09.29.06
Posted in arrrrgh, cats at 5:21 pm by Hanne Blank
While I was answering some e-mail Fez got a claw caught in the screen of my office window. I attempted to help her, putting one hand under her to hold her steady and still while I unhooked her claw.
She freaked out for no discernable reason and went full-bore Tasmanian Devil. She managed to badly lacerate both my palms, my left wrist, and my chest just below the collarbone on the left side. She also managed to drive a claw so deeply into my left index finger that the outermost layer of claw (cats shed them normally as the claws grow, it is one way they keep their claws sharp) stayed embedded in my finger up past where the quick of her nail would be.
I just spent half an hour bawling from the shock of having my cat turn into a furry screaming shrapnel bomb in my hands, carefully nipping the worst of the lacerated shreds of skin away from the cuts with (alcohol-rinsed) cuticle scissors, extracting a claw from my fingertip, cleaning the wounds with hydrogen peroxide, and putting on innumerable Band-Aids.
Well, maybe not innumerable. 14, to be precise. Including an “Elmo & Friends” one because I ran out of the regular kind and that was all we had left.
Fortunately, with the exception of the left index finger, the other fingers are fine and it isn’t too bad to type as long as I use my wrist rest. Though you’d be amazed how many letters you normally type with your left index finger, really.
So now I am venting online, because M isn’t home yet and the dog just wants to try to lick my hands, which strikes me as counterproductive.
I feel compelled to note that under ordinary circumstances I am opposed to declawing cats. Today I could make an exception.
Wow, these really do sting like hell.
(Note use of native Midwestern understatement here. My hands are on fire, and there’s nothing I can really do to make them stop.)
Fez, by the way, is just fine and does not seem to have any recollection of having gone ballistic. I should also note that Fez has done this sort of thing once before, to Malcolm, about 2 years ago.
Every once in a blue moon she seems to just lose it if someone is trying to hold her, particularly if they are trying to hold her midsection (as I was and as I seem to remember Malcolm was when she did something similar to him). She is not a cat that likes to be picked up or held normally, and when she does let you pick her up she likes to be held in a very particular fashion (one hand under the back feet, one hand under the ribcage very far forward with a finger or two coming up to support her chest). Anything else is not acceptable and she struggles to be put down. Mind you, this is a cat who requires 3 vet techs to hold her still when she has to have an injection or a blood draw (two to hold her still, the third to distract her with pureed veal baby food while the vet does the injection). She is made of Slinky toys and barbed wire and I seriously think that she has the ability to turn into liquid mercury and fish-hooks as necessary.
Q.E.D.
This day can get the hell over itself any old time. And I am putting tomorrow on notice: don’t screw it up, got it?
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Posted in outrage, patriotism, politics at 10:05 am by Hanne Blank
This is the text of a letter I am presently printing out to send to my elected representatives.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Dear [Congressman/Senator] ,
I am writing to express my profound displeasure and outrage at the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and to take you personally to task for your part in its passage.
To permit the passage of this Act, with its provisions for detainment, coercion, torture, and the legal admission of evidence obtained by these methods, is an act of moral cowardice.
Read the rest of this entry »
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09.28.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:48 pm by Hanne Blank
If you read this blog via an RSS aggregator and you want to comment on something in the blog, you must come to the actual blog to leave a comment if you want me to see it. Comments left within the context of an aggregator — for example, LiveJournal — are not likely to cross my radar.
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Posted in interviews, writing at 4:11 pm by Hanne Blank
Recently, NaughtyWords approached me for an interview about being an editor of erotica anthologies. Since the interview, which is really interviews, plural, with several folks including Susie Bright and Rachel Kramer Bussell, woven together so that our viewpoints on the various questions are compared, has begun to run on the site, I thought I’d first point to it and then mention something that isn’t anywhere in the interview.
So. Pointer given. Which means that now I want to talk about Sir Not Appearing In That Interview, namely, the fact that I’m actually a retired editor of erotica anthologies. This is something I’ve been letting people know gradually over the past few years, and the reactions have been fascinating. A few people, like my mother, have seemed relieved. A few more people have nodded understandingly and said something along the lines of “good on ya, I’m glad to see you doing what you need to do.” But many people have reacted with a certain amount of shock, and demanded an explanation. The NaughtyWords editor did that, in fact, when I agreed to the interview with the caveat that I was no longer working in the genre: I’m stunned! “Severine” is one of my all time favorite erotic stories! Why would you of all authors quit?!
The answer is pretty simple: I said what I came to say and I did what I came to do. I did not set out to climb to the peak of Mount Smutverest, drive my flag into its summit, and survey the world from its eminence. I certainly didn’t sent out to do erotica as my one and only literary pursuit.
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09.27.06
Posted in Virgin book, making book at 6:46 pm by Hanne Blank
As part of my site updates, I’m rolling out — partly as preview, partly as adjunct to the book as it will be when it is published — a set of pages that I’m calling Virgin on the Cutting-Room Floor. It consists of a number of more or less standalone excerpts from the original, thousand-and-one-page draft of Virgin: The Untouched History.
There are still a handful of excerpts that I have yet to put up and link. Those should be on the way tomorrow. But for now, there are 17 excerpts available, on topics ranging from how difficult virginity is to define (and what techniques get used to do it) to the medieval pope who sent all the nuns in Europe to their rooms permanently, and well beyond — 20th-century judges chastising young women for hanging out in Chinese restaurants because it presented a danger to their morals? Victorian lawsuits filed by wronged women against the men who promised them marriage in order to get into their pants? Christopher Columbus, kidnapper, rapist, and pimp? Kristy MacNicholl movies?
(Yeah, it’s a pretty diverse book. And this is the stuff I left out. Just wait until you see what I left in.)
Anyhow, go check it out if you have a chance. I’m actively soliciting translations of these excerpts, incidentally, and am posting them under a limited-use Creative Commons license for that purpose. If you’re inclined to do a translation of something, let me know — I’m happy to host your translations online if you don’t have a stable site of your own, too.
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