What I Did This Weekend

Untitled, a photo by madrobins on Flickr.

It was Tachyon Publications' 16th birthday, and they had a party at Borderlands books, and I made what is possibly the silliest cake of my cake-making career thus far: a Sweet Sixteen cake. The figure at the top is a rhinoceros at a typewriter (Tachyon's logo). The pink tiara was my own addition.

The innards were double-dark chocolate cake; the frosting was Swiss meringue buttercream, light and silky on the tongue, with a heart-stopping amount of butter.

There were lots of left-overs; you shoulda been there.

Boosting the Signal Because Gee Whiz, Aren't We Past This Nonsense?

Via rosefox wearing her PW hat, a piece by rachelmanija and sartorias about what happened when they sought an agent for their collaborative YA novel.

Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.

The thing that's saddest and most repulsive about this sort of bigotry is that, while some adults might think that they're doing it for the kids, the kids already know there are gay people in the world. The straight ones are not going to have their heads explode because OMIGAWD teh Gay! and the gay kids, or the ones who really aren't sure where they stand on the great spectrum of sexuality, would get to see their own faces reflected back at them. As would the kids who are not white. This seems to me, even on a programmatic "do it for the children" basis, to be a good thing.

It shouldn't surprise me when this sort of shit happens, but somehow it does, every time. It should make me angry, and it does.

Perforation

As the sign and signal of virtue, Avocado went today to get her nostril pierced. Nice, clean, perky place (perky people with major tats and piercings) where Nicki cleaned the girl's nose to a farethewell, explained everything, giggled pleasantly at how excited and giggly Avocado was, and did the deed in about a nanosecond. Now it's six weeks of saline soaks and grins. The stud she selected is rose gold, tiny and glittery. She looks adorable, and boy howdy is she pleased with herself.

Somewhere my mother, who didn't want me to get my ears pierced, is doing a quick 360° of dismay. And my father, who was the one who took me to get my ears pierced when Mom was out of town, is clucking with satisfaction and saying "You look very nice, kid."