Live Through this was released on April 12, 1994. I was nine years old and just about to finish out third grade at a new school. I was tall for my age, fat, smart, and already just a little bit angry at the world around me. I’d started my school year at a brand new school and my big sister had just moved out of our house. I was just starting to   [more...]]]>

Live Through this was released on April 12, 1994. I was nine years old and just about to finish out third grade at a new school. I was tall for my age, fat, smart, and already just a little bit angry at the world around me. I’d started my school year at a brand new school and my big sister had just moved out of our house. I was just starting to become someone and music was the thing — the thing I loved first, the thing I loved before books or movies or television — that was helping to make that person.

Nineteen years later, I am twenty-eight years old and just about to finish up my first year in a new state. I’m no longer tall for my age, but I am still fat and smart(ish). Music is still the first thing I ever really loved, but I’m in a serious relationship with television at the moment. My idea of what “someone” is has changed dramatically and I’m okay with how I turned out most days.

Nine years old seems insanely young to me now, impossibly young — too young for Hole probably, too young for anything, honestly. But I grew up with wonderful, involved but permissive parents and KROQ and the Los Angeles alt-radio culture of the mid-90s, so young or not, I first found my footing as a human being in Green Day and Candlebox and Nirvana and Tori Amos and The Offspring and Alanis Morrissette and Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. And Hole.

I remember standing in my bedroom screaming into the handle of a sponge mop to every single song on Live Through This. I remember scrawling lyrics out on binder covers and backpacks. I remember listening to it in the dark with my best friend Marian. I remember burning candles and shadowing my eyes with black eyeshadow and slicking my mouth with red Wet & Wild lipstick and screaming those songs like the words were being exorcised from me, like I’d die if I left them in for too long. I remember staring at that album cover, at young and barefoot and probably-not-all-that-far-from-my-age-at-the-time and still kind of unbelievably cool Courtney Love on the back. I remember the cracks in the plastic CD case.

I remember being angry — so angry — at so much, at everything. Angry at nine and at twelve and at fifteen and at twenty. Angry at myself for being fat and weird. Angry at the kids who were mean to me and at myself for being impossibly meaner back. Angry at the people who didn’t listen when I was hurting, angry at myself for getting hurt, for letting other people hurt me. Angry at the world in the most uncomplicated ways, the most individual. I was angry because I was hurt.

I remember.

I couldn’t have told you in 1994 when I bought it on cassette at Tower Records at the West Covina Plaza or a couple years later when I bought it on CD at the same Tower Records or a year after that when I had to rebuy it because I’d worn my first copy out or when I rebought it digitally because I couldn’t take the skips from my ripped copy any longer — I’d have probably just said I liked it a lot because Green Day was my favorite band and I would’ve felt like a traitor — but Live Through This was the most important album of my youth. And nineteen years later it means more to me than ever.

I didn’t call myself a feminist in 1994, partially because I was nine years old and I didn’t really know what that meant and partially because I was raised by a father who called feminists “feminazis” and if there was one thing I wouldn’t have wanted to do in 1994, it was disappoint my father. I didn’t call myself a feminist in 2004 either because I was raised by a culture that taught me that feminism meant female superiority and that I should strive for something my conservative poli-sci professor called “equalism” but was actually code for the patriarchal bullshit status quo. I call myself a feminist now and I try very hard to be a good one, an intersectional one, an engaged one.

But I’m also angry. Still angry, so angry. And where my anger was indistinct and personal when I was young, anger built on hurt and sadness, it is anger directed at the system now, at patriarchy and rape culture and misogyny. At the incredible violence women face, institutional and political and personal.

Before I really knew why I was angry, Hole gave me a voice for it. Before I understood what it meant when a boy with a blond bowl cut chased me and my best friend around the playground at my first elementary school and flipped our skirts up, laughing, I was angry. Before I understood why a yard aid pulled me aside and told me not to play on the monkey bars because my shirt was “too short” and everyone was looking, I was angry. Before I saw the aggressive challenges from boys in high school because “girls don’t like metal” as acts of sexism, I was angry. And even though I didn’t really know it, Courtney Love was shaping that anger, asking questions that I wouldn’t understand for years, and planting the furious seeds of something that would shape me monumentally as an adult.

As an adult, that anger raged, rages through me every day. Every time I see another woman sliced open on a television or movie screen. Every time I’ve been groped or catcalled or hit on through the open windows of my vehicle. Every story I hear about street harrassment. Every time a politician thinks they have a right to make rules about what people can or cannot do with their uteruses. Every single time I’ve heard “Nice tits” or “That mouth would look great around my dick” or “You’re fat but I’d still fuck you.” Every story about assault or rape or abuse.

Every time I remember the world I live in as a woman, the world the women I love have to live in, the world every woman has to live in, I’m angry. So angry. And at nine, at twelve, at fifteen, and nineteen, and twenty-two, and twenty-eight, I was angry and, even when I didn’t understand the forces behind the objects of my fury, Hole was there to give that fury voice and shape and color and direction. Courtney Love was there. Nineteen years later, she is no longer the sole voice of my anger, but she’s still there, familiar, always and eternal, and for that I will be forever grateful.

March was a success for the Casual-Ass Internet Book Club! In that I read and posted about it! Every month I manage to do this feels like a super big accomplishment and this month I managed to do it kind of early, so I basically feel like I just won some sort of gold-plated award.

I read more books in March than I’ve been averaging and I kept finding myself thinking, “Oh,   [more...]]]>

March was a success for the Casual-Ass Internet Book Club! In that I read and posted about it! Every month I manage to do this feels like a super big accomplishment and this month I managed to do it kind of early, so I basically feel like I just won some sort of gold-plated award.

I read more books in March than I’ve been averaging and I kept finding myself thinking, “Oh, hooray, more stories about white people.” in a particularly bored voice. And I was really irritated about it and I pledged on Twitter to do better in both my reading and my writing. So I started reconfiguring a couple of things in my first novel and I sat down and actively added books by people of color to my Amazon wishlist and decided that I would make sure to choose a book from an author of color for April. And so I did!

From Amazon: One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family. Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.

So here’s the plan as always!

1. Read the book!
2. Post about it on the internet no later than April 30th
3. Link me to your post in the comments here
4. I’ll do a round-up post on May 1st-ish
5. We can have a casual-ass comment party about the book
6. I’ll announce the next book
7. REPEAT

Your site, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, even Twitter is fine! (Just Storify and link!) Whatever works for you!

This is a very casual, kick-back, low-expectations, low-effort deal! I just like the idea of reading the same book and then hearing what people think about it. That’s literally it. FUN, YES?! Good.

If you have suggestions for the next book, please please please comment with them and tell me! I’d appreciate if it was available on Kindle, but that’s the only requirement.

Share this with people if you do it! Tell me if you’re going to do it! Tell everyone!

We have to be more than the world would make us.

The Eleventh Plague was pretty decent! And I might have a couple things to say about it! Spoilers!

I wasn’t sure about this one from the jump which has been the case with all of the Casual-Ass books so far, actually, and I was worried I’d have another month in which I had little   [more...]]]>

The Eleventh Plague was pretty decent! And I might have a couple things to say about it! Spoilers!

I wasn’t sure about this one from the jump which has been the case with all of the Casual-Ass books so far, actually, and I was worried I’d have another month in which I had little to say. But! The more I read, the more I got into it and, by the end, I felt like I’d had a nice little ride through Hirsch’s dirty little dystopia! It’s not The Hunger Games or Unwind– but what is? — and it’s got some Very Big Issues, but Hirsch does a decent job towing you through his world.

The premise of the dystopia itself is probably the most compelling element of the book. That the world was teetering on a precipice anyway with climate change and oil reliance and global conflict and all it took was a couple of American students caught and accused of espionage to ignite the series of events that would end in the almost complete extinction of the U.S. population. Biological warfare is the kind of reality none of us want to confront, even if instead of Anthrax or Ebola, it’s a suped-up flu.

I don’t like Stephen and I think — despite the rough life he’s led up until his arrival in Settler’s Landing — that most of his distrust of the people who are trying to help him comes off as unwarranted paranoia. This isn’t Stephen’s fault — Stephen should not trust anyone, not the way he’s been raised — but is instead a failing of Hirsch’s writing. The point of view is so close in Stephen’s head, that you understand the fears that his grandfather instilled in him and you even see — really clearly early on, even though Hirsch tries to save it as a big reveal — how deeply the loss of his mother and baby sibling has impacted him, but you never really understand his motivations. And that is the absolute most primary failing of the book.

The dystopia is cool and I love the contemporary-rustic nature of the Settler’s Landing settlement and I really love the sort of… Lord of the Flies nature of the community under Caleb’s rule and their willingness to sell other people out in order to keep the peace, even though it pains them (Violet and Marcus at least) and the great, big, giant nature of the story and I love the emphasis on education (even though I think there’s too much emphasis on learning from the dominant culture’s canon — which is sort of challenged in the idea that people are at least asking whether going back to what the country already was before the Collapse, but it isn’t challenged nearly enough) and the issues of race and wealth that are raised. The United States has been annihilated and the people in this story are just hanging on for their lives and that is always wildly compelling.

Unfortunately, Hirsch never pushes it far enough and he doesn’t make his characters’ actions transparent enough. I don’t understand why Stephen does the things he does. I particularly don’t understand why he’s terrified to rock the status quo in one minute and throwing himself headfirst into stupid situations the next. Hirsch seems to believe that the reason for those actions is Jenny, but Jenny doesn’t bring enough to the table for me to really believe that.

Jenny could be great, she should be great, but Hirsch totally squanders her potential. Jenny is experiencing, firsthand, the torture of being the enemy in a land that belongs to her as much as it does to Stephen. She is visibly Chinese-American in a country destroyed by the actions of the Chinese government (motivated by the actions of the American government, of course) and she should be a lightning rod for the incredibly important issues that raises. Jenny has every right to be furiously angry and to react furiously the racism and cruelty that surround her. We meet her as she’s having racial slurs thrown at her, but because Hirsch mishandles her, she ultimately seems like a childish troublemaker instead of someone lashing out because of their mistreatment. She exists to be Stephen’s motivation to challenge the social structure around him and perhaps that could’ve worked had Jenny been a fully-fleshed and realized character, but instead they… what? Throw some firecrackers and almost completely destroy the community that’s keeping them alive?

The heart of the book is the idea that humans must always strive to be more than what the world around them will allow, but these characters don’t. They strive to rebuild their world in the image of the one that caused the Collapse in the first place and that’s not only a lesson I don’t want them to learn, that I don’t want anyone to learn, but also, I don’t think it’s the lesson Hirsch wanted them to learn. And that’s both his and his book’s gravest failing.

For as long as I’ve had access to a DVR (years and years, now) I’ve saved shows and movies like they might later save my life. Half hour comedies, one hour dramas, whatever movies happened to interest me on all those expensive premium movie channels. All of it. I save and I save and I save and I watch that available storage space bar disappear and I   [more...]]]> Hi, I’m Ash and I’m a DVR hoarder.

For as long as I’ve had access to a DVR (years and years, now) I’ve saved shows and movies like they might later save my life. Half hour comedies, one hour dramas, whatever movies happened to interest me on all those expensive premium movie channels. All of it. I save and I save and I save and I watch that available storage space bar disappear and I get more and more tense, awaiting the day that I’ll have to cull the herd in order to let my recording habit survive.

The culling isn’t hard, not at all really. By the time it arrives, I’m so disconnected from the things I’ve recorded that I no longer have any real need to keep them around. The movies and special recordings go first, then anything canceled, then anything that might constitute a mini-series type situation. There’s a thrill to deleting, a cleansing rush. “I am no longer obligated to watch or care about that thing,” I think. “I’m free.”

But then the potential regret. “I really wanted to see that movie, didn’t I?” and “A lot of people said John Carter was really good!” and “But you really do want to watch The Newsroom!”

I struggle with my hoarding because the line between save and delete is fine, baby’s hair fine, finer than, like, the breath of a ghost. There’s no rhyme or reason to it and I probably couldn’t explain it if asked. “That show feels better than that show.” or “I’ll feel bad for that one if I delete it.” My decisions are irrational and meaningless, but I am capable of making them swiftly.

The other day, in a preventative move against a future shouting match over the lack of disk space on the communal DVR, I went to work. I got rid of the awards shows that my dad neither watches nor cares about, but somehow always sets to record. “Peace out, Grammys,” I said. “Smell ya later, Golden Globes.” I cleaned off a couple dumb things I’d recorded to show my girlfriend and then forgotten to delete because no, I don’t need to keep an episode of House Hunters that I recorded in November. Then I got to USA’s show from last summer Political Animals.

I thought, “Meh, I’ll delete that one. It’s just a mini-series!”

But I was feeling lazy and I didn’t particularly want to get off the couch, so instead of deleting those last four episodes, I sat there and watched them all. And how glad am I that I did?!

What a good show! What a good thing! Even with all of its issues — it’s lacking in characters of color (Though there are some present, none are really leads, and Brittany Ishibashi is severely underutilized.) and it has a particularly difficult time dealing with women which is frustrating because it’s a show about an incredibly smart, powerful woman featuring several smart, powerful, engaging female characters and yet there are still heinously catty interactions between female characters, poor handling of complicated relationships (Carla Gugino’s relationship with her boss/boyfriend could’ve been great, but they fumbled her terribly.) and women insulting men by comparing them to women/girls — it was a fun, engaging, and emotional experience!

It’s got all kinds of smart people talking quickly and authoritatively about politics and journalism and it’s got that sort of fun and witty political drama element and it’s got good looking people and likable people and beautiful, heartbreaking family relationships and it was just super satisfying.

It’s got a seriously compelling, evolving relationship between Sigourney Weaver’s Secretary of State and Carla Gugino’s DC Journalist.

It’s got (G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S) fraternal twin brothers (James Wolk and Sebastian Stan) where one is the fuck-up and one can do no wrong but they love each other anyway!

It’s got Ellen Burstyn as the feisty drunk grandma who is the constant, sassy voice of reason and support! (And a WONDERFUL relationship between her and Sebastian Stan’s character, oh man.)

It’s got a womanizing, cheating former president dad who, despite his massive failures as a human, really loves his family and his ex-wife.

It’s got the sassy grandmother and the perfect brother’s uptight fiancee smoking pot in the Secretary of State’s kitchen and bonding!

It’s got an impromptu elopement which the entire overbearing (WITH LOVE) family manages to crash during the single most dramatic/shocking event of the presidential term. An event that made me sob! But I won’t spoil because it was so much better not knowing it was going to happen.

And it’s got Sigourney Weaver playing a Hillary Clinton-esque badass and playing her with wit and humanity and tenderness and palpable concern for her family. If there’s one thing I left this show with it’s that Elaine Barrish is not to be fucked with.

Sadly, USA pulled their full episodes from their video hub and OnDemand, so the only place to watch the show legally is by buying episodes through Amazon but, you know, if you’ve got a space twelve bucks sitting around, I don’t think it’d be poorly spent.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll learn from me and try to be just a tiny bit less arbitrary when you’re trying to free up space on your DVR. I think I will.

February was a success for the Casual-Ass Internet Book Club! In that I read and posted about it but also someone else read and posted about it! The ever-awesome Rae posted about The Woodcutter here. Having someone else express the same things about a book you both read is so satisfying.

So, for March, I did the same song and dance last month — recent purchases and wishlists and blog posts other people   [more...]]]>

February was a success for the Casual-Ass Internet Book Club! In that I read and posted about it but also someone else read and posted about it! The ever-awesome Rae posted about The Woodcutter here. Having someone else express the same things about a book you both read is so satisfying.

So, for March, I did the same song and dance last month — recent purchases and wishlists and blog posts other people had made about things they’d recently liked and best of 2012 lists and on and on — but then I remembered that my gf had just bought me a book as a surprise! A young adult diystopia! And it was one that sounded really good! And had a blurb from Suzanne Collins!

From Amazon: In the aftermath of a war, America’s landscape has been ravaged and two-thirds of the population left dead from a vicious strain of influenza. Fifteen-year-old Stephen Quinn and his family were among the few that survived and became salvagers, roaming the country in search of material to trade. But when Stephen’s grandfather dies and his father falls into a coma after an accident, Stephen finds his way to Settler’s Landing, a community that seems too good to be true. Then Stephen meets strong, defiant, mischievous Jenny, who refuses to accept things as they are. And when they play a prank that goes horribly wrong, chaos erupts, and they find themselves in the midst of a battle that will change Settler’s Landing–and their lives–forever.

So here’s the plan!

1. Read the book!
2. Post about it on the internet no later than March 31st
3. Link me to your post in the comments here
4. I’ll do a round-up post on April 1st-ish
5. We can have a casual-ass comment party about the book
6. I’ll announce the next book
7. REPEAT

Your site, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, even Twitter is fine! (Just Storify and link!) Whatever works for you!

This is a very casual, kick-back, low-expectations, low-effort deal! I just like the idea of reading the same book and then hearing what people think about it. That’s literally it. FUN, YES?! Good.

If you have suggestions for the next book, please please please comment with them and tell me! I’d appreciate if it was available on Kindle, but that’s the only requirement.

Share this with people if you do it! Tell me if you’re going to do it! Tell everyone!

“Toy,” on the other hand, is associated with a feeling. And that feeling is what we are trying, time and again, to convey to people. That sex toys are not just mechanical objects that will get in the way of your sex life. They are not ominous gadgets that will turn your girlfriend into a vibrator-wielding recluse. They are toys, meant for adding playfulness and fun to your sex life. In our sex-negative culture, where   [more...]]]>

“Toy,” on the other hand, is associated with a feeling. And that feeling is what we are trying, time and again, to convey to people. That sex toys are not just mechanical objects that will get in the way of your sex life. They are not ominous gadgets that will turn your girlfriend into a vibrator-wielding recluse. They are toys, meant for adding playfulness and fun to your sex life. In our sex-negative culture, where to even enjoy sex (especially as a woman) is somehow blasphemous, this is important.
    – Epiphora‘s great post What Should We Call Sex Toys?

Kelly Dewey

I always love Rae‘s posts, but I really loved this pretty arrangement of roses she did post-Valentine’s Day. I love all that layered height and texture! Beauty born of kitty-damage necessity.

the always on-point Anne Emond

Everything Sarah does is great. I especially love her photography and the frank way she talks about fatness. She rules.

Don Carson

What is the date of my commencement at my previous position? Why, I believe t’was a September, as the hot summer winds where just beginning to gently falter, the sweet New England crisp in the air was creeping over Beacon Hill like a rare red squirrel emerging from it’s winter slumber. What date, specifically? Uhhh, I don’t know, the fourth? The fifth? If memory serves, I believe I was living in a house with 5 other 19 year old art students, eating exclusively at “Finagle a Bagel” in Coolidge Corner, and napping at my mother’s basement apartment in the middle of the day. This will not fit in the assigned “date” box! Fuck it! It was probably the fourth, who gives a shit?!
    – Zoe Hyde‘s Open Letter to the Electronic Resume Form is perfection.

Internet K-Hole [NSFW]

Kelly Dewey

I’m not a big fan of A Softer World, but I loved this one.

Okay, so, January wasn’t the most successful foray into book club-dom, what with how my post was the only one and I didn’t even like the book all that much. But that’s okay! Because this is a project! And I’m stickin’ to it!

So, I went through my recent purchases again and then went through a bunch of things on my wishlist then I stared at my bookshelves for a long time   [more...]]]>

Okay, so, January wasn’t the most successful foray into book club-dom, what with how my post was the only one and I didn’t even like the book all that much. But that’s okay! Because this is a project! And I’m stickin’ to it!

So, I went through my recent purchases again and then went through a bunch of things on my wishlist then I stared at my bookshelves for a long time and the I thought about doing The Fault in Our Stars since basically everyone on earth has read it and I already have a copy in my hands and then I went back to my recent purchases and then I tore my hair out and got some utterly useless opinions from my girlfriend and then I decided on Kate Danley’s The Woodcutter because it sounds interesting and good and fun to talk about it regardless of ultimate enjoyment. Plus, it’s pretty cheap, particularly for Kindle and you can even borrow it for free if you’ve got an Amazon Prime membership.

From Amazon: Deep within the Wood, a young woman lies dead. Not a mark on her body. No trace of her murderer. Only her chipped glass slippers hint at her identity. The Woodcutter, keeper of the peace between the Twelve Kingdoms of Man and the Realm of the Faerie, must find the maiden’s killer before others share her fate. Guided by the wind and aided by three charmed axes won from the River God, the Woodcutter begins his hunt, searching for clues in the whispering dominions of the enchanted unknown. But quickly he finds that one murdered maiden is not the only nefarious mystery afoot: one of Odin’s hellhounds has escaped, a sinister mansion appears where it shouldn’t, a pixie dust drug trade runs rampant, and more young girls go missing. Looming in the shadows is the malevolent, power-hungry queen, and she will stop at nothing to destroy the Twelve Kingdoms and annihilate the Royal Fae…unless the Woodcutter can outmaneuver her and save the gentle souls of the Wood.

So here’s the plan!

1. Read the book!
2. Post about it on the internet no later than February 28th
3. Link me to your post in the comments here
4. I’ll do a round-up post on March 1st-ish
5. We can have a casual-ass comment party about the book
6. I’ll announce the next book
7. REPEAT

Your site, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, even Twitter is fine! (Just Storify and link!) Whatever works for you!

This is a very casual, kick-back, low-expectations, low-effort deal! I just like the idea of reading the same book and then hearing what people think about it. That’s literally it. FUN, YES?! Good.

If you have suggestions for the next book, please please please comment with them and tell me! I’d appreciate if it was available on Kindle, but that’s the only requirement.

Share this with people if you do it! Tell me if you’re going to do it! Tell everyone!