Love and the Headless Chunky Shapeshifter in Modern 'Literature'

I'm noticing a disturbing trend in romantic fantasy literature. I call it the Headless Chunky Male Shapeshifter trend. These books can be identified by the picture on the cover of a large white man's well-built chest and no face - there being no room on the cover to waste on such a triviality. Or maybe it costs more for an artist to paint a face. Dunno.Also there is a picture in the background or the bottom-left of whatever creature the character turns into.
I subscribe to two lists of free and cheap Kindle books that arrive in my inbox daily. They know I like Fantasy literature, so this type of book is thrown into the mix.
my mother used to read novels of this ilk, except that they were all real-world stories that didn't include anything magical or paranormal- just lots of sleaze that was peddled as literature. That was before vampires and werewolves became mainstream, back when you could still consider yourself edgy for reading Anne Rice.
Maybe Anne was the one responsible for making vampires mainstream. Maybe it was the Twilight series. Maybe it's been evolving that way for some time. I remember Frank Langella climbing the wall in the 70's version of Dracula, and my 15-year-old mind and body going haywire to the point where the girls I was with asked if I was all right. Shape changers have always been sexy for me, but then I was the odd one out. I was what we would now call a "girl geek' - a title I would proudly have claimed. I didn't know the word,"Geek" then, and this was decades before the word would be claimed as a term of respect and camaraderie. I knew that a lot of boys were into Star Wars, and no girls besides me. I really didn't know anybody of either gender who was into Paranormal fiction.
Skip forward to the twenty-tens: Every mediocre writer who wants to be published is putting out a paranormal fantasy novel. Either that, or an Outland-type romance featuring time travel. Like "it worked for Twilight and Outland, so if I follow the same formula to the letter, it will work for me," kinda thing.
While I realize that mediocre copycat literature will always be with us, what bothers me most now is the way men are depicted on the covers. It's de-humanizing. It's like you're telling a story about a woman who falls in love with a bulky chest, not the man who owns it.
And what is it about a human chest that is even fascinating in a story about a shape-shifter? To me it's like, Never Mind what he looks like as a human; he can turn into a FUCKING DRAGON for gods' sake! He could be the Guy who Gets Sand Kicked in his Face at the Beach, and once he turns into a dragon, or a wolf, or a bat, he's absolutely got my attention. More so, in fact, if his human persona is one that can be easily overlooked.

Oh, that and a decent storyline that isn't constantly interrupted by pages and pages of passion and innuendo that fail to move the story forward at all. You see, I can find porn online any time. If I'm reading a book, I want the story, thank you very much.

The Apricot Tree

Another essay I wrote for my comp class.

I was seven. It was late summer.  I was an only child and my parents and I lived in an old rental house in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas.  It wasn't exactly “country” I suppose, but compared to the only experience I could remember – that of living on an Air Force base in Germany – it was rural enough.  I spent my days climbing trees and playing in a tree house my dad had built for me: two pieces of leftover paneling nailed onto parallel branches.  The dirt on those dirt roads was fine, like no dirt road I've been on since. It felt soft to my bare feet.

Our house had marvelous, climbable trees all around it. The field on the other side of our driveway was a wonderland. That's where my treehouse was. 

If I wasn't careful, in the summer, I'd wander into that field barefoot and be ensnared in the thorns we called ”stickers.”  They'd be everywhere, and they'd get all over my feet until I was trapped and couldn't move without pain. That was the only unpleasantness of those days though.

There was a little yellow house just up the road from us, owned by the same landlord that rented us our large, gray two-story house that was cheap because of the termites.  One summer it was unoccupied, so the yard was just an addition to my usual playground.

In the front yard of this little house, there was an apricot tree, with branches enticingly low. The apricots had become ripe and were falling on the ground.  I climbed that tree and ate apricots until I was bursting.  I remember clearly the sweet flavor, how the juice rolled off my chin and had to be licked off my fingers. Those days were paradise, and I was strong and free.

I move ahead in my mind to a time eleven years later. I was eighteen and staying with some friends in a little house just down the wash from an old mining ghost town named Jerome, in Arizona. My friends slept late and I woke up early and walked up the dirt backroad to town alone, hoping to get breakfast in one of the little cafes that catered to the tourists and the bikers.  The walk up the mountain was just strenuous enough to build a real appetite by the time I reached the paved road and vertically-designed houses and shops of Jerome.

Much to my dismay I'd forgotten the truth of a small tourist town: nothing opens until ten a.m. I'd woken up way to soon and was starving, walking the empty streets of the most beautiful place on Earth.

The road snakes up the mountain and doubles back upon itself.  Between one level of the road and another are the houses, some four stories tall. The road is so steep that a house may have a door opening on the ground floor, onto a lower level of the street, and another door opening onto the upper street, four stories above. If the mountain were a tree, the houses would be treehouses nestling among its branches, with ladders going from one level to the next, instead of stairs.

City Hall is accessed by concrete steps that wind up past a small park, which is also formed of steps, with green grass and trees and concrete retaining walls holding it up.  One level below City Hall, accessed by broken steps with an iron banister, there grew an apricot tree.

It was late summer, and the fruit was ripe and rich and falling to the ground.  I devoured apricots until I couldn't hold any more.  I think nothing had tasted as good ever before, or ever would again.

Looking back from fifty, I remember the delicious abandonment of those times. I recall the power of my dreams and the way the future was wide open.  Today I sit in the basement of the old house where I live with my husband and my mother-in-law.  I am not alone any more, and the future seems now to hold more limits than possibilities.

And yet, in the backyard is a tiny apricot tree. It's too small to climb, even if I still could. It's too young to bear fruit.  I don't know if apricots will flourish in our North End home.  I hope with all my heart that they will.

Breaking the Monopoly: Windows Vs. Linux

Note: This is an essay I wrote for my comp class

We all are familiar with the Windows operating system created by Microsoft. It comes pre-built into nearly every new computer one can buy. Virtually all Americans learned on a computer equipped with Windows. All well-known games and programs work on it. Why then, one might wonder, would one want to try any alternative, especially one like Linux that, as everybody knows, requires a PhD in Information Technology to use?  I  intend to put to rest some common myths about Linux and explain why everyone should, at the very least, become familiar with the Linux operating system .

As an amateur aficionado of open source software in general, and Linux in particular, I have used and installed the Linux operating system on my own computers and some of my friends. I have also made a point of learning the theory and history behind the open-source movement.

Before I go any further, let me explain the primary differences between Linux and its more widely-used competitor Windows.  Windows is proprietary, meaning that the Microsoft Corporation alone owns the code and can do whatever it wants with it, whether that be supporting it, dropping it, or withholding it.  Linux is open-source, meaning that everyone has access to the code behind it, and all versions of Linux can be freely supported by programmers within the Linux community. Also Windows costs money; if one buys a computer with Windows pre-loaded, the cost of the Windows operating system is included in the price.  Linux can be downloaded free of charge.

I recently installed Linux on a friend’s computer for her.  Her computer had come installed with Windows Vista Home Premium. Unfortunately, when I had to install a new hard drive, Windows decided that was too big a change in hardware, and refused to accept the product key that came with her computer. Instead it prompted us to buy a new copy of Windows. Yes, for the same computer.  Windows can do this; it’s a monopoly. It’s the only game in town …or at least that’s what most people have been led to believe.

Microsoft can also force a user to buy new upgrades, whether he wants them or not.  It does this by ending support on the old versions. Remember Windows 2000? Many people were perfectly happy with it, but when Microsoft quit supporting it, they had to change.  Without updates from Microsoft, viruses can and will enter a computer, and since Windows is proprietary software, only Microsoft can help people maintain their Windows operating system.  If Microsoft doesn’t want to support an older version anymore, there’s nothing anyone can do about it because Microsoft owns all access to the code.

So say someone decides to upgrade her operating system to something like Vista or Windows 7.  Maybe that old computer can’t handle the shiny new versions of Windows. You see, Windows takes up a lot of space on the hard drive, and uses a great deal of memory and other resources, and the newer the version, the greater the waste.  So she has to buy a new computer.  Then maybe her old scanner, which still works great, has to go because there are no drivers for it that work with the new operating system. Now she’s put out $200 for a new operating system, which will itself be unsupported and obsolete in a few years, plus she’s had to replace her computer, her scanner, her printer and her cameras (and if she hasn’t, she will the next time she upgrades). I’ve been through this process myself, and found the wastefulness of it very depressing.

Regarding my friends computer, she really had no option; she simply couldn’t afford to buy a new Windows product key.  Fortunately I was able to install Linux and educate her enough about its use that she now has a working computer that will last her many years.

Many people, uninformed about alternatives, would have given up on the computer altogether, bought a new one, or purchased a new product key.  Most people either don’t know enough about Linux to consider it, or they have been told many of the myths about Linux that are simply untrue.

The biggest of these myths is, of course, that Linux is hard to use; that one must be a programmer.  My friend thought at first that her computer was going to be nothing more than a terminal and that she’d have to know all kinds of code. She was surprised to find that it had an interface with a start button, and all the links and accessories you’d find on a Windows screen. To help her begin to use Linux, I put a link on her desktop to a beginners’ page on the Ubuntu Linux forums, where she can go to ask questions and get answers from  hundreds of people around the world.

As for installing Linux,  the easiest way – if one just wants to try it out and not replace Windows completely – is to use the Wubi installer (“Introduction,” 2012). This requires no fancy formatting and the instructions are easy to follow.

Another myth is that Linux programs are completely incompatible with Microsoft‘s; that, for instance, it is not possible to write a document on a Linux program that can be read by someone with a conventional Windows computer and Microsoft office.  The truth is, OpenOffice and LibreOffice – two office programs used by Linux – can both save documents in the .docx format which is read by Microsoft Office.  The same goes for spreadsheets and presentations.  Images created in the open-source program GIMP can be saved as the same image formats used by Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Paint.  The biggest difference between the programs used by Linux and those commonly used by Windows users is that they,  like Linux, are free and open source (and as a side note, all of these open source programs will also run on Windows).

One cannot mention operating systems without discussing security.  Thousands of viruses are written every year, and if one keeps up with Microsoft updates, one doesn’t have to worry about most of them. That’s if one remembers to update. Unfortunately most of these viruses are targeted at the Windows operating systems.  As I mentioned earlier, if a Windows version is no longer supported, and a user doesn’t update often enough, that user is a sitting target. 

There are a number of reasons why Linux is more secure than Windows.  One reason is that normal Linux users by default don’t have root access. That means that viruses that get in also don’t have access to anything deeper than the local user files (Noyes, 2010). Another reason is what’s known as “Linus Law,” (after Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux) which states that “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”(Raymond, 2002)  In other words, the fact that the code is available to all means that bugs and exploits are found sooner and corrected. 

In addition to being more secure, Linux is also faster than Windows.  Recently the video game company Valve, which produces Left for Dead II, announced that its game runs faster on Linux Ubuntu 12.4 than on Windows 7 and published the benchmark data to prove it (Kingsley-Hughes, 2012). When a top game manufacturer gets involved in the debate, computer users – gamers or not – are wise to take notice. 

Much has been said about donating old computers for schools and such, but the proprietary nature of Windows means that old computers are virtually worthless, if you consider Windows to be the only practical operating system.  A sixth-grade teacher named Robert Litt proved that it wasn’t when he furnished a computer lab for his school with donated, older computers that had been fitted with Linux (Elizabeth, 2012).  In this way waste can be reduced and old computers kept out of landfills.

Another way that Linux helps the environment is through packaging. Basically, there isn’t any. Whereas Windows comes in a box with all the necessary padding needed to protect one small disc, Linux can be downloaded onto a thumb drive or re-useable DVD, thus keeping more waste out of landfills.

With Windows, Microsoft has a near monopoly, with Apple’s MacOS a distant second.  More choices, or the awareness of more choices, would create more competition and help break up the monopoly Microsoft holds.  Which brings me to the most important reason to try Linux: to become a more informed consumer. The more people know that there is an alternative to Windows, and the more they feel comfortable using it, the more Microsoft will have to compete if they want to remain on top.  That means better operating systems, better value, and better service. Even if a user only tests Linux and never switches to it completely, he is making a statement that they know there’s more than one player in the game, and that statement is phenomenal.

I hope I’ve shown that Linux is easy to install, easy to use, and it’s free: free as in ‘no cost,’ but also free for developers to improve upon.  It is faster and more secure than Windows. It can greatly extend the life of your computer.  Using Linux helps fight monopolization, thus it’s better for democracy. It’s better for the environment.  Finally, the strongest reason for trying Linux is that it will make you a more informed consumer.

Did I mention it’s free?

References

Elizabeth. (2012, August 3). How One Teacher Built a Computer Lab for Free | iFixit. iFixit.org. Retrieved October 20, 2012, from http://ifixit.org/3001/how-one-teacher-built-a-computer-lab-for-free/

Introduction: Wubi Ubuntu Installer. (2012, October 10). Wubigude. Retrieved October 20, 2012, from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide

Kingsley-Hughes, A. (2012, August 2). Valve: Linux runs our games faster than Windows 7 | ZDNet. ZDNet. Retrieved October 20, 2012, from http://www.zdnet.com/valve-linux-runs-our-games-faster-than-windows-7-7000002060/

Noyes, K. (2010, October 3). Why Linux Is More Secure Than Windows | PCWorld. PCWorld. Retrieved October 20, 2012, from http://www.pcworld.com/article/202452/why_linux_is_more_secure_than_windows.htm

Raymond, E. (2002, August 2). The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Retrieved October 20, 2012, from http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/index.html

Halloween: Fear versus Fun

(Note: This is an essay I wrote for my Comp II Class)

Halloween is not what it used to be. Fewer parents allow their children to go trick-or-treating. The reason for this is that we don’t trust our neighbors anymore, and we certainly don’t trust strangers. Paranoia has ruined Halloween.

I personally have a very broad memory of trick-or-treating, having grown up in various places in the US plus Germany. Every year my friends and I – or my parents when I was little – would go around to neighbors houses in costume and beg for candy. There was always one adult who would ask us to do a trick. We travelled in the neighborhoods where we lived. The streets were always crowded. We ate as much of the candy as we could before getting home, because parents or siblings would lay claim to it after that. Nobody was afraid – well, make-believe afraid perhaps, but not really afraid, not of our neighbors.

Nowadays they have car trick-or-treating in church parking lots. Children are encouraged to get their treats x-rayed before eating any. For the past several years, there have been no children coming down our street, even though we live in a pleasant neighborhood. The few children that still do the traditional trick-or-treating are driven over to Harrison Boulevard by their parents, partly because it is a prosperous neighborhood and known for its abundance, but also because it’s considered, ‘safe.’

Parents worry that their children’s’ costumes are too tight, and they’ll choke, or they’re too loose and they’ll trip. They worry that face masks will make their children blind to moving cars, or that drivers won’t see them. While these concerns are legitimate, it may be that parents are worrying too much and taking the fun out of the holiday.

One reason for the decline in trick-or-treating is the fear that our neighbors will poison or otherwise desecrate the candy that they give us. Apples will have razor blades in them. Candy bars will have pins and needles.

The actual evidence for random adulteration of Halloween candy is virtually nonexistent. A woman in 1964 made some ‘joke’ bags with marked boxes of rat poison in them that she handed out to older teenagers only. No one was hurt. In 1970 a boy died after getting into his uncle’s heroin. The parents put heroin in the candy to draw attention away from the uncle. In 1974, a father poisoned his eight-year-old son by putting cyanide in his candy, and tried to make it look like a random poisoning (Robinson, 2003).

The fear is fueled by certain religious groups and individuals promoting the idea that Satanists (by which they mean also Wiccans and other Pagans) use Halloween as a time to foist their evil schemes upon an unwitting community by randomly poisoning children. Do a web search for “Satanism Halloween” and you’ll see all kinds of testimony about this supposedly happening. As a Wiccan, I can attest that Halloween - or Samhain as we call it – is a major holiday of the year for many Pagan religions, but we have more important rites to attend to than the adulteration of children’s candy.

B. A. Robinson, a writer for Religioustolerance.org, states that, “A sad byproduct of these urban folk tales is that parents develop anxiety over a threat to their children that does not exist, or which exists at a very low level. Many children pick up the fears of their parents. Both end up believing that they live in a society that is far more violent than it really is (2003).”

The reason that we are so willing to believe these urban myths is, I believe, due to the fact that we are more afraid in general twelve months out of the year. We are afraid to let our children play outside alone; we are afraid to let them walk to school. Recently a man sipping coffee near a playground evoked frantic text messages and calls to the police (Rochman, 2012).

So what is to be done? I concur with Lenore Skenazy, author of Free Range Kids. “We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too.”

References:-Robinson, B. (2003, November 2). Adulterated Halloween Candy: “Razor Blades in the Apples” Hoax.    ReligiousTolerance.org. Retrieved from http://www.religioustolerance.org /hallo_ap.htm
-Skenazy, L. (2010, October 27). ‘Stranger Danger’ and the Decline of Halloween. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com.
-Rochman, B. (2012, June 11). Stranger Danger: Are Parents too Paranoid about Safety? Time Healthland. Retrieved from http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/11/stranger-danger-are-parents-too-paranoid-about-safety/

Life as a Ferret

Ferrets are weasels, but they are not wild. It’s pretty easy to tell what they’re thinking.

When I pick one up, he looks up at the ceiling or the nearest bookshelf and thinks, “Can I reach it, if I jump from here?” He’s fairly near-sighted, so the actual distance eludes him. The one thing totally devoid from his mind is the fact that he might get hurt. His world consists of play, treats, naps, and pooping. Danger and pain simply do not exist.

We did once have a ferret that appeared to consider danger. Her name was Shaddoe. I saw her once, looking down on the floor from a dangerous height, and she seemed to be hesitating, as if considering the consequences of jumping down, in a way that is uncharacteristic of ferrets. She lived to be a ripe old age.

But she was the exception. Usually a ferret will jump without looking. He’ll do his ‘weasel war-dance,’ leaping backwards, until he falls off the bed. He’ll sneak into places he’s not supposed to be and get injured. If he gets out of the house, he’ll go up to the neighbor’s dog and try to play. We lost one that way. Another one we got back; it seemed the dog was so stunned to see a small creature unafraid of him that he paused before biting, and our neighbor was able to intervene.

In truth, I would only want to live like a ferret if I owned a human caretaker that was as careful as my husband is. He counts noses every day, sometimes several times a day. He keeps our ferrets in a room that has been, “ferret proofed.” He gives them treats upon demand, and lets them nap in his arms while he tries to play games on the computer.

But if I did own such a human, life as a ferret would be grand. I’d tunnel through laundry, each pants-leg a mysterious and wonderful trip down the rabbit-hole. I’d scratch and sneeze and then take a long nap whenever I wanted to. I’d have my human play with me or hold me, whenever I felt like it.

Oh there would be some stress. I might have to establish dominance over a playmate, or accept the dominance of same, but once the pecking order was re-established, all strife would be forgotten, and we’d nap together, draped over each other like a pile of wet socks. There would also be the occasional period of time when our human ran out of treats, which would bewilder me. How could imperfection enter my world? But the treats would reappear, and having a short memory, I would forget that I’d ever been unhappy.

Alas, I am not a well-kept ferret. I am a loyal servant of ferrets. I go to school so that I can get a good job, and buy them toys and food, and help preserve the stability and peace that they take for granted. But some day, perhaps when I am old and can no longer work, and my mind has become as simple as theirs, then I shall be cared for, and allowed to play and nap when I like, and maybe somebody will watch out for me so I don’t wander off.

Ode to an Iron Pan

When my son, now grown, was a baby
I bought a small iron pan from a discount store.
Not many things from that time do I still have.
Too much darkness and chaos in the years since
have destroyed nearly everything.
This iron pan I still have.
It is precious to me.

Years have tempered it
Obsidian black
moon-like
scrying glass
handle like a needles head.
I gaze into it like a mirror
a pool of dark water
with dark metallic waves spreading out
from the center
as if the fairies had dropped a tiny rock into the middle
and turned the surface to liquid
which then froze.

Poem - The Murder House

There is a house that still calls my name
I lived there.
I made promises.

The house held a ghost we called
the “Old Norwegian” –
He who made the carvings above the door.
He’d change the channels on the TV.
There was a young lady also,
who sat on the landing
In Victorian garb.

Others wandered in and out,
Shades dressed in myriad hues of trauma and grace.
Some of us had bodies.

Limerick

There was a Wise Woman in Boise
Who said, “The Spirits are Noisy!
It isn’t the wight
That screams in the night,
Alas, ‘Tis the ghost of poor Roy, see!”

Ballad for the Lord of the Greenwood

I walk the winter woods with Herne
And all the trees are bare
‘Alone’ at dusk I do return,
for no one sees Him there.

“Why go you in the midnight frost?”
They ask, “when hearth is warm?”
They say, “Oh, what if you get lost,
Who’ll keep you safe from harm?”

“There’s danger, yes,” I do agree
“and warmth and food do beckon
It would be nice to stay inside
And knit some socks, I reckon.

Yet I must dare to be so bold
To walk into the wild
To listen to Herne’s teachings old
You see, I am His child.”

Haiku for Brigid

Triple goddess, please
Gift my hands with poetry
Look! I am your bard

A Sonnet to the four Directions

We hail the Guardians of the East, that They
May, with their breath, their wisdom us bestow
Oh tell us what our ancestors do say
And how the gods of old would have us grow.

We hail the Guardians of the South, their flame
Will kindle in our breasts the passion to
Remake the world according to Her name
And cause the oracles to write anew

We hail the Guardians of the West, we see
A distant land across the ocean. There
We go at dusk of living to be free
And seek the West when change we know is near.

Now to the North, where gnomes and dwarves do dwell
We turn and know the earth, and all is well

by Morgaine O'Herne, 2012
If you post this elsewhere, please link back to my website. Http://morohe.com
Thank you.