The Raven

Thursday, October 24, 2002

Getaway

A business trip is taking the Raven offline until tomorrow evening, so I thought you might like a peek in our case files. Some of these would have been worked into stories, some would die on the vine. By Friday night, they'll all be expired so we're turning 'em loose.

What Up with MnM?

A hilarious take on the doings of everyone's most hated musical personality.

This is what you are supposed to know by now: White rap stud Eminem's daughter is named Hailie and Eminem's ex-wife is named Kim and his mom is apparently named Bitch.

Chalkbored

Colleges have been busy ensuring that all students have a wholesome learning experience in a multicultural setting that embraces diversity and tolerance. But that won't happen if the little morons have access to chalk, thus "zero-tolerance" sidewalk chalking rules have been popping up on campuses like psylocybin mushrooms in Farmer John's cowfield.

"Not only does it restrict our right to free speech, but it also seems kind of silly," said Norton, president of Nebraska's chapter of the Campus Freethought Alliance. "It's only chalk, after all. It's not going to be there forever."

DOS and Deathpings

Over at CNN, there's a story about the recent attacks on the 13 domain-name service root servers. Check out the simple-but-fun flashscript on the sidebar titled, "Interactive: How a 'Denial of Service' attack works." They also have an item about efforts in the works to distribute the server load and thereby reduce the exposure of the servers. Nice to see the folks in charge are presenting a moving target instead of sitting around and playing Ultima.

Thursday Is Thong Day

Remember that case where the middle-schoolers had sex in science class and the teacher didn't know? There's been an on-going investigation regarding doings at Fox Chapel Middle School and some weird stuff is coming to light.

Last year, School Board member Gail David was at Fox Chapel to be interviewed by three seventh-graders for their social studies project, but she wound up hearing horror stories instead.
David said the girls described a sexually charged atmosphere at Fox Chapel that takes on a different aspect depending on the day of the week, literally.

Tuesdays, for instance, Fox Chapel boys routinely twisted girls' nipples. Thursdays were for thongs. On Wednesdays, girls reached into boys' pants. On Freaky Fridays, anything goes.

I guess they took a break on Menses Mondays.

Downshift Me, Jesus

Chevrolet is hooking up with the Christian Right for an integrated marketing campaign and "evangelical concert tour."

"This is surprising—a real blurring of the lines between the commercial and the sacred," says Phyllis Tickle, an expert on religious marketing for Publishers Weekly magazine. "We know that church and state are never supposed to meet, and I think it's also a bad idea for church and Wall Street to be meeting like this."

No, Phyllis. That "separation" thing doesn't apply to carmakers. But something tells me that the "Chevrolet Presents: Come Together and Worship" stage show is gonna make us wish it did.

Hell on Wheels

The New York Daily News reports that Islamic Jihad is "going back to basics" and taking a second look at the trusty car bomb. Turns out that those annoying Israeli security experts are getting really good at keeping bomb-laden mudjahadeen from boarding buses, and too many bombers are experiencing detonitus interruptus.

"When we saw that Israel's security measures were keeping people off buses, we had to find a new way," said an Islamic Jihad representative, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Too bad the "new way" involves fireballs and dead people. Hey guys, try something like "talking" and "negotiating." You never know.

2:23:01 PM

Slash Fiction

The Raven was perusing this month's Utne Reader and ran across an article titled "Kirk, honey. It's me, Spock!" The online version, linked above, just shows you the abstract, which does convey a sense of the story.

Slash is a subgenre of science fiction in which writers compose their own plots for favorite pop culture characters. Slash tends to be written by heterosexual females about homosexual relationships between male characters portrayed as heterosexual or asexual in their TV shows.

Ever the curious reader, your host jumped online and began a strange journey into the Slashfic world that just kept getting weirder with every page click. The work of Audrey Lemon was a fair entry point and that name alone unlocks hundreds of strange, oddly crafted pages that are difficult to navigate. It became apparent that the young women writing this fiction do not want nosey parents stumbling across their contributions to the aetherstream and have constructed sites not unlike the Hellraiser puzzle box—a deft touch is needed to unlock the dark inner secrets.

Once inside, as with all things teen and Net, an insider's argot fences off casual inquiry, as you can see here in Slashrecs by xen.

I generally run screaming from kid fic of any kind, thanks to beaucoups of sappy crappy kid fic in TS fandom, but this is a BtVS/AtS crossover, and it is just too much fun to resist.

You hit these abbreviations all over Slashland. Yes, "BtVS" is Buffy, AtS is Angel, and as you figure these out the picture resolves. Slashfic is largely populated by WB network idols who have been tampering with the unconscious primal urges of their target audience. You'll also see that the writers rate their own work following Hollywood guidelines, using NC-17, R, and X to warn viewers of what to expect. Here's an excerpt from an X-level tale quite well written by CarrieGlitter, in which andogynous popster Brian Slade meets malkchik Alex from Burgess's A Clockwork Orange:

As he pulled off my platties I thought how tonight I'd be the one getting the lessons rather than giving them and had a good inner smeck about that. I was pushed down onto the bottom cot and Brian climbed on top of me. He started pressing at my yahma and going push push with his hips.

Smart writing from this set. From a psychological perspective, Slashfic seems to be something akin to the Japanese Takarazuka Revue theater, which along with the female wrestling circuit allows young women who are uncomfortable exploring their own sexuality to form pseudo-lesbian "crushes" on other women acting in a masculine context. The Slash genre puts desirable (albeit non-threatening) male archetypes into the complete control of an author who can then manipulate their textual avatars in a kind of doll-play. From a critical perspective, some of the writing in this scene is quite good, and most is horrid dreck lifted from a Harlequin bodice-ripper. Nevertheless, there's a master's thesis here just waiting for a gung-ho grad student to come along.

9:38:41 AM