Strong women

In a story I like my women strong of character.  It's kind of a big deal for me.  I have always been into women, which led me to take classes about feminism or feminist studies and gender and a bunch of others.  When I see a woman in a story that is stereotyped or hollywoodized I pick up on it quickly and it turns me off, not sexually, just in interest with the story.  Helpless women that wait around for their men to do something for them, passive characters like whats her face from Twilight stories, rubs me the wrong way.  I want my women to be the arbiters of their fate and I like to see them reconcile their feminism with the task they need to do.  So while they are out there kicking ass I also want to hear about love and being a mother, that struggle between being a tough chick and a mom or a lover is so much more interesting than a sexy badass girl. 

In the movie Aliens, Ripley (a female main character) lost her daughter because she was in cryosleep for too long and her daughter outlived her.  When she finds a little girl that is a survivor on this colony she takes to her like a mother would, obviously we know she lost her daughter and we know this new girl is about the same age as her daughter was the last time Ripley saw her.  In a way she needs to make up for failing her daughter, so when the Aliens get Newt, the little girl (for those who haven't seen this movie drop what you are doing and see it right now) Ripley goes into the HIVE of the aliens and rescues her before the colony explodes from nuclear meltdown.  She doesn't wait for a guy to tell her what to do, or to go in for her to rescue the girl and she doesn't leave her behind like some kind of heroic sacrifice.  She goes in there, kicks ass and escapes with Newt who calls her mommy.  We know that is what Ripley has wanted so badly that we feel it too, the story satisfies us on multiple levels.  That's desirable. I challenge you to find another movie that addresses these issues.  You need a movie where the main character is a woman, isn't a passive character, and can move between the roles of hero and woman, either as a mom or as a lover.  Firefly does this really well with Zoe the Warrior woman.  Maybe I just like that dynamic between the lethal bad ass and the soft woman, like she can be on the 'fair maiden pedestal' but she can also step off and kick ass and climb back up there, you know, like real women.

Think of women in movies today.  Like the movie Salt with Angelina Jolie.  The movie was originally made for Tom Cruise but he backed out at the last minute so they brought in Angelina Jolie.  I like that she is a bad ass spy chick, but I get a strong masculine vibe from the character because she is very direct and kicks ass like any action movie guy would.  where is her feminine wiles?  Where is her struggle to reconcile life giver to life taker?  No, no, we couldn't have any of that, she will be bad ass number one, a role which any actor  can slip into without changing the story in the slightest.

Loo made me read some of Twilight and I remember reading it and seeing this passive character.  I finally yelled at the book, "Do something!"  Than they made a movie. Now all kinds of young girls read the book and see how everything works out for the girl because she waits while things happen to her, guys fight over her and on and on.  So the message is, girls just wait for the guy to figure everything out for you. 

Ahhhh!!! 


It makes me CrAzY!   Glad I got that off my chest. 

Carry on.

Seal Team Six

I just finished Seal Team Six by Howard Wasdin.

This memoir of an elite navy SEAL sniper is well done.  He isn't a writer, but he has a story to tell and he tells it well.  I knew SEALs were bad ass dudes, but I didn't know just how badass.  He tells his story, where he came from and where he went.  What a life.  


I recommend it highly.  There is a thread throughout of him trying to help people. I think I might check out more military memoirs.  This story made humans out of heroes.

I thought I had a lot to say about this, but I guess I don't.  I guess I am interested in war and conflict and violence.  I bet everyone is though, they just don't want to admit it.  Violence is the way nature deals conflict, so when it happens right in front of you it speaks to you on an innate level.  It gets your blood pumping, kick starting your lungs to draw more air and your brain releases chemicals in response, most notably cortisol, which makes your blood coagulate.  Your brain does this in the event you lose some blood.  Than it releases dopamine to make you happy, and deaden pain and adrenaline to allow you to run or fight as it decides. 

Weird thing abour the brain, it wants to protect itself, and when it sees violence and perceives danger it protects itself.  That's when the fight or flight response kicks in. 

This is where you really get to know people, or rather get to know who a person really is.   I remember this story this guy told me about a car that flipped over on an icy mountain road. Lets call him Stan.  I know it to be true because I have seen similar things happen in front of me.  Stan sees the car lose control, slide across the road and right off the mountain and tumble down the side.  He parks near the edge and goes down to help the people.  On his way down this guy comes running up like its part of an obstacle course, he just had to get out of there.  He doesn't need Stan's help so Stan keeps going while crazy man runs up the road.  At the bottom of the mountain the car is on it's roof.  Stan lays on his belly to look inside.  There is a woman still buckled up and hanging upside down and she calmly looks over to him and says, "Have you seen my husband?  I think he got thrown out."
        "I just saw him, he is fine," Stan says.
        "He's ok?  That's great!" the woman says.  Stan tries to get her out, telling her to support herself when he unbuckles her and they crawl out together and up the mountain they go.  The woman keeps checking with Stan to make sure her husband is ok.  Stan keeps assuring her he is.  Finally they reach the top of the mountain and they see the husband walking away, and he is way up the road by now, like a half mile.  She asks where he is going.  Stan shook his head and offered her a ride to the hospital.  She gets in and they pick up the husband.  She calls out to him, "Honey!  Honey!"  And Stan sees he is crying.  He pulls up and opens the door.  The guy climbs in back with his wife.  And she kisses him all over and is over joyed he isn't dead.  That they survived.  The husband looks up in the rear view mirror and sees Stan looking at him and quickly looks away and starts sobbing.

In the hospital the wife was getting some x rays and the husband was standing next to Stan, the two were alone, and he says to Stan, "You know, I wasn't leaving her back there."  And Stan looks at him.  His face is neutral, no blame, but no belief either.  Than he adds, "I just had to clear my head."  Stan didn't believe him, but didn't want to make a scene.  He nodded.  The husband seemed happy about this, like his conscience was now clear.  The wife returned and was unhurt.  Both were ok, which is to say that the wife was ok but the husband was not.

He would forever be tortured with guilt for leaving her trapped in the car.  He was her husband, how could he leave her like that? Not knowing if she were alive or dead and just running away.  And than to keep on going...  No, he convinced himself there was something wrong with him and she deserved something better.

He tried to make problems with her so she would ask for a divorce, but where this tumble off the cliff had separated him from her, she was only drawn closer to him for having survived it together.  So he kept doing bad, being rude to her, cheating on her, treating her worse than a bad pet, and she kept taking him back and loving him despite all of it.  Finally she suggested they go to counseling. 

They had to come to terms with reality, his abandonment and her deliberate ignorance of it.  After many sessions he accepted what he had done, she was made aware of her deliberate ignorance and could not accept what he had done.  Her forced ignorance was the only thing holding them together after the crash, with that gone they divorced, a year after the crash.      


   

It's been so long.

Hi there!

I'm coming back.  I don't have much time to write anymore, so I decided to make time.  Weird concept, I know.

I forget things a lot, unless they are cool, in which case I remember specific details.  Like the surface temperature of Venus is 847 degrees Fahrenheit and since Russia was the first to send a probe to the planet there is a silver bust of Lenin on the surface somewhere that has since melted into a puddle.  I read that venus book over a year ago.

Anyway, It was bad to forget the important stuff I was supposed to do when I got home from work.  Like get groceries or important paperwork for the bank and work.  I had planned to get one of those mini tape recorder gizmos.  I could say into it, "after work pick up 40lbs of dog food."  I told this idea to loo thinking it was a good one.  She didn't think so because I would forget to rewind it and it costs money.  She got one of my dad's little calendar books and now I have several days on each page that I can write notes in.  So the days of forgetting to take out the trash and clean the cat box and the oft forgotten date night are over.  At least in theory.  I have to get into the habit of checking it and writing stuff down in it.  I already feel less stressed.

Update:  There are usually six people in our house all the time.  Three couples.  Mom and Dad, Loo and I, and Kevin and Oscar.  The house feels a lot smaller now. Add two dogs, two cats, a monitor lizard, two snakes and fish and you have a full house. 

Funny story:  My brother and his boyfriend decorated the house with hearts and pink stuff for Valentines day.  There are strings of hearts stretched all over the house.  They called me out front to the family room to ask me what I thought about the job they did.  We all had some beers on board.  I took a look at all that pink stuff and I wore a disgusted face and said, "God, this room is so GAY!"  and we all laughed.  My brother high-fived me.

Later Kev's boyfriend  and him made a cake and it was all rainbow sprinkles and cuteness.  While I was eating breakfast with Loo and Dad and Oscar I said, "Man, everything you make turns gay!"  and we all laughed.  Than loo said, "You know, Oscar made the coffee this morning."

"Oh, no," I said, "Does that mean the coffee is gay too?"

"Yeah," Oscar said, "But I like it straight!"

We all laughed at that and I had to high five him.

 The two of them were at my work getting some tires put on Kev's truck and the two of them were huddled up outside watching videos on their iPhones and one of my co workers comes up to me and says, "Hey, is that Kevin's gay boyfriend?"

"No, that's his straight boyfriend," I said.  He looked so confused.