rebeccakuder

Girl cooties! (or, Mary Shelley rocks)

461px-Frontispiece_to_Frankenstein_1831I just read John Scalzi’s post where he takes issue with a current blogoversy about girls infiltrating the boyish world of science fiction literature. I adore what John Scalzi has to say about it, so wanted to spread his good news.

I have to make two notes here. 1) Although I run with (and am married to) a boy who knows a hell of a lot more than I do, from first-hand experience, about science fiction literature, most of my direct experience with it is with film and TV. However, 2) I have read Frankenstein several times, and I love that novel. Novel. Not qualified and ghettoized, it turns out, as genre fiction.

It’s a great novel. You should all read it.

rebeccakuder

Could there be a dumber burglar?

I read about this guy who broke into someone’s house and stole a couple of diamond rings. But before he left, he used the victim’s computer to log into Facebook. Unfortunately, he forgot to log out. (D’OH!) Not that you have to be smart to break into a house, but really. This is amazing.

Read more about the burglary here.

Then there are the girls who got trapped in a stormwater drain, and WITH THEIR CELL PHONE updated their Facebook status before it occurred to them to call the Australian equivalent of 911.

I am worried about the world. I sort of want to lobby against computers, but of course, it’s not the computers, it’s the people. I’m starting to think that we’re headed for Idiocracy, as Mike Judge predicts…

rebeccakuder

More strange lullabies…

After having recently ranted about overly personal blog posts, here I go, posting more personal stuff.

(Is it personal to divulge the music with which one puts their babies to sleep?)
AlejandroEscovedo
Tonight, it was Alejandro Escovedo. He’s a major player in our house, majorly played, and often at bedtime. Tonight was a bootleg from a few years ago… not from this show, but here’s a sample of his greatness. Ironically, I was at that Black Swamp Arts show (pictured in the youtube video) with my babe in utero. Alejandro was great, but the sound was horrible, and I was paranoid that her developing eardrums would be damaged, so clutched my purse to my belly, trying to buffer the sound. Eventually my husband and I left early. (We have seen him many times before, and I must say, his pre-Chuck Profitt albums are much better than Alejandro’s collaborations with CP.)

Despite that concert, the baby’s hearing is, luckily, fine. And she loves the music of “Hano,” as she calls him. All’s well that ends well, as the saying goes.

rebeccakuder

Maybe unusual lullabies

200px-TomWaits-MuleVariations

In our house, the music at bedtime is quite varied. Tonight, it’s Mule Variations by Tom Waits. I love Tom Waits. Anyone who can write:

In a land there’s a town
And in that town there’s
A house
And in that house
There’s a woman
And in that woman
There’s a heart I love
I’m gonna take it
With me when I go

or

All your cryin don’t do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Come on up to the house

had me at the first clanging line. Maybe he ripped some style and other stuff off of Captain Beefheart, but at least he admits it. Tom Waits is a great creative force in the world.

Maybe it’s unusual for some, but for the fledgling raindog in our family, these lullabies seem just right.

And maybe she will sleep.

rebeccakuder

To blog or not to blog?

I have always been a fairly private person.

Although I used to work in information technology, I am ambivalent about the virtues of computer technology. Including blogs. But back before Facebook and Twitter and all that noise was born, the buzz was that in order to exist, one must have some sort of “web presence.” So I decided to buy the domain http://www.rebeccakuder.com, assuming some day I would need it. I created a website, really like an extended business card for myself as a writer. I also had a blog accessible from that website, and I decided against doing a purely personal weblog, but instead chose a somewhat rigid form: short nonfiction essays, exercises really, each inspired by something I had seen. Each with its accompanying image. I thought I would post something most days, but as a writer who is pretty concerned with well made sentences, my output wasn’t as bloggy as that of so many bloggers. (If you want to peruse those archives, they have been moved to the blog you are currently reading.)

My blogging was too precious, then, because I wanted time to reflect, time to draft and ponder before posting. My goal for each post, at that time, was to have a polished piece, so these little ruminations could accumulate into a published soapbox. As if each post would be something I might theoretically send to a magazine for publication. Or some day, collect into a book.

As part of an online class I’m teaching, we read George Orwell’s excellent essay, “Why I Write.” One of the reasons Orwell lists in the essay about why he writes is political purpose. He talks about how he was motivated to write, often, by something that angered him.

These days, writing out of anger is everywhere. It’s free and simple: just set up a blog and start yelling. And the glut of ME!-ME!-memoirs that continue to be published between portable covers speaks to the fact that there is an audience for certain types of yelling. But I’ve always thought that it’s important (at least to me) to let the anger simmer for a while. Sort it out. Go to therapy if you need to. Gain distance from the irritant. To extend that metaphor, let the pearl develop. While I like the immediacy of the technology, I want to see more pearls out in the blogosphere.

The line between public and private has disappeared. In fact, sometimes it seems like the membrane that existed between public and private has been turned inside out. I don’t want to hear others’ cell phone conversations in the public restroom, but I do, all the time. To paraphrase a friend who was ranting about the inanity of Facebook status updates, while I hope people eat good, interesting food, I don’t really give a rat’s arse what even my closest friends and family had for breakfast. (No offense.) But why do people think that the world cares about what they had for breakfast, unless it was something truly remarkable, like a freshly killed sparrow? I have enough email and things to do in the day, as I’m sure you do, too. Why would I want to wade through all that? I’ve thought about closing my Facebook account, because it’s so annoying (and yet embarrassingly addictive) but I like that I can occasionally find lost people, so I’ll keep it for now.

And if you’re reading this now, I guess my question, to blog or not to blog, has been answered.

rebeccakuder

The Buckaroo Banzai Principle

“The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension” is near the pinnacle on my list of my top favorite movies, ever, of all time. It’s got everything a girl could dream of: brain surgery, aliens, a cornet solo, an unexplained watermelon, Rasta aliens carrying bubble-wrap glasses to view their leaders’ video-letters, a kid named Scooter who outsmarts the Secretary of Defense, John Bigboote… I could go on.

Those of you who know, know.

But for those of you who don’t know: In the film, Buckaroo Banzai and his band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, are also stars of a very popular comic book. Early in the movie, Buckaroo and one of his entourage, a hot 80s blonde guy named “Perfect Tommy,” are walking down a cellblock, looking for “Penny Priddy” (played by Ellen Barkin) to bail her out. Someone from another cell reaches toward Perfect Tommy, he dodges the hand, and you hear a female prisoner’s voice say, “Oh my Gawwwwd, Perfect Tommy!”

There’s no room for doubting this world; we just accept that everyone knows who Perfect Tommy is. Of course we hear a woman calling after his tall, handsome, bleach-blonde self as he walks down the hall, because she’s probably just read the latest comic. We trust that someday, “Reno” will tell us later about that mysterious watermelon in the lab.

Meanwhile, NEW JERSEY and RENO NEVADA are searching another lab. They pass
racks of equipment, including a large watermelon clamped into some sort of
apparatus.

NEW JERSEY:
Why is there a watermelon there?

RENO NEVADA:
I’ll tell you later.

My husband and I refer to this phenomenon as “The Buckaroo Banzai Principle.” When a work of fiction is so confident in itself that the reader just enters the world and goes with it. I aim for that in my work, and hope, someday, to achieve it.

(Recently, one of my students informed me of something, so I should probably stop waiting for the sequel, billed at the end of this film thusly:

WATCH FOR THE
NEXT ADVENTURE
OF
BUCKAROO BANZAI

BUCKAROO BANZAI
AGAINST THE
WORLD CRIME LEAGUE

because, among other things, Peter Weller, who played Buckaroo, is getting his PhD in Renaissance Art at UCLA. Oh my Gawwwwd, maybe he really IS Buckaroo!)

rebeccakuder

Who are you this time?

(Quoting Tom Waits before coffee is always good. I could do it in my sleep. Sometimes I dream about Tom Waits; it’s always some sort of message about myself as an artist. But that’s not what I was going to write about.)

I’m teaching this academic writing and discourse class at Antioch University McGregor and yesterday was the in-person kickoff. It’s filled with an amazing, inspiring group of students from several disciplines and programs, but the beauty was in how they found common ground, talking about an address given by Paulo Freire. The address was called, “The Importance of the Act of Reading.” (It’s great, you should read it.)

After the first part of the session, where I’d done a little spiel about Lynda Barry and my academic writing demons, this student asked me, “Rebecca, are you actually Tina Fey?”

I don’t know what prompted the woman’s question, was it because I was being amusing and silly? Was it my eyeglasses? My purple silk disco shirt? Or because I look like Tina Fey? (Do I?) Or maybe because I come across as anxious and neurotic? (Am I?) Whatever the reason, I will take it as a compliment. Tina Fey cracks me up; I think she’s pretty brilliant, though some episodes of “30 Rock” seem to be a bit like the creators are playing with their food, but I will forgive that. Everyone needs to play with their food sometime. And by the way, I wouldn’t mind Tina Fey’s salary.

But I said, “No, I’m Sarah Palin.”

I thought it was a funny and somewhat sophisticated comeback, which I’m not usually known for, but the student just looked at me. Which proves it: I am not Tina Fey. Tina Fey would have gotten a laugh.

rebeccakuder

If men didn’t have a choice…

I am a strong proponent of natural childbirth. This is, in part, because of my own experience as a first-time pregnant woman of “advanced maternal age.” I was 41 when I had my first pregnancy and birth. My daughter was breech. I was able to have a vaginal breech birth. There were several reasons I was able and “allowed” to do this: my supportive husband, my supportive doula (Amy Chavez of Bhakti House), and my supportive (and highly unusual, and old-school) obstetrician (Dr. Stephen Guy in Dayton). And more than all that, which was huge, was the fact that women, if well supported and encouraged, and barring other medical complications, are perfectly capable of giving birth to babies in breech position.

I am working on an essay about the birth, and it’s a subject I’m always interested in. I just read excerpts from an interview with Dr. Stuart Fischbein, a California VBAC-and breech-supportive doctor, who, according to blogger The Well-Rounded Mama, “is in trouble with his hospital for supporting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) and vaginal breech births.”

Here is an excerpt from her post, his interview:

“There’s a study that came out in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology last December that found the morbidity of a repeat cesarean section is higher than a successful VBAC.

A successful VBAC occurs about 73% of the time. If a hospital bans VBAC, they’re basically telling 73% of women that they have to undergo a surgical procedure that carries more morbidity than if they had a vaginal birth. That’s outrageous to me. It leaves me speechless, and for me that’s no small thing!

The same model applies to breech deliveries. Some women are being told to have a procedure that carries more morbidity than a vaginal delivery. But they are never being told the numbers or given the option.”

I know many women have truly necessary medical interventions to birth healthy babies, and I’m grateful that there are many options for birthing. I’m not saying that everyone must or should have natural birth. But it’s incredibly unfair that so many women aren’t informed or given a choice, and that so many pregnancies end in C-section (a major surgery) for the wrong reasons: because doctors are not trained, because home birth is not legal or accepted, because the medical establishment is more frightened (or motivated) by lawsuit than by the idea of all the secondary problems that can result from unnecessary surgery.

If there were any major surgery like this that was de facto mandatory for men, Congress would be coming up with solutions. There would be legal home birth in every state; midwives would be the norm, and doctors would be schooled in how to support various birth positions.

rebeccakuder

Antioch Writers’ Workshop and Antioch McGregor partnership

There’s a nice article posted in the American Chronicle about the partnership between Antioch University McGregor and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop (AWW). You can read it here.

For my part, the work of the summer course was challenging and exhilarating. I hope to teach it again next year. It’s a really good workshop, too, even if you don’t want academic credit. You can read more about the AWW here.