First up, my paranoid VR suburbia story "Days Like These" is up in audio form at The Overcast and narrated by J.S. Arquin. This is a new podcast focusing on speculative fiction from writers in the Pacific Northwest. There certainly are a lot of us here! I hope you'll check it out.
Also, my short story "Hand of God," originally in PodCastle, is now in "print" in Fantasy Scroll magazine! This is an older story, one of the first that I wrote when I started writing again in 2011, There's also an interview with me up at the site. I may have blathered.
Also re: Hugos: I have never cared about them, but now I really don't care. I know that by all rights I should have An Opinion About This. It probably doesn't say anything positive about my character that I don't. Yes, the Puppies' tactics (both sets, though one much more so than the other) were skeevy. But also, it's an award. Just an award. If I were one of the fans who has been attending WorldCons for years or spent the past decade as a supporting member, I might care. But I'm not. I don't have the money to travel to faraway conventions and while I could afford the $40 for a supporting membership, I'd rather use that money to buy books (you get books with the supporting membership, but they might not be the ones I want to read).
I appreciate that people are upset about this and they have the right to be angry, but I also have the right to be indifferent. Seeing the words Hugo (or Nebula) on a dust jacket has never made me any more likely to pick up a book. There are hundreds of quality works published every year and only a fraction of them will ever win awards. That's life. This year, a different and possibly less quality slate of works were nominated. But does that mean no more great stories will be published? It certainly does not. If works of lesser quality are nominated from here on out? Perhaps that's a little crappy, but you always have the option to not care about the Hugos. Care about a different award instead. Or care about... no awards at all. Crazy thought, I know!
Selfishly, I am unhappy that my first WorldCon will be marred by tense conversations about a stupid award. Every panel: award talk. Hugo talk at the bar, Hugo talk at the pool. Maybe all WorldCons are like this? Or maybe by that point nobody will care. That's the best case scenario, a world in which we all just kinda say "you know what, this doesn't matter." And then we all go read things we like, and write other things we like. The work is the prize. All else is gravy.
So it seems that less than a month after joining SFWA, it has managed to disappoint. If you're involved with writing SF at all then you already know the details, but I figured I'd put up another post about it anyway, because it's always good to have another voice in the room. So, the details:
1. SFWA publishes a trade journal called The Bulletin, a subscription to which is included with SFWA membership. The Winter 2013 issue had a cover featuring a lady in a chainmail bikini, laughingly juxtaposed next to a headline asking "Where Do the Dues Go?"
2. The next issue featured an editorial about career longevity that included an extended metaphor about Barbie, how she doesn't dress like a tramp the way those Bratz girls do, instead maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should. I read the article while over at a SFWA member's house, and thought it was more bizarre than anything. The metaphor didn't even make sense in the context of the article; Barbie changes "her" style all the time! "She" can't remain true to "herself," because Barbie is a plastic toy licensed by a corporation.
I already knew about the chainmail bikini cover and the Barbie article when I joined, and while I was annoyed by those things, I wasn't actively offended. I rolled my eyes, yeah, sure. Because it's a trade journal, not the cover of a pulp magazine (and SF magazines haven't carried those types of covers for a very long time). This would be kinda like the AMA journal putting a sexy nurse on the cover, or the American Bar Association trotting out its hottest new lawyers on the front page of an issue otherwise devoted to tax policy. I'm all for sexy nurses, hot tax attorneys, and yes even chainmail bikini babes (although I didn't find the image on The Bulletin all that sexy, I felt the composition was poor and the coloring muddied). But on the cover of what's supposed to be your organization's flagship publication, the professional face you put out to the world? I've railed against the expectation of professionalism in writing before (of course, that was when I was told that "professional writers" shouldn't ever mention politics or personal problems to anyone, because nobody will publish your stories/novels if you don't present an absolutely blank-slate face to the world), but when it comes to something like The Bulletin, I think that professionalism is something that is required.
And that leads us to...
3. The latest issue, the first I received in the mail and which was worse than the other two fails combined. Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, two writers I have never read but who have been in the SF game for a very long time, engaged in a "conversation" where, over six pages of fairly small type, they railed against anyone who was offended by the bikini cover, said that nobody would complain if they called male writers or editors "beautiful" (yeah, but you didn't do that, did you?), and closed out the article by stating that "If they [feminists] can get away with censoring that, can you imagine what comes next? I'm pretty sure Joe Stalin could imagine it. Even Chairman Mao could imagine it." Because truly, thinking that a pulpy image isn't necessarily the best cover for a trade journal = killing ten million people. The editor, Jean Rabe, seemed to think this was a counterpoint to a very good article by another male writer, Jim C. Hines, about ChainmailFail and sexualization of cover images in general. (It's also worth noting that the length of the Malznick piece was twice the length of the Hines article.)
Where do the dues go, indeed!
It seems that the editor (who has since resigned) seemed to think she was offering a different view by placing the Malznick piece alongside the Hines piece. But the thing is, the Hines piece didn't need a counterpoint. Equal rights and respect for all don't need a differing view to "further the dialogue." Also, invoking "fascism" is a lot like bringing up Hitler. You don't automatically lose the debate, but you've set up a hell of a job for yourself.
I'm not going to quit writing SF. You don't need to be in SFWA to write SF, and let's be honest, all my attempts at straight fiction come out SF anyway (there was one story that I wrote in college that came so close to being just a normal lit piece about relationship dynamics but then I had to go and make the metaphor literal). And I'm not going to stop interacting with the SF community, at least now that I've found a corner of it that doesn't suck. I also know there are some amazing people in SFWA (largely women) who are currently scrambling to make things better.
But I gotta say, it DOES piss me off that I paid $80 of my money to pay for two old dudes to talk about what a fascist people like me are. I guess I'll spend this year deciding if it's worth it to me to continue. I think a lot of people in SFWA are going to spend this year deciding that.
One of the things I hate whenever a tragedy happens (and I don't need to specifically name the tragedy here, because a) you all know which one I'm talking about; and b) it's going to happen again at some indeterminate point in the future, so this is a multi-use blog post, like a greeting card that says "I'm Thinking About You") is the refrain of "don't politicize it!" Because the only thing that makes survivors feel better about the senseless pain they are going through is if people they will never meet tiptoe around and never try to change the parameters in order to help prevent someone else from undergoing senseless pain.
I would agree with not politicizing tragic events if you're directly related to the event in question. If you're actually living in Newtown, you probably shouldn't be railing about gun control today. If you're taking a casserole to a grieving mother, it's best not to drop in a note saying "by the way, what's your opinion on mandatory commitment for the mentally ill?" If you do those things, you are a stone cold asshole.
But if you're on the outside? Yeah, no. It's okay for you to politicize events, and in fact it's your DUTY as an observer to politicize events.
So, here's the particular political axes I've come to grind:
1) Guns. We've had 223 years with free and open gun laws, and we've proven time and again that we can't be trusted with them. So it's time for those laws to be changed. Suckers act like the Constitution hasn't been amended multiple times. We change that thing all the time, whenever we decide that it's wrong to own other people or feel like nobody should have a drink or when we want to drink after all. The original ten amendments aren't unbreakable; in fact, we routinely break most of them all the time! Not that that's a good thing, after all. But it is curious that the same people who talk about the Second Amendment as a sacred right often don't have a thing to say about grand juries or military tribunals or capital punishment. Either that, or people just get bored around the Sixth Amendment or so and stop reading.
"But most gun owners don't commit crimes!" Yeah, and most people who drive drunk get home just fine. Running with scissors is a fun pastime that only very rarely puts out someone's eye. We make laws to protect us from the exceptions, not the rule. If most gun owners wanted to shoot people, the rivers of western Pennsylvania would run red with blood. Unfortunately, sometimes it is necessary to remove a freedom from law-abiding people when the public well-being demands it, and in this case, I believe it has.
And that Constitutional amendment you're all so hot for? Includes the word "well-regulated." Nothing well-regulated about buying a Glock with no waiting period at a convention from a guy with swastikas tattooed on his cheeks.
It's time to beat our guns into plowshares, or maybe small replica guns that we can use as paperweights.
2) Involuntary Treatment of the Mentally Ill. I knew -- knew -- that it wouldn't take more than a few hours for people on my Facebook feed to start posting links to editorials about how mentally ill people are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime, and "we can't know whether Adam Lanza was mentally ill or not" (because killing 25+ people isn't enough evidence to support it, ~*skepticism!*~). I am glad to say that my predictions did not disappoint.
Look, I have "issues" too, but I also believe that people are smart enough to differentiate a person with garden variety depression or anxiety from someone with a serious thought disorder or antisocial personality disorder (i.e. sociopathy, not introversion). Mental illness is a very, very wide spectrum/constellation and pointing out that Lanza or James Holmes or Jared Loughner are or were probably crazy doesn't reflect at all on my feelings about the rest of the 20% (this is probably a conservative estimate) of human beings with a mental illness.
And yeah, I agree with forced treatment, although before we can even start talking about that we need to have a system in place. There aren't enough resources even for the people who want and can afford to get treatment.
But when that system is in place? Then we need to start identifying people with serious mental illness, and implementing medical treatments, both for their good and for the good of others. What causes more stigma, forced treatment or a mentally ill person shooting up a school?
I believe in forcing vaccinations, too. This is no different, it's only different because people choose not to see mental illness as a physical, medical problem. And that's something I think current stigma-fighting rhetoric actually contributes to, not helps (but that's a post for another time).
Yesterday afternoon as I was about to go out for my near-daily ride, I caught a commercial that didn't seem to be doing a very good job of telling we the audience what we're being sold. I quipped to Rob that "it's another hybrid car commercial" since earlier we had seen a puzzling hybrid car ad that involved a guy buying ice cream and getting dissed by a little kid. However, that's exactly what it turned out to be.
I don't need to explain why this is a terrible ad, although I will. First of all, holy nightmare fuel, Batman! Toyota's managed to come up with a monster even more terrifying than the Burger King, one which will subsume our own bodies into its lump of undifferentiated mass, only briefly allowing us to decouple so as to perform small tasks like squeezing toothpaste. You don't even know what product it's selling until most of the way through, by which point you're already so grossed out by this lurching golem that you probably don't even care. Yeah, car that plugs in, whatever. What happens when that thing goes to the bathroom?!
Also, this is the car they're selling:
They're on a family vacation in the formless void.
I mean, I'm sort of a car racist (they all look the same to me), but even I can see that this isn't exactly a "hot" car for "cool cats." It's practical, but that's about all it has going for it, and in a world where people depend on their consumer products to sell them not just a better product, but a better life, Prius just doesn't cut it.
Also, think for a second about the NAMES of hybrid cars. Prius. Volt. Yaris (car or birth control?). Fucking Leaf. With the possible exception of Volt, these don't sound like vehicles meant to tear up the pavement. They sound like some kid's science project. Maybe Europeans would buy a car called "Leaf," but 99% of Americans, Canadians, and Australians (i.e. the world's biggest per capita fuel hogs) will scoff at it and keep on looking for something that's cool. Like it or not, looks and names matter, and the majority of people from the individualist nations aren't going to buy something named after the photosynthesizing organ of a plant.
UNSEXY.
So, who are these ads meant to target? Certainly not the average American driver, who doesn't give a shit about fuel efficiency and is far more concerned about horsepower and carrying capacity. And not the true environmentalist or sustainable transportation buff, since they're already either riding bikes or taking public transportation as long as the location of their job allows it. (Newsflash: it's greener to buy a used car than a hybrid.*) And it's not meant for the cheap and/or poor, since hybrids are exponentially more expensive than standard cars, even used hybrids.
I can only think that they're targeting a very specific audience: upper-middle-class "environmentalists" who want the whole world to know how sustainable they are, but wouldn't be caught dead riding the bus because, well, ew. Essentially, the greenwashed. And that's a piss poor marketing strategy because outside of maybe Northern California, there just aren't that many people with the combination of tons of disposable income and the smug desire to do something to "help the planet" without doing something actually radical such as not driving.
I'm torn between wishing hybrid cars had a better marketing department and saying "well, at least if everyone keeps buying SUVs that will get rid of all that oil that much faster." I very much believe that the disconnectedness created by car culture is extremely damaging to society and that even if they could be made carbon-neutral (and that will never happen), cars are bad. It's not just about the carbon emissions or the smog they create or the fuel they waste, although that's a large part of it. So yeah, car companies, continue to mis-market your own product. It will just bring my car-free/lite utopia that much quicker.
But if I were writing ad copy for an electric hybrid car, it might go a little something like this:
Voiceover: "Hello, I'm Antonio Banderas."
He's got a little bit of a Tommy Wiseau thing going on here.
ANTONIO BANDERAS leaps into the driver's seat of a cherry-red electric hybrid convertible. On the seat next to him is a Zorro mask, a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and a taxidermied deer's head. He guns the engine, and with a mighty squeal the car--complete with fins and lighted rims--speeds down a canyon inexplicably studded with sexy nightclubs.
Antonio Banderas: "When I get out of the movie studio, I don't want to take time out of my busy schedule of ab crunches and photo ops to get gas every week, instead of every week and a half. That's why I drive the Chrysler Lightning. It'll really give you a charge." (Suggestive grin.)
ANTONIO BANDERAS pulls up to a red light. Next to him, in his own retro-styled hybrid car, is DON DRAPER.
Don Draper: "Remember, when you drive an electric car, you're really keeping a lot of emissions out of the air. That means you can smoke as much as you want." (Takes a puff.) "Ah, that's smooth."
Antonio Banderas: "My wife, MELANIE GRIFFITH, really likes the car too."
Don Draper: "Women can drive?"
They ride off into the sunset.
*When you consider the implications of the Jevons paradox, and that the mpg of a 2012 Prius is only around 42 highway/36 city (Rob's Hyundai gets 35 highway/25 city)... I'm not even convinced that a new fuel-efficient standard car is worse than a hybrid. I have personally experienced the truth of the Jevons paradox, as owning my bike (which certainly counts as an energy efficient vehicle compared to walking) makes me much more likely to leave the house and travel long distances for little or no reason at all ("hey, you need one thing from the store, well I guess I can go get it for you") that I never would have if I were on foot. Of course, the extra "emissions" generated by someone on a bike are tiny compared to the "emissions" I'd generate simply by sitting around at home expelling CO2 at a more leisurely rate. But if people are driving hybrids more just because they think they're greener--and there's no "if" about it--then hybrids may turn out to be more damaging to the environment than Hummers ever were. At least people know that Hummers are bad.
I swear I'll get back to funny/light posts that aren't about transportation issues eventually but this is too important a news story to not comment on. Raquel Nelson, an Atlanta woman whose child was killed by a drunk driver while she was crossing the highway in front of her apartment building, is now being charged with vehicular homicide for her son's death. Nope, not the driver who actually killed him. The woman who lost her child due to the combination of a selfish asshole driver and piss-poor urban planning is being charged with murder. Welcome to another battle in the war between pedestrians/cyclists and drivers.
Of course, comments are making much to-do over the fact that she crossed illegally. This is true, she did. But why should a mother with three young children be forced to walk almost a mile round-trip to get to the crosswalk? Why are crosswalks so scarce in this part of Atlanta? Why did the bus let her off in an area without a crosswalk? The story says that other bus passengers also illegally crossed there, and if I'd have to guess based on the aerial picture on that link I'd say that it's a pretty popular spot for illegal crossings. There appears to be a large housing complex on the opposite side of the street from the bus stop, a wide median strip, and no obstructions to prevent walkers from seeing cars speeding toward them. And there also doesn't appear to be a sidewalk on that road, meaning that walkers who do choose to travel along the shoulder to the crosswalk would still be in danger from cars drifting onto the edges of the road, plus the exhaust and harassment and possible disease-ridden debris normally found on shoulders. I've seen dead rats and broken beer bottles alongside highways, been panhandled, had things shouted at me. I don't blame her for taking a chance crossing that highway instead of mucking around on a shoulder for an additional half hour with three young kids, who tend to be inquisitive and put things in their mouths and such.
Naturally, race and gender have a lot to do with this, too. Would Nelson have been charged with killing her child if she was a white man? Well, maybe not, but maybe so. It's no secret that non-drivers are marginalized almost everywhere in the United States; a greater percentage of non-drivers are POC/poor/disabled which skews things, but even a person privileged in almost every other category becomes suspect when they choose not (or are forced not) to travel in a two-ton death machine, when they live in a walker/biker/human-unfriendly place. And in another news story, which did not mention Nelson's race, a commenter came right out and said a woman with children who doesn't own a car is a child abuser. Awesomesauce, right? To top it off, Nelson's jury wasn't comprised of her peers, not just because all six (and since when does a jury only have six people on it?) jurors were middle-class whites, but because they were all drivers. God forbid, if I am ever in a serious accident, I for damn sure don't want people who have never walked or cycled anywhere to be on my jury, no matter their race or class. (Actually, I don't want people who have never walked, cycled, or taken public transportation in their lives to even exist but we're talking about possible hypotheticals here.)
Being a pedestrian in a walker-unfriendly city is not a crime. Raquel Nelson is guilty of crossing a road illegally, but nothing else. The drunk driver who killed her kid bears the greatest responsibility (natch), but so does the city of Atlanta for allowing this situation to happen via some seriously shit-ass urban planning and bus routing. I think it's about time for people who take "alternative" transportation to start organizing around these issues, and for cyclists to care more about pedestrian issues, and vice versa. Walkers, cyclists, bus-riders... we all have more in common than we think we do, and the Nelson case sets a dangerous precedent for all parents who can't or don't have a car to be charged with murder (like, really, my mind's still trying to wrap around that one) for just attempting to get their kids safely home.
So, I've been pretty busy for someone without any real responsibilities, so here's a list of some of the shit I've been up to.
• We are moving into Baltimore City! Not only that, it's to the best apartment in the world! This apartment is really huge, at least 1.5 times bigger than everything else we saw. The living room is painted the exact same color of mint green that I would have painted it, if I'd chosen the colors of my walls. The dining room is bright blue, and the bedroom is reddish fuchsia! The kitchen is a yellow which I can only describe as "kitcheny," which is apropos. There is a dogwood tree in the backyard (yes! in the city!) and a small plot of land which I might use for a garden. There are tomato cages which I'd like to use because tomatoes are one of the few vegetables I actually like and the only one that would grow well in a backyard garden. There is a basement where I can park my bike and where we can store excess books. We are almost certainly inheriting a fourth cat from our landlord for convoluted reasons to be explained later.
Needless to say, I am stoked. The last year has taught me a very valuable lesson: don't live in the suburbs. As a non-driver (and one who is increasingly uninterested in getting her license), I can't handle it: the monotony of only being able to shop at chain stores and eat at chain restaurants, the utter meanness of townies who assume you're a student, the impossibility of getting a job because interviewers assume you're unreliable simply because you don't drive. (I've never had to call into work because I had to take my legs into the shop. Just sayin'.) When we moved to Towson, we thought it would be a lot like State College, PA, which is also a college town of approximately 50,000 people. Except that it's a lot easier to get to a big city from Towson vs. State College. But State College is very walkable/bikeable, and to some extent so are smaller PA college towns like Indiana or, hell, even California (which is where I went to college), and I don't think I would have had a lot of problems making friends or getting a job there. Towson is more like Monroeville, except with two colleges lodged in its bowels like nuclear bombs in a mixed-metaphor word salad. Also that reference will not make sense to you if you're not from Pennsylvania. Sorry about that.
• Working on short stories! I have two in the pipeline right now: one about evil cars, the other a Machine of Death story. I had been working on a novel in progress, but sort of abandoned it when my computer crashed and I lost the last five pages of writing. Maybe that doesn't sound too tragic, but it was only eleven pages overall. Perhaps it's for the best, I don't really have the attention span for novels. I've said it before: if I only ever write one novel in my life, that is totally fine with me.
• One of our cats was turned into a lamp by an evil sorcerer:
Rob wouldn't let me put the sweater on her. "It's too hot, she'll roast." So you can blame him for this picture not being as awesome as it might have been. It would have been on for ONE MINUTE and cats are hardy little critters. Simply elucidatin'.
• Selling shit on Amazon. Now, it will be no surprise to people who have been to our house that we own A LOT OF BOOKS. (Although not an alot made out of books.) But we've been practicing Discardia, which means getting rid of many hundreds of our books. In the past, we'd always take the books to a used bookstore, which would maybe give us thirty bucks for four bags of books, if we were lucky. But then I had a brainstorm: why not Amazon? I've bought things off Amazon Marketplace in the past, because used CDs are usually much cheaper than new or digital download. Probably because hardly anyone keeps CDs anymore (although I do!). And yes, putting up hundreds of superfluous books is sometimes tedious, and sending them out is definitely tedious, but I've made several hundred dollars on there already, including over a hundred bucks for an out-of-print expansion board for Arkham Horror, the game of mind-numbingly banal Lovecraftian terror. While I don't want to bad-mouth my "customers," it constantly shocks me what people will buy, and for what prices. Granted, I am not into the mangas that the kids are reading right now, but $40 for a comic book? However, as this is the closest thing I have to a paying job right now, I am going to continue doing it until all the books are sold, or I get a real job doing something exactly as tedious for slightly more money.
(Aside: before beginning my extended period of unemployment, I don't think I realized how utterly useless I'd feel. I am someone who crashes and burns without a schedule, and while I do try to write lists to structure my days, it's easier to follow a schedule when it's imposed from without by someone who's paying you. I feel guilty for doing things that I don't consider my "job," i.e. putting items up on Amazon, going shopping for basic necessities, cleaning the house like a motherfuckin' adult. I don't consider writing my job even though I've been paid for it. It's hard for me to talk about this because it's such a first world problem; we can get along fine on Rob's income and I don't NEED to work. But I've realized that I WANT to, especially if I can get back into the only jobby thing I've ever been good at, medical research. Hello, Johns Hopkins University, soon to be within my reach/clutches.)
• Riding my bike, natch. As cycling has turned out to be the loose focus of this blog, I feel obligated to mention that, yeah, still at it. Last night I abandoned my old, broken BSO in my front yard for the first taker, because even though I did have plans to fix it up and teach Rob to ride on it, we all know I wasn't going to do that before moving and it would have just become more moving clutter. Also, it would have been way too small for him, and also a girl's bike. I feel guilty about this, even though I know that's dumb. I'll probably feel better when I see a lady riding around on my old bike, all fixed up shiny and newish. But right now I feel like a consumerist jerk.
Today I went to my first dentist appointment in five years. It was an awful, awful experience.
I'm not afraid of the dentist. The reason I hate going to the dentist boils down to a) having to sit in a chair for an hour or longer, and b) I really hate sitting in the same position for an hour. Also, the idea of dentist as "doctor" sort of puts me off. Dentistry is two steps above cosmetology: own it, learn to love it, ADA. So I wasn't thrilled about calling or going, and only did it because I'm an adult and feel it's expected. Kind of how I try to eat a non-Coco Wheats-based breakfast at least once a week.
When I arrived at the office (after biking there -- and if I can digress, let me just say that it makes me feel very fucking accomplished to run basic errands on my bike, to be riding with a real purpose besides exercise) I knew I might be in trouble when the first thing they wanted to do was take my picture, "for [their] files." Now, I'm not a super paranoid person. I have a picture of myself on this very blog and I am aware that it would be quite easy to Photoshop me kicking it with Gaddafi, or put my head on a naked body, perhaps going so far as to replace my face with a giant boob. That's what living in the 21st century is all about! However, I could fathom no sane reason why a dentist's office would need to have a mug shot of me, especially when I haven't even established myself as a regular client yet. So I said no.
"Well, we just want to take it."
"And I'm just saying no."
"Fine," the receptionist says, frostily. "I'll put down that you refused." She typed a note on her computer, brusquely.
Already I have established myself as a suspicious freak who is afraid that a 200-year-old technology will steal her soul. Awesome! They also charged me a $15 copay for X-rays and cleaning (remember that, kids!), even though they said there would be no copay over the phone.
The dental hygienist takes me back and they take approximately 32,712 X-rays. Really, guys, I don't think those were all necessary. Then the dentist comes in, and I prepare to sit in that fucking chair for an hour. But all he does is look at my teeth and shout out a bunch of numbers. "2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 2, 69, negative 7, pi, 4...." Turns out these are gum measurements, and even though I looked it up when I got home and those aren't terrible numbers for a person of 29 who used to smoke and isn't hyper-diligent about dental care, he made it seem like I am on the brink of total mouthal collapse.
"You got here just in time!" isn't a phrase that you'll hear in a dentist's office very often. Getting there "just in time" is what happens when you rush to the hospital with an almost-burst appendix, not when the teeth that have been serving me well lo these past twenty-three years have a slightly-above-average amount of decay. That was my first tip-off that this place was a scam gallery. The second was the fact that the walls were covered with ads for adult braces, surgical whitening, and various other totally unnecessary procedures. (I'm telling you, it's a form of cosmetology!) The third is that he didn't even give me a cleaning, saying that it would be unsafe to do it without doing the gum treatment. I didn't ask if I should continue to brush my teeth or eat solid food. I mean, if my mouth is in such a desperate, terminal condition, surely those things will harm it too. But I'm not the fake doctor around here.
This fake religion is also bullshit.
Oh yeah, the procedure: even though my gums are only borderline terrible, he is convinced that I need a full work-over, two hour-long gum treatment sessions with bonus tongue scraping ($131) and "prophylaxis" ($88). The whole dealie will cost $369.00, and when I heard that, I laughed right out loud. And thus ended my time at the dental clinic. See you in five years, dentistry!
My husband Rob, long-time hater of dentists and their craft, was neither surprised nor sympathetic, clearly thinking I had burned myself out of my $15 and 90 minutes by dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight glinting off an angled mirror. I've joked that he is to dentistry what Scientologists are to psychiatry. I had been more forgiving (I've never been denied a basic cleaning before!), but now I think I am ready to become the Ron Miscavige to his L. Ron Hubbard.
Even though I didn't actually get my teeth cleaned, I did learn that I have no cavities, which is basically the only thing I care about. Well, not as much as that fifteen dollars. I could buy SO MUCH useless junk for fifteen dollars!
As I've pointed out many times before, Maryland has an exceptionally tough set of hurdles you have to jump in order to get your license. You have to wait nine months after getting your permit before you can take the driver's exam, regardless of age (which means I may not be able to get a job for the entire year of 2011). And everyone has to take driver's ed, also regardless of age. Which means that I must spend thirty-six hours learning and growing as a motorist with people who were born after the death of Kurt Cobain.
It's probably going to be the most humbling/embarrassing experience of my entire life.
Anyway, it's me, six high-school-aged girls, and one high-school-aged boy. (I know they are all in high school because the instructor went around and had us introduce ourselves by name and school. "Hi, I'm Erica, I was born in Ronald Reagan's first term.") First, we watched a videotape (yes, VHS, and I'm guessing that only me and the instructor know how to even operate a VCR) called STREET SMART. The letters were formed out of actual streets, which is the kind of thing I find hilarious. In STREET SMART, a "guardian angel" dressed like Kid and/or Play counseled a number of rich white kids about staying cool on the road, paying attention, etc. while they huffed about and looked bored. At one point, one of the teenagers whined to his father that he didn't want to pay a toll because he's saving up for a Walkman. I wanted to pipe up and say "that's an iPod for my generation, kids. Also, did you know that stamps used to cost thirty cents? We used them to send this stuff called mail, which is like an e-mail, except you can hold it in your hand! Oh, what golden days those were."
During the break, one of the girls started talking to me, unaware that I am a few short months away from the big 3-0. I told her that I'm "way out of high school, but thanks for the compliment," and was then immediately mortified because wow, isn't being pleased that you look younger than you actually are something that old, vain women do? The kind of women who go to the bar at Red Lobster in dim lighting hoping to be carded, and then they ARE carded, but only because the waitstaff aren't dummies and know they'll get a better tip? The kind of women who self-identify as cougars? Just call me Blanche Devereaux.
After the break, we watched a less-hilarious videotape about teen driving deaths, which are the basis behind MD's draconian permit laws, and I was again reminded of how ill-equipped most states are to handle us elderly "rookie drivers." It's not that I think they should cut me some slack just because of my age... no actually I DO think exactly that. But the examples both the teacher and the video used were setting me up for this revelation: all these cautions about not driving after midnight to parties don't mean much when you're a boring married almost-thirtysomething, let alone "cruising at the mall" or playing "chicken." I may be less mature than most people my age (judging by how hard I laughed at a roller derby player with the name "Jenn Italia" at the match last week), but the days when I could be a demon behind the wheel are far behind me, and it's sort of frustrating to have to go through the same lectures as if my life experiences don't color my attitudes toward driving and as if I need the same amount/type of guidance as a teenager. I may only have a permit, I may still look like I'm in high school, but I can buy a Lobstertini without a fake ID, dammit!
I sort of think that there needs to be a driving-instruction videotape geared to the 25-and-older set, STREET SMARTER (the logo is also made out of streets except they are worn down and broken in parts, because they are older!). It could cover such topics as:
● how to cleverly conceal your lack of a driver's license from potential employers!
● how to structure your entire life around your deficits!
● In the movie Inception, why didn't Fischer recognize the people around him on the plane after he woke up? Why didn't Saito just buy Fischer's corporation, or have Fischer killed? Why didn't the free-fall gravity affect the people in the snow dream? And why couldn't Leonardo DiCaprio just fly his kids to France instead of hatching a complicated reality-bending scheme to get back into America?
● If a man on steroids dressed in a shark suit fought a sick gorilla dressed in a bear suit on the moon, who would win?
● and many more!
It can even be a cautionary tale for those fresh-faced new drivers born during the awful aughts: don't be like us! Get it while you're young! Otherwise, you're going to have to sit in a class with people twelve years younger than you who listen to their music on hyperboxes surgically implanted into their skulls and are ruled over by a wise android known as Benevolentus XII, who is definitely not a human killer. No sirree Bob.
First up, my paranoid VR suburbia story "Days Like These" is up in audio form at The Overcast and narrated by J.S. Arquin. This is a new podcast focusing on speculative fiction from writers in the Pacific Northwest. There certainly are a lot of us here! I hope you'll check it out.
