Cross-dressing is one of my favorite tropes of historical romance. When a historical romance novel features a woman disguised as a man, I am ON IT like pair of buff-colored breeches on ...Read More
Ancient Grains Archive
Of Breeches And Rounded Bottoms
Ancient Grains, Books
Aug 09, 2013
Recent historical romances featuring cross-dressing heroines (and heroes) show that bodice rippers can be more than prettified, corset-bound wank material.
Do Not Take Cell Phone Pictures of Van Gogh Paintings in Busy Museums
Advice, Ancient Grains
Aug 09, 2013
I'm not usually in the business of telling you not to do things.
Follow your dreams, put babies on spikes, whatever. We're only here on this planet for so long, there is no God, all is permitted. We make all this stuff up, you know? Human freedom, duty, etc. None of it
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V.C. Andrews Day Submissions
Ancient Grains, Books
Aug 08, 2013
Monday is going to be a very special day around here, ducklings. It will be a day dedicated to the prolific and mysterious Cleo Virginia Andrews and particular her masterwerk Flowers in the Attic.
You have read it, of course, or seen it passed around your seventh-grade classroom from cool girl to cool girl
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Twelve Steps of Leaving the Church
Ancient Grains, Religion
Aug 08, 2013
Step 1: Admit that you are powerless to stop yourself from thinking and saying incendiary things. The demon seed throws out out a tiny rootlet the evening you ask your stepfather if the Law of Consecration is the same thing as Communism. He stares like you’ve
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Slightly Less Beloved Classics: A Canticle For Leibowitz
Ancient Grains, Books
Aug 08, 2013
Slightly Less Beloved Classics takes a second look at the lesser-known works of celebrated authors. Here we shall decide what is to remain by the wayside and what is to be led gaily back home, lauded with timbrels and trumpets and fatted calves. Previously in this series: Nightingale Wood.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
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Five San Francisco Locals
Ancient Grains, Artwork, Cartoons
Aug 08, 2013
I'm pretty inspired by the ingenuity and dedication of the people that live in my neighborhood and the neighborhoods surrounding ours: Noe Valley, the Mission and the Castro. I especially enjoy watching and interacting with the self-employed and the practitioners of off-the-beaten-path professions that I come across here. I go for long
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Feel the Burn: A Really Long Post About Pushups
Ancient Grains, Fitness
Aug 08, 2013
Previous installments in this series can be found here.
Hello, fitness enthusiasts. I had had a rough plan to give you some actual physical work to do for me this week, but the trainer I was charting it out with sprained his ankle playing rugby (dang fitness-obsessed people driving up all our
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Waiting Rooms I Have Known
Ancient Grains, Health
Aug 08, 2013
You never ask anyone in the waiting room at the oncology unit what they're in for. You just never ask. You sit there and stare into space, you flip through a wrinkled magazine too fast to actually read anything, you stare at the TV at Kelly Ripa who is too loud, you
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