers or have anything invested in SF or media fandom.
So go. Read. I met (or heard speak) all of the contributors at WisCon this year, and was very impressed by each of them.
September 14, 2009
Karen Healy, on making the effort to Write The Other correctly
Karen Healy has written a really wonderful essay about how she's working hard to Write The Other well. She gives concrete examples, and makes no claims to having done it right -- she leaves that up to her (future) readers. It's a very good read, and closely mirrors a lot of what I'm (still) going through with Clockwork Game. Kudos, Karen. I hope the book does very well for you.
July 8, 2009
Asian American Comic Con
This weekend is the Asian American Comic Con, at the Museum of Chinese in America, brought to you by Secret Identities, the first-ever graphic novel anthology of Asian American superhero stories (check out a sneak peek of the book here). It's also going to kick off the first-ever Kiyama Award, named after Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama, the author of The Four Immigrants Manga.
If you're in NYC this weekend, go check it out!
June 20, 2009
Women of Color and Rape Culture
Delux-Vivens and She Who Has Hope each have really excellent posts talking about how the experiences of Women of Color are all too frequently left out of discussions of rape. Please read both; they're important.
Shoutout for Steve Leiber and Sara Ryan
Steve Leiber has some incredibly good news lately... he and Jeff Parker's long-awaited spelunking comic (yep, a comic about cave exploration and rescue) is here:
It's soliciting in Diamond's July PREVIEWS to ship in September, so head on down to your LCS and pre-order yours today!
His other good news involves a movie based on a graphic novel he illustrated a while back called Whiteout. After several delays, it looks like it may be nearing theatrical release. The book is wonderful -- can't speak for the movie yet because the movie execs yanked the trailer before I could watch it. But you're going to need to read the book before you see the movie, right? right?
See, there's a reason why I'm telling you to buy Steve's books. It's because in addition to his really good news, he also had some stupendous bad news today:
My wife and I were just burgled. They stole our laptops, so we have no computers at home anymore, and we've got several days ahead of us of running around dealing with police, insurance, checking to make sure backups work, etc. This means that all the time at home I'd planned to spend doing promotion is gone, as are the machines I'd planned to it with.Lots of folks have asked "what can I do to help?" The answer, if you have a comics audience, is blog or tweet something about the book. Send them to the site, or this specific post, or just tell them that Parker and I have a new Image book coming out. Your RTs and message board notes can make a big difference.
This sucks extra bad because Steve and his wife Sara Ryan are two of the nicest, kindest people you could ask to know. Sara's also a writer and has some really wonderful books out. So you should go and buy her books, too.
Hope your luck turns back to all-good soon, Steve and Sara!
June 16, 2009
I wore green today.
To stand in solidarity with the Iranian election protesters.
Woodrow Hill has two excellent posts here and here about why it's important to blog about the protests.
Andrew Sullivan's blog has frequent updates from insider sources, and Twazzup.com has up-to-the-second tweets from Iranians at the scene as well as people all over the world.
This is history in the making, and for possibly the first time ever, the mainstream media is solidly behind the curve. Bloggers and Twitterers are taking up the slack, giving eyewitness accounts, flashmobbing help to the injured. This is amazing, this is history, this is full-out rebellion against fascism, and the internet is the voice of the revolution.
Take note: The protesters in Tehran are setting an unbelievable example of bravery, and they deserve our support however we can lend it.