Undermining the Oligopsony

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So, this morning I woke up to a spam email that had a title “Pee like a horse.”  Robert who was standing behind me, looking in my medieval history bookcase (yes, he’s taking a STEM degree.  NO, I don’t know what he wanted with medieval history.  I don’t ask these questions, I just go to his room every month or so and bring back the stuff he forgot to return.  Yes, this was in my office, and no, there is no privacy – so if you send me a video of naked cats skating, one of the kids or Dan are likely to see it.)  Anyway, where were we?  Oh, yes, he looked over my shoulder at the screen at “Pee like a horse” and said “What?  On all fours in a field? I suppose I could do that, but I don’t think there are any fields around college.”

To which I said, “Ijit.  It’s a prostate health add, which means I’m now on some list as an old male.”

I think I’ve talked about the multiple people I am here before, right?  I get adds to increase what I don’t have, to increase what I have [but if they were more than DD – it’s hard as is finding 36 DD, most DDs are forty and above, unless you go really expensive – I’d need a brace for my back], to kill foot fungus (this might be somewhat justified as I try EVERY sort of anti-itch product on the market, because of eczema, of course), to refinance my mortgage, to vacation in exotic places, to look after babies, to choose an old age home etc.

The guys tease me because none of them gets as varied a spam load as I do.  And it’s become a joke in the house to see what ads are on the sidebar of my facebook because, mostly I think depending on whom I’ve been pming on FB, it can be anything from bedpans to diapers, from vanity presses to courses to become a Social Worker.

I think part of this is the inability to pin down what I am based on what I look for or what I read.

It’s not just that I’m a writer.  I mean, I’m sure there are certain types of writers who only look up one thing or another.  I can imagine Agatha Christie with an internet account looking up poisons and the effects of hitting someone on a certain portion of the cranium, and how one recovers from arsenic, say.  I can’t imagine her waking up one morning and feeling that what she really, really, really needed to know was how much one could buy a castle in Scotland for, or alternately what type of wheels went on carts in 14th century France, or even “What was the police force in Paris in the time of Louis XIII” (Does anyone know?  I haven’t been able to find that, d*mn it, because the one service that seems to have the info is a subscription service for French historians.  I don’t mind that it’s in French.  The only languages I’ve totally lost are German and Swedish, though weirdly Swedish might come back with a little effort. I can still read French fluently – and speak it, given two days to switch to that track – but I can’t – I really can’t spend $600 to see if it even has what I need.  Someday maybe, but today is not that day.)

And she almost for sure wouldn’t lose an entire morning trying to read Space stuff to come up with a plausible FTL.

It’s not just that I write in all those genres.  I think I’d be that way even if I weren’t a writer, because I read in all those genres.  If it hit me right, I’d read it.  And if it raised a question I’d hare up after it.

Call it an insatiable curiosity for the world.  (It’s actually a satiable curiosity, if I had, say, three times the life span and no other job.  Or maybe not, after all more things will be discovered.)

I remember when reading Friday, when the internet was in its mewling and crawling infancy, that I was very jealous of her net search (which is what it amounted to.)  I thought “if I could only have that, I’d be rich.”

Actually now that I have that, it eats my life, because I end up checking up on stray thoughts in the middle of working on something else.  It’s kind of like the kid in the candy shop, right?  And if I don’t use the penguin, nothing coherent will come out.

What is this all about, you say?

I was talking to a colleague this morning, and he said he and Larry (Correia) have been schooled by the left SEVERAL times that there’s no political bias in Science fiction or in fact in publishing.

Pfui.

Perhaps it is because I choose my friends among those who are like me.  When you go haring off in search of this or that stray curious thought, you end up – of course – coming up with STERN opinions on very odd things.

Like, I can go on for hours about panspermia.  (No, seriously, I can.  And no, seriously, you don’t want to start this.  It was the subject of a three month reading spree when I was recovering from pneumonia and couldn’t write.)  Or the Habsburgs.  Or for that matter the inflationary pressures in Portugal in the seventeenth century.

Inevitably, I come across a friend who has read the same thing and formed the contrary opinion.  Sometimes one convinces the other, sometimes we have fun and lengthy battles.  And sometimes – sometimes – I retreat from the field before I start calling names and friend and I put that on box of “no one will be convinced.”  (This is why I stop theological discussions here, when they get to the point you’re just going neener, neener at each other.)

You would think it was absolutely impossible for two close friends to shout that the other is “evil” because of his beliefs on medieval agriculture.  And you’d be wrong.  I’ve had this type of argument (I think that one was with Kate) with every one of my friends, at some point.  Or avoided having that argument (As in, I narrow my eyes at the screen and go “okay, he thinks that.  That’s his right.” And let it be.))

So how is it possible that the majority of fiction has rather improbable uniformity?  You should read Dave Freer’s column on that, where he mentions the villain is always white and male and usually a businessman or religious.

PFUI.

The people who made it from slush/through the ranks to regular publication JUST all happened to have the same opinions.  Wow.  “It just growed that way.”

To believe that you have to believe everyone — even supposedly very creative people — are completely categorizeable, and that you can pick political and other opinions, not ala carte but only from a fixed menu.  And that, my friends, is nonsense at least for free people who aren’t completely insane.

The uniformity is even greater if you look at bestsellers, because when publishing was an oligopsony ( A literary lycanthropic oligopsony — say it three times.) it took buy in from your publishers to get into the top ranks.  Otherwise you ended up in midlist hell… or if you wrote SF you went with Baen… who was held down by the bookstores enmity, but still managed to produce more field bestsellers and more lasting ones than practically anyone else.

Baen is hated because it shows them that there is rigging in the other houses.

So, what do we do about it?  I mean, not everyone writes SF.

Someone posted in comments about a woman who writes mystery for one of the big houses and sighs because she can’t come out as Larry and I did.  (And I bet I know which house it is, too!)

Sister – and I mean that – what are you doing?  That house (either of the two it could be) is dying anyway, and unless you’re way better at faking it than I ever was, you can’t make a long term career there.

But you don’t want to throw away what you have?

Okay, but look – for years now we weren’t allowed to send things in under closed pen names.  Our agents wouldn’t let us.  And why not, if not to monitor who we really were and what we really thought? – but the world is wide open.  You have indie.  Check your contracts.  The most important thing is to make sure your agent hasn’t laid claim to EVERYTHING you write, indie or not.  If he/she has drop them like a boat anchor.

If your publisher has hair of the dog contracts that don’t permit you to publish/write anything outside them, ignore it.  The way you’re going to do it, they’re unlikely to track it, and might drive themselves nuts trying (which is always good.)

Now, pick a pen name.  Pick a press name, or a small press to submit to.  Either register a dba with your state (some states don’t need this.  You just open a dba bank account, so check that first) so you can cash those checks.  OR use the name of your husband or your kid or your sister or something (Obviously someone who lives with you and shares your money is best.)  Of course, if like me you were blessed with a plethora of family names, you don’t even need that.  I can cash checks for Sarah Marques, Sarah de Almeida, and  Sarah Hoyt.  (It also helps my banker knows us.)

Then – and this is the big effort – write a book FOR YOU every time you write one for the big boys.  Come the collapse, you’ll have your own career ready to go.  You can then get out of the closet and announce “Marques de Almeida is a pen name and…”  And you can publish your books as collaborations and put on the cover “Mary Smith, writing as Jane Michaels.”

Think of it as insurance.  Think of it too as mental health help.  Because, if you’ve got an outlet, you’ll both stealth better, and you won’t feel so bad about it.

And think of it as going mini-Galt – avoid giving your best to the liberal establishment.

And then, most of all, think of it as driving the establishment crazy.  They can no longer control who makes it, and the more of us who make it and who don’t agree with them, the more we shatter their self image of “We’re on top because people who think like us are just smartest.”

Yes, I know writing two books a year is a pain and if you’re on the four books a year houses are putting newbies on, writing eight books a year is murder (try six, truly.  It’s doable.)

But the sound of the exploding heads of the dahlings makes it all worth.

This is your job – I won’t say your duty.  You know your duties.  If you can at all, write for you as well as for the sclerotic oligopsony.

(Sorry for scattered post – not only did that email subject throw me off track, but today is a crazy day.  I have a million things to do and only about twelve hours to do them in.  Wish me luck.)

241 thoughts on “Undermining the Oligopsony”

  1. Varied spam? I can’t identify what three quarters of the spam I’m receiving is pushing because it’s in French, Russian, Turkish, and something from India.

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        2. To be serious for a brief moment, a large amount of “male” products are in effect sold through women. This is because, as a stereotype generalization, women drag their husbands to the doctor.

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          1. I find that most reasonably presentable females have no problems enlarging penises and can do it several times a night if they are so inclined.

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          1. Be glad it isn’t worse. For about 6 months in 2006 I got on someone’s “granny-porn” radar…..

            Some of this stuff, I don’t know which is scarier, that someone out there was sick enough to come up with it or that they get enough responses to make a living at it……

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        4. I used to get those Viagra ones, but not for a while now. But that kitilappi address seems to be attracting those classic ‘I’m a Nigerian prince who needs help to get my money out of the country’ ones. One even was from a ‘Nigerian prince’, then there was this widow who had just recently lost her rich husband, and a few other variations. :D

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          1. I keep seeing spam from somebody calling for Free Local Sluts, which I find confusing. Are local sluts being imprisoned, in America?

            My greater concern is over the local sluts we send to represent us in the legislatures of this nation. Can’t we elect a majority of politicians lacking round heels? (While I deplore Anthony Weiner’s off-the-clock activities, I was far more endangered by what he did while he wasn’t texting.)

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                1. Apparently there is a moral difference between buying them a few drinks and slipping them a 20.

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  2. “There’s no political bias in Science fiction or in fact in publishing.”

    And if they believe that, I have some oceanfront property in Mongolia to sell them. ;-)

    Luck!

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    1. It all depends on how you define “political bias”, don’ it?

      Conservative views are political bias, Liberal views are just common sense and settled science. Also, pigs fly (especially if you strap a JATO to ’em) and handwavium makes things real. Only a raaaaacist sexiiiiist homophobe Islamophobe phobeaphobe would argue otherwise, you nazi-loving !@#$!&

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  3. I am, I realized today, in not one but two lit classes. I signed up for Latino/a Lit of the Americas (yes, that double ending is *just* how the prof has it in the syllabus) on purpose, as it was the lesser of evils for a certain requirement. I discovered today that what I thought was a required composition class is in fact a Lit class. We read a Joyce story in class today. I may slit my wrists with a spoon this semester… I know full well there is political bias in all of what I’m reading, because the professor selected it all carefully to reflect PC. Not only did this stuff pass through gatekeepers, it has now passed through two gatekeepers. And I use “passed through” on purpose!

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    1. That usage “Latino/a” has been turning up in an editing job I’ve been doing, and even “Latinos/as,” which looks really ugly. I assumed the author was just subliterate (not hard in the social sciences) and changed in to “Latinos/Latinas.” I’m disturbed to learn that it may be commonly thought of as the correct form.

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      1. In my field “Latino/a” is the preferred form. It grates in my craw, so I find ways around it if I can.

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          1. If referring to a group of unknown composition. I had to specify in the footnotes to one article why I used the endings I did, and why I used the male pronoun (because no women were involved in the policy discussion). You’d think people had more important things to worry about.

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            1. People do have more important things to worry about — frighteningly important things … which is why they focus on trivial matters instead.

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      2. Anyone with a background in Spanish literature, or Castillian if you want to get out of the Iberian peninsula, will tell you that the correct answer is Latino, since the male sigular is the generic. Talk about English PC imperialism!

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        1. Yep. someone on my FB page got all upset I used mankind. let’s talk indo- european languages… GAH. This obsession with mangling the language is why I hate Feminists. Why? BECAUSE THEY DON’T GET UPSET WITH ISLAM MANGLING WOMEN. NO, they’re beating up on language. Language will change when and if it’s convenient. Enforcing it from above is what conquerors do. They’re not my conquerors and I have two middle fingers.

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              1. Point. A couple of decades ago, there was a Basque restaurant in my hometown. I’m pretty sure I was the only non-Basque to know what it meant that the owner had put up posters with the slogan “Zaspiak Bat!” on them.

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                1. So, what does it mean? I’m guessing it’s not in praise of Ravel’s unfinished symphony piece?

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                  1. “Seven is one” or “From seven, one”. Old motto of Basques of which there were seven provinces including two in France. Adopted by Basque terrorists.

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            3. No, but Amazon will put a language bomb by [insert over-praised author of your choice] in there if you don’t order carefully.

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          2. I enjoy people who have no clue about the language telling people what words are appropriate and what aren’t. Used to be “werman” and “wifman,” with “man” just being the base that meant you were talking about a human being. Somewhere along the line, “werman” stopped being used, and “man” pulls double duty today.

            What gets really funny is when you get the occasional feminist who thinks she’s being clever by quoting the Bible to show that the word “woman” is sexist: “But the Bible says ‘She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.'” As if the Jews wandering around Egypt and Mesopotamia wrote the Torah in English.

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              1. Even more so, the chiasmus of “you will be called ‘Adam’ (masculine singular), for you were taken from earth/dirt (“adamah” / feminine singular)” with “she will be called ‘woman’ (ishah / feminine singular) for she is taken from ‘man’ (ish / masculine singular)” is completely lost in English – especially given that neither “Adam” nor “earth” refer to “beings of singular gender” according to traditional understanding.

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                1. And this is why G-d gave me an annotated Torah. Oh, the things I learned. (It tends to get stolen by sons, though, and older son almost murdered younger son who — GASP — folded down a corner of a page. I had to stand between them when the page was red, too. Turned out it was something about two nations in your womb and the younger enslaving the elder. :P Ooooooh #1 son was MAD.)

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                    1. No, but you know the funny thing? If one of them is busy elsewhere, the other is like a little ghost around the house. (And it’s hard for them to be little, they’re both over six feet tall.)

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                2. I don’t think I knew that before (at least not the full extent). It’s beautiful. :)

                  On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 11:02 AM, According To Hoyt wrote:

                  > ** > thegameiam commented: “Even more so, the chiasmus of “you will be > called ‘Adam’ (masculine singular), for you were taken from earth/dirt > (“adamah” / feminine singular)” with “she will be called ‘woman’ (ishah / > feminine singular) for she is taken from ‘man’ (ish / masculine sin” >

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          3. You must remember that the euphemism treadmill will always ensure they have something to have a grievance about. Also, it will do nothing to help real women, so they decrease the possibility there, too, of running out of things to be feminist about.

            After all, do you really expect them to settle down, get a life, and start being good in such simple and quotidian manners as telling the truth and being nice to the waiter? Merely buying “green” products in the lab made subjects more likely to lie and cheat when playing a game for money right after; just imagine the amount of moral license you get for being an activist — and which you would have to forgo if you admitted the problem was solved.

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            1. And having a grievance to monger almost seems like the highest priority. There’s never a sense that “We Have Accomplished That Which We Struggled For So Long To Achieve And Now We Shall Retire To Disneyland And Rest From Our Labors For A Season.” It’s always on to the next struggle, the next grievance, the next enemy. Because there is always an enemy. And that enemy must always be destroyed.

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              1. It is that struggle which gives their lives meaning and fills them with the warm glow of moral superiority. You think they can go cold turkey on something that potent?

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          4. At times I put rants on my FB pages about our church not only changing the hymns and songs to be gender-neutral, but not noting that they are changing them. Makes me cringe every time.

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          5. Yes. Nail on head. Murder rape victims, force little girls to get married, kill a girl for sleeping with a guy: no response. But chainmail bikinis, WELL! You’d better get ready for WW3!

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          1. That was kinda my point.
            If true neutering of the language is to occurr (*snip*) one could say that one’s true goal must be to remove all elements of gender in aaall forms. Womyn is not enough; it must be woperson. The same with female. Nothing could be more correct in concept, structure and plain unvarnished truth than to refer to them as fee-persons, since they obvioulsy are selling something along with their integrity.

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              1. Speaking of Newspeak, I wonder if the group responsible for putting together the “Life of Julia” slide show peed themselves laughing over using the name of Winston’s love from 1984.

                Ooh. I just looked. There is a fanfic on that. I can’t tell if it is sarcastic or not.

                “Winston is fixated on the new Party program airing in Oceania – the story of how Big Brother’s plans and the Party’s programs have supported and helped some woman named Julia throughout her entire life.”

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            4. Finnish is, to some extent, gender neutral. We have one word, ‘hän’, instead of ‘he’ and ‘she’. Yet one recent study seems to indicate that Finns think about the genders of the people they are talking about the same way English speakers do, even thought the language does not necessitate it.

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              1. That’s because language is a tool that transmits existing thoughts, and may make some thoughts easier, but which does not prescribe what one’s thoughts will be. I bet French people don’t think of pens as particularly female, but I bet they do think about the sex of people they talk to!

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          2. Not completely. The use of “they” to represent a single person of unknown or indeterminate sex is attested from several centuries back, and apparently there are examples of its use by writers as respectable as Jane Austen. And it gets reinvented regularly by small children who find the use of the masculine to include the feminine puzzling. I’m in favor of declaring it officially correct.

            I know there are people who will object to using a word whose meaning is plural in a sense that can include the singular. But many of those people are fine with using a word whose meaning is masculine in a sense that can include the feminine. So I’m not impressed by their logical consistency.

            And I like singular “they” a lot better than any of the feminist neologisms, even Marge Piercy’s “person/per/pers/perself,” which I can almost imagine an English speaker might say.

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            1. Well, if we are allowed neologisms I call for “rhe” as the singular neuter, with “Rhei” or “Theii” as teh plural.
              Granted, “Eloi” would work for me too, except of course for that whole [i]Eloi, Eloi’ lamas sabachthan[/i] thing might be offputting to some.

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              1. Annnnd, someone plese point me to a source to figure out how to make italic blockquotes pretty please?

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                1. Just use standard HTML tags — <i> and </i> — instead of the BBCode-style [i] and [/i]. This is italic, and [i]this is not[/i]. (I used the standard HTML tag for the first part of that sentence.)

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                2. Standard HTML coding, using angle brackets, such < to initiate a command and using its opposite to close it. BLOCKQUOTE automatically indents and italicizes. To highlight something within the block quote you have to use boldface, which uses a B in the brackets to start the emboldening and (again, within angle brackets) /B to return to normal. Same thing with I and /I for italics. A strikethrough effect is done by enclosing DEL and /DEL in the brackets. To embed a URL in a phrase, employ the instructions [A HREF="http:/URL"]Phrase[/A], replacing the [ & ] with the appropriate angle brackets.

                  So:
                  [BLOCKQUOTE]quoted portion[/BLOCKQUOTE]
                  [DEL]strikethrough[/DEL]
                  [B]boldfaced[/B]
                  [I]italicized[/I]

                  With appropriate substitution of angle brackets for the square brackets. The portions within the angle brackets will not be visible in the posted comment and will not take any space.

                  If there are other HTML commands WP accepts I am not aware of them, nor have I found a way to unitalicize words within a block quote. The HTML coding for underlining [U] doesn't seem acceptable to WP.

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              2. Technically it’s not a neuter. English already has a neuter singular, “it.” But neuter is mostly marked for inanimate; for example, you can ask a new mother, “Is it a boy or a girl?” but after that you’d better say “he” or “she.” The technical name for what’s wanted is “common gender”; at least, that’s apparently what it’s called in Dutch, which uses common gender for people and neuter gender for things.

                In any case, English doesn’t need a common gender plural. We already have “they,” which serves as the plural of all genders.

                I really would rather avoid neologisms. I can’t imagine any of them ever catching on, simply because they need so much explaining. Singular “they” needs no explanation; even a grammatical purist will know what you mean when you say, “Tell them I’m not home.”

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                1. William, you are using common sense again. In a world where forging new realities through neurolinguistic programming to promote social justice is more important than actually understanding each other, sacrifices must be made.
                  (Just don’t make eye-contact with the per-hum-child with the obsidian knife)

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                2. “Who is it?”
                  “It’s the security guard.”
                  “What does it want?”

                  Note the point at which you are jolted.

                  Ah, the insanity of English where you can SOMETIMES use the neuter without problems.

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                  1. I’ve noticed an annoying (to me anyway) trend on the part of various authors and journalists to use “she” when the sex of the party or parties is unspecified, rather than the traditional “he”. I find this incredibly jarring, and when I encounter it in a non-fiction book it substantially undermines my confidence in the objectivity of the writer. If he’s so politically motivated that he’ll make that unnecessary substitution, then how can I trust that his political biases aren’t controlling everything else he writes?

                    I’ve returned books, both borrowed and bought, after running into that bit of PC nonsense.

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                    1. I like how David Weber does it. When his characters (at least in the Honorverse) are talking about somebody who’s sex they don’t know, they refer to them as the “same sex” as themselves. That is, a female character will refer to them as female while a male character refers to them as male.

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            2. Heh. Anything with ‘per’ sounds a bit funny to Finnish speakers. ‘Perse’ happens to refer to that part you sit on. And it’s a very impolite word for that part of our anatomy too. Gets used as a swear word when somebody is a bit too well raised to use that very popular and very impolite word which refers to the outer parts of female sexual organs, is roughly on par with the ones which refer to the fallen head angel (perkele is one of those – rolling the r’s can be very satisfactory when you are angry).

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        3. If you want to appeal to the Castilian, then in this specific instance I should say it really ought to be latina, since literatura is a feminine noun. Of course, nobody would use a phrase like literatura latina de las Américas in actual Spanish, but that is the literal translation of this boob of a professor’s phrasing.

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  4. Sarah, you have just argued for people breaking the law by violating legal contracts. You have implied that you have used such illegal methods.
    I’m so proud of you I could burst!

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      1. Indeed they are not. They must be a) very specific as to length, b) locale, and c) not “slave” like. Which means they are *almost* certainly _not_ enforceable. In fact, they could end up bringing heavy penalties for trying to enforce them.

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        1. And this is the thing — those have been in all contracts but Baen’s for ten years. I went on signing with other houses. They KNEW (of course. I work for Baen under my own name.) NO ONE said “boo.”

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        2. They have traditionally been enforced by tacit agreement among the publishers. This is known as “collusion” and is not a good thing (except when practiced for noble purpose by the enlightened in which case you are a bad bad person for raising impertinent questions and nobody wants to read your dumb old books anyway so there.)

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        3. Like lots of the law these days, they aren’t meant to be enforced, they are meant to be intimidating.

          There’s a filker named Tom Smith; Sarah will get to see him at Fencon. His picture is on the wall at Mouse Central, because he wrote a number of hilarious filks to various Disney tunes…. and you couldn’t find them on CD because the Mouse’s lawyers threatened to sue. When he gently pointed out that the Supreme Court had ruled parody was permissible, the response he got boiled down to “We know. But we’re going to give you an expensive tour of the legal system re-proving that your stuff is covered by it.”

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    2. Actually I didn’t use them, because I had Baen — but those contracts are only MARGINALLY legal. They wouldn’t stand scrutiny. You can’t make people sign a contract under duress (they need to eat, say) that bars them earning a living.

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      1. Entertainment seems to be full of weird, semi-legal contracts. The whole child actor child star business somehow gets around the laws that forbid children from signing contracts. The parents sign their children to a contract, and they are held liable and face huge monetary penalties if they can’t force the child to perform.

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  5. I ran a GURPS campaign based in a fencing academy under the French Regency (even more scandalous than the English one—what is it about regencies anyway?). My research for it turned up a police force operating in Paris, headed by, I think, a general. At one point they raided a convent and dragged out a bunch of Jansenist nuns. I think this was a fairly recent innovation, but I don’t recall my sources, so I can’t check when the force was instituted.

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    1. In late medieval times, there was something called Le Chatelet de Paris (with the little bent macron thing over the A in Chatelet ) that was running more and more of the police duties. They had horse sergeants and stuff like that. Their rulebook appears to have been called Style du Chatelet.

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        1. Okay, that was doing police because the physical Grand Chatelet was the HQ of the provost of Paris during the Middle Ages, and he ran the criminal courts for everything not handled by the Hotel de Ville (jurisdiction fights). He was under the Parlement de Paris.

          So if you can find out what happened to the Prevot de Paris’ powers of policing, you can probably work your way back up to Louis XIII’s time.

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          1. Ooh! He was still doing it in Louis XIII’s time! He had to move court (so says the next paragraph of Grand Chatelet in English on Wikipedia) to the Louvre and to the Augustinian convent for a bit, but the office kept rolling.The morgue was at the Chatelet too!

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            1. The Prevot de Paris article is only on Wikipedia in French and Czech, but it even gives the names of all the provost guys and tons of info about how it was supposed to work. And there’s some bibliography! Yay!

              I can do other people’s work just fine…. :)

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              1. Since I’m going to resume the Musketeer Mysteries, this will be VERY handy. You can’t imagine how hard it was to write mysteries while knowing NOTHING about the police force. Seriously.
                I can read French. I’m saving Czech as a challenge for my old age.

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                1. I’m glad I found it. You’re going to have fun with all those guys: the provost’s men, the guet royal, the compagnie of the lieutenant criminel de robe-courte, and the commissaires (whoever they were). Sounds a lot like the many different groups that did London policing.

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                2. Louisiana University Press published a book (never read it myself) on The Police of Paris way back in 1979. It looks like it only covered the period of 1718-1789, so it is probably too late to be of help . . . unless the author, Alan Williams, happened to include earlier references.

                  I’ve also seen a reference to something similar to a police force that was called La Fluviale and dates back to the 1600’s?

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              1. Of course not. That would be too easy! More stuff is coming online all the time, but it’s important to remember that a lot of stuff is out there but not indexed well by Google, and a lot of stuff is disappearing. That’s why I enjoy searching so much — it’s a real hunt with no guarantees. (Though I’d prefer less excitement and more indexing.)

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          2. I will observe that large portions of Paris were still the property of various lords who still had the right of private justice.

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            1. Aha! So that’s why they were talking, in the medieval Paris book I Googled, about conflicts with “seignorial justice” and various ways that the Provost of Paris kept fighting that. I wondered.

              It’s not a cop mystery series without the occasional jurisdiction fight!

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            2. Surete was started in the 1800 by Vidocq, as a way to get police agents into the back alleys where the regular cops couldn’t go.

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      2. … with the little bent macron thing over the A in Chatelet …

        Its official name is a circumflex accent, and in French its main usage is/was* to mark where a letter (often an s) had been dropped at some point, turning the word chastelet into châtelet.

        And Now You Know™. :-)

        * The circumflex accent is so widely misspelled in France, usually by incorrectly omitting it, that in 1990 spelling reforms were suggested to drop the circumflex accent over the i and u vowels in just about every case, only keeping them where dropping them would create homographs (e.g., the circumflex on mûr, ripe, would be kept to distinguish it from mur, wall). This would reform the language not by imposing new spellings that nobody was using, but by taking the spellings that many people were using (albeit incorrectly), and saying “These spellings will now also be considered correct.” So now both the old and new spellings are correct. For all the grief the Académie Française gets (sometimes deservedly), they do occasionally get one exactly right. That’s how language changes should happen: by having the rulebook updated to reflect the reality “on the ground”.

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          1. If you’re trying to recall how it’s spelled in French, it’s spelled grave; if you’re trying to recall the Portuguese spelling, I haven’t a clue.

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          2. They play hell with text filters, if you’re not experienced in dealing with that kind of encoding. Unfortunately, I’m not, so the A-circ I kept getting in one text file was breaking my import, until one of the other guys showed me how to handle it.

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          3. I’m still using the old ß all over my German, since no one has made it illegal. Apparently the change to a double ss (unless it is in a compound where you’d end up with ss) is due in part to problems with computer coding.

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            1. One of my coworkers found out about that some time back. What happens, is that some systems, in order to prevent incorrect matches due to upper/lower case typos, will switch all text to lower case in order to compare two text strings. Apparently the case folding situation for that character is that it converts to the double s upon being switched to lower case, but the rule does not require (as it should not) the double s to convert to ß upon being upper-cased.

              There are some other case-folding situations where similar things occur, and it is a problem for computers, when searching for words in text documents.

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            2. Spanish dictionaries have moved from listing ch as a seperate letter at the end of the C section to blending it in “alphabetically” (between CE and CI) because it sorts that way on computers.
              Gave me fits the first time I found that.

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              1. I have decided, now being into my 40s, that from henceforth I shall revel in being elegantly old-fashioned. And the first person to call me out-of-date will get whapped in the shins with my cane.

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          4. Hi Sarah,
            Actually we still have them under the new rules, but there at least a few changes to some of the situations and words in which they are used. Although, if I remember correctly, there are cases where there’s little or no change at all, like in the case of good old til. Of course that only matters if you’re actually paying attention to that nonsense, and not just ignoring it like I do. Thanks, but no thanks! I’ll keep misspelling it the way I’ve always done it. :0)

            You can find more info on the new rules for example here http://www.flip.pt/Acordo-Ortografico/Introducao.aspx#.Uh4jPz_SvTU

            Regards,
            Rui Jorge

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              1. Heheh! You can probably blame texting for that. People don’t seem to use them while texting. You can certainly write faster if you don’t use them, although the result will look a bit er… peculiar. :0)

                Regards,
                Rui Jorge

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        2. Of course, mathematicians don’t seem to know the word “circumflex,” as they normally call it a “hat” when they put it on variables.

          Then there is the upside down circumflex that occurs in some Slavic languages. It’s called a “hacek.” I think that’s pronounced “HAH-check,” but I’ve never actually met anyone who used the word in speech.

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            1. In the terminology I’m used to, a caret is a different and larger mark, the mark a proofreader scribbles onto a page to indicate that something is to be inserted. I don’t know of a case where a caret is written *above* a letter, as a diacritical mark. Though I guess you might could invert a caret to show that you wanted to insert a diacritical mark above a letter (such as a circumflex!), just as you would to insert a quotation mark or an exponent.

              In any case, the papers I edit usually call it a “hat.” I haven’t seen it called a “caret” in years.

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    2. The reign of Louis XIII is a -very- complex transitional period in French history. The early-modern french police were formed by Louis XIV in 1667 because under the regency and through the first portion of Louis XIV’s reign, the Corpse de Miracles beggars and the associated slums overran the ability of the older policing groups, so L XIV signed a proposal that pretty much swept it all away and created an independent police force.

      But prior to 1667, during the period of Richelieu and L XIII you were still basically in a situation where what policing happened was under the auspices of the “Royal Watch.” The Bourgeois Watch or citizens watch had been disbanded by Henry IV in 1559, essentially because it wasn’t doing anything at all. . The Provost of Paris was nominally in charge of the watch, and the size of the watch grew from the mid 13th century when it consisted of forty sergeants and twenty men-at-arms until the time of L XIII when the watch encompassed about a hundred fifty sergeants and about 70 men-at-arms who may be mounted.

      From 1550 on, sergeants were required to be literate.

      Meanwhile OUTSIDE the cities, the marshals of France were responsible for appointing constables to deal with military discipline, guarding royal property etc. Think of the equivalent of the U.S. Marshal’s service. From 1536 they were tasked with policing the highways and etc…

      the other thing to recall is that it was as true then, as it is now that each of these authorities contained BOTH the arrest and investigative branch AND the judicial branch, or rather, there was no branch, in France, the investigating and arresting officers (the sargents of the watch) worked for the judge who sat on the bench (the Provost or the Marshal)

      Finally, the Provost of Paris during this period was NOT tasked with “civil” crimes, that is, contract enforcement, guild issues, market fraud, etc. That was the job of the Civil Provost.

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        1. and why do I have this just at hand? Because in 1634 Richelieu has sent the young Charles d’Artagnan to retrieve an uptime nursing student from her travels around France establishing chapters of the French Royal Society for Public Health — which bears ____absolutely no____ resemblance to the committees of correspondence causing disruptions all over Europe, no indeedy no. None. — anyway, Chuck needs to get Katy down to Fontembleau to prevent the royal physicians from bleeding Queen Anne into another miscarriage… or something like that.

          Ahhhh the wonders of alternate history.

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    1. She has a penguin timer. You /insert activity/for an amount of time set on your timer. then you have treat/other activity for another amount of time. Unfilth your habitat on tumblr uses this approach for household chores. 20/10, 45/15 etc.

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      2. I’m using the pomodoro technique, with a penguin timer instead of the tomato.

        Are you sure that’s legal? Sounds pretty twisted. I think I don’t want to know. Never mind. ;)

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        2. “Fear the penguin.” (From a bad malt liquor ad).

          Today: 3500 words, one mile walked and 30 minutes of weights. Plus got research books.

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            1. I am going to wash three rag rugs about half an hour from now, when it starts getting light enough to see outside. Today’s physical exercise, they are reasonably big.

              I’m not going to be working for a couple of days, can’t sleep during the night anyway and the parking next the place where you can wash those rugs is certainly free at this time of the morning (it’s half past four now here) while during the day you wont necessarily be able to park there. Joys of keeping unconventional schedules. The area where I’m going can actually be slightly worrisome earlier in the night but the weird types are usually off the streets by now, at this time of the year anyway as it gets kind of cold towards the morning now.

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              1. 1000 words, 14000 steps. And I’ve got a bunch of editing to catch up on. Sigh.

                Anyone interested in having a group on MyFitnessPal? Just thinking it might be easier to put all our updates in one place than having them all over the place.

                On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 8:39 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

                > ** > pohjalainen commented: “I am going to wash three rag rugs about half an > hour from now, when it starts getting light enough to see outside. Today’s > physical exercise, they are reasonably big. I’m not going to be working for > a couple of days, can’t sleep during the night anywa” >

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          3. Didn’t leave the house; calculation violated mathematical bound. :mad: Found (or so I blearily think) a minus sign at the beginning as midnight struck. Should not stay up till 0400 trying to correct it.

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  8. I think part of this is the inability to pin down what I am based on what I look for or what I read.

    As one who is heavily involved in the reporting of the delivery stats of such things as sidebar ads, I can tell you that this is definitely the case.

    The majority of the ads we track are for media websites, mostly associated with newspapers, but there are others doing the same thing. We have targeting parameters based on geographic location, age, sex, income, and page content, and deliver accordingly. You’re one who would confuse the targeting. They’re not concerned about people like us, though. They’re concerned about the ones who DO fit into little boxes, because they’re easier to sell to.

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    1. Well, I BOUGHT a mop from an advertising on Pandora, so that got me square on. Works, too. BUT I might not have got it if it hadn’t been Friday morning, when the call of the dust and the cat fur can be heard throughout the land and when a Sarah’s mind lightly turns to thoughts of scrubbing.

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  9. Lady Hoyt, you’ve expanded my vocabulary. Once I figure out how to pronounce the word. And spell it.

    Now I’m wondering what kind of internet spam writers of pre-internet eras would have gotten.

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    1. Dear Domina or Dominus,

      I am a Numidian prince who has fallen into hardship. If you would lend me 1000 denarii . . .

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          1. I can only do Latin when out of my head on morphine. Don’t ask how I know. Oh, okay, fine — I was on morphine drip after three days in labor and a risky emergency Caesarean, followed by uterine infection. Doctor came in. I needed to tell her something. It was urgent. Halfway through it, I realized I was telling her a Tom and Jerry Cartoon. in Latin. Under the same circumstances, I can ALSO speak grammatical German. No explanation.

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            1. When you’re totally relaxed, your brain can let loose _all_ of its memorized contents, and combine them in weird ways. (Alas, I just couldn’t figure out that I had icepacks around me, and thus couldn’t understand why I couldn’t move my neck. I’m not much entertainment on morphine….)

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            2. Oddly, when drunk enough to black out I apparently A. become fluent in whatever languages are being used nearby and B become charming enough to seduce multiple strange women simultaneously. I cannot swear to any of this because hey, Blasck out!. The stories I used to hear as a young G.I. of how I womanized my way across Europe. Bad thing was I never got to remember any of it and sometimes had to clean up sticky situations arising from it

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        2. Assalamu Alaikum.

          Miss sum Aisha Gaddafi unum de filiabus mendata proconsuli
          Cyrenaica. Ego sum ​​currently in unam residendo Africae regionibus, ut infeliciter profugus. In interim, mea familia signum Western gentium ducti
          Lorem pater meus vult perdere aliqua. Et ripam Collocationes nostrum
          tabulae sunt in pluribus regionibus eorum peltas ad duratus.

          Adeunt ad me uestra opera mea leo.

          Si vis me uerba uestra mutante pretium tincidunt ut laoreet disponere, ut pecuniam a vobis.

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          2. This brings to mind a question that I have: If you are planning to do a create space book, and they tell you that “lorem ipsum” text will be rejected, and you actually want to include text by Cicero, is there a workaround?

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      2. I just got a new cat, a thirteen year old Persian whose fur was so matted half of it had to be shaven off. Lower half, he’s without trousers now and the tail only has a tuft in the end, pretty obvious too since he has black fur so that shaved off part is rather light gray now. He also turned out to be a full tom, both balls were found when that fur came off. Now I don’t think I could make him skate, but I could send you a picture of a half naked tomcat. With a face slightly reminiscent of a pissed off Samuel L. Jackson.

        Like

        2. You know … a good picture of what you describe could make you rich on the internet today. I spent twenty bucks for a coffee mug and a decal, for my Jeep, of grumpy cat.

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        5. At least you can make money with cat pictures in the US, I don’t know what the current fad is in Europe. Pictures of dogs butts that resemble Angela Merkel?

          Here in the US, Cafepress will let you upload images and then they’ll sell t-shirts and coffee mugs with the picture when people order them. Never looked to see if they cover Europe or if there is a European operation doing the equivalent.

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      3. I wonder what would happen if I sent Robert pics of the box art for Japan’s “Sweet Model Aviation Kits” — said box-art involving a horde of sapient cats led by a sixteen-year-old girl….

        (I know John Ringo would jump at that shit in half-a-minute. >:) )

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  11. I really do think that they believe “it really just grew that way”. How can they not? They have a news media, entertainment industry which have become a total echo chamber. “Default leftist”, I call it. It’s the only possible correct opinion, and look, everyone who’s anyone agrees! Anybody who thinks different is just some mean-spirited ideological deviant.

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  12. I’m sure your distraction is not helped by the fact that your friends and colleagues are *not letting up* on the email that distracted you this morning, and then they went and filled your mind with images of writers in totally inappropriate dress. I have the brain bleach you ordered…

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  14. It is increasingly distressing to me how often I come here and at the end of a blog post feel guilty for not having written more anything the day before.

    As Mom used to say, guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.

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  15. Re: Agatha Christie, I always feel like she had a lot of info and interests sitting back in reserve. A lot of the little side remarks she had characters toss off — sometimes they turn out to be pretty interesting.

    Btw, I’ve been rereading her by listening to audiobooks borrowed from the library’s Overdrive hookup. It keeps striking me that she’s a very experimental writer in her plot constructions, use of viewpoint and voice, etc. What’s more, she always has a reason for all her experimental weirdness, and makes them work for a living. But does she get credit for it? No! She was outdoing the literary types while proving with money that normal people will read experimental fiction, so it was easier just to ignore her entirely.

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    2. I read something odd about Agatha Christie. She apparently took her most beloved characters out of the plays she wrote based on certain novels, because she couldn’t stand her own characters any more.

      Great, one more thing to worry about. Editing is driving me crazy. Not quite that crazy, but still.

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  16. “if I could only have that, I’d be rich.”

    Now that we have that, think how rich our lives are as a result. Think of the friends (and enemies) you would have never acquired but for the internet.

    I have (as Bill Whittle once explained) convenient access to wealth beyond the dreams of the Pharoahs, from indoor plumbing to air conditioning and forced air heating to toilet paper to rapid travel to foodstuffs in abundance. That is not to overlook the wealth of books, theatre and musical performance within my grasp.

    I am not only rich beyond the dreams of average, my average is rich beyond the dreams of Cyrus, Amenhotep or Kublai Khan.

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      1. I have always thought that the non-linear sort of time tracking one would have to do as a time traveler would, long term, have adverse effects on the mind of said traveler. Now… some way to make a story out of this…

        Though I did have a character whom everyone called “Blinky” who was a vampire who was shoved like a ping pong ball throughout time and space, who would show up, say something random or incomprehensible, then do something equally bizarre and absurd.

        Only later would what he say make sense, but it would still be completely nuts.

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  17. I found this book in Google books:
    The institutions of France under the absolute monarchy (1598-1789). Volume 2: the organs of state and society. by Roland E. Mousnier.
    Maybe you could find something in it about the police force in Paris.

    Like

  19. ““What was the police force in Paris in the time of Louis XIII”

    Depends. Before or after 1635? At this date, Louis XIII introduce the function of police, justice and finance intendants. These officials, in turn, introduced reforms.

    The police at the time was the marechaussee (marshals). Police and justice are under the same authority, and marshals are unlikely to be dragged to a court staffed by colleagues, so abuse was rampant.

    However, the marshals didn’t have any authority in large towns and city. Local urban authorities had their own police force, often as old and with traditions dating back centuries.

    In Paris, this role was devoted to the “Guet” (the Watch), a militia-like corps headed by a Prevôt (Provost) at first. Under Louis XIII, the Provost role is very political and is a public charge bought by rich bourgeois. The Guet is lead by the Chevalier du Guet (Watch Knight).

    There were two separate Watch corps, one for day, one for night, each with its own organization.

    The day watch included Royal Sergeants, seignorial Sergeants and a milicia. In Paris, the seignorial sergeants were paid not by a “seigneur” (Lord) but by an ecclesiastical authority (such as the Bishop of a given parish). Royal and seignorial sergeants were often defending their jurisdiction ferociously, and just by running a few blocks, a criminal could change jurisdiction and thus hamper pursuit.

    The Royal Châtelet prison was well-known for its atrocities. Prisoners were systematically given the Question (torture). Arrested thieves often pretended to be clerics, hoping that the Royal police would remit them to the more lenient ecclesiastic justice. The Châtelet was often lenient with murders committed under the influence of alcohol (due to beer and light wine consumed through the day — nobody drank the cholera-contaminated water). However, thieves were at best branded or had their ears cut. At best. About 80% of them were executed. Women were buried (alive?) to protect their decency, as their hanging would have been a choking sight.

    The verses of poet François Villon (15th century, or 200 years earlier) wrote verses showing that the guet of his time was just as bad as the criminal they were supposed to fight. Corruption and abuse remained rampant, although the intendants somewhat cleaned up the Guet.

    The milicia was a troop of armed civilians organized in tens, fifties and quarter (250 men). They were under the orders of the Parliament of the Bourgeois (which was not a lawmaking body). Historically, the milicia took part in several rebellions, so the King watched them carefully.

    At night, the streets were patrolled by the Royal sergeants and the milicia. The Royal watch wore mail and helmets (and sometimes plate) (with even a few mounted troops), and they were noisy enough that criminals easily avoided them.

    Let me know if you want more info.

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    1. Fred — my email is sahoyt at hotmail dot com. I think I’m in 1626, but it might be 1627 in that series — it’s been suspended for five years, so the research is not QUITE present in my head right now. The overarching political plot that coexists with private murder in book five is the conspiracy of Louis XIII’s half-brother Caesar (and I’m of course blanking on his last name, the name of his other conspirators and the name of the plot. This is sort of like at the end of college trying to remember a specific high school course, particularly since those books were — not my choice –written in a white-hot heat over a year and a half. I don’t remember WHEN that plot took place, but I’ll get my bearings again before I re-edit the current books and do book six (by December because I’m not insane or anything.) So, yes, I’d like to keep in touch, since I might need help ;)
      Also, are we friends on FB? I’m not very good at keeping track.

      Like

  20. a video of naked cats skating,

    As opposed to cats in skin tight outfits and ballerina skirts doing triple lutzes?

    it’s hard as is finding 36 DD,

    FLPB?

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    1. FLPB? Nao compreendo.

      36 DD is easy on Victoria’s Secret, because there’s lots of frontally enhanced people who shop there. But some of us need to buy them cheaper/local. And that’s a b and a half. Today I threw away a bra because Dan looked at it and pointed out there were more holes than bra and therefore it probably wasn’t doing its job. I looked at the fact it had parted company with the central support rib and sighed and threw it away. But I wear them into the ground, because they’re hard to find at decent prices. And OMG for those of you who are crazy, please DO NOT send them to me as gifts! I’ve had weird gifts but that would make Dan get very worried.

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      1. Given how utterly individual the fit can be between different models of the same brand, much less between brands, I should hope not!

        Clothes shopping for and by women remains a very individualistic torture. Darnit. The ability to find a pair of jeans that fit well (other than one single lone brand/style) remains on the same list as my flying car, teleporter, and asteroid-mined diamond torc.

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        1. Does nobody here know what a gift card is? Does anybody doubt Victoria’s Secret sells them?

          Carl already gave the reason to not giver her an Amazon gift card, she’d just squander* it on books.

          * :-P

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      2. FLGS is Friendly Local Game Shop/Store, so I’m guessing FLPB is Friendly Local (something) (something). Having never shopped for bras myself, I can’t guess as to what the P and B stand for, unless B is for bra.

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      3. Maybe you should give Dan a heads-up about the 36 DD bras he’ll be receiving, because IMHO that’s what you’ve set in motion.

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      4. I would suggest a link to an amazon.com wish list where you select sizes, brands, and colors, but based on your blog posts, you would likely just fill it up with book and stuff.

        Like

      5. OK, not sending you any, but what do you consider a decent price (remember, I turn into ‘just one of the gals’ when around these conversations)? My wife used to shop at Lane Bryant, and they do have that size (not for all of the styles, but more than a few). If you don’t have one nearby, though, I don’t know if you would want to risk buying online because of what Dorothy said about individual fit.

        It’s a good thing I don’t have spare cash, though, because the temptation to send one of those things they called Bras that people used to put on the front of their cars is very high right now. :-)

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        1. Eh. I’m cheap. Under 20 is good. Yes, that restricts me to walmart. Shut up. I’ve been known to buy the good brand that fits at Amazon for 45 but Dan acts like I robbed the bank. :-P (It’s not that he’s cheap. I can spend 100 on books and he just goes “okay” but he doesn’t shop for bras and the price per square inch of fabric is… astronomical)
          Robert has a car bra. :-P

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        2. JC Penney… of course, the bras are not as good as they used to be… but I still shop there. I am full frontal as well, but larger around in the rib cage.

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      7. FLPB==Future Lower Back Problem, or as my father used to say “That poor deformed lady”.

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