The Maw Gets Another One: Julie Lindemann

Oh, fuck you, cancer, to quote Kerry Reid. I knew this was coming, but still, fuck you, cancer.

Someone I admired died today.

Julie Lindemann first saw me when I was puking off the porch of the punk rock house I lived in when I was 21 (I wasn't aware of her presence till a few bleary moments later). That is the age of hangovers, which explains the puking. She was a grown-up punk rock girl, still cool as hell; she was actually IMPRESSED that I was vomiting off the porch, and she was roughly as old as I am now. She had a timeless punkness that she never lost, even when she had admitted she was going to lose to the rebel cells.

I met her thus, in the filthy confines of my own home, because she and her mate Johnnie Shimon were coming to visit my roommates, Nigel and Brett. Nigel and Brett (Brett is now deceased as well) were two punk rock reprobates from Manitowoc, where Julie and Johnnie had been living and working their photographic magic for, I dunno, decades.

Their life's work was taking portraits of the lovely whack-jobs of my home state of Wisconsin:

See? Click for beautiful. 

The portraits as well as most of the subjects were legendary in their off-the-beaten-path eccentricity and hard-core dignity. I went to their last photo exhibit during Julie's lifetime this spring, at the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Thank god I didn't miss it (thanks to Vee Sonnets, who drove); the couple were unable to attend because Julie was in too much pain, but I saw an artwork there for whose conception I suppose I had been present:

The last time I saw them, they had come to visit me in Carbondale, where we went to see the ruins of Buckminster Fuller's own...

Original geodesic dome...

... I had no idea at the time it would be the last I would see of her. So appreciate every moment with people. You never know. I never went to see them enough. I was busy, I was lazy, I was an ass.

Anyway, at the Museum of Wisconsin art I saw one of Julie and Johnnie's photos of a leafy canopy, repeating as panels of a geodesic dome hoisted near the ceiling...

That's how I said goodbye.

Goodbye.

Peter John Mclean Reviews NVSQVAM

... declaring it a great book.

Full disclosure: Peter and I work the same street corner under the same pimp.

JOKING!

We have met a couple of times, but fuck it, it's cronyism all the way down these days. And he was able to see past the shitty, hasty formatting of NVSQVAM's Kindle edition (one of the many tasks I need to get to now that I'm free of this train wreck is straightening that mess out).

Admittedly, as Peter remarks, the title NVSQVAM is not necessarily doing me any favors. I figured it would stand out; trouble is, in all the flotsam and jetsam, to stand out a title has to be FOUND first.

In any case, this made me smile:

 Lester is by no means a likable character, as if that were a fair metric by which to judge a protagonist. He is a depressing, depressive, and selfish person, but all people are selfish and Lester generally just appears to be more honest, at least internally, about how selfish he is.

Read the whole shebang here.

Clarification: Rachel Haywire is not an embezzler... that I know of.

Lest I wind up in jail for trying not to wind up in jail...

(Get the background story for this update here: http://mattforney.com/rachel-haywire-scammed-trigger-warning/)

I have no evidence that Rachel Haywire actually misused any funds from the Trigger Warning Indiegogo campaign. For all I know she has a perfectly lovely and organized accounting ledger which she just never let me see because... er, because...

Yeah, that's where my mind kept getting stuck. She told me about all the crazy expenses she had doled out for, but none of it made much sense, and a ledger was never proffered.

Let me repeat: I never saw proof of what happened with the finances.

There were all kinds of frightening indications that she might have spent all the money on God knows what: Her lame excuses for stalling in paying me for my writing and labor; her insistence that I take half the money now and get the other half after continuing to work for her for an indefinite length of time; her admission during our last Skype call that she was pretty much broke; her suggestion that she and I take any extra "mad money" and go on a sexcation to see some guy she was interested in, presumably with me as wing girl.

Therefore, I moved to expose her not because I was certain she had committed any crime, but because there were enough indications to make me afraid she might have. And considering her past behavior toward myself and others, I had reason to suspect she would try to pin the blame on me should the shit hit the fan.

The bottom line: I wanted to make public the fact that I never saw the money, and I was never allowed to touch the money or see any financial records; for all I know Rachel has virtuously put it in a trust fund for the magazine or invested it in gold bonds for the future. So for your sake and mine, avoid all slander, libel, etc.

Thanks, and have a nut-job-free day! I know I will. Ahhhhhhh, that feels good.

In Defense of Beta Females

by Ann Sterzinger

Oh god, the tiresome rants about power relations between males and females. There must be millions at this point.

Now we’re probably going on a million about the dynamics between alpha and beta males as well. But what about alpha females and beta females?

Alpha females: You know, the kind that scream at rallies, dominate all meetings, berate their male partners endlessly, and though they’re chest-puffingly feminist they secretly want to be mothers so they can have a little prisoner.

But their main victims are beta females. Every alpha female has a mousy friend to push around, and then there’s her favorite bullying victim too, particularly at the office where the creature can’t escape. In increasingly matriarchal workplaces around the country, alpha females are the managers and sadists-in-chief. Men in the office traditionally stood up for the alpha bitches’ favorite punching bags to some degree. But with men disempowered, there’s nothing to protect shy women from being predated on endlessly. God help you if you’re good-looking. Or smart, or dating someone, or have anything going for you at all that they might want…

I for one am absolutely through with it. After a lifetime of curling into a ball, saying “Yes, M’am,” and praying for the release of sweet death, I have been used as a human punching balloon by one too many proud bitches.

Beta females: It may go against our nature. It may go against our aesthetics. Hell, it may even go against our principles. But it’s time to stand up and show that buried under all that silky fur, we still have claws and fangs.

Right now we have the element of surprise on our side: They have no idea it’s coming.

Punch an alpha bitch in the face today, hon. Go on, make a fist. Take a kickboxing class. Learn some game theory. It’s the only way to keep them from ravaging the face of world culture like a plague of locusts in Skrillex haircuts.

Scream at a bitch. Learn to manipulate her back. Most of them are extreme narcissists, so flatter them into doing exactly what you want them to do. Don’t be scared: they may shout and insinuate and guilt trip people constantly, but they’re really only morons with overinflated egos.

If that doesn’t work, figure out a way to get them where they live. You know you can do it. You’re probably bookish and thoughtful. And you’ve been watching them from the shadows all your life.

If anyone can save the world from them, it’s us.

Update: Rachel Haywire got her blog back to "normal." But here's the link to a mirror of my tell-all on Matt Forney's blog:

http://mattforney.com/rachel-haywire-scammed-trigger-warnings-donors/