This Is A Post

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Okay, I lied. It’s just some memes and links.

I am better, but I’m slammed under deadlines. Also woke up with massive headache. Ibuprofen has it at manageable levels, but still annoying. Yeah, I might have messed up my sinuses by being an idiot. (Long story.) Anyway, that’s probably the headache. Or it could be the fact I’m under crisscrossing deadlines and desperately want to write the thing that doesn’t need to be written. Because….

Because I’m going to have to take my muse in the back lot and shoot it.

Which of course brings to mind a series of books called “Death of a muse” in which an author (only one who knows the muse world) investigates muse-murders. And I’m not going to write it. Deal with it. You guys can feel free to write beginnings for the first book though. Go ahead, amuse me. Make it silly.

Meanwhile:

Meanwhile, the Babylon Bee is breaking news again: Yet Another Stash Of Classified Documents Discovered During Biden’s Colonoscopy

Our very own Ox is on the track of a concealed carry gas stove — okay, it’s butane, close enough: Tiny Little Stove and Big Heat MOO! (I probably have the accent wrong on that, but oh, well.)

I’ve been saying this for how many years? Go. Disperse. Tyrants need people concentrated to effectively tyrannize.

Too late to have another drink, the lights are going out: The great Paul Johnson, RIP

Like we haven’t before: Like Paul Revere, a Massachusetts Republican Sends Warning.

This will end well: Biden, Media Taunt Struggling Americans By Insisting 6.5% Inflation Is A Good Thing

Direct from Fauci’s plans: Boston Medical Center Denies HIV-Positive Patient Life-Saving Care Over Face Mask Dispute

They have nothing left: The new Scooby-Doo series is “boring and unfunny and sexualized” and it’s getting absolutely terrible ratings

They really got nothing: ‘Man Called Otto’ Is Oscar-Bait at Its Worst.

This seems interesting: ‘On the Trail of Bigfoot: Last Frontier’ Will Get Under Your Skin.

115 thoughts on “This Is A Post”

  1. OOOOH. So many links to explore.

    Re: Babylon Bee … Who is their seer? Too accurate. Or wait. Dems going hold our privilege, again?

    2. I keep expecting to see a photo of an old style British police call box in their offices.

  3. RE: that Babylon Bee Article… I just about died laughing, and when I read the headline to Papa Raptor, he almost fell over he started laughing so hard. Haven’t seen him laugh that hard in a loooooong time.

    1. My favorite is still the one about Trump endorsing his own impeachment, thus forcing Democrats to oppose it.

  4. The thing about the Boston Medical Center makes me giggle a bit at my own doctor’s clinic, which has started requiring masks again now that cold and flu season has begun. But I go in, sit down in the examination room, and the first thing the doc says is, “Are you sick, or sneezing and coughing?” I say, “No.” He says, “You can take your mask off.”

    It’s theatre…nothing more, nothing less. As a non-modified human, I’m a lot less likely to catch or pass the WuFlu than all the proudly-post-humans with their modified DNA…but you try to tell the world that, and they don’t believe you.

    Though I suppose they will as more and more young folks drop dead from Sudden Vaccine Syndrome.

    1. What makes you think that they will ever admit there’s a problem with the vaccine? Remember, data are irrelevant; all that matters are “feelings”, and if you imagine they’ll ever admit they were wrong I have a good deal in some oceanfront property, just up the road in Phoenix… 🙂

      1. It’s not so much admitting they were wrong. It’s the admitting that the people they look down on were right.

        2. Luke, they can’t admit it. Because if they admit it, they will be held personally and professionally liable.

          And that’s not going to be limited to the people who manufactured and mandated this stuff. It’s also going to extend to the members of the medical profession who reasonably should have known that the medical evidence around WuFlu and the clot shot didn’t support the measures being taken to enforce compliance, limit treatment, etc. However, they didn’t stop enforcing those measures or prescribing that harmful treatment, and thereby violate the “do no harm”.

          There’s been a lot of quoting Milton Friedman that the way to deal with bad actors is to make it unprofitable to do the wrong thing. Part of making it unprofitable is having horrible warnings to point to and say “Do you want to end up like that?”

      1. Congratulate them for dodging that bullet, of course. The number at risk appears to be low as a percentage of the vaccinated, but also appears to be higher than the risk of dying from COVID for most demographics.

        1. What pisses me off is that they are disproportionately risking young people when actual kung flu disproprotionately is a risk to old people. But still that risk is about flu level. And their stupid chase the variant game is just going to help breed variants.

          And don’t get my asthmatic ass started on masks. Especially since the SOBs in charge never wear them.

    4. My ophthalmologist’s office was insisting on masks long after my state had dropped such requirements. But as of my most recent visit they finally seem to have gone back to normal.

      Fucking finally.

  5. Our Hostess Said:
    “Meanwhile, the Babylon Bee is breaking news again: Yet Another Stash Of Classified Documents Discovered During Biden’s Colonoscopy”
    That Dear hostess is an unsurprising finding. How else pray tell could the Turnip in Chief read the documents with his head so firmly implanted in his lower colon?

    On a side issue what is your muse up to? Are they just not cooperating and being verbally constipated? Or are they giving odd ideas to the characters and sending them in odd directions? Luckily I am unbothered by a muse as far as I can tell. I’m just a boring old plodder. It does seem like a bit of an affliction to have a muse at some level.

      1. Well that is annoying. I guess Muses not needing food and shelter do their own thing without regard for commercial issues. Here is hoping and praying that your Muse will cooperate for a while but come back to this. I joke about not having a muse but the couple times deep inspiration has come while working one hates to walk away from it.

      2. There can be no harsher task master for an author than those poor souls who self publish.
        But still, have I nagged you lately?
        Should I?
        If I’ve been slacking, most humble apologies.

  6. Dang. I like Paul Johnson’s stuff, even when he gets . . .enthusiastic about details. Yeah, that’s the term.

    Now I need a skull-shaped tea mug . . .

    You shoot the Muse, I’ll bring a tarp. shovels, and receipts for an alibi. I got ambushed by another Merchant novel, one that requires a lot of research into herbology and medieval medicine.

      1. $SISTAUR and I once went shopping as she wanted a BRAIN Jell-O mold… and all we found were skull molds. We summed it up as “All skulls, no brains” which describes FAR too much/many.

  8. It was a dark and stormy night.
    I entered the bungalow without knocking and walked softy in to the study.
    The cracked keyboard on the floor beside her, the author looking with loathing and horror at her hands red with muse blood….

  9. There’s a reason why you don’t murder your muse. It’s a very very good one, too.

    There’s also a reason people don’t talk about it. Much. Because folks just really listen to crazy people anymore.

    Folks don’t listen to crazy people for good reasons, too. Mostly, crazy people just say crazy things. Things like “the clouds are full of crayon dust. And my hovercraft is full of eels.” Stuff that doesn’t quite make sense. Thus avoiding the crazy people is just common sense.

    But every now and then, that’s a problem.

    See, every once in a while a crazy person says something that’s not crazy. Or they’re not really crazy at all… just too weird otherwise.

    Asylums used to be full of folks like that. Folks what just didn’t fit in, folks that made other people… uncomfortable.

    That’s what happens when you tell people you shot your muse. And it exploded into a billion tiny muse-lets that are all trying to tell you a different story. All at the same time.

    They’ll call the cops first. Because of course they would. Where’s the body? They’ll ask you that. Where’s the gun? They’ll ask that, too.

    They don’t want to hear about all the billion little muse-lets. They don’t want to hear that you pulled the gun out of your own head, either.

    Especially not if that’s the truth.

    2. That’s because Normies are boring, stupid, insipid rules-followers who will say or do -anything- to fit in with the herd.

      We do not speak to them, except to say yes please when they ask “would you like fries with that?”

  10. Good news! The deer damage is gone from my truck. ($OFFSPRING2 tried. Deer pulled a squirrel maneuver.)

    Bad news: ADD damage to truck might not get fixed. I jack knifed the trailer after Christmas. Bumper warped; trailer tongue bent, right quarter panel same. Sigh.

  11. Hi: Hope you feel better, headaches bordering on migraines are the worse, but Have to say Death of a Muse sounds like it could be a real good read. Me, I’m/was a programmer/analyst so everything I write is fictional and boring as hell.

    1. “programmer/analyst so everything I write is fictional and boring as hell”
      ……

      Me Too! Truth be told, it is “wrote”, now (retired). Some reason clients don’t like pictures with pointers with comments of “don’t do this” (they don’t read). Do not think it funny at all. Well unless you are reading/writing “for Dummies” book. Must admit those books kept me sane. Not that I needed them to learn anything. But they helped in that they were an indication of someone else has seen this stupidity. … Just saying …

    2. Same here. Writing as stale as a SQL update statement. As predictable as homework done by ChatGPT.

      Then I started seriously learning the Ur-programming language this year: Common Lisp.

      My muse woke up.

  12. Kill my muse? Never.

    I do occasionally slip it some espresso while it is distracted. Payback….

    1. Is that something similar to giving Familiars coffee?

      (Ask Alma what happens when “her” Familiars drink coffee.) [Very Big Crazy Grin]

  13. I thought I was going to release my muse (actually, I would have been praying for inspiration) when the pastor called me to say he just tested positive for Wuflu and could I handle the service? I’ve never had to come up with a message overnight.
    Sadly, it’s a small church and enough other folks are sick/nervous they canceled the service. (And the pianist is about to become a grandmother any second now, so she’s got her mind on other things than music).
    Sigh. I was sort of looking forward to the challenge.

    1. I now a ponder a ‘Muse Rescue’ or a “Home for Recovery Muses’ or would be ‘Home for Wayward Muses”? No. Can’t be…. ain’t they ALL wayward, really?

    3. Anyone remember me mentioning Aydin Paladin a while back? The lady who does data-driven psychology videos? She has a podcast that I recently checked out for the first time, and they dissected the Velma trailer (starting at about 1:13:00, if you want to jump to it):

      They also pick apart an interview of Neil Degrasse Tyson in which he tried to defend the vaxx mandates. Aydin couldn’t go 10 seconds without pausing the video to rip into some falsehood on his part or point out how his body language suggested he was on the verge of panicking.

      They also discussed Hasbro/WotC trying to illegally change the Open Gaming License and rip a bunch of people off. TTRPG fans here might want to watch that part if they haven’t already heard of this (it’s the first thing they discuss).

  16. The new Velma series stars Mindy Kaling, whose entire career seems to have been made by the fact that she’s female and Not White, along with a gargantuan dose of narcissism (the first time I heard of her was when she starred in her own show, The Mindy Project; but I’m sure fans would say “That title was irony!“). And like unimaginative narcissists everywhere, the only really “creative” thing they’ve done with the show is to make Velma into Mindy Kaling. She’s now Not White, has body image issues, etc. When reviewers are saying “This makes She-Hulk look competent,” that’s a Bad Sign.

    1. I thought they’d also decreed Velma a lesbian? Or was that the other new (or possibly still up-coming) series?

      1. That’s been an on again/off again thing since at least the mid-90s, part of the “any geeky girl is obviously a lesbian” thing.

        1. One of the two new shows (I can’t remember which one) explicitly has her as a lesbian. Ace had a post up about both of the shows a little while ago, and that’s where I found out about them. So this time it’s a bit more than just speculation and fan fics in chat groups.

      2. I dunno. I kinda zoned out the whole thing, since there are ways to update the Scooby formula, and ways to not. Hollywood as gazillion-tupled down on “not” for everything. And Scooby was never that dear to me to begin with, so… I zoned it out.

        1. Once upon a time (alright, it was 2004) I’d had Quite A Week and decided I needed some not-asleep “brain at minimum” time. I figured what could be more brainless than a Scooby-Doo movie? And then Scooby-Doo 2 surprised me by being better than I’d expected, somehow. I have no fear of that experience repeating now.

          1. The live actions are dreadful, but have sparks of inspiration in them. For instance, Matthew Lillard was perfect casting for Shaggy, which based on his past work, was a considerable shock. (“He can ACT?”)

                1. I wanted the one where he is stopping and turning to talk to Scooby, and doing a kind of throw down argument, because it was just gold— but couldn’t find it.

        2. Hollywood seems bound and determined (compelled?) to take every harmless/wholesome program and make a corrupt version of it, so that it’s forever ruined for its fans.

          1. That’s part of it, but not all, nor even always a major factor. There’s also “I need to express my creativity by taking this thing everybody already loves, and making it mine, so that everybody will then love me,” which isn’t necessarily malice, it’s just stupid.

            For instance, I’m reasonably sure that Kathleen Kennedy’s destruction of Star Wars began that way: a childish need to be seen as better than her former boss, coupled with an almost total lack of understanding of what people loved about Star Wars. Not benign, exactly, but innocent, in its own way. Now, of course, she hates the fans with the rage and fury of a thousand suns, because they rejected her “genius”, so she’s going to burn it all down if she possibly can.

            With Scooby-Doo, some of the resentment the creators working on new versions have is toward part of the core concept of the original series: that there was nothing supernatural at work, ever. While it manifests from the left quite often (William Gibson’s aborted master’s thesis was about how hard science fiction was necessarily “fascist”, e.g.), it’s not exclusively that. The first run of cartoons was formulaic (which is part of why kids loved them, in fact), and “formula” is almost always equivalent to “mindless and stupid” to the “smart” people in Hollywood. (Seriously, did they never watch The PowerPuff Girls?) Therefore, “smart” people break the formula, and get praised for doing so. (Especially if it enrages the rubes in flyover country, of course.)

            Now, of course, that the woke idiots are in charge, there’s a lot more of “let’s piss all over this IP to make the ‘stupid people’ angry” than before, because they literally have nothing else. The recent complaint by Kumail Nanjiani that Hollywood won’t cast non-white actors as villains shows just how sterile things are going to get by following the woke agenda. “Actors of color” are now denied the juiciest roles.

            1. Or will the villains all become cardboard cutouts? Of course if they do, the heroes are likely to do the same and you just have a new formula.
              I don’t know.

                1. There is a Pakistani actor who recently complained that he can’t get any good villain roles (he likes playing villains) because the studios want to make stuff where only whites are the villains.

    1. Ummm. Over explained certainly; overstood? Good question. Ah! Example: Aeronautical engineers don’t make great fighter pilots (I was told) because they understand the limits of the airplane. They’re over-informed for the position; thus, perhaps, they would be “overstood.”

    2. Possibly, if someone is trying to flaunt their learning when they don’t have any, and use pretentious constructions like “backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind”.

  19. The body of a robed woman, clutching a lyre, lay sprawled in the alley. Near the body a man leaned against the wall, smoking a cigar and looking as if he’d won the Daily Double.

    “Yeah, I know who you are,” he greeted me calmly. “Let me save you some time. I killed Erato.”

    I stared at him, fighting an urge to punch him in the gut. “Whadda ya want, the Nobel Prize?”

    “That would do for a start. You know she was the patron of mime, right?”

    I shook his hand and bought him a drink.

  20. You probably have Covid. I did, a month ago. The Tylenol and Ibupropen is good, but do this also. Mix 1 teaspoon of salt with 1 cup of water. Boil it. when it cools to ‘warm,’ take it into the bathroom, and snort it into the nostrils, one at a time. The dreck will drool out. Repeat a couple of times, but it will offer you much relief. Also, you should gargle with same. Will clear out the throat pretty good.

    Sorry you are still recuperating. I like the bit about the muses. Mine has Covid. I’ve written ten books, but am having a hard time justifying writing any more when the ones I’ve already written are hardly selling.

    Oh, well, c’est la vie.

    Best!

  21. Tim Powers wrote the definitive work on killing your muse. ( The Stress of her Regard if you’ve not read it. Featuring Lord Byron, Shelley, his wife, Polidori, Keats, etc. plagued/blessed by vampires of the psyche. Highly recommend.)

    1. But has anyone written about your muse killing you? Now there’s a challenge for a detective.

      2. No, but Paul Auster had a novel called Book of Illusions that was (astonishingly, for a “literary” novel that NPR almost certainly praised to the skies) quite excellent, and in it there is a short film about a man trying to create, visited by what turns out to be his muse, and he ends up destroying the thing he was writing to bring her back to life. I think Auster even made a feature film of the idea, though I’ve not seen it.

        (The conceit of the novel is that a silent film comedian vanished after making a year’s worth of two-reel comedies, and turns out to have gotten rich, lived in the desert, and made “purely artistic” movies that nobody was ever allowed to see. The short described is the only one described in any detail.)

  22. The Message drove her.

    She crept from shadow to shadow, dreading the final featureless plain.

    Glowing green eyes peered across the the room, pale beams following her tracks. The faint tinkle of the tiny bell made her freeze, but she knew her mission had failed.

    No reason drove the monster. No need justified the hunt. Innate cruelty was motivation enough. One bound and it was upon her.

    She tried to sing the Message, hoping it might be heard.

    A huge clawed limb smashed into her body, driving out her breath. The bite through her spine stilled her thoughts, the Message lost.

    Felis had murdered Mus.

  23. “Because I’m going to have to take my muse in the back lot and shoot it.”

    If your muse is your inspiration and it’s being lunatic…couldn’t you just sic your amuse on it? 😉

  25. My name is Martinsday, and I’m a detective. I’m a private investigator, in the city of New Tours.

    My last visitor of the day had left. I then spent some time re organizing the shelves of my library, because they had become disordered by use, and it relaxed me.

    After I returned Herodotus to his position on the top shelf, in front of the memoirs of Watson and Goodwin, I was done.

    I loosened my back, took a walk around the office, and thought what else needed to be cleaned. I did that, turned out the lights, locked up, and left the building by the front door.

    I halted, contacted the police, and stood there puzzled until they arrived.

    Sergeant Larry Einsberg of the New Tours Police Homicide Department finally came to me and asked me “What seems to be the problem, Hank?”

    “Well, you see, there is a dead woman here.”

    “Yes, there is. And?”

    “I know her, she was just with me in my office. She didn’t have the hole in her head then.”

    “And?”

    “I can’t tell what the problem is, but it feels like there should be something that I would be doing here, and I just can’t say what it is. That was Clio, who most think of as patroness of historians. But Historia means ‘investigations’, and she is also muse of detectives. That should mean something to me.”

  26. > “Which of course brings to mind a series of books called “Death of a muse” in which an author (only one who knows the muse world) investigates muse-murders. And I’m not going to write it. Deal with it.”

    Translation: Sarah hates money.

    As additional evidence, I note how long she resisted doing a yearly fundraiser.

    > ” You guys can feel free to write beginnings for the first book though. Go ahead, amuse me. Make it silly.”

    Nice job working in a stealth writing prompt.

  27. Well, while we’re just killing time, perhaps you guys can help me with something. I recently came across this:

    I know who the two on the bottom are (Rand on the left, Marx on the right), but I don’t recognize the two on the top. I’m guessing some of you do, though.

  29. Me: Oh good, this story is almost done.

    Muse: That’s not what you are supposed to be working on.

    Me: Oh, [censored].

  30. “Rosy-fingered dawn, my *ss.”

    “OK, look, how about this: a one-legged guy comes out of cryo-sleep in the middle of a space battle….”

    I hesitated. I spat. “You can’t talk your way out of this, sweetheart. I got work to do.” I pulled back the hammer. “Paying work.”

    She looked at the gat in my hand, and swallowed hard. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

    I fingered the trigger. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  31. Oh, dear….
    Boris Badenov stalked around the sunny hilltop. All across the hill the bodies were scattered, riddled with bullets from a submachine gun. The gun his partner was carefully pointing away from him as he stalked.
    “Why, Natasha?”
    Natasha Fatale looked confused. “But you gave me an order, Boris. You told me, “Kill the Muses. Kill all the Muses!”
    Badenov grabbed the edges of his hat in frustration. “I said, “Kill the mooses! Kill all the mooses! If we kill enough of them, Moose and Squirrel would have to investigate and we could eliminate them!”
    He looked over thr hilltop once more. “I don’t know what Fearless Leader will say.”
    A voice boomed from above. “Never mind about your ‘Fearless Leader,” it said in a voice like thunder. “Worry about Me.”

  32. On a totally different note the post titled “Why does the dumpster always burn when I am away from keyboard” had a quote from another blogger that the USSR (and successor states) military had always been of the Potemkin Village variety. This had led me to the thought “What Might have happened had the Cold War Gone Hot”. So I’ve started tackling that here:
    https://tregonsee.blogspot.com/2023/01/counterfactual-alt-history-could-ussr.html
    Whether I finish the rest of this beats me it is fairly ambitious.

    As a side note, How do you people that do this regularly crank out stuff Daily or nearly so? Especially you Dear Hostess? This blog, Instapundit, MGC, this is kind of thing is serious fricking work. Its taken me almost a month to crank my 5-6 paragraph gloss out. On top of that finding information is hard. My Google-fu is quite good but getting any information of even minimal trustworthiness is a challenge. Oh and good luck actually finding anything about the USSR. You’ll have better luck getting details on Middle Earth as far as I can tell.

    2. Speaking of Potemkin Villages, I’m shocked that nobody, not even Fox News, made that comparison for the sudden cleanup in El Paso just before Biden breezed through for a four hour “tour”.

      1. Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale
        A tale of a layover
        That started from Beltwayland
        With Joe and a cackling whore

        The media started getting rough
        Some documents were found
        Despite the shrills of the soulless shills
        The Admin ran aground
        The Admin ran aground…

    3. Perun had a snark in this week’s video: “The Russian army is a large modern army, but the large part ain’t modern and the modern part ain’t large.”

  33. This is so great and kind of you, you make us happy in spite of your suffering; I am truly sorry you have had so much pain and illness lately, wish I had a magic wand or word or foofoo dust to make things better for you. Prayers anyway. And hope you enjoyed the “Jam Sandwiches” thing I sent you – hope it lightened your day a bit :o)

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