linkers gotta link

^I pretty much never do video links but this one is worth it, at least if you've ever wondered what rhymes with 'Regretsy'.

Epic plug time; part of Tricia Sullivan's back catalogue is finally appearing on Kindle. She's been blogging about them, and has put the two-page opening of Maul on her LJ. Please take a look at it; it is the most trollmode opening I know of and I love getting people to read it irl. The book is partly a story about teen girls with guns having a nice day out in a high-end New Jersey shopping mall (the titular maul) and partly about a future earth mostly devoid of men. It's provocative and thoughtfully problematic, and gratuitously ends in what a lesser book might have regarded as a middle. One of the recurring things I love about Sullivan is the fucking with the idea of what an ending is.

She followed that up with a post about Double Vision which also includes an extract. It's a more evenly written but less gratuitously fun book than Maul, and is partly about a mid-80s SF fan who has a strange relationship with TV, and partly about a war on an alien planet. It has a followup called Sound Mind that she hasn't blogged about yet, but I'll link it when she does, because it is my favourite, and is the only sci-fi book I've read in which the science in question is music.

I know I've said this before in this blog, but the reason I love Sullivan is that she uses sci-fi machinery like aliens and apocalypses and virtual worlds in order to discuss the things that really matter; marketing, television, junk food, pop music, shopping. Her protagonists are almost all WOC. Her writing is vividly human and relevant and also full of damn good prose and verbal & structural experiments. So yeah, read the extracts, buy them if you're interested; she is completely worth your time.

Also from Tricia Sullivan's blog, short extracts from Thunder and Lightning by Natalie Goldberg, which is a Zen Buddhist book about writing. Scholastic Snake Oil is today's other link about writing; The MFA: Why Can't It Be Training For Real Jobs And In Writing Real Poems?

In wank news; Pretending You’re Oppressed: The New Internet Fad:

And we’ve already crossed the event horizon. Anything not mainstream is “oppressed” in this wonderland. Wielding identity as a weapon, one can entirely remove themselves from personal responsibility for their part in harming others, and ultimately, any negativity at all.

Ever hear of otherkin, or otakukin? They refer to people who “identify” as animals or anime characters. I’m pretty open, do whatever you want as long as you’re not bugging me. According to some, though, lack of widespread acceptance of otherkin is contributing to mass otherkin oppression. Oh? Otherkin are being rounded up from their homes and killed? No? Are they being fired from jobs for being otherkin? Not that either, huh? Are they at least being disproportionately arrested and thrown in jail with sentences 60% longer than non-otherkin? Well then what IS going on? They’re… being ostracized on the internet. Oh.

From Dw3t-Hthr's Pagan Blog Project series, H is for Handholding and Headpatting:

I was not put on this planet to make your life easier.

If you are seeking out religious services in particular, it would be contrary to my duties and obligations to make your life easier. In the short term, at least. If you want my services as a priest, then expect to have your ass kicked, because that is the service that I offer in that role. I do not do confession and absolution. I do not offer warm blanket snuggles and affirmations as to your special place in the universe.

Stuff you already knew: 26,000 Americans die prematurely due to lack of health insurance every year. The Atlantic has a photoseries called Not Where They Hoped They'd Be; 'portraits of graduates from around the world who have been unable to find work in their degree fields and have ended up in poorly paid service industry jobs.' And John Cheese has written a cracked.com summary of much of the stuff we already know and called it 5 Ways We Ruined The Occupy Wall Street Generation.

From the New Statesman, Tax avoidance isn't a left or right issue, it's a cancer eating our democracy. This is a really good UK-specific overview of why rich people pay less tax than the rest of us, although it leaves out one crucial detail from the book it's partly based on (Treasure Islands, which I've not yet read, just heard a lot about); about half the world's tax havens are British territory and it would be trivially easy for the UK government to bring that to an end, and the only justification for not doing so is the notion that people would just go use some other tax haven instead.

On Reddit, Where has all the money in the world gone? (in terms understandable to a 5-year-old).

In electionfailia, Four Things Romney Wishes He Hadn't Said About Romneycare. Also in ACA news, Don't Cheer John Roberts from Paul Campos at Salon.

From Buzzfeed, 21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity.