Sea & Sun (Day 4)
Exploring the Ship (Day 2)
Boarding (Day 1)
[Hawaii Cruise] On The Way (Day 0.5)
Gender Switch Catch 22
My roommate, who shares the same interests in discussions of gender and sexism as I do, passed on to me article about parents that are trying to raise their children in “gender neutral” environments, but said children often conform to traditional gender norms despite these efforts.
One point of the article that particularly caught our attention was this: “One militantly gender-neutral friend who had withheld dolls from her daughter says she once walked in on her daughter cooing to a toy truck she’d swaddled in a pink blankie.”
All arguments aside about whether or not this proves that women are naturally maternal/caretakers no matter how many footballs you shove at them, what struck me is why would anyone consider denying a child a toy because of it’s implied gender role to be “gender neutral”. What, trucks — a classic boy toy — are gender neutral, but dolls aren’t (unless, possibly, they’re being played with by boys)? It’s okay for a girl to fit into traditionally boy gender typing, so long as she isn’t conforming to anything traditionally girly? Surely I’m not the only one seeing the fault in this thought process.
My own toy collection growing up was fairly diversified. My Little Pony shared the same toy drawer as my model T-Rex and Brontosaurs. I used to give Barbie dolls rides in my beloved Tonka Truck, until I buried them all in the front yard.
This is what I always thought gender neutrality was; allowing someone — a child, or an adult — access to something they enjoyed regardless of the societal gender roles enforced upon it. Girls playing with model trains and makeup; boys playing house and football. It doesn’t matter the gender of the kid playing with the toy, as long as whatever they are doing makes them happy.
At what point did the effort to ease the strictures of gender roles turn into pushing them on the opposite gender instead?
Between Paper Pages and Digital Screens
If you use Amazon.com at all — or the internet, for that matter — it’s a fair bet that you’ve at least seen the Kindle. And if you read blogs and review sites, it’s also a fair bet that you’ve come across the furiously negative reaction to it among many technology-minded book readers.
The Kindle is a representation of the human need to make things more complicated in order to make them simpler. The paperback book is probably one of the most easy-to-use and practical of human inventions — turn a page, get more content. It’s portable, looks nice on display, can be lent out to friends, and just plain feels good in your hand. You can collect hundreds, provided you’ve got the money and the wall-space. Why on earth does the human race feel the need to improve upon this?
Those against the Kindle and other e-book readers will often laud the inherent perfection of books. If nothing else, they remain a source of textual entertainment that isn’t chained to the nearest electrical outlet or wireless internet hub. Well, as long as you plan to read only during the day or invest in candles.
Paperback and hardcover books as they are currently, however, are not the bastions of usability that hard-core devotees will make them out to be. If they were, I would have reached for my dictionary to make sure I was using the word “laud” right — instead, I used dictionary.com.
That’s where the advantage of e-book readers over paperbacks comes into play; not in the readability, but in the accessibility. Being able to search two hundred books with a few keywords is a massive improvement over going through them by hand to find the information you want. It also helps on organization; when the size of your book collection starts reaching into the hundreds, it’s easy to lose or misplace individual books or buy multiple copies of the same book. Digital books provide instant organization and access to your book collection, with just the click of a button.
The other advantage of the Kindle and similar e-book readers, and probably their biggest attraction, is storage. Everyone who regularly reads and collects books suffers from never having enough book shelves. Everyone. The difference in storage space between what’s needed to keep several hundred paperbacks and what’s needed to keep a few scan-disk memory cards is massive. The book collection that currently takes up your living room wall could now fit easily into your purse. If you, too, got teary eyed over the several dozen books you had to get rid of during the last move or are constantly moving book piles around your apartment to accommodate your living space, this is a very appealing concept.
Now on portability. One of the articles I read sneered at the idea of carrying around that many books in your back pocket. No normal person finishes off or looses interest in a book during a daily train ride and simply must have a selection of 199 others to pick from right that second. And yes, when looked at that way, it can seem a little excessive. But let’s not talk about daily bus or train rides — let’s talk about hours long plane flights and week(+) long vacations. I have, on more than one occasion, completely finished off the two novels I brought with me for a weekend trip and had nothing to read on the nine hour plane flight home. Back when I used to travel around with my grandparents in their RV, I could never pack enough reading material to satisfy my appetite. I’m the person who requires a extra piece of luggage to carry all their books when they go on vacation. So, having a selection of two hundred novels whenever I go without taking up more space than a single book? A dream come true.
E-book readers are not without their advantages or future potential. But much the same way PDAs were once vastly over-priced for what they offered in comparison to conventional binder-style organizers, the Kindle asks a lot for giving relatively little back. Above, I list all the reasons why I want one — my reasons for not getting one could be summed up in a $400 price tag.
If e-Books were cheaper or there was a cheap (meaning free) way of getting digital copies of the novels I own currently, that might off-set the cost of the device. Unfortunately, many e-Books cost as much as paperbacks, or even more than it would be to get the same books used. The shelves I buy at Target may not be able to go on the train with me, but they cost a third as much and that’s money I can spend on more books. Or, you know, rent.
There also still remains the fact that while e-Readers offer the advantage of accessibility and portability when it comes to vast numbers of novels, nothing beats a single paperback book when it comes to easy and enjoyable readability.
I think I’ll wait for Version 2.
PsyCop: Partners by Jordan Castillo Price
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Victor is a PsyCop, also known as a member of the Paranormal Investigation team. He’s not popular with the living, as most people consider him a little odd, but the ghosts of violent crimes can’t wait to tell him all about their deaths.
What pleased me about this book: I picked this book up on a whim and was delighted to find an honestly good, hot story. I finished it in the same day I unpacked it from the shipping box. Victor has a job he doesn’t care much for, a talent that makes his life a misery, and the depressing realization that there isn’t much better for him out there. He spends most of his days in a drugged-out haze to help deal with the ghosts and doesn’t have any friends. He’s also gay in a traditionally homophobic career and not entirely comfortable with that either. He could easily come off a self-pitying whiner who spends pages dwelling on the suffering of his life, but instead he is portrayed as a sympathetic, likable guy who just isn’t happy with his life — and with good reason. Victor’s love interest, Jacob Marks, while not a particularly complex character, presents a perfect counter-point to Vic’s awkwardness with his grinning self-confidence. He’s handsome, talented, capable, likes his life and his job — Vic’s baffled “and this hunk wants to be with ME?” attitude is understandable and easy to connect with, but at the same time, we can see what Jacob finds so appealing about him. It’s enjoyable to watch their relationship develop and Vic struggling to figure out his place in it. I was never left with that annoyed sense of “wish-fulfillment” that I get from stories with overly bland characters attracting overly amazing love interests. The plot is fun and nicely paced. It’s no mind twister, but it will draw you right in and keep you entertained and interested in what will happen next right up until the very end. There are no holes or inconsistence, and it’s not constantly put on the shelf for the sake of sex. Now about the Sex… This is no traditional romance filled with scenes of ever-building passions leading to a final, firework cumulation between the two characters. Jacob and Victor’s relationship is dirty back-room hip-grinding from the get go, and the deeper feelings and connections start developing from there on. The sex scene themselves are numerous and fantastic. They run short, sweet, and hot, and are joyfully free of silly euphemisms or meandering internal monologues on “feelings”. They never overwhelm the plot or take place of good character development. I loved all the side characters; they were as well handled as the main character and were never marginalized for the sake of the main romance. Overall, I highly recommend this book for a good, fun read. |
Creating a Gallery with WordPress
When I first started re-designing my webpage and building it completely on Wordpress, I used the WPG2 - WordPress Gallery 2 plugin to create and manage my image gallery. This served me fine at first, but after a while it became obvious that it had too many extra features that I didn’t use, trying to attractively integrate my G2 into my Wordpress theme was a pain, and it didn’t give me the easy control over my content that I desired.
So I removed it entirely and took a more serious look at my WP installation itself. After doing some more research in the Codex and browsing the forums, I found it was more than possible to build a gallery just using the tools Wordpress comes with.
Note: This does require some work to set up and continues to require some work with every post. But once you get the hang of it, it’s quick and easy to get exactly the look you want, and unlike a plug-in, it won’t run the risk of breaking your blog when you upgrade.
Go on to page 2 to see how I did it.
Pages: 1 2 3
Gallery: Duck Pond
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