Hissy Cat

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March 31, 2006

The Price Of Salt

I know it's early for for the Paperback of the Week, but since Maud pointed yesterday to an exhibit of Patricia Highsmith's life taking place in Switzerland I thought it would be an opportune moment to share one my favorite lesbian pulp novels-- one of my favorite novels, period-- with anyone who happens to be reading.

Patricia Highsmith wrote The Price of Salt in 1950 and published it in 1951 under the pen name Clare Morgan. It is a strange, beautiful novel; a romance about two women, and a suspence novel, too. It is deliciously moody and strange. I wrote a blurb about Price of Salt on Wikipedia, if you'd like more background info (be kind-- I wrote it either right after or right before I was finishing my thesis, so I was totally cracked out and my spelling is totally cracked out. Also, I just checked that outside link-- which I so did not add-- and it leads to the dumbest review/ essay I have ever read ever. Please don't read it. It will only discourage you/ make you sad.) There are no murderers, but there is a private detective and a cross-country chase and all kinds of issues about identity.

The Price of Salt is one of the four novels I covered in my thesis on lesbian pulps (the other three were Spring Fire, Odd Girl Out, and The Girls in 3-B). This sounds really corny, but I got really attached to Carol and Therese. I lived with them day in and day out for so very long. I miss them.

On a side note, the article Maud linked to I found to be very, very strange. It's titled, first of all, "Patricia Highsmith's secret life revealed." And then there's this:

"We didn't know until now how intense or excessive her love life was when she was young," Ulrich Weber, the curator in charge of the author's literary archive, told swissinfo.

"She experienced her homosexuality and didn't suppress it, as was the case for her fictitious hero, Tom Ripley."

"Excessive"? I find that to be a rather odd remark for a biographer to make about a subject. Or anyone. In any event, Highsmith made no secret of her sexual preferences. In the introduction Highsmith wrote to the Naiad Press reissue of The Price of Salt in 1986 that comes across pretty clearly (I don't know if this essay is included in the 2004 WW Norton reissue of the Price of Salt, which was released under the name Patricia Highsmith, because I don't own and haven't had a chance to take a look, but if not try to get your hand on the old Naiad edition. They're still around in used bookshops and they have that essay which provides some interesting publication history.) Descripitions of her in her youth paint her as a WASPish, butch lesbian. She lived in Greenwich Village, frequented dyke bars, and vacationed on Fire Island. I once heard a radio interview in which Marijane Meaker, a lover of Highsmith's and the author of the lesbian pulp Spring Fire, the memoir Highsmith: A Romance of the Fifties, described Pat as looking like Prince Valiant. It's hard for me to understand what the curator is finding so surprising unless it just never occured to him that even in the 1950s lesbians had lesbian sex.

The article also says nothing about her rabid anti-semitism and racism. I love Highsmith's writing. I think she is a fascinating artist, but she was, by all accounts a very difficult person.

But she also loved her cats.

Posted by hissycat at 04:16 AM | Comments (516)

March 30, 2006

From The Dept. Of STOP THE PRESSES!

Breaking news that's fit to print:

"It's really accelerated in the past year to the point where there is a ton of bad information out there," said Robert Massa, the vice president of enrollment at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. "People need to realize that anybody can say anything on the Internet."

So true.

Posted by hissycat at 11:24 PM | Comments (8)

March 28, 2006

You've Come Far Enough, Baby

The Annalog pointed me to the interview of powerhouse magazine editor Bonnie Fuller by the NYT's Deboroah Solomon that ran in Sunday's Magazine Section (I know, I know-- I've been that busy.) Fuller's promoting her book, The Joys of Much Too Much, as an antidote to the women-can't-have-it-all books. God forbid anyone suggest that a woman can have a successful career and a happy family, even-- no, especially a woman who has managed to pull off a high-power media career and mother four children. For this, Solomon has only disdain:

As a wife, a mother of four and a symbol of female accomplishment who has served as the editor of Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly, Marie Claire and other magazines, why would you stoop to writing a book like "The Joys of Much Too Much," which basically argues that greed is good?

Fuller's reply:

I think it is good to be greedy in terms of your dreams and in terms of trying to have everything you want out of life. The road to the richest life is one in which you partake of careerhood, lovehood, mommyhood — all of those things.

Wow, what a totally reasonable thing to say! Pursuing your dream of being a mother is no reason not to pursue your dream of being a firefighter! Being an award-winning journalist does NOT mean you'll become man-repellant; you can have a happy marraige and a thrilling career. It's OK to put your needs first. By the way, here's the Publisher's Weekly blurb:

If you still don't know how she does it, Fuller can tell you: don't sweat the small stuff (forget about organizing the sock drawer!), don't expect to be perfect and don't feel guilty. Fuller is a high-powered magazine editor, wife and mother of four, and in the upbeat, peppy style of Helen Gurley Brown, one of her mentors, she explains how you can have it all and enjoy getting it. Fuller is a believer in the power of positive thinking: push yourself forward, she says, and behave in a self-confident manner in order to get the job you want. You can balance marriage, family and career, she says, if your marriage is based on mutual unconditional love. Fuller has had a few hard knocks along the way and describes how she coped with the serious illnesses of two of her daughters, and a career crisis when she was fired from Glamour and had to struggle for months before getting another job. Failure is not a permanent condition, this optimist advises, and her pragmatic approach to a "jam-packed, maxed-out" life should inspire other women trying to have it all.

Not exactly The Fountainhead, is it?

But remember how wacky Bonnie Fuller who, oh yeah, just happened to raise with her husband their four children while accomplishing kind of everything in her field and writing about it, said it is possible to have a family and work? Solomon says no-no:

But we can't have everything. We're in a moment of postfeminist Realpolitik, when women are realizing that juggling a job and family life requires some sacrifices. It's impossible to do everything well all the time.

Which is why men are only dads or professionals, but never both. Because that would just be greedy. Greedy and Poseurpolitik so sacrifice, martyr!

Back to Bonnie:

I'm not suggesting that you do. In fact, I say it's O.K. — your house doesn't have to be clean. You don't have to have clean floors. Your drawers don't have to perfect, and dishes can pile up in the sink. That's part of my philosophy.

What philosophy is this? The philosophy of Dishevelism?

Oh, dis. Good one, Deboroh Solomon. Way to prove that you can't have everything. Sure, you may be a loving mother and an accomplished careerwoman but if your floors aren't pine fresh, you just fail. Fail. As a wife. As a mother. AND AS A HUMAN BEING.

You mention several times in your book that you are the main breadwinner in your family. Are you boasting?

I do like it. I don't mind it.

But how does your husband feel about that? You never even say what he does.

He is a self-employed architect. At one point, after we had our second child, he decided to take time off and stay home. I think he's happy that at least one person in our family is a breadwinner.

Deboroh Solomon, I expect if/ when you have children you'll stop writing at the Times and instead spend the days cleaning the floor till it shines. With your tongue.

Posted by hissycat at 04:31 AM | Comments (64)

March 27, 2006

Paperback of the Week

Another expert/ psychologist/ scientist - authored pulp book. After novels with tragic/ punishing endings, this was the most popular format pulp publishers used for homosexual content. Dressing titillating material in a cloak-- ok, a skinny scarf-- of scientific and social value was a reliable strategy for getting their books through the mail without disturbance from the censors.

I think what I love best about this cover is the color scheme. Ouch. That so-called "normal" woman is like, totally modular, man. She's about to run away with someone named Spring Rayne she met in her pottery class. They think about going to California eventually; right now, they're just living on the road and the power of female-to-female love. If you move the book around, the women, like, totally, leave trails behind them, like, in the air. Whoa, dude. Those colors are, like, seriously intense. Love on.

Posted by hissycat at 06:22 AM | Comments (28)

Pop Quiz

Because I've been up doing work all goddamn night I give and because owning a blog means getting to inflict this crap on others, I present you all with a good-for-nothing, waste-of-time, sorry-ass quiz:

Posted by hissycat at 06:02 AM | Comments (5)

March 25, 2006

Orson Welles Is From Outer Space

Now up on Google Video is a delectable selection of videos from old movie reels taken from The National Archives. 1930s footage from the Dept. of the Interior, United Newsreel Motion Pictures from WWII (check out this clip about the WACs, the Air Force's female division), and NASA films. It's loads of fun.

Among the NASA films is Who's Out There? The lost masterpiece of Orson Welles, for serious. He's all gray-bearded and bloated and he narrates in his crazy voice. The camera work is full of weird zooms and there are all these random old people. It is totally out of control. Out of control. I mean, WTF? Orson Welles is making a freaking motion picture reel about freaking aliens for freaking NASA.

I wish the archive had more. It's missing, for instance, what has to be one of the most frightening 9 minutes of film of all time. I mean, of course, the Duck and Cover film. No wonder our parents are so fucked up. It's seriously creepy. Watch the part about sunburns. Oh, and when all the children flee the yard, leaving their jump rope behind:

While we're on the subject of government propaganda, I also really love this:

Ok, it's the East German government, but whatevs. Here's the description:

Strange mixture of propaganda and advertising from former East Germany, late 1958. The first half celebrates the progress the communist country made promotes how fantastic the Christmas supply available at state-owned Konsum shops is.

No wonder I find it so soothing, so soothing.

Posted by hissycat at 07:46 AM | Comments (5)

March 22, 2006

Patently Ridiculous? Copyright it is!

From today's NYTimes editorial on patent law reform:

Our nation's founders considered intellectual property important enough to include in the Constitution, but did not establish the system for the sake of the inventor. It exists for the sake of society, or, as it says in the Constitution, "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts."

Oh my freaking god, it's an honest-to-god miracle that the principle of the common good is being mentioned in an article about intellectual property, so thanks, Gray Lady, for bringing this up in regards to patent law.

But whenever the topic is copyright law why-- oh, for the sake of sick orphan kittens-- does no mainstream newsource seem capable of adding two and two to get to the forehead-smackingly, air-punchingly obvious point that copyright laws can and in fact have become stifling and not in the interest of society? Yargh, I say to ye. Yargh.

Posted by hissycat at 03:32 AM | Comments (87)

March 20, 2006

Selling Out: A Rambly Late Post

No, really, it's just my new haircut that makes the page look different to you. No? Ok, look. I'm not crazy about the new look either, and yes, I know, advertising's the devil's trade. It's just that I'm just kind of, well-- comment vous dites? ah, oui!-- poor. I'm not as indigent as I was a couple of months ago when I was out of work, but I'm still just barely scraping by, and things are about to get even tighter.

No, I'm not about to get fired again. Well, at least I hope not. God, I hope not. That would blow. I actually like the work I'm doing-- it's researchy work that I can do from home on my own schedule. Its not in a field I have intention of hoeing-- or whatever it is one does, metaphorically, in one's metaphoric field-- but that's ok. I dig up general-interest interesting info, which is pleasing enough in itself, and besides, I'm not interested in a jobby job job, if you know what I mean. Like, a career-track job. I just want work that will fund my writing time-- something that isn't so draining and time-consuming that I just want to smoke drugs and die when the I clock out. If I can use the time to learn about a world I don't spend a whole lot of time engaged with, all the better. Lately I have been under pressure from my employers to get the project done faster, which means working more hours. It's been cutting into my sleeping time (I'm too stupid/ stubborn to give up my writing time) and stressing me out. I'm going to have to step up and ask to cut back my hours. I hate to do this because I 1) feel like a shmoo and 2) need the money. But on the other hand, this was just the kind of job one takes to support things like writing and if it's stressing me out and cutting into my work time, then the situation probably needs to be reevaluated.

Oh, and writing. This is the best part of my life right now. I mean it always is-- I think this is how I know I'm going to always have to be writing. I just feel so useless when I'm not doing it. I'm so anxious all the time, worrying that I ought to be somewhere else, spending the time differently, living my life in a better way. When I'm writing well it's like I'm just doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's just what I'm supposed to be doing (even when it's not. . . like, for instance, now. I should be working. Or sleeping. Or washing dishes.). I can't think of another activity I feel that way about.

Anyway, I've sort of gearing up to do more freelance writing over-- well, a long time-- but in the last month or so, I'd say steam has been gathering. That's another reason I want to cut back on my work hours. I know I was all about grad school last month. I still am, kind of. But I'm not going to be ready to apply until 2007 at the earliest. And I took my GREs in 2003 (don't ask)-- ha ha I am so going to have to take those again. It's not that I'm having any, like, material success as a writer. God, no. Nothing like that. Don't get the wrong idea. This is more just about how much time I'm doing to get my work out and how much I am putting out there and just being serious and committed and grown-up in the way I approach my work.

So in the meantime, I have bills to pay. If you happen to be planning on signing up for DSL with Speakeasy as your ISP (I actually do recommend them, esp. if you live in San Francisco and your alternative is crappy SBC), you can do me a kindness by clicking the Speakeasy button at the bottom of the page or telling them the refferal code. I'll get a credit towards my DSL. And if you happen to be signing up, or thinking about signing up for Backpack, it'd be neat if you'd use me as your referral. I spend $9 a month to keep my shit organized on that site, so a credit towards future bills would be cool, if it's no trouble to you and you happen to be signing up anyway. If I suddenly become filthy-- or even scuzzily-- rich I'll take down the ads.

I tried to make the ads as unobnoxious as possible, but if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them. Also, tell me if you have any issues in browsers other than Safari, since I'm lazy as hell and don't bother to check. Or, if you just feel like calling me a money-grubbing Jew, greedy whore, etc., feel free.

Posted by hissycat at 03:09 AM | Comments (6)

March 19, 2006

Paperback Of The Week

Posted by hissycat at 06:44 PM | Comments (4)

March 17, 2006

Better Hipsterkeeping

Posted by hissycat at 01:04 PM | Comments (2)

March 15, 2006

The Most Popular Search That Led Viewers To This Blog

Aside from "Hissy Cat," and permutations thereof, is "salad tossing" and permutations thereof.

No, I'm not kidding.

Posted by hissycat at 08:18 PM | Comments (11)

March 14, 2006

Writing Writing

It's been pointed out to me that my latest string of entries have been full of, like, stuff but bereft of the longwinded, self-indulgent, I'm-too-old-for-this-faux-Plath-crap babble writing-writing that used to go on here. Why, gentle readers, some of you seem to want my nattering back is beyond me. Dorothy Parker echoed my sentiments on blogging my sentiments (echoed, she did! why, blogging had not yet been invented; think of her vision; what a sensation!) when she said of poetry, "I gave it up, knowing it wasn't getting any better, but no one seemed to notice my magnificent gesture."

Actually, I've been very, very busy with work (both kinds), but I will make an effort soon.

Posted by hissycat at 01:53 AM | Comments (6)

March 13, 2006

Web 2.0 Makes The Internet Relevant To Me. Now Fuck Off.

Finally, a technology that speaks to me.
Isolatr: helping you find where other people aren't.

Posted by hissycat at 06:23 PM | Comments (8)

Meta-Kittenian Experimental Video Art

How do you make the best funny cats in the world even better?

More kittens!

Oh man, the layers of catness that are going on right now are totally blowing my brain. It's too much. Too much. It's like, all those cats. And then that, that little one. And here I am watching the video with my cat. Oh, wow. I just had some kind of small stroke in my brain. Seriously, call an ambulance. My IQ is dropping by the second. I cannot. . . stop. . . watching. . . need. . .more. . . kittens . . .drool. . .

Posted by hissycat at 12:55 AM | Comments (3)

March 12, 2006

The Revolution Will Not Be Sold On iTunes

The Daily Show is now available on iTunes, thus obviating television's one remaining purpose: to beam Jon Stewart into one's living room. I feel totally vindicated. I called your bluff, TV! And I didn't want to be your friend anyway, so there.

Posted by hissycat at 11:53 PM | Comments (4)

March 10, 2006

Paperback Of The Week

Posted by hissycat at 04:41 PM | Comments (1)

March 09, 2006

I Thought I Was Reading The Headline Wrong

"New York Asks Help From Poor in Housing Crisis." Shouldn't that be for poor? Apparently not. The NYT reports that the New York City Housing Authority "has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged."

That's insane. Subsidized housing is what makes it possible for non-wealthy people, and working-class families in particular, to live in the city. Now the housing authority is scrambling to cover make up for "'a steady divestment' in public housing at the federal level" by charging restupidulous fees. The fees are really steep:

So it has proposed charging tenants $5.75 a month to run a washing machine, $5 a month to operate a dishwasher, $10 a month for a separate freezer. Parking fees will rise to $75 from $5 a year on April 1.

Apparently, some fees for services "like fixing damage to apartments beyond normal wear and tear" actually have been on the books for a long time but, de facto, were never imposed except in "extreme cases where a door was bullet riddled or somebody kicked the front entrance door and it was not based on wear and tear." You hear that? Bullet holes. That's extreme, people. That's extreme. Not like today, when it's one bad enchilada and you're being charged an arm and a leg to have your toilet plunged. Or whatever they do to make the shit go away. 'Cause call me crazy, but if there's one thing I like to think I, as a tenant, should not have to pay extra for-- that I am, in fact, entitled to-- it's fecalmania all over my floor. I'm crazy that way.

Posted by hissycat at 10:37 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 08, 2006

How I've Been Feeling

Posted by hissycat at 04:13 AM | Comments (5)

March 07, 2006

Another Month, A Brand New Slut

Issue 46 of Bookslut is now up, including the reason I was a cranky bitch last week. Well, one of the reasons.

Posted by hissycat at 09:20 AM | Comments (4)

Painter of Light: A Portrait of Darkness (or, "Codpiece! Codpiece!")

I have always suspected that Thomas Kincaid is a fountainhead of pure, unbridled evil, but now I finally, finally have confirmation. If you are lucky enough to live in America and not know of Thomas Kincaid, he is the "painter of light" whose overpriced Christian schlock sells in, I think, malls, but also, like Pebble Beach and wherever else rich, white people without an aesthetic bone in their body can be found purchasing mass-reproduced "art" to match their wall-to-wall to carpeting. The best way I can describe Thomas Kincaid paintings is: imagine Oprah eating Dr. Phil, a Madame Alexander doll, an evangelical mega-church complete with Power-Point sermon, 839,459 Pixie Stix, then vomiting all that up into a gold-leaf frame and swishing so it will cake into vomity swirls of texture as it hardens. That's what his paintings look like. See:

But now the jig is up! According to the LA Times "Some former Kinkade employees, gallery operators and others contend that the Painter of Light has a decidedly dark side." It goes on about fraud and, I don't know, maybe money laundering, and all sorts of bad things, and blah di blah blah blah blah. "A three-member panel of the American Arbitration Assn. ordered his company to pay $860,000 for defrauding the former owners of two failed Virginia galleries." Right, whatever. This is the shit I live for:

It's not just Kinkade's business practices that have been called into question. Former gallery owners, ex-employees and others say his personal behavior also belies the wholesome image on which he's built his empire.

In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.

And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company, in an interview.

The article goes on for a while about how Kincaid (someone stop me) paints himself as an upstanding Christian before coming back to elaborate on the Sigfriend & Roy incident-- even though you already know about that-- because it is just soo bizarre.

In testimony and interviews with The Times, Sheppard and other former employees said they often went with Kinkade to strip clubs and bars, where he frequently became intoxicated and out of control.

John Dandois, Media Arts Group's senior director of retail operations from 1995 to 1999, testified in a hearing that the artist was a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde character, whose behavior worsened as the alcohol flowed.

"Thom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden, you couldn't tell where the boundary was," he said. "And then he became very incoherent, and he would start cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff."

Dandois, who left the company to become chief executive of a group of galleries owned by Kinkade's brother, Patrick, recounted that about six years ago the artist was so intoxicated during a performance by Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas that people seated nearby moved away from him.

"I think it was Roy or Siegfried or whatever had a codpiece in his leotards," Dandois testified. "And so when the show started, Thom just started yelling, 'Codpiece, codpiece,' and had to be quieted by his mother and Nanette."

This is really too much. I think I broke my lung.

In an interview, Sheppard, who often accompanied Kinkade on the road, recounted a trip to Orange County in the late 1990s for the artist's appearance on the "Hour of Power" television show at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. On the eve of the broadcast, Sheppard said, he and Kinkade returned to the Disneyland Hotel after a night of heavy drinking. As they walked to their rooms, according to Sheppard and another person who was there, Kinkade veered toward a nearby figure of a Disney character.

"Thom wanders over to Winnie the Pooh and decides to 'mark his territory,' " Sheppard told The Times.

In a deposition, the artist alluded to his practice of urinating outdoors, saying he "grew up in the country" where it was common. When pressed about allegedly relieving himself in a hotel elevator in Las Vegas, Kinkade said it might have happened.

"There may have been some ritual territory marking going on, but I don't recall it," he said.

Posted by hissycat at 06:15 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

March 06, 2006

Google Library Project And Why Nigel Newton Is A Fuckwad

Nigel Newton is a bloody idiot. Guardian Unlimited Books ran his dumb-ass article, Google's Literary Land-Grab, on Saturday to let you know why he thinks you should boycott Google to protest Google Print's Library Project. Newton is, of course, a publisher, although even greed can't fully explain his insane animosity towards Google nor his rabid fixation on 'rights' that are against virtually everyone's interests save possibly his own (and even that is debatable). The only possible explanation for Newton's stance is sheer dim-witted lack of comprehension and technological illiteracy.

If you click on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in Google Book Search, you may find yourself taking an unexpected journey. Google's ambient advertising programme hotlinks to a dating agency called Great Expectations Dating ("Find Your True Love Today"). How crass is that? We can be sure that Dickens would have thought it so. Indeed, he would probably have reserved a special vituperation for Google's literary land-grab.

There are two aspects to this land-grab. The first involves scanning out-of-copyright work, provided by the great libraries, and surrounding it with such advertising. That's not illegal, though it is of cultural concern.

That's some ballsy rhetoric, calling "scanning out-of-copyright work" a "landgrab" when it is not only perfectly legal but also will make those works more, not less, widely distributed. Landgrab has the connotation of hoarding. Stockpiling copyrights would be a good example of landgrabbing. Distributing works already in the public domain? Not so much.

And yes, a Great Expectations Dating Service is kind of tacky. But so is an Edgar Allen Poe Pizza, a(nother) spineless adaptation of an Austen novel, and the novelization of the movie adaptation of Great Expectations featuring a nude Gwyneth Paltrow draped on the front cover (I shit you not). The hyper commercialization of publishing does indeed concern me, but I think that perhaps there are other, more alarming examples of such crassness than Google's initiative to catalog information and make cultural works more accessable.

The second part of Google's literary predations, in the case of American libraries, involves scanning in-copyright works - for the purpose of publication - without direct prior permission of the copyright holder. That is to say, the author or his or her estate. Google's decision to scan first and ask permission later with copyrighted works is playing fast and loose. In America, it has already landed Google with a huge lawsuit from publishers.

It is authors who will suffer most. Dickens isn't around to defend the integrity of his work. Were he alive, he would certainly have tried. He campaigned with vigour on the issue of copyright. [emphasis mine]

Hey Nigel, let's play a game called, Spot The Logical Fallacy! Dickens "isn't around to defend the integrity of his work" because he is dead. How, exactly, will he suffer most? I'll get back to the issue of living authors in a moment, but let's stick with this Dickens fellow, on whom you are so obviously and yet so disengenuosly hung up.

A number of his works were copied in America and he was an early advocate of international copyright protection. In England, he went to court to stop someone writing a continuation of A Christmas Carol. He dedicated Pickwick Papers to Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, who introduced the Copyright Bill in 1837.

If Newton is seriously proposing that no one but Dickens ever be permitted to make a profit from Dickens' work, then every publisher that prints 'A Christmas Carol' or 'Great Expectations' needs to stop their presses right now. I don't mean Google. I mean Harper Collins or Penguin Putnam or whoever because they don't own no fucking copyright so who are they to turn a penny off Dickens' work. Obviously, Newton has no idea what he is saying, or else he is lying through his teeth. There is a huge difference between plagerising a work in part or whole or reproducing and selling it at a profit without the writer's permission during the writer's lifetime, and making it available to the public cost-free after the author's death.

The problem with having absolutely no copyright protections isn't all about being unfair to the writer; having NO protections also hurts the community by making it disadvantageous for living writers or artists or inventors to share their works with the public. Readers of Dickens' books should be aware of his feelings for societies run entirely by the untempered profit motive, with no eye towards the common good-- NOT GOOD. The American publishers of Dickens' day, much like the caricatured capitalists in his stories, contributed nothing of value yet profited off of the work of others (in this case, authors). When the author of the book in question is dead, however, it's doing the author any harm to distribute that cultural work widely and freely (it's not doing them any harm to distribute it at a cost, either, which is what mostly happens to works in the public domain; I mean, debate the ethics if you must, but dead's dead: as of yet no author has actually "turned in her grave"). Meanwhile, depriving the public of access to the work definately does harm the community at large.

So I call upon internet users worldwide to boycott the Google search engine until it ceases to scan books in America without prior permission, and desists from its mission to place ambient advertising on the great literary works. Switch your search engine from Google to MSN or Yahoo today, until you hear Google has withdrawn from the type of activities that have been described in another context as acts of "kleptomania".

No. Just-- no.

The worst thing is that the actual money paid to authors and publishers for these silly ads is negligible. So is the number of book purchases arising directly from these links (certainly they were when Google's representative came to see me last autumn). Authors are being ripped off however you look at it. They need to say something about it, loudly.

Of course, that's exactly NOT what authors are saying, but it's so much easier for publishers to put words in the mouths of dead authors than to listen to what living authors are saying.

Publishers also have serious responsibilities in this matter. It is possible in Google's contract for publishers to withdraw any book at any time. I call upon all publishers to do so immediately until these critical matters are resolved. No one will write much in future if they don't receive money for it because books are suddenly free on the net.

Frankly, any writer worth her ink should care more about reaching readers than about hoarding her precious words, and the world would be better of without those kinds of books, which have been glutting the market anyhow.

Plus Newton is being willfully thick. He knows the books are not going to be "suddenly free on the net." He said it himself.

At the moment, Google only offers a proportion of a copyright book for free. But it insists on scanning 100 per cent of each book it loadsBut it insists on scanning 100 per cent of each book it loads and, moreover, on owning the rights to the resulting digital files of authors' works. This is a Pandora's box. It must be regarded as likely that a subsequent management regime at Google will pressure publishers to allow it to offer 100 per cent of the text as battles for market share are joined against the other mighty search engines.

Publishers also have the responsibility to make sure that when it comes to hosting electronic content in future, it is their own websites that host the downloads and the scans of text and audio. There is no reason to hand this content to third-party websites.

Now he's just making himself sound foolish. Newton does not understand the technology. Not that I'm a huge techie myself, but at least I get this much: Google Library, much like actual libraries, will index the books for content. People using Google Library, much like people using their local public library, can then look up books according to a particular subject that interests them or whatever. Now, since Google indexes content using computers, they have to scan the entire book into the computer in order to do this. To put this in somewhat condescending, anthropomorphic fuzzy speak, Google has to let the computers 'read' the entire books so it can can catalogue the books by topics. Otherwise you're just sifting through first sentences. Now that doesn't mean that Google has to let the user read the entire book they pull up-- Google can choose to show you just the first sentence-- but they have to first scan and index all the content in order for the search to make sense and to have results that are useful.

University and copyright libraries also have serious responsibilities in their dealings with Google. I believe that libraries such as the Bodleian and Harvard may have misinterpreted the missions with which their universities have entrusted them in handing over part of their collections for scanning. They may also have thrown away the biggest commercial opportunity in the history of their academic institutions by regarding content as somehow free (though they do get their own copy of the digital file). It isn't free of course.

Funny after all his bellyaching about commercialization, Newton thinks libraries aren't commercial enough. Because god forbid Universities might want to promote the exchange of knowledge and information for its own sake and for the common good instead of increased revenue.

If there is to be money made out of scanning, the libraries themselves, not Google, should make it. Art collections provide a good example, as they often support themselves by licensing the images they have spent years (and millions) collecting. Yes, scanning a huge collection overnight is a huge expense but it does not have to happen overnight. The collections were written over two millennia; the online solution might decently take a long time.

It is all about making money. It's not about the authors and it's about the cultural implications of a Great Expectations dating service, and make no doubt about it, Nigel doesn't care one whit that without Google's inititaive it would take decades to digitize these books and even then it would be done with profit as a sole motive.

What Google is doing to books is, by contrast, positively indecent. It is a good search engine, frequently used by all of us. I for one would like to see it keep to that core business. Until it lays off literature, or else pays for it, I hope the readers of the Guardian and many others will join this boycott.

Yes, let's all of us stop using Google and Gmail and blogger and all of the other tools that Google has provided to literate people at no expense to us simply because you, Nigel Newton, happen to be the world's greatest fuckwad. Great idea.

Posted by hissycat at 09:16 PM | Comments (152) | TrackBack

March 05, 2006

Feminist Link Love

The always incredible Twisty Faster has an especially incredible post up called South Dakota and Libya: Blood Brothers in Misogyny:

. . . Rape isn't just a subset of unrelated incidents perpetrated by a fringe contingent of sickos. It is, as Susan Brownmilller asserted, "a conscious process by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."

If you are a man, and you don't rape women, well, goody for you, but if you email me with some inane vituperation about how your personal noble restraint invalidates Brownmiller's statement, you will only embarrass yourself. No matter what kind of man you are, you benefit in a thousand different ways from the violent sexualization of women's subordination. Actual rapists have got the initial shock and awe covered, but they're only the infantry; it's up to the rest of you to finish the job.

You do this by demonizing feminists, by renting women for lap dances, by letting rapists off the hook in court, by buying cheap crap Victoria's Secret thongs for your woman, by congratulating your girlfriend on her boob job, by ignoring mass rapes in Rwanda, by passing along the URL to Paris Hilton's fuck video, by ogling that girl at the bus stop, by letting your mom do your laundry, by "giving away" a bride, by voting control of women's uteruses over to godbag politicians, by pressuring your girlfriend to take it up the ass because all your friends are doin' it, by having an opinion on the size of human labia, by arguing that stripping is "empowering," by claiming you're "hardwired" to be turned on by women who emulate the ludicrous fashion practices of strippers and centerfolds, by your inability to conceive of sex without dominance, and by refusing, despite 30 years of intelligent, educated women telling you otherwise, to concede that you don't really, truly view women as human beings in anything approaching the same light in which you view yourself.

Go read the rest at at I Blame the Patriarchy! When you are done, you can go cast your vote for Twisty in the Koufax Awards, where she's nominated in nearly every category.

Posted by hissycat at 07:24 PM | Comments (16)

Paperback Of The Week

Posted by hissycat at 04:02 AM | Comments (5)

March 02, 2006

You Are Like A Beautiful Rose

Posted by hissycat at 02:54 PM | Comments (4)

Guess The Century: An Exercise In Institutional Brutality

1. During which century did American prisons shackle female prisoners during childbirth? Why, this one, of course! There is an article in today's NYT about the barbaric practice still practiced in many prisons of shackeling pregnant inmates in labor. I'm supposed to comment insightfully on the article now, this being a blog and all-- but really, what do I need to say? Read the article. It's enough.

There was a very interesting special on incarcerated mothers that was done on Forum this summer. I remember listening to it in the car and driving circles on my way to work so I could finish listening to the program. It covers a range of issues, and if I remember correctly, the first show dealt a lot with pregnancy, mother-infant bonding, and early childhood when the mother is an inmate. Highly recommended.

2. Name the year in which the federal government responded to concerns over mining fatalities by lowering safety standards? This one! The NYT has an article on how the Bush admin. has reduced the fines and/ or not collected the fines for potentialy lethal safety violations in mines.

"The agency keeps talking about issuing more fines, but it doesn't matter much," said Bruce Dial, a former inspector for the mine safety agency. "The number of citations means nothing when the citations are small, negotiable and most often uncollected."

Before the January disaster at the Sago Mine near here, where 12 miners died, the operator had been cited 273 times since 2004. None of the fines exceeded $460, roughly one-thousandth of 1 percent of the $110 million net profit reported last year by the current owner of the mine, the International Coal Group.

[At a House oversight hearing on Wednesday, agency officials repeatedly cited the frequency of fines against Sago in the year before the accident as proof of aggressive enforcement. Exasperated, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, replied that maybe those fines had little effect because many were for $60. That point set off applause from audience members.]

$60 is a freakin' parking ticket. The punishment for endangering the life and health of human beings (if you are a multi-mill company) is the same as forgetting to move your car for street-cleaning (if your are an individual). Actually, it's less-- they don't even get a yellow bootie.

Posted by hissycat at 02:09 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 01, 2006

"I Just Thought They Make Great Pussies Nowadays," Says Asia Argento

This will be my last J.T. Leroy post, I swear. I feel that once The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is released into theaters, the J.T. Leroy will finally be allowed to die a natural death and go gentle into that dark night of the film canister forgotten on a shelf. It's easier that way.

Meanwhile, Asia Argento raved, raved like she had a lightbulb or two loose in the attic! Today's Gawker reports back from the premiere, director Q&A and after-party:

Argento gave quite a performance during the Q&A following the screening. When she was asked how the revelation that Leroy was nonexistant affected the movie's impact, she began a beautiful ramble. To heavily paraphrase: "What is truth? Am I telling you the fucking truth right now? How do you know what the fucking truth is?" She then talked about her personal experience with J.T. and how she had now idea he didn't exist until everyone else found out about it. "I mean, I slept with J.T. I touched his pussy. I just thought they make great pussies these days. I don't know. I couldn't see, it was dark. He said he was on hormones, that was why the boobs were there. I just thought they make great pussies nowadays." Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Posted by hissycat at 12:51 PM | Comments (8143)

"Entertaining and Honest and Funny and Tragic"

Since there's a deadline approaching, I'm busy wasting time skimming things like Everyone Who's Anyone In Adult Trade Publishing, Propagandaville and Tinsletown, Too, a listing of literary agents interspersed with the editor's personal correspondances with the agents listed and including his own letters of rejection from those who have rejected his manuscript. The exchange at the bottom of the page I find especially engaging:

Dear Mr. Jones: I very much enjoyed the freshness of your work, however, I find that there are two kinds of writers, those that want to write and those that need to write. If your story is as thinly disguised as I suspect, Mr. Jones, then you are one of the latter, and I count you in good company. Those who want to write, generally, want to be published and rewarded for their efforts. Those who need to write are primarily concerned with the product of their labors, recognition being an afterthought. In light of the current hard cover fiction market, I see no way in which your work will be published in its current state. Whether or not you wish to subscribe to the parameters of popular fiction in order to alter the fate of your work is up to you. In the end, you may be happier with the job at McDonald's. Warm regards, Hillery Borton

Dear Ms. Borton: You apparently want popular fiction to continue to be fatuous, formulaic and stupid. Why? Why not give people a chance to read something fresh and true? Something entertaining and honest and funny and tragic? You sound like someone with some integrity. Why, then, wouldn't you rather work at McDonald's than continue to promote the fatuous, formulaic claptrap and crap that passes itself off as popular fiction? Thanks for your warm regards. Gerard Jones

Dear Hillery: I got a letter from Seva Gunitskiy dated 7/31/01 which said: "Gerard, Go ahead and send the rest of the GINNY GOOD manuscript, but address it either to myself or to Hillery Borton, Putnam Editor. Best, Seva." I sent the manuscript in, addressed to both you and Seva, and haven't heard anything from either of you. It's been over a year. What's up with it? Thanks. Gerard Jones

Out of office auto reply: Hillery Borton no longer works at Penguin-Putnam.

Posted by hissycat at 12:37 AM | Comments (2)