Gender Bending

Posted on 6 July 2010 | No responses

This post comes courtesy of the very interesting rendition of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” by Jonathan Coulton, seen here.

It is hardly a new thing for members of another gender to sing gender charged songs. Tori Amos did it quite a bit with one of her albums, and listening to her rendition of ’97 Bonnie and Clyde is creepy. But I have to wonder, why not bend the lyrics? I mean, I can see the “you are covering a song, dip-weed, you don’t change it,” but both in the case of Tori and of Jonathan, it feels like they are trying to bring the other genders take and feel to the song. So why not a song about the mother killing the father, and why not a song from a guy who was cheated on and dumped? And this isn’t me trying to be all hetro-normative either. I’d be fine if the singers were going for non hetro-normative takes, but at least in these two cases (and likely in others), it just doesn’t seem like what they were doing. Iunno, thoughts?

Tags: covers, Gender Bender, Jonathon Coulton, songs, Tori Amos
Categories: Admin Blog

Patriotism

Posted on 5 July 2010 | 1 response

You know one thing I don’t know that I’ve seen addressed too much in literature? The worth of patriotism. I’ve seen stories that actually talk about worrying if your government is corrupt, or that have highly patriotic or apathetic characters, but not one that really had a person or people honestly question if patriotism is a good and just thing. Now, lemme talk some before ya’ll lynch me on this wonderful 5^th of July.

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Tags: I Love Big Brother, July 4th, Nationalism, Patriotism
Categories: Writing

Change, I Hates It

Posted on 21 June 2010 | No responses

I dislike change. I loath it, you might say. This is funny for someone born in the information era, someone who grew up embracing constant change as computers leapfrogged in what they could do. I remember when 32 meg of RAM was amazing, and a Pentium 2 processor was fast. I can’t even keep up with what is going on with technology anymore, though, and I’m actually in the field for my day job. Maybe I’m becoming an old man.

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Tags: Change, Conservative, Geezer-talk, procrastinating, Whining
Categories: Admin Blog

A Smile That Doesn’t Touch The Eyes

Posted on 17 June 2010 | 2 responses

Have you ever tried smiling in such a way that it doesn’t touch your eyes? Ever looked at yourself in the mirror when you do? If you haven’t, go ahead and do it. I’ll wait, honest. Just click past the fold when you get back to let me know, and we can continue.

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Tags: A Song of Ice and Fire, anti-intellectualism, G.R.R. Martin, Manipulator, non-verbal communication, Puppet Master, smiles, Weasel
Categories: Writing

The Language of Fans

Posted on 11 June 2010 | 3 responses

I just finished reading the book A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham. It was actually a pretty good book once I got into it, although it took me two tries. First time, I got about halfway through the prologue and was somewhat distracted and not into it enough to pick it up for some time.  Anyway, it was proof that a good simple story of conspiracy to topple a government by means of destroying its unique advantage over others can come in odd ways. In this instance, the government’s advantage was it had a god that destroyed unborn things. Economically, it helped by making cotton processing easier. Warfare (not that it was really need), it could be used to destroy entire fields of crops or kill an entire generation before it is born. Of course, none of this is why I titled the post as I did. No, what I want to talk about is the concept of nonverbal languages in stories.

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Tags: Daniel Abraham, Fans, Language, Poses, Robert Jordan, Talking without talking
Categories: Writing

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