CanLit on fire: who can win this game?

I had an immediate reaction to this meme (or whatever it is): truer words were never spoken! Of course, if you truly embrace this perspective you're seen as crass. But what is a writer to do? I've said many times that we don't expect a trained concert pianist to play in an empty hall. But that's the equivalent of what professional writers are expected to do.  That is, those who aren't at the top of what is starting to look like a literary slag heap.

I'm a little sick of being disappointed, and I do try to comfort myself with the three novels I did get published (NOT self-published, by the way - I had to wangle contracts from three different publishers). I also have three or four manuscripts stashed in my computer, and ran one in parts (Bus People - if you wanna see it, the link is here) on this blog. I think ten people looked at it. I just think if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and in this case it wasn't. 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2016/10/bus-people-quick-links-to-parts-1-12.html

But was there some sort of weird karma going on? If not karma, then guardian- angel-ship, which I absolutely did not believe in. But maybe something was protecting me from "success", after all: the kind of success that lifts the privileged class out of the slag heap of anonymity and onto the shoulders of the gods (while selling lots and lots of copies).

It seems the game changed before I could catch up. I was only interested in writing well, which I believed would result in having a healthy readership. I don't think that's an unreasonable goal. But it didn't happen, and now I know it won't.

But my melancholic acceptance of failure was disturbed by the current CanLit "dumpster fire" which is threatening to consume the whole industry (and yes, believe me when I say it IS an industry, though that's not such a bad thing - we all need to pay the rent). Though someone came down hard on me for posting the wrong piece on this (though there is no such thing as a RIGHT piece on this!), I will share a link (below) which gives you some idea of what's been going on in the schoolyard. If nothing else, it will give you an idea of the sheer complexity of the situation, how twisted and tangled it has become. Worst of all, it has made some writers afraid to say anything, knowing they risk having their most innocent comments mangled and distorted by the monstrous sharks of social media.

What vexes me is that NO ONE has yet said anything at all about how Twitter has poisoned the well: without even having to face your adversary, and having spent an entire nanosecond composing your thoughts, you can fire off the most hateful volleys, only to be met by a Greek chorus of approval from somewhere before your enemy fires back. Without context, and I mean ANY context at all, even relatively innocent statements can appear to be soaked in poison like a lethal dart.

I will be accused of being a crusted barnacle for saying this, but in the past, if a writer read something in a magazine that made her furious, and she wanted to write a letter to the editor in protest, she would have to take the following steps: find a piece of paper and a pen, compose it, fold it up, address it, find a stamp, walk to the nearest post box and drop it in. At any point, she might think better of it, or at least rewrite it. Then, after a long wait, perhaps weeks or months, it might be published (likely severely edited). But once a tweet is tweeted, there is no taking it back. 

Poison darts are poised everywhere, and can't even be deleted because someone will take a screenshot and use it as a weapon. Those who wish to have a future as a published author are on thin ice, and it doesn't help that the stodgy, arthritic, unmoveable CanLit establishment is sawing a hole in it.

Speaking out is risky. NOT speaking out is crippling, and plays into the hands of elitist powermongers interested only in disenfranchising marginalized groups who MIGHT bring fresh perspectives to the table, if only they were allowed to. But the reins of power, not to mention the purse strings, are in the hands of the Big Few - bestselling writers, hotshot agents, major publishers. So perhaps some unknown angel prevented me from getting what I thought I wanted.

Or not? Are the grapes sour? Who gives a shit, at this point!


CanLit-dumpster-fire-disaster



If you'd rather not wade through this long piece, here's a short excerpt which demonstrates how rancorous and confusing this has become:

Then, a new twist: B.C. author Angie Abdou wrote on Facebook that she in fact had notified Kay about Wunker's post as "part of a conversation about troubles raging in the [CanLit] community and how those issues are making their way into the classroom." But by the time Abdou went back to look for the post to send it to Kay, Wunker had unfriended her. So Abdou asked Bok to screen-cap it. In her confession, Abdou apologized for unintended consequences against Bok and Wunker; she called Wunker "a committed teacher and writer." She then left Facebook and Twitter. (On Thursday, Abdou provided The Globe with a statement. "I made a mistake, and I'm extremely sorry. I did not intend to betray anyone's confidence or to harm the reputations of anyone involved.")


Are you with me still? . . . No? Well, don't feel bad. Neither am I. The twists and turns of it are giving me vertigo. Come OFF it, people! Try to come up with some sort of armed truce, before the whole thing collapses and entire books are lost due to discouragement and pain. Creativity will be extinguished along with the flames. If people are not allowed to express themselves, if works of real literature (NOT TWEETS!) die on the vine, everyone loses. Everyone. Do you hear?

Pinkwashed: why it pisses me off

Today I found this in my message file, and was about to delete it as trash until I realized it was a real message from a real Facebook friend:

Hi darling can you put a on your FB wall, without comment, only a heart, then send this message to your chick contacts. This is for women to remember its the week of breast cancer prevention! Check your boobies!!

Hold your finger down on the message and hit forward.

I don't like tricksy little FB gimmicks at the best of times, but I have to tell you, I hate being "darlinged" by someone I don't even know. It's cheap and cloying. I especially hate "chick contacts" (who or what is that??), using "its" rather than "it's", and (most repellent to me) "Check your boobies!!"

Why must breast cancer stuff be so annoying and crass? They rake in many times the amount of other diseases, and have given the public the idea that it's the leading cause of death in women. It's not even close. The leading cause of death in women is heart disease. But who cares if a bunch of old ladies have a heart attack in a nursing home? Bouncing your boobies around in a pink tshirt is so much more alluring.

Isn't it?

Stop, already. Enough, already. It's in poor taste, vulgar, and empty-headed. In fact, it cheapens a worthy cause. I don't want to hang out with "chick" friends who express themselves that way. They would irritate the shit out of me even if I had them. Whatever happened to dignity and sincerity? Why must it be "chicks" and "boobies"? Is this to make cancer cool, or show how unstigmatized it now is, or how we're OK with it, we really are, we're not scared of it any more cuz we're cancer warriors? Or did some publicity mill decide this was the best thing to do to squeeze the maximum dollars out of people by fostering ignorance and distortion of the truth?

The breast cancer industry is a mill, and someone besides patients is reaping most of the rewards. Think of all the $$ it takes to make those hideous pink buttons, the tshirts, pencils, mugs, etc. (and especially things like water bottles that are full of cancer-causing agents) which are so crucial to saving women's lives. It's a game of follow the bouncing boob.

This-here infographic thingie tells the story. On the left side is the amount of money raised for a disease; on the right is number of deaths from that same disease. Since the print is too small to read, I made it easy for you, dear reader, with a little infographic of my own. Match the colour to the disease. It's that simple.

 A quick comparison will show the disparate sizes of these various planets, and how human attention (and funding) has been drawn to certain diseases with slick advertising and celebrity endorsement.

I am not "against" funding breast cancer research, if that is what is going on. But I am also "for" funding mental health concerns, which look to be pretty much ignored. I am "for" funding heart disease research, which apparently isn't sexy enough to warrant much attention. And the others? When I was transcribing these names, I did not even SEE diabetes, almost passed it over entirely because the "money raised" dot was so small as to be nearly invisible. But compare that dot to the ominous-looking green planet on the right-hand side.

Have I made my point? I am SO, so sick of silly, ill-timed, usually crass or downright rude or embarrassing messages being forced on me. I hate chain letters, always have, always will, and am NOT willing to pass ANYTHING mindlessly on because, on the internet, you never know whether the thing is bogus or not. It may in fact be clickbait, a way for advertisers to get information from you about your likes and dislikes so that they may exploit you ever more ruthlessly.

Sounds familiar. Doesn't it? The following infographic of a pink soup can and a pink bucket of (likely) hormone-laced fried chicken are a case in point.

I found it a little hard to believe this particular person would forward something like that. I answered her message by telling her it wasn't breast cancer awareness week or month or ANYTHING, and that I did not like getting this empty-headed "hey, girlfriend! Squeeze your boobies!" shit. I didn't use those words, of course. I tried to be polite. Ironically, the person who supposedly sent me this thing was an editor I used to try to impress with novel queries, in another lifetime.

I can't quite wrap my head around the irony of the fact that, in a completely anonymous note that might have started with some truck driver in Minneapolis, she addresses me as "darling".

POST-BLOG QUOTE: I'm posting a link to an article which, in my mind, hits it right on the head: it expresses exactly why I feel so offended by the glibness and vulgarity of these "booby" messages that are so ubiquitous, and forced on us even by the most unlikely people. This is just a small excerpt. 

Pink ribbon promotions often degrade women by objectifying and sexualizing women’s breasts and bodies. From “save the boobies” to “save the ta-tas” to “save second base,” campaigns like these demean and insult women—and distract from the true focus of saving women’s lives. They highlight narrow standards of beauty (thin, white, able-bodied, and young), depict women as coy sex-objects and too often promote the fantasy of “perfect” breasts. These sexy/cute campaigns hide the lived experiences of women in all their diversity and complexity. NASCAR, for example, is selling breast cancer awareness t-shirts that say “Check Your Headlights” which degrade women by objectifying and sexualizing women’s breasts and bodies.

We must honor women’s rich complexity and full diversity, rather than obsess over narrowly defined body parts as the focus of breast cancer campaigns.

http://bcaction.org/2014/09/30/think-before-you-pink-stop-the-distraction/

In other words, gals, it ISN'T all about the boobs. We do NOT need to "save the hooters". We need to save human lives. That's what it is all about.

Why isn't anybody getting it?

POST-BLOG. I did hear back from my former editor, who said she passed the message along because it was from a good friend. She also said "it might be bogus" - meaning she didn't question it, just forwarded it to all her "chick contacts".  This alarmed me. I have already received some pretty absurd shit in the name of breast cancer "awareness" (and by now, who ISN'T aware of breast cancer? Is it a huge shock to most women that they should get mammograms and do periodic self-examinations?). And a lot of it DID turn out to be bogus, but in at least one case the friend refused to admit it.

Breast Cancer Awareness: HOAX!

(From a women's health page):

Wondering why your Facebook feed is suddenly covered in little heart emojis? Unless you have a number of extra-affectionate friends, it likely has something to do breast cancer awareness.

This isn't the first time we've seen this trend. It's actually resurfaced a few times over the years, but generally during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. The concept is as follows: Post a heart on your female friends' Facebook walls, then send a private message explaining that the heart is a subtle reminder to get their breasts checked for lumps. Then, the goal is to cause a ripple effect—your friends posts hearts on their friends' walls, their friends posts on other friends' walls, and so on. They're also supposed to post the heart on the same woman who sent them the message. But, the catch is, if any guys ask what the emojis are all about, the recipient is supposed to stay silent, since the game is meant only for women.

The trend has been stirring up some controversy. Critics on social media find the whole concept offensive, concerned it’s turning breast cancer into a game. Others say the cryptic message is too opaque to do any good, and argue it's counterproductive to try spreading awareness about a condition by staying silent. Rather than use this subtle tactic, some suggest it would be more effective to post something more direct, like a simple "Check your breasts."

(A pissed-off P. S.: why is the game "meant only for women"? Guys get breast cancer too.  I know a guy who has it. This just adds to the stigma men feel by excluding them from "breast cancer awareness". Come to that, the secretiveness of this coy little game stigmatizes women with breast cancer, too, by rendering it "unmentionable". FAIL - all around!)

CATFIGHT! Girl fights in romance comics

I may have actually bought some of these, or one, back in the '60s, but only so my brother Arthur and I could make terrible fun of them. It wasn't hard to do. Never mind the sociological significance of these things. They're FUN, and that's all I care about at this point! The "catfight" scenes could not be cropped exactly to match the others (perfect squares), so I had to fiddle around with them a bit on white backgrounds, but it was worth it, they are just SO cool. The "jailbird" one is a favorite, as are the "nurse" specialties (nurses being especially hot). One thing I didn't realize - and this is illustrated in a couple of the pictures - some of these comics were done in duplicate for two different markets: white and black. It's eerie to see the exact same backgrounds, clothing, captions, etc., but with women of different races. 

Those issues are, of course, completely settled in 2016. Aren't they? We honestly thought we had fixed it once and for all, and things would only get better. NEVER did I EVER hear so much about racial hatred and violence and murder and strife back then, during the height of civil rights fever. It's worse now, much worse. This is but one of the things I must contemplate as I keep on chugging and blogging. As W. H. Auden put it: "Life remains a blessing/although you cannot bless."

Pejoration: for women, things just get worse

This is just a snippet from a much longer article in The Guardian about a linguisitic term I hadn't heard before: "pejoration". It's related to the more familiar word pejorative, but I didn't think such a term could be verb-ated.  I HAD however thought about some of these words and why they never seemed to match up to their male equivalent. (NOTE: this term isn't to be confused with peroration, which is oratory, or perforation, which is . .  perforatory.)

The denigration of half of the population has embedded itself in the language in ways you may not even be aware of. Often this takes the form of “pejoration”: when the meaning of the word “gets worse” over time. Linguists have long observed that words referring to women undergo this process more often than those referring to men. Here are eight examples:

Mistress

The female equivalent of “master”, and thus, “a woman having control or authority” – in particular one who employs servants or attendants. It came into English with this meaning from French after the Norman conquest. From the 17th century onwards, it was used to mean “a woman other than his wife with whom a man has a long-lasting sexual relationship”.

Hussy

This once neutral term meant the female head of a household. Hussy is a contraction of 13th-century husewif – a word cognate with modern “housewife”. From the 17th century onwards, however, it began to mean “a disreputable woman of improper behaviour”. That’s now its only meaning.

Madam

The female equivalent of “sir”, a woman of high rank, is still used in formal contexts as a mode of address. From the late 18th century it was also used to mean “a conceited or precocious girl or young woman; a hussy, a minx”, alternatively, a kept mistress or prostitute, and finally, from the late 19th century, the female manager of a brothel.

Governess

From the 15th century onwards, “a woman who holds or exercises authority over a place, institution, or group of people”. Compare it with “governor”. Over time it drastically narrowed in scope and fell in status, coming to mean “a woman responsible for the care, supervision, or direction of a person, typically a child or young lady”.

Spinster

This occupational term originally meant simply someone, usually a woman but possibly a man, who spun yarn or thread. Since a woman without a husband might have to rely on spinning as a source of income, the term became associated with unmarried women, eventually becoming the legal way to refer to one. The more loaded use of it to refer to “a woman still unmarried; esp. one beyond the usual age for marriage, an old maid” begins in the early 18th century.

Courtesan

One of the most dramatic shifts in meaning, from the female equivalent of “courtier” – someone who attends the court of a monarch – to a form of prostitute, which is now its only meaning.

Wench

A 13th-century word meaning a female infant or a young unmarried woman quickly acquired negative connotations: from the late 14th century, in Langland and Chaucer it is used to mean “a wanton woman; a mistress”.

Tart

Collins dictionary says that this is a 19th-century contraction of “sweetheart”, a term of endearment, particularly to women. From 1887, however, it is attested as meaning “a female of immoral character; a prostitute”.

Thinking about the male equivalents of some of these words throws their sexism into sharp relief. Master for mistress; sir for madam; governor for governess; bachelor for spinster; courtier for courtesan – whereas the male list speaks of power and high status, the female list has a very different set of connotations. These are of either subordinate status or sexual service to men. The crucial thing to remember is that at one time, they were simply equivalents.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Mother's Little Helpers (or: "doctor please, some more of these")

The text reads:

ANOTHER STRIKING TRIBUTE TO PHOSFERINE TONIC WINE

"I take Phosferine Tonic Wine at 11 a.m. and at 3 p.m., also as a nightcap, and believe me, I derive from it wonderful nights of sleep. I get up very fresh in the morning, having lost that tired feeling and after taking a couple of bottles I am now a different woman. Phosferine Tonic Wine stimulates, energizes and tones the whole system, and is a wonderful nightcap."

(Signed) Mrs. D. Islwyn Lewis

(I note in the fine print that this woman hails from Swansea,Wales, Dylan Thomas' home town. That explains a lot.)

And how about this. . .

Yes, for superior vacuuming skills, it's DEXIES!


"BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!"

Text reads: 35, single and psychoneurotic. The purser on her cruise ship took the last snapshot of Jan. You probably see many such Jans in your practice. The unmarrieds with low self-esteem. Jan never found a man to measure up to her father. Now she realizes she's in a losing pattern - and that she may never marry.

Valium (diazepam) can be a useful adjunct in the therapy of the tense, over-anxious patient who has a neurotic sense of failure, guilt or loss. Over the years, Valium has proven its value in the relief of psychoneurotic states - anxiety, apprehension, agitation, alone or with depressive symptoms.

Valium 10 mg. tablets help relieve the emotional "storms" of psychoneurotic tension and the depressive symptoms that can go hand-in-hand with it. Valium 2-mg. or 5-mg. tablets are usually sufficient for milder tension and anxiety states. An h. s. dose added to the t. i. d. dose often facilitates a good night's rest.

Oh how I wish I could see those photos more clearly, as I think they demonstrate the sad downward spiral of Jan's life as she dates men who are lower and lower on the social totem pole. At the end, she's taking handfuls of Valium with some drunken and probably gay purser. But hey, if it helps her sleep. . .

Yes, I can just make out some of the captions: Jan and Dad, 1955. Tom, Jan, Ruth and Steve, 1957. Joey, 1959. Jan and Ted, 1961. Jan and Dad, 1962. Jan and Charlie, 19(?). Jan and Danny/Benny, 1966. Jan and Dad, 1969. Jan, 1970.

Whoawww now! This is saying even more than I thought it was! This is a little girl who is hung up on her Daddy. So obviously she needs to be chock full 'o Valium in order to cope, if not survive. Yes, there was a time when her life looked hopeful, when she had lots of friends and even boy friends, but say, didn't she seem to go through an awful LOT of boy friends? Did this mean she was a raving slut, or a pussy-zippered prude? The ad implies that none of these nice young fellers was quite good enough for her - shame on her for being so picky, or could it be - could it be there is actually "something wrong" with Jan, something so awful we dare not speak its name?

I'm just thinking, TEN milligrams? I've been told that drugs that end in "pam" are all in the same family and do more-or-less the same thing. If you were swallowing tens regularly, it wouldn't be long until you were an emotional zombie. I have to take clonazepam for leg cramps at night, and the prescription is HALF A MILLIGRAM. That's right. I have never taken more than that because it wouldn't do me any earthly good, and because I don't want to feel groggy and out-of-it in the morning. I WANT my emotional storms, thank you very much.

But just think of all the women who were addicted, who were lost. It hasn't changed enough to suit me. Women in the psychiatric system are still patronized and treated with more disdain and disrespectfulness than men with similar disorders. They're wrongly or over-medicated, with a cookie cutter approach: just throw this at her, or that. Seroquel seems popular now, but you wait, it'll be another flavor in a year or so.

And nowhere does it mention the possibility that real relief of her "symptoms" will only come by breaking through to a more courageous, more authentic life. Which generally means telling the doctors to go piss up a rope. Because they don't know anything about us anyway, do they?

For more absolutely insane ads that patronize women and paint them as screamimg meemies with no legitimate cause to complain, just click on the magic link, below!

http://www.bonkersinstitute.org/medshow/fem.html

(And sorry about that Mornidine. It's another name for Thalidomide.)

The flight attendant from hell, part 2

The more things change, the worse they get, it seems.

Yesterday I wrote quite a long post about that incident involving an American Airlines flight attendant who “went berserk” on the plane, ranting over the PA system for 15 minutes about 9-11, the plane crashing, and other bizarre possibilities (screaming, at one point, “I’ll kill them all”).

Yes, this was an extreme case, but a few details have come out that I think are VERY strange.

The public are understandably “concerned” (read: terrified) about the possibility of something like this happening again. Flight attendants are supposed to keep everyone calm no matter what the situation, so this hellish rant was more than disturbing.

But in the aftermath, certain facts are emerging.  Alarmingly, it turns out that airlines do NOT screen flight attendants for mental illness. Pilots, yes. But pilots have an important job. I think the old idea that “stewardesses” are just there to keep everything jolly and mildly sexy still hangs around.

So if this woman is bipolar, as she claimed she was, she would not have been required to disclose it in applying for the job. Even if the airline knew about it, it would not have been grounds for letting her go.

I am all for hiring people with mental illnesses, given the fact that the huge majority of cases are manageable with medication and a regulated lifestyle. But how regulated is the life of a flight attendant? Sleep deprivation, constant major time zone shifts, meals coming sporadically if at all, meds accidentally left at home (and where do you get lithium if you’ve forgotten it?) – and add to this the current level of job uncertainty as American Airlines teeters on the verge of bankruptcy – and you have a potential recipe for disaster.

But there are no safeguards in place here. It seems to take a traumatic event like this one for hiring practices to come to light. Failing to screen flight attendants for ANY kind of medical disability is negligent and potentially dangerous.  In this age of lurking terrorism, the stakes are even higher. Flight attendants are, as the airlines are now scrambling to tell us, “first responders”. To say the least, they need their wits about them at all times.

Whenever anything weird and scary happens, other weirdness leaks out. Many of the headlines for this international news item referred to the woman as a “stewardess”, a term I haven’t heard in decades. The police report about this strange event said she was experiencing “mental lunacy”, a term that hasn’t been used for about 100 years!

Someone else described her tirade as a “word salad”, a way of containing and distancing the terror with an obscure, clinical term most people have never heard of.

Then we have this bestselling author, Heather Poole, a veteran flight attendant who just happens to have written a book called Cruising Attitude, popping up and saying, “It could have happened to any of us.”

Oh, really?

So any “stewardess”, at random, just picked out of the crowd, could have gone completely berserk and screamed for 15 minutes while on the job? Any flight attendant, perhaps stressed by job uncertainty, could have flipped out into a state of “mental lunacy”, needing to be carried off the plane in restraints?

We still have a deep dread and horror of mental illness, a put-them-in-shackles mentality. This buried unconscious reflex is what causes us to lapse into language that is shockingly obsolete. On the one hand, bipolar disorder has been sanitized as a kind of diabetes of the mind – and in the vast majority of cases, it is something like that. On the other, we see people who are experiencing a serious episode as “demonic” and “possessed”: attitudes that go back to when humankind was preverbal and terrified of any behaviour that threatened the safety of the band.

Back in the day, “stewardesses” traditionally took care of men’s needs, all the way up to (or down to) sexual release. Thus, the “Fly Me” advertising slogan that was popular 50 years ago. On the (best ever!) TV series Mad Men, a retro look at Madison Avenue in the ‘60s, Don Draper is practically accosted on a plane by a “stew” taking an aggressive sexual stance. They were all there for the picking, it seems. Even the title of that book, Cruising Attitude, has a suggestive tone: cruising for what, exactly?

And will this bizarre episode help Heather Poole’s sales? I can’t see how it could hurt. She just lucked out, I guess.

I believe all airlines should change their policy immediately and begin to rigorously screen flight attendants for mental illnesses, especially major ones like bipolar. I don’t think this is discriminatory, and in fact I believe it would ultimately protect applicants from getting into situations like this that they cannot control. It’s unlikely this woman will ever work again in her chosen career. If the airline knew about her condition but turned a blind eye, what does that say about them? Did they pretend it wasn’t there? Did they think not hiring her would violate her civil rights? Do her civil rights trump public safety?

Why are pilots so rigorously screened, when (according to the airlines) flight attendants also carry huge responsibility for safety? I think it’s the remnants of the “Fly Me” attitude. “Stews” just squeeze up and down the aisles in tight skirts, serving cocktails with a smile. They’re really not very important, subservient to the real crew, the guys who fly the plane.

You say that’s not true? That things have changed? Then where does this “mental lunacy” label come from? Will we now begin to call mentally challenged people “idiots” and “imbeciles”?

This woman did not “flip out” because of “job stress” and “economic uncertainty”. What happened to her could NOT “happen to anyone”. It could only happen to someone who is either extremely high on drugs, or seriously mentally ill. If it’s the kind of illness that requires regulation with medication, and the medication is cut off, we have a problem.

We have a problem that could have crashed that plane. Had it already taken off, had she been armed, had she been packed with explosives like a terrorist (and do you think it couldn’t happen? How carefully are flight attendants screened, if their mental health problems are being routinely ignored?), we would have had a disaster on an almost unimagineable scale.

Will there be a response to this obvious weakness in the system? I don’t think so. I think the policy will stay the same, because we don’t like to look at mental illness. We look away at the first opportunity, as if it isn’t really happening.

It’s lunacy, after all, a term that reverberates with an ancient and even primal terror.

Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole (hot off the presses, girls!)

This synopsis/blurb appeared on the Amazon.com web site.

Flying the not-so-friendly skies...

In her more than fifteen years as an airline flight attendant, Heather Poole has seen it all. She's witnessed all manner of bad behavior at 35,000 feet and knows what it takes for a traveler to become the most hated passenger onboard. She's slept in flight attendant crashpads in "Crew Gardens," Queens—sharing small bedrooms crammed with bunk beds with a parade of attractive women who come and go at all hours, prompting suspicious neighbors to jump to the very worst conclusions. She's watched passengers and coworkers alike escorted off the planes by police. She can tell you why it's a bad idea to fall for a pilot but can be a very good one (in her case) to date a business-class passenger. Heather knows everything about flying in a post-9/11 world—and she knows what goes on behind the scenes, things the passengers would never dream.

Heather's true stories in Cruising Attitude are surprising, hilarious, sometimes outrageously incredible—the very juiciest of "galley gossip" delightfully intermingled with the eye-opening, unforgettable chronicle of her fascinating life in the sky.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Four's company

Unless y'all've been buried under a tree lately, you'll know all about this new "reality" show on TLC called - what the hell's it called? Oh yeah, Sister Wives. Might as well call it Bob and Carol and Alice and Alice.

See, polygamy is fun now. It's cool. It's an alternative lifestyle, like composting and recycling and community gardening. Except that it's even more rewarding (or so certain people insist).

We have this guy named Kody Brown (not his real name - heh-heh) who lives in Utah, natch, and long ago married three rather large long-haired blondes (not that he has a "type"). They insist they all married this guy before any of their children were born, but then, hey presto, thirteen of them popped out (or should I say twelve and a half - one is still in the oven). This is not so much a family as a litter, a la the Duggars, the Gosselins, and that other family, the one that popped out the quints.

What's this fascination with raising such a mess of kids, anyway? Why is it being presented as such a barrel o' fun? It must be a modern-day version of the carnival side show. And what do you know - one of them really IS called Chrissie (well, Christine), though she's a little too stout to pass for that airhead on Three's Company.

We don't use the term "bigamy" any more - it's one of those words you have to blow the dust off of. Like polygamy, it's illegal as hell in Utah, as it is everywhere else. And the Mormon church is dead-set against it. Does it ever occur to this Kody guy (and who spells it with a K?) that he's not only living in sin, but living under the constant threat of arrest? Is breaking the law really the best example to his mass of kids?

But Kody has all that covered. In interviews, he literally says things like "shucks" and "dang it", insisting with sociopathic sincerity that he's merely obeying the laws of his religion. Having three kinds of nooky to choose from is faith-based, I guess, though I find that hard to comprehend.

Never mind: these wives all smile, smile, smile, and insist that their way of living is a free choice. Incredibly, they say it's up to their kids to decide what sort of life they will lead, but this flies in the face of the entrenched fundamentalism and profound, ruthless patriarchy of "plural marriage".

But there's a "surprise" here. Not content with all that vanilla, Kody wants a little chocolate in his life (or in the bedroom - though he complains of not having any "space" of his own, poor baby. I guess his only space is in these women's vaginas.) The impending addition of a fourth wife to the harem, a slim young brunette this time, seems stage-managed, almost a stunt for the cameras: or is that why the producers agreed to make this show in the first place? Is this impending shift of family dynamics going to make for good TV (bitching, hair-pulling, rrairrrrrrw!), or will it all be a whitewash of forced smiles and sweet sisterhood?

One of the worst Mormon/polygamist sayings is "Keep Sweet", and it might as well be embroidered on a sampler on the wall of every room (and how many would that be? Each wife has her own self-contained apartment, though nobody explains where they'll stash Wife #4). The truth is, Kody, who complains all the time about how tired he is (all that crawling from room to room?), will now have four flavours to choose from every night, with his only problem being keeping his "schedule" straight. It must be nice to be able to ejaculate on cue. Meantime, these sweet sisters have to grit their teeth and wait for their turn.

They're the unpaid help in the harem, programmed from birth to obey male-imposed rules in a patriarchal culture that withholds any control over their intimate lives. Though one of the wives (which one? Damned if I know, they're all blonde/bland) insists they don't "do weird" (i. e., Mormon orgies of four people rolling around on a king-sized bed), the whole premise of the show is more cringe-worthy than that last episode of Hoarders, where the old lady's house was so fouled with cat-shit that it had to be gutted to be made inhabitable.

So why do I watch these things? There isn't much on that's watchable besides Mad Men. And I will admit I have a fascination with the bizarre. I had no idea there was such a significant polygamous subculture in the States: I thought it was the province of crackpots who lived out in the desert with fifteen wives and a shotgun.

But is this Kody guy, this smarmy long-haired creep who oozes a sense of entitlement, this lone rooster in the henhouse, any less off-putting? While the family tries to figure out where to put the new wife (maybe Kody will build a shed for her out in the back yard), I contemplate the dynamics of other polygamous cultures in which the first wife always has the upper hand, the most power in a nearly-powerless situation.

Each succeeding wife has less control, and the last one, the little sister, has practically none. She is merely a sex toy for the husband, who has grown tired of all these breeding cows mooing around the place.

OK, so how long until she gets pregnant? Stay tuned.