Year: 2015

Okay, this is an odds and sodds post, but the first thing to do is to say that while I thought Captain Comic’s pamphlet juvenile, I didn’t think it was unfunny, I certainly didn’t think it was offensive (ah, yes, the famously bad word genitalia.  Let me clutch my pearls.)

I can sort of understand their taking the pamphlets off the table, though, not because they were the Worst Thing EVAH but because they were a direct attack on their philosophy.  Worse, they were a HUMUROUS attack on their philosophy and as we all know the devil cannot be mocked.

What I CANNNOT understand or forgive is the taking of the ribbons “Ask not for whom the puppies bay” and “Strawman Larry, that Man is a Jerk” while digs at them are WAY more subtle, are not offensive, and couldn’t even REMOTELY upset a person who is not on the other side of the controversy, even when that person was raised in a convent and never heard the word “genitalia” as clearly a lot of the SJWs did.

THIS is theft, nothing more, nothing less.  Oh, no wait, it’s also more.  It’s censorship of despised view points.  Worse than that, apparently Sasquan thanked this woman, Dori, for “policing” the freebies table in a public tweet.  I want to know who did it, and I want that person reprimanded by the  con.  There is nothing offensive about those ribbons — most of Liberton con had at least one — and you have no right to confiscate them and not allow them distributed.

This is Captain Comic’s comment on it in the comments:

I don’t tweet or twit or twot or what the hell ever, so I’ve not been able to thank any of the counter protesters on the chain, notably one Jim Rizzi (@RizziWorld). If your reading this, Jim et al, thanks for backing up if not me, at least the first amendment.
And to whomever used an official Sasquan handle/account to thank her, excuse me, I mean thank xir (fight cis normative pronounds now!) I say this:
You work with/for the con. You people have the reg info. There can’t be that many people with a “Captain Comic” badge name, and darn fewer with a first name of David. You want me, call me out with the Cat Voice From The Ceiling system (it makes more sense if you’re attending). Put something up on the meet and greet board and I’ll see about dropping by for a visit.
As I commented at Amanda’s blog, how the hell did this ever become THIS?
I AM EMANUEL GOLDSTEIN!
FTW!
Sincerely yours,
David
Captain Comic
Evil League of Evil Faceless Minion #6969
(And how did all the “childish/juvenile/immature” detectives miss THAT one?)

As for Mary-Three-Names claiming that the people who wear those completely innocuous ribbons self-identify — yeah, as what, not afraid of your shunning and calumny, Mary?  And Mary, darling, remember, you also just self-identified.  Me, I’d like to identify as not bowing down to the SJWs, right now, because, you know, congenital stiffness of the back.  I get it from my science fiction daddy.

And since yesterday one of the few people I respect and try to listen to (I don’t in general listen very well.  Not something to be proud of and something I try to change, but it’s not my default mode) Dr. Pournelle asked me why I am not writing, and why I’m involving myself in fannish politics.

I am writing — actually more than I have been in years, until yesterday when allergy to an antibiotic made it hard to see, let alone write, and I wouldn’t have written that post if I hadn’t been mad enough to do it despite illness — however, this is important because it’s no longer fannish politics.  If nothing else, this kerfuffle has proven it.

I’ll quote something overheard in a discussion from my friend Michael Z. Williamson:

The prestigious Hugo Awards, which honor science fiction and fantasy writing, will be held Saturday. Lately, they have been given to more and more women and writers of color as the world of sci-fi opens up — and that’s prompted a backlash from a group of mostly white male writers who call themselves the “Sad Puppies.”

My question is, why does NPR suddenly care about the Hugo Awards?

Pretty much every denial of a leftist media conspiracy are left in tatters for any thinking person, by all these major media handling a very niche subject with the same dishonest party line.

Why would the WSJ EVER care about the Hugo?

Why would the Guardian?

What’s next? Pravda and Beijing’s organ, whatever it’s called?

Okay, today was really not a good day for me to wake up back in middle school.  For those not aware of it I had an ENORMOUS auto-immune attack.  Yes, I know what set it off and it was very stupid of me.  It probably wouldn’t have set off if my whole system weren’t weakened by the grueling months of work on the other house. (Yeah I’ll post pictures here.  Those who saw the pictures on FB know what an Herculean task it was, mostly performed by Robert and I in hero mode.)

The attack was so bad that I went to the doctor, who proceeded to freak at me, because my arms are raw flesh, while I tried to explain that’s NOT what caused me to come in, but the fact I’m taking benadryl to control it and it “turns off” the writing which is difficult to explain to anyone who doesn’t write.  The stories are still there, the words just won’t come.

The problem is that since the steroids worked on my lungs but not the eczema last time (I think the eczema is mostly stress) they wouldn’t give me steroids and instead put me on a panoply of prescription and OTC meds which so far haven’t stopped the itching (yes, yes, I know, give it at least two days) BUT have thrown me in to the deep end of depression, do not pass go, do not collect three hundred whatevers.

So it was a really bad time to wake up back in middle school.

How did I wake up in middle school, you say?  Well, apparently — and note I’m going on reports of the other side via Twitter, the place the nuts go to scream — someone lifted a comment by Captain Comic from Amanda’s blog and put it up as flyers at Worldcon.  This is of course an “Attack” by the “puppies” and it’s the worst thing ever.

This is the entire text of the comment:

In the alleged flyer, the name was changed to I THINK (I’m too tired to go look and I’m saving my will power to pushing myself to actual work.) Carol Wilson, instead of Amanda.  Why?  I don’t know.  Who is Carol Wilson?  I don’t know.  Seems to be a non existent person.

The first I knew of it was a kerfuffle in one of my private groups, where people were saying that tracking who left the flyers was totalitarian behavior.  Others were acting like this was the worst thing ever and of course the concom needed to track the perpetrators to its source.

You know, I read Revolt in 2100 a long time ago, so I don’t presume to quote it, but I know when the main character’s friend is showing him the power of words to wind people up, he says something, and the Lyle is at his throat.  At which point the friend says “What did I say but that you are the product of a legally sanctioned marriage?”

I kind of had the same reaction to this alleged (again, the report was by someone who “took the whole pile” to the concom so I have no independent verification) flyer.

What the heck does it say that is not something we said over the throwing out Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg thing?  That for a professional organization, SFWA sure as heck cares a lot more about what’s down between your legs, if it’s been changed and how you use it.  Oh, and your color, too.

We’ve all said it.  And the other side of this fight has said more than once that it cares about “advancing progress” (to the Marxist past, but never mind) so I don’t think they can object to “socialist” either.

That is the unvarnished truth.  That is what the flyer (if it existed) said and what the comment says.  Now, honestly, yeah, it says it in as crude a way as possible.  No, I amend that. I can think of at least twenty cruder ways to say it. BUT it mentions genitalia and color, both of which send born-and-raised Americans into a froth I DON’T GET. People in the private group I belonged to were frothing over the use of “Carol Wilson” (I honestly don’t know if she exists.  Might be the name of the person who copied it, who knows?) and asking “what if this were your wife or daughter?  Would you want this said about them?”  What?  That if they wanted to do well in SFWA their genitalia and skin color mattered more than their writing?  Why is that so terribly insulting?  You can disagree with it, and most members of SFWA will.  But those of us who left because we think the silly organization has lost the plot and is now arguing over the irrelevant just sort of shrug.

I didn’t understand the furore then.

For those who haven’t been to worldcon, the freeby table, where the alleged flyers were allegedly placed isn’t even usually past registration but in the lobby of the hotel (if it’s different this year, let me know) which means people can put whatever in it and do.  I have int he past put things on tables of cons I haven’t attended (bookmarks and nefarious covers, yep.)  Some of those things will be off color.  Some will be insulting to people of various religions and political color.  My memorable one, because it made me do a double take, was from a Satanist group which opened up with Christ performing a sexual act. It was written in huge letters, so I couldn’t help reading the first paragraph and being grossed out.

Note I did a double take, but I didn’t grab the lot and go running to concom.  I know some cons remove stuff, though last I checked it was more likely to be the stuff of someone they hate than an actually offensive item.  Because we’re science fiction, and arguing over offense and freedom of speech would take THE ENTIRE CON.

Anti-semitic and political stuff doesn’t even register, because it’s so common.  Stuff threatening to kill say, George Bush?  Oh, my Lord, if the secret service took SF nuts seriously, we’d all have been arrested because of those materials in that place.

Now, if the comment had been posted in the official con news release, or all over the green room or something, then it would have been important, because it would have meant the concom was in on it.

AND if the comment said anything about killing socialists, or SJWs or whoever the heck Carol Wilson is?  Yeah, that would justify an immediate investigation.

But it didn’t.  As a blog comment it was passably witty.  As a pamphlet and out of context, in a con that’s not run by SFWA it was just weird.  Though I suspect there’s weirder stuff on that freebies table.

And then I woke up this morning to find out that not only is this alleged pamphlet THE WORST THING EVAH but that Amanda Green and I and of course the rest of the Sad Puppies are somehow implicated.

Guys.  Deep breath.  If we were implicated this would be A LOT MORE PAINFUL.  I mean, we’d have come up with something that got under your skin and crawled there.  Particularly if Amanda and I had been involved, because you see, we fight like girls.

So do you, so you should know the difference.  Only you fight like whiney, spoiled little girls.  All of you.  Even the guys.  I think it’s the statist persuasion.  You just don’t see fighting as something you do.  You view it as “getting the grownups attention and getting them to spank the people we don’t like.”

Yep, there’s a branch of girls who fight like that.  Like the 18 hell-spawned b*tches in training that almost made my middle schooler commit suicide by constantly accusing him of stuff to the adults.  And even we thought it was true, until I was waiting for him in a place they couldn’t see, and saw one of the girls who was “afraid of him” and whom he had “followed home calling names” — which is why I was waiting for him — following him out of the school calling him the foulest names and throwing ROCKS at him, while he just trudged on doing his best to ignore him.

But you see, these girls were the children of staff at the school, so they were believed and petted and given special treatment, and eventually we had to take my kid out and homeschool him for a year, before putting him in another school (where he didn’t have any problems, ever, and got a solid group of friends, both male and female, because really he hadn’t done anything but for some reason become the center of these deranged kids’ obsession.)

And they were girls.  Spoiled little girls who never had to struggle for anything in life. And therefore went screaming to the mommy-and-daddy substitutes.  And were sure he was dangerous.  And… and … and…

Let’s suppose the pamphlets existed.  Let’s suppose they were made by someone on the Sad Puppies side.  (More likely to be the Rabid Puppies side.  They’re more… insane?  But never mind that.)

What actually happened here?  The pamphlets, in clinical if unsavory language, called SFWA socialist and said it cared more about the physical characteristics of the writer than the work.

Um… okay.  And?

If it’s not true — and it can be argued it is — SFWA members who aren’t, of course, the ones the leadership objects to, can d*mn well defend themselves and cite reasons why no.

The Sad Puppies side has been called racist, sexist and homophobic and accused of being neo-nazis, which can affect our livelihood and personal lives.  I’ve had friends of decades tell me that they still stand by me even if I’m homophobic (and they’re gay) and I had to ask them where the h*ll they got that idea.  They got it because if you repeat something often enough and with enough screaming people believe it without thinking.

Which is how little girls fight.  “No smoke without fire” is probably the stupidest saying ever, but it was applied to me several times, when girls (I went to an all girl middle and high school) accused me of something I wouldn’t even remotely think of doing.  Because enough of them said it, the authorities thought it must be true.

These alleged pamphlets are similarly being touted as an attack and “the worst thing ever” and people aren’t stopping to think about what they actually say.  And Amanda, of course, is guilty, because she didn’t — what? — erase this blog comment?  Doss Captain Comic?  WHAT?

I’ll note Captain Comic, too, left a comment here (funny really) about working under cover at worldcon.  The comment is obviously innocuous and the under-cover consisted of buying registration.  BUT of course they’re combing our blog comments and someone will post it as evidence of wrong doing on my or Amanda’s part.

This is a very — VERY.  I can’t express how much — day to do this to me.  REALLY really really bad.  I don’t feel I have the energy to put up with this cr*p and I’m on my last nerve just from personal stuff that has NOTHING to do with sf/f (because, yeah, I have a life.  Fancy that.)

I don’t know who made those pamphlets.  I don’t know if it was a Puppy, Sad or Rabid.  You see, we REALLY don’t have membership numbers, (yeah, Rabid does.  Not my circus, not my monkeys) and the only thing you need to be a “Sad Puppy” is to say you are.

But I would caution people who are jumping on this as The Worst Thing Evah and An Attack and Proof of Puppy Perfidy.

I would caution you because, contrary to the other side’s deranged claims this is a movement of women now.  Yeah, Larry started it but he was ready to drop it last year.  This year, the women pushed for it to go on, and I’d have spearheaded it if I hadn’t been ill enough that I couldn’t.  Brad chivalrously offered to pick up for me, but the backbone of the movement is women.  Go through the prominent names: Larry Correia, who actually did almost nothing this year.  Brad Torgersen, who was taking over for me.  And then me, Kate Paulk, Amanda Green, Cedar Sanderson, and peripherally Sabrina Chase, Celia Hayes and a slew of other female indie writers whom I can’t remember now because meds.  This year Human Wave which is mostly women IS the Sad Puppies.  And next year more so, as the dreaded “Sisterhood” or if you prefer “Critique Coven” mentioned in my books is falling in place to support and help Kate Paulk carry the load.

See, we’re not spoiled little girls.  And all of us have found ourselves in the receiving end of spoiled-girls and precious-darlings attacks before: in school, in college, in our jobs.  We see these people coming, and we see them going.  And in self defense we have learned to fight like a girl.  You might for instance look for my post The Goat Kicks Back, in which I frame these lunatics in their own words.  Well, my friends have been capturing a heck of a lot of insane screaming since then, including over these alleged pamphlets which are, of course, The Worst Thing Evah.

I’m tired and depressed, which means I could totally do a post all in quotes.  Oh, I could.  And I could contrast it with the rather silly alleged pamphlet.  And we could see which is nastier, and which actually makes threats.

Amanda is much on the same page, as she told me this morning:

I read somewhere the other day that someone wants to ban the term “you fight like a girl” because it demeans women. I’m still shaking my head over it. One day, folks are going to realize that girls don’t fight by the rules. We fight dirty. We take advantage of any situation we can. We kick, claw and bite both figuratively and metaphorically. Saying that “you fight like a girl” is demeaning is just as ridiculous as saying there would be no war if women ruled the world. All I want to ask those folks is if they have ever been to middle school or seen a woman go full berserk in the protection of a loved one. You can try whatever you want where I’m concerned. I’m a big girl and can – and will – take care of myself. But come after mine and heaven help you because you’ll have unleashed a whole can of butt-hurt on yourself. The only rule I follow when it comes to fighting is that there are no rules. Best remember that when trying to pick a fight with me.

Because you see, if you want to make SF/F middle school, go right ahead.  We’re not leaving it.  If you annoy us enough we’ll just start fighting back like girls.  And you won’t like it.

You fight like a girl — a spoiled and ineffectual one whose recourse is to run to the “authorities” screaming for help against “the worst thing evah.”

We fight like girls.  Girls who were never the darlings and had to be competent and good at their jobs.

We’re all busy — in my case both with work and personal stuff — and really don’t have the time to pay attention to this nonsense in which no one was THREATENED and no one was harmed and the most offensive word is “genitalia.”

Yeah, if the pamphlets existed they’re unsavory.  If they were put there by a Sad Puppies supporter it betrays a juvenile sense of humor and lack of social ability.  THANK HEAVENS only Sad Puppies have that in Science Fiction, right?  (Did the sarcasm just drip so heavily it corroded the floorboards?)

Be real.  Wash your faces.  Straighten your pink ribbons. This doesn’t even begin to be as mean an attack as the Sainted Scalzi twisting my publisher’s words into their opposite.  It’s just silly pigtail-pulling. Get over it. Because if you don’t we’re going to get REALLY upset.  And you don’t want that.  No, seriously, you don’t.  Not that we’ll do anything physical, of course.  We will fight like girls.  We will make you the laughing stock of the world.

We’re very busy.  Be glad for that.

I’d advise you to throttle back on the whining before you tempt us into actually fighting.

UPDATE: Apparently my site has been reported as a malware vector.  NOT found to be, mind, but reported, so corporate places block it.  This has been done to MGC a number of times.  You know, I can’t think of a single time I even thought to do this to a blog on the other side.  Why not?  Because I’m not afraid of people reading them.  CLEARLY these people are afraid of people reading what I say.  Possibly because they know I tell the truth (to power, darlings.  Consider who has power in traditional publishing after all.  Yep, their side.)

I wanted to say “what are you?  Two years old?” but then I realized really, it’s the greatest compliment they can pay me.  “We’re so scared of you we don’t want people to even glimpse what you say.”  Keep doing it.  It just shows who you are and how terrified you are of opposing views.  (Slow Clap.)

UPDATE: Captain Comic left this comment on my blog

Captain Comic

*From what I hear — what you think I have time to read them?  I’m overdue on three stories and five novels, guys — the other side didn’t understand the meaning of “Go ahead, I have no objections.”  So today I’m bringing ESL guest lecturer Tom Knighton to explain the meaning of “I don’t care.”  ESL, you ask?  Well, I don’t know what they speak, but it’s CLEARLY not English. They keep insisting we don’t mean what we PLAINLY say we mean, so they must be reading what we say in some other language.  Brutopian, likely. (Readers of Disney Comics will know exactly what that means.  Why the happy people of Brutopia know everything) – SAH*

How hard is “I don’t care” to understand? – Tom Knighton

There are people who are just going to have an opinion on what you do, think, or say. It’s not any of their business, mind you, but they’re going to have an opinion. It’s a free country, more or less, so they have that right. However, it’s amazing how their opinions are often based more on the voices in their own heads, rather than anything you’ve actually said.

For example, I recently wrote a post over on my blog about how I really don’t care what the other side of the aisle reads, writes, or gives awards to. I just don’t care what they do. I care what I write. I care what Sarah writes. I care what Brad Torgersen writes. I care what Larry Correia writes. The list goes on.

You see, I care what those folks write because I love what they write. I want to know what they’re writing so I can read it. I care what I write because, well, it’s mine.

For anyone else? I. Don’t. Care.

However, not caring apparently means different things to different people. For example, while linking to my post, Mike Glyer of File 770 commented, “If Tom Knighton hadn’t titled his post “Why I no longer care” it would be easier to focus on his actual point”. Which is funny because my actual point was that I no longer care. Luckily, I have someone like Mr. Glyer to discern my real point.

Gee, thanks Mike.

You see, while Glyer’s been given a relatively free pass and considered by some to be a neutral party, he has also managed to try and set me up to look like a sexist schmuck by linking to a post where I take issue with a woman who wants to ban men from literary readings. Oh, I wrote that, sure enough, but he linked it in the Puppy roundup, despite it having nothing to do with Sad Puppies, but he left out the post from a few days after where I took men’s rights activists to task for calling for a boycott of the new Mad Max movie.

However, Mike’s not alone in apparently knowing what I mean better than I do. At least one commenter on his side took a post where I said I don’t like message fiction to be condescending towards people who do. I’m going to be as clear as I possibly can for a moment. I don’t care what you read, write, or seek to give Hugos to anymore. I think the stuff you like is absolute shite, but since so many of you have said the same thing about the stuff I enjoy, I really don’t give a flying flip if that offends you.

Still others have taken my comments about preferring action oriented stories as evidence that I don’t like “mushy stuff”, as one person put it. I almost gave myself a concussion from the facepalm I gave myself on that one.

I’m a married man, with a wife I love. I get plenty of “mushy stuff” in real life, so no, I don’t seek it out in my reading. However, I don’t close a book because there’s a romance subplot either. The key word is “subplot”. Not plot, subplot. I don’t want it to be a driving force in books I read, but I have no issue with it being there. There are some books were I all but demanded it, as a matter of fact, but as a subplot.

One comment I made was: I don’t need to be told that the protagonists are gay, straight, trans, or whatever.  That’s not pertinent to my interests.  Whether the story is fun, is.

As I’m sure my fellow Huns can imagine, this was taken as something completely different than what the words actually say. You see the word “need” up there? I don’t need to be told. I need to know whether the story is fun.

Now, some seemed to act like a gay character in a story made it unfun or something. This, boys and girls, sounds like what we like to call “projection”. Do they have it in their own minds that gay characters can’t exist in a fun story? I said nothing of the sort. I think nothing of the sort. I just said whether they’re gay or not isn’t pertinent to my interests. How difficult is that to understand?

Another took that comment to mean I don’t want the “mushy stuff” in my books. Again, I invite you to go and read my original post, if you haven’t already. Where did I say any such thing?

You see, I don’t care what these people read. Hell, I don’t particularly care what people I consider friends read. I care what I read. Nothing more, nothing less.

And yet, for some reason, there are perfect strangers blathering on about what I like to read. Am I just that interesting? Is my patronage that important to these people? Somewhere along the way, did I become the arbiter of good taste in fiction, and therefore what I like has some significant bearing on the publishing industry?

No? Kind of what I thought.

So why then does my choice of fiction offend so many people?

Of course, to those offended (and I’m sure they’ll be linked to this post soon enough), understand this: I. Don’t. Care.

I don’t care what you read, write, or vote for. I also don’t care if it bothers you that there are some books I like that don’t meet your oh-so-learned approval. I don’t care if it bothers you so much that I don’t actively seek out books with minorities, gay, trans, or whoever else you think I should seek out. I just don’t care.

In fact, I urge my comrades over here to not care either. We have argued that they’re irrelevant, so why have we given them so much relevance? Let’s read what we want to read, and let them read what they want to read. Let’s buy as many of those books as we can, so that publishers will produce more of what we want.

Will it force them to create less of what the other guys want? *shrug* Don’t know. Don’t care. I won’t lose a moment’s sleep over it either way.

Let’s just read what we like, don’t buy what we don’t like, return books that we hate for a refund, and let the free market sort it out.

When I was in North Carolina, at one time while my dentist was asking me questions while she had both hands and instruments in my mouth, she finished one of my sentences that started with “Oh, we grew up poor” with “But honest” which was not at all what I meant to say.  Oh, we were honest, as in we didn’t steal, but mostly for two reasons: one, grandma would have given us her “more in sorrow than in anger” look, and second, we weren’t conscious of needing anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I was a kid like other kids, and when there was a faddish toy I would drool over it.  But, perhaps because we didn’t have a TV till I was eight, it just never occurred to me that we were poor.  When I was six I asked grandma what we were and she said “We’re not poor, we’re not rich.  We make do.”

That’s about right.  In the same message in which my brother said we’d been poor as Job, he also mentioned we were rich as kings, much richer than we’re now when grandma would objectively describe our lifestyles as “what a luxury” what with running hot water and a bathroom per person in this house right now.

If you just said “Wut?”

Look, the only reason I knew there were people much better off than us is that at 12 mom contrived to have me attend a high school in the “rich” area of town.  (Theoretically, we all lived in a rented room down the street from the school.  In point of fact, mom paid a lady to forward our mail.) For the village we were between middle class and upper middle class.  In fact, when truly rich people came to the village or had their kids visit, I was among the small number of kids invited to play with them.

My childhood is, in point of fact, unclassifiable in US terms.  Sarah C. wrote a thing which I might post later, about all this, about the nostalgie de la bue and saying “but I was even poorer” that goes on on the other side, which quickly becomes “but I drank a cup of cold poison.”  She pointed out anyone born in the US (with the possible exception of Appalachia and other small pockets, such as the one Larry grew up in) was automatically better off than anyone born abroad.  From what I’ve seen, probably still is, except for the very rich.

OTOH the American assumption that those who come from  Latin countries that my dentist reflected must have been starving in tar shacks is almost — almost — infuriating.  The reason it’s not infuriating is that it is so funny.  Built into this is the idea that either Latin people are discriminated against in their own countries (wut?) or that they need leftists to enlighten them and make their lives bearable. Note this doesn’t apply if you come from English Speaking countries, where in point of fact, many people lived like we did when I was a kid, because then, of course, you have privilege, so you couldn’t have been poor-poor.

My delving into my childhood was more to show that I don’t impress conventionally.  And it’s really hard to sell me the Marxist theory of oppression that must be broken by government.

We’ve been damn broke.  And we’ve been enviably rich in many ways.  And we faced “you can’t come in” with “you and whose army”.

I grew up poor by US standards, but everyone was poor.  Okay, not everyone.  I remember going to the architect’s house when my parents were having the house built, when I was 5? 6? and being very impressed at the shiny woodwork.  We lived in a 100 plus year old house and our doors were painted and repainted with thick white paint.

My grandparents owned land and houses (grandma’s dad had bought most of the village before dying young.  He was a cattle dealer.  Yeah, yeah, I have cowboys in my ancestry) but in an era of rent control it didn’t do much, except for the fact we retained “right of cultivation” to a lot of the backyards, (lawn was sort of unknown in our circles) so we could grow twice the potatoes, had a chestnut tree and a lot of vines.

My parents lived extremely tight because dad has a religious hatred of credit.  Not just credit card debt, a hatred he passed on to me, or loans, but of any credit, including mortgage.  The first fifteen years of their marriage (I was born around year ten) were spent saving to buy a house outright.  They didn’t manage it, but built a house with a ten year mortgage.  And after that was paid off, when I was about 16, our lifestyle APPROACHED middle class US.

I still didn’t go to coffee shops as much as my friends, because I had no allowance, and earned my pocket money, but that was good as it saved me from the “coffee and pool” circle who usually repeated every year.

OTOH in my twenties I had some very rich friends who didn’t give a d*mn if they had to pay for me, so I got to vacation in really expensive resorts.  Mind you I came home to mom turning off the hot water (which the new house had) in summer because it was wasteful, but I got to go to places where the British nobility hung out.  And by the time I was in college, I was invited to embassy and consulate parties, due to my grades in foreign languages.  (Italian consulate had the BEST ice cream because most ice cream parlors in Porto were owned by Italians.)

Anyway, the reason for delving into my background was to point out that it rendered me singularly immune to Marxism.

When I was in 10th grade, one of my friends drank the koolaid and disputed with me that my family was upper class.  I asked her how, since her dad — skilled blue collar, manager — made about twice as much as my dad did.  Her sputtering reaction was that my parents were better educated, they had books, they–

They had the markers of upper class in the village.  Though in mom’s case, she was as educated as my friend’s mom, at least formally.  But mom took an interest in world affairs and history (mostly through the radio) while her mom took an interest in gossip and recipes.

I stiffly pointed out to said friend that Marx’s “classes” were economic only.  She didn’t like like.  She is still, I think, communist.  Eh.

My best friend at the time came from hereditary-upper-class meaning that her family had some noble ancestors (oh, who doesn’t in Europe?  Keeping it in their pants just didn’t apply to those people) and a lot of manners and parents who were both educated.  But I used to give her my used sweaters (when we got to the point mom was retired and, I swear, made those for recreation) because her family had 13 kids and therefore were a little tighter than we were with 2.  (Though I’m sure her dad too made more than mine.)

The completely insane background and the fact my dad acted like the dad in Have Space Suit “Dad, I want a radio.” “Go ahead, I have no objections” — Which meant I built one from parts of broken radios in the attic — left me singularly unimpressed by both wealth and poverty.  Later when my brother replaced his crappy and now broken tape player,(which he’d bought with his tutoring income) I bought it off him for 20 escudos and spent more time fixing it than listening to it, until mom got tired of her kitchen table getting used to perform surgery on the beasty and gave me a tape player bought from the smugglers (What?  Well, the shop was in Smuggler street which was a dead give away.  Yep, I grew up in a fantasy town) when I was 19.

I learned there was absolutely no virtue in being poor.  A lot of the truly very poor in the village made more than we did but spent it on either wine or frivolous stuff (mom classified meat every day as frivolous stuff, mind.)

In fact, when government started rendering assistance, most of the welfare cases lived in crappy houses and went through broke periods through what mom called “lack of head.” When they had money they ran through it, then pawned everything the second half of the month.

(Mind you mom thinks I do the same, because while I have two kids in college, I can’t drop 10k to come over with the kids when she wants me to.  To an extent she’s right.  No matter how tight the money, you can plan to make it plenty.  We choose not to live in a tiny apartment with the kids.  OTOH it’s our investment: buying more house than strictly needed, in places headed up and trading up regularly that allowed us to own a house that our peers couldn’t with double the income.  Now if we can sell it and downsize, when we no longer need the space and good schools are of no consequence, we can come close to debt free, which we couldn’t otherwise.)

All of this and dad’s cavalier attitude to anything I wanted to do “I need to go to Germany to improve my German.”  “Go ahead.  I trust you abroad.”  (I got a job as a hotel maid for a summer.) his absolute assumption that if I wanted I could figure out how to do it, and his certainty that he didn’t really care how difficult it wold be to get into college for instance, both of his kids WOULD make to college made me singularly unimpressed by people who complain of micro aggressions and discrimination.

And it made me singularly unimpressed by wealth, too.  My rich friends had it easier, of course, but they were also easily impressed by brands, and they had never had to fight for what they wanted.  If grades didn’t qualify them to enter public — free — college, that was all right.  Mommy and daddy would buy them a spot in the private one.

I think this is why the plot lines that consist of “victim is oppressed and spit upon and dies in gutter/gets bloody revenge” have always bored me.  The idea that you have to “make way” for someone and make their path easy because they’re a one-footed Patagonian Lesbian makes me laugh.

You are a minority/poor/oppressed and want to write science fiction?  Fine, I give you my dad’s answer “Go ahead.  I have no objection.”

You want to feature a minority/poor/oppressed in your story?  Go ahead, I have no objection.  Just don’t make them sad sacks who need the help of the enlightened to get anywhere.  Sad sack characters and ex-machina socialists are BORING.  I don’t care what they taught you in school, getting there on your own is much more fun, both to do and to read about.

This is something the establishment doesn’t get — both the genuine upper class and strivers.  It’s amazing how many of the puppy kickers are in point of fact well off, upper class in the Marxist sense, even if they feel “downtrodden” for whatever reason.  And the rest, the strivers, have adopted the attitudes of the “upper class” and their class-signaling Marxism.  As I said originally, more papist than the pope — It’s something they can’t seem to grasp.

The working class gets rescued by benevolent Marxists (or even attacks academics while drinking gin — good Lord, pull the other one, it plays Elvis) is only exciting to Marxists with messianic illusions.

From the rest of us it elicits a yawn and an itch of the middle finger.

Write people of whatever color, orientation, wealth level you want.  Make them live.  Make them interesting.

We don’t add special points for flagellation of Marxist stereotypes and we do deduct them for predictability.

Or write whatever the heck you want. I mean, the pap has its fans — but it’s not us.

Just don’t demand we doff our hats and bow and scrape and tell you that stuff we don’t like and which is formulaic and poorly written is “of course, better” because it “fights the patriarchy” or whatever other idea you’re obsessed with at the time.

We don’t care.  You’re in an entertainment job.  Your job is to entertain the public.

The public is rarely entertained by lectures.

If it makes you feel better, I’ll make grandma’s face when someone was bragging to her about how special they were, and I’ll say “Oh wow.”

But I still won’t tell you boring stories that conform to whatever the new Marxists are peddling are better.  Learn your craft.  Then write whatever the crap you want.  And let the rest of us write whatever the crap we want.

Go ahead.  we have no objections.

I’m no Adam Smith — which is good since otherwise I’d be really, really old — and I thought until recently that most human beings understood where money came from, how it was earned, and what it was necessary for.  Also, of course, what it was.  I.e. a symbol that allows free trade between individuals.

I thought this, arguably because when in 6th grade my younger son had to do a paper on the history of one of the inventions that made modern civilization possible, he did it on money, complete with a retrospective history of money and trade and an explanation on why money was a good thing because it facilitated trade between humans.

I should have known better.  At 12 my son was virgin of most higher learning, ignorant of the great theories of economics, and flying by the seat of his pants because a project was due.

The evidence from politicians, “economists” and social theorists starting with Marx is that there is a VAST group of people out there who have studied carefully in order to deny the function, use and utility of money and to substitute for it the raving lunacy of a street person, like the Occupy member who told us the government should just print money and give everyone a million or some such.  See, at the time I assumed this was just a street person and that other people understood LOGICALLY that money is a symbol for wealth and that money uncoupled from that symbolism has in fact no value.

But apparently there are adults (I’ll assume, it’s entirely possible the commenter below is a 4th grader who hangs out at Vile 770 from whence he came, but I sort of kind of doubt it) who believe that money is sort of a free bene produced by the government and the only reason you wouldn’t give more of it to everyone is that you were an evil greedy capitalist.  (Moustaches to twirl, optional.)

For the win, on the Post Ca Ira is a comment by Zander Nyrond (I noticed he misspelled Nymrod, too.)

A Spark of Hope – Amanda Green

I’m probably going to get into trouble for this but I don’t care. You see, something happened Thursday night of last week that made me stop and think. Yes, I know. It can be dangerous for me to think. That’s when those non-approved thoughts happen and I forget to walk in lock-step with those who are so willing to tell me what to think and what to do. Well, screw ‘em. Thursday night showed me there is at least a glimmer of hope for our country and I’m going to cling to it, reminding myself that what we see and hear from the main stream media isn’t what mainstream America thinks.

For those who don’t know me, I live in North Central Texas, right smack dab between Dallas and Fort Worth. For some, this is the beginning of “the West”. For those of us who live here, it is the difference between fast-paced Dallas (although nothing like NYC) and a slower-paced Fort Worth. We have many of the same problems of any major metropolitan area. We have our fair share of poor schools, gang-related issues, drugs, crime, and poverty. You name it and you can find it. Maybe not in the same numbers of say, Detroit or Cleveland, but it is there.

Like too many places of late, we’ve had our own instances of white cops killing black youths. The last time that happened was less than two weeks ago. Late one night, 19 year old Christian Taylor, a young man who had so much promise ahead of him, broke into a car dealership in Dallas. Security video showed him jumping on top of cars, denting hoods and breaking windshields. When Arlington police arrived, they found him inside the dealership building – Taylor had driven his car through the glass wall to gain access. And, unfortunately, events played out in such a way that this young man lost his life. A rookie cop made access to the building, separating himself from his training officer and Taylor was shot and killed.

When the story first hit the media, there was no doubt the media was playing up the angle that we have seen all too often, that of a cop too eager to kill a black youth. A “copy” of the radio log was leaked to the media showing only two seconds elapsed from the time the cop confronted Taylor to when he killed him. The only problem happened to be that the “copy” turned out to be a heavily edited copy and that two minutes elapsed instead of two seconds.

Now, this piece isn’t about whether or not the cop in question was right or wrong in what he did. In my mind, mistakes were made on both sides. Taylor never should have been at the dealership and he sure as hell shouldn’t have driven his car through the glass to gain entry. He shouldn’t have run when the cops arrived and ordered him to halt. But the rookie cop made mistakes too. He shouldn’t have made entry into the building without first securing the scene. He should have waited for back up. His training officer should have had better control over his actions. I won’t speculate on whether he should have deployed his Taser, as his training officer apparently did, instead of his weapon because I haven’t heard all of the tape nor seen the video. All I know is a young man lost his life and a cop is now without a job. This was a tragedy no matter how you look at it.

So what does this have to do with what happened Thursday night, you ask. Very simple. No matter what the media tried to do with this story, no matter how they tried to stir the pot of discontent, it failed. And believe me, the media did its best to make this story into much more than it is. Not just locally but on a national level. In fact, the national media was the worst about trying to stir up trouble. I heard media mavens trying to draw a parallel between what happened in Arlington to what happened in Ferguson. I stopped counting the number of times the national media led the story off with some version of “There’s been another black youth killed by a white cop”. When it became clear the “copy” of the radio log had been heavily edited, national media was all but silent on it. After all, it didn’t fit the picture they wanted to paint.

Fortunately, the Arlington Police Department is active on social media and learned about this leaked “copy” very early on. It didn’t take APD long to release the entire log, showing that things didn’t quite play out the way the media was portraying it. Even more fortunately, Taylor’s family, while grieving and having more questions that any parent or family member should have about a loved one’s death, called for calm. They didn’t fall into the trap the MSM tried to set for everyone involved. They have been class acts through this all, mourning Taylor and asking for answers but also asking for calm from all sides. My heart and my prayers go out to these people and I hope they get the answers they want and they deserve without much more delay.

So that is the basic background for what happened Thursday night.

That night, I went into Dallas to see Motown – the Musical with my mother and a friend. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, so the thought of spending an evening enjoying the music of that era thrilled me. I also expected that the crowd for the show would be a bit different, not because of the fact it was Motown but because we were going on a night of the run that we don’t usually go to. This was one of the last shows instead of early into the run.

The audience was filled, something I was thrilled to see with school starting soon. The people attending were a bit older than usual, on average. Again, not surprising because this was one of those musicals that called out to the fans of Motown and let’s face it, Motown was at its most popular in the 60’s and 70’s.

I hadn’t seen Motown – the Musical before. All I knew was that it would have some great music and would tell the history of Motown Records. From the reviews, I expected plot to be sparse. I didn’t care. I was going for the music. So imagine my surprise when the plot (yes, it was less developed than most musicals but it was most definitely there) followed historic events. John Kennedy’s assassination was shown, as were the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Nor was the language of the times sanitized.

I’ll repeat that. The language of the times was not sanitized.

There are times during the musical when various people ask Barry Gordy, Jr., founder of Motown Records, why his sales force is all white. Initially, there is no answer. Then, as the world begins changing during the upheaval of Vietnam and Flower Power, and all the other movements of the 60’s and 70’s, he asks his sales manager the same question. In a subsequent scene, a promoter from down South calls the Motown sales manager and is all but beside himself with anger and disbelief. He wants to know why the sales manager sent a “g** damned n***er” down there. The sales manager, as white as the driven snow, doesn’t miss a beat. He asks the other guy how much money he makes off of Motown records. Then he says that if he wants to keep making that money, he’d better get used to seeing that “g** damned n***er” down there.

When that happened, you could see the audience reaction. You saw a number of folks, mainly white, holding their breaths. After all, we’ve learned, often the hard way, that you just don’t use the N-word. Some of us have been on the end of the lectures that it is all right for blacks to call one another that word but it is never to pass our lips. We shouldn’t even think it. So to hear it on stage, and so soon after Christian Taylor being shot by a white cop, there were those in the audience waiting for the shoe to drop.

It didn’t. I didn’t see or hear one angry mutter, one angry reaction from anyone in the audience. The very nice African-American woman sitting next to me, simply nodded sagely and commented to her companion that she was so glad things had changed for the better. She remembered those days. Things might not be perfect now but they were so much better than they had been and that was what we all needed to remember.

That seemed to be the reaction of everyone in the audience. I wondered at it and then realized that I had fallen into the trap that MSM had set. It had done its best to foment discord between the races that we now expect trouble. Worse, we expect it at the drop of a hat. Fortunately, that hat did not drop Thursday night and I got to see that there is hope that it won’t drop, at least not for long.

You see, those men and women in the audience, be they black or white, knew something that the media and those social activists who go into communities they have no ties with and who serve only to stir the pot of trouble did not. They knew that, while there is still a ways to go in this country to rid it of foolish prejudices (on all sides), we have come a long way. They knew that you don’t move forward if you resort to violence as your first choice. They have been there. They know it is better to build bridges than it is to blow them up and then trek figurative miles to find another way across the chasm of prejudice and distrust.

For three hours Thursday night, several hundred people of all ages came together to remember times much worse than today and to celebrate the fact that we have come so far. We celebrated the victories. We mourned the loss of men and women who had a dream and did their best to follow it. We ignored the media that would have had us at eachother’s throats simply because of a single word.

In short, we proved the media is not nearly as powerful as it would have us believe and, for that, I am most grateful.

So here’s the final point. As the Christian Taylor case showed, the media is quick to release and comment on anything that serves the cause du jour. It doesn’t do the fact checking it should. It doesn’t issue the qualifiers it should when it gets information from unconfirmed sources. So, instead of jumping to conclusions – either to immediately agree with what the media says or to immediately disagree with it – find that grain of salt and apply it.

Most of all, remember that there is still hope for this country. It might not be as big as any of us would like but as long as that glimmer is there, I will continue fighting to grow it from a spark to a flame. Will you?

So, let’s suppose there was an award that no longer meant increased circulation for the book that sported the little seal on the cover: how far would you be willing to fight to preserve the right to have the award given to the people you wanted/to have the chance at the award yourself? If you were, that is, someone who played by the rules of the “in” group, the writers and publishers we’ll call “the old establishment”?

I am making a leap here, as I’m not sure the Hugo no longer boosts print runs at all.  I know it no longer boosts them as it used to, because the Hugo used to be d*mn big noise, when I came into the field.  The hierarchy when I came in, as told to me by older and more scarred pros was as follows: The Hugo meant an increase in circulation; the Nebula did nothing for you; World Fantasy Award LOWERED your circulation.

No use arguing those, btw.  Last time I sat at a world fantasy banquet, the publisher was loudly hoping her author wouldn’t win it.

How does this happen?  This happens because science fiction forgot it was science fiction and its greatest aspirational desire was to be considered “literary” — where “literary” is neither better nor worse than other writing but has the markings of “stuff they teach in college.”

Now I have nothing against stuff they teach in college, but it’s in truth just another genre.  You might think it’s “better written” but that’s because it’s what your college professors told you it was good writing.

As someone who has enough training to teach literature in college, let me tell you a secret: there is no sacred anointing that makes that stuff good and the rest “trash.”  As a writer it took me years to get rid of the markings of “literature” in my writing and even more years to believe that this was NOT what denoted quality. My first series still suffered heavily from it and was tagged as “literary fantasy”.  So did the Magical British Empire for that matter.

Those markers?  They’re mostly an aping of the things we consider “literature” or “important literature” because they attach to books that have proven their importance by surviving the centuries.

So, for instance, the language will be a little difficult, and the rules of the world/behavior might seem irrational.  Listen to me very carefully: in centuries old work it is so because the time has changed.  To put them in intentionally is akin to faking antiques in furniture something I know how to do and which is in fact a difficult craft, but which does not make the furniture into REAL antiques, no more than the use of tricks to make something feel like an old work that has been good enough to survive the centuries makes that work one that will survive the centuries.

In fact, something you can be sure of is that almost every work that is lionized by the elites of its day will be ridiculed by the future.  With exceptions, of course.  Shakespeare was beloved of both the groundlings and the elites.  But he lived in more robust times than most of us do/have throughout history.  In the bloody turnover of Elizabethan England, a lot of newly enriched merchants were the elites, and they hadn’t acquired a veneer of faux sophistication yet. And what kept Shakespeare’s work alive and going is that he did appeal to the masses.  Go and count how many small American towns are named after his characters/locations.  These were colonists, living hardscrabble.  They had no room for affectation and affected tastes.  They loved it because it spoke to them.

But unfortunately somewhere in the nineties or two thousands, the turn over of science fiction and fantasy professionals and fandom into the hands of people with degrees in humanities from excellent colleges was complete.  Which means these people are trying to write/publish that which would impress their erstwhile professors or their colleagues now.  And they all come from similar milieus.

This would be fine if science fiction were in fact a “literary” subgenre.  Or if “literature” would ever approve of science fiction.

In fact science fiction is still sneered a by academics and their minions who hark back to an SF that never existed and talk of “naked girls and alien space lizards.”  In fact a well known novelist with SF themes got very upset and said something of that kind when they asked her about science fiction.

(Oh, and let me interject here that yes, there is craft to “literary” and it’s hard to do.  But that doesn’t make it “better” — better according to whom, tovarish?  How will your work survive the ages when people won’t give you their beer money now. — every genre is hard to do WELL.  Yes, even romance.  The increasing slide of romance into erotica means that people have more trouble conveying “sizzling hot” without describing the body parts going into other body parts.  That’s craft they’re lacking. Writing transparent prose so that the reader remembers as if he lived the story and doesn’t stop to admire your pretty prose is d*mn hard, particularly for someone afflicted with my love for words)

So, given that you could never get into the “big boys” table of literary and are stuck trying to make science fiction/fantasy look “literary” and looking down at your colleagues and screaming you are SUPERIOR TO THEM, and that the award at best gives you a modest boost, how hard would you be willing to fight to keep it within the right kind?

Apparently the answer is: up to calumny, slander, character assassination, death threats, hate male, and the destruction of your own reputation as a sane and reasonable human.

When we set out on this, back in the dim days of our first discussions of Sad Puppies (I object, of course.  I have cats) the goal was to make the Hugo worth something again.  Granted, we can’t cater for everyone’s taste.  If you’re a heavy mil-sf guy and the prize goes to hard sci fi it won’t be to your taste.  BUT to cater to the “literary” crowd is to cater to the tiniest fandom in SF.  (I found this out in sincere arguments with agents while looking for one between my third and fourth.  They all wanted me to write literary sf — because I CAN do it — because it would win awards and increase THEIR prestige (and make me slit my wrists in a warm bath if I had to write much more of it.  It was no fun.) But they all candidly informed me that it sold almost nothing and so I should try to get a job teaching or write for literary journals or something.  Why do you think they kept telling us that Ancillary Justice as a “fun space opera” — because no one buys “literary”.  Or yeah, some people do, but not enough to keep you in writer kibble.

Our idea, goofy as it sounds was to get some good books/good names associated with the Hugo, so Hugo would mean a boost in print run again.

We were shocked at how hard they were willing to fight to keep it a “just us” club.  And the ridiculous levels they’d go to.

And then I realized that, like the agents I interviewed they don’t view the Hugo as a promotional tool at all.  They view it as bling.

What I mean is, when your book hardly sells, and you have to have other jobs –teaching, speaking, whatever — you need the awards as an appearance of legitimacy.

Awards are very important because most of the general public, even the casual readers who MIGHT try SF know nothing about the award process, who votes for them, or how it has gone.

So if you can’t say “I’m a bestseller” saying “I have x award” gives you immense prestige in the eyes of the world. I realized this while talking to someone who had read his first ever sf novel over summer and was asking me about mine.  He was like “yah, uh uh” until I said “And it won the Prometheus.”  He obviously had clue zero what the Prometheus was, but “won the Prometheus” translated to “instant affirmation someone else liked it” and he wrote down Darkship Thieves for looking up later.

And even if — as has been the run in recent years — picking it up after finding it had won an award, you immediately put it down and promised never to read any SF again, if that was the best out there, the bling still has value.

Why?  Because they’ll book you on TV when there’s something even vaguely related to SF.  Because all foreign countries still translate Hugo winners because they don’t know any better (and also most of them are more addicted to the symbols of status than we are.)  Mind you, it’s killed their market.  There’s a reason that Portugal no longer has sf/f shelves in most bookstores.  BUT you’ll still make a boatload of money from so many (if small) translation rights.

For the outside world, those who don’t read sf, having “x” “y” or even “z” award still translates to money in your pocket and being considered by the world at large as the best in the admittedly tiny pond of science fiction.

If your philosophy in life is “I got mine” and your goal is to get while the getting is good, and “Apres nous le deluge” doesn’t trouble you at all, you will of course do everything to keep riding the award pony until it’s so dead that it even stinks in the nostrils of the “mundanes.”

Think of it as the parable of Solomon.  If they weren’t killing the field in the name of uplifting it, we’d even let them have it. Because what we love, more than our own careers is Science Fiction.  Note most of the supporters of Sad Puppies have no books on the ballot, not even short stories.  And some who are on the ballot are there under protest: Dave Freer, for instance.

As it is, of course, we have to keep fighting. Because we want the genre to mean something and we want other people to find the joy and challenge in it that we have found.

If the books that won the Hugo, once upon a time, could speak to a young girl/woman in Portugal, who transitioned from reading them in translation to reading them in English and perfected her English in the process, if the genre could change her life and help her endure rather trying times, it’s a genre worth saving.

And saving doesn’t speak to going back to the past, but to porting the same enthusiasm and life to present day sf.  (i.e. stop with the formulaic repetition of what you think are “international” or “multicultural” truths.  Their attempt to be cosmopolitan which somehow uses exotic puppets to deliver their message to the world just reveals they never were out of your university campus, at least not in their mind.  Of them I think it can only be said: “Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” Real cultures have evil as well as good, a lot of them have more evil than we do, and it is patronizing and ignorant of them to make them into less than human, and walking advertisements for theirr academic philosophy. I agree that there needs to be more variety now, in a connected world, than there was in the past.  BUT not a variety that makes natives of other cultures into painted saints.  Trust me, that would have disgusted me when I was fully in that culture.  Oh, and if they try to attract people of the culture you’re writing about, forget it.  They’ll almost certainly get it wrong.  I can’t read anything set in Portugal.  the “flavor” is wrong. EVEN when other Portuguese write it, because they’re catering to the US market, anyway. And it’s better to write middle class US and make it exciting than to write a novel set in Lisbon and make it deadly dull by having all the usual villains and pseudo saints.)

I know this will be twisted and screamed at.  If they could twist Toni’s post that amounted to “let’s establish bridges of understanding” to mean she was trying to exclude people, they can twist anything.

And I don’t expect them to stop, because they care about nothing but their own false bling, their tarnished glory.

I just want them to know we won’t stop either.  Because that baby you want cut in half is still alive, if barely.  And we’d like it to grow up into a fully realized person, one that can lead humans to the stars and keep humanity human wherever we go.

Yeah, it’s a crazed dream, but at least it’s not all about the present and bling we can get to make people who know nothing of the field respect us.

And you know, as we’ve said over and over and over again, with us it’s all about the dream.

We’ll continue working for it.

So today I woke up after sleeping over 12 hours straight, and I’m still somewhat sluggish.

Do you know when you finish a book and your body goes “I’m done” and for a few days falls into something akin to flu only it’s not, and you sleep a lot and end up watching the A & E edition of Pride and Prejudice and IF YOU’RE LUCKY don’t read all Disney comics for 2 months?

Okay, maybe that’s just me.

Yeah, there are milestones I just passed, though none of them is finishing a book (not just now, at least.)

We finished work on the house, though we still need to get a realtor.  For those on FB who’ve seen pictures, yeah, it’s huge and (now) gorgeous.  This has been our strategy with houses, and we doubled our money on the two houses we lived in before, so we sank it all into it.  So, we have tons of money, but until it sells we’re broke.  Meh.

At any rate we finished cleaning it.  And that was a huge project now done.  I felt somewhat fluey-but given the amount of work we put into it, well…

But then yesterday we went up for Robert’s med school matriculation and I came home so tired, I couldn’t even READ and slept for 12 hours.

I think my back-brain has interpreted the ceremony was “we’re done raising him.”  While foolish brain is wrong, of course, you’re never done worrying for/helping your kids if my parents are an indication, it’s also right in a substantial way, because Robert is living elsewhere and is now treading his own path, one of which I know very little, and where I have to “let go” to a large extent.

I think my brain interpreted that as “we’re done with the heavy lifting now.  Rest.”

Of course I’m not resting.  Today I need to clean the house we’re living in, which hasn’t been acquainted with a vaccuum in three months, and then I need to finish short stories so I can write novels.

But in a very real sense, one task is sort of done.  Kind of weird as in my mind we’re still figuring out how to set up things, since getting out of our parents’ house.  Eh.  And now we’ve podded someone else out to his own little space, to do his thing, and the next will follow soon.

Milestones mean a new mile has begun, I guess.  Now is the time for what I never could do before: concentrate on my writing and REALLY work it.

… of course if other house doesn’t sell soon we’ll be doing it from under a bridge.  But no matter.  Things don’t matter, people do.  And I love and appreciate my two sons, and am looking forward to their becoming even more awesome as they take off on their own.

And yeah, I’m feeling sort of old, because they’re obviously men, but I won’t keep them back to flatter my balcony.

And after this cop-out post, the writer goes clean and vacuum.

Pulpy Things! – Julie Doornbos

Greetings! I’m Julie. I live on a mountain and do the art thing. And I have a thing for campy illustrations. Sarah has asked me to show you my embarrassingly huge collection of pulp fiction covers! You know you want to look.

*flashes trenchcoat*

I kid. Today’s post is (mostly) safe for work. So long as you work for yourself and/ or your boss can’t see what you’re browsing on the internet. I’ll leave the extra naked covers for another day. You’ll be fine!

Probably.

For educational purposes [delicate-lady-snort], I’ve divided these into three categories. The first category needs no introduction, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Covers With Scantily Clad Women That Don’t Need to Be Scantily Clad

Plutonians, gold bikinis, AND three sexes? Well hell, that has nebula award written all over it.

Her: Mildly irritated to have a man fused inside her bathroom wall.
Him: Deeply disturbed by that sparkly pink shower curtain.

For just a moment, please ignore how completely awful these space suit designs are. You see their belly buttons? No?

That was done for decency sake. That little bit of covering is the difference between Space Ladies and Space Hussies, my friend. (just ask Jeannie…)

Speaking of improbable spacewear…

Space Pasties! With tubing. For reasons. SCIENCE reasons.

My favorite part about this cover?

The little blurb telling you that it is complete and unabridged.

Somewhere out there is a heavily edited version. It’s just slurp noises.

That bit of red drool on the monster and the woman’s neck means he deaded her.

You’re totally oogling a corpse. You freak.

Speaking of freaks, our next category is

Covers With Monsters!

This is the far more terrifying version of Harry and the Hendersons in which I burn the movie theater down and everyone thanks me for it.

Art DIrector: “The book is titled WHAT? Don’t we have something ominous and mostly naked we can put on the cover instead?”

Somebody do something! That dinosaur is taunting Kenny Rogers!

I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but I think they’re forcing her to listen to a dramatic presentation of Fifty Shades of Grey as read by Gilbert Gottfried. (I’m… just going to let you google that one.)

Somebody do something! That bear is spooning Richie Cunningham!

Which neatly brings us to our third category…

Covers With Men Being Attacked By Things

This category brought to you almost entirely by whoever was in charge of the covers for Man’s Life, True Men, Man’s Conquest, Stag, Man’s World, and the simply named Men magazine.

Attack fish!

Attack snakes!

Attack otters!

Attack eels!

Attack bats!

Attack crabs! (with bonus incorrect usage of the word “cannibal”)

Attack rats!

Attack weasels!

Attack flying squirrels!

(and my favorite) Attack turtles! With bonus cleavage!

You didn’t think I was finished, did you? I told you my collection was huge.

Surprise fourth category!

WTF Pulp

“…and arsonists are my bread and shoplifters are my pickles and bank robbers are my condiments! It’s a whole crime sandwich!”

I wasn’t aware that the CIA was hiring teeny-boppers…

This is my horrified face. Moving along.

Oh good. A palate cleanser.

You laugh, but Spinrad was nominated for a Nebula for this.

You think I make this crap up, I know it.

That’s hot.

I think the author must have described the entire plot of his book out loud and then finished up with “do you think you can fit all of that on the cover?” and the illustrator was all like “yea, brah, I got this.”

That’s all for today! Next time Sarah leaves the door unlocked, I may sneak in here and show you my collection of sexy 80’s com-pew-turr ads.

You only wish I was joking.

Toodles!

Julie

*You know guys, I think I should leave the door unlocked more often.  What say you?*

I had a wonderful guest post planned for today but I’m in an away-remote location and can’t access the never sufficiently cursed email.  Okay I forgot the password, my fault, but when I ask to send to my phone WHICH IS REGISTERED WITH THEM they forget what account I’m trying to access.  Sigh.

We’re doing family stuff, so the post may go up after lunch OR tomorrow.  I’ll put something up early afternoon, anyway.

Sorry guys.