(no subject)

I'm doing the Bechdel test on every novel I read from last Wednesday until I turn fifty. So far, the results are 100% fail, but it's early days and I've only read one novel. I can't count short stories (especially not romance short stories!) and non-fiction has its own traps for the unwary.

In the non-fiction, my litmus test is whether women are part of the society or only subordinate elements. I'm checking out Mortimer's popular book on the Middle Ages so that I can address it next Tuesday, and most activity in late Medieval English society is by men. Their wives sometimes appear as wives. Prostitutes get a fair amount of discussion, though Mortimer finds his own path through the complexities and contradictions in Medieval sexuality - prostitution is OK, he says, because only women were constrained to be faithful in marriage. It's early days for this, too, however, and I'm sure it will improve and that men are not the default makers of history.




PS I really don't feel well today. This is partly because I'm not well and partly because the antibiotics are the sort that knock me down and bowl me out. I'm about to check the TV guide and see what sick days have to offer. If there's nothing on, then I shall sulk. Also, I shall work.

(no subject)

I'm too sick to work, so I'm sulking. So is the sky, given the amount of tepid rain that's falling.

If I had waited until Monday to go to the doctor, I would have been much worse. The fact that I went to the doctor for entirely different reasons, is completely and utterly irrelevant.

I'll be very relieved when I can breathe fully again (I have about 50% of my normal lung capacity right now). I'm finding it very hard to string two thoughts together, and my paragraphs are each and every one of them two sentences long.

Also, I want to work; I have work I want to do: every time I sit down to do something, I can't even string two thoughts together. This is why I'm sulking.