In the interest of just saying it and not waiting to write the perfect review, I present to you my latest media recommendations:

Print

• Best Fantastic Erotica from Circlet Press. This is a small press just down the street from me. I met Cecilia Tan back in 1998 (wow! ten years ago!) at the International Bisexual Conference IV at Harvard. She and her partner have been running Circlet Press for years and years, and the cover letter that came with my review copy pointed out something interesting I'd never thought of: Circlet Press has had an impact on the scifi genre as a whole. Good examples? Uber-sexxay Tricia Helfner as Number 6 in the new Battlestar Galactica. Inara in Firefly. Seven of Nine in Star Trek Voyager. Is it a girly thing? A pervy thing? Who cares? Science fiction is no longer JUST about hard science or sociology. Me likey.
  
  The anthology itself can be rather uneven but still totally worth the read. Winners of the contest appear first in the book, and I thoroughly enjoyed the lush, sensual descriptions of the winner, "Monsoon," by Arin Dembo. It's also nice to see Indian mythology penetrating American culture. Uh huh huh. I said "penetrating." "Marked," by Cody Nelson, evokes shades of the AIDS epidemic. Plus, really hot, kinky gayboy sex. "The Night the New Hog Croaked," however, echoed every annoying thing about typical kinky pr0n that you can think of (uber dominant females in tight corsets and 5-inch platforms). The prose of that piece lays in the stomach like one of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies, but parts of the story still please. "Copperhead Renaissance" fascinates and disturbs at the same time and serves up a little ironic twist in the last paragraph. "Nocturnal Emissions," about a Catholic priest's relationship with a wild spirit, will be a great read for anyone interested in the history of the rise of Christianity in Europe. And "Twilight" (the first story I flipped to), while less than stellar in the prose department, offers a compelling story about an oft-explored subject: vampires and Van Helsing. Plus, the descriptions of the New York subways made me homesick.
  
  Overall, I would recommend searching out this anthology. It's still rare to find straight-up erotica mixed with science fiction and fantasy. As with comix and fanfic, the genre allows for unexpected possibilities you won't find in the mainstream.
  


• Echo, from Terry Moore, the artist who brought you Strangers in Paradise. Early in my entree into the world of comics (I came to it late -- you can blame Hugh Jackman and Brian Singer), I was discussing the dearth of female comics with Tony, the awesome proprietor of Million Year Picnic. He mentioned that many people assumed that Terry Moore was a woman since Strangers in Paradise had such a strong female voice and since the female characters lack the bizarre boobie phenomenon so prevalent in most mainstream comics. Alas, Terry Moore is an XY, but we won't hold that against him. The story line of his new self-published title contains many familiar comic tropes (secret agent, girls with super powers), but Moore manages to inject a freshness to the old themes with brilliant characterization, suspenseful storytelling, and his characteristic pleasing, accurate drawing style.
  



• Buffy Season 8 For those of you who have been hiding under a rock (or who don't keep up with the Whedon fandom sites), the Buffy story didn't end with Season 7 on Fox, or Angel Season 5. Whedon continues the line, sans the restraints of the TV medium, with Buffy Season 8. You'll find plenty of reviews online, so I'll just mention the highlights: hot Buffy girl-on-girl action in the latest issues, combined with Whedon's characteristic humor and wordplay. Artwork varies but for the most part provides more accurate depictions of the female form than you'll find in, say, the Marvel line
  



• Angel: After the Fall Not my favorite comic of all time. Too many monsters and not enough character development. But folks who fell in love with Wesley Wyndham-Price, everyone's favorite green demon, and the rest of the gang will have fun reading about their further exploits in the hell that broke forth over L.A. at the conclusion of Season 5.



• Misericordia The only bona fide new title written by a woman I've come across recently. Better than some efforts I've seen, but not quite A-list material. Mostly wordless, with evocative drawings and an interesting story line involving a dystopian, possibly post-apocalyptic society.



• Bitch Magazine. Feminist response to pop culture. Can be a bit dour at times, so I recommend reading Bust (for women with something to get off their chests) as a counterpoint, which can be a bit too frivolous at times. Mix them together like cheese and crackers.

Film and TV
(Loves her Netflix)

• Firefox I missed Angelina Jolie's early work and have been rectifying this omission slowly via my Netflix queue. Gia, the drama-mentary about the first supermodel to bring "fierce" to the catwalk, should be a staple for lesbians looking for more recent evidence that we exist. Firefox, however, holds together much better as a movie. It's a rare thing in modern media, a bildungsroman for girls. Empowerment, rebellion, sexual awakenings, and haunting endings, plus a kick-ass revenge scene for all girls who have ever survived sexual abuse at the hands of authority figures.
  


• The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman Laura Kightlinger joins the ranks of women in the film industry sick of men's stranglehold on production and writing and makes her own damn series. Acerbic, satirical, sometimes cynical, and often funny, it tells the story of two women out to scramble to the top of the heap in L.A. Makes me glad I live in Boston. Favorite line so far?
  Magazine editor: "You can't write for someone else! That would be cheating!"
  Jackie Woodman (gesturing to her clearly female form): "Do you see a ring around this cock?"
  

tammy212 articulates in a full-of-awesome way what I've been too busy with my own little dramas to say. About the Texas raid on the Fundamentalist Mormon compound in which over 100 women and children were "seized." More info here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89395841 or google "mormon texas polygamist raid" or some combination thereof.

From tammy212's post:

So feminists have achieved their revolution? Women are equal? Our rights have been won in our enlightened country?

Apparently not as far as law enforcement in Texas is concerned.

...

It was bad enough that this "lead" was given to law enforcement a year ago. But today it comes out, according to MSNBC.com, that Schleichler Counter Sheriff David Doran has had an informant in the church compound for four years. He has known that underaged girls were being forced into marriage against state and national law for four years. But this upstanding representative of the public's civil rights has this to say:

"We are aware that this group is capable of (sexually abusing young girls)," Doran said. "But there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them. We're not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry. I've said that from day one."

There, you see? Forced marriage is only important if women and girls living in a compound under the control of men complain to outside authorities. Otherwise they should just be left to the control of their men, who today are weeping as the chapel where the marriage beds are is being searched. I would like to give each of those men a red-hot iron handkerchief for their tears.

This is the United States. We are going to respect the rights of adults to force sexual behavior on underaged girls. We are going to respect the rights of men to hold women and girls captive. Have I got that right?

I am too angry to breathe. The next person who tells me we women have it made will be lucky to walk away without my teeth in his/her throat.

This story was way too close to an account of a fundamentalist Mormon compound in Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country. I don't agree with all of Tepper's ideas, especially those around social engineering, but her account of a post-apocalyptic society and the different ways that surviving groups and cultures deal with gender issues is compelling and a great read.

It chills me to think, though, that what happened in her fictional, dystopian account, was actually happening in Texas. Here. In this day and age. While I run around being all sexually liberated and economically free and stuff.

So you can take that "strident feminist" crap and shove it up your ass.

On the NPR books podcast, I heard a really cool interview about this guy:

Whenever my wife and I go to Seattle to visit her family, I look forward to the stimulating conversations that I know we will have with my in-laws. They are smart, well-educated people who are always abreast of the political, social, and cultural issues of the day. They watch tons of movies and read tons of books. Both her parents are Native-Americans, so they take great pains to be sensitive when they are talking about other cultures. I remember my mother-in-law talking about a conversation that she had had with a coworker.

"I was talking with my friend James, who’s an African American. He was saying that in the African-American community..." I felt like screaming, "What did that nigger say already?"

Which brings me to my personal favorite: Black. It makes more sense than the others in every way. Phonetically, it’s no contest. One syllable versus multi-syllabic hyphenates. Black wins hands down. Although initially it doesn’t conjure the lofty bourgeois imagery of the other terms, it depicts a more realistic portrayal of who we really are. Indeed, who we have become. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. (I also don’t mean that in a literal way. I have met some extremely dark people in my life, but I think very dark brown is the closest a human being can come to actually being black.) When my family put on our Sunday best and sat through a two-hour, fire-and-brimstone, Baptist church service . . . we were African-American. When we came home and changed into jeans for Sunday dinner . . . we were black. When I go into an office for a job interview . . . I’m African-American. Once I get the job . . . I’m black. Black is who we are and what we call ourselves when we aren’t concerned with what white people think. It isn’t lesser than. It isn’t greater than. It just is. It’s more casual, more understated, and much more honest.

~ Nick Adams, Making Friends with Black People

More info here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5256145

Books I've been reading:

I went from famine to feast. After a few months of reading deprivation, I made my way to the new location of the Cambridge Public Library and started reading up a storm. Here are a few of the titles I've recently devoured, in no particular order:

• Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
  
• Swamp Thing, by Alan Moore, et al. Three volumes.
  
• Embroideries, by Marjane Sartrapi. From the Harvard Bookstore. So I own it. Mineminemine.
  
• Adastra in Africa. by some guy whose name I forget. From Million Year Picnic.
  
• Soutshore, by Sheri Tepper. Sequel to Northshore.
  
• Lords & Ladies, by Terri Pratchett. Sequel to Witches Abroad.
  
• Grow A Business, by some guy who started Erewhon, the first natural foods grocery store in Boston.
  
• Kindred, by Octavia Butler
  
• Biography of a Tree, by Jeff Josephson? Joseph Jefferson? One of the best books I ever read.
  
• The Life of an Oak. Better graphics than Biography of a Tree, but not as cohesive a narrative. Yes, a tree's life can be a narrative.
  
• Some field guide on North American trees. Can't remember the exact name.
  
• Off the Beaten Path: Boston.
  
• You Grow Girl. A great book on Urban Gardening by the woman who runs http://www.YouGrowGirl.com
  
• Two books on Persian Myth. Inspired to check these out after reading Persepolis II: A Story of a Return. Also by Marjane Satrapi.
  
• More to follow when I remember
  

There are some hidden pages over at the Garden of Words that have unofficial-type information about me: like my bio page, with all the memes and silly details, some of which are out of date. And the books she's read page, which is like totally out of date.

I'm too lazy to open Dreamweaver or Textpad, update the page itself, and FTP it up to the server, so instead I'll just note which books I've been devouring from the Cambridge Public Library. Eventually I'll get around to update the Official Annotate Bibliography of Okelle, along with my marital status. And then maybe I'll actually post some of these new poems I've been churning out. And start a CafePress store. And publish those old articles on paganism. And scrub the bathroom tub. And...

But first a note about reading deprivation, an exercise suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way. She recommends taking a week or so and doing no recreational reading. I did this, and also refrained from watching TV. By refraining from listening and reading the stories of other people, I suddenly had the space in my mind to hear my own stories.

I wonder lately if I've totally sacrificed that space to Sheri Tepper.

Maybe. Lalala.

But I smell like tea tree oil and roses today and just don't care.


So anyway, here's the list:

By Sheri Tepper:

Like Ursual LeGuin, Sheri Tepper has the ability to imagine and entire culture and society and bring her global consciousness into the human story of a few sympathetic characters.


• Northshore (currently reading) Deals with many of the same issues as Singer from the Sea (see below), including religion as an opiate for the masses, symbiosis of species, and the impact of geography on culture.
  
  
• The Gate to Women's Country One possible solution to the battle of the sexes. Of interest to anyone who has studied the ancient Greeks. Rather too gender essentialist to me, and rather casually offensive to non-heterosexuals. Fascinating primarily in terms of its slow revelations of story lines, but not as finely wrought a tale a Singer from the Sea.
  
  
• Singer from the Sea By far the best of the three novels of hers I've read so far. This is due either to the concerted efforts of a new editor, to her own chops as a more experienced novelist, or both. Prophetic, far-reaching, and as graceful as the dance of a whale's passage through water.
  

Also Reading:



• Life Story of an Oak Fascinating book about one of the most common and prolific species of tree on the planet. Extremely technical and at the same time a great read.
  
  
• The Findhorn Garden Written by the Findhorn Collective, a spiritual community in the north of Scotland that somehow managed to coax a fruitful garden from the sandy, barren soil of a trailer park. Goddamn hippies claimed to do it by talking to "devas and nature spirits."