Ruminator: Rape & NZ culture

I expanded the first chunk of that last post into a longer piece for the Ruminator: Rape is easy here.

It’s another example of how I’m using the existence of the Ruminator as a prompt and motivator for a different style of writing, with a different set of goals. (e.g. I write here often for myself, whereas there I often write to whatever audience I imagine.) I’m very pleased to be a contributor to the Ruminator and intend to keep sending them content.

The Ruminator is also fundraising. In theory “pay our writers” is part of the goal but I’ll just be happy if it covers the ongoing costs of hosting and registration. If you like what the Ruminator is doing, you might want to send a few virtual coins its way…

Ruminator: Pink vs Blue

Yesterday turned out to be an interesting day. There was winning at basketball, which happens rarely enough these days that it’s a happy moment indeed. There was completing the serialisation of “in move”, my teenage-boys-in-the-Hutt novel, about which more soon (I need to get the ebook version prepared for release). There was getting a heat pump installed, hurrah for that. But the big thing was Pink vs Blue.

Pink vs Blue was a post I wrote over at The Ruminator. It’s about how being a dad to a little girl has given me some new avenues for thinking about the way our culture codes and scripts gender in a really limiting way. I spent a while scooping together lots of bits and pieces I’d been thinking and feeling for a while, and lined them up in what I hoped was an illuminating way.

As usual with this sort of stuff, the writing of it is also the thinking about it – I look for turns of phrase or metaphors or rhetorical flourishes that feel like they help me understand. Like if I can just line up the words in the right way, I’ll unlock some hidden secret. Sometimes it does feel like that.

Anyway, I’m pretty proud of this post, because it’s very personal and also very general, and I tried hard to get it right. It’s taken off in a moderate sort of way, lots of shares by people I’ve never heard of. Easily the most widely circulated thing I’ve ever written (excepting that time I cut and pasted a few Wikileaks tweets and added the words “this is interesting” and it went crazy on Reddit).

You can find it here. I hope you’ll have a read, and if you are so moved, do pass it on to anyone else who might be interested.

Part 1, & Rumination

I Ruminated again: the 10 best things to tell computer support scammers.

And the first part of in move has gone live. I read it, too, for the first time in years – I’m going to read along as the sections go up and see how it plays. Verdict on the opening: not nearly as bad as I was expecting. There’s definitely some copyedits I’d do if I was treating it as a live project though! And I do appreciate how this relatively innocuous sequence & decision sets up an entire novel’s worth of angst. You can check it out here if you missed it. It’s a short opener – tomorrow’s update is about 4 times as long…

Ruminator Linky

The Ruminator is a new groupblog that launched about a week ago and is just figuring out its voice as its many writers make their first posts. I’m a contributor, and my first post is up. It’s about how, when music shops and bookshops close down, there’s some additional consequences:

One by one, these stores are closing up for good. As they close I wonder if there is something at work here beyond the normal swell and fade of commerce and retail, something with an impact that reaches beyond “retail therapy” and the ding of a cash register. I can’t shake the feeling that this is a change that matters, and that what we are losing here will reduce us, irrevocably. [Read the rest]

There’s plenty of other Ruminating writers there, too. Go check ’em out.

25 fictional detectives & their #1 moves (mash, you’ll wanna see this…)

David Simon brings the ruckus on the US senate’s failure to pass even massively-watered-down gun regulations.

Do not touch, a crowd-sourced music video. Fun! (via Sammyh)

Not much money at all can buy you a fake Facebook girlfriend

The dangers of thinking like an economist

Law & order’s fakest websites

Alison Brie does memes:

Conan O’Brien hosts an 80-minute chat with writers from the golden age of The Simpsons. Marvellous! Had this on while cooking dinner over two nights, enjoyed every minute.

This image should NOT be seen by the whole world (via Hugh Dingwall)

The myth of Margaret Thatcher
and What we talk about when we talk about Thatcher

Riverbend, the Iraqi blogger who was posting regularly in the buildup to the invasion, and after, has made a new post after years of silence, marking the 10th anniversary of the war’s beginning.

Star Wars characters modelling fur for Vogue in 1977

There’s a GREAT clip circulating of Patton Oswalt improvising the plot of a new Star Wars movie (part of a Parks & Recreation story apparently) – I watched it, it was awesome, but the one I watched is no longer there and I can’t find another with permission to view from NZ. Google “Star Wars Filibuster” and try your luck, it’s well worth a look.

Oh my god! They killed Sean Bean!

Perhaps the definitive analysis of those bloody eagles not flying to Mordor

My buddy Dan’s story “Waking The Taniwha” has been published at Wily Writers (guest editor: Richard Dansky) and I still haven’t listened to it but it’s been up a while now so I’m linking to it anyway.

And finally, via my sister Beth… absolute worst pictures of men and cats