TL:DR - Book recommendations needed, Coven, please comment as soon as you get time to breathe!  I know you are all busy as busy can be!

Today, I am sacrificing my post to boost the signal.

Lindsay  wants this:

"The Bechdel-Wallace (as Ms. B has said she thinks it should be called) Test is more important than I've realized. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Han Solo, so I could save Luke and kiss Leia.  Try to find any story where a woman does that. I'll read it or watch or listen to it, and praise you for leading me to it." 

Here's her whole post.

My first response is, "Hey, I wrote that!  Twice!"  One was a story about a pirate mom rescuing her kid from other pirates.  It may not pass the Bechdel test, but the badassery was all hers.  Well, the kid too.  Also, I wrote a Three Musketeers-esque novella where the D'Artagnan-analogue was female.  Of course she had help from her friends, but that's how the three musketeers stuff works.

I am trying to think of books like that, but even my favorite books about women have them winning by sacrifice more than by kicking ass, Han Solo style or kicking ass up to a point and then the man steps in, or at least they collaborate.  Also, I have a shitty memory and I am sure I am missing a bunch of great books I read and loved.

So, let's talk about the Hunger Games.  Katniss is a fucking victim.  She is traumatized through the whole book.  Gale is the strong action hero.  Peeta is the gentle soul with the spine of steel and the mushy bedroom eyes.  Prim is actually pretty brave and sensible throughout, but she's a secondary character and she's the cleric, not the warrior.  Katniss is not a hero, she's a figurehead who can shoot a bow, but internally, she's a mental patient who is able to function with a large support staff and she's manipulated by them over and over.

I know they're out there, these books, these stories.

Grania was a good one (historical fiction about Grace O'Malley), but that was written in the 80s.

I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write for JaNoWriMo.  I think I'm starting to figure it out.

I crave good storytelling, like medicine or food. 

Lately, I listen to a lot of podcasts at work. My mainstays are BBC Global News, and Stuff You Missed In History Class. The Truth is a fave, but updates infrequently. 

I want story; metaphor elevates me out of "point and click, lather rinse repeat." I want plot, I want action. I want it in the moment. 

The Bechdel-Wallace (as Ms. B has said she thinks it should be called) Test is more important than I've realized. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Han Solo, so I could save Luke and kiss Leia.  Try to find any story where a woman does that. I'll read it or watch or listen to it, and praise you for leading me to it. 

I want to create those stories, but I flounder on the rocks. I'm still trying.

I don't want to exclude men. I want to include men and women. The field is wide, but thin as it stands. 

In the meantime, I watch Jessica Jones at night and keep hitting the search button during the day. ​

I don't always lie down next to humans and act cute, but when I do...

I wait for them to pet me, and then shred their hands to bloody stumps. 

Of course, my humans try to play with me. I've broken the handle of the string toy twice. I will catch The Red Dot. And Blanket Shark?

Blanket Shark Begs Me For Mercy. 

I'm The Most Interesting Cat In My World. ​

Today is Hug a Random Stranger Day.

How do I know this? Because I hugged a random stranger today, at the grocery store.

And on a day after a day of Yet More Unspeakably Awful Things Going On Out There, that was a nice thing, to be offered a hug from a stranger, and to accept it. I had walked up to the end of the salad bar at Whole Goats, to get lunch. A tall man, older than me, was already there at the bins holding three different kinds of lettuce, carefully picking out individual leaves with tongs.

He saw me and said, "Hello," and I said, "Picking out the best lettuces, I see?" and he said, "Yes, as a vegetarian, I like to pick out the ones that still have the most nutrition left in them, that are still firm and crisp; I figure if I'm paying for it, I should get the best ones." He kept explaining about nutrition and attributes of healthy produce as I put lettuce in my takeout container. "Trying to stay healthy," he said, and I agreed, saying it was a good thing, and that I was also trying to stay healthy.

We moved together to the the bins holding things like chunks of cucumber and celery and red bell pepper slices and shredded beets and carrots and kidney beans and I held back, waiting for him to go first because he was there first and he said, with a sweep of his hand, "Oh, ladies first," and I thanked him and started putting various things on top of my lettuce.

"You having a nice day so far?" he asked, putting various things on top of his lettuce, too, and I agreed enthusiastically that I was--I didn't say this to him, but I had just come from the gym, where I'd had an awesome workout, which felt great because I've had to pull back a lot lately in order to continue healing from my surgery and that has totally been bringing me down.

So, finally feeling more healed and like I can maybe start pushing again, and having just been pushed by my awesome trainer, I was pumped full of endorphins and virtuously hungry. He asked if Santa was treating me right and I said, "Um...?" "Not a believer in Santa?" he said, and I said, "Well, it's just that Santa time hasn't happened yet," and he said, "Yes, but it IS that time of year," and I agreed that was true.

And then he said, "Just let me know when you're done, so I can give you a hug," and I know that might sound like it was creepy or weird or like he was hitting on me, and coming from someone else or in a different situation it might have been the case, but from this particular random stranger I did not get a creepy or weird or hitting on me vibe at all. Really. I know what that feels like.

This, it just felt like...kindness. Why the hell not, I thought, so I said, "Oh, I haven't been offered a hug yet today, thanks!"

I held out an arm and we gave each other a quick strong side hug, and continued putting things on top of our salads, and after a few more moments of chit-chat as we completed our salad masterpieces, we went our separate ways.

Some people are going out of their way to kill random strangers. Others are going out of their way to be nice to random strangers and offer them a hug.

And so I say, today if a random stranger offers you a hug and if it feels right to you, take it.

I was lacing up my boots to leave, my brain was a jumble, and I needed something to lift my spirits. Just to see what would happen, I tapped on my phone, and said, "Siri, play some beautiful music." 

Go ahead and look it up if you like. I won't force it on you.  I have to say, I've never heard the "n" word 3 times in ten seconds, in context, before. 

Sooooo... yeah. That was fun. 

I'm certainly losing fat but also certainly gaining muscle. So the weight is kind of hovering. Have been doing some core, upper body & arm exercises with large elastic bands. I like them but I really need to sink a couple of anchors in the wall or ceiling.

Have been moving some junk around in the house. I get freaked out doing this because I see a huge pile of stuff and panic and have to leave the room. I know the right approach is one thing at a time. But it is nevertheless often just overwhelming. And ridiculous; there are empty cabinets all that stuff could go into. But I just took it out of there to sort it.

I am theoretically trying out for Royal City Musical Productions' _Into the Woods_.  Because it's a musical, I have to sing. No problem. But because it's Sondheim, I have to sing Sondheim. I mean, yeah, duh. But Sondheim is just so depressing. His plays are always a box of chocolates where the flavours are all Yiddish deprecations. (Not unlike real life, but magnified. Depressing!) But the director seems very strong. And it would be Something To Do in the Winter. 

However right now I just want to crawl in a blanket fort and play video games for four months. But that would probably not be great. I guess? Seriously if I replayed the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games over again that would probably get me to March at least. And I still have to finish Bloodborne, and the occasional fucking around with TESO. Could get me to the equinox!

On the other hand D is also trying out for it. And if she gets a part I wouldn't mind so much if I got a part because it would be something we could do together. If she didn't get one but I got one that would probably not be great IMO. Because driving to Guelph 2x a week when we don't have a car just for my benefit would suck.

On the camera app front, I'm trying to get into beta test mode. There's a few small features to add but overall it's solid and ready for other hands than mine. I've been hampered this week by a compiler optimization error that caused the test version to fail for Apple's beta review team, but not me. Not fun to get reports of freezes or crashes on app startup when I haven't seen those in months. But I could reproduce it by debugging in release mode, which allowed me to at least see the Swift library code path triggering it; and it was something I could work around. 

I keep looking at real-estate in tiny little towns. Like, oh, I could buy a run down century home for $70K. But my neighbours would be Conservatives. At least small town Ontario's like that. Probably small town everywhere. I'd probably be bored out of my gourd. And there's not so many great jobs for technical managers in small towns. 

I've put in an application for a three month artist residency next summer in Newfoundland. I hope I get it. It would provide a much needed reboot of my artistic chops. And a nice reboot of my personal interaction dynamic. My habits are too ossified, I feel like I just can't break free of them. A change of scenery would help.

That's it for now!

Driving back to the Mountains just now was like driving onto a Hollywood movie set, wherein the set has been lit and dressed for maximum nighttime atmosphere. Fog. Frozen fog, hanging low, illuminated by headlights. And in my driveway, I parked and walked to the mailbox to check the mail, and as I did, I heard some seriously wiggy sounds right above my head.

Crispy crackly crunchy grindy squeaky sounds. For a paranoid moment, I thought there was, like, a mountain lion or a bear or maybe even a chupacabra in the trees above, rustling, positioning itself so that it could fall down onto me and chomp me into tiny bits.

And hey, I live in the mountains, so while unlikely, it's within the realm of possibility. I was spinning around, looking for the source and meaning behind these sounds that were seriously freaking me out and I realized it was Spike, the weaponized tree, glowing ghostly white in the light of the front porch.

Spike's limbs and giant thorns are coated in frost, still, and in the breeze, they were rubbing and squeaking and grinding against each other, creating a creepy symphony I have never ever heard before. And am not keen to hear again.

::shudder::

I missed a couple week's posts. Felt poorly about gaining a few pounds. Which I figure was due to starting some mild strength training. And having more dried fruit rather than (out of season) fresh fruit. Fucking winter. Fucking, fucking winter.

Still working on the camera app. Very, very close now. Just minor polishing. I need most importantly now to get the documentation written so I can put it in the hands of testers. It's that moment of uneasiness in a big project where one wonders, is anything important missing? Is it as good as I think it is? I know the work has been worth the months of effort because I love the resulting app, but it would be very nice to make some money from it too, and I don't know if that's just a pipe dream.

In other news, I'm applying for an arts residency in Newfoundland. If I get it, I will be away from home for up to 3 months ( hopefully in the summer) focusing on my photography. Yes, being apart from my beloved and my cats and my home and my habits for months will suck. It will also be exciting, wonderful and enlivening. It will be an adventure. I really hope I get it. 

Today I listened to a lot of Stuff You Missed In History Class. 

To make a long story short, this exists, and it comes from a place of kindness and curiosity. 

Unrelated: I just started reading Brainwashing by Kathleen Taylor. It's all scientific and stuff. 

Too rainy for a lunch walk. 

Setting reminders for myself to do things tonight. 

The Punch Brothers' new album is really good.