Lois Lane or Mary Jane

He was her best friend in the entire world, but when it came to giving valid and significant relationship advice he always fell short.  Nonetheless he always threw himself out there to do it when the opportunity arose. And right now was no different.

"What?!?" she bristled not bothering to hide her irritation with the question.

"Are you Lois Lane or Mary Jane?"

She was no comic book ignorant. She knew her fair amount of mythos. "Mary Jane, as in Watson?"

"Yeah, Pete's woman."

Her brow crinkled. As comfortable as she was with the genre, she didn't think being able to refer to a fictitious character by his nick name was healthy.

"I know who she is. What does that have to do with me?"

He shrugged in that way that implied that it was obvious for anyone paying attention.  But the shrug was never the part to wait for, his explanations, no matter how farfetched, were usually money and quite entertaining.  She had told him years ago that he needed to record his rants and have them transcribed.  He'd make millions.

"All women can be divided equally and completely by one question.  Is she Lois Lane or is she Mary Jane." he paused dramatically.  It took a moment more before he acknowledged the obvious.  "It’s how I remember the question, try to ignore that they rhyme."

Despite herself she did crack a rather sheepish grin because he did know her very well. "Fundamentally impossible."  She finally sat next to him on the couch knowing that the words from her mouth would spurn an explanation that no one would want to stand for. "Do tell."

He took his time, as was his nature, before he imparted some of his well thought out and completely inane views on life, liberty, and love.  He stretched leisurely, snapping and cracking the joints in his shoulders, arms, and wrists in a fashion that made them pop one after the other like a shuffled card deck.  Then he settled back into the cushy sofa while taking a long theatrical breath.

"It’s quite simple really.  Think about Lois Lane, wholly irritating completely annoying and seemingly self-involved to a disturbing level.  And MJ is the girl next door, wholesome and sweet as apple pie. Nicest little girl you would ever want to meet.  On the surface.  Then you get to know them through their superhero mates."

"The real Lois Lane is a goody-two shoes cynic because she understands human nature.  She knows that not everyone has figured out what she has, which is that most things in this world we can take care of ourselves, and don’t need to be saved all the time. She knows right from wrong, and is always trying to reveal the truth regardless of what trouble that may bring."

Taking in her frown, he paused, and then shook his head. "Think about it, at no point in time does she ever get into trouble accept for when she's trying to do the right thing.  She's banging Superman, and he's the last dude she calls when she's in trouble.  Instead she hunkers down and sees what she can get done herself.  She's usually in way over her head, but she doesn't let that little fact stop her.  And before long old Supes says, hey I wonder what my lady's doing. There she is, in it up to her elbows, and still she hasn't relented.  He's pissed because she should know by now to come to him first, but he respects the fact that she won't to the point that he doesn't even give her a hard time about it.  Shrugs and says that's just Lois."

He holds up his contradiction hand, which is the right one.  He always raised it when he was about to embark on the counter argument.

"MJ though is different.  She's one of the sheep, the flock.  She thinks that regular people should depend on super heroes for everything.  So she's banging Spiderman with the unspoken understanding that she has priority. All hell breaks loose if she thinks for one minute that he is off saving someone else besides her when she's in trouble.  Regardless of whether or not she could've saved herself and maybe someone else couldn't. She's got small town girl issues so she's always jealous of Spidey's fame.  Trashing him for coming home all beat up, getting mad when his enemies come after her, worried about other women beating her out for his attention.  Let's be real, you're dating or married to a super hero, she should've known from point jump that this is the way it would be.  You either want him enough to let it not be an issue, or you want the issue enough to be with him."

Her frown was increasing because for once in his inane asinine uttering, he was actually making some sense. And like clouds parting the wisdom of realization and enlightenment fell on her.  With an eerie gleam in her eye, and a confidence in speech that she never possessed, she declared in an even unwavering voice.

"So what you're saying is that as women, we either want to be with someone because they respect who we are, or we want to be with them because they tolerate us for not respecting who we are?  As women we have to understand our own limitations and strengths and find a mate who understands and agrees that who we are isn't a terrible thing, but the only thing that they will ever accept from us.  Finally breaking free of the clingy woman, or ball-breaking bitch stereotypes.  Finally being accepted as an entity not defined by sex but sex being only a characteristic of the person as a whole."

He looked at her as if she had grown two heads.  "Where the hell did you get all that from?  I'm saying that women who seem like they are sweet usually aren't, and women that don't usually are.  Depending on who you are you either pull in a Superman or a Spiderman.  A guy that can really lay down the smack, or one that can take the smack."  He looked at her expectantly.  "Are you a woman that can pull a man that can deliver the smack, or just one that can take it?"

"Its not that simple," she countered. "While no one is as proficient at taking an ass-whopping as Spiderman is, Superman has been known to get it handed to him before he gets pissed off enough to do something about it. And when they get fed up they both lay down the smack.  Pretty efficiently.  So what does that say about their choice in women?"

This was a moment for posterity.  She had just once, for the first and probably only time, actually turned an argument of his against him.

He shook his head, with a self-effacing grin beginning to take hold. "Not a damn thing."

"Honestly I thought you were going to go with the whole,” she formed quotations in the air with her fingers, “Lois seems dumb as a stump while Mary Jane seems unnaturally intelligent for an actress, but the opposite for both is actually true,” end quotations in the air, “angle."

The blank stare confirmed that this was an avenue he had not considered, and in fact blew apart his whole theory.  "I hate telling you these things."

She smiled at him. "I'm going to stick with what I said so that I can give you credit for actually helping for once."  She patted his head endearingly. “I suggest you do the same.”  She popped up and started away. “It’s good advice for guys too, you either be with a woman who accepts that she’s not the only thing going on in your life, or is pissed because she isn’t, and is always lobbying for it.”

He continued to shake his head at her. “You know there is much to be said for not being so skilled at emasculation.”

She nodded. “I agree, be strong enough that your woman can’t.  Superman can handle a self-possessed woman and Spiderman can’t.”

He smiled at her then. “Lois Lane all the way.”

Manpaper - The Khal and the Kryptonian. . from Iowa

Because he will always be Khal Drogo in our hearts

Jason Momoa

Brandon Routh

Yeah from Iowa

True Altruism

In book one of my W.A.R.M. Front series the heroine and the hero share a very interesting if not integral belief.  That belief is in altruism.  Whenever I write books I like to talk about things that are near and dear to my heart.  In very many ways I doubt anything is as near or dear to me as altruism. 

Growing up my family depended very much on the kindness of strangers.  I remember at least 2 Christmases very clearly that would've been awful if the local church had not been kind enough to give us a Christmas dinner and toys for my brother and me.  I wonder about how different my childhood would've been if these services had not been available and how I would be a different person now from those experiences.  And I wonder how the general public feels about charity and altruism.  Even more so I wonder if those who have been fortunate enough either through recognition of hard work or by virtue of luck to be highly financially successful in this life understand what sharing this does for their soul.  Not just giving money to the Red Cross once a year, but actually getting their hands dirty and watching a life transform.  

For those who have lost their way and lost meaning in their own lives, it is restored through finding meaning in another’s life. Altruism is in many ways the most selfish act I know and all the more lovely for it.  It is a process of healing another that brings the healing to the healer. By opening the most nurturing and cradling parts of yourself to others you give that part of you what it really needs, air to breathe.   By burying it in yourself you are only suffocating it, depriving it of sunlight, food, and water.  The things it needs to grow.

This comes on the heels of reading something yesterday that literally made me cry.  I've always been a fan of the music of Bon Jovi. Well now I'm a fan of the man Jon Bon Jovi because of this wonderful contribution he has made to his hometown.  In a nutshell he and his wife have a foundation that gives back to their community. This is something that I believe is an absolute must if you have any amount of great success, and is a must in smaller quantities even if you don't. 

Their latest endeavor is a revamping of the 'soup kitchen' concept.  Historically the soup kitchen is a necessary thing that brings with it a multitude of soul destroying poisons.  However this version includes something that I believe people forget to give to those in need. Dignity. This is a pay as you can restaurant that gives a healthy meal in a clean well received environment.

The full story can be found here: Soul Kitchen, Jon Bon Jovi

I can't wait for the next trip I take to the area so I can eat a meal there and leave $100 on the table.

I know it stands to reason that if you are this down on your luck, beggars can't be choosy.  But this is in essence the problem.  Beggars should be choosy.  It is this sense of self-worth that propels a person to make the necessary changes in their life to actually start a positive shift in their existence.

I remember being ashamed of my upbringing when I was younger.  I never had the best toys on the market, was lucky to have the toys I did have.  My mother always made sure that we had clean clothes, food, and a roof over our head no matter what she had to do to accomplish this.  If it meant swallowing her pride and asking for aide then so be it.  Her children were worth it.  However as a young child all I had was a perpetual sense of not being 'good enough' to have things other children had.  And my mother's income or lack thereof became a definer for people as to what I could or could not accomplish.

I remember being accepted to my high school and then told in so many words that children from my socio-economic background usually didn't last long because they felt like outcasts from other students who sometimes had very privileged backgrounds.  They could afford the things I could not.  Being a visual artist is very expensive business and somehow my mother made sure that even if I couldn't have the best supplies, I could create art. She didn't let me feel guilty about costing the family so much money because she saw this for what it was; dignity for me.  And she knew that I very much needed to have that if I was ever going to achieve anything.

As the first high school graduate, first college degree holder, and soon to be the first graduate degree holder in my family I can look back and see how unattainable these goals would've been if I didn't have my dignity to see it out. What people from other backgrounds don't understand is the sense of helplessness someone who is deeply impoverished has.  When you are in poverty your living conditions and standards are much lower than that of people in the middle class.  You juggle bills, paying them by importance as opposed to paying them because they are due.  You never have enough money to pay all of your bills and trying to live below the means necessary to account for the amount of money you make leads to consequences like not being able to buy the proper clothes for the job you work. Not being able to secure transportation to it, or not being able to eat enough to have the energy to work. And all the while everyone around you blames you for your inability to be better, to be more.  The United States poverty lines are just a bad joke that accounts for an economy that was thriving over 3 decades ago without truly accounting for inflation, technology, and the changing standards of basic human needs.

The issue is when another bill collector has called you a deadbeat, your boss is too cheap to give you a raise implying that your work effort is not worth this level of finance, and you don't know how you're going to feed yourself or your children tonight, you start to believe some unfortunate things about yourself.  When you work yourself to the bone with multiple jobs, no health insurance, living paycheck to paycheck and another financial burden presents itself as an emergency; you are willing to do almost anything to free yourself from the panic, the horror, and the rage this gives you.  The last thing on your mind is your dignity, because if it will make you feel like you are accomplishing something to sell it off, you most likely will, and very few people in similar situations would blame you for it.

While some may say all you have is your pride, you must realize that people in truly tragic situations don't have that any more.  Pride proved to be too expensive in the face of hunger. And dignity isn't allowed to be a thought if you want to maintain shelter. There are those miracle stories.  Those people who despite the odds managed to maintain both and succeed.  However they are the minority not the majority.  Self-worth is a commodity in our world that has had a definite price tag placed on it.  It is now a beast that involves status, income, and has little to do with moral values and community building. Dignity has always been this nearly indefinable mix of human frailty and strength.  It can be used to break you and to lift you high.  Sometimes within the same breath.

I build this case to state this. The humility it takes for a person who is very successful to look at someone less fortunate, and offer a hand as opposed to a handout is immense, and should be treasured for the miracle that it is. The difference is in the old Chinese fish metaphor, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish. . . you know how it goes.  This is the act of showing someone through the care you have taken to prepare something for them, their worth to you as a human being.  And when someone can't manage to build self-worth and dignity for themselves, it is the job of others to show them how it's done through our own actions. The world is our community if we don’t care enough to take care of it, who else will? No matter how isolated we try to make ourselves, no one is here alone and if you are in a position to help others, you must understand this and help.

I give men who have Superman tattoos a hard time.  It’s because usually they are self-involved delusional braggarts that have placed on this false persona to fulfill some missing need within themselves.  My issue is that Superman is a hero and saves lives.  If you aren’t doing something similar you haven’t earned his colors.  Jon Bon Jovi is earning those colors.

I hope acts of true altruism become an epidemic.

Lois Lane or Mary Jane

 

He was her best friend in the entire world, but when it came to giving valid and significant relationship advice he always fell short.  Nonetheless he always threw himself out there to do it when the opportunity arose. And right now was no different.

"What?!?" she bristled not bothering to hide her irritation with the question.

"Are you Lois Lane or Mary Jane?"

She was no comic book ignorant. She knew her fair amount of mythos. "Mary Jane, as in Watson?"

"Yeah, Pete's woman."

Her brow crinkled. As comfortable as she was with the genre, she didn't think being able to refer to a fictitious character by his nick name was healthy.

"I know who she is. What does that have to do with me?"

He shrugged in that way that implied that it was obvious for anyone paying attention.  But the shrug was never the part to wait for, his explanations, no matter how farfetched, were usually money and quite entertaining.  She had told him years ago that he needed to record his rants and have them transcribed.  He'd make millions.

"All women can be divided equally and completely by one question.  Is she Lois Lane or is she Mary Jane." he paused dramatically.  It took a moment more before he acknowledged the obvious.  "It’s how I remember the question, try to ignore that they rhyme."

Despite herself she did crack a rather sheepish grin because he did know her very well. "Fundamentally impossible."  She finally sat next to him on the couch knowing that the words from her mouth would spurn an explanation that no one would want to stand for. "Do tell."

He took his time, as was his nature, before he imparted some of his well thought out and completely inane views on life, liberty, and love.  He stretched leisurely, snapping and cracking the joints in his shoulders, arms, and wrists in a fashion that made them pop one after the other like a shuffled card deck.  Then he settled back into the cushy sofa while taking a long theatrical breath.

"It’s quite simple really.  Think about Lois Lane, wholly irritating completely annoying and seemingly self-involved to a disturbing level.  And MJ is the girl next door, wholesome and sweet as apple pie. Nicest little girl you would ever want to meet.  On the surface.  Then you get to know them through their superhero mates."

 

"The real Lois Lane is a goody-two shoes cynic because she understands human nature.  She knows that not everyone has figured out what she has, which is that most things in this world we can take care of ourselves, and don’t need to be saved all the time. She knows right from wrong, and is always trying to reveal the truth regardless of what trouble that may bring."

Taking in her frown, he paused, and then shook his head. "Think about it, at no point in time does she ever get into trouble accept for when she's trying to do the right thing.  She's banging Superman, and he's the last dude she calls when she's in trouble.  Instead she hunkers down and sees what she can get done herself.  She's usually in way over her head, but she doesn't let that little fact stop her.  And before long old Supes says, hey I wonder what my lady's doing. There she is, in it up to her elbows, and still she hasn't relented.  He's pissed because she should know by now to come to him first, but he respects the fact that she won't to the point that he doesn't even give her a hard time about it.  Shrugs and says that's just Lois."

He holds up his contradiction hand, which is the right one.  He always raised it when he was about to embark on the counter argument.

"MJ though is different.  She's one of the sheep, the flock.  She thinks that regular people should depend on super heroes for everything.  So she's banging Spiderman with the unspoken understanding that she has priority. All hell breaks loose if she thinks for one minute that he is off saving someone else besides her when she's in trouble.  Regardless of whether or not she could've saved herself and maybe someone else couldn't. She's got small town girl issues so she's always jealous of Spidey's fame.  Trashing him for coming home all beat up, getting mad when his enemies come after her, worried about other women beating her out for his attention.  Let's be real, you're dating or married to a super hero, she should've known from point jump that this is the way it would be.  You either want him enough to let it not be an issue, or you want the issue enough to be with him."

Her frown was increasing because for once in his inane asinine uttering, he was actually making some sense. And like clouds parting the wisdom of realization and enlightenment fell on her.  With an eerie gleam in her eye, and a confidence in speech that she never possessed, she declared in an even unwavering voice.

"So what you're saying is that as women, we either want to be with someone because they respect who we are, or we want to be with them because they tolerate us for not respecting who we are?  As women we have to understand our own limitations and strengths and find a mate who understands and agrees that who we are isn't a terrible thing, but the only thing that they will ever accept from us.  Finally breaking free of the clingy woman, or ball-breaking bitch stereotypes.  Finally being accepted as an entity not defined by sex but sex being only a characteristic of the person as a whole."

He looked at her as if she had grown two heads.  "Where the hell did you get all that from?  I'm saying that women who seem like they are sweet usually aren't, and women that don't usually are.  Depending on who you are you either pull in a Superman or a Spiderman.  A guy that can really lay down the smack, or one that can take the smack."  He looked at her expectantly.  "Are you a woman that can pull a man that can deliver the smack, or just one that can take it?"

"Its not that simple," she countered. "While no one is as proficient at taking an ass-whopping as Spiderman is, Superman has been known to get it handed to him before he gets pissed off enough to do something about it. And when they get fed up they both lay down the smack.  Pretty efficiently.  So what does that say about their choice in women?"

This was a moment for posterity.  She had just once, for the first and probably only time, actually turned an argument of his against him.

He shook his head, with a self-effacing grin beginning to take hold. "Not a damn thing."

"Honestly I thought you were going to go with the whole,” she formed quotations in the air with her fingers, “Lois seems dumb as a stump while Mary Jane seems unnaturally intelligent for an actress, but the opposite for both is actually true,” end quotations in the air, “angle."

The blank stare confirmed that this was an avenue he had not considered, and in fact blew apart his whole theory.  "I hate telling you these things."

She smiled at him. "I'm going to stick with what I said so that I can give you credit for actually helping for once."  She patted his head endearingly. “I suggest you do the same.”  She popped up and started away. “It’s good advice for guys too, you either be with a woman who accepts that she’s not the only thing going on in your life, or is pissed because she isn’t, and is always lobbying for it.”

He continued to shake his head at her. “You know there is much to be said for not being so skilled at emasculation.”

She nodded. “I agree, be strong enough that your woman can’t.  Superman can handle a self-possessed woman and Spiderman can’t.”

He smiled at her then. “Lois Lane all the way.”