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2015 in review

Yes, I know! I haven’t posted in a long, long time. Is anyone still out there? *waves*

Not sure if my posting will improve in the new year, but here are my sad, sad stats for this one. Wishing you all the best in 2016! Happy New Year!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,300 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 55 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Workout corsets! For real…

And more bad celebrity health advice. Corsets are a thing now? Oh dear. Thanks to Fitness Is a Feminist Issue for writing about this. I want to read Caulfield’s book now, too.

FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

I’m looking forward to reading Timothy Caulfield’s new book Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong about Everything?

In it Caulfield debunks the health and fitness trends perpetuated by celebrities, everything from juice cleanses to to gluten-free diets.

Sometimes it seems as if celebrity diet and fitness advice ought to have a giant negation sign put in front of it. If Gwyneth Paltrow says to do something, that’s almost a reason not to do that very thing. Think of the Costanza maneuver, doing the opposite.

What’s the latest version? I know, vaginal steaming. But I’m not going there. How about exercise corsets? Apparently Kim Kardashian recommends them. I don’t know if Caulfield’s book covers the claims made on behalf of exercise corsets but here’s James Fell’s assessment, Kim Kardashian: Queen of Celebrity Weight Loss Dumbassery

What in the holy mother of crap?

Here is part of the marketing pitch from the…

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Why feminism is still needed

Woke up to this lovely obit this morning. What old coot (in attitude if not age) wrote this?

FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

Michael Rowe shared this on Facebook with the following comment: “I can’t help but wonder what it would look like if a male author who had sold 30 million copies of one book (in this case, THE THORN BIRDS, which was made into the second-highest rated miniseries of all time) was eulogized as being “plain of feature and certainly overweight,” especially in the first paragraph of his obituary. I’m still wondering, because I just can’t picture it happening. (Photo by @vanbadham, via Twitter.)”

Thanks Peter K for sharing

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Gwyneth Paltrow says steam your vagina, an OB/GYN says don’t

Reblogging this because, well, read for yourself. Don’t do this!

Dr. Jen Gunter

On today’s episode of ask the experts we pit the gynecologic advice of Gwyneth Paltrow, a consciously uncoupled actress and self-professed lifestyle expert who dabbles in vaginal health, against that of yours truly, a board certified OB/GYN who has completed a 5 year OB/GYN residency and a fellowship in infectious diseases and is an expert in vulvovaginal disorders.

Ms. Paltrow, recommends a V-steam. Her words:  “You sit on what is essentially a mini-throne, and a combination of infrared and mugwort steam cleanses your uterus, et al. It is an energetic release—not just a steam douche—that balances female hormone levels. If you’re in LA, you have to do it.”

My response: Don’t.

Here’s why.

The vagina (and uterus and vulva for that matter) should be viewed as self-cleaning ovens. We know that douching is harmful, heck, even seminal fluid can be harmful (exposure to multiple partners without condoms is…

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Accessing the Future Blog Hop

The Future Fire is crowdfunding another science fiction anthology! The theme this time concerns the issues that come with disability as well as how those intersect with other issues such as race, gender, sexuality, and class. Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well, to help spread the word, Future Fire has a blog hop going for writers and readers to talk about their work in progress or their current read and how power plays out therein. Future Fire general editor Djibril al-Ayad invited me to chime in and I quickly agreed.

Monday Morning Music – Martin Luther King Day

It’s Martin Luther King Day here in the U.S. Happy birthday (belated-he was actually born on Jan. 15) to one of the greatest people of the twentieth century! It’s a sad, sad shame that he didn’t make it to the twenty-first. He would have been 84 this year.

In honor of the day, I’m going to share a song with you written by a man who knew Dr. King and, according to this Poughkeepsie Journal article, introduced him to the song “We Shall Overcome,” which became one of the anthems of the civil rights movement¹.

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.”

Monday Morning Music will be up in a little bit. But first, I wanted to let you all know that I have a guest post up at Snobbery today. I go on about Tolkien. Check it out if you like.

The Between by Tananarive Due – A Review

“Sometimes the dead go unburied.”

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We’ve now sliding down the downslope of this year’s women of genre fiction reading challenge. No, no! I don’t mean that I’ll be giving The Between a bad review. Far from it. What I mean is that this is book #7 out of twelve. More than half way done!

The Between is Tananarive Due’s first novel, published in 1995. Its protagonist is Hilton James who, as a young boy, almost drowns, but is rescued by his grandmother. The undertow takes her instead. James is adopted by an aunt and uncle and, once grown, marries a woman named Dede and has two children, Jamil and Kaya. The book opens (after the prologue where we learn about James’ near-death experience) with Dede being elected the first African American judge of Dade County, Florida. Hilton is a successful drug counselor. All’s well that ends well, right?

Yeah, not so much. Dede is receiving racist hate mail from someone she once prosecuted and Hilton is having nightmares, nightmares that steadily grow worse and cause James to question reality.

The Between is a creepy, haunting tale. I really loved coming along with Hilton on his descent into madness as his dreams become ever more intense and his obsession with protecting his family from their stalker grows worse. I felt so bad for him as well as Dede and their children, who could only watch as he slips further away from them.

While the book is predictable in places, Due’s prose is lovely, she has a marvelous attention to detail, and the tale sucked me in deeply. Due created such strong characters in the James family; I loved them all and was hoping all through my read that everything would work out for them. The secondary characters are strong, too. Hilton’s therapist Raul is a smart, interesting man as is his brother Andres, who delivers the reveal of what’s most likely happening with Hilton James, an explanation that works for me.

If you like psychological horror, I highly recommend The Between.

4.25/5

Link Treats

It’s Wednesday, and I’ve counted to five, so let’s have some links.

The Times, They Are A-Changing (And So Should Your Dictionary)
Kory Stamper takes on the idea of preferring older dictionaries. Not really a good idea.

10 Signs that Feminism May Not Be For You
The Belle Jar guest-posted at the Outlier Collective last week. Some good tips here.

fill up your rainbow tank
Poetlandia was one of many celebrating SCOTUS’s decisions on DOMA and Prop 8 last week.

Reporting Harassment at a Convention: A First-Person How To
Elise Matthesen’s thoughts over at Whatever on reporting sexual harassment at conventions.

An Open Letter to Paula Deen
Michael W. Twitty at Afroculinaria shares his thoughts about and for Paula Deen. It’s an awesome read.

I thought a random rainbow pic might be nice today, but decided to go with this: the Northern Lights outside our house several years ago. Neat, huh?