'Something's Wrong with Maddie'

Oh my dear god.  That title—the title of this post, as it happens—is the title of a book I bought, at a time last week when I wasn't really paying very careful attention.  I Just started actually reading it this morning. 

Piper, the main protagonist, is in a really bad place.  She's dragging herself through a very painful life as a complaints person for an internet provider.  She's lost her girlfriend recently; she's dead.  That's Maddie.

It turns out that she and Maddie were so close that Piper is all at sea in a very scary way.  She can barely hold herself together; doesn't eat, can't sleep, can't focus on anything.  Then she finds a book that tells her how to get Maddie back from the dead, as a zombie.

This is where I stopped reading.  I went back to the blurbs, finding it hard to believe that I actually paid, like, $2.99 for this book.  Then I read a few reviews of people who had bought and read the book.  The reviews were almost all highly favorable.  Apparently, once Maddie comes alive—don't ask, because I didn't read that far—she has to eat human flesh.  I think it's completely out of line for a dead person to demand human flesh, but apparently Maddie is insatiable. 

So why am I writing about this story?  It appears that these two were really super in love.  (That much I got from my reading; the author conveys Piper's devastation at Maddie's death very convincingly.)  And from the blurbs/ reviews I think I picked up that the more Maddie ate, the more human she became. 

What can I say.  I should've waited until I'd read the whole thing before I wrote about it.  Maybe one of you might be brave enough to just pick up the book and read it, and tell us how it goes!

Kay

A Helen episode I had forgotten about!

Here is the link, and I'll explain below:

Chopsticks

This is a 'page' on the Blog.  It is set at the time Helen had had her most recent, and most invasive, brain surgery, and had returned home with Maryssa, to the Primrose house (Maryssa's family home, from where they would move to the new, rented home near where Lalitha's family, and the instrument factory were situated).

I was just reading this page this morning, and I was startled at how well I had been writing at that time.  Many of the characters are illuminated beautifully by this episode, but I'm a little nervous about slicing it into one of the other stories, for fear of having to do some lengthy inspections, to avoid duplication, etc.  The painfully slow steps Helen took to become a functional adult again have been glossed over in Concerto.  This episode also highlights how Erin struggled with Helen's nemory loss.

People Who Hate 'Spelling Nazis' Need Not Read

I'm just in the middle of a short story, and the author had confused 'their' and 'they're'.  I was puzzling over the sentence for a full minute, until I guessed what was going on. 

Now, I do not believe the entire e-story industry should revolve around my desire to avoid being confused for even 1 minute.  But I'm now becoming afraid of whether it is even possible to demand orthographic accuracy from my fellow-citizens.  I can imagine everybody thinking: Jeeze, the whole world is going to hell, and you want accurate spelling???

OK, well no.  Spell your words however you want; I would not deign to jump in the middle of these bleeding Iranian schoolchildren, and these gilded high-security ballrooms and these multi-billion-dollar thefts of public funds, and these shameless lawsuits to prevent citizens from voting, just to insist on good spelling; no sir, not I.  But listen, there are obviously a few leftover Boomers to spellcheck official government documents, so that uneducated goons like hegseth and whatsisname—the secretary of state—can dash off screeds to be later cleaned up by spelling flunkies.  But think long-term.  Ten years from now, who's going to do this unrewarding editing?  Just so that, in my old age, I will be saved minor peaks of blood pressure while reading fiction?  (Or governmental vitriol?)

I know; while impeaching the prez (affectionately called "the former president" by furious people, who don't even want to give him the recognition of being the elected head of state) the last thing we ought to be doing is worrying about spelling.  But this is how I keep sane.  The agitators advise: don't let this corruption become normalized!!  If this is going to be the way government will be run in the future, every group that doesn't like the policies of whoever is in power will adopt these MAGA-type tactics to render the Federal government ineffective.  This is the long-range objective of the Steve Bannons, the permanently angry podcasters out there. 

But no matter in what stage the destruction of the government is in, I have to remain sane.  So while I briefly allow my blood to run cold at the insane actions of Trump and his non-aligned ducks, I quickly come back to the sane world of women's fiction!  And, of course, rail against the wrong use of words.

I have to concede: it's not exactly about spelling as such; it's about the correct use of various words that sound alike. 

Kay

What do diverse college kids study?

I'm trying not to insult anyone, especially now that college-educated middle-aged liberals find political allies among farmers and union workers, and former government workers. 

When I was in university (I attended a university for both undergrad and grad school), I noticed some trends in what sorts of majors young people from various backgrounds signed up for. 

Asian kids: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Korean, etc, normally studied science.  As a result, there are a lot of Asian people working in industry, Tech, computer, and technical fields within media companies, and so on.  Meanwhile, most kids from the US tended to study Business.  Law schools had lots of US kids, but also kids from Jewish backgrounds, as well as from families where one or both parents were already lawyers.  The kids of teachers often went into teaching, though how rewarding that was, from a professional point of view, depended on how motivated their students were.  (Truly gifted teachers could work with even moderately willing students, but I personally found it difficult.)

What sports did kids get into?  Business majors were often into Golf, and Football.

These choices are seen in the makeup of the various professions:  I see lots of white Americans in Business; lots of Indians and Asians in News media.  It isn't as clear as I expected, but there do seem to be trends. 

In quite unrelated news, I'm reading that the prez seems to be spiraling, feeling that he's losing control of all the shenanigans he's been juggling, including the war, and foreign policy generally.  That last: foreign policy, is not something that can be improvised under pressure.  You have to have two things ready: a clear philosophical basis for all your actions; some people would call that a moral foundation; and a strong team behind you, and armed forces that believe in your leadership.  Trump had 0 for 2.  If he's reading this (or if his assigned reading assistant is reading this, because I don't think Trump can read efficiently) they would declare that I'm biased, and disregard the whole post.  At least, they would have, if Trump was all right.  But everything points to Trump being senile.  Trump certainly majored in business and golf.

Kay

Gender Transitioning, and Parents

I have written before about why I strongly dislike gender changing surgery for minors, and certainly for pre-pubescent children.  Many people who become parents don't seem to have the maturity to make life-changing decisions for their kids.  There's presently a case of a broken family, where one parent—who is transgender—has abducted their child, and taken it to Cuba, and it is suspected that the objective is to perform gender-altering surgery on the child.  OK, draw your own conclusions. 

Most of the difficulty with gender, in my view, it's because our society expects all of us to express our gender.  I mean that guys are expected to wear pants.  Girls, old enough to have breasts, are expected to wear bras.  In short, you're expected to dress according to whatever gender you "are".

In Catholic schools, for instance, the nuns are often severe on kids who prefer to cross dress.  If a guy is permitted to dress girly, and act girly, much of the psychological pressure for a little guy to want to be a girl will dissipate. 

Meanwhile, of course, young guys with hormonal urges tend to express their needs by bullying, shows of strength, picking on girls and effeminate boys, all with a view to showing off how tough they are.  So a little boy who wants to dress in a skirt and pick daisies is going to be relentlessly persecuted.  And there are going to be girls who would rather die than dress like girls are expected to, and prefer to play boy sports, and beat people up just like the boys.  If the kids just left each other alone (without interacting with each other in gender-related ways), they could easily express themselves in any way they wished, without wishing for gender-altering surgery.  I could easily imagine a time when little kids under the age of 9, say, could share common toilets, boys and girls, once our culture has proceeded beyond the taboos that are common today.  So it could very well be cultural imperatives that fuel much of dysphoria among little kids. 

A little second-grader girl who wants to dress like a boy can easily do so.  It's a little harder for a little boy to dress like a girl, and wear a ribbon in his hair, for instance.  And in Pennsylvania, I suppose, if that happens in a catholic school, the older nuns will freak out, because obviously God would not like his gender statistics ruined.  But the time can come, surely, where we could separate a person's preferred way of expressing their gender, from the morphology of their genitals?

Kay

Miscellaneous

Well.  I slept over at my friend's last night, after having attended Governor Josh Shapiro's meeting at the local college!  I was trying to meet him and say hello, but I could not get close enough 😞!  He holds our state on a steady course, despite all the shenanigans of the maga component of our state house.

This morning, we were drooling over some photographs of my friend's Irish family!  The nieces were so incredibly cute!  There's something to be said for raising a family and having children!  But I love tiny kids too much to inflict silly GOP nonsense on them.  Imagine sending your child to a classroom where vaccination isn't required?

The little critters were just painfully cute this morning!

My friend is going nuts over the nice weather, and she wants to go work on her garden!  That's what she's doing now. 

And then she's going to watch golf.  I could never see the point of that sport; miniature golf I enjoy.  But real golf: count me out. 

Kay

Clair Ashton: Oxford Romances

I have been reading Clare Ashton's sort-of trilogy of romances, centered on two friends, Charlotte and Millie, who get into the university the same year, and really hit it off beautifully.

Charlotte is an upper-middle-class child of Oxford-educated parents, while Millie is the only child of a single mother.  Charlotte is reserved and naïve; Millie is blunt and brash and outspoken and loud.

The author is quite clear-eyed about the snobbery of the place, and the annoying attitudes of Oxford boys ("men"), actually not very different from those of guys on any university or college campus.

I have noticed that those who have gone to Oxford tend to love the place to pieces; the stories are replete with descriptions of the environs, though Clare Ashton, the author, is considerably more restrained than most oxfordian authors.  Even in this story, many of the characters leave Oxford, but then return.

The characters Clare Ashton delineates over the four volumes of the 'trilogy' are very three- dimensional, including the grandparents of Charlotte and one of her friends, and some young children.  All this goes to underscore what I have tried to say, namely that an interesting author is a careful observer of everything!  Of course, we can only infer how much õf an observer an author is by reading their work, and naturally there's a lot of selection there, in what he or she chooses to record.  I just love what CA chooses to comment on, though I could use a lot less Oxford information.  (In fact, Oxford is effectively an additional character in these stories.  It is so in other stories as well, e.g. The Golden Compass.)

However, the author occasionally goes haywire, and drops one or more words in her excitement.  The language is beautiful (a long as she's aware, and keeps track of her mechanics), and she drops into colloquial lingo as and when necessary, sometimes totally cracking me up!  In these horrible days, it is just fabulous to know that there are sane, imaginative people writing fiction. 

Another author I have been enjoying is Caren Werlinger.  She writes stories that are deeply religious, and about people who are religious—in fact a community of nuns in a convent.  Now, I'm not in the least religious, and certainly not Roman Catholic, like Caren Werlinger's characters (I was an Episcopalian, and very low-church), but I can say that her stories (actually, mainly just one long story) is mainly about values.  The values of our society are splitting in two, in the Trump era, to coin a phrase—or actually, into three.  A large number, of quite articulate people, continue to be strongly grounded in values that drove the political leadership of the last fifty years.  Then there is an enormous number of people who are quite cynical.  Robber-baron wannabees.  And then, unfortunately, there are religious militants, who seek power and wealth, and are totally intolerant.  Reading Caren Werlinger, Ì'm transported to the idea-world of my childhood and youth, filled with idealism.  Popular media is full of a sort of fake, performative idealism (Theater), and the fiction of both these authors are very refreshing, for their values.

Kay