Category Archives: etc.

The Latest Book Trends

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(I shall begin with a digression. Actually, I can’t guarantee that these are actually the very latest book trends. I buy a lot of my ebooks based on newsletters from FreeBooksy and BookBub because they promote heavily discounted books, not all of which are, technically speaking, new. But most of them cost under $3 and, at the rate I buy books, I need to economize somewhere.)

That said, I have noticed what seem to be trends.

The first one is not a book trend, per se. It’s a trend in book covers. What’s hot right now (apparently) is book covers that don’t show faces. I’ve written about how men on the covers of romance novels are cut off at the neck (so to speak) or lost in the shadow of a cowboy hat, but these books feature mostly women on the covers. And they don’t have faces either.

The most common reason for this is that the woman or women are walking away from the person viewing the cover. (Bonus points awarded if the woman is wearing a red coat.) I don’t know why this trend has come to the fore, but I suspect it’s because the cover designers don’t like to draw faces or don’t want to read enough of the book to learn what the main character looks like. Or maybe the women are supposed to be all mysterious. Or the reader is supposed to imagine the woman having their own face. Like I said, I don’t know.

(A while back I noticed that there was a book cover that featured a man in a top hat walking through the rain, in the night, beside a wrought iron fence. In fact, there were two different books that had exactly the same cover. Both were terribly atmospheric mysteries or dark Victorian tales. I guess someone made the cover for one and an unimaginative art director tried to get away with using it twice. I noticed, however. But I digress again.)

Now, as to the contents of the books, I’ve noticed trends as well. When it comes to cozy mysteries, cats are perennially favorite characters or even sleuths. And Rita Mae Brown credits her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown, as co-author of her mystery series. Cats are as popular as ever, or more so. Every self-respecting woman in a modern romance novel has a cat.

Many of those romances take place in libraries and bookstores. The trope of the young woman who moves to a small town to restart her life, taking up the job of librarian or bookstore owner and meeting the love of her life, after suitable conflicts and misunderstandings, is a common plot. (Librarians are no longer portrayed as lonely spinsters—mostly. There can be an older librarian as a mentor and confidante, at least regarding the book aspects of the story. But I digress more.)

You can easily see what’s coming. The romantic heroine has both a bookstore and a cat. And the covers of the books reflect that. In fact, sometimes the cat and the books are all that appear on the cover. The woman herself is missing in (romantic) action.

One other trend that I’ve noticed in romance novels (I don’t actually read them, you understand—I learn about them through reading blurbs) is that, although traditionally the stories involve reckless, passionate, consequence-free sex (the “zipless bleep” that Erica Jong made so popular in Fear of Flying), is that increasingly, pregnancy results from the sex. (No, I’m not saying that romance novels are getting more realistic. They still involve royalty and billionaires, after all. And men from Scotland apparently are popular now, as in the book titled Too Scot to Handle. But I digress still more.) The pregnancy adds an extra layer of potential complications, such as the impending parenthood needing to be kept a secret.

If you’ve noticed any other book trends, feel free to share ’em. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a book that features a man in a red kilt walking through the door of a bookstore with a pregnant cat in the window.

Deep Sighs and Facepalms

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My husband and I have any number of catchphrases that we use frequently. Some of them come from movies (Have fun storming the castle! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!), TV shows (I can’t promise I’ll try, but I’ll try to try. [humming the Jeopardy music]), songs (On the road again. Timing brought me to you.), and even books (Time is an illusion—lunchtime, doubly so.).

But not all our catchphrases are quotations. One of our traditions is that when one of us heaves a deep sigh, the other will say, “The Serenity Prayer.” (Not the whole prayer, just the phrase.) This started many years ago.

You may already know that the Serenity Prayer (“God grant me the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.”), which has been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi but was actually written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, has been a mantra of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step groups. They recite it at their meetings and remind each other of it in order to ground themselves.

(Totally irrelevant digression. Once when I was a waitress, a customer complained that the coffee tasted like mud. I replied, “That’s because it was ground this morning, and then we added water.” They didn’t get it. Just looked at me funny.)

(Slightly more relevant digression. St. Francis also didn’t write the “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace” prayer, as is commonly believed. It was written in 1912, long after the saint left this earthly plane.)

Anyway, Dan once worked in a facility where he had to engage with many addicts and alcoholics (no, that’s not where we met). One of them noticed that every now and then, Dan would sigh dramatically. “Why do you do that?” they asked. Dan thought quickly and replied, “It’s the Serenity Prayer. The short form.” That just seemed so apt that it has entered our own metaphoric vocabulary. We regularly say things that elicit a deep sigh from each other, so we use it all the time. We use it a lot since both of us are frequently exasperating.

Another common response to exasperation is not a quote, but a gesture: the facepalm. You see it in memes in which someone tells a really bad joke and the other one (usually Captain Picard or Commander Riker) places a hand over his face. One assumes that they also heave a great sigh at the same time, but don’t recite the Serenity Prayer, though they could, I suppose.

It isn’t only a response to a particularly appalling joke, however. There’s an AI image of the Statue of Liberty facepalming that comes around in response to some dire piece of political stupidity. You also see memes that say something to the effect that the poster’s guardian angel looks like this: [insert image of an angel, saint, or God facepalming].

Personally, I sometimes think of Jesus facepalming. The apostles said so many dopey things. Not the “Increase our faith” stuff, but at times such as when Jesus was transfigured and appeared in a vision with Elijah and Moses. “Shouldn’t we go put up three tents for the three of you?” the apostles James, John, and Peter asked, despite the unlikelihood of the long-dead Old Testament figures needing tents to rest in. That was worth a facepalm.

Then there’s the time when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. As the account goes, Jesus delayed going to Lazarus’s house, although everyone knew he was dying. He then told the disciples that Lazarus was asleep. The apostles, puzzled, replied that if Lazarus was asleep, he would awaken. Just the time for a Jesus facepalm. The apostles just didn’t get it.

(If you think this last part of the post is blasphemous, so be it. You can take it as just another of my many digressions gone wrong. I know a sense of humor is a dangerous thing to display when it comes to religion. My sister even objects to jokes regarding someone arriving at the pearly gates and bantering with St. Peter. If you have any complaints to make, I’ll be over here, hiding under this rock.)

-Punk, -Core, and Portmanteaus

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So you thought punk was something that had its vogue years ago and has disappeared since. Or maybe you just hope it has.

It’s true that you don’t hear much about punk music anymore, but punk is alive and well in the fictional world. As long as it’s combined with something else, that is. There is, as far as I know, no strictly punk genre of stories and books. But there are cyberpunk, steampunk, and even stonepunk and solarpunk.

(All of these are “portmanteau words,” squished-together words or sounds that combine two meanings to create a new one. Think smog, webinar, bromance, brunch, or spork (which I still call a runcible spoon). Or, given the time of year, spooktacular. But I digress.)

These varieties of fiction share the sensibilities of punk such as rebellion, individualism, social inequality, and unconventional thinking. (Less screaming, feedback, and safety pin piercings, though. Thank goodness.)

Most people’s introduction to the hyphenpunk world was a 1984 (appropriately) science fiction novel, Neuromancer, by William Gibson. It presented a dark, gritty, dystopian society in which a killer AI invaded people’s brains. At the time it served as a warning, which apparently we have not heeded. (Since then, almost all -punk fiction has been sci-fi or fantasy. At least I haven’t seen any romancepunk or mysterypunk. Again, thank goodness. But I digress again.)

Cyberpunk didn’t start any fashion trends the way punk music did (using the word “fashion” loosely). But another iteration of -punk has: steampunk. Steampunk combines Victorian-era technology and problems with a sense of adventure and invention and owes a lot to the writing of Jules Verne. You’ll find air battles between pirates in blimps, steam-powered robots pieced together from spare parts, and plots involving gaslighting (the streetlamp kind, not the manipulative kind). It’s a celebration of innovation, progress, and developing technology combined with nostalgia for a time when science was exciting, not threatening, and possibilities for advancement seemed limitless. Steampunk, unlike cyberpunk, is uplifting.

Nowadays, you can see steampunk aficionados at clubs and sci-fi conventions dressing in Victorian garb, embellished with brass gears, gauges, and wheels. One trendy accessory is the top hat with welding goggles as a hatband. Women can dress as aviators (aviatrixes? aviatrices?) with, obviously, aviator goggles. One would assume that the expected reaction from those not in the know is goggling at them. (Sorry, not sorry.)

(And that stonepunk and solarpunk I mentioned? Those refer to fiction that immerses the reader in a Flintstones-like past and a back-to-the-land agrarian setting respectively, with technology based on those eras. But I digress still more.)

Now on to -core, another element used in portmanteau words related to the music scene, rather than fiction. As you might guess, the word “hardcore” is the origin of the term. But instead of referring to pornography, -core applies to an extreme expression of any kind of music. Skacore. Thrashcore. Even emocore, unlikely as that sounds. (Theoretically, you could have punkcore music, but I’ve never heard that term used. Nor punkpunk fiction, for that matter. There is a subset of country music called cowpunk, so I guess you could have cowpunkcore. But I digress even more.)

Historical note: Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass pioneered the creation of portmanteau words. (A portmanteau is “a case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, especially a leather trunk or suitcase that opens into two halves.” So portmanteau, when it comes to words, is actually a metaphor.) Carroll’s epic poem “Jabberwocky” contained several. Slithy (as in “the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe”) is, he said, a combination of lithe and slimy; frumious, a mashing-together of furious and fuming; and chortle, a portmanteau of chuckle and snort that is still used today.

(Less historical note: Thanks to the book The Annotated Alice (annotations by Martin Gardner), which I highly recommend, I learned how to recite the first verse of “Jabberwocky” in French, a skill with no practical applications whatsoever. But I digress. My last digression for this post. I promise.)

(Just kidding. Bonus digression. Back to -punk and -core. There exists a series of books that combines steampunk, thriller, and fantasy. (A Study in Silks (The Baskerville Affair)). Steampunk-Holmes-demoncore, I guess you’d call it.)

Surfing With Sharks

etc.

Okay, first a disclaimer. I don’t actually surf, which may come as a surprise to those of you who don’t really know me. Aside from my lack of athleticism, the fact that I live in Ohio and there isn’t any surfing that I know of on Lake Erie keeps me firmly grounded, so to speak. But I do surf the Interwebs. And I keep running into sharks there.

The sharks online don’t chew off body parts. Instead, they’re scammers and spammers. (Do sharks eat spam? Or do they hate it as much as we all hate the electronic kind? There’s no one who likes it (except for the spammers themselves). But I digress.)

Spam isn’t the only hazard to life online. (Yes, I live online. I work online. I read online. I communicate online. The only things I don’t do online are eat and poo. But I digress again.) Some online phenomena I hate, while others just puzzle me, like the memes and pass-alongs that say, “Share if you hate cancer/child abuse/nuclear war.” Who likes them? They’re just trying to boost their “shared” numbers. Similar to this is the passive-aggressive “I bet you won’t share/repost this.” You’re right. I won’t.

Boosting share numbers is a form of like-farming. This bucolic-sounding practice is often engaged in by businesses like radio stations. They post an intriguing question or celebrity photo, then wait for the “likes” and “loves” to roll in. This proves that the business has lots of “reach” or generates “impressions,” which means they can charge more, get more advertisers, or do something else that’s good for the business.

Social media is a hotbed of lies and deceptions, some harmless and some less so. In the “less so” category, there are pass-alongs that rise to the level of urban legends. Facebook is either going to start charging or has access to all your photos for their own nefarious purposes. You can address holiday cards to “Any Soldier” at Walter Reed Hospital. People are using various ruses to lure or incapacitate women for sex trafficking. Apple is practically giving away computers if you post something, forward something, or send $5. Check out such dubious claims on Snopes.com and you’ll find out the truth.

People have learned to be wary of Nigerian princes and many other lures. But online deceptions become dangerous when underhanded users find other ways to capture your personal information. One of the come-ons most often used is seemingly harmless questions that entice users to reveal sensitive information. Less blatant than merely asking for your bank card and PIN number, these questions may ask, “Do you remember your first-grade teacher’s name?” “What kind of car did you drive in high school?” or even “Your stripper name is your first pet’s name and the street you grew up on.” It’s no coincidence that the answers reveal info commonly used for security questions on bank accounts and the like.

Another ploy makes use of the “cute factor” or the “sympathy post.” There will be a post about someone who has eight adorable puppies or kittens and needs to find homes for them. Or one that shows an injured dog that’s been found and needs an owner to claim it. One of the giveaways that this isn’t legit is that the poster is really a business or wants you to respond via DM or “bump this post.” If you do that, you’re leaving yourself open to having your identity stolen, your account spoofed, or being bombarded by ads for the business.

If you want to protect yourself online, you need shark-repellent. The delete, unfriend, and unsubscribe buttons are good weapons. Clicking on the poster to see who’s really behind the message is another. Pay attention to the source. There are publications that are known for their inaccuracy or sensationalization (New York Post and Daily Mail, I’m looking at you). And, as mentioned, Snopes.com is valuable for checking lots of rumors and scare tactics. (I understand that some people feel that Snopes has a political agenda. I doubt it (I think that’s an urban legend), but even if they do, debunking urban legends isn’t what I’d call political. Is this another digression? Yes. Yes, it is.)

I don’t know how to stop the ads that appear anytime you Google something. If you do, please tell me. Google is a shark I haven’t been able to dodge. I’ve been bitten more than once.

Science Madness

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The problem these days is not so much “mad scientists” as people who are mad at science.

Where did the Mad Scientist trope come from anyway? Arguably it was Mary Shelley’s horror novel Frankenstein, published in 1818. Science fiction classics like Jules Verne’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) kept up the theme and the “Golden Age” of science fiction provided many more examples.

In these novels, scientists either tampered with things better left alone or succumbed to a lust for power. Death rays and the precursors of gene splicing abounded. The outcome was mostly dreadful, except for those few gallant hero scientists who managed to save Earth from a deadly plague/alien/monster/giant something.

While the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s were the heyday of mad scientists in fiction, those years also constituted a time when real scientists were heroes. The atomic bomb ended WWII in the Pacific. Polio was conquered. The “Space Race” that led to many scientific breakthroughs began, thanks to the Soviets and their Sputnik (1957).

Back then, scientists were revered.

Later on, not so much.

The conflict between science and religion heated up. Of course, there was conflict going way back – before Mary Shelley warned us about “playing God.” Galileo and Kepler removed us from our “God-given place” in the center of the universe, and Darwin implied that we were just another animal. The Earth suddenly became billions of years old,  circling a mediocre star.

Then there was fallout, both literal and figurative, from the atomic bomb. Medical science gave us thalidomide. NASA used up billions of dollars, with no obvious monetary payoff down the line, and some people decried the space program for spending money that could be used for problems on Earth.

And all that led to changes in the general public’s attitude toward science.

By the ’60s. medicine was under fire from those who found Eastern philosophy and natural healing just as good or better. Physicists were condemned for the same atomic bomb for which they had been lauded. Science didn’t seem like such a good deal after all.

And there’s some truth to the complaints. Many scientists believed that math, physics, and chemistry were all. If it didn’t have numbers attached to it, forget it. Psychology, sociology, anthropology, and most other -ologies were “soft sciences,” barely sciences at all. Hard sciences ruled.

Slowly, the ground under science shifted. Now science has become to many people the enemy, the domain of elitists and narcissists and people who feel they are entitled by their intellect to run the world.

Of course, the stereotypes from early science fiction had something to do with that.

But the Average Man (and Woman) had a bone, or at least a fossil, to pick with science and scientists. Again, science was denying what the general public believed.

Increasingly, people believed in the efficacy of non-Western medicine, or at least the non-efficacy of Western medicine. Science believed in genetics and stem cells and cloning.

People believed in the spiritual realm. Scientists believed in the measurable.

People believed in religion. Science believed in science.

You can see where this is heading – right back to the days when people thought science meant the reanimation of corpses, invasions of bug-eyed monsters, and the creation of death rays. Because what, after all, is the distance between growing human organs and creating Frankenstein, between cloning a sheep and making a half-man-half-fly, between a laser-guided missile and a death ray?

And many scientists are arrogant, dismissive of popular opinion, and unwilling to engage in dialogue with opposing viewpoints. “Because I said so,” seems to be enough for them. “Real” scientists look down their noses at “popularizers” who look to educate the public about science.

Unfortunately, everyone is shouting and no one is listening.

Personally, I am a sometimes science geek as well as a word nerd, thanks to high school chemistry and physics, college astronomy, and lots of nonfiction reading. I don’t think science knows it all, and it’s a long way from figuring it all out. I also think that psychology and spirituality and art have a lot to teach us about the human condition and our place in the universe, STEM classes and careers notwithstanding.

But the pushback against science scares me. NASA is wasting its time chasing UFOs. Streaming channels that used to be devoted to science now feature ghost chasers and treasure hunters. I’m not saying that science never stumbles, but it provides the best answers we have to some of the problems that plague us, including plagues.

I don’t advocate returning to a time when science was the be-all and end-all of thought and education, or to the time when fictional science made scientists suspect. I just think science deserves more respect than it’s getting now.

Tortitude

etc.

Tortoiseshell cats have the reputation of being “divas,” “feisty,” “strong-willed,” “independent,” “aloof,” and with a temper, given to hissing and scratching – in other words, a general pain in the owner’s ass. There’s even been a study that supposedly validates this. But yet cat lovers, including me, have given their hearts to and shared their homes with beautiful tortoiseshell kittens and cats.

(There is also some disagreement on whether they are beautiful or not. Some find their mottled fur patterns ugly. I don’t. I once saw a carpet that had a pattern that looked like a tortie. It was an ugly carpet. The cats themselves are gorgeous. But I digress.)

There’s even a name for the supposedly difficult personality of torties – tortitude. It’s meant to encapsulate the sometimes-unpleasant attitudes they might display. (The Urban Dictionary says “torbies” (tortie/tabby combos) share these traits.) I, however, have never found torties’ attitudes unpleasant.

Oh, mine have had their moments. Louise was a toe-biter as a kitten. I vividly remember her needle-like teeth piercing my tender toe flesh. But she grew out of it and turned into a loving, totally agreeable cat with an amazing purr. I could cradle her in my arms and she would sigh with satisfaction. I would melt.

Not that torties can’t be mischievous or quirky. Anjou once got into my purse and stole a chocolate bar. (I know chocolate is supposed to be bad for cats, but she suffered no ill effects.) She was also fond of eating a few slices of bread from a loaf and making croutons from the rest of it. The first night I got her, Bijou slept across my throat. Later, she was known to scratch the heater in the bathroom that was next to her litter box. (“Listen,” we said. “Kitty’s playing the harp.” Though I suppose it really sounded more like a steel drum. But I digress again.) Bijou also once crashed a party I had thrown, sauntering into the living room with a tampon applicator held in her mouth, looking like a little kitty Groucho Marx, but more embarrassing.

One time at the NYC Cat Show, I got to spend a little time with a breeder who told me about torties. He said they were “the candy bar of cats – a little bit sweet and a little bit nuts.” (He also told me how to tell the difference between a Norwegian Forest Cat and a Maine Coon. It has to do with the shape of the cats’ muzzles. But I digress yet again.) (I was in New York on business and stayed a couple of extra days. In addition to checking out the cat show, I also took in the Broadway musical Cats. It was my Kitty Weekend. But I digress more.)

I started adopting torties when I went looking for calicos and the shelter didn’t have any. Torties are a kind of calico or calicos are a kind of tortie. I can never remember which. I came home from the shelter with my first cat, who was also my first tortie. I’ve actually had more torties than I have calicos over the course of my cat-owning life.

So. Tortitude. Is it a real thing? If you ask me, tortitude isn’t a drawback. To me, tortitude equals sweet, loving cats that look much better than a walking carpet. (Sorry, Chewbacca. It had to be said.)

Gift Giving: The Good, the Bad, and the Weird

Christmas, etc., holidays, humor, , ,

Giving gifts is an act fraught with significance and anxiety. (At least it is for me. Once I walked into a store to buy a baby shower gift and instantly got a Charlie horse near my collarbone. It felt like a ping-pong ball under my skin. Only excruciatingly painful. But I digress. Already.) How much should I spend? Will the person re-gift this? How the hell do I wrap and ship a live goat? (No, I’ve never actually tried to do this. I use Kiva.com for all my goat-gifting needs. More digression already.)

Never fear. Here are some tips on what to do, what to avoid, and how to make sure your gift is really special.

The Good. My husband, Dan, is the best gift-giver I know. His strategy is to follow me discreetly around a mall or exhibit hall, note what I ooh and ahh over, and sneak back to buy it. Sometimes he even pretends the store was out of whatever to make the surprise even more of a roller-coaster of disappointment and delight.

Another good strategy is the one he and my mother cooked up one year. They went through old boxes and closets and found things I had forgotten about that were a bit the worse for wear – a tambourine, a doll, a ceramic Christmas tree I had made – then cleaned, repaired, and refurbished them.

I have a hard time getting gifts for my husband. He belongs to the “Here’s what I want; just get me that” school of thinking. That is no fun. But I probably should just go with his requests, because I often end up getting him things he doesn’t want or use, like a yogurt maker or a GPS for his car. (Truthfully, I am the GPS for his car. I suppose I should be glad that he prefers me to electronics, but somehow I’m not. But I digress.)

Once, though, I thought of Exactly the Right Thing. He had an old, orange-striped cat, and I had a friend who was a painter. She told me how to take a good natural-light photo of the cat and then turned it into a painting.

The Bad. Rex, a former boyfriend, never knew what to get me for any occasion. He therefore unilaterally decided that I would henceforth collect heart-shaped boxes. I received boxes decorated with ribbons, fashioned from colorful stones, and so forth – none of which I particularly wanted. (Teapots. Eggcups. Stuffed armadillos. Almost anything would have been more to my taste. I sometimes wonder how many other women he knew suddenly found themselves collecting heart-shaped boxes. Something to store in those boxes – say, jewelry – would have been much more welcome. I’m digressing a lot today.)

The Weird. If you know as many weird people as I do, you enter the realm of weird gifts. The world’s ugliest Goodwill tie fitted with a microchip that plays “You Light Up My Life.” A 12 Days of Christmas-themed “Three French Hens” – three eggs decked in tiny black lace garter belts. A toy chicken that walks and lays malted milk balls. The Black Widow model slingshot (my father gave me that one).

If there’s a White Elephant or pick-or-take gift exchange it can get weird quickly, too. A mug that says “I Don’t Have Herpes.” Sea monkeys. An inexplicable purple and orange glass thing. Twenty dollars worth of toilet paper. (It makes an impressive-sized package, if you get the really cheap kind. People love that. Just like they love digressions.) It’s even more strange when the weird gift is the one that people fight over.

There are also other considerations besides the appropriate gift. For instance, there’s:

Wrapping. My efforts at wrapping resemble those of a ten-year-old child. But at least I try to be creative. I once wrapped an umbrella to look like a candy cane, if a wrinkled, uneven one. And if I give boring socks (in addition to a more interesting gift), I like to wrap each pair in a different-sized and -shaped package.

Gift cards. Some feel that receiving them is boring and giving them is a cop-out. Not my friend Michael. He has an entire philosophy of gift cards. He explains, “To me, respecting the gift means using it on something outside the ordinary, or at least something I would have trouble allowing myself to get with family funds. Something that will stay associated with the giver in my mind, at least for a while.” Think of that the next time someone gives you a gift card.

Poverty Christmas. One of the best holidays I remember was when all of my friends and I were broke the same year. Separately, we each had the idea of hand-making or hand-selecting gifts. I cross-stitched potpourri sachets. Meg baked cookies. Phil went to a used bookstore and found exactly the right book for everyone. Rhonda decorated small baskets of inexpensive treats. That was really an “It’s the thought that counts” kind of year. Since we all did it, it wasn’t even embarrassing.

There you have it: my advice on gift-giving. Go good. Go weird. Go small. But don’t try to make someone collect heart-shaped boxes.

Seven Reasons I Hate The Bloggess

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jennymeFirst, let me say that I read The Bloggess’s (Jenny Lawson’s) blog all the time. I have her books and I read them all the time too. But secretly I hate her, and here’s why.

1. She had a weirder childhood than I did. She lived in a small Texas town full of farm critters and wild animals, and weird characters, including her father the taxidermist, and has interesting poverty stories, like the one about the bread-sack shoes. I lived in a nondescript middle-class suburb with a stay-at-home mom and a dad that went to work every day smelling of Vitalis and Aqua Velva, rather than deer blood.

(This was also the problem I had trying to write country songs. You can’t get very far with “I was born an industrial engineering technician’s daughter/in the Central Baptist Hospital of Lexington, KY.” But I digress.)

2. She had more interesting pets, with more interesting names than I did. She had a raccoon named Rambo that wore Jams and a delinquent turkey named Jenkins. Later she had a dog named Barnaby Jones Pickles and now has one named Dorothy Barker. Her cats are named Ferris Mewler and Hunter S. Thomcat. We had dogs named Blackie and Bootsie and rabbits named Christina and Mittens. Our recent dogs have been Karma and Bridget, and the only eccentric cat names we’ve bestowed have been Django and Dushenka.

(Ordinarily, I don’t like cat names like Baryshnikat and F. Cat Fitzgerald. I think cat names should be something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to yell out the door if one of them wanders off, like Louise or Garcia. I suppose the Bloggess’s neighbors are by now used to anything. But I digress again.)

3. She has more interesting disorders than I do. I have bad knees and bipolar disorder type 2 (and a blog about it, www.bipolarme.blog). The Bloggess has generalized anxiety disorder, anti-phospholipid syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and, apparently, an obsession with chupacabras and vaginas. This gives her much more to write about. Although I do have two blogs. Two! In your face, Bloggess!

4. She’s less inhibited than I am. The Bloggess would have ended that last paragraph, “In your face, motherfucker!” I didn’t learn to cuss till I was in my 20s and no one I meet ever believes I swear until I do. Then they’re shocked. Also, I swear all the time, except in my blogs, where I’m afraid I’ll offend readers, all of whom I assume have tender sensibilities. The Bloggess knows her readers better than that.

5. She has way more readers than I do. And she’s published books and has another coming out. I have some followers, but I think most of them want to sell me books on how to publicize my blog. I should probably study a book like that, but I’d rather read ones about emerging viruses, cloud cities on Venus, and mostly true memoirs. On the other hand, I have the distinction of being the only writer ever to have articles in both Catechist and Black Belt magazines. So take that, moth . . . Bloggess!

6. She and her husband have more interesting arguments than my husband and I do. We never even talk quietly about whether Jesus was a zombie.

7. She has a stronger voice than I do. I mean her writing voice. I had no idea what her speaking voice was like until I saw a video clip of her on the web, talking about vaginas. But when I’m going to write in my blogs, I have to lay off reading her for a day or two, because her voice takes over my weak, tiny mind and it wants to sound like her. I wish I could write like that. Or at least as well as that.

But, like the Bloggess, I am a strangeling. And that’s a start.

The Future of Sex and Cleaning

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Forget about all the robot assembly and manufacturing machines that are out to steal our jobs. As far as I can see, the only occupations  chores activities that are likely to be overrun by robotic thieves are sex and cleaning.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite – cleaning. (I mean favorite in terms of one thing we’d like to have taken off our to-do lists  hands plates – including cleaning the plates.)

Of course everyone knows by now about the Roomba and its cousins, those vacuuming wizards and automatic cat transports. And although they’re not the Jetsons’ Rosie the Robot Maid, they’re fine. As far as they go. Which supposedly is around corners and table legs, over shag carpets and pet stains, and through any detritus (other than Legos, which have overcome every attempt to remove them from floors so that they don’t attack unwary feet. But I digress.).

But do you have any idea what other household chores have been usurped by mechanical minions?

A quick tour around the Internet reveals the possibilities. As of this writing, there are, in addition to mechanized, self-propelled vacuums, robotic:

window-washers

barbecue grill-cleaners

gutter-cleaners

pool-cleaners

dustpans (I can’t make this stuff up)

baby-rockers

plant- and lawn-waterers

and lawnmowers. (At $2100 per, a bit pricey compared to the kid down the street or your own reluctant teenagers. But I digress again.)

It would be nice if there were one robot that would satisfy all our needs  do all that, but unfortunately, every chore needs its own robot. So we humans still have to multitask, even though our machines don’t.

But, speaking of multi-tasking, there is the RealDoll (Abyss Creations), apparently the be-all and end-all  epitome (for now) of sex dolls. They’re easy, but  not cheap. And they’re marketed to men. (Do I need to say that? The sexbots-for-women industry is tiny  minuscule  nearly invisible  not yet growing  unimpressive.) Starting at about what you’d pay for a robotic lawnmower, but rising rapidly  at increasing price points or more, you can have a “plastic pal who’s fun to be with.” (Apologies to Douglas Adams. Couldn’t resist.)

Make no mistake, for that price you’re getting more than your standard blow-up doll. Or blow-up sheep (which I’ve actually seen). More than “just silicone orifices,” according to one writer, the sexbots are jointed, with synthetic skin, and customizations tailored to the customer’s preferences  desires specifications as far as hair color, skin tone, eyes, clothing, booty jiggliness, and genitalia go.

(That customizable genitalia feature has me perplexed. According to the specs, that can mean “removable, exchangeable, flaccid, or hard.” I don’t quite get why someone would want a sexbot with flaccid genitalia. And if you know, don’t tell me. Removable kind of gives me the creeps too. But I digress yet again.)

For those of you not in touch with  an aficionado of  deeply into conversant with the world of artificial intelligence, any number of quandaries are brought into being by the creation of sexbots. You (well, not you) pay for them, so are they prostitutes? What happens when a company decides to make a robo-sex-sheep (and you know they will)? Will a sexbot that can fulfill antisocial desires make it more or less likely that users will act out criminal lusts IRL (as the saying goes)?

Sexbot visionaries have lots of plans for the future: camera eyes for facial recognition, multiple downloadable personalities, etc. The goal is to have either a sexbot that can pass the Turing Test (being indistinguishable from a human being in conversation, the gold standard of AI) or one that you can fall in love with.

Long before then, however, we’re going to need a sexbot-cleaning cleaning robot. ‘Cause otherwise, ew.

How I Faced My Fear … And Failed

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This is my idea of hell:

A semitruck rolled early Friday, spilling a load of honeybees on the Interstate 5 median at the Interstate 405 interchange near Lynnwood….As temperatures warmed and the bees became more agitated, firefighters sprayed a mixture of foam and water on the hives to slow down or kill some of the bees. Television reporters swatted at swarms of the insects surrounding their cameras and clumps of bee carcasses littered the roadway.

Yes, I am an apiphobe, also known as a melissophobe. (No, I don’t fear apes. That would be pithecophobia. No, not fear of people named Melissa, either. Seriously? Apis mellifera is the scientific name of the bee. But I digress.)

In actuality, I’ve only been stung by a bee once. I was in my early teens and given to going barefoot whenever possible. While walking through someone’s yard, I happened to step sideways and the outside of my baby toe brushed up against the backside of a bee.

I know the bee had no intention of stinging me. It was an accidental encounter on both our parts. A little baking soda and a bandaid and I was fine. Physically. My lack of reaction to the sting proved that I was not allergic – except in my own mind. Although I hadn’t panicked during the actual stinging, now panic is my instant reaction to the approach of any bees, wasps, or other stinging insect. (Ticks, too. Anything that impinges on my bodily boundaries. It’s a wonder I’m able to have sex at all. But I digress. Again.)

I tried to overcome this fear. I really did.

During my college years, I had a relationship (Mistake!) with a man who intended to keep bees. Somehow I thought that if I studied beekeeping, it might be beneficial to the relationship. (Mistake!) As it happened, the college I was attending had on its faculty Roger Morse, one of the world’s most noted authorities on bees. He did mostly research, but also taught two courses, Anatomy of the Honeybee (which was highly technical) and Beekeeping 101.

I signed up for the beekeeping course – this despite the fact that I was an English Major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the courses on bees were in the College of Agriculture. The university insisted we broaden our minds by enrolling in several classes unrelated to our majors. The beekeeping class consisted of lectures and a lab component. Lectures were sort of nice, and quite interesting. We passed around samples of honeycomb and honey made from the pollen of various flowers and plants – buckwheat honey, orange blossom, and the like. Since then I’ve also had lavender honey, which has to be my favorite.

Lab was something else again. I was OK when we were dissecting honey bees. (When I got to the bee’s wee intestine, I learned that bee poop is bright orange-yellow, which makes sense, because pollen. Everyone poops, and that’s how bees do. But I digress, yet again.) But when we got to tending beehives and interacting with live bees, my old fears came to the fore.

At first, we were given netted helmets, heavy gloves, and smokers, which were supposed to calm the bees. (I still don’t get why spraying smoke into their homes would calm them. It would panic almost any other animal. Although capnophobia, fear of smoke, seems to mean only cigarette smoke. But I digress. As if you haven’t noticed.) The rest of the class gradually got away from using these crutches, but I clung to them the entire time, along with a dose of Valium before lab. I would even eat almond cookies before lab, because I had heard that bees don’t like the scent of almonds. (Which presents the question: Why do they like the scent of almond flowers, but not the nuts? But I digress some more.)

I managed to pass the course, but failed at the relationship and at conquering my fear. To this day, when a stinging insect appears anywhere in my vicinity, even if it is paying no attention whatsoever to me, I freeze, try my best not to scream, and wait in terror for someone braver to shoo the thing away. My husband always tries to convince me that it was not a bee, but a dragonfly or a hummingbird. This does not fool me for a second, but I suppose he’s trying to be helpful.

And now, National Geographic tells us that bee enthusiasts and scientists are trying to create artisanal bees (artisanal honey, okay. But artisanal bees?), in what they call “The Quest for a Superbee.”

Great. Now I get to be a superapiphobe.