incipit vita nova

Pictures of Lillie (No - Me and Meredith)

  Me and Meredith doing "Billy Idol."

Meredith and her friend Alex.

 

Meredith and Alex at the wholesome hookah bar.

Mister Skwirrell: Smash 'N Grab Seed Thief

I've been watching a fat reddish squirrel outside my balcony for the past several weeks.  He lives in the giant banana trees that are almost level with the balcony.  I've watched him many times as he scurried about, eating whatever seeds, nondeveloped banana spores, or whatever is in the pods in the bananas.  For sure they're either all male or all female and not fertilized, because there are no bunches of bananas, just these big pods.

Last month, our newsletter warned us not to feed the squirrels that would come on our balconies, because although they "looked cute," they had already shredded people's patio furniture.  "Ha ha," I thought.  "My patio furniture is all metal. There's nothing for the squirrels to shred!"

So, today was one of "those" days.  I didn't feel so hot this morning and I was poking around aimlessly.  Then, there was a loud, weird noise at my door and Badger started barking.  No sooner was this noise gone than I heard scrambling and scraping on the balcony.  I turned around and looked out and there he was sitting on the arm rest of one of my patio chairs.  Mister Skwirrell.  He looked at me with his shiny black eyes and I thought, "He's pretty bold!  I wonder what --"

Ka-blam!!  Mister Skwirrell leapt off the chair acrobatically and slapped the yellow enamel pitcher filled with sunflowers off its plant stand.  The pitcher crashed to the balcony and the water spilled out. 

Badger was cowering somewhere, unwilling even to enter the living room.  Mister Skwirrell chittered at me as if to say (like, I'm sure he WAS saying this in "skwirrell") - "Lazy stupid human!  I have the prize now!"

Demoralized and needing to leave for work, I just left.  No sooner had I closed my front door than I discovered some time during the night, the key had quit working.  After struggling fitfully for a few moments, with Badger ever-anxious to make a break for it, I just left, leaving the door unlocked. 

When I got back home tonight, the first thing I did was clean up Mister Skwirrell's mess, after making my key work, of course.  When things are like that, nothing's going to work right - I was thinking I needed a new key, I'd bent it, I needed WD-40, maybe that banging noise was some idiot trying to break in . . . no, I just needed to jiggle it a little and it was working again.  I picked up the pitcher and noted, after picking up the stalks, that Mister Skwirrell had used his time wisely and beheaded every sunflower.  He had then carried his prizes to beneath the other patio chair and obviously taken his time eating every single seed and strewing all the leavings everywhere.  It looked like crack 'n spit night at the truck stop under that chair.  Wisely, Skwirrell was hiding when I got out the broom. 

I'll get him next time.  Wait and see.

Facts on Child Kidnapping in the US

Like many of our country's laws and regulations, the Uniform Child Abduction Act, passed in 2006, does not have a lot of "teeth" in it.  It was passed more than 25 years after the first Congressional Act dealing with parental kidnapping, the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, which was passed in 1980 in response to the growing number of parental kidnappings coming to the attention of courts and law enforcement nationwide.

This type of kidnapping forms the basis of the great majority of the activity of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the well-respected and effective organization co-founded by John Walsh, who undertook his continuing advocacy after his son Adam was kidnapped and murdered in Florida in 1981.  Every parent's nightmare, that their child will be seized by a crazed murderer at a mall (as happened to Adam), has happened only 115 times since the Center began keeping statistics.  In contrast, between 1,000 and 2,000 children are parentally-kidnapped each DAY in the United States. The problem is so widespread that the Hague Convention dealt with it, and it represents a significant area of international law and concern, as many children who are kidnapped by one parent are not just taken across state lines, they are taken to foreign countries without anyone's permission.  Law enforcement in local jurisdictions and nationally have struggled for years to develop strategies to deal with this pervasive problem.

Of the children who are parentally-kidnapped in the United States, the overwhelming majority are recovered.  Since the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children began keeping statistics, they have received over 140,000 reports of parentally-abducted children, and more than 130,000 children have been recovered.  Over an approximate 20-year period, that means that about 500 children are abducted each year in the United States, and are NOT recovered.  However, this statistic only refers to the serious cases that are referred to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for assistance by law enforcement.  Overall, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that over 780,000 children are reported missing each year in the United States - among them runaways, parentally-abducted children and sexually-exploited children.  This problem is not limited to the United States - it occurs worldwide.  Australia, for example, has one of the highest per-capita rates of such abductions.  This is a video about an Australian mother who had to re-kidnap her children from an ex-husband who snatched them and took them to Beirut, and another mother, who after 14 years, recovered her daughter from Indonesia.  "Often the children are not told what is going on," commented one estranged parent.  "The children who have been abducted once or twice grow up not trusting anyone," said a counselor who has worked with these children.  "When you're lied to over and over at a young age by your parent, who can you trust?"

In studies of the traumatic effects of parentally-kidnapped and recovered children, a shocking percentage of the children are physically and mentally abused.  In my view, the number who are abused by these acts is 100%, because the very act is by its very nature, highly-abusive toward the child.  Many authorities cite rising divorce rates as the cause of the rise in parental abductions, with some extreme advocates suggesting that the only solution is to unilaterally award full custody of the child in cases of divorce to the mother, thereby abrogating any type of custody "dispute."  In my opinion, such a situation would only cause father-initiated abductions to rise dramatically.

Here is a link to some of the success stories of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  One teenaged girl missing for three years was located after being arrested in another state and giving a false name.  Another little girl from Colorado was rescued after being left by noncustodial, kidnapping parents at an acqaintance's home in Texas.  That is probably the most typical result - in at least 60% of the cases, the parental or related kidnapper dumps the child with relatives, "friends" or even acquaintances, as their interest was never for the child's welfare at any point -- merely their own, discarded when care for the child becomes inconvenient.  Child kidnappers also have few community ties to begin with, and rely upon gullible or easily-persuaded strangers to assist them in order to continue to perpetrate their lies or continue their unlawful activities.

I just came across this heartwrenching essay by Prof. Stephen Baskerville.  I don't know if his children were located or not.  I hope that they have been.

Too Late for Bozo

Thanks to Patrick at Popehat (funny how news travels these days), I learned of the tragedy in my own town.  Yes, Bozo is dead. Alan W. Livingston died at age 91 in Beverly Hills, after a long, eventful and influential (whether to the good or bad is yet to be determined) life.  The former Capitol Records President also created something that eventually became the horror of an entire generation - Bozo.  A clown, a nightmare, and a new descriptive noun. 

This is the Bozo I remember.

Unbelievable, isn't it?  Waking in the middle of the night screaming in horror because Bozo was trying to force me to eat cyanide-laced cotton candy.

"Hello kiddies!"  AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

Look at those TEETH!  Holy maholey - what's he got in that nose - a midget with a straightedge razor?

Look at that poor kid, too.  It looks like Bozo is giving him a wedgie and has just issued a hissed threat.  "Don't look scared, kid, or Bozo'll give ya something to really be scared about."

And I wasn't even that scared of clowns.  As to Mike?  It's a wonder the guy ever managed to leave the house and go to work - for fear he'd see a clown on the street.

Which brings me to the memorial concept of The Museum of Bad Art.  Many happy moments spent laughing until tears streaked down my cheeks. 

A child did this - clearly under the malign influence of Stephen King's It Bozo.

For more fine work of this nature, visit the Museum of Bad Art.

Ralph Bakshi did that.  Just like, you know - clowning around.

Dude . . . Sweet!

I was entertained this morning by a feature on the top 21 (why this random number?) TV/film idiots.  Near the top - I felt they should be at the top, but who am I to say? - were Chester and Jesse (Seann William Scott and Ashton Kutcher) from one of the universe's all-time top great films, Dude, Where's My Car?

Dude, you got a tattoo!  Sweet!  What does mine say?  Sweet!  No, dude, what does mine say?  Sweet!  DUDE - what does MINE say?

How those guys did that scene in one take without cracking up is beyond me - maybe they didn't!

Which brings me to - why are dumb people so funny? 

For example - "A Florida man, who robbed two men at gunpoint in their homes, dropped his wallet as he left and then called police to ask if they found the wallet.  They said they did.  They asked him to come down and claim it.  He did."

Or this couple:  "Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, N. J., in September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 a.m., the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the window was closed."

These could be Snopes or Darwin Award legends, I suppose.  The most popular Darwin Award legend is the JATO Rocket Car, which was debunked by Mythbusters as well as found to be untrue - due to its physical impossibility.  However, I wasn't surprised to read in the updated Darwin story that Andy Granatelli had tried JATO rocket engines in his "need for speed" in the 60's and 70's.  A JATO is a "Jet-Assisted Takeoff" rocket used for military purposes to aid aircraft in leaving aircraft carriers. 

One of last year's Darwin Awards tells the tale of Brazilian priest Adelir Antonio, who recreated the infamous (or famous) Lawnchair Larry's flight over LAX by tying hundreds of helium-filled party balloons to his lawnchair and sailing out over the Atlantic.  Although armed with a cellphone and GPS - Father Antonio did not survive.  After drifting over the open sea for a time, he called for help using his cellphone.  Rescuers were unable to find him - because he didn't know how to use his GPS.  You really have to read this one to believe it - a German moron got his Porsche stuck on the railroad tracks, realizing at the last moment that a train was on its way.  He leapt out of his car only to run straight toward the locomotive waving his arms - so it would, like, stop, you know.  And not hit the car. 

But then, here's my supposed lookalike Lisa Kudrow, the ultra-dumb hippie blond chick from Friends.

I guess it's a good thing I never feel overwhelming desire to tie a bunch of balloons to my lawn chair because I always "felt an urge to fly." 

Birds Are Aliens - And Some Endangered

When I was about ten, I remember waking early in the morning to high-pitched, alien-sounding cries outside my window.  I looked out to see a young red-tailed hawk perched on the low wood fence about five feet from my window.  He had a limp, dead gopher in one claw and was delicately pulling bits of gore out of its abdomen and swallowing them, then crying out in what I interpreted as joy or victory with each bit of meat that he swallowed.  I watched quietly for several moments.  Suddenly, he looked up with his strange golden eyes, his eyes met mine, and he stayed very still for a long moment, then took flight, his meal firmly held in one claw.

I have known people who were afraid of birds, and also heard that as soft as their feathers are, and as clean as they may appear to the naked eye, they carry nearly-invisible mites and pests and can spread disease. 

Another time, much more recently when I was living in Woodland Hills, Badger woke me in the middle of the night due to "nature's call."  Groggy with sleep, I let him out in front of our house, which had a circular driveway beyond which was a small dirt road and a small hill between our house and our neighbor's house, which was covered with ivy and tall pine trees.  It was a dark night, with a new moon barely peeking through the cloud cover.  As Badger sniffed about in the ivy, I had the strangest feeling of foreboding and the hair did stand up on the back of my neck.  I looked up to see the biggest wingspan I've ever seen.  Absolutely silent and ghostlike, an enormous owl soared over my head from somewhere on our roof toward the pine trees - and of course, Badger.  

It was very dark, so I could see few markings, except that it wasn't a horned owl - his face was rounded and smooth.  He might have been a Great Grey Owl, which is a widely-distributed species, or a very large spotted owl.  I'm sure the wingspan grows with each memory I have of the owl's silent flight.  I will never forget those opalescent eyes, looking dispassionately down at me, and most certainly, determining that Badger was a bit too large to snatch up and carry off into the trees.

Thank goodness Badger is a 20 pound dog - for if he'd been a Chihuahua, I think I would be writing his memorial right now.

Anyone who's had a pet parakeet or parrot knows that birds can be very bright, have distinctive personalities.  Small, social birds like parakeets and parrots act curiously monkey-like.  They climb, chatter, play and exhibit great curiosity.  Bigger birds of prey are completely different.  From the silent, ominous owl to large raptors like the red-tailed hawk or eagles, their lives seem, at least to me, to be spare and solitary, spent in the wide-open spaces of the air, or on high perches dispassionately observing the busy ground-based life below, waiting for their chance to swoop down upon unwary prey and feed.

A curious artifact of conservation efforts dating from the 1970's until today is that - some have worked.  Some situations were so dire that the progress that has been made seems very small.  For example, California Condors had dwindled to such a low population level that it was uncertain if they could be saved from extinction.  As of January, 2009, there are 167 condors in the wild, and another 154 in zoos or several captive breeding programs, with the birds intended to be released into the wild. 

I saw this little fellow, a Calliope hummingbird, on my patio the other day.  He spent quite a bit of time with the bright flowers, then buzzed around my shoulders and flew away.  I don't have a hummingbird feeder, but I do have brightly-colored pots and flowers that would attract him.  Hummingbirds are one of the species that nearly everyone likes. This webpage is a great resource for hummingbird enthusiasts no matter where you live.  Much like the barn owl, who is a welcome feature that keeps the vermin population in check in urban and rural areas, the hummingbird peacefully coexists with humans -- it even feeds well from the millions of hummingbird feeders that are sold and put into action on porches and balconies every year.

Now that I live near the ocean, I see many different pelagic birds that I'd never seen before, in addition to the familiar seagull and brown pelican.  These small birds appear numerous and not-endangered.  However, even with the improved conservation and environmental situation in Southern California, with open space (I live near the Ballona wetlands), problems still occur.  Last night driving home, I saw a brown pelican crumpled on the shoulder of the road near the wetlands.  I thought he must have somehow collided with a car, and thought of the impact that a large bird like that would make - costing the pelican his life, and the driver, likely a windshield.  But that was not the case.  I think the pelican fell prey to a mystery disease that's stumping animal rescuers. 

Birds, in general, are extremely sensitive to environmental changes and human pollutants, as Rachel Carson pointed up to great effect in Silent Spring. The most recent Audubon Society report (note: a large PDF file) on the top 10 endangered bird species in the US was issued in 2006, but it still contains good information. The report also has a separate section for the top ten endangered Hawaiian birds.  Hawaii, despite its natural beauty and the environmental concern on the islands, has the greatest number of endangered species per square mile of any location on earth.  Here is a good link to resources on Hawaiian endangered species, including many rare and unique birds.  The list of extinct birds from Hawaii offers an interesting insight.  While it is frequently cited that many of Hawaii's lost species became extinct after European contact was made, and the extinction list shows that most were lost in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who is to say what species lived there previous to European contact - and possibly became extinct due to other, nonhuman environmental factors?  Not to excuse the attitude of Europeans ranging through the world's oceans in the 18th and 19th centuries - from whalebones, whale oil, and seal fur to clubbing dodos to death for the sheer joy of it, it's not a pleasant record.  It is also possible that Hawaii is the world's endangered species capital because there - people are watching, while in other parts of the globe, no one is watching at all.

Second Cyberstalking Case in Illinois

Aptly-named Illinois resident Justin Savage, a Seth Rogen lookalike, has been arrested on felony charges of cyberstalking, identity theft, and electronic harassment of a witness.  Detectives in Wayne County, southern Illinois, investigated threats being made against a crime witness via a MySpace page - that turned out to be a "cover" for Savage, who had used another person's MySpace name - "Sabetya" - and duplicated his profile in order to make the threats.

Through the MySpace profile, Savage offered $7,000 to anyone who would kill the witness and her family.  He also stated he had been on her property, seen her bedroom, and knew what time she went to bed.  The witness had made a police statement regarding a fight that Savage had been involved in, for which he feared prosecution.  The goal of the harassment was to terrorize the witness into retracting her police statement in the assault case.  Most terrifying of all, the witness had been previously afraid of "Sabetya" and Savage, having become aware of the situation, exploited both her fear and "Sabetya's" name and images.

Wayne County detective Jonah Kinsolving led the investigation, which took months to complete.  He said "You can't just subpoena a MySpace account.  You have to say 'I want this MySpace account on this day at this specific time'."  Detective Kinsolving said that Savage probably didn't realize that his online threats were a Class 3 felony.  He hoped that more people would watch what they type online, because over time, more and more people were going to get into trouble over it.

North Carolina attorney Don Burleson has begun some advocacy activities and writes compellingly about the need for recognition that "intentional infliction of emotional distress" in cyberstalking cases is not a "junk tort".  Burleson is also advocating for a national sociopath registry, although other advocates suggest that only 8% of the sociopathic population is diagnosed with this mental illness, and such a registry would be almost impossible to establish.  He also has a great picture of Lori Drew, whose online antics, also via MySpace, victimized young teen Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being convinced that a boy on MySpace that she had never met, had rejected her.  The "boy" turned out to be completely fake, a figment of Lori Drew's imagination (and in the California trial that Burleson references, he neglects to mention that the young girls who did the actual MySpace dirty work for her had testimony all over the map - i.e. - they were lying to protect Drew, having previously accepted immunity for themselves, then changing their testimony to exonerate her).  Burleson suggests that cyberpaths be branded with a "scarlet letter" and shows a picture of Charles Manson's forehead - complete with hand-carved swastika.  His website's also worth visiting for the large illustration of Uncle Sam stating "YOU ARE - A BAG OF DOUCHE!"

Is Wikipedia Sexist and Racist?

The correct answer is:  yes, and in a similar nature to much of the written/internet-published English-speaking world that is.

That makes it right and okay, doesn't it?  I mean, Wikipedia is doing no worse than other aspects of society.  It's not out leading lynch posses or sending around postcards of watermelons on the White House lawn.  Besides, who cares if some online bunch of whatever put there by whomever doesn't treat people of color with as much loving care as it treats living white men, especially the ones who share the worldview and characteristics of the majority of its Wikimaintainers?  This two-year old article from Alter.Net is one of the top websearch resources on this topic.  In it, Joi Ito was quoted as referring to the distribution of male vs. female Wikipedia chroniclers two years before that - in 2004.

Wikipedia seems much more gender balanced than the blogging community ... I wonder what causes this difference in gender distribution? Is it that the power law aspect of blogs is inherently more competitive and appeals to the way men are "trained" in society? Or is it that we're just talking to the "head" of the blog curve and that the more interesting blogs are actually by women in "the long tail"? Or is it something about Wikipedia that attracts powerful women?

Today, one of the top female blogs is Pioneer Woman.  And I find it almost surreal that Ito would refer to female Wikipedia contributors as "powerful."  Ten months after the Alter.Net article (receiving lots of comments, nearly all predictably of the "shut up, I'm right" and "don't make trouble where there is one" and "you're an idiot and WikiChix suck" variety), this chirrupy commentary concluded that the blogosphere was not primarily male dominated based on a series of scientifically-conducted counts of blogs, topics and genders of contributors. 

Wikipedia breaks down the same as everything else, no matter what commentators say.  The first mention of a female on Wikipedia's main page as of today, March 7, 2009, is down on the left hand-column, where it first mentions actress Brenda Scott (no Wikipedia link) and Andrew Prine (Wikipedia link) who were in real life, a married couple, starring as a brother and sister in a 1960's NBC television series.  The very last entry of "recently updated" Wikipedia entries says that fashion model Frankie Rayder appeared in Gap ads with her sisters.

I'm going to refer to Octavia Butler, because she went out in front so many times, on so many occasions.  It looks like she's had quite a bit of Wiki-attention, and her entry is factual and relatively comprehensive.  The earliest you can see edits from her entry is 2003, and I am sure the entry predates these edits that show today.  Since that time, her entry has been revised approximately 500 times.  Now we turn to Larry Niven, a sci-fi author whose entry is similar to Octavia Butler's - in one regard.  Larry's page contains tremendous reference to his ideas - in specifics.  His revisions are far more content-based than those observable on Octavia Butler's page.  All in all, however, these two entries are very similar, in history and in current appearance.  The big difference?  I LOVE Larry Niven - but culturally and historically, and even idea-wise, Octavia Butler is by far the more influential writer.  It's not that her entry should be "bigger," it's that it should be bigger idea-wise.  And with everything that Octavia wrote and did, it's the exact same.  Fair and balanced and nonsexist, nonracist, right?  Not.

Viewed in another manner, the only reason Sheri S. Tepper's Wikipedia entry is longer than Bud Webster's is that Sheri has published a significant body of work. 

It's like this.  Obama has to become President to be "noticed" and treated seriously.  Octavia Butler had to be that MacArthur genius to get an entry equivalent to Larry Niven's.  And Sheri S. Tepper had to publish her extensive body of work to get a similar entry to Bud Webster - who most people reading this would have absolutely no idea of who he is, and for very excellent reason.  And it's also related to this. And this.  Whoever has the biggest gun, and whoever yells the loudest.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love a Psycho With a Smiley Face

In one respect, the past does stay as bright as ever.  I remember hiding under my desk during bomb drill and looking up at the gum collection thinking, if the bomb really hit, would those hardened gray-pink blobs be the last thing I'd see?  What was on my school notebook?  A green and white peace symbol.  What was my favorite button on my jeans jacket?  A smiley face.  "Have a nice day." It was the exact same colors as the fallout shelter signs scattered here and there around town, usually above stairwells, at the basement stops of elevators, or one particularly frightening one, near the end of a blind brick alley.

To use a phrase common in those days, right on!  Just like "Have a Nice Day."

If there was one thing common to being a child of the cold war, it was the fear, always in the back of the mind, that the Russians could launch their missiles, we would fire ours back, and the whole world would be destroyed.  Yes, Virginia, we really did have nuclear bomb drills where we were told to "duck and cover."

None of the young people going to see Watchmen these days grew up with that fear.  I don't think "bomb drills" have been held in years, and if they tried to have them, people would laugh their butts off.  And in the ultimate irony, "Ozymandias" didn't save the world by mass slaughter and framing Dr. Manhattan, Ronald Reagan saved it by winning the cold war through spending the Soviets to death.  We are actually living in the world today that probably would have resulted twenty-four years down the road if Watchmen were real and the strange events of the story's alternate 1985 had actually occurred.  Laurie Juspeczyk seems about my age, although the Minuteman picture means that in the story, she needs to be older.  If she and Driberg had a baby (and I'm sure they would have, eventually), that baby would be about Meredith's age.  Bal's not a superhero grandbaby of the gorgeous psychopath rape couple, Sally Jupiter and Edward Blake the Comedian, she's the grandbaby of a couple of genius 1950's radicals who used to party with Lenny Bruce and other assorted blacklisted characters.

This is what great literature and film does.  It makes us think about the world we live in, whether the world it portrays is "real" or not.    

I'm not the only person to notice that the Comedian resembles Ernie Kovacs, the great 50's comedian who died in an auto crash in 1962 (and whose widow, Edie Adams, just passed away).  Others have mentioned that Rorschach's real name is Walter Kovacs, and that's a lot of coincidence for there not to be some subtext there.  The bizarre thing is, the real Ernie Kovacs was the gentlest, most creative of comedians, with a unique style of humor that's never been matched.  On the outside, he resembles Edward Blake; on the inside, he can't have been anything like him and done the sort of universal, timeless, unique comedy that he did.

Yes, that's a famous picture of Ernie Kovacs, not Edward Blake.  Look familiar?

So, in terms of the Minutemen (Missiles) and Dr. Manhattan (Project) and Watchmen (as in "My father was a watchmaker, but I gave it up when I realized time could not be kept"), Dr. Manhattan returning for his watch in order to be trapped and "atomized" into quantum particles, and the "Doomsday Clock" - and in terms of a product of the 1950's, like Ernie Kovacs, like Dr. Strangelove - like Dr. Manhattan's effort to make sense of the universe in his watchlike Mars palace - Watchmen is a great film, as its inspiration is the greatest of graphic novels.

You may find Rorschach's severe administration of justice and commitment to truth-telling difficult to take.  The scene where he describes to the prison psychologist ("You don't like me - why?" "Because you're fat.") how he became fully Rorschach, is as difficult to watch in the movie as it was to read in the original graphic novel.  However, anybody who would come across what Rorschach found in that horrible place and who didn't want to axe the child-raping murderer doesn't have their head screwed on even remotely straight. 

If you're as PTSD'd as I am, you may feel liberated by Rorschach's brutal candor and lack of any and all governors on behavior, making the scrawny, undersized red-headed stranger able to destroy any and all of his prison nemeses with ease.  When Nite Owl and Silk Spectre arrived to bust Rorschach out of his burning Attica, it was more like they were rescuing the surviving inmate population, not their fellow "mask". 

Or, you may feel liberated by the Comedian's joyful slaughter of Vietnamese peasants (somewhat), and as glad as I was to see him launching grenades at rioting hippies.  When he shoots down the Vietnamese woman who has confronted him with the results of his sexual exploitation of her, it's collateral damage of the most brutally honest nature, and Dr. Manhattan's bemused, too-late false concern even better.  When it was revealed that a week prior to his death, the aging Comedian was confessing his sins to his worst enemy and bawling like a baby to think of the horrible plot he'd uncovered, it's hard to keep in mind that the same crybaby was the gentleman who in the film, still gripping his Cuban cigar between clenched teeth, slaughtered JFK, and who fathered the beautiful second Silk Spectre through the worst sort of violent expression of "love".

Supposed to be a political commentary?  It's a commentary that, made during its time, seemed politically trenchant, because the world really was on the brink of nuclear destruction.  A Smiley Face is a Fallout Shelter is a shredded Vietnamese peasant.  The Watchmen are special because they made themselves heroes, and the most Godlike of them is the "symbol and protector of America," a 50-foot tall blue man who blithely slaughters the lone honest one among them, just so that man wouldn't tell the truth.

The danger that gave rise to all of these metaphors has greatly-changed today, and what remains are the feelings, the characters, the things that they say about all of us.  The truths as Sally Jupiter said, "At my age, the future grows a little darker every day, but the past is as bright as ever."  The truth where Dr. Manhattan, the man with godlike powers who isn't very human at all any more, says that Laurie came from a terrible rape, but became the one unique thing that she was.  She's supposed to be a symbol of goodness, I suppose, but maybe more in the graphic novel than in the film, her character was a real woman, who needed and wanted all the things any woman does (and three blue guys weren't it).  The fans will see one thing in Watchmen, the moviegoers another, the graphic novel purists, yet another.  Nobody can "get" it all -- it's a creation that has taken a life of its own, and not at all the same life as other popular superhero fictions have.  Better than X-Men?  The Watchmen are "grittier" and "flawed" so therefore . . .

I don't think so.  When it was written thousands of years ago, Gilgamesh was about the things that were important to the Mesopotamians in that day.  Gilgamesh was actually kind of an asshole, and Enkidu wasn't even human - he became "human" like a mud-based Pinocchio in the course of the story, and both of them interacted with gods who did stuff for their own, humanly-inscrutable reasons.  Kind of like where Dr. Manhattan was headed.  Watchmen got the Cold War wrong, but it got everything else right - so much so that it doesn't matter "who won the Cold War" because the rest of it really does go on forever.  And there really are people who think Ozymandias was a hero, and his crackpot genocidal mania the best thing evarr.  Which is why there are people like the Comedian, to launch grenades into their idiotic protesting faces.

Silenced: Do We Speak, or Not?

I would love to have found easily accessible writing and advocacy that encouraged not-blaming victims of assault, harassment or coercion.  I did not find it.  Most information of this nature is highly-politicized.  I know from my experience in fathers' rights situations and parental alienation, that only the most extreme horrific behavior on the part of the alienator/s will convince people that the target parent is not to blame for his or her bad situation.

As if she needed some OTHER online trouble, one of our most talented editors and writers, Kathryn Cramer, appears to have been targeted in an internet hate campaign related to some inadvertent - something-or-other.  I'm really not sure.  I just know Kathryn was doing what seems to have been a usual task for herself, maintaining an online Wiki, and she suddenly drew the ire of aggressive individuals based upon including online comments and a pseudonym of a commenter on the subject at hand.

I've witnessed online communities destroyed by aggressive, abusive behavior.  There's no other word for it.  In fact, it's pretty obvious, at a distance, that the perpetrators are not only frequently male, they are invariably dysfunctional in "real life".  I have never seen an extreme online aggressor who, in real life, was successful in his career, enjoyed many real-life friendships, and who had a reasonably stable financial base.  The story of the horrible treatment of Kathy Sierra is well-known.  This article does an excelent job of covering the harassment Sierra received as a result of being a female blogger.

In pursuit of my theory that those who abuse others are doing so for two reasons, first, that they feel inferior to others, and being abusive or harming others provides them with enjoyment and a sense of superiority, and second, abusers cannot exist coequally with others, and therefore strike out in order to dominate and maintain a sense of power.  In a third potential, occasional abusers or manipulators can reverse the "victim" situation, and attempt to cover up inadequacies by "striking first".  Yes - no day is complete without some Moonbattery.  Failing class?  Accuse a beloved book of being "racist" to escape work and consequences. In the case of Kathy Sierra, her assaulters/harassers probably had poor jobs, if any, probably wished they had an internet audience and attention, and what better way than to put up pictures of her with a noose around her neck, issue death threats and post about slitting her throat and ejaculating.  Hee-hee-hee. 

The thought process that would produce something that is so pathetic that it's hardly worth talking about except to say - NONE OF IT WAS KATHY'S FAULT. 

In my case, the answer is simple.  It's far too late for me to be anonymous, and research points up that anonymity doesn't help women avoid harassment on the internet.  Increasingly, threats of real-world violence are made against females online - just for speaking up.  This article features a woman who received five years of harassment that extended to threats against her children and false accusations that she abused her children (actual calls to the police).  Her offense?  She commented on someone's blog!  It's almost universal among female bloggers that some type of online harassment has occurred.

Yes, in my case it is very simple.  I made the choice many years ago to be a writer.  It was my childhood dream, and I made my first "book" (folded construction paper) when I was six years old.  I was fortunate enough to be born recently enough that I was not overly hindered by ideas that "a woman can't be a writer," though I discovered as I began to study literature that - there were an awful lot of guy stories, and not many girl ones, once one graduates from fairy tales, Disney princesses, Island of the Blue Dolphins and Misty of Chincoteague. 

But what this really is about, at least as far as I'm concerned, is losers trying to tear down winners in order to make themselves feel less like the pathetic, talent-free waste-cases that they are.  I've already lost the most precious thing a person could lose, and I survived.  I'll never be the same again, but that doesn't mean I'm weak, and it doesn't mean that I think my son's memory will be best-served by my ceasing to get up each morning and live every day to the fullest.  I've got a daughter, many friends, many students - and heck, even some people who like to read what I write.  And after you've been through what I have - no internet flamer is going to mean a damn thing. 

I want to link to this beautiful, eloquent post by a LiveJournal writer, Miss Maggie.  I would simply like to comment that, from my experience as a teacher and in working in different environments - people who are coming from NORMAL AND DIVERSE perspectives can maybe feel a little less "silenced" to realize that many of the individuals who "dominate" in the SF/F world, especially online, are more egotistical and less-able to listen and acknowledge than the general population.  Think about it.  Think about how common in daily life it is to find people at every turn who are unable to hold a conversation unless it consists of "me me me me me, enough about you, let's talk about me!"  That IS part of it.  I can't say I'm sorry to see that it looks like the larger group of younger, diverse creative artists have noticed the ego/communication/dialog issues and are addressing it in the best way - refusing to sit down and shut up.  Being a creative artist does involve risk-taking and a lot of courage.  Sure, it feels good to play it safe, and I am pretty sure that it might be as hard for a lot of others to speak out as it certainly has been, and somewhat to this day, remains to me.