Ian, you may recall, hit it very big very young with the brutally bittersweet, hopelessly gut-wrenching anthem “At Seventeen,” for which she won her first Grammy, in 1975. “At Seventeen” is about how much it sucks to be young and to yearn hopelessly and know that life will never be what you wish it would. It is a hell of a folk song, a hell of a pop song…but it’s more, because as itself, to me at least, it’s almost not survivable; certifiably virulent, that song can be lethal.

I remember seeing Ian perform “At Seventeen” on Saturday Night live when I must have been maybe ten or twelve, and I was all, “Wow, I feel like I’ve just been beaten in the face with a rubber hose.” I think of “At Seventeen” as far more than simply a pop song; it is a rabidly fearless piece of activist psychology, feminist and Feminist not by conception but by the very blood that pumps through its lyrical veins. Alongside such films as Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse and Alison Anders’ Gas, Food, Lodging, such albums as Ani DiFranco’s Not A Pretty Girl, such writing as Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues*, Daphne Gottlieb’s poetry and my friend Violet’s writing about her life, “At Seventeen” stands as one of the works that made me begin to understand just how rich, bleak, beautiful and terrifying my female-born friends’ internal landscapes are.

But, through an accident of chronology, “At Seventeen” got their first, since I was about seven when it was released. It still makes me feel like I’ve been beaten with a rubber hose…but sometimes that’s what the artist has to do to make people understand, and only the real artists have the brass ones to do it when the time comes.

If there’s a blueprint for undoing male sexism, it’s helping guys understand some of the vivid internal terrors their female-born friends experience early in life. Some days I like to think that compassion and understanding are the answer to every terrible nightmare out there, and today is one of those days.

Art is the epicenter of any true revolution…in this case, voiced by women who speak the truth even if their voices shake.

Congratulations, Ms. Ian. You are fearless and shameless and bad-ass, and…thanks for that.

*I should note here that it’s my understanding Feinberg no longer identifies as female, but as transgender and alternatively-gendered or non-binary-gendered, and unless I am mistaken now uses alternatively-gendered pronouns. However, Feinberg’s brilliant novel Stone Butch Blues is very clearly about being female, butch, lesbian and working-class, so I count it with these other works about being female. Similar things could be said about some of the early work of Pat (now Patrick) Califia’s, which was clearly conceived from one part of the female side of the human experience, although Patrick is now Patrick and identifies as male. Transgender experience may have different elements in many ways than the non-transgender female experience, but growing up “assigned female” is still an experience with commonalities, even for those who later change or feel like they were always mis-assigned. Every person’s story is individual, just as every person’s gender is individual. That’s why autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works are so important to me.

Rob Zombie has a horror novel coming out. I am basically nonplussed that he is kinda walking on my territory, but I guess the bastard has earned it...for now. But if this is some Nick Cave shit...IN THE NUTS, Zombie. I'm telling you.

There’s also some fascinating speculation by Conquest about “who” Stalin’s “real” “father” might have “been,” since Stalin’s comments about his own mother were often unkind in his later years, and she was thought to have had an affair with her employer roughly around the time of Stalin’s conception. Which would make Stalin half ethnically Russian, which I had already thought he was (apparently he’s not…the question’s between Georgian/Ossetian and Georgian/Georgian, unless his father wasn’t his real father).

It’s all very Star Wars, which seems reasonable given Conquest’s assertion that Stalin may have shaped the twentieth century more than any other person. Of course, Conquest would say that…he’s the English-speaking world’s foremost Stalinist.

So far this book is so unbelivably detailed and literal, in fact, that I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

Robert Conquest, will you marry me? You’re the greatest Stalin writer in history…

This ’80s-era short film aired on Saturday Night Live, “Laughter May Be Hazardous to Your Health” may be my favorite short comedic film of all time. For years, I’ve looked for it…never found a copy on the web. And here it is! It features Harry Shearer doing his dead-on Mike Wallace impression and Christopher Guest (now Sir Christopher Guest) and Billy Crystal as old-school novelty businessmen. It also features what I think was the first appearance of Martin Short’s recurring character, sweaty-lipped lawyer Nathan Thurm.

As far as I’m concerned, this is satire at its finest.

You know, humor writers are fond of portraying Joe Biden as a beer-swilling bumpkin.

In fact, he’s a tea-totaler, and the guy quotes Keats in speeches. The worst offenders are The Onion and The Daily Show.

Could the characterization derive from the fact that he went to a public university as an undergrad, and a non-Ivy (the private Syracuse University) for law school?

Could there be, oh, an element of, I don’t know, CLASSISM to this characterization of Joe, particularly from The Onion, which is famously staffed by Ivy League types?

Nah…classism in the U.S.? What are the chances?

Nonetheless, there’s always good comedy to be found in copper wire theft. And yeah, I went to public school, too, so draw your own conclusions…

Many of you may be familiar with my annual reading event My Sucky Valentine. You may also be familiar with the SF erotic spoken word salon, Perverts Put Out. This year, for Valentine’s Day, we’re joining forces. I’ll be co-hosting with Simon Sheppard and Dr. Carol Queen. Be there!

My Perverted Sucky Valentine Puts Out!
Saturday, February 9
Doors 7pm, Show 8pm
The Center for Sex and Culture
1349 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103

For an anti-Valentine’s event of epic proportions, two of San Francisco’s most celebrated erotic literary events join forces! On February 9, the Center will host the collision of Perverts Put Out and My Sucky Valentine! Come hear some of SF’s favorite erotic authors read and tell stories about dirty love, dirtier lovemaking and the train-wreck delights of romance-gone-wrong!

Our three-way of hosts will be Carol Queen, Simon Sheppard and Thomas S. Roche; expect filthy heartache from Bay Area luminaries Charlie Jane Anders, M. Christian, Daphne Gottlieb, Philip Huang, Allison Moon and horehound stillpoint. This event is a benefit for the Center for Sex and Culture and the St. James Infirmary.

I should have known I was in for a ride when I scratched my head at the subtitle. “The story of America’s first nuclear accident.” Um. Except for the Santa Susana and Westmoreland partial core meltdowns in the 1950s and 1960, respectively, the Daghlian and Slotin deaths after their close encounters with the “demon core,” in the 1940s, plus a whole slew of military incidents in the 1950s…including non-nuclear detonations of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil. It might seem like nitpicking — but in nuclear science, terminology is critically important (get it?) The author didn’t even discuss the terminology used in contemporary incidents, nor did he address what is meant by “incident,” “accident,” and related terms. Instead, page after page after page after page after page after page is spent discussing the intimate family details of the servicemen responsible for the accident. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Slotin or Daghlian are even mentioned. If they are, the treatment is brief and inconsequential compared to the vast amount of ink devoted to the utterly irrelevant information and speculation about families of the men involved in the incident….about which, the same information is repeated over…and over…and over again, as if the author, you know…didn’t have anything else to talk about. How much weepy speculation is required in a book about a nuclear accident on how a son remembers his father, or what  path the SON’s life might have taken if the father hadn’t died — when the son is unrelated to the incident. I get the sense the author was trying to fill pages without doing any additional research. That’s utterly mind-boggling in a book about nuclear technology, since there’s more information about nuclear accidents on Wikipedia than in all of McKeown’s book.

I can’t possibly go into everything I hate about this book, since there’s probably more words to be written about how bad this book is than there is in the original work. This is a textbook example of how bad popular science writing can be. Imagine The Hot Zone with ONLY the overwrought tones of terror present in the most overblown scary segments about how ebola rips you apart from the inside. Now imagine that kind of narrative style applied to such speculative scenes as how much liquor was consumed by Idaho Falls workers on a given night, or what a husband and wife or a commanding officer and subordinate may have said to each other while they were having a fight…in 1960.

What it boils down to is that the author tries to whip up drama from complete speculation, using overheated language for the most simplistic claims. He goes into great detail about very sketchy personal interactions, speculating wildly about what happened off the record — which is not a hanging offense — and, far worse, doing so in a crazed, overheated narrative voice that made me feel like I have been buttonholed at a backyard party by a crazed conspiracy theorist whose conspiracies are without a doubt the MOST BORING CONSPIRACIES IN HISTORY.

Obviously, this is a book that’s been padded from relatively sketchy information. The author does not really seem to understand the milieu of nuclear power, and repeatedly refers to atoms buzzing like “angry bees.” Such language is ridiculous the first time, and by what seems like the ten thousandth, the author has completely exhausted any chance of being taken seriously in my mind.

This dissonance becomes particularly evident near the end, when the author introduces some essentially unrelated questions (in quotations) about nuclear waste, as if it is a huge revelation, and as profound as the author thinks every other word in this book is. Unfortunately, such a sentiment is pretty pointless…since the SL-1 incident had nothing at all to do with waste. It was an operational accident, not a waste accent. That just goes to illustrate the incoherence central to this book’s narrative. As a reader, I was let with no real picture of what actually happened, in operational terms, or what the institutional failings were that led to the SL-1 incident. That makes the author’s completely credulous delivery of the “suicide” and “love triangle” hypotheses seem like I’ve stumbled on to the set of The Jerry Springer Show.

Ultimately, the lack of credibility in this book is not about specific problems but about something ineffable. I felt like the author either knows virtually nothing about nuclear history, or is simply a terrible writer…and not that smart. I find that last point somewhat impolite of me to make, and unlikely. But I can’t resist making it after suffering through this book’s delirious overblown and largely content-free narrative.

I’m not suggesting there’s not a story in the Idaho Falls incident, but this author was apparently unable to find it. Instead, he gave us an incoherent mess of a book with a clear agenda to whip the reader up into a frenzy.

Avoid this book like you would a swarm of angry bees.

Y’see, it seems Sean’s recommendations list, delivered in a blog at uncommonwisdomdaily.com, is restricted to science fiction titles. It’s like this, see?

A friend asked me for a list of science fiction for her husband. She just bought him a Kindle for Christmas, and she specifically wants science fiction — “he’s not into fantasy.” So, I won’t, for example, recommend “The Half Made World.” Heck, I won’t even recommend a ripping good zombie story like “The Panama Laugh.” Nope, we want sci-fi, and sci-fi only.

Okay, for the record, to me The Panama Laugh is science fiction, though it’s science fiction-horror. But hey, whatever. Childhood’s End it ain’t, I’ll give you that.

Though I’ve had almost no time to read fiction this year — and probably will have even less next year — the list is a pretty interesting one. Check it out here.

And thanks, Sean! A ripping good zombie story, indeed. If I could get omitted from every year-end recommendations list in such manner, I’d be pretty okay with that.

That said, an NPR article about his hospitalization misuses the term “notoriety” in the closing graf.

The former president was a naval aviator in World War II — at one point the youngest in the Navy — and was shot down over the Pacific. He achieved notoriety in retirement for skydiving on at least three of his birthdays since leaving the White House in 1992.

Actually, “notoriety” carries a negative connotation. It doesn’t exactly mean “infamy,” but it’s closer to that than it is to “fame.”

This fact is delivered in a response from one commenter that is technically (sort of) correct but is delivered in a vicious, snooty and self-righteous manner:

Even though I didn’t vote for him, I wish him well. I wish even more that journalists with a modicum of education will note that the term “notoriety” means famous for an evil or infamous deed. Skydiving at 80 does not count. Shame on the HR department who hired this benighted troll of a “journalist.”

Shame on the HR department? “Benighted troll”? Fuck you, asshole

Anyway, this issue sets off a comment brawl of epic proportions, which is somewhat perplexing in an article about a former President whose tenure saw us in two foreign wars (Panama and Iraq) and a major recession. The brawl is attended most reasonably by a commenter who says that “notoriety” CAN mean “famous in a positive sense,” but that’s kinda garbage.

Generally speaking, the word “notoriety” has been shifting over the years to become a synonym to “famous,” but that’s because people misunderstand it. They use it to beef up the pompousness of their writing, or spice it up, without knowing its contemporary (post-17th century) usage. Prior to that time, the word’s etymological roots make it appropriate to mean either “fame” or “infamy.”

But the 1600s are a hell of along time ago. Today, “notorious” means, or nearly means, “infamous.” (Since the meanings aren’t exactly aligned, “notorious” is a near-synonym, not a synonym, of “infamous.)

Words often migrate toward having less precise meanings, and usually because news writers don’t understand them. News is the most widely consumed form of text, and the least precisely edited form that has such wide distribution, so it can be blamed for many usage migrations that begin with impreciseness.

This is a pretty typical misusage of the word “notorious,” and in my opinion it’s not a “correct” usage based on the fact that the term is widely misused, but an incorrect usage that happens to be common.

Not knowing the proper usage of a word does not make one correct in misusing it. Nor is it a defense that “I always use it that way.” It is far less of a defense that “everyone uses it that way.” If everyone jumped off a cliff, friend, I would still grab your arm as you moved to follow them.

Overblown language is the enemy of clarity, and the enemy of genuinely powerful writing. It’s easy to do, and when usage errors or near-errors become common, it is even easier to use them and not realize that you’re using overblown language. I would say that using a term one is not entirely familiar with, whether it’s “decimate” or “safeword” or “asshat” or “prestidigitation” or “punk rock” — well, that’s a symptom both of compositional impreciseness and of a genuine desire to write vividly.

Neither one is a war crime.

I would rather have people misuse words than get lectured by stuck-up losers.

The original commenter may be right, but is also an asshole.

It’s my opinion that such “usage-police” commenters and all who pile on with their noses thrust high in the air, nostrils flared, ought to shore up their self-esteem in a way less transparently pathetic. Of course, it’s hard not to keep your nose in the air when you’ve got such a giant stick up your butt.

To me, a former copy-editor, usage police like this represent the most odious form of pompous ass. The discussion of usage correctness vs. incorrectness should not carry with it the intent of humiliating people who misuse words. Doing so carries a class bias that I find far more revolting than the misuse of language.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I started really feeling the passion for learning, and the ability to do it reliably (or at least try to).

For me, what made it happen was a (long-overdue) relative absence of acute anxiety, some healing of my ambient anger about how fucked the world is, and proper medication.

But the thing that made the biggest difference for me was not being tied to the format of “lecture, reading and discussion.”

What helped me to truly love learning was (and is) being able to switch between fiction books, nonfiction books, recorded audio lectures, video lectures, audiobooks, and documentary video. I have ADHD, you see, and I don’t know if that’s why, but I lose interest in a single given format very quickly, often without losing interest in a single topic. E-books also made a huge difference…because I tend not to lose them. That might sound familiar to anyone who’s ever been the parent of an ADHD kid.

So that makes me wonder what “effective” education would look like for people like me — people with ADHD if you want to put a label on it, but there are other similar syndromes. With the relocation of ADHD to the autism spectrum, a whole range of psychiatric isues — some clinically significant, some subclinical, some undetected and others catastrophically life-altering, like severe autism — all seem to present similar challenges to the way humans perceive and assimilate data.

I wonder about a K-12, junior college and university model that incorporates more of the individual learning options available, not depending so much on lecture-reading-discussion. Lecture, which many teachers are shitty at. Reading, which — seriously — 99% of the students don’t do, and the teachers don’t usually call them on it. And discussion, which has become, in our world, not the complex interchange of ideas or even an informal debate — or, hell, even an argument. “Discussion” in most contexts too often becomes one or more of a selection of truly execrable things…ranging from bland regurgitation to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, right up to politically-motivated shoutdowns, guilt-trips and racially-coded attacks as the students seek to “educate” each other. American society needs to work on its social skills if it wants class discussion to serve an educational purpose, rather than merely being an ordeal.

I find social situations hugely anxiety-producing — and, more to the point, exactly counter to assimilating the large quantities of data I desperately need to keep my brain from revving uncontrollably to the point where it throws a rod. At the same time (so help me!) I swear, I love people. Almost nobody but me believes that, but really, I do. I love people. I love YOU. Seriously, you’re almost not as awful as books!

I josh.

In any event, there are so m any learning possibilities enabled by aggressive use of the interactive learning model. New kinds of learning are allowed by easily accessed, relatively cheap, and entirely portable audio, video and e-text.

All those formats can be accessed on a single device now — a tablet, MP3/video player or even a cell phone. The same file, or an audio version of a text file or vice-versa, can be used on multiple devices, too, with technology similar to the Kindle’s text-to-voice or Amazon’s easy bookmarking  between downloadable audio versions of books and the Kindle editions of the same books.

For instance, if a student is squirmy sitting at the computer watching a lecture, he or she can take a long walk with earphones in, switching to the audio version of the same lecture they were just watching. Or if they’re reading on a couch and falling asleep, go for a jog and listen to the audio of the book that was just sending them to dreamland.

Or you can take an iPad and go watch the lecture sitting under the tree in the park, or while walking on a treadmill, or…almost anywhere. You can even listen to audio lectures in the car…so you’re not tempted to text, of course.

At least for things like humanities, politics and the less technical, more theoretical aspects of the sciences, it seems like such a student-directed, student-paced, multi-channel model might completely transform learning for students with ADHD or other autism spectrum disorders. I know it would for me.

But it’s not just ADHD students who are smart but can’t “get” school. Plenty of students have trouble sitting still, or don’t otherwise like fitting into school’s social structures.

I come from a family of teachers, and my beloved sister and mother might give me a stern talking-to if I were to sound like I’m advocating any reduction of the number of teachers.

I’m not. Teachers are the critical element in any learning program. But just what they do, as most teachers will tell you, needs to change, to some degree, with the student. Special needs students have, well…special needs. That’s as true for gifted kids as it is for slow ones. Neither should be left behind by a one-size-fits all approach.

Having been a Chemistry major, my teacher now sister teaches middle-school science, and I think there’s no way most students are going to be able to retain science — and sure as hell not Chemistry! — without a pretty rigid structure, including in-classroom demonstrations and labs.

I love teachers, and I love teaching. For all subjects in K-12, in-person, in-classroom learning is a critical piece of the puzzle. In college, the process is more interactive to begin with.

But people like me have a hell of a time learning at a pace that’s anything close to our potential when we have to sit there in class feeling like we’re spending 90% of our energy not screaming at the top of our lungs, diving through the window, or simply jumping out of our skin. Add social bullshit into that, and there was no chance at all that school would be anything but a nightmare for me.

Technology is not always salvation…but I do believe that in the case of education, for some students like me, it can be, in the long term…if we let it.