Punk-Ass Book Jockey

I feel like this was a bad week for female voices. Lloyd Alexander--creator of one of the best girls in YA fic--is dead; FanLib shit hit the fan; VMars was cancelled.

I'm pissed off with myself too. I'm doing a fine job of stifling my own female voice.

So. Deep breath. I am resolved to quit. I'll give them two pay periods. (I'm light-headed now. Good thing I've got some wine. ... Oh. Had some wine. *sad*)

And then there's FanLib. All I have to say (since everyone else is doing a fine job with the raking-over-coals and raising-of-eyebrows -- here is a pretty comprehensive list of responses) is that for all the protesting that the FLib people are doing--and I've now spent the last three hours reading through the cheerleaders and naysayers--no-one on the pro-FLib side has bothered addressing the question that is burning the brightest and angriest for me -- to paraphrase astolat , what the hell are a group of non-fanfic/vid/art-producing or -consuming men doing attempting to make money off of a female gift economy?

Anyone? Anything? I really want an answer. This is the thing that totally damns FanLib for me -- the all-male and apparently heterosexual (or not willing to mention their queerdom) exec and board of directors.

Really. Damns. TO HELL.

Or, in secular and practical terms, damns to me not participating, endorsing, or doing anything to help or encourage. I have no patience for this blind, opportunistic, rude nonsense.

In fannishness, I'm making my way through Veronica Mars S2. It's a bit less awesome than the first season, but oh the banter! The witty, witty banter! And that bit where Keith told Wallace that if he pinched his nipples it would help him pee! *loves on Keith* *thinks Keith is the best TV dad eva*
--

In non-fannish life stuff, this morning, as I was walking down the big-fuck-off hill to work (although really, I only swear at it in the evenings, when I have to walk up it), I noticed a pile of clothes on the other side of the chain-link fence that separates the sidewalk and road from the local park.

"How did that happen?" I thought idly "Someone lost their... hey... wait a minute!"

One of my mittens was in the pile of clothes. One of my mittens which I lost two years ago, I don't know where, and mourned, because I loved the wool I knit it from. I climbed over the fence, rooted through the wet and slimy leaves, and carried it gingerly the rest of my half-hour walk to work, holding it arms' length and pinching it by the very tip of the thumb, because it was wet and dirty and gross.

It's now in the wash, and despite being kind of delighted by the whole thing, I'm also aware that this is the kind of pack-rat-positive reinforcement I don't need. I didn't throw out the mitt's mate--for two years--because somehow I thought I'd find it again... and I did. Now I'm going to feel twingy about getting rid of all my odd socks.