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As I watched yet another body count trend upward in a recent movie, it inspired me to list the top five things that bore me as a viewer/reader. These clichéd and overused tropes are supposed to wow, but leave me snoring. This list applies to fiction as well as movies.
1) Gratuitous sex scenes, aka sex with a stranger.
It’s stupid. Why should I care? The encounter between two people who truly long for each other, who have been kept apart then finally come together, is far more intriguing. Couples who have a history that reunite or make up are more interesting than random rutters.
2) Random violence.
Killing one character I've grown invested in is more compelling than blasting away with an automatic weapon downing characters I don’t know or care about. It's a fact of human nature that genocide in a distant land doesn't register until the battle is brought to a person's front door. The closer the character who dies is to the protagonist, the higher the story stakes. As much as I love cozy mysteries, there's almost a disconnect when it comes to the victims. The best cozy mystery makes me care that the victim died.
3) Gore.
It’s a turn off. As much as I appreciate special effects makeup artists, they can use their talents to make cooler effects that don’t involve rolling heads or spurting arteries. In books, I really don’t need paragraphs of gruesome details. I scan past them. Same with torture and battle scenes. They make me cringe. I'm a grown-up. I have experienced loss and pain. I get the drift. The reality that people are bestial and kill each other is disgusting and horrifying enough. We never followed Anne Frank to the concentration camp, but the reality of the horror of that story scarred me for life. Why? Because I grew to know and like her and that made what she went through personal rather than abstract. If you want to impress upon your readers true horror, make it personal.
4) Drawn out panoramic shots.
Whether it’s a prolonged movie clip or endless paragraphs describing the setting in excessive detail, I have a tendency to fast forward or skim read past them. Take a picture; it lasts longer. Have you ever sat through an endless slideshow of someone else's vacation? Make description short and make it count, then move onto the point of the scene. It's even better if the setting has an impact on the scene.
5) Adults or teens that behave like out of control toddlers.
Book or movie, I have no patience with these characters. I wouldn't hang out with them in person. I don't waste page time with them either. If this character is the protagonist, I put the book down and it goes on my discard pile.
What tropes inspire you to flip pages or quit reading?
0 Comments on Top 5 Things That Bore Me as of 4/19/2013 8:32:00 AM
A while back, the Beat’s own Henry Barajas – tireless observer of Kickstarted comics that he is – took some time to preview a crowd-funded book by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Jimmy Broxton, and Juan Santacruz. Sex and Violence, Vol. 1 was laid bare (spread-eagle, perhaps) to its supporters this past week, after reaching its funding goal. The only hurdle yet to cross is for Palmiotti, Gray, and cover artist Amanda Conner to actually sit down and sign the damned things. I was part of the crowd that funded Sex and Violence; I expect I’ll get my copy in the mail any day now. In that copy, and in everyone else’s, too, there will be my name (my government name, my “goes on job applications” name), thanked for helping to finance, well, sex and violence.
I wonder if this bizarre offshoot of buyer’s remorse is common amongst Kickstarter supporters. The thing is, it’s not exactly remorse. It’s more like Schroedinger’s cat, where a funded project exists in a quantum state of being both satisfying and regrettable until you get your copy and find out for yourself. “So, goofus,” the dialogue begins, “why did you throw money at it if you weren’t sure you’d be happy with it?”
I’m not sure I have a good answer for that. I like Jimmy Broxton’s art, I guess. Getting an Amanda Conner art print or whatever else is pretty cool. As writers, Palmiotti and Gray have yet to grievously offend me, but then again, I’m not exactly snatching Freedom Fighters off the racks so roughly that the staples kink. It almost, maybe, makes a little more sense when I take the long view and consider the status quo of adult-people comics today.
Joe Casey, agent provocateur, just released a comic called Sex, which I saw praised on Twitter as “the most 2003 comic of 2013.” Brandon Graham’sMultiple Warheads, a book I love without qualifiers, started as a porno gag strip in an NBM anthology. Matt Seneca’s Very Fine Comix debuted with Daredevil 12”, a XXX Marvel comic spoof; Jane Mai just put out Blumpkin Spice Latte, a zine that’s 99% dick talk (with the best title of 2012). Sex is in the air in comics, these days, but it’s kept its edge, sticking mostly to the dim corners or weird vortices of the market.
Violence, of course, is the foundation modern comics were built upon, and the sword that they live and die by to this day. I shouldn’t even need to point out examples, but the “big moments” in the Diamond-distributed scene always revolve around bloody carnage. Think Damian Wayne, freshly skewered. Glenn from The Walking Dead: turned into a piñata. Avatar Press is its own thing entirely. Both Mark Millar and John Romita’s certified hit Kick-Ass and Frank Cho and Joe Keatinge’s upcoming Brutal have promo art that looks jacked straight from the cover of Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power. DC Comics’ big multimedia tie-in for the quarter isn’t just a fighting game, it’s a fighting game built by the people who make Mortal Kombat.
So in this rough-sex-and-eyeballs-popping milieu, Sex and Violence seemed like a romp. Sure, it was being pitched as tawdry, sleazy, exploitative, and unshakably macho despite itself… but sometimes the grindhouse is the place to be. All of this is very much after-the-fact justification, but it seems to add up. But that just takes us back to Schroedinger’s cat. It could be fun and trashy. If could just be trashy and a little sad. I paid my admission, so the least I can do is find out.
There are two halves to Sex and Violence. You’d think that with the title structured the way it is, this duplex approach would lend itself to a sex story and a violence story. It almost does (one tale is certainly more violent than sexual, and vice versa for the other), but not enough to comment on the idea at any other point in this piece. The book starts with “Pornland, Oregon,” illustrated by Jimmy Broxton. In what starts as a sideways riff on the movie Hardcore, a young woman is made a deep web sensation forevermore by being murdered in a snuff film. As it turns out, in one of those funny coincidences life likes to play, her grandfather is a retired Mafia hitman, and all expected murders and executions follow in due course. The second story, drawn by Juan Santacruz, is “Girl in a Storm,” about a lesbian NYPD officer who becomes obsessed with spying on her beautiful neighbor, and has to deal with the small complication of that neighbor already having a woman to keep her bed warm. Things, as they must, get more sordid from there.
So is it any good? Jimmy Broxton’s minimalist (and very British, in a way I can’t put my finger on) style sells “Pornland” rather well. Abetted by Challenging Studios’ color palette of blue, grey, purple, and what I can only call “various shades of Dave Stewart red,” Broxton makes “Pornland” into something not unlike the crime media of the 70s, when character actors could still look like the bottoms of feet: Get Carter, The Outfit, The Squeeze, some imaginary episode of The Rockford Files with more exposed breasts… In fact, the plot of the thing is pretty much Get Carter with some serial numbers filed off, and things like “a vaguely sympathetic hero” and “romance” bolted on like a new spoiler on a Gremlin. That’s not bad, mind. If you’re going to be something in the avenge-young-relative sub-genre, Get Carter is really what you want to be.
On the other hand, “Girl in a Storm” is just… there. The story strains to be Brian de Palma, which is a noble ambition until you realize that Brian de Palma is usually straining to be other people (in this case, a Sapphic voyeur version of Rear Window) – it’s a well that quickly dries up. Juan Santacruz is a veteran superhero artist, and that’s a downside here. Instead of a claustrophobic, psychologically maladjusted story of obsession, passion, forbidden desire, violence, and all those other things that we pretend not to love, the leggy all-but-baby-oiled figures and brightly-lit colors give the whole thing a plastic shine. The look of the strip – which, in a strip about looking, is really the most important thing on multiple levels – isn’t enough to elevate an uninspired script, and both sides end up worse for it. If “Pornland” is Get Carter, “Girl in a Storm” ends up as a post-depilation-culture take on something like a Christina Lindberg movie, and not one of the really twisted, memorably corpse-mutilating ones like Thriller.
So this is what’s going to have my name tucked away in it, until we’re all dead and beyond. I don’t feel particularly embarrassed about this, I suppose. I probably should, and the sting is probably lessened by my name being so generic as to sound like an ethnic take on “John Smith.” Only half of Sex and Violence is really any fun – a statement more true than I intended it to be when I typed it – and I overpaid, based on that math. It’s not egregiously offensive (by comic book standards) and it’s not a work of genius. It just exists, and me with it, twins conjoined at the donation. It’s hard to work up a head of steam one way or the other when both pleasure and disappointment come mild.
LTZ sells comic books, and infrequently contributes to the Beat. He even more infrequently contributes to his own site, Nowhere / No Formats. He tweets about how hard this rigorous schedule is at @less_than_zero.
4 Comments on REVIEW: “Do I Really Want My Name Associated with SEX AND VIOLENCE?”, last added: 3/17/2013
The realy Hardest Game of the World said, on 3/14/2013 6:27:00 PM
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Around the Tubes | Graphic Policy said, on 3/16/2013 6:00:00 AM
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Evan said, on 3/17/2013 4:01:00 AM
Any word yet if the book will also be going the traditional Diamond route like the other two Kickstarter projects yet?
Evan said, on 3/17/2013 4:02:00 AM
Any word yet if the book will also be going the traditional Diamond route like the other two Kickstarter projects yet?
By Corey RobinRoss Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist, and Dan Savage, the liberal sex columnist, recently had a Bloggingheads conversation about sex, lies, and videotape. It’s a fascinating discussion, mostly because of what it reveals about the conservative mind and its attitude toward sex.
0 Comments on What the Right really thinks about sex as of 1/1/1900
Keywords: Based on a True Story, Addiction, Drugs, Sex, Banned
Alethea's review:
Ellen Hopkins's debut YA novel is a cautionary tale first and foremost. This collection of poetry tells the story of her daughter Kristina--a bright, pretty, but damaged girl who makes some painful and disastrous decisions in her young life. Underlying it all is tragedy--the author's family drama made public. The scandalous subject matter coupled with adults' perception of how a tale like this might affect its intended audience--teenagers and other young people made to witness mature topics "before their time", has led to its being challenged and banned in various communities.
Kristina seems to go from zero to sixty into a drugged-out, sexed-up downward spiral--this abruptness is what I liked least about the book, though I can see both that a) it's very possible it really happened this way and b) for storytelling purposes, it still works better than a gradual decline. The language is cutting, crystalline, harsh--the alignment (disalignment? malignment?) of the printed words emphasize the disorder and compulsions that drive Bree, nee Kristina, to waste and wither even as a new life develops within her body. The overt lessons in Crank are quite direct--don't do drugs, don't be careless with sex, seek help when you need it, but miss that last hit of credibility. The voices of the character and the author both seem unreliable somehow. However, while Crank is not my favorite of Ellen's books, it's a must-read to set the stage for the rest of her stories.
I have met Ellen Hopkins and I trust her writing. I have listened to her read from some of her later books (Fallout, Perfect) and her words have moved me to tears. I believe that, dark as it is, her narratives are important and even necessary to touch topics no parent wants to have to talk about with their kids. It's hard enough to do it as a preventative--what do you say when your child is, or--heaven forbid--you are the one with the addiction? Hopkins will touch the topics no one else will touch. She wrestles with the monster in the hopes that other Kristinas (and maybe even Adams) will be saved; not just to prevent teens from using drugs, committing crimes, or being sexually abused, but also for those teens who have been there and done that, and who no longer believe
1 Comments on Crank - Banned Book Review, last added: 10/2/2011
In a comment on my last post, Tracey suggested I read The Yoke, by Hubert Wales, because, like The Career of Katherine Bush, it features a woman who has premarital sex and doesn’t get punished for it. So I did.
It’s an astonishing book, especially for 1908. It’s also a super creepy one, for any time.
See, Angelica is forty, gray haired and still beautiful. She never married because the man she was in love with died of cancer during their engagement. His son, Maurice, is now twenty-two, and having a hard time stopping himself from having sex with prostitutes, so Angelica starts sleeping with him for his protection.
According to Hubert Wales, this is how the world works: young men, unable to control their sexual desires, sleep with prostitutes. Then they get STDs and their lives are ruined. To be fair, he allows Angelica to have sexual desires too, and that’s great. Here’s the catch, though: Angelica has raised Maurice since he was two. For all intents and purposes — except genetic ones — she’s his mom.
Everyone feeling uncomfortable? Okay, let’s move on.
Angelica and Maurice very much enjoy sleeping together. Angelica develops physically in some unspecified way. Maurice is no longer tempted by prostitutes. And as if the advantages of their relationship weren’t being shown clearly enough, Maurice’s friend Chris, having slept with a prostitute, gets an STD and kills himself. Because that’s what happens if you don’t have an adoptive parent nice enough to have sex with you.
Eventually Maurice falls in love with Chris’ sister Cecil. That’s not a spoiler; it’s evident from before her first appearance that that’s what’s going to happen. And Maurice is all agonized about it, because he promised Angelica he’d be faithful to her, but Angelica’s like, “Seriously? You thought I was going to prevent you from ever getting married?” And then she goes and talks the whole thing out with Cecil, who basically scorns the idea that either of them have done anything immoral and thanks Angelica for saving Maurice from her brother’s fate.
I feel bad, because it is really rare and cool to find an Edwardian-era novel that lets a woman want sex — let alone have sex — without punishing her for it, but this is such a male fantasy: the beautiful older woman sleeping with the young man for his benefit — only it’s okay because she likes it — and then handing him off to his future wife with the words, “take care of the kiddie,” literally Maurice’s father’s last words to Angelica.
And that’s without even considering the incest issue. Or the fact that, while Wales makes a point of Angelica not trying to preach at Maurice while he’s growing up, the entire book is a very pointed moral argument. So, yeah, it’s cool — more than cool — that Angelica gets to have her fling and be happily single ever after, but most of the time that felt like a couple of grains of wheat in as many bushels of chaff.
It DOES sound creepy. I’ve downloaded it but it’s not at the top of my TBR list!
heidenkind said, on 3/4/2012 8:38:00 PM
So it’s basically Mrs. Robinson, is what you’re saying. ;)
Tracey S. Rosenberg said, on 3/5/2012 3:13:00 AM
Wow, I had blanked out the extreme creep factor. I just remembered that it was made VERY CLEAR that Angelica was not actually married to Maurice’s father. Definite reread!
Melody said, on 3/5/2012 4:40:00 AM
Except for how she’s his mom. D:
Melody said, on 3/5/2012 4:46:00 AM
Itt was definitely made clear that Angelica and Maurice’s father weren’t married, and I think Wales went out of his way to avoid the use of the word “mother” in reference to Angelica, but…she adopted him when he was two. She’s the only parent he’s got. I know that book was kind of scandalous at the time, but I wonder if it was all about the sex or if iny of it was about the not-exactly-incest.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendation. Whatever else it was, The Yoke was completely fascinating.
I just did a fun interview about my eBook, HOW TO HAVE SEX IF YOU'RE NOT HUMAN, on the Radio Show, SUSAN RICH TALKS: Love and Lifestyle. Susan Rich and Annemarie Schuetz were great interviewers and we had a fun time talking about mating behavior across the animal kingdom, including humans. Also had a chance to plug my book SEXUAL STRATEGIES: HOW FEMALES CHOOSE THEIR MATES. The show is archived, so you can listen by clicking on the show link.
1 Comments on HOW TO HAVE SEX IF YOU'RE NOT HUMAN - Radio Interview, last added: 4/11/2012
Right On Mary, "Brainless as Beetles" too right, just look at the Wisconsin Governor's legislation against equal pay! "Money is more important to men than women," he said. Now there's someone who needs to listen to "how to have sex if you're not human!" He gives some of those male animals who have strategies for controlling females, a a run for their money...so to speak.
So glad to have Nicole O’Dell with us as she shares a special ministry devoted to connecting teens, their parents and God. Here’s what she has to say about “Hot Buttons:”
Well, in the broader sense, the phrase Hot Buttons means a lot of different things, anything really, that can get a rise out people. Something that charges them up and receives an intense reaction. For the purposes of Choose NOW Ministries, I’ve defined hot buttons as those tough issues that teenagers face–the things parents are often more afraid of and most hesitant to talk about.
Why not just leave it alone and let the kids figure it out? We can pray for them and trust it all to work out in the end. In some ways it does work itself out, true. Circumstances happen, pressure hits, relationships change. . .and your teens gets to figure it all out. In the heat of the moment. On their own. Hopefully they’ll make the right choice, but it’s really hard to know what will happen when the prep work isn’t done.
Take an issue like dating–we talk about the boundaries. We set rules for curfew and other things. We even make sure we apprrove of the date and talk about saying no to sexual advances. Right?
And that’s great. It really is. But there’s something missing. Our teens need to know what to do and what not to do, and what we expect of them, but they also need to understand why that’s going to be difficult for them. How does the body respond in ways that make it tough to say no? What will the feelings be like that make it difficult to leave the room or douse the proverbial flames?
You see, if we don’t hit those truth head on before they become an issue, our teens will think it’s a secret, it’s specific to them, and we really don’t know what we’re asking them to say no to. But, if we press those hot buttons in advance, if we have the difficult conversations, then our teens will enter those pressure-filled situations armed with understanding and equipped with the words to say to stay true to their commitments.
With every hot button issue, someone is feeding your tweens and teens information–do you really want that someone to be anyone other than you?
Now that you’ve made the decision to be proactive about helping your tweens and teens battle peer pressure, I love to share the principles behind the Hot Buttons book series and the method of communicating with your teens it prescribes.
0 Comments on Pressing the “Hot Buttons” By Guest Blogger, Nicole O’Dell as of 1/1/1900
The dream of Maria Angeles, a child from Almussafes, Spain. One of many children's dreams collected by Roger Omar. Casein paint on sugar paper 40cm x 41cm. Click to enlarge.
0 Comments on Bee Arse Sting Bum Tree as of 9/3/2012 7:59:00 PM
As most of you probably know by now, there’s a new stage in life – emerging adulthood, or for the purposes of this post, the unmarried young adult. Marriage is getting pushed off (26 is now the average age for women, 28 for men) which means…more premarital sex than ever!
According to sociologists, emerging adults are all part of a sexual market in which the “cost” of sex for men and women in heterosexual relationships is pretty different. Out of this disparity has risen the theory of “sexual economics,” which I recently read up on in Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying. At first glance women appeared to be the clear losers in this market. See this passage:
Sexual economics theory would argue that sex is about acquiring valued “resources” at least as much as it is about seeking pleasure. When most people think of women trading sex for resources, they think of prostitution and money as the terms of exchange. But this theory encourages us to think far more broadly about the resources that the average woman values and attempts to acquire in return for sex – things like love, attention, status, self-esteem, affection, commitment, and feelings of emotional union. Within many emerging adults’ relationships, orgasms are not often traded equally.
Basically, the sexual economics theory says that while women and men are doing the same thing during sex, socially they are doing two different things. Women can and do enjoy sex, but they also have an agenda, while men…just want to have sex. Which to me just seemed, well, sad. Hadn’t women all finally agreed that a man can’t ever make you happy, only you can? But the more I read up on the theory of sexual economics, the less cut-and-dry it became. Women might use sex to get commitment, but they’re also getting things like advanced degrees and independent financial stability - which also play a role in this new sexual economy. This led me to ask: are men really the clear winners in this game? I scoured the countless studies and interviews in Premartial Sex in America and came up with the following chart to sort all the data out.
Wins in the Emerging Adult Sexual Market by Gender
Tally:
Women &
0 Comments on Who’s winning in the sexual market? as of 1/1/1900
Until now, high school junior John Keats has only tiptoed near the edges of the vortex that is schoolmate and literary prodigy, Gordon Byron. That is, until their mutual friend, Shelly, drowns in a sailing accident.
After stealing Shelly's ashes from her wake at Trinity Catholic High School, the boys set a course for the small Lake Erie island where Shelly's body had washed ashore and to where she wished to be returned. It would be one last "so Shelly" romantic quest. At least that's what they think.
As they navigate around the obstacles and resist temptations during their odyssey, Keats and Gordon glue together the shattered pieces of Shelly's and their own pasts while attempting to make sense of her tragic and premature end.
How I found out about this book: Alethea picked up the ARC at ALA Midwinter in San Diego, having lusted after the cover.
Alethea's review: I don't know what I was expecting from a novel that's essentially a present-day retelling of the lives of three (or rather, four--Shelly is a composite of two Shelleys--Mary Wollstonecraft and Percy Bysshe) of the most talented but messed-up people to ever grace the pages of literature. There are a ton of things in the novel that most mainstream YA readers won't like. It's chock-full of sex (specifically incest, rape, and molestation), obsession, and grief. There is, at one point, a murder in which one of the three main characters figures prominently, yet doesn't seem to undergo any emotional change, other than to remove himself from the situation. The thing is, they're in the book because they reportedly happened to their real-life counterparts, not just to titillate.
I'm not saying the novel is without merit. The characters are engaging, though they skew more towards cautionary-tale rather than model-citizen. Keats is a sympathetic narrator and the most relatable of the three. Shelly and Gordon have the tendency to go off the deep end--in massive ways, especially since they are spectacularly privileged (Shelly having been born rich; Gordon having the pedigree but restoring family fortune by writing an Eragon-type novel at a very young age). Never before has the lack of parental supervision been so blatantly exploited as in the love-polygon of Shelly chasing Gordon, and Gordon chasing every other woman who isn't her, including various of his relatives, caretakers, and best-friend's-stepsisters.
While the novel does a great job of capturing the spirit of Romanticism and retelling, piece by sordid piece, the lives of three great writers, So Shelly would best be enjoyed by those who can appreciate--or maybe tolerate--erotica and shameless depravity. Ultimately the themes of friendship, loyalty, and forgiveness
4 Comments on So Shelly - Review, last added: 4/24/2011
I wanted to like this book. It had potential. But I found it painfully slow and thought it would have been better written for adults, rather than the YA market for which it was written. I couldn't even finish the book far enough to post a legitimate review. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was less than enthralled by it.
Whoa, my first reaction was 'Pretty Cover!' and I was planning to get it instantly but now that I've read your review I've learned a bit more... caution. Thanks for the review. :)
Until now, high school junior John Keats has only tiptoed near the edges of the vortex that is schoolmate and literary prodigy, Gordon Byron. That is, until their mutual friend, Shelly, drowns in a sailing accident.
After stealing Shelly's ashes from her wake at Trinity Catholic High School, the boys set a course for the small Lake Erie island where Shelly's body had washed ashore and to where she wished to be returned. It would be one last "so Shelly" romantic quest. At least that's what they think.
As they navigate around the obstacles and resist temptations during their odyssey, Keats and Gordon glue together the shattered pieces of Shelly's and their own pasts while attempting to make sense of her tragic and premature end.
I very much believe that every book has its reader, and while I liked this novel, it didn't wow me. I want someone to have this who will love it. It's got historical elements, poetry and drama. This is a YA novel with some very adult topics--sex and violence--so please, if you're young and impressionable, don't enter the giveaway :/ I don't want to be in trouble with your parents!
Read the review and if you think you would like to win this book, comment below (not on the review post) and tell me why you'd like to read this book. Make sure your email is in there somewhere--so I can contact you if you win.
I'll choose a winner at Midnight on May 1, using the random number generator. I'll mail to the US or Canada.
Tweet the link to this page for an extra entry (leave the link in the comments!)
Good luck!
24 Comments on Win So Shelly - Giveaway, last added: 4/29/2011
I'm with Ricki. I like the nefarious aspect of this story while also being in the Catholic school environment (especially since I attended a Catholic school from 5th-12th grade and now teach at one). That is very intriguing to me.
I am drawn to the MC's names being close or the same as some historical writers, poems and such. Seems interesting! My email is lpcoolgirl@xplornet.com and yep :)
I'd love to win a copy of this ARC because (1) The pitch is fascinating; I love books about finding out about another character, and (2) I love the cover (cover's important!!).
I'd love to win a copy of this book. My daughter is a YA nut. The plot seems like something she would like to read because she loves books that have a mysterious air about them. That cover is amazing, I love it.
I would love to win this ARC. It's really important to showcase 2011 novels and support new YA authors. The cover/synopsis of this novel is so intriguing to me, especially since I haven't read a "gritty" novel in a while.
the (dot) zealous (dot) reader (at) gmail (dot) com
I want to read this book because I just have to find out if they get to spread her ashes by the shore that she washed up on! mamabunny13 at gmail dot com
In her novel, Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver celebrates the lush fecundity of nature. The main character marvels at the way her ovulation dependably comes with the full moon.
It’s a poetic image – but is there any evidence for it?
Actually, no. It’s true that the length of the average menstrual cycle is close to the length of the lunar cycle. But like so many notions about fertility, an effect of the moon on ovulation is just a nice story. The menstrual cycle is remarkably variable, even among women who say their cycles are “regular.” This is not surprising – unlike the movement of stars and planets, biology is full of variation. The day of ovulation is unpredictable, and there is no evidence (even in remote tribal cultures) that ovulation is related to phases of the moon or other outside events.
We humans are susceptible to myths about our fertility and pregnancy. These myths also invade science. One scientific “fact” you may have heard is that women who live in close quarters synchronize their menstrual cycles. The paper that launched this idea was published forty years ago in the prestigious journal Nature1. Efforts to replicate those findings have been wobbly at best – but the idea still persists.
Another scientific myth is the notion that sperm carrying the Y male chromosome swim faster than sperm carrying the X female chromosome. It’s true that the Y chromosome is smaller than the X. But there is no evidence that this very small addition of genetic cargo slows down the X-carrying sperm. As often as this idea is debunked, it continues to appear in scientific literature – and especially the literature suggesting that couples can tilt the odds towards having a baby of a particular sex.
Choosing your baby’s sex
Many couples have a definite preference for the sex of their baby. The baby’s sex is established at conception, which has led to a lot of advice on things to do around the time of conception to favor one sex or the other. Recommendations include advice on timing of sex in relation to ovulation, position during sex, frequency of sex, foods to eat or avoid, etc. The good thing about every one of these techniques is that they work 50% of the time. (This is good enough to produce many sincere on-line testimonials.) Despite what you may read, there is no scientific evidence that any of these methods improves your chances for one sex or the other, even slightly. The solution? Relax and enjoy what you get.
When will the baby arrive?
Everyone knows that pregnancies last nine months – but do they? Doctors routinely assign pregnant women a “due-date,” estimated from the day of her last menstrual period before getting pregnant. The due-date is set at 40 weeks after the last menstrual period. You might think the due-date is based on scientific evidence, but in fact, 40 weeks was proposed in 1709 for a rather flaky reason: since the average menstrual period is four weeks, it seemed “harmonious” for pregnancy to last the equivalent of ten menstrual cycles.
So what are a woman’s chances of actually delivering on her due date? Fifty percent? Twenty percent?
Try four percent. Just like the length of menstrual cycles (and every other aspect of human biology), there is lots of variation in the natural length of pregnancy. If the due-date is useful at all, it is as the median length of pregnancy – in other words, about half of women will deliver before their due-date, and about half after. So don’t cancel your appointments on the due-date just because you think it’s The Day – there’s a 96% chance the baby will arrive some other time.
1. McClintock MK. Menstrual synchorony and suppression.
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Category: Young Adult Realistic Fiction Format: Hardcover (Also available on Kindle) Keywords: Hip hop, GLBT, suburbia
Alethea's review:
I can't do a better blurb than the one that's already on the jacket, so here it is, from goodreads.com:
A gay suburban hip-hopper freaks out her Christian high school - and falls in love - in this righteously funny and totally tender YA debut, for real.
Listen up: You’re about to get rocked by the fiercest, baddest all-girl hip-hop crew in the Twin Cities - or at least in the wealthy, white, Bible-thumping suburb of Holyhill, Minnesota. Our heroine, Esme Rockett (aka MC Ferocious) is a Jewish lesbian lyricist. In her crew, Esme’s got her BFFs Marcy (aka DJ SheStorm, the butchest straight girl in town) and Tess (aka The ConTessa, the pretty, popular powerhouse of a vocalist). But Esme’s feelings for her co-MC, Rowie (MC Rohini), a beautiful, brilliant, beguiling desi chick, are bound to get complicated. And before they know it, the queer hip-hop revolution Esme and her girls have exploded in Holyhill is on the line. Exciting new talent Laura Goode lays down a snappy, provocative, and heartfelt novel about discovering the rhythm of your own truth.
I cried about 6 times in 360 pages, and I laughed about 30 times or more. Esme's voice is so vivid that I felt every twinge of hurt and every sweet burst of joy she experienced. I loved that she's a booklover, and a biker, and a writer. I loved the way she thinks! Though I have to admit, at times some of the lyrics sounded weak to me (this, from a brain mostly hardwired more for showtunes than hip-hop--I'm no expert, is what I'm saying) they got progressively stronger throughout the book. And anything I might have found lacking in the lyrics, the prose made up for in spades.
This novel struck me as vastly educational: I loved how Goode worked in not just poetry and music theory (and the history of hip hop, of course) but also religion, law, ethics, gender/race issues--even chemistry. The author clearly loves language, as do the mischievous sisters. They speak and sing in praise of intelligence, creativity, courage, freedom, and love. Think Sister Act 2, set in the suburbs buteasy on the cheese and with a little more Lauryn Hill.
One of the other things I like about this book is how there's no outright villain (ok, Ma
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I have a new addiction, it’s The Secret Life of the American Teen. Yes, I’ll admit it, it’s not a very good show. The characters are somewhat one-dimensional (at least some of the time) and the plots are often quite unbelievable, if not plain old stupid. But yet, once I realized it was on NetFlix streaming, I started watching and got hooked.
If you aren’t familiar with the plot line of this ABC Family series, the series began with the focus on Amy Jurgens, a 15 year-old who discovers, at the very beginning of the first episode, that she is pregnant. The first year follows Amy as she decides what to do with the baby – keep or adopt – and also as she deals with the father of the baby, her new boyfriend, her best girlfriends, the Christian good girl at her school, the school slut, teachers, parents, her sister, and so on.
I actually saw the first episode when it first aired in 2008 and couldn’t watch more than that first installment. I found it didactic and boring.
But yet, now I’m hooked, and I’ll tell you why. The Secret Life of the American Teen does a great job at showing how important it is for adults to be a part of teen lives and to have real and straightforward conversations with teens. In every episode there are lots of conversations between teens and adults and the adults talk with the teens directly about sex (the show really does revolve around sex), making good decisions, and personal responsibility. While at times the conversations seem forced and too didactic, they are conversations nonetheless. I love that!
The other thing that really draws me to the program is that the teens and adults talk about all different aspects of sex. Whether or not it should be fun. If oral sex is sex. If masturbation is a way to manage a teen’s sexual desires. Responsibilities of fathers and mothers to their children. And more. The topics covered are topics that teens are curious about and that adults should be talking about with teens.
As I watch I think about all the reasons why all adults aren’t having these types of conversations with the teens in their lives. The reasons include fear and risk. It’s a risk to have straightforward conversations with teens about these topics because it’s not clear where the conversation will lead. One might be fearful of having to give away a bit of their own experience and past when talking about difficult topics. Or fear that the conversation will lead a teen in a direction that isn’t what the adult would desire for the teen. But, really, the lack of conversation is more frightening and risky as teens could end up making decisions without the benefit of adult experience, wisdom, and support.
Of course conversation isn’t all that it takes to keep a teen safe and smart about the decisions he or she makes in life. Conversations however can go a long way to helping to guarantee that teens have the skills they need in order to make good decisions about life. Every teen has to have those conversations. Every teen should have the oppor
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0 Comments on Pressing the “Hot Buttons” By Guest Blogger, Nicole O’Dell as of 1/1/1900
I can't wait until I get my hands of your memoirs, I guess you have all the big publishing houses fighting over it?