Given that I have been posting daily for three years now, I feel justified in using a year in review post as a cheater escape to avoid actually talking about something today, because I feel like some of my better posts probably get lost in the sheer volume of material here. Maybe I will start a page with “best of” posts for the edification of new readers. At any rate, here are 12 posts from the year which I think were particularly good/interesting.

In January, I talked about being compared to bacon: “‘She looks just like a big slab of bacon,’ one of them was saying as I took out the garbage on my way into town to pay the rent, and a gale of deep throated male laughter arose, the kind of laughter that makes me nervous.”

In February, fixing the carousel in Molybos: “This was in fact such a frequent occurrence that Alexandros at the hardware store kept little carousel repair kits ready to go in paper bags. You only had to go up to the counter and ask, and he would vanish into the back room and reappear a few moments later, ceremonially carrying a plastic bag filled with bolts and nuts. If he thought you didn’t have a wrench, he would offer to lend you the hardware store’s wrench, shaking his finger at you as he reminded you of the consequences for not returning it.”

In March, I delighted in the return of spring:

In April, I read Everything Conceivable, and it sparked some thoughts: “She also talked about the way that fertility treatments are reshaping the structure of the family, and that was interesting to read about. Thanks to advances in infertility treatment, for example, gay and lesbian couples can have kids, which I think is awesome (my one exception to generalized loathing of fertility treatments). And more complicated situations are arising, like a kid with two parents in addition to a birth mother (surrogate) and a donor mother and/or father.”

In May, I thought about veterans: “Every day this week, I’ve passed them at the Post Office. The chipper woman at a folding table scattered with poppies, with an aging representative of the Greatest Generation propped up beside her, staring blankly at the Chapel by the Sea announcements pinned to the noticeboard.”

In June, there was a freak thunderstorm (which later led to epic fires): “So there I was, minding my own business, chatting with Baxt, when she said that she got epic hail at her house. And I was all like ‘Dude!’ and she was all like ‘it was weird.’ And suddenly, there was a huge-ass mother of all thunderclaps basically right over my house which caused Mr Bell to rocket into the air, followed by a wicked lightning strike, and I looked outside…”

In July, I remembered getting electricity: “My father had planned the inaugural use of our electricity with care. He thought about simply flicking the lights on at dusk, but he decided that it lacked flair. Instead, he trundled into town and returned with a top of the line record player and a formidable set of speakers, and when the party started to flag, Maria Callas singing La Traviata rang out through the trees, creating at first a sudden hush and then an excited chatter as my father turned all of our four lights on, one by one.”

In August, I expressed discontent with the fact that the media sticks feminist issues into the style section: “When you publish the results of a survey which shows that girls are every bit as talented at math as boys, it should go in the sciences, or perhaps the news section, depending on whether or not you think that the fact that girls and boys are equally good at math is ‘news.’”

In September, I criticized the depiction of polyamory on Bones: “Polyamory is all about communication and open discussion, and what Brennan was doing was pretty much the opposite of that. How much more interesting it would have been if Brennan had been modeling a healthy polyamorous relationship, discussing issues with her partners and working them out, instead of just sneaking around and stringing two men along.”

In October, I talked about my subscription to the National Review: “I even brought in a National Review article for class discussion about a controversial ballot initiative (I ended up getting in hot water, and being rescued by my father, who pointed out that the National Review was a respected publication, whether or not the teacher agreed with it, and I was therefore entitled to bring in articles from it). After said show and tell, ‘bring in an item of news to share’ was disbanded in favor of ‘craft like the Egyptians,’ and I was permanently disinvited from several of my classmates’ homes by their parents.”

In November, I talked about how the personal is political: “I’m queer. And not in a ‘of a questionable nature or character,’ ‘mentally unbalanced or deranged,’ ‘bad, worthless, or counterfeit,’ or ‘not feeling physically right or well’ kind of way. You probably already know that, if you’ve been reading this site for any amount of time, but I think that this is the time to explicitly state it.”

In December, upskirting aroused my ire: “One of the interesting things about this type of pornography is that it is heavily rooted in lack of consent, which differentiates it in my eyes from pornography in general. Posed upskirting photographs with a consenting model are not popular. What people want are ‘illicit’ photographs in which a woman’s private parts are photographed while she is unaware.”

I couldn’t help but think of Haddock when I found this review of two photography books chronicling the early years of punk.

Testicular feminization? Virgin births? Turkeys?

The latest suspect in the death of the publishing industry: bargain books.

Religious bias in the military? Most definitely.

This argument encouraging Australians to commit to green energy could just as easily be applied to us.

Is this the last Book Project review? Could it be? Is the insanity finally over? Quite possibly, given how hectic the rest of today will probably be. I suppose I should savor the moment, and I have to admit, I am glad to be going out with a Dahl, because he is one of my favourite authors, and I would also venture to say that he played a critical role in my formative years.

This collection of stories includes several works of fiction, and several works of non-fiction, including Roald Dahl’s first published story, which is pretty exciting. (It’s about the time he went down over Egypt during the Second World War.) It’s really interesting to read this mixture of stories from different periods in Dahl’s life, and to see how much his writing evolved and changed over the course of his life.

My favourite story is probably “The Swan,” which is just Dahl at its finest, macabre, strange, and gruesome, with an object lesson embedded in the tale. I love that in his stories, nasty little boys usually get a comeuppance, and nerds, freaks, and geeks end up being rewarded for their kind and gentle natures. It’s also interesting to note that he included another story which touches on animal rights and kindness to animals in this collection, and it makes me wonder about that side of Dahl’s personality.

“Lucky Break,” his discussion of how he started writing in the first place, is very interesting, and I can’t help but love “A Piece of Cake,” even though it feels very crude and rough and you can really feel his influences and derivations. It’s remarkable how much a writer’s style and attitude can change with time, and I think that all writers should be required to publicize their first works accepted for publication, just for general interest. The other work of nonfiction talks about a remarkable treasure find which occurred in Suffolk. Dahl traveled to the scene, untangled the web of stories around it, and published a very nice bit of investigative journalism about the event.

The title story doesn’t actually thrill me all that much, and I’m not quite sure why. It’s an interesting premise, and there’s no real reason not to like it, I just didn’t. I suppose that one can’t like everything by one’s favourite author, and that’s just the way of things.

Demographics:

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, by Roald Dahl. Published 1977, 225 pages.

This story intriguingly integrates the life of a young Edgar Allan Poe into a larger story. Poe, in fact, is a rather marginal figure in the story, only really interesting because of who he is, and I kind of like that. It illustrates the way in which ordinary people can turn out to be extraordinary, given half a chance.

The mystery is involved and a bit complex, and there’s a fair dash of conspiracy and some macabre humor. While it is set in 19th century England, Taylor doesn’t really do a very good job of adding in historical flavor. This is kind of disappointing, since I think that the whole point of reading historical novels is being able to get a taste of what life was like then.

There’s an obligatory scene at a cold country house, ice skating on a pond, some riding around in carriages, and antiquated language, but I didn’t feel like I was immersed in the world of 19th century England. I felt like I was immersed in the story of the character, which was interesting, don’t get me wrong, but I kept wanting more, turning the page and wishing that things were more vivid and fleshed out.

The story is told in the form of a document written up largely after the fact, with an afterward discussing the provenance of the story, ostensibly written by another character. I couldn’t help but wonder about the things that the narrator elided or modified slightly to make himself look better, and I think it might be kind of neat to read the same story from another point of view, but that might just be the nerd in me coming out.

I also couldn’t help but note that none of the characters were very deep. We didn’t get much of a background with anyone, and while the narrator’s story seethed with resentment and comments made in hindsight, I didn’t feel like many of the characters had dimensions and personalities and interesting traits which would have made me engage with them. The most interesting character is a mute maid, who turns out to be a pretty minor figure in the tale, although she does have a few surprises up her sleeves.

Demographics:

An Unpardonable Crime, by Andrew Taylor. Published 2004, 496 pages. Fiction.

Reading Bottlemania reminded me of an issue which I have long been interested in: water.

It’s kind of hard to not be interested in water when you live in California, because water is a bit of a theme here. The entirety of Southern California is maintained with the use of stolen water, and there have been a few pretty outstanding water grabs in California history (including attempts to steal water from us in the North). We’ve generally had reasonable levels of water access in the North, but we have experienced chronic droughts and water shortages, and growing up in a house which used collected rainfall as a water supply, I tended to be especially aware of water issues.

Access to drinking water is a huge problem. In Africa and Asia, a surprising amount of the population cannot access water which is safe to drink. There are a variety of reasons for this: changing weather patterns, contaminated waterways, chronic droughts, growing populations, and, yes, the privatization of water by corporations which then sell that water at very high cost in little plastic bottles.

Make no mistake, because water is the issue right now, and I think that we are going to be seeing a serious escalation of conflicts about water. Communities all over the world are already fighting viciously over supplies of available water. Look at what’s happening in Darfur, where one of the huge pressures is a lack of available water. People are dying for lack of water, and they are dying over water supplies. That is not going to change unless we break some rather entrenched patterns.

Here in the West, we are polluting and spoiling huge amounts of water with agricultural chemicals, discarded pharmaceuticals, byproducts of manufacturing, overflowing manure from factory-farmed animals, and sundry other materials. I think about this every time I flush my toilet with potable water, adding fecal coliform bacteria and pharmaceutical byproducts to water which was perfectly drinkable a moment before.

What are we supposed to do about the water problem? I don’t know, but I think we had better find an answer soon. We need to be using water more efficiently, and we need to be thinking of ways to rework our attitude to water. Like most other resources, water can be recycled if it’s being managed in a responsible way, and we should be fighting to re-use as much water as possible while cleaning up our rivers, streams, and aquifers, and fighting to keep pristine bodies of water intact. We should be establishing and upholding higher standards for water cleanliness, and we should be promoting the development of technology and policy which preserves water supplies.

Water is already a problem in the United States, and it’s going to keep getting more serious unless we do something pretty radical. This is the kind of issue which I would like to see the Obama administration focusing on, because as it is now, we are leaving a pretty costly legacy to our descendants.

Is it capitalism, or a giant ponzi scheme?

Being a location scout looks like it would be a lot of fun.

People who make virginity pledges are actually more likely to get pregnant.

Should we tax like it’s recession time?

A researcher just repeated an infamous Milgram experiment, and found that not much has changed.

Speaking of psychology, the DSM is under attack (again).

More best of, this time in viral videos.

This brief collection of essays gives the reader the faintest of glimpses of prison life in America. The author was convicted of murder at the age of 18 and sentenced to life in prison, and his experiences in Walla Walla Prison are quite interesting to read about, especially given the fact that prison writings (including his own) are routinely repressed by the authorities. In fact, Longworth spent three months in solitary confinement as a result of circulating an early work, and I can’t help but wonder about the consequences of this publication.

These essays read like snatched moments, with incomplete and partial thoughts which just begin to scratch the surface of the complexity of the prison system, and what life is like for the people inside it. Longworth alludes, for example, to the way in which the system perpetuates itself, talking about his own experiences as a juvenile and mentioning the fact that he feels totally unprepared to navigate the outside world. He also discusses the daily grind and oppression of prison life, the things which become normal which those of us on the outside would never tolerate, like never really having anything to yourself, or living in a prison where water streams down the walls when it rains.

He’s also a remarkable figure in that when he entered the prison system, he had a seventh grade education. Upon asking for access to education, he was informed that because he was a lifer, educating him would have no real purpose, so he is essentially self-taught, fighting for access to educational materials. His essays are clear and elegant, with a crisp language that I really like, and they illustrate the potential present in so many people, and the shame that we should feel for denying that potential (something which he actually addresses as well).

Longworth’s references to sightings of various birds (osprey, starlings, goldfinches) are depressing in a way I can’t really articulate. It sounds trite, but I really cannot imagine what it would be like to be trapped in a place where the outside world was taken away from me, and where I ached for the sight of a single bird or some moss or something living and natural. These essays reminded me of an essay I heard on NPR earlier this year about a stray cat who became the darling of a bunch of prisoners before the prison trapped the cat and took it away (presumably to be murdered at the hands of Animal Control), and they made me question the humanity of our prison system.

Is incarceration necessary? Are mandatory sentencing laws a good idea? Are there more humane ways that we could be incarcerating people, if we think that’s what needs to be done? These are all issues which I ponder, and writing from prisoners is one of the best ways to explore those issues for those of us who have not experienced the prison system at first hand.

Demographics:

The Prison Diary of Arthur Longworth #199180, by Arthur Longworth. Edited by Leonard Cirino. Published 2008, 24 pages. Biography. (Available from Pygmy Forest Press, for those who would like a copy.)

(Note: Leonard is my godfather, but I promise that didn’t entitle him to a special pass on this book review. The Prison Diary really is good, and you really should read it.)

Every now and then, our cultural attitudes about animals astound me so much that I am left momentarily speechless. The holidays are prime time for an assortment of articles about how great Christmas puppies and kittens are, followed by reports of overflowing shelters filled with unwanted Christmas presents. Every now and then, there’s a sternly worded editorial about how maybe pets are not the best thing to give as presents, but I notice that those editorials usually stop short of explicitly stating that our views of animals are, to say the least, pretty messed up.

Animals are not toys. They are not disposable. They are living, breathing organisms which are capable of feeling physical and emotional pain. Numerous studies have strongly suggested that animals are extremely emotionally mature, and most people who live with animals can testify to that as well. To pretend otherwise is to kind of negate the whole purpose of having pets; don’t people have animals because they enjoy the emotional connection?

Yet, we still treat animals as disposable. The massive wave of foreclosures has led to a flood of abandoned animals, and overflowing animal shelters. A Holidailies post I read earlier this month roused me to an incoherent rage when the poster wrote about abandoning her pets at the shelter because she couldn’t afford them, and then about lying to her child about what happened, and then wanting to get more pets.

People should not get animals if they cannot afford them. You should not have to choose between supplying food for your animal, and putting shoes on the feet of your children. Keeping an animal does not have to be costly, but it should be recognized as a potential expense. People should also not get animals if they cannot commit to them for life. The other day, I was talking to someone about the logistics of moving to Europe, and I was saying that moving with three cats would be extremely complex, and he suggested, totally straight faced, that I should just “get rid of them” and “get new ones” when I arrived in Europe. I said, equally straight faced, “are you fucking kidding me,” and he said “no,” and I was totally flabbergasted.

I realize that most people think of pets like toys and cars which can be discarded, abandoned, and thrown away at will, and I also realize that I rant about this at least once a year, but that’s because it really pisses me off. It’s been said that you can judge a person on the way he or she treats animals, and I would say that this extends to a nation. Americans simultaneously spend obscene amounts of money on the pet industry, and treat animals like trash. I can’t figure it out.

I don’t think I want to figure it out, honestly. Personally, I think that the attitude about animals being commodities is totally sick, and possibly evil.

A third of the mammals in Britain are considered at risk, which just goes to show you that all those foolish people who fought to preserve British hedges and woodlands weren’t so foolish after all.

Heavy bombing is going on in Gaza. Call me silly, but bombing a people who already think that they are oppressed doesn’t seem like a good approach to a peace process. It just makes more martyrs and more rage.

It’s almost January, which means eight gazillion year in pictures retrospectives.

Older Americans are thinking about the difficulties of navigating inauguration day crowds, and deciding to stay home.

Restrictions on pets in rentals has led to an increase in interest in “exotics” like parrots, rabbits, and rats, since they aren’t explicitly prohibited in many leases.

I realized a few days ago that I had been throwing the term “bodysnarking” around, and that some readers might not know what it meant. Given that bodysnarking is a rather important issue, I think that it deserves its own post. We’ve pretty much all been victims of bodysnarking, and most of us have bodysnarked at some point, and it’s become a deeply internalized part of our society.

Put briefly, bodysnarking involves judging the bodies of others. Some people define it specifically as the public dissection of women’s bodies, but bodysnarking can happen to women and men, and it’s not limited to the body. Bodysnarking can also extend to fashion, and to eating and exercise choices.

Pretty much any time someone makes a comment about someone else’s body, it could be considered bodysnarking, and it should be considered unacceptable. A throwaway comment like “she should eat a sandwich” is bodysnarking, just like “that guy is so fat, I’ll bet his car sags when he gets in.” Likewise with “I can’t believe that fat kid is eating an ice cream cone, what’s wrong with the parents.”

Bodysnarking assumes that other people’s bodies are public property, and that they are put on display to invite comment. In fact, other people’s bodies are private property, and when someone walks down the street to go to the post office, he or she is not, in fact, asking to be judged by everyone who passes by.

What’s interesting about bodysnarking is that it doesn’t just happen to people who are overweight. It happens to everyone. Snarkers can find a flaw in every human body. Too thin, too fat, too blonde, too bony, too leggy, not leggy enough, bony elbows, wrong hair color, fake boobs, saggy boobs. The list goes on. And for people who lead public lives, like celebrities, bodysnarking takes on a whole new level, with front-page headlines which blare judgmental comments, and rambling comment threads on gossip sites in which the body is dissected from head to toe.

The other interesting thing about bodysnarking is that it seems to be widely accepted, even among people who claim to be socially conscious. I’ve been in groups of feminists, fat activists, and everything in between, and I’ve seen bodysnarking on flagrant display. People seem to be unconscious of the fact that they are doing something wrong, and calling them on it will result in censure.

The fact is that bodies do not come from a standardized mold. There is no “perfect” body, and people have different personal beliefs about what they find attractive or visually interesting. Bodysnarking is defeatist, and kind of sick, and I can’t fathom why otherwise personally reasonable people feel the need to engage in it. And calling people on it should be a social and ethical responsibility: if someone is told enough times that what he or she is doing is not acceptable, maybe the behaviour will stop, or be significantly modified.