A Friendly Reading

Local author (and my friend) Simone Zelitch will be discussing and reading from her alternate history novel, Judenstaat, now in paperback at the next meeting of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society. Free and open to the public!

Quote of the Month (Humor)

They played an old-fashioned board game called 'Monopoly', which had recently become very popular on Aynrand, and was spreading out from there. -- Lurking Dragon, "Winter Sunday"

Let's Put the ERA in the Constitution

ERA campaigners are arguing that the Congressional deadline for ratification isn't enforceable because it's not in the amendment text that states actually ratified. But we can't count on the courts to uphold that interpretation.

 

The Equal Rights Amendment would definitively put an end to the male-only draft, ideology-driven "Duluth model" batterer intervention programs, and other forms of sex discrimination by government. Please join me in acting to put it in the Constitution!

 

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/sign-on-lets-put-the-era-in-the-constitution

 

 

I got a couple unexpected social strokes at the Erotic Literary Salon the other night. As soon as I arrived, someone came up to me to tell me she loved the song I sang last month, which she called "really sweet." Later, someone thanked me for having announced last month that I'd be performing at the Philly for Bernie Variety Show Fundraiser. She said that because of this she'd also attended it and was now getting involved in the campaign, and thanked me for having gotten that started.

These Go to Eleven

Last night I came up with two new spanking-themed song parodies, bringing my total to eleven. If you throw in my filk song "Trinity," which isn't kinky but is also a parody, that makes an even dozen.

A Fine New Publication in Philadelphia

I recently read Volume 1, Issue 2 of Root Quarterly, a new review of "art and ideas from Philadelphia," which someone handed me a couple months ago right after I'd delivered an open mic performance at the Erotic Literary Salon.

I'm very favorably impressed. This issue's theme is monsters, and the core pieces are a personal essay and an analysis concerned with call-out and cancel culture. As Lauren Leonard writes in the essay on why she "choose[s] not to cancel Ryan Adams," "What we're really cancelling when we blanketly and spontaneously disappear art is critical thought and argument. We cancel reflection and hindsight.... We cancel choice." And the analysis by Walter Foley and Heather Shayne Blakeslee uses the case of James Damore to examine how the current business model for media feeds moral panic, calling it "outrage as profit center."

As soon as I have a little disposable income, I intend to subscribe.