Mangoes

Here are ten reasons why you should eat mangoes:
1) They are soft fruit and super easy to digest.
2) They are full of sugar, which is good for you, damnit (yeah, pretty much everything you heard about sugar murdering your face is wrong. Except for diabetes, which is not cool)
3) They're tropical, and that's somehow more awesome than temperature fruit. Fuckin' apples. Think they're so cool.
4) Some mangoes are red and green, some (like in Zimbabwe) are purple and green.
5) They're sticky and juicy
6) Years and years of planned breeding has gone into them to make them not nearly as stringy as they used to be. Seriously, they used to have to be cut in a special way otherwise the fruit would get all mangled. But it's not like that now. Be a hero and appreciate it, damnit.
7) You can chew the residual flesh out of the peel and it tastes amazing.
8) Mango is a fun word to say. Imagine how fun it must be to eat?
9) They're not available that often, so eat them now!
10) They taste like sugarflower fairies having sex in your mouth!

FDPL Weekly Feature

For great Justice, please send me your original artworks! I'm running out of pictures here, and the FDPL needs all the help it can get! Without you, there is nothing but darkness and despair for all foxgirls worldwide!

My Second Cousin Once Removed

Well, first off her name is Epiphany. So, you should probably go and kill yourselves because nothing you do will ever compare to her name, let alone her accomplishments. I'm sorry, but we've all been made redundant. I know, it's hard.

Secondly, omigosh she is the cutest creature EVER. I've spent the morning with her walking on the mountain and doing handstands and everything and it has put me in the best mood. And somewhat broody, but I'll get past that soon... hopefully.

I hope to see her again soon.

God Emperor of Dune

I won. Barely, but I won.

I got all the way through that terribly thought-provoking book, all the way to the end, though admittedly the appendices defeated me.

But still.

I won! Except near the end I realised that all my preconceptions had been shattered by the beauty of the inverted ending. I felt that special feeling; being the only person in the world who interpreted a book correctly. I need to go and find all the other people like me and we can sit and be self-righteous together.

With a picnic basket, discussing World Systems Theory.

Yesssssss.

My Own Prejudice

I am going to tell you a sad story, about me.

A few days ago, on Saturday the 17th, I went to the first of a number of seminars designed to teach me how to become a cultural diversity facilitator. It was a long day and though I was prepared to deal with some ego issues and so forth, and have been extensively prepped on the subject matter from doing Anthropology, one incident sticks out on my memory.

(First, a little about the course. There were 18 facilitators-in-training, a few trainers, and the programme organiser. The group was politically-correctly homogenous, crossing the age, sex, colour, and class boundaries in a way so clearly aritificial it was almost nauseating.)

We had just finished defining prejudice (for the purpose of the course) and then had to introduce the person sitting next to us to the room. Everyone took their turn and di their thing, and it was interesting and enlightening. Then, one woman began introducing the woman next to her. They were both fairly young mothers, I'm guessing in their early thirties, and had obviously been talking about their children. So, this woman said that her partner's 'greatest achievement' was raising her 14-year-old son to be a good man (verbatim).

Here we come to the sad part. Upon hearing those words, I immediately thought: "Oh dear, I know what that means: she's raising him on a solid diet of feminist rhetoric. That poor guy is going to grow up to be omigosh Thomas WHAT THE HELL.You are the most terrible person."

Okay, well, that is rather sad. Unfortunately, it gets worse. Because throughout the entire course she... wow I really wish I wasn't saying this but she confirmed my every suspicion. I can't describe the scene except it was like watching someone about to stab themself in the face, and there's nothing you can do about it. And then I felt terrible for developing that judgement based on an earlier judgement and then I felt angry at the world for not jumping in and proving to me that I was wrong to make snap decisions. Remember, this was just after a section on why prejudice is bad. I was choking on the irony.

Now I understand I could simply have found 'objectionable' things in what she was saying to justify my earlier judgement and thus enable myself to feel self-righteous about the entire mess. And even using the word objectionable is a cause for sadness, because it speaks of my own intolerance towards certain movements, or at least ways of expressing certain ideologies. But the saddest part is, referring to my possible self-justification: I don't think that was the case.

I think I managed to walk away from a transformative session on the dangers of prejudice with reinforced set of prejudices. No wonder I was so bloody miserable on Saturday.

Post: Frank Herbert’s Dune

What I really need is to avoid reading things, pretty much any things, when I want to write again. At the moment/for the past week I have been reading Dune and all its sequels, which is terrible. Or terrifying, probably both. I love Dune like a jogger likes running. It’s not actually pleasant but when it’s over you feel like a good person. For me, Dune is much the same, because it makes my brain ache. Currently I am working through (and it is work) God-Emperor of Dune. Aside from the common theme of politics and religion which deserves not a blog post but an entire bloody university’s output for three years, the topic de jure is about male vs female armies. And it’s getting really, really convoluted. All sorts of repressed sexual connotations and worship and the whole thing is tied into religion and shhiiiiitttt I’m not smart enough for this...

Dune makes me think. It doesn’t make me accept everything in the books as fact because that would be close to the ultimate insult to a critique on deterministic religion, but it does make me think. The problem is I have both lost my taste for intellectualisation and even the ability to do it properly. I feel on the precipice of a massive well of indescribability and I’m terrified of it, and terrified of my own terror.

I need to finish this book, quickly. I need to block it out because I am constantly in pain these days. Even the unpleasant exertion of pointless gym exercise is becoming a relief from my mental hurting. I hate Dune, for making me think.

FDPL Weekly Feature

Hello hello... the weekly feature. I have to say this picture confuses me... she looks about 12, is wearing tartan and a hoodie, and is carrying a gun. Plus she's in Mexico? Layers within layers.

4 hour tutorials

This happened yesterday. I didn't have time to post it then, but here it is now, for your enjoyment or hatred.

* * * * *

4- Hour Tutorials and Omigosh I’m Tired
Well, I’m writing this in sections, in the ten minute breaks I’ve scheduled after each hour. After talking my ass off for an hour I’m already tired and I still have three hours to go – there is no way I can keep this up! They say men only speak 2000 words a day; I think I have already fulfilled my quota.

I have to say I have missed university-level tutoring. Though English is not my area of expertise (literature certainly), it is fun to have an open forum of ideas and not just the usual one sullen school student and their fatuous mathematics problems.

FATUOUS I SAY!

Anyway, yeah. Tutoring! Its great. Somehow I have been managing to provide a good quality service (or so it would seem) to my kiddies (even though at least one of them is older than me, tutlings is probably a better word). I find it strange how eloquent and clever they can be with a little encouragement, but they obviously need a boost in the right direction. The biggest problem seems to be poetry. Oh boy, do I know that feeling...

I still have difficulty getting the hand of things like trochaic meter, enjambment and caesure. Sometimes I think poets are being deliberately obtuse about the whole cadenza just to keep themselves viable :P. But as a dabbler in terrible, terrible poetry myself, it would be harsh of me to unjustly criticise the profession. or vocation. Or whatever it is.

Gotta go, they are back from their last break. You have to have breaks in a thing like this: no-one can concentrate for 4 hours straight, NO-ONE I SAY. let's analysis some madda-squagging poetry, beeyotch.

Fox About Box: Dirty Talking

Sometimes I wish I was on Wordpress... they seem to have much nicer tabs... if you're listening google, make your blogspots more customisable please! The list thing just isn't enough... anyway today's topic, and finally the opening of the promised sexy times my banner promises, we have the first entry for Fox About Box, the new sex section. Today's topic: dirty talking.

Dirty talking always confused me. Confuses me I should say. I guess because there seems to be multiple definitions which centre around two basic poles: A) dirty talking is talking about how good that tongue/penis/vagina (gasp, naughty words!) feels, or how hot one is getting, and so forth, while the latter (likely inspired by pornography) consists of straight out foul-mouthed swearing, possible accompanied by gesticulations and power point presentations. To be frank, the second seems just unpleasant. I have to say, I've often been of the opinion that if you're mouth isn't too busy to chat, you're doing it wrong, but that's just prescriptivism.

Anyway, getting the the main point, which is only tangentially related... wow my sentence structure is terrible. Um, dirty talking. Dirty acadmic talking. For those not in the know, and lets be honest all 4 of my readers are in the know, I trained as a social scientist. And so politics, economics and sociology is sexy to me. And therefore when I read upon some website a fictional conversation between two politics-trained soldiers, and especially the quote:

"Say it, I'm about to cum!"
"Socio..."
"Yes..."
"Political..."
"Oh yes!"
"Ramifications!"
{cries of ecstasy}

I laughed until I died...

I'd totally get turned on by that.

So, dirty talking! Awesome, apparently.

Holy Shit Holy Shit Holy Shit

A sequel to Arcanum, with the artwork done by Sam Didier, with music by Joseph Fuckin' Bolton, featuring the programming of Thomas Biskup. The narrative is set in a steampunk world ala Arcanum with a slightly greater focus on nature and paganism. I'm seeing pagan gods walking disguised amongst humans, the clash of technology and magic, politics, assassins, trade cabals, unique quests, changing political landscapes based on player decisions, random story encounters...

Sorry, I think I just had a nerdgasm...

FDPL Weekly Feature

Another musical foxgirl. It must be a trend :P.