You see, I caught a second 24 hour ban for an OLDER post. Considering how many times I posted Mr. Caramel’s name, it’s going to be a LONG time.
Anyway, I can post in groups, and comment on other pages — want a comment from Sarah A. Hoyt on your page? Tag me, do — but I can’t approve new posts on my timeline (I turned them to approval-only during a similar kerfuffle, but not with FB.)
So, until I can promote the promo, there’s not much point doing it. Maybe tomorrow. We’re going to be on the road with irregular hours all week. And frankly, I’ve passed Deep Pink to readers, and am now trying to write a full-length space opera in the next couple of week. Also, I have SIX short stories overdue. Spent the long drive talking them over with husband, I now just need to write them.
As for why I’m not abandoning facebook? Because we can’t guys. That’s what we’ve been doing wrong for seventy years or so. We’ve abandoned their spaces and silenced our own voices. It not only makes us unheard, it gives them illusions of invencibility and has brought us to the brink of civil war.
This is what I’m posting in comments, all over:
Oh, also bake me a cake, Facebook. An Italian Caramel cake.
Are you a publisher or a carrier? Are you a wave or a particle?
What you are is a corrupt idiotic cabal. Maybe you think I’ll get so annoyed I’ll leave.
Only I’m not self-cancelling for your pleasure.
Bydand!
(And yes, curiously, I have a right to the motto. Tenuous, but there.)
And now I’m going to go write. Send me a file baked in a cake 😉
According To Hoyt 
Bummer. 😦
What a time to be alive, huh?
Dull is fine. I like dull. I could use a lot more dull in my life.
A dull decade would be nice right about now.
“Boredom beats Terror.” – some ox
Just call him Voldemort 2, and the next person Whose Name Must Not Be Said can be V.3, and so on.
There were once rules about siege warfare: when the walls are breached you may surrender honorably, and be treated well, but if you force the attacker through the meatgrinder of storming every last foot of the Keep you will be shown no quarter.
Even if this war were a hopeless fight (and it is far from that!) our enemies have made excruciatingly clear that there will be no quarter regardless of what we do.
“Have fun storming the castle”
do you think it’ll woik?
It’ll take a miracle.
Precisely.
Forget storming the castle. I saw we nuke it from orbit just to be sure.
Oh no, they are the ones impotently storming our castle.
Ah, so it is poison gas we need.
Poison gas is so declassee. How about lots of M18 Claymores (pointing the correct direction please) and several M67 “Zippo” flame tanks to clean up anything still moving excessively afterwards?
“there will be no quarter regardless of what we do.”
So long as they don’t play the “False Surrender” game I am willing to accept them. Those caught surrendering only in order to close with us will get what they’ve earned.
They cannot give quarter because their totalitarian philosophy cannot tolerate dissent; our philosophy require acceptance of dissent because that is the essence of what is needed for growth.
As for why I’m not abandoning facebook? Because we can’t guys. That’s what we’ve been doing wrong for seventy years or so.
*nod*
Oh so politely withdrawing when it’s made clear that we’re not welcome…even when they’re screaming to the skies about how everyone is welcome… doesn’t work.
Maxim 47: Don’t expect the enemy to cooperate in the creation of your dream engagement.
We have been letting them get away with that for far too long.
We didn’t realize that we were an enemy, rather than just an opponent.
Perhaps it is the benefit of hindsight, but…… how the bloody hell did that happen?
I’ve spent my entire life hearing Conservatives talking about the Enemy that would destroy everything. Mainstream Conservatives, not Bubba with his pirate radio station. You could almost list knowing this as one of the defining features of 20th Century Conservatism in this country.
Did everyone secretly agree that it is all hyperbole, and then get shocked that it turned out to be true? Or just think that the Left were not the enemy, only Communism? (doesn’t really pass the smell test: not when also identifying the left as crypto-communists)
Perhaps you should have listened a little closer to who those enemies were– it was folks doing specifically X, or Y, or Z. Generally folks whose JOB it is to advance those causes.
Not Aunt M who is a fluttery liberal but generally alright…right up until one day you realize that it is really unlikely to always be your fault when she launches into you.
And now, especially with communication in writing, you suddenly notice that she talks about you as an actual enemy, a legitimate threat, any time that you don’t do what she wants.
Ah! The realization is about the rank and file pawn all the way to the bottom of the totem pole, not the leadership and higher ranked pawns. That makes more sense.
Though who counts as high enough on the totem pole to be a threat has always been a difficult question with the left.
….you were raised as a Liberal, weren’t you?
No. The “rank and file pawns all the way to the bottom of the totem pole” are not all jerks who view us as enemies.
Although the activists would really, really like them to believe we think so, and it would be hella handy for them if we ACT like it.
The vast majority? Are just being polite.
They’ll make the right noises– or just not argue because, frankly, it’s not worth it– and then some asshole shows up with guns blazing and jumps down their throat because they’re a leftist and damn but it feels good for the blazer to go smiting about.
You know how I know this?
Because it’s already happening at least once a week with somebody deciding that he’ll lift the Left’s playbook (Because copying someone whose behavior pissed you off enough to abandon them, at cost to yourself, is such an awesome tactic.) and go be gratuitously rude to the groups that the Left claims they own.
News flash, they don’t.
And even Aunt M can be shamed into behaving better if you behave like the grownup.
Um, no… You are simultaneously on the mark and completely off the range. Ugh this one gets complicated.
90s homeschooled / conservative-hint-of-libertarian / christian. Except for having little to do with conservatives because despite agreeing on stuff none of us have been very good at getting along with conservative personalities (and vice versa: despite disagreeing on almost everything we usually can get along with liberal personalities as long as politics doesn’t come up).
Little contact with christians because all (or at least those tried before giving up) of the local churches turned out to be either clear heresy of some sort (no, not “everything I don’t like is heresy”, I mean *provable*), or was that and also had manipulative power hungry snakes for elders. I wasn’t kidding a few months ago when I said I hadn’t seen the “christian virtues” from christians.
Also little contact with homeschoolers because they were inevitably some combination of {conservative | christian | batshit insane} and see above.
And then to top it off little contact with anyone else, because this was the 90s. If you were homeschooling you were hyper-suspect. People would always come around to “questions” (translation: demanding condemnations) about why you didn’t put your kids in school.
Why yes, I *do* know my priors are completely #(^%^&@(#!&ed up. Have fun trying to recalibrate for what “normal” is (let alone *correct*), when you know that all the data you start with is completely suspect, and all the new data you get is also completely suspect because half the people talking are lying, and the other half deceived. And that “normal” is a warped concept in the first place.
In that sense the previous accusations of me being disingenuous have an element of truth to them: on one level I’m being completely sincere, on another trying to poke the universe and see what happens. Jordan Peterson has been very useful for getting some sort of grounding on this problem.
One of the worst crimes of the long marchers is that they based their lies on seeds of truth whenever possible. Inevitably the backlash has listed truths under the lies column because those truths have been tainted.
I was basing that off of these ideas:
* The left’s leadership and as far down the chain as are active coordinators were already known enemies.
* The previous confirmed by “Perhaps you should have listened a little closer to who those enemies were– it was folks doing specifically X, or Y, or Z. Generally folks whose JOB it is to advance those causes.”
* Then the next two paragraphs, where you talk about the low level rank and file “Aunt M” going full attack mode.
And I wasn’t referring to literally everyone. Obviously huge numbers of people on the left have been abandoned by their party. Notably including our current president…
Yes…
“Never underestimate the capacity for a conservative to make a colossal strategic fuckup”
…
I can’t rightly tell if that “somebody” is supposed to be me or not.
Also, conservatives taking as gospel truth whatever narrative the left feeds them is no more news than the strategic errors.
I can’t rightly tell if that “somebody” is supposed to be me or not.</i
I can't call to mind you– or any of the non-one-shots here– playing the "you're really a liberal" game. I'm pretty sure that I'd remember the laughing.
The closest I can remember recently is my own asking if you were raised Liberal, and that's entirely because you're hitting the Ayn Rand zone.
It's like the old joke about sending a diplomat to Ireland to make peace between the Catholic and Protestants, and he's an Atheist– so they ask which faith he's an Atheist from.
You can tell the shape of what was removed from the hole that's being filled, so to speak.
************
Sounds like your childhood was seriously screwed up– to the point that I'm wondering if you were from the Seattle area (don't answer that) because of what you describe that were self-describing as conservative.
Bleepin’ over-delete.
I can’t rightly tell if that “somebody” is supposed to be me or not.
I can’t call to mind you– or any of the non-one-shots here– playing the “you’re really a liberal” game. I’m pretty sure that I’d remember the laughing. Generally happens over at Insty, from the “Burn everything down waaaa I’m so mistreated I’ve been pre-judged” guys.
The closest I can remember recently is my own asking if you were raised Liberal, and that’s entirely because you’re hitting the Ayn Rand zone.
It’s like the old joke about sending a diplomat to Ireland to make peace between the Catholic and Protestants, and he’s an Atheist– so they ask which faith he’s an Atheist from.
You can tell the shape of what was removed from the hole that’s being filled, so to speak.
I have enough trouble getting folks to listen to me when I’m being blunt, and I’m terrible at being subtle– so the closest I’ll get to subtle is being polite.
************
Sounds like your childhood was seriously screwed up– to the point that I’m wondering if you were from the Seattle area (don’t answer that) because of what you describe that were self-describing as conservative.
*throws hands in air*
Yes, yes, howling internal voids that warp how a person thinks and behaves. Everyone who isn’t old and has an ounce of self-reflection knows about those.
I say “everyone who isn’t old” not as projection, but due to the simple fact that anyone who has grown up in the last few decades grew up in a civilization that was doing everything it could to tear itself to pieces at all levels. Some of us were just a little ahead of the curve and didn’t have the support system to mask the problem.
And then there are of course the people who are way ahead of the curve. When we are lucky they kill themselves privately instead of trying to take a bunch of other people with them.
If it’s a howling void, you are probably rather badly hurt.
Blindspots are one thing, but no, not identifying a howling void inside of yoruself is not due to a lack of introspection.
And here I truly have fscked up; to behave in ways that allow others to be perceptive is no different than barging in and shouting one’s problems to all and sundry.
(no, that this message is also part of that is not lost on me)
*shakes head*
Nope.
Insufficient hiding isn’t the same as shoving at folks. Not even for Himself.
It is a possible line of attack, though, so I can see how the connection would be made, especially with pain.
The later. We thought the democrats were duped useful idiots, not outright communists. identifying hte crypto communists among them was a game precisely becaus eof that.
I guess this is just another miss-calibration then…
In that case, I suppose that Sunday NaNo updates should go here:
Word count (as of this morning): 20076
Excerpt:
Emma said, “I wanted to ask you something: what do you know about the cat sith?”
“The cat sith?” Kenneth raised his eyebrows. “Where did you hear about them?”
“From Saoirse.”
“Really? And what…um, what precisely did she tell you?”
“Not much. I looked them up on Wikipedia, but all I got there was that they were ‘fairy cats.’ The rest of the legends were pretty contradictory.”
Kenneth looked nervous. “Well, then, I suppose that the basic fact you’d want to know about them is that they’re an unsuccessful group of rebels against the Seelie Court.”
“Like the will-o’-wisps?”
“Sort of.”
“It seems that the Seelie Court has lots of unsuccessful rebels. Aren’t there any successful rebellions in the Court?”
“Yes, many of them,” said Kenneth. “However, successful rebels don’t tend to advertise themselves as such. Others might get ideas. As for there being lots of rebels running around, remember that we’re immortal. The cast-out rebels tend to stick around until they make enough of a nuisance of themselves that the court sends someone to capture or kill them.”
“Might save a lot of time if you guys just did that from the beginning.”
“It might, but Court doesn’t like to use executions. The official justification is that death is too easy; an eternal life of regret is the only appropriate punishment for those who defy the authority of the High Ones.”
“And the unofficial justification?”
“The unofficial truth is that the Fae don’t like to see the deaths of other Fae, even the worst criminals. It reminds us that, while time doesn’t touch us, we aren’t invulnerable. Fae don’t like to be reminded that we can be killed.”
Emma nodded in sympathy even if wasn’t something she could really empathize with. “But we’re getting off topic. The cat sith?”
“Ah, yes. The cat sith. The cat sith were a group of cat-shapeshifters, as you might have guessed from the name. They were rebels against the Court, like I told you, but not precisely rebels like Will and his crew were. Will was making weapons to fight the court and take over; the cats claimed that they just wanted to be left alone. They refused to acknowledge the authority of the Court, the Fairy Queen, or anyone who might tell them that they weren’t allowed to do what they wanted to do.”
“The cat who walks alone,” murmured Emma, remembering her Kipling.
“These were definitely cats who wanted to walk alone,” Kenneth agreed. “And to make a long story short, they did. The Court eventually granted their wish by driving them out and then cutting them off completely. They were cut off not only from the Fae realm and the rest of our kind but from their magic as well. The curse that was placed on them prevented them from shapeshifting at all.”
“So they aren’t cats any more? Or is that they aren’t human?” It seemed to Emma that it had to be the latter; surely Saoirse wouldn’t have suggested a cat sith as the possible identity of Emma’s cat if they couldn’t enter cat form.
“Well, that’s an interesting subject. The curse was designed to trap them in human form, but it didn’t precisely work. Or maybe it did work, but in a twisted, perverse way. They were each left with enough magic to change into their cat forms nine times.”
“Nine times? Is that where the legend of cats having nine lives comes from?”
Kenneth shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe the legend inspired the punishment. At any rate, nine times. And once those nine times were used up, they’d be stuck in human form forever, pining for what they’d lost and regretting that they hadn’t obeyed the Court when they’d had the chance.”
But . . . are there Cat Jedi?
There have to be. I have a black cat who is vaguely emo. He also has a BB8 toy which he attacks with vigor. I kind of wanted to call him Kylo Ren… Behold Darth Kitty…
NonNo:
Sat, 900.
Sunday, 153.
I did say I’d post snippets from WIP, so here’s a snippet from the very beginning of “Coffee With Kali The Destroyer.”
Alice Haddison needed a coffee in the worst way. Not enough sleep the night before, and it was raining. “I gotta have some java or I’m going to die right here,” she complained, pushing her black and white hair back from her face. “Hurry up.”
“Relax, cranky pants,” replied Nike with a long-suffering air, “we’re here already.” Nike was walking arm in arm with Alice, holding the umbrella and not slowing her up at all.
They arrived at the Green Lady coffee house and hastily went inside. The café was busy, with few open seats and people waiting in front of the counter.
“Oh god, there’s a line.” Alice’s shoulders slumped. “I’m so dead.”
“I called ahead,” said Nike smugly, and indicated the delivery side of the counter where two double cappuccinos waited. “Margaret fixed us up. You’re welcome.”
“I’m saved!” Alice exclaimed, going directly to the waiting ambrosia and taking a big sip. “Ahhhh, yeah! Margaret, you saved my life!”
“Can’t have you expiring on my floor,” said Margaret, the little pink-haired Emo girl behind the counter. “Nike said it was a caffeine emergency, I slipped a chocolate syrup shot in there too. Don’t drink it too fast or your brain will melt.”
“We had movie night last night, so Miss Haddison did not get her beauty sleep,” said Nike. “Stayed up late watching Cary Grant romances.”
Margaret waved acknowledgement, then turned back to her work. “Sarah saved you a couple of seats, and we have a new visitor. Go see, I’ll come and gossip when the line dies down. I want to hear all about the giggling and the swooning over Cary Grant!”
“Visitor?” wondered Alice, scanning the café as she took another fortifying sip.
Down toward the back was Sarah in her accustomed spot, the table covered in pencils and sheets of art paper as usual. Sarah had skipped the Goth makeup and settled for black jeans and a Sisters of Mercy tour t-shirt. She was sketching furiously.
Seated across from her was a very cute Indian woman. She was petite and shapely with perfect skin, luminous brown eyes, long black hair parted in the middle and done in a pigtail all the way down to her waist. She wore a lovely blue salvar kamees suit with rich embroidery on the eight cuffs of the sleeves. Because she had eight arms.
“It never stops, Nike,” said Alice conversationally. “Every week, a new thing.”
“No, it never does,” replied Nike. “I just ordered coverage, I’ll have major heavy backup here in 72 seconds, minor elements are here now.”
“It’s probably okay, Sarah and Margaret would have hit the panic button,” sighed Alice, her plan for a morning of lazy coffee consumption unraveling before her eyes. “I can’t see anything bad about her, just the arms. You see that too, right?”
“Yes, and what I’m seeing doesn’t obey the laws of physics,” said Nike. “Two shoulders, eight arms. She’s like a painting.”
“More 28-dimensional magic horse shit,” grumbled Alice, touching the worn Colt 1911 in the holster behind her right hip, just to reassure herself it was still there. “I was hoping it was just sleep deprivation.”
Wait! Have I missed some magic horse shit?
You people with Nom-de-internets make it hard for the memory impaired to find your stories!
No, you haven’t missed anything yet. I’m still to wussy to pull the trigger on Book 1. Real Life is interfering with me learning all the cover creation thingz, plus I’m a PhD level procrastinator. Not just an expert, I’m breaking new ground in avoiding getting things done. So much easier to just write book after book and not worry about it.
But yes, there’s some serious 28 dimensional shenanigans going down out there. Did you know that there are dimensions both above and -below- our three? And sometimes things sneak out of those lower ones, or in this case come down from the higher ones and show up at the cafe unannounced.
Just because its Sunday:
Sarah looked up, saw then and waved for them to come over. “Hey, I saved you a spot!” she called.
Alice took the seat next to Sara, Nike sat next to the Indian woman. “Hey, Sarah,” said Alice. “Who’s your friend?”
“It’s Kali!” said Sarah excitedly. “She came in a couple minutes before you. I called Mabel, she says Kali is cool. She’s coming over with Siska right away.”
“Okay then,” said Alice relaxing slightly and addressed the Indian woman. “Hi, I’m Alice Haddison. This is Valkyrie Nike. Are you here for a holiday, or is the world coming to an end?”
“Again,” added Nike darkly, as Alice reached over to shake a hand.
Kali took Alice’s hand in three of hers, demonstrating that she really did have eight of them. “Hello Alice, I am Kali,” she said a little mischievously. Her accent was Indian, like her outfit. “I am honored to meet the source of so many mighty tales of battle.” She leaned forward confidentially, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Did you really carve your initials into the Dark One Oewaebahr’s invincible hide?”
“Yes,” answered Alice truthfully. “I shot him in the face, too. Are you really Kali? Like the Kali in the stories?”
“No, not really,” said Kali. “That one is mythical. Still, some of her exploits resemble things I have done. My appearance here in this seeming is a translation, to help you humans understand who I am.”
“You seem too pretty to be Kali the Destroyer,” said Nike critically. “Where’s the bowl and the severed head?”
“I left those at home,” said Kali with a careless four-handed wave of dismissal. “I must say you both look lovely today, despite the rain.”
“Well, thanks,” said Alice a bit hesitantly. She wasn’t used to getting complements on her looks. Between her hair and eyes, she was a rare and mildly unsettling sight. Her hair black on the left side of her head and white on the right, with a fairly even part between the two, Her right eye darkest brown, her left eye the lightest blue/grey. Not to mention, she was wearing some very un-ladylike army boots. “So, not to repeat or anything, but is there a demonic emergency or some other world-destroying disaster coming?”
“There is not,” Kali said reassuringly. “I am, as you said, on vacation.”
And, what is the object-adjective linking? It’s ambiguous. Could mean shit from a magic horse, which is not itself magic; or it could mean magic shit, from a horse which may or may not be magic.
English can be so twisty sometimes!
c4c
c4c
Do not go gentle into that good night
Zuckerberg should burn and rave at posts of name
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
A day of transit on each side and four days under FTL got us to Columbia, one of two colony works in the system- they must have taken the trip kind of slow; it was only 56 light years. Camp Bellavia was a pretty sizeable base founded during the last war that had been expanded to a basic training facility because we’d since learned a little lesson about training all of our forces in one system and having to ship them everywhere. For some people Columbia was kind of rough, since its gravity was almost 1.3g, at the high end of tolerance for a lot of people. The Army, of course, considered the high g ‘good training’.
After loading the dropships, I got seconded to helping Sergeant Menedez get the other privates secured. They weren’t quite used to having to strap down all their gear and then the harnesses for the dropship seats were a little more than what commercial and transport shuttles used. Once they were good- and the sergeant checked my work- I got locked down myself and the sergeant did his own. One recruit, a Brazilian named Oliveira, actually crossed himself as the dropship lurched when the launch rack picked it up. Several of the dozen trainees looked worried or sick as the dropship faintly wobbled, and I wondered how hot of a drop the pilots were going to do.
We slid into the rack and then sideways. There was a loud thump from the bay doors and then suddenly all exterior noise fell off as the launch bay depressurized. Oliveira looked like he was going to panic, then the outer doors opened, the engines lit, and we were away from the transport. My stomach lurched a little as the dropship turned and the engines opened up for the deorbit burn.
Poor Oliveira was not doing well.
From the vibrations conducted through the hull I could tell we were doing a fairly strong burn. I briefly wished I was in a suit so I could at least monitor what was going on, but figured I was better off keeping an eye on my fellow recruits.
Then the engines cut, and the dropship turned around. Another stomach-lurching move and I was surprised no one lost their breakfast.
Followed by the blissful silence of cruise. I didn’t realize how much the other recruits would remember from the previous day’s briefing, but this meant we were on our approach vector and would be hitting the atmosphere in a few minutes, depending on how hot our approach was.
Some subtle turbulence told me we were actually getting into it. The shuttle tilted back to take the reentry heat on its belly as the air really started to bite in.
Then sound came back, gradually. The rush of the air around the dropship, and then as the air got denser the turbulence picked up. I counted how long we spent in that stage before the pilot brought the nose down and the atmospheric engines spooled up to tell myself how steep our decent was and it was roughly ‘scare the rubes’ steep- just steep enough to give the new trainees a start but not dangerously steep.
Ten minutes after we disconnected from the transport ship, we massively braked and pitched up to kill our speed, and I pictured the dropship’s outboard engines pivoting to counterbalance the inboard engines’ vectored thrust- then our wheels touched the ground and we were on Columbia.
Sounds as if you’ve been targeted for destruction. You know the technique: once trolls find you they swarm and file FB Moderator complaints over any and everything, so that the sheer number of complaints is itself a proof of BadThink. Think of them as having weaponized an FB auto-immune disorder.
I
don’t know ifdoubt FB has a protocol for defense against such swarming, as Idon’t know ifdoubt it is easily accessed.“Send me a file baked in a cake“?
What kind of file? ASCII? Text? JPEG?
Sarah, I have a file coming together nicely of the Alpha-Beta email list requested on fb. The only question is where would you like it delivered?
I’ll on on fb
Ok.
That was, I’ll pm. Grrrr
Vote time:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/194086-what-work-about-the-season-of-winter-shall-we-read-in-december
How do you upload files into cakes? Do PDFs fit their bandwidth requirements?
Sigh… Only about 1,000 words this week – and those mostly on the daily Observer log and the Veteran’s Day blog post (to go up first thing in the morning, don’t look for it now).
We’re getting a new oven/range in on Thursday, and $SPOUSE$ decided that it was a good time to completely reorganize the kitchen (it’s the same form factor, except for being about 2″ higher on the control panel – that protest fell flat…). Plus install a new exhaust fan. Which, while I was fishing around in the walls for wiring anyway (switch to fan wiring is way too old), I decided to finally put the network drop in for the younger daughter.
Tomorrow is some metal cutting and bending. Plus a bit of wall patching to cover up the klutz marks.
Hopefully more progress to report next week; the next priority is the Christmas short (Gifts). Then Going Home, which has already grown into a novelette, on it’s way to novella.
Nano update: 12,465. Behind, but gaining ground. It was a 2,800 word day today.
New excerpt:
Sittas stumbled into the barracks. He wasn’t late. It wasn’t even light.
Still, Nicetos sat at the table with a lamp lit. He wanted to laugh at Sittas’s condition, but he could not. With effort he put on an expression he saved or the newest recruit assigned to the rear guard of his dekarchia.
“Pentarchos, will you be sober for muster in a mater o hours?”
Sittas turned as though noticing Nicetos for the first time. Nicetos realized Sittas had not even stopped to wonder why a lamp was lit, much less notice his friend and, more important right now, his superior.
“Nicetos,” Sittas said, a slur still present but obviously damped by sheer force of will, “have I ever missed a muster.”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“Probably not, but no. I will be fine.” As he stop Sittas took the seat across from Nicetos. He sat with some intent, but it was clear he’d taken a huge leap to sober. Nicetos reflected that a good scare sobered up anyone and that he was glad it worked on his friend.
“It is that damn widow.”
“Penelope? Were you drinking wine with her again.” Sittas nodded in confirmation. “My friend, were you not just yesterday noting that I needed a regular woman. It would seem you have one yourself.”
Sittas shook his head. “Of course not, she is a widow. Certainly she is fun, but she will pick a husband who can tend to their farm, if that. And I do not want to be a farmer.”
“Are you sure? There was a time that when a soldier mustered out after twenty-years his pension was a farm, usually somewhere nice.”
“You mean somewhere on the frontier.”
“Why couldn’t that be nice. I know lots of legionaries once settled in Britannia. I hear that is nice.”
“From who? Isn’t Britannia overrun with Picts or Goths or something.”
“Angles I think they are called. But Arianna hails from Londinium, although she called it London.”
“How can she be from someplace lost to the Empire?”
“Just because it is lost to the Empire doesn’t mean it is destroyed. Jerusalem was lost to the empire, as was Acre. Yet they are still there.”
“She’s a long way from home, then. How did she travel this far through lands full of barbarians? And how is she already Arianna? Are you sure she isn’t a witch who has enchanted you?”
Nicetos’s eyes narrowed at the accusation. He began to call Sittas out on his accusation. Just as the words reached his lips Nicetos broke out in roaring laughter. After a close encounter with passing out from laughing so hard, Nicetos forced himself to breathe.
“Sittas, not a day ago you sat in that same chair and suggested I pursue the woman. ‘Nicetos,’ you said, ‘you need wife to start a family.’ Now I show interest in a strange woman whose native tongue is not ours and suddenly I’m at risk of being bewtiched.”
Sarah,
Happy to send you a cake, but files tend to trip metal detectors. When you get it, just take the “cord” used to secure box and wrap it around the ell bars near the lock. Then tie off ONE of the candles to it, pull the wick. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, DUCK!
Save the rest of the candles for future use (keep away from flame and remember once the wick is pulled, Mr. Candle is NOT your friend).
NaNo not quite — 300 words. 100 antiwords.
FWIW, yesterday on FB I wrote a hasty post about our Dear Democrat operative posing as a reluctant guy who dint du nuffin. Approx. 24 hrs. so far, my account abides. I wonder if the bots are gettin’ tired or if some geek there figured out this fire was too big to piss on, and the Streisand Effect was workin’ agin them.
Rough guess, the AI and the mob are going after those with the greatest reach. Lots of people on the right with some FB reach were reporting getting gulaged.
“On second thought, let’s do go to Facebook… it is a silly place.”
Yeah, FB took down my Eric Ciaramella post. Didn’t give me any warnings or bans though. SO I posted another short of, “Who is Eric Ciaramella?” just to see if any of my friends comment on it.
In-effing-credible. They removed my post which only said, “Who is Eric Ciaramella?”
No ban though.
Reposted. Will continue to do so until I get tired, they get tired, or they ban me.