Part of the problem we have with the left’s fantasies is that they are very bad at world building.

I mean, you can see that in their movies and books. The number of books I’ve thrown against the wall because “this is not how any of this works” including the book where “because of global warming” Kansas was underwater but London wasn’t. Or the one where Space colonies were great because it was incredibly communist but Earth was in deep trouble because of being free trade. Or the one where– But truly, what’s the point? I’ve walled more leftist bad world building than I’ve read, and even so I tolerate a lot of bad world building.

But what you have to understand — No, seriously, as if the post leading to the semi-fisking of the last few days didn’t make that clear — is that to them the most ridiculous nonsense makes perfect sense, and that they think like that in real life too.

No, seriously. They’re all about the story, but if they’re given a “reason why” they never poke into it, see if it’s true, or even do the most basic elementary “wait, that doesn’t add up.” Ever.

Instead they decide that things are a problem/not a problem for some arbitrary reason and when the reason doesn’t materialize or have anything to do with it, they still decide it’s needed, because of … reasons.

Take their entire fixation with getting rid of cows. It all started with Diet For A Small Planet. I read it standing up in a bookstore, way back, fascinated at the sheer insanity of it.

Being, as I was, from a rural area, I could tell the person coming up with this theory had never, ever, not even in semi-lucid imaginings been near an agricultural region or had any idea how one grew food or cattle.

They had instead just done abstract math. They’d either read Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (I’m not sure, you know, if it was before or after the Diet bs and I’m not going to look it up. They’re both stupid.) And then they did the calculations on what cows eat and what humans eat, and had a brain storm: if only everyone just ate vegetables, we could feed a lot more people.

What they missed, of course, that any rural kid knows is that you don’t feed livestock on what humans can eat. Instead, you feed the stuff humans can’t eat, the stuff left after processing corn, or wheat or whatever to… well, you feed just about anything to pigs. But you can feed wheat straw to cows. And frankly, you can pasturage cows on land where you can’t grow anything. They’re not like goats, that you can feed on three tin cans and an old log, but they still can digest hard vegetable matter humans can’t eat.

In the US this is even more stark. A lot of land in the US west is really not good for agriculture. Too steep, too arid. In Colorado mostly full of scrub oak. In fact, unlike in good land in the east, in the west the land is likely to support fewer cows per acre. But it does support them. And humans can eat the cow, which is concentrated calories.

If everyone went vegetarian, we wouldn’t feed more people. We would instead have to put more land under the plow. In fact the entire dream of the insane left of sticking us all in stack a prol apartments makes perfect sense with this, except they think the rest of the world would be a natural preserve. In fact, we’d have to grow food everywhere. Including in the road medians.

But they don’t know this, and they fell in love with that idea. In the future, we’re overpopulated, and we all have to eat only plants.

Okay, so maybe they are too soft and get weirded out at eating moo cows. I’ve met some of those. Or perhaps they just don’t like the idea of people raising these huge animals.

But you know the real reason they fell in love with that idea so much? Because when they read this as teens, they thought it was brilliant and made perfect sense. They told people that and people kept laughing at them. So in their heads they decided they were too smart for the world, and the world would see they were right when everyone had to go vegetarian, not to starve.

Only, you know? Turns out the population bomb was a fizzle. And the need for vegetarianism never became a thing.

So now they’re old (most of them are older than I) and they are determined to make everyone eat the plants (and the bugs) and to ban cows, because they still have this vision in their heads, and they want to make sure that everyone does the thing they said they would do, back when they read the world’s stupidest books.

In the same way, they’ve been enchanted with “climate change” for decades now. I remember hearing people older than I cackling about all those idiots (read people more successful than them and who didn’t fall for the just so stories of the doom mongers) would be sorry when the world was under water 20 years ago.

Like Diet For A Small Planet — or Marxism — it is the sort of system that is self-verifying inside the system, and as long as you don’t leave the system is completely logical. You know, in a world where cows eat the same humans eat, and where all land is equally arable, and in which humans are reproducing like bunnies, Diet for a Small Planet would be true. If this sounds like “If ifs and ans were pots and pans, everyone could cook,” it’s because it is. The climate models are the same thing, except on computers. If you keep inside the model, then the model is right. If you assume that all the factors possible went into the model, then … well, we’d already be baking or something.

Except of course, the models can’t even predict past weather. But for the people enchanted by the models and convinced it makes them smarter than other people and/or who see in these models a way to power and to stop all ‘the idiots’ who don’t believe these things from being wealthy, it’s easy to put hands over ears and go ‘lalalalalalala.’

Which brings us to the idea that the left does everything to an exact plan and they’re keeping their plan and —

It’s not that simple. It’s not even that close to that simple. It’s more that yes, they want power and they grab at everything as a vehicle of power.

But they also believe these things, because it’s part of how their minds work. Even the ones “at the top”, even the ones in on concocting the lie end up buying it, because it allows them to think of themselves as insightful and brilliant, and also caring. They’re saving the world. Or keeping people from starving, or whatever.

Hints of these confused thoughts come through periodically, like when John Kerry said we needed to stop traditional agriculture, or people would starve. At the bottom of that incoherent idiocy was Diet For A Small Planet that some portion of Lurch either thinks it’s real or wishes were real.

And then we get to their happy fun idea that Global Warming (hear the capitals) would submerge islands and destroy agriculture across the world, and there would be “climate refugees.” They were deathly serious about it.

Of course, it didn’t happen, the same way that overpopulation didn’t happen. Because, well, the world might be warming (not noticeably for about a decade, but whatever) but these things aren’t computer models and in the real world these things don’t happen immediately, in movie-schedule. So, no, nothing is submerged, and no patterns of agriculture have changed.

But hey, if you open the borders, and get various shady NGOs and commie fronts to ship the world to our Southern border, you can claim — and tell yourself — that these are “climate refugees.”

Of course, as a rich country, who profited from the thing that made the warmering, we should look after all the refugees. Notice their insistence in calling them “refugees.” These aren’t invaders, sent in to be their wrecking ball on America. No, they’re refugees caused by our greed and capitalism (everything is caused to capitalism. Is there anything it can’t do?) And look how kind the left is looking after them in our hotels, schools and… airports?

Mayorcas said that because the left absolutely believes this. Partly because they very much want to. And they fail to realize it is the most absolute, utter garbage.

No? Well, tell me what parts of America are now under water? None, you say? In fact, wealthy lefties keep buying sea side property?

What magic is this? How come we have sea-shore privilege and the sea only goes up where the poors littlez brownz peoplez live? Nefarious of us, isn’t it?

What about climate change destroying agriculture? Look, there are droughts and floods around the world at any given time. Like, South Africa in the eighties in some places had people who were 18 and had never seen rain. (Or didn’t remember seeing rain. Don’t quote it. I read the article, but it was a long time ago. It might have been in Dutch, which tells you how long ago it was.) And we remember that California had floods — Australia too — in recent years. And our midwest is dry-ish in spots. But all this is part of the normal swings of weather, and no, they’re not really causing that much of a disruption in any nation much less in all the nations these supposed “refugees” came from.

Again, our land doesn’t have some kind of capitalist privilege. No one has built a shield over America. If climate were so bad in so many regions, we’d also already be starving, or at least having serious trouble growing anything. Even cows on scrub oak.

So, you know? All of this is nonsense.

They view the world through a half formed network of dreams, all of these dreams being really nightmares for everyone else, and designed to make them look like heroes and geniuses.

It’s important to know where they’re coming from, and what is going on in their brains, and how they’re guzzling their own ink, and how it poisons them.

But ultimately? Ultimately their lies and idiocy.

And not only are we not required to let them drag us backwards into their insanity, it is our duty to point out it’s insane, and has no contact with anything but the fantasies of their deranged brains.

And it’s important to keep this in mind and refuse their language which leads to their insanity. These are not “refugees” even if they come from countries with profoundly bad governments. No, they’re illegal immigrants, or border jumpers, or, if you prefer, commie advance guerillas (at least the military age ones.)

Be not afraid. Hold on to the truth, and keep telling it.

In the end, we win, they lose.

A friend, who is perhaps not as allergic to leftist/progressive duck-speak recommended an article — albeit noticing that it was leftist, so saying some adaptation would be needed — as giving us some ideas for how to prepare to what is/will be to some extent a bad crash.

I mean, I don’t think I’m giving anyone news when I say that 2025 is going to be a mess, even if by some miracle we manage to beat fraud and get the usurper destroyers out of our in the US. Because they’re going to go insane and terrorist-like, even worse than the fiery summer of 2020 love. And they’ll use their perces of power in our culture to destoy us, worse than they’ve been doing.

And so, we’ll have to rebuild. These rules are in a way how to face the destruction and how to position ourselves to make it short and rebuild.

Except they are from the left side. Note that these were written by an historian who studied the tyrannical regimes of the twentieth century and that he really should know better, but that he’s persistently and bafflingly ignoring how his own side is violating these “don’t do that” and giving off all danger signals. His blindness is baffling and infuriating, and sometimes his bubble-assumptions are hilariously weird, like the idea that what you do with newfound friends is “march” with them.

So this is part fisk, part “this rule is good” and part “this is how we can apply this.”

The article (which he first wrote in 16, then republished recently, because if Trump won/wins reeeeee instant Hitler) is here in archive link, because I really don’t need a blog war. Too busy for that.

And if you’re a completist: Part one, part two, part three.

16. Learn from peers in other countries.  Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries.  The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend.  And no country is going to find a solution by itself.  Make sure you and your family have passports.

16 – Okay, first off, he’s not exactly wrong. I have friends abroad. Some of you are abroad. 10/7 shocked and changed a lot of us, even if it happened in Israel. And how the left took it here shocked and changed us more.
Also we’re aware of what Castreau is doing in Canada. And of the — literal — freedom fighters trying to claw back the right to grow food from the eco-industrial-complex in Europe.
And he’s not wrong that this is part of a worldwide trend, just like the sick 20th century pash for Marx was a worldwide trend, to an extent predicated on the culmination of the industrial revolution and the realization that — with the technology of the time — concentrated and planned production was better. This led them to believe that government should also concentrate power and plan everything, including the economic life of the entire country. (Note the trend started in the 19th century, just reached its apogee in the 20th. History is slow.)
So, we had the two hard core attempts, which this guy supposedly studied — fascism and communism — and the soft, namby pamby Marxism with a smiley face of Europe the rest of the time, because their governments discovered how much they liked all the power to control what people made and read and ATE during the two world wars. So they installed “socialism” which was a pathway to that perfect communism that never happens. That this man doesn’t realize that socialism is a “soft” but not much changed version of the tyrannical regimes he studied, and that the slide to tyranny is inherent and inevitable in concentrated power telling every individual what to do, believe, eat, think is a mystery.

The problem is socialism kills. Fast or slow. In the camps and gullags, or in births that don’t happen and the slow death in life of diminished lives, meaningless lives.

We’ve now reached the point where socialism’s reach for more power has become an obvious death grip, and people are fighting it for their lives. Because the alternative is dying. And all the old, sclerotic institutions, long skinsuited by the socialists are now utterly inefficient and useless when not counterproductive. A blind man can see it. The socialists’ habits of hiring for ideology, not competence, has produced in a scant century what took the Hapsburgs five centuries of controlled incest to create: rulers and an elite so demented, so stupid that they would take three tries to figure out what end of a queen to put the crown on.

So, yeah, the crisis is global.

BUT learning from other other countries? Pardon my French, but F*ck that Sh*t. 

I mean we can learn minor flourishes from them. It has been pointed out the trucker’s convoy of Canada got the idiots to back off, but I think that’s a “one time” trick. And while the French spraying manure on their government buildings was fun to watch, let’s remember that proles had to clean that, and it was paid for by the proles’ own tax money. And knowing what doesn’t work is half the battle.

However ultimately, getting a passport is only good for a small sojourn abroad should that be needed, and even then. Remember, as I experienced first hand in the seventies, when the US sneezes, the world catches pneumonia. No. We stay here. We fight here. The idiocy has to die in America, because it hid in our campuses and institutions when the USSR fell.

We can’t run and we can’t hide, so cut your cloth to suit your purpose. Prepare yourself physically and mentally now. There is no running away.

And repeat after me: The world can d*mn well learn from us. The antidote to Marxism are natural rights of the individual. Among others, but essential, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For the purpose of safeguarding such rights legitimate governments are instituted upon the world. Any government that doesn’t safeguard them or violate them is illegitimate.

All the rest is dross.

17. Listen for dangerous words.  Be alert to use of the words “extremism” and “terrorism.”  Be alive to the fatal notions of “emergency” and “exception.”  Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

17- Giggles hysterically. If I weren’t so busy and didn’t have better things — 5 novels to finish — to do with my time, I’d go to blog war, and send this guy videos of the Red Speech and the Abomination at Valley Forge.

Onto you I give other dangerous words to watch for: disinformation is one. Legitimate governments don’t try to stop you from hearing wrong things. They make sure you listen to a lot of things, and let you listen to EVERYTHING. They inform. They don’t suppress disinformation. The difference between information and disinformation is apparently decided by government experts. Which means censorship and propaganda. Or, you know, there’s Democracy and someone’s election being the end of democracy.

Or, in general, a government that hates its own people and wants to control it, destroy it and punish it.

Angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary? Well, you cookie-eating-bitch, I’m only not traveling to Valley Forge with a truck full of hydrogen peroxide to disinfect our sacred site from the presence of the ugly, ridiculous usurper of all that is right and good in this nation, because the attempt was so ridiculous and pathetic. A speech against insurrection in a site sacred to the Memory of George Washington is like a speech against ice cream in a creamery.

So what do I propose to do about it? Well, I fight with what I have. Speech. Lots of speech. Pointing out the ridiculousness of the current regime, and that they’re not less terrifying for being ridiculous. Hitler was a ridiculous little man with funny mannerisms. Stalin was a ridiculous man with an oversized mustache. But millions of people died laughing.

What can you do? I don’t know. Being angry is not very useful, so you have to go beyond anger, and craft quips and words that show other people the danger we’re in, and where it’s coming from.

Will it save us? I don’t know. Probably not. But after the crash, or during, it might wake up some people. Perhaps enough people.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.  Modern tyranny is terror management.  When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power.  The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book.  Do not fall for it.

18. First he wants us to be angry. Then he wants us to be calm. And apparently he’s been asleep in a cryogenic tank in deep storage the last four years, and hasn’t seen each and everyone of these things used by the left, blatantly and in everyone’s face, including the persecution of a political enemy who is apparently “uniquely” scary.
Yeah, I don’t think we’re at any risk of falling for this. How to wake up someone who studied tyranny and doesn’t see it? I don’t know. At this point I feel like the man is either insane or under an hypnotic suggestion.

So what do we do in the face of this propaganda? We ignore it. We don’t believe it. We disobey whenever we can. We disobey in funny ways that encourage others, if we can, and we don’t shut up.

We tell the delusional bitches to look in the mirror. And we show them the double digits straight up.

19. Be a patriot.  Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come.  They will need it.

19. Looks pityingly at the author of the original article: And what does America mean, sweet cheeks?
Because if you think it means opening our borders and our purses to anyone who traipses in uninvited, you got it wrong. (I’m all for immigration, and if we still had a frontier, or at least didn’t have a welfare state, I’d even be okay with people just walking in. But walk in and become our pensioners? Well, that’s something quite different. We no longer lest circumstances cull those who will become Americans.) If you think it is America’s job to send its troops as social workers to spread progressivism all over the world, you’d be wrong. If you think America owes anyone spit, you’d be wrong.
America is or should be, the land of the free and the home of the brave. The place where those of us who just want to be left alone to live our lives are allowed to do so, without bending the knee to king, queen or potentate and without assuming someone is better or worse than us by virtue of birth.
And I’m being a patriot as hard as I can. While you have forgotten or never knew, I try to defend and uphold the constitution of the United States of America against enemies domestic and foreign.
And if she — forbid the thought — should fall, I intend to continue teaching her and preaching her, sot hat eventually she can come back.

America, in the flowering of her blessed Constitution, and despite her falls and slips, and her compromises, has been the best thing to happen in the long, blood soaked history of mankind.

She shall not vanish from this Earth. And if she falls, I will do my utmost to restore her.
You? Do what you can, when you can. It’s all we can do. But don’t forget how special the Republic is that we inherited (some of us wrong side of the bed, by means of naturalization) and how important it is she not perish.

And as you do so, cock a snook at the cookie-eating-bitch who wrote the original article and who thinks that being patriotic is voting for the progressive du jour and defending our democracy is keeping Democrats in power. I bet you he’s never seen middle fingers like ours. Because ours are American. And he’d be lucky to see them.

20. Be as courageous as you can.  If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

20 And you know? He is right, other than the fact that he can’t see that his side is already instituting tyranny makes it worse.

BUT I have words for you, and listen to me: Being prepared to die is not the same as rushing upon martyrdom. The early church fathers apparently told people not to be in a rush to get killed for the glory of G-d. And you, don’t you rush to die for our cause, though it’s glorious.

And don’t you go pushing into violence without thinking, just because you’re angry. There’s many ways to skin a tyrant, and only on of those is physical. In many ways they fear our rebellion less than they fear our disobedience. And they’re getting that, straight up and double size. No? Then you haven’t paid attention to their repeated attempts to re-institute the Covidiocy and how much Nope they’re getting, right in der Fuhrer’s face. Not to mention the fact their climate panic is falling flat except to the very young and very neurotic — and even then most of those are starting to realize that a Winter without fuel and unable to afford food is worse than a couple degrees of warming — or that their well-spoken, “it’s just fairness” DIE (Yeah, they call it DEI. It’s DIE. Racism ain’t divine) policies are being exposed for the sham and destruction, and worse, ridiculousness they are.

They are facing the destruction of all they’ve worked for, and they wish you’d just rebel. A few of you, in a relatively small force, so they can stomp you and use the “fear” of you to hunt everyone who is humiliating them so badly in the public square. 

In default of that, they’re trying to use Jan 6 to hunt down everyone who didn’t condemn it. (And yeah, that probably means you should watch, in case this space suddenly becomes blank.)

It won’t do them any good, because it makes them look more ridiculous.

Right now, you’re not required to die. And you shouldn’t listen to the caveman in the back of your brain saying what we really need is some atrocities to scare the other guys. We are no longer in the stone age. All atrocities do is scare the vast majority of humans and revolt the rest.

Yes, you’re angry. So am I. But don’t let them use your anger against you. The majority of non-politics addicted people are starting to notice something is very wrong, but they’re not where you are yet.

Remember Americans have been late to every war. Every single war. And when we enter it, we finish it.

Let it play. Don’t rush. This is not a movie.

There is still a chance that physical violence passes us by. And at any rate, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that we wait till our just cause be plain as a slap on the face, or as a drawn gun. Their drawn gun, not ours.

Prepare, prepare, prepare. It’s entirely possible this degenerate leadership will realize who they’re dancing with, and will run to non-extradition countries (who’ve already been paying them.) Look, miracles do happen.

But probably there will be violence here and there, with or without official sanction. When there is violence be prepared. First, be prepared not to be there. Particularly if you’re in no state to fight. But if needed, be prepared to end it and to protect the defenseless. I call to your attention the Kenosha Kid. Be like Kyle. Don’t be a martyr, be a defender.

More importantly and almost for sure, some of us here and there will fall victims to the regime, either with our lives or with lawfare that strips us of everything worth living for.

None of us wants this. I don’t want this. None of you wants this. We don’t want to lose our lives or our liberty, or the things we’ve worked hard for.

But if we got to go? If the music stops and any of us is standing? Face the music as well as you can. Because the man is right about one thing: if you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall for nothing.

Be not afraid. In the end we win, they lose. It’s the middle that’s going to be painful and spiky.

But given what we’re fighting for, it is more than worth it. Great things have a great cost. And the restoration of the republic is great. If we don’t see it, the next generation will.

Let’s keep the beacon of freedom lit as a light for the world.

There is this article that a friend recommended as a preparation for the next year, because you know that whoever wins (I believe in miracles, despite the fraud) it’s going to be hell on earth, and for what comes after, as well, when we, hopefully, get to rebuild. (That article link is archived, because I’d rather not start a blog war. Not because I can’t hold my home, but because I’m buried in fiction and don’t have time.)

The article surprised me, both in its being useful, and in the level of utter blindness of someone who wrote this before Trump’s first presidency, and who is now running it again, because Trump is so dangerous. It’s unbelievable how he doesn’t see what this administration has already done and is doing that fits his list, or the violations of this list that are solidly in the “progressive” camp.

Anyway, this is part fisk and part “Yeah, he’s right and here is how we can apply it to our situation, but ARGH how blind can he be?

Part one is here.

Part two is here.

11. Investigate.  Figure things out for yourself.  Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media.  Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you.  Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad).  Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

11. And there we go. Yeah, sure, print media does investigative journalism. (Smacks head hard with flat of hand.) That ANYONE in the 21st century still believes this is mind-boggling. As for some in the internet being there to harm you: No shit Sherlock, but compared to the AP fed media they’re virtually sweetness and light. As for the sites that tell you what’s reliable, hasn’t he noticed most of those have been debunked or revealed to be lying themselves? No, he probably doesn’t at that. Liberal privilege is never having to think.

SO FOR US: Investigate, investigate, investigate. Most of us already have an habit of doing this. Because as someone pointed out, even sites we trusted bit us during the Covidiocy. Or went they went foaming at the mouth siding with democrats, just because Trump won in 16. Even though none of their dire predictions about Trump came true.

So investigate. Then investigate some more. Particularly if it’s something designed to “scare” or make you give up. We know the other side is running psy-ops on us, and even the “just” right has a bad habit of gloom and despondency from the days when everyone assumed that Communism was the future and that anti-communism could never win.

Even the right tends to emphasize the bad things that the other side is doing, and look here, it’s not that this isn’t happening or isn’t important to know. But you’re not the only one resisting. There are thousands of quotidian acts of defiance and non compliance you never hear about. Most of those you don’t hear about because they are tiny, but even when the aggregate is huge, the media doesn’t report it unless to condemn it.

Note the frantic advertising for the vax, because it’s dead in the water. And the way their hair is on fire about Trump because they are afraid they can’t fraud enough.

I’m telling you to suspect the doom narrative most of all, because it’s so prevalent, and because if we really were losing they wouldn’t be working so hard to convince us of it. And remember that after the unprecedented brain washing and lockdowns and everything, they still had to fraud at the last minute and visibly in 2020, because people didn’t say anything, but hunched their shoulders and went to vote for Trump.

Despite how corrupted our information system is — in a lot of this, nobody knows the truth — for the small psy-ops operations they run, the truth is out there and can be found. So look for it.

12. Make eye contact and small talk.  This is not just polite.  It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society.  It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust.  If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

12 – Sure. Why not. Look, I’m not wonderful in the real world. For one we don’t visit much, since we work from home, and we work a lot. But when we go out, I pay attention, and I try to be cheerful and respectful of others. I figure everyone is under a great deal of stress whether aware of it or not, and I don’t need to add to it.
This magic of knowing whom I should and should not trust is not a thing I know. Maybe he mind-reads? But I know not to trust the Che-t-shirt wearing people. It suddenly occurs to me I haven’t seen a single one in our new area. Interesting.
The “enter a culture of denunciation” is hilarious too, since some of us have been called everything but nice people ever since we’ve been out politically, and interesting crime adduced to our account with zero proof. Sigh. Never mind. Idiots gonna idiot.
I don’t expect strangers to come to my defense because I smiled at them once. That’s simple-minded. it’s movie thinking. Networking? Sure. It might help. I suck at it, but it might help. BUT most of what he thinks this advice can do, it can’t.
What it can do is get you out of the house, interacting with others. When you’re out, mind your six, both because we’re going to be seeing attacks here (duh) and you need to be ready to react, but also because you’re a social ape. You need some contact with your species. In my case, it doesn’t have to be much, but I need to see strangers every so often.

Remember staying shut in will distort your view of real life, and how real humans are coping.

13. Practice corporeal politics.  Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen.  Get outside.  Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.  Make new friends and march with them.

13. Snort giggle. ”Power wants.” Dear Lord. How Marxist is this man? There is no such thing as incarnate power, and the oligarchy trying to install itself on our necks is not “Power”. It’s more incarnate “greed and stupidity.” They have some power and some levers, and boy, are they pulling them. But honestly, I don’t think even they care if my body softens or not. This is utterly bizarre. Does he think tyrants spend time sitting around, rubbing their hands and going “You, Mr. Smith of 454 Main street. I want you to become a couch potato.” Bah. The rest of it is also fairly daft. ”Put your body in unfamiliar places” might be a great idea if you’re young. But all the same… Why do the places NEED to be unfamiliar? Or the people, either? I mean what is the net value of unfamiliarity?
I’d rather not put myself in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people for the hell of it. I mean if there’s something I want to see or do, and it’s a place I’ve never been (let’s face it, usually a museum) with people I’ve never seen that’s fine, but no, I don’t think this is advice I want to follow for the hell of it.

THIS part was the most hilarious of all though “Make new friends and march with them.” Er…. where are you marching? And why? Is this a thing that happens a lot in lefty circles? “Hi, I just met you, want to march?” What the holy hell does he think marches accomplish other than pissing off a lot of people? Also, do any of the marchers have jobs, and lives? And while they march, do they sing “A thousand miles on foot, it wears out the caligas?” Or perhaps “Lock up your sons and your daughters, home we bring the bald hair plugs seducer sniffer”? Or do they just do boring crap like sing “The International.” (Wanna bet he and his friends are now shaking fists and chanting about from the river to the sea? No? No bets? Aw.)
FOR US: The Power to Truth Camp wants you to do stupid things, and march and trust strangers particularly those with a high and tight haircut and nice polo shirts, not to mention expensive, matching sunglasses. What do they think we are? Stupid? And who has that kind of time, anyway?

Instead, perhaps just extend your areas of comfort a little. When go have to go to an area look around and familiarize yourself with different routes. Health? Sure. try to get that squared away if you can. (After a certain age it’s all downhill, but I should not have let my glasses go two years.) Exercise, if you can and it will help. Walking is good. Avoid cosplayers carrying tikki torches, though. And do the same in the non-physical sense. Learn something, even if it’s not something practical. And learn to do or make something new. It keeps the mind supple, dissipates the sense of doom and gloom, and who knows, it might come in handy in the future, somehow.

14. Establish a private life.  Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around.  Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis.  Remember that email is skywriting.  Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less.  Have personal exchanges in person.  For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble.  Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you.  Try not to have hooks.

14. Giggles hysterically on “Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around.” Dude. I assume everything I do can and will be used against me.

Fortunately — not saying I don’t have a past. Everyone does — most of my life is incredibly boring. I get up, I have breakfast, I write while husband works. We sometimes pet the cats. On really exciting days we have dinner out at a cheap place. On red letter days we meet a friend for dinner at a cheap place.

The most subversive things I look up are usually historical and for a book. The most damning things I write I write in public, on this blog.

If the “nastier sorts” like the ones we have want to pick me up, nothing will save me. Or you. Be you as pure as snow or innocent as a dove, they’ll accuse you of something horrendous and probably plant evidence.

We’ve seen what they did to the Covington School kids. And what they’ve tried to do to a lot of other people. Again we’re not stupid.

FOR US: You’re not safe. There’s nothing you can do to be safe. No, not even joining the left will make you safe. They turn on their own on the regular.

Sure, sure, run malware sweeps, and if you must talk about something mildly damning do it in person if you can. That doesn’t hurt anything. However, be aware it won’t save you. Again, nothing will. We are under a particularly vicious kakistocracy of idiots who will think nothing of making up atrocities to denounce you for.

Move where you feel safer. Don’t give your address, or give an address that will forward to the mass of people. At least if you’re out and exposed. PARTICULARLY don’t give your address to leftist friends and family if you still have any, and if you can avoid doing so. because they’re human (yes, I know, and yet they are) and they will talk. And even if they don’t intend to hurt you, the friend they talk to about you is another matter. (Says she who, at the height of the puppies came home to find a junior kicker in her home, because her son was dating her, and brought her by to introduce her. Yeah. Kids, right? And no, that relationship didn’t last long after she realized who his mom was. Snort. However I felt unsafe until we moved form there.)
Don’t take unnecessary risks but be aware you can’t be safe. So come to peace with that, and instead concentrate on not doing things that you’d hate being arrested for. Look, it’s like this: If they plant evidence of a crime in my house or computer and take me in for it, I don’t care how heinous it is or even if they condemn me for it, because in my heart I’ll be at peace with the fact I didn’t do it. But suppose I’d actually done the thing, like, oh, I don’t know, stolen the family’s silverplate (we never had any) or set fire to a kitten, or whatever. When I was taken in for it, I would be triply upset: Upset for being caught, upset I was so evil as to do THAT, and upset I gave them an opening to get me by doing something evil and stupid.

If they take me in for saying that Joe Biden is an evil old pedo and stupid to boot? Well, at least they’re taking me in for something I did do, and I won’t be the least bit remorseful I said it, because I think it should be shouted from the rooftops. So, you know, at least I’ll feel better, and be able to live with myself.

Another part of this, in the mental hygiene front, and tying to number 11: if they take you in because you, say, blog at instapundit, and they have convincing proof that Professor Reynolds who owns the site blends puppies for a secret youth-giving shake?
1) Refuse to believe them without verifying your friend/relative/friendly acquaintance really did the heinous thing. 2) If you verify it is true (snort) be aware you’re still innocent, because you didn’t know that when you associated with the person. People have secrets you sometimes couldn’t imagine. 3)Question their idea of guilt by association and list back at them all the reprehensible criminals they associate themselves with.

15. Contribute to good causes.  Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life.  Pick a charity or two and set up autopay.  Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.

15- I agree you should contribute to good causes, political and not. Putting a charity or two on autopay… 
Look, it’s not that there aren’t non-corrupt charities out there of the kind you can autopay. In fact, Dan and I have donated to one — which we investigated thoroughly — for 20 years now. And will probably put them in our will unless they change markedly.
However, while you’re doing that, keep in mind that people have horribly crisis when they aren’t poor, and which they couldn’t have foreseen. Particularly right now, because so many people are tight to the bone and have been for years now. This means that any little thing: health, home repair, car repair, can put them in a terrible situation. Yes, we investigate those too, and we don’t donate to “chronic cases”. (Note this is separate from donating, say, to bloggers, which, yes, I do too. Even wealthy ones (I’d like to be wealthy. They keep drawing the wrong lottery numbers) because they’re providing a service I use and laborers deserve pay. Also because frankly, any blogs I’m likely to read regularly mean that people are extending their neck into danger in the present day. But what I’m talking about is charity.) But we do help those in our circle, from friends to acquaintances, to friends of friends. It’s gotten so pervasive, because of the terrible economy, that we had to set a cap on what we’ll give, because we were spending way too much on that every month. Don’t do that.

BUT do contribute to organizations and help people out of tight spots. We don’t have much of a safety net — all of us — these days. So help as you’d wish to be helped.

And sure, get involved in organizations if you can. As I and others have noted, a lot of things have gotten taken over. So, start a new club. A new book discussion on line. Do the thing you want to happen. Make it as cool as you know how.

Be a light to the world. Go and do it. Even when you’re worried, your fingernails are bleeding from trying to climb a sheer scarp, and you don’t know where the next paycheck will come from. Do what you can when you can. It will help you too, if only psychologically.
Trust me on this. Do it.

More tomorrow.

So, the setup for this is that a friend who is kinder and less sensitive to leftist BS than I, sent me this link (now archived in an attempt to not create a blog war) because he says some of his ideas apply to where we are, and what is happening this year, and next.

Because, let’s face it, whoever wins (I believe in miracles!) the left is going to try to drag us, screaming, into its psychodrama. At the heart of it it’s just that, of course, they don’t want to lose their places of privilege and power, for which most of them did absolutely nothing and are completely unsuited. But they’re going to cast themselves as saving the world or democracy, or whatever. There is no end to the depths of their illusion. Which is the problem.

The friend isn’t wrong about this article. There are ideas we can use to prepare for the train wreck ahead. But it is written in such a way it’s obvious the writer is a leftist, and the lack of self awareness drove me bonkers.

I guess my friend is not as sensitive to liberal bullshit, which frankly probably applies to 90% of humans living or dead. I just spent so much time in environments infested with the lit-crit left that I can get irritated when they say hello.

So I decided to do a combined “yeah, we can use this, but more like this” and fisking of the massive rats in the man’s head. (ROUS, seriously.) Note in wrote this in advance of the first Trump presidency, when ZOMG literally Hitler, and is republishing it now — NOW after all the abuses of the Biden presidency, which given his trying to tamp down free speech, his corruption of law, his racial (if inverted) politics, etc, as well as some of his speeches might as well grow a toothbrush mustache and be done with it — because ZOMG Trump might come back and literally Hitler.

You can actually see this bizarre man, who must be living in a very strange parallel reality, set his hair on fire and run in circles, because Trump might not want the world to invade us, or might make Americans able to afford groceries again. ZOMG. Horror!

For the beginning of this, because it was becoming gargantuan even for my blog, go here: Before The Crash 1

So, let’s proceed to his point six:

6. Be wary of paramilitaries.  When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh.  When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

LITERALLY no one carried torches and pictures of Trump, but okay, twinky, let’s dance!

6. We have the guns. And we are against the system, as noted by the fact that they hate the fact we have guns, and keep trying to get us to give them up. Anyone else remember Obama’s brilliant scheme for this, which would only occur to someone whose emotional development stopped in kindergarten, and who’s about 10% as smart as he thinks he is: Fast and Furious. ”Ur, ur, so we sell guns to the Mexicans, they kill lots of people. We trace the guns as being American and then ur ur, Americans feel so bad they give up their guns, and we win.” — This is prime underwear gnome reasoning right there.

They know we have guns, they hate our guns. It’s what’s kept them from coming stomping through flyover country all big and bed, burning and looting. Instead they have to confine their shows to the centers of blue cities where most people are disarmed.

I have absolutely NO clue what he’s talking about us dressing in uniforms and matching with pictures of a leader, much less the torches, last seen in tikki torches when the FBI decided to cosplay Nazis.

He’s again confused about who the individualists are. They’ve told themselves they’re rebels and iconoclasts that they believe it, even though their statist side has been in power for almost 100 years and they are good boys and girls fitting exactly in the approved mode.

Our side …. the individualists failed to organize, okay? The chances of getting us all to march in the same direction and do the same thing are zero. Torches? Only if we reach the pitchfork and torches stage. Pictures of the leader? WHAT?

Look, I said from the beginning Trump would be the nominee and Trump has a (remote, given fraud) chance of winning. But you know, if I were making him to order, I’d want someone else. And as I told my mom when she was going on about how uncouth he is “I’m neither dating him, nor even going to dinner with him.” As for “worshiping” him, Lord ‘a mercy! I have a religion. My religion looks very askance at anyone worshiping humans, yo. The closest I come is having a massive lit-crush on Heinlein, and heck, if we met we’d have SUCH arguments. (Unfair, as I know how some things turned out, and how some psychological studies were faked. But never mind.) And I’m close to what passes for center mass “Trump Supporter” — I think there’s a very remote chance if elected he’ll do some things I want him to do. That’s it. LEADER? get out of town. Americans lead themselves.

Anyway, our guns. We don’t need no uniforms. In fact, I appreciate he’s taking this from the 20th century, but he should realize things have changed. If all of this falls in the pot, it won’t be uniforms and serried ranks. It will be guerrillas coming out of nowhere, and melting back to nowhere.

I hope it doesn’t come to that. No. I pray it doesn’t come to that. Miracles DO happen, you know? BUT all I can say is I’m very glad we have guns, so that if they try, say, to confiscate all our food and starve us, we can defend ourselves.

Remember: 

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

This is a thing of the most basic preparation. Stay frosty. And of course, side-eye the people who march in concert, all say the same thing and deploy, seemingly at the drop of a hat. And those who talk of their candidate for president being “A sort of god”. They are NOT free men.

7. Be reflective if you must be armed.  If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you.  But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things.  Be ready to say no.

7. I completely agree with him on this. We’re seeing policemen already doing irregular things, like letting Burn Loot and Murder burning things. We’ve seen policemen lose their minds during Covid: Arresting people for taking their children to the park, or closing down churches.

An executive order, whatever that mental midget Polis thinks is not a law. It doesn’t even have the color of law. It’s simply “Do this, or I hurt you.” If it outright contradicts the constitution and makes a mockery of our natural rights as individuals, it is against your oath.

I’m going to say this now, to any of you in police, para-police, military positions: REMEMBER YOUR OATH.

Some of you have already done things that while not grave enough to see you hanged at Nuremberg are on a sliding scale with those evils. REMEMBER YOUR OATH. You swore to the constitution, not to the power of a man who just wants his way — like, say, Obama closing national monuments, to push budget negotiations — and you should remember that if this keeps going on, there will be a reckoning. It might be delayed, but it’s not cancelled just because you say so.

And more importantly, when you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, do you see an American or the mewling gelding of a despot?

You gave your word. Keep it.

8. Stand out.  Someone has to.  It is easy to follow along.  It can feel strange to do or say something different.  But without that unease, there is no freedom.  Remember Rosa Parks.  The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

8. Yeah, very easy for the left to say, because the right, at least now and in recent decades hasn’t come down on anyone opposing them like a ton of bricks, removing their livelihood, their friends, their connections, their bank accounts or even their freedom.

And yet–

We’re about to enter very difficult and dangerous times. The time to be quiet and well behaved and polite was …. five decades ago. And look at where it led.

Yes, I know, many of you can’t speak. Just can’t. Because you have people to support and duties and financial obligations. I get that. My own path has been painful as is, and yeah, it has affected my family.

But for you people who can’t stand right out in the open and scream, please support those who can and do. I don’t mean monetarily, though trust me, even those of us relative well off have paid a financial price for our dissent, but … you know, it’s good to know we’re not alone. Even if you’re talking under an assumed name, and not saying much.

And figure it out ahead of time — if you’re like me you have esprit de l’escalier and think of the perfect retort three hours later — figure out things you can say or ask that don’t break cover but plant doubt. I recommend two books: Revolt in 2100 and Comrade Don Camillo. Go and study the technique. I’m very bad at it, too, but we need to get better. All of us. Prepare now. before the crash.

The life — and country — we save might be our own.

9. Be kind to our language.  Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does.  Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying.  Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet.  Read books.

The fine irony of a lefty saying this is…. Chef’s kiss. It’s not insanity unless it comes from the insané region of France. It’s just sparkling lack of self awareness.

9- If you can — again I’m aware of the constraints of facing an amoral and unrestrained enemy — when you can, every time you can, even if in the quiet of your own head:
They is plural. (Yes, Shakespeare used it ONCE for someone approaching whose gender and NUMBER was unknown. (But turned out to be a guy.) Get a grip. One instance. might have been a quillo (there were no typewriters.) And if you’re going to base this on Shakespeare, I want you to be able to justify all his word choices when I ask, in a full length non-plagiarized essay, biatches.) There are no “chest feeders”, there are breast feeding women. There are no “persons who give birth.” There are mothers. And black is black (I want my baby back) not “African-American” because Africa is not a race. (Black isn’t either, it’s a characteristic of several races, but you know what, if we are to call Americans with extreme tans something, black is fine. If we’re going to invent weird monikers, call them splendid people of enhanced tan, and whites melanoma-incurring-people of pallor. I don’t care. No one is white and no one is black, but you call people white, you call other people black. (Yellow is weird though. No one is even remotely yellow.)) And let’s be very clear on what “minorities” are, because women ain’t.

What I mean is don’t concede their bizarre corruption of language. They’re not speaking truth to power. They’re speaking terror to truth. Speak the truth as much as you can. Giving up your very language to them lets them in your thoughts and makes you feel dirtied and powerless. Which is what they want. No, it’s not Critical Race Theory, it’s racism in academic face.

10. Believe in truth.  To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

10. And again, I fully agree with him. Which is why we should stop the federal government from using our money to corrupt journalists and artists (ah, those grants) and the army and police we pay for to threaten social media sites, etc.

The fact he doesn’t see his “fear” is already happening, with his side doing it, and has been happening since they came up with “political correctness” a term invented by Mao to describe something you know NOT to be true, but which the political power has decreed to be true is an amazing failure at self-reflection.

Most of the people who read here are already rebels who value the truth and facts above mere social comfort, wealth and advancement.

Keep it. And yes, I’m afraid this continues for two more days.

The best way to think about what to do if there’s a crash is before the crash. Hopefully so far before it, that you can train yourself in mitigating strategies, so that when the crash starts to happen, you can stop it.

Note this is the driving-phobic woman speaking. I’ve only been in one crash while I was driving, and that was the result of forgetting my glasses and being profoundly astigmatic.

And for me, imagining crashes isn’t a great strategy, since what I’m afraid of is in fact other drivers’ brain farts. (I ain’t too trusting.) But I do, of course, by default. Which means I’ve avoided crashes a couple of times (one of them a chain of crashes) because I saw the brake lights way ahead, started braking, pushed the hazard, and well, limited that chain reaction.

Most of the crashes I’ve been a passenger for, though, come out of nowhere, like the person who didn’t slow down when we were stopped at a stop light and plowed into us in a five way intersection, where we literally couldn’t see the direction he came from once we had started turning (Thank heavens for good insurance.) Or the woman who came out of a mall ENTRANCE and plowed into us on the street. Or most recently, the kid who ran a red light and hit us as we were turning left.

The crashes were literally unavoidable because they happened in ways we couldn’t expect, and from a place we had no visibility. Correction, we had visibility behind us, just no way to escape it.

But I’d guess on any long-distance trip husband avoids crashes three times a day, just by being vigilant, and having a lot of practice, so he reacts before he can even think, and isn’t there when we could be hit.

There’s another type of crash, of course. Because we were broke, and couldn’t afford to replace (beater) cars when the kids started driving, we paid for a very expensive driving course. (We paid in installments, starting six months earlier.) It was a course in defensive driving/how to avoid crashes, or how to minimize damage if you were in a crash.

In the first year they were driving, both kids were in situations that could have turned nasty. One was skidding on black ice (not visible on the street) where the car went spinning. Because the kid had been trained — trained, not just heard about it — on a skid pad, he stopped the spin and was calm enough to get back to his lane and facing the right way with no incident. If he hadn’t had the training, given that car was a rollerskate with rear-wheel drive, he probably would have ended up hitting people, or spinning into one of the trees or phone poles.

The other kid also found the one patch of ice after everything had melted from the last snow storm, but controlled it and stopped so quickly that he only touched the car in front of him in the intersection. (It was an expensive car, so that paint damage still cost us the Earth, but it wasn’t a totaled car or loss of life.)

They were prepared and they had trained ahead. Yes, yes, okay. So, yes, the usual: Prepare, and keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. Not personal preparation, but society/group preparation.

Let’s assume the crash is inevitable. We don’t know how much it will hurt or what will be destroyed. We don’t know if society will be totaled (unlikely, truly) or just severely damaged. But we do know that there’s a crash coming, and that society as we know it won’t be the same after.

Now, I argue the crash is the crash of the bs FDR instituted to the American model. I think it’s not able to withstand the decentralization of information and production, and it’s been coming to pieces for 40 years, and is now inevitably crashing. Of course, it brings in its wake a lot of other effects, in this case the fact that the people who long-marched through the institutions refuse to be banished like the pantomime devils they are by voting or other strong incantations. Instead, they see the peril they’re in, and are determined to hold on to power to all extremities because they know what they’d do to us if they could, and they’re afraid we’ll do likewise to them. (To be fair, we wouldn’t have if they went away quietly. The more they try to hold on, the worse it will be.)

What this means in practical terms is that there is no way this year ends well. Or at least no way it ends without significant upheaval, meaning the next year will be major upheaval throughout. (So to an extent, enjoy while you can.)

Because if they fraud their way to Victory, they’re going to think it’s the reign of a thousand years (they always do) and get nasty. And if we beat the fraud, they’re going to panic and try to do onto us before we do onto them.

Now I think the damage in either case will be small and controlled RELATIVELY. Some places. Short time. I know this is no comfort. I also think we’ll win.

But what comes out on the other end is a good question.

A friend who did not major in the liberal arts thought this article (note archive link. I don’t need to start a war. I have books to write) though obviously written from the other side could be useful to us. He’s not precisely wrong, but the writer of that article is, including, of course, his fear of Trump-the-dictator who is going to behave exactly like 20th century dictators. Never mind. If the man could realize that the entire civilizational paradigm has changed, he wouldn’t be a leftist trying to institute a regime that looked utopic in the 1930s and even so has failed multiple times since. That’s part of the failure.

So, the “Twenty lessons of the 20th century” are some good, some bad, some “head tilt, what?” particularly with what he thinks he’s doing and applying. You can feel free to follow the (archive) link but keep in mind there are rodents of unusual size in that head.

I’ll be doing this in parts. Yes, I do realize it increases the chances of a blog war. Can’t be helped. These rules are more complicated than he thinks.

The first one is ALMOST good. Almost. Where he says:
1. Do not obey in advance.  Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.  A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. 

I say to you
1. Become ungovernable. A government instituted over us by skullduggery is not legitimate, whether it has the color of law or not. Pre-existing, sane, human laws should be obeyed, but its arbitrary commands should be given two fingers, straight up. So their entire war on fuel and education and everything else? Find a way to go around. Find a way to subvert it. If you have no other choice, find a way to obey it with maximum malice. Malevolent compliance is your last choice. You did not consent. They do not have the consent of the governed. You know it, they know it.
Some people have been in this mode a long time. Every day heroes, each and every one of them. Over the long, stupid Covidiocy, my silent respect (and high tipping or other help I could give) went to the many servers, cashiers, etc, who wore the stupid required muzzle-of-submission under their nose, with the nose completely free. I am in awe of the fan who — without lying — got a religious exemption form the vax while admitting his “religion” was “rational atheism.”
Go thou and think ahead of ways and means to do likewise.

This one is outright cute. The “protect the institutions” he’s trying to do are in fact protecting the long march:

2.  Defend institutions.  It is institutions that help us to preserve decency.  They need our help as well.  Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf.  Institutions do not protect themselves.  They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.  So choose an institution you care about — a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union — and take its side.

2. If you find or work for a non-corrupt institution, by all means protect it. Provided it’s something we’re going to need on the other side — newspapers, LOL. Labor Unions, ROFL. They really live 100 years ago, in their heads — but more importantly, think through whether that’s something we need, or something that was very needed when most work force was illiterate and doing interchangeable jobs, and when dissemination of information was only possible from a centralized location. Defend what we’re going to need absolutely, but question what we’ll need.
More importantly, things we need and don’t have either because they were subverted or because they don’t exist — listen to me — it’s essential we start creating them now. That part of the “build over, build under, build around.” Which (curses softly) means I need to get with my web person soon, about the publicity/review/listing, maybe selling site. Just in case. Definitely selling the minute the ‘zon goes froggy.
But it’s more than that. We need geek clubs. I need to start a monthly geek dinner just with our small group. I’ve been kicking the can down the road, but we’re going to need the contacts, the resilience, the human connection, whatever they unleash this year that’s comparable to or worse than the Covidiocy.
Friends have complained that there are no non-woke geek spaces. They’re not wrong. So, create them. Keep them aggressively non-political. Make sure there are rules to kick anyone out who starts the politics.
Your homework is to think of two things you can do to create a support group, a “social institution”, a fun or social space, online or in person. It will be small and a lot of them will fail aborning. That’s normal. It’s called the free market. It’s not your personal failure. It’s you and circumstances interacting. But start thinking about it.

Spaces, stores, institutions you can start alone or with friends, in person or on line. See if you can do at least two. These can involve your hobbies, and they can be as easy as “mentor neighbor kids in art” or as complicated or “what the heck will we have if Amazon goes crazy?”

3. Beware the one-party state.  The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start.  They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents.  So support the multiple-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections.  Vote in local and state elections while you can.  Consider running for office.

3- That someone from the left can unironically rerun this post from early 2020 and not see this is already happening and which side is doing this is jaw-droppingly unbelievable. Probably stupider than the college catalog a friend linked listing “Afrochemistry.” But hey.
So, what can you do: Make sure people KNOW. Most of the people walking around in blissful ignorance are not aware of anything crooked about the 2020 elections and don’t know enough math to see how stupid it is. Find articles. Cull arguments. Make them in your own way, pointing out discrepancies. Above all point out no free nation has vote by mail or vote with no ID. NONE. (Though Portugal wants vote by mail. Insert swearing.) Point out the court cases that weren’t heard. Point out there’s literally no way to do anything about fraud, even when 125% of a precinct votes. Here your battle is informational, and you need to start now. When they say “But that’s in the past,” Make it clear the point is not to repeat it. Because it is an election year. You will fail. A LOT. But most of the time you should be ready with the off-hand comments. Stuff like “Yeah. I never understood why they didn’t let it be investigated. They could prove there was no fraud, and then it would be fine.” Keep pounding. Off hand comments. Eventually one will penetrate. Or something else will, that builds on what you said.

4. Take responsibility for the face of the world.  The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow.  Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate.  Do not look away, and do not get used to them.  Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

4 – Heaven give me patience. Does he live in Europe? There have been swastikas as graffiti in Portugal last time we visited. (Kids were shocked by those, and the hammer and sickle, as well). That’s because when your elites are terrible and keep talking about how bad the Nazis are, people are going to start thinking the Nazis are great. Which is human. Also entirely, brutally stupid. Swastikas or hammer and sickle, black fascism or red fascism, both are dangerous and anti-human.
But yeah, sure, the symbols matter. So if you find some leftist or some barbarian painting a wall with death to the Jews, we recommend you paint over it. Whether before or after administering a sound verbal beating to the miscreant is entirely your choice. If it escalates, remember to defend yourself against physical assault. The working class men in NYC who tore into the guy taking down posters of abducted children are my heroes.
More importantly, ask the men with the Che shirt why he’s wearing the face of a man who murdered the poor, children, students gay people and particularly dogs (which is how you know he was a demon) by personally beating them to death. Wouldn’t he prefer a shirt with Jeffrey Dahmer? Mao? Be ready with his massacres. The hammer and sickle? Be ready to tell them they’re right, 100 million deaths are not enough. Let’s give it one more try. That’s also good to write below a place with such a symbol, if you don’t have time or resources to paint over it. I mean, they card us when we buy spray paint. Let’s make it worth their while.

5. Remember professional ethics.  When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges.  Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

5-This absolutely. DO keep your ethics, when everyone else has lost them. But do not sign a suicide pact over ethics. Because some crooked judge passed on a case, it doesn’t mean what happened is now lawful or under the color of law.
Most of all, ABOVE ALL whatever your position, if you took an oath to the constitution, remember it was TO THE CONSTITUTION. I.e. unlike monks, you didn’t promise to obey. You promised to defend the constitution. You did not promise to “follow orders.” Remember with these people in charge, your iron rice bowl is about to become more iron, with very little rice.
Ask yourself the question I asked myself before I came out politically: Can you live with yourself, if you go one step further. Will the face looking at your from the mirror be that of a traitor to your oath?
And then look at point 1. If you absolutely must “follow the rules/law” and it is just the tyrants whim? Follow as maliciously as you can figure out how.
A flea can’t derail a train. But it can give a mighty itch to the conductor. And that, when it’s a thousand fleas, certainly can derail the tyranny train.

More tomorrow.

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM ALMA BOYKIN: In the Vliets: A Steampunk Adventure

Hamburg’s half-buried canals, the vliets, hold a secret and a key.

The Prussians conquered Hamburg in 1865, adding the city-state to their new German Empire against the city’s will. Jakob Timmerman fought in that war—as a mage-soldier called Jaeger. Twenty-five years later that war resumes among the waterways and hidden channels of the great port city of Hamburg. Imperial mages and their klankmänner—armored men condemned to half-life for treason or murder—stalk the city.

Jakob accidentally discovers the Imperials’ secret. Now his only hope for safety, and for justice, lies in the vliets among the very men who hate his kind the most.

WITH A SHORT STORY BY SARAH A. HOYT: Shapers of Worlds Volume IV: Science fiction and fantasy by authors featured on The Worldshapers podcast

*The entire anthology made the Tangent online reading list, and Sarah A. Hoyt’s and Edward Willet’s story got the highest (three star) recommendation.*

The fourth in a series of powerhouse anthologies featuring some of today’s top authors of science fiction and fantasy

From the farthest reaches of our galaxy to the cozy-yet-mysterious spaces under beds and behind sofa cushions, from mystical realms of fantasy to the here-and-now and the very near future, the nineteen authors in this fourth collection of science fiction and fantasy by authors featured on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worldshapers offer readers a kaleidoscope of fantastical adventures in the company of unforgettable characters.

The editor of a tyrannical bestselling author thinks she’s finally escaped their hellish relationship when the author dies . . . but she couldn’t be more wrong. A retired ghost-hunter’s life takes an unexpected turn when an immensely valuable magical vase from the nineteenth century is brought to her attention. At the end of a millennia-long journey to the edge of the galaxy, a man who has lived a hundred lifetimes is reunited with his first true love in the midst of a battle for survival. Scarecrows that appear overnight on a lonely man’s lawn prove to be far more than the teenagers’ prank he thinks them to be. A man travels back in time to confront the attacker who destroyed his life, only to make a horrifying discovery. The Monster Under the Bed finally meets his match . . .

Shapers of Worlds Volume IV has new stories by David Boop, Michael brent Collings, Roy M. Griffis, Sarah A. Hoyt, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Noah Lemelson, Edward M. Lerner, David Liss, Gail Z. Martin, Joshua Palmatier, Richard Paolinelli, Jean-Louis Trudel, James van Pelt, Garon Whited, and Edward Willett, plus previously published stories by James Kennedy, Mark Leslie, R.S. Mellette, and Lavie Tidhar. Each story features an illustration by Wendi Nordell.

Travel into the past, the present, and the future in stories set in our world, in deep space, in worlds scattered across the multiverse, and in worlds that exist only in the imagination, all shaped by an outstanding collection of authors, many of them bestsellers and award-winners.
An unforgettable journey awaits. All you have to do is turn the page . . .

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS ANTHOLOGIES, WITH A STORY BY CEDAR SANDERSON: He Was Dead When I Got There

It seems like disaster always strikes when you’re on the road. Sometimes it’s unavoidable but others, it’s from a the actions of one of the world’s dumbest and most incompetent creatures. Andrew Spurgle is at it again, complete with an explanation from the “man” himself in the Foreword.

FROM FRANCES DECHANTAL: Jessamyn’s Yarn

How far do you go to help a relative you haven’t seen for sixteen years? On the verge of making promises to a chosen community, twenty-five year old Jessamyn drops everything and rushes to help her Great Uncle, when he is attacked and injured, on his Iowa sheep farm. Some of her best memories come from his long ago kindness. Once there she struggles with his concussion, his sheep, his handsome neighbors, and his acquaintances, some of whom would love to steal the sheep, or take over the farm. What is she going to do when the crisis is over? Will she stay on the farm or return to her previous life?
Enjoy this warm tale of family and friends rearranging their relationships, and watching a few shooting stars as they do so.

FROM EDDIE MCTIER: Ant Poison Revenge

When Dave Walker got hurt on the job, he moved with his wife Jean to rural Georgia. They were glad to bid goodbye to the cold and the cramped cities of Pennsylvania for the room and warm breezes of the rural South

The people were friendly and welcoming, but beneath the surface lived another civilization. Poison ants that were sick and tired of being poisoned themselves by the demons who lived above ground. One day they decide to fight back – and the Walkers are the first people in their way.

They might not be the last.

FROM HOLLY CHISM:NOW LIVE: Whine in a Box (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 3)

Maybe chasing murderers wasn’t so bad after all…

Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, and investments advisor…is a political radical. By vampire standards, at least. She’s young, American, and wasn’t inducted into the unlife in the usual way. Which means she’s not a European feudalist. So, when other vampires started asking to move into her territory, she wasn’t sure how to react, other than to welcome some of them. She has a chance to shape an entire territory, if she wants.

(She doesn’t)

Her allies have other plans, though. And, between those plans being sprung on her without much warning, her nearest neighbor coming under attack (and sending his helpless civilians to her for shelter), her mother showing up on her doorstep, looking for answers to why she’d not gotten in contact in the last twenty years…yeah. She’s got a reason to whine.

And that’s not even counting the rising panic over a brand new virus…that shouldn’t affect her people, but will anyway.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Dare (Fall of the Alliance Book 9)

Arkady was a servant’s bastard, but when he needed to update his records, his friends dared him to claim a father . . .
A year after the Japanese left the Alliance, then turned to attack the Home World . . . things are getting back to normal on Home. Normal being the usual viciously competitive power struggles, both personal and to maintain the class structure of Lords and the brain chipped slaves . . .
The Lebedov Family is undergoing a shift in it’s internal structure as the older Lords die of natural causes . . . and sometimes helped along . . .
Arkady may not have chosen the best time to try to join the ranks of the Lords . . .

FROM STEPHEN KRUEGER: Law Future

The anthology has 25 original legal science-fiction stories: 3 short-short stories, 18 short stories, 2 novelettes, and 2 novellas. Plus 1 original preface, 1 original essay, and 1 original Post Scriptum.“Science fiction” intends a recital, the foundation of which is a yet-to-be technology. Usual yet-to-be technologies are space travel, time travel, and terraforming.
“Legal” intends that a substantive law matter is central to a recital.
The target audiences are lawyers and sci-fi readers. To that end, excellent writing prevails. There is not a single blasphemous, scatological, or reproductive word in the anthology. An aficionado or aficionada of quality legal fiction and of first-rate science fiction will be happy with the anthology.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: INTRODUCE

Where do you go when you need to hide? When everything is just too much, and the world is just not doing what it should, but you can’t fix it?

Because there are things you can’t do, and things you can’t fix. I almost drove myself insane in 2020, convinced there must be something I could do to stop the madness. If I just explained once more…

It is a side effect of playing with worlds, with made up histories, with empires that rise and fall in my mind. You get confused when it comes to the real world. Kind of like when you’re in a rough spot and you just want to fast-forward and get past it, because your mind is used to movies. Only more so, because you think there must be a clever trick you can use to make it all alright.

But clever tricks are a novel plotting device, partly because it would be really boring to write “And then the character sat around for ten years waiting for the other shoe to drop in the minds of those who weren’t paying attention. And then–“

But the world doesn’t lend itself to fast forward or clever tricks. Not most of the time. 

Note I’m not going to say you can’t do anything about the mess — looks around — we’re in. It’s a mess and no mistake, one that started before I was born and probably long before most of you were born too. And it’s… Well. It is, you know? It took almost a century to weave, or if you look at it another way, 300 years, from the beginning of the industrial revolution, to the worship of “scientific” and “experts” and larger and more bureaucratic governments.

We’re not going to undo it all in one go. Even if you take the approach to untangling this mess that I take when I’m crocheting and the thread gets in a big tangled mess, and just cut out the worse of the knots, then tie to the last clean thread, when it comes to the world, and everyone in it, or even to the vast and complex nation we inhabit… well, other than that outside the metaphor, you end up in blood up to your ankles, with that approach, and what comes after is more than a bit of a gamble, even that takes time. And pressure. A lot of time and pressure. And heaven help us, the pressure is being applied. Yes, it is. But the time is awfully hard to take.

And honestly most of us, perhaps desperately, are still hoping for a solution that doesn’t dye all the thread red with blood, and allows us to go on crocheting a tissue of human dignity, liberty, individuality instead of the old grey, dingy pattern of feudalism or communist neo-feudalism. That, well, now, it could go very slowly and then all of a sudden. Or it could go… slow. Incrementally slow, so it looks like it’s all coming apart, because you don’t see the parts that are getting slowly rebuilt in the background. It’s messy, it’s slow, and most of the way — probably the rest of my life — is very uncomfortable indeed for those who know history and see how it could all tip into the brown stuff. Or worse, the red.

But it’s all slow, beyond individual, or even plucky small group control. Hard to live through.

However, we live not just in a place but in a time. And it’s the time we have. Probably (unless you believe in a very specific form of reincarnation) the only time we have. Like the space opera “these are the times of our lives.”

And you know, it could be worse, much worse. I mean, I doubt I could have gotten this far and still be alive, given what my body is and how it works, if I had been born ten years earlier, even in a slightly more advanced place. Also, I like daily showers. I like clean clothes every day. I like hot meals. All of those were at times luxuries, and at times unobtainable without extreme effort or wealth while I was growing up, let alone say when the founders lived.

So our times are not so bad, even if parts of it are very much Heinlein’s crazy years, and our polity insists on going howling further into them.

Then there are personally bad times. Sometimes I wonder how my friends survive, how they go on functioning and producing beautiful things, or creating these ordered, joyous lives, while dealing with stuff. I think I’m more of a wussy in the emotional field. I worry obsessively about those I love. (My love language is biting my nails to the quick.) Particularly when I want to help but I can’t.

But I know, blessed though I’ve been so far, there will bad times ahead. They arrive for everyone. Nights of a thousand years by a hospital bed. Days of dealing with a loved one who is sinking into illness or losing his or her mind. Endless weeks of drudgery and effort. Personal or inter-personal strife. People you love who leave, by their decision or not. People you lose to death, misunderstanding, anger. You wake, you sleep, and you wish you could be anywhere else, at any other time, doing anything else. All of us go through times like this. All of us. It’s part of humanity.

Where do you go then? What’s your bolthole? The fox goes to ground. The bunny goes down the rabbit hole. Where do you go?

I don’t mean physically. We all have places we go physically, where we feel renewed, refreshed. Where we gain strength, so we can go back and do what must be done.

For most of my young life that was grandma’s house. I’d go around the side gate, past the renters’ yard and the wash tank, around past grandad’s workshop and the orange tree and to the grape-vine shaded patio where I played every day until I was seven, and often enough till I was ten. The kitchen door was always open — unless grandma was going to be gone more than a day — and the clock ticked loudly on the wall. If grandma was not in sight, I crossed the kitchen, opened the door to the inner corridor and called for her. If she didn’t answer, she was out on some errand. But most of the time she was in the kitchen or the yard, doing something, or answered from the depths of the house, “Daughter! I’ll be there.” (Daughter/son is a term of endearment in Portuguese, often used for grandchildren, and even your spouse.)

And then I’d sit down. A kitten or three would climb into my lap. The dog would lie at my feet, grandma would make tea. Later, when she decided I was a young lady, instead of the bowls used for tea in family, she’d bring out the teapot, the night cups, and the bought cookies. (Heaven only knows why, but I appreciated the effort and the love behind it.)

She’d talk of people in the village. I’ll be honest, I have a lousy memory for faces and names. And always did. So most of the time I was only half aware of who she was talking about, unless she mentioned a connection to one of my classmates, or a cat or dog. (Yes, I know. But it’s like this. I knew every pet in the village. Humans on the other hand, were Rex’s owner or Tareco’s girl.) Still, I was interested, in a way. And grandma had a gift for making stories interesting and infusing these very ordinary people with interest and color. Particularly because her memory often went back to their grandparents or great grandparents. And she wasn’t malicious. Sometimes disapproving, but not malicious. (If she made malicious comments, they went waaaaaaaay over my head at a point that I caught the hint, but knew she wouldn’t elaborate. Stuff like “And if you knew how his grandfather made his fortune.” Or “Well, they said her great grandmother was no better than she should be, but I never…” Sometimes, I really wanted those stories. After grandad’s death, while she was still in shock, I managed to get her to tell the story of a local family whose first ancestor in the village was a “dangerous sword-fighter” and “not a good man” and I got a feeling that, well, things we value in characters are certainly not how the village knew people. Or how they valued them.)

Sitting there, listening to grandma talk, to the daily life of people engaged in their own struggles, and how she wished to help this one, or convince that one to take it easier, or– And petting a kitten and sometimes the head of a dog that came to rest it on my knees, I could feel my own struggles: exams and college and ideologically motivated teachers and professors, and spiteful (and sometimes ideologically motivated) classmates and friends or ‘friends’ slip away. Leaving me a space to catch my breath, and just be. Until I had to face the outside again.

For years, while living in Colorado, the bolthole was Pete’s kitchen on Colfax, which is kind of funny, since for at least half of that time, it wasn’t in a particularly safe part of town. Also, it was technically a “low dive diner” frequented by working class people, but also marginal people. That was part of its charm. I could go there, usually with the family, and sit in the back, and soak in the noise and the busy and the various pieces of various lives I could overhear. And eat some souvlaki and rice pudding. And for a moment, the world was bearable.

My other respites, the first one from the beginning, the second only my last ten years there or so, were the Natural History Museum (Yes, it changed names. I’m not at home to their weird notions. rolls eyes.) And the zoo.

I’d walk slowly through the hallways devoted to the evolution of life on Earth, soaking in how small we were in relation to the immensity of time, and I’d feel better. And there were often interesting special exhibits.

Then there was the zoo, which particularly when it was cold and almost empty was like a very large garden with interesting animals as a side attraction.

It probably says something about our last years in Colorado that we ran away to those at least once a week. (Until the lockdown.) And older son and I would often drive through night for coffee at midnight at Pete’s. (Mostly because I wanted to talk plots, or stories, as it was getting harder and harder to write, for reasons that were probably physical.) By that time, nighttime at Pete’s was a who is who of area writers. I have no idea why. I mean, I know why for me, but not for others.

Now I’m far away from all my physical boltholes, and grandma’s house is gone. I mean, parts of it stand, but it’s not remotely the same. The room I was born in is now a bathroom, tiled in pink roses.

Going to Colorado this summer did my heart good, even if I paid for it physically, in having my auto immune go completely insane the moment I went to high altitude. (It got better when I came back down.) It’s good to know it’s still there. Look, yes, I knew it existed. But remember we left during 2021, lockdowns still in erratic existence, and everything plain weird. It’s not what it was. And Colorado Springs has changed beyond recognition, at least the downtown area that was my stomping grounds. But a lot of my hangouts are at least similar enough, it’s good to know they’re there, that people are enjoying them, even if I can’t.

I have memories. Both of grandma’s house, and of Denver, and of a couple of perfect days in Denver with the family. One when the kids were little and one when older son and I just couldn’t take “it” — house hunting (for us), apartment hunting (for him), short on money, waiting for house to sell, stressed over writing career in my case, and applications in his — sometime in 2015 and we went out for the afternoon, had a long walk in the zoo, under a drizzling rain (so rare in Colorado we didn’t have umbrellas,) then dinner at Pete’s. At the time we were both strict low carb, but we were bad and split souvlaki for desert. We sat in a small booth, up front (you could only sit in the corner booth if you had 4 or more people) and watched the street outside through the window stippled with rain drops. I don’t know why that particular afternoon was perfect. It just was, and thinking of it makes me feel better.

And of course, when I sleep I go to grandma’s house. That kitchen, with the (insufficient number of) blue-painted cabinets, and the huge table, is somewhere at the center of who I am. It’s probably where I’ll go when I die. And you can tell I feel it when I want to paint my kitchen cabinets blue and put a chicken mural on the dishwasher…

But I’m a writer. My boltholes aren’t always real places, or real memories.

Oh, I’m a reader too, but weirdly, I don’t often go to other people’s worlds to hide. Heinlein’s, sometimes. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Puppet Masters. Pratchett’s Hankmorpork. Simak’s rural places, in fall, with someone hunting raccoons.

But it’s more likely I’ll go to my own places, my own internal worlds. When I’m truly going insane, the world is often Elly, which is yes, very weird, very dysfunctional. But it’s been with me since I was 14, and I have 3000 years of its history in my head. (The rest is fuzzy.) And it’s so different from ours that I’m not in it at all, so I can go there and live for a moment a life that is not mine, and that is impossible to me.

Going away, even if only inside my head, gives me a few moments to breathe, so I can face reality again.

And its being inside my head means I can go any time (so long as I remember to come out again. there were years, while growing up when making myself do that was almost impossible.) I can take a much needed break while cleaning boxes or doing dishes, or sorting clothes.

Then come back refreshed to face the mess we’re in. Again.

I honestly think without those breaks, I’d already have gone insane. (Or at least “non-functionally insane” since these are the Crazy Years, and I haven’t taken and I’m not likely to take the solution of the “sane man” in those circumstances, you can tell I’m a little nuts myself.)

So, what’s your bolthole? Not physical. (Or physical, but not in the sense of where you go when SHTF. We don’t want that out in public anywhere.) Just the place you for a respite, so you can face the madness again.

Because these days? Everyone needs a bolthole.

Self-Control by the Baloonatic

I have vague memories of Christmas as a child.

My parents didn’t have a lot of spending money, and my Dad was converting our house from a one floor schoolhouse to a two floor home, so it was always in a state of construction. This meant a lot of our Christmas presents were not new, but were often second hand. One year we all got skis, with poles and boots. One year it was bikes.

When it came to the items, I was often quite clever at finding the places in the house where my parents liked to hide things. I hated the suspense of waiting until Christmas or my birthday to find out what I was getting. I just couldn’t do it, so I found that place at the bottom shelf of my parents’ closet one year where they had hid a box of what seemed to me like treasures. It was full of clothes for Barbie dolls. It didn’t matter to me that they weren’t new, and some of them were obviously homemade. They all seemed beautiful and I couldn’t wait to dress up my dolls and show them off. So I woke up eagerly on Christmas morning, eagerly anticipating getting this present. And to my dismay, it wasn’t there. I had been punished for my lack of self-control by my parents forgetting this present and neglecting to put it under the tree. I can’t remember how they reacted when I pointed out this lack, but I do know that it was the last time I went searching for my presents before Christmas morning.

As in most things, the best revenge for a parent when their child does something wrong occurs when the same thing happens to that child as a parent. My son inherited my lack of self-control. Boxes of Lego would arrive and be hidden, only to be found and opened by someone who just couldn’t wait. It got to the point where I ended up having packages sent to my wonderful next door neighbor, Mrs. Winnie, who held onto them for me until the big day.

Self-control is still something I struggle with to this day.

With some things, it isn’t hard. As a Canadian by birth/American by choice, I still prefer Canadian chocolate bars and will buy large amounts of them when I travel back to the land of my birth. But I don’t have trouble hanging onto them, using them as occasional treats and rewards when I’ve accomplished a difficult task. I can make them last because I know that they won’t be replaced easily. Now my son, on the other hand – he even found them when I hid them in the freezer in empty pierogi boxes! But bring chips or cheese popcorn or ice cream into the house…. After all, you don’t want them to go stale or get freezer burnt. Better to eat them quickly so they don’t go bad, right? And I’m sure I’m in the majority of the readers of this blog who, after starting a book, will find themselves late at night saying “Just one more page… one more chapter… one more part…” Or getting on your phone/tablet/computer at night with the intention of getting to bed on time only to find that you got distracted and it is well into the wee hours. The lack of self-control has resulted in many sleepless nights and not so productive days afterwards, as well as many pairs of pants that either don’t fit at all or are uncomfortably tight. And let’s face it, the lack of self-control can lead to much worse fates than that.

So now, as the year has ended and a new year begun, my goal is to continue to make improvements in this area. If I can’t turn off the electronic gadgets at a reasonable time, then maybe I can stop from turning them on. If I can’t resist the call of the ice cream or bag of chips, then maybe I can stop buying them so that they aren’t in the house and tempting me. If I can’t stop from turning the next page… ok, no point in kidding myself. Who has that much self-control?

The bad news is I forgot my Adderal this morning, which I only noticed when I realized it was 1 pm and I hadn’t done a heck of a lot, and even the post at Mad Genius Club took forever, though it was basically a ran on what annoyed me in recent reading.

I can’t explain what happens, but I’m going to assume I spend an inordinate time between sentences playing with these guys:

Or perhaps staring blankly out the window. Who knows. Or half and half. Honestly, the ADD becoming weaponized is the downside of the post menopausal life. Apparently estrogen mitigates ADD. Who knew?

Okay, new head canon: ADD meds work by keeping Terry Pratchett’s monks of time from stealing hours of your time to patch holes in time elsewhere. It’s as plausible as anything else.

Also is forgetting your adderal (yes, I prefer vyvanse, but the pharmacy has been having trouble sourcing it) the most ADD thing ever? Or is it just me?

Anyway, yes, I have a couple of guest posts waiting, but you know I don’t like wasting those when it’s (eeek!) the middle of the afternoon.

So, first an announcement: for the first time in donkey’s years, I made a recommended reading list in science fiction, at Tangent, with 3 stars, their highest rating. Which was gratifying, since this story would be the prequel to the series of novels about mirror-nauts that I posted a bit of a few years ago. It starts with “Jump, the mirror said.” Anyway, yeah, still intending to write that, and this short story is kind of my promise that I will.

Here is the Tangent review for the anthology: Shapers of Worlds Volume IV

And the recommendation: Tangent Online 2023 Recommended Reading List

Anyway, I thought this would amuse you, and also serve as a promise to myself. This is the cover for the eventual first novel, yes, after the short story reviewed by Tangent:

And this is, not the back cover, but the beginning of the novel:

Mirrorplay

Sarah A. Hoyt

“Jump,” the mirror said.

I blinked.  There was one thing I knew for sure, and that was that mirrors don’t talk, even if this was great uncle’s whatshisface’s mirror, inherited in the family for generations, a heavy thing in a heavier gilt frame, which had been a pain and a half to move to my college apartment.  I didn’t have any idea why mother had wanted me to bring it with me, either.  I mean, sure, your college essentials: modular bookcase, folding table, desk, and of course heirloom Venetian mirror, right?

“Jump,” the mirror said again.  “Honorable Katrina Rhea, jump now.”

The mirror looked like a mirror, reflecting myself in jeans and a loose t-shirt, my long red hair caught back in a ponytail.

Right.  So somehow, somewhere, someone had slipped some drugs into something I ate or drank.  Only I hadn’t eaten or drank anything or been around anyone all day.

Which left going insane as a possibility.  I tried to think of insanity in the family, but came up dry.  My reflection in the mirror looked pale; green eyes wide, lips parted.

The kitchen exploded.

It was at my back.  I was in the living room, facing the mirror, when I heard the crash and saw a blossom of light reflected in the crystalline depths of the mirror.  Sound and light.  Explosion.  I smelled burning.

I can’t explain why I jumped for the sofa, reaching between the arm and the cushions for my gun.  The back of my mind gibbered to get out, to call 911.

I held the gun pointed at the doorway to the kitchen.  In this cheap apartment it had no door.  The people before me had hung a bead curtain, but I’d removed it.

Shadows moved against the light in there.  Was it flame?  Was this just stuff burning.

“Put the gun down, Rhea,” a man said, stepping from the fire-light-explosion in the kitchen and into the tiny living room.  He was huge, blond, with the sort of mustache that had gone out of style in the 19^th century.  And it looked like he’d outfitted himself by buying everything advertised in Soldier of Fortune, plus some.  “The game is up.”

Two other men came out, also large, one more blond and a dark haired guy.  The outfits were the same.  But they were holding… water guns?  Weapons of some sort, from the way they pointed them, but in brilliant colors, and weird shapes.  The back of my mind said to rush them.  They were only bluffing, my head said.  But something held me still.

“My name is Kathy Jones,” I said.  “I have no idea who or what you want.”

The first man laughed.  I moved my gun between them. When one pointed his weird device at me, I aimed at him.

The door to the outside flung open behind me.  It shouldn’t have.  It was locked.  But I heard it swing open, and felt the woosh of air at my back.

I turned around in time to see what I can only describe as fish men come in.  They were tall and wore business suits, but from the neck up, they had the heads of sardines.  They walked with a distinct flop flop flop, leaving a trail of water behind them. They wore helmets. Space helmets.

I opened my mouth to protest I wasn’t doing drugs.

Something hit me from behind.  Not an object.  A force.  Something like a heavy wind.

I fell down. I fell down and down and down what seemed to be a cylinder of dark, crackling energy.  I fell down and down and down, as though through the floor, and the apartment below, and the earth.  Down, down, down.

I was taken.  The back of my mind screamed I’d been taken.

****

“Where is it?”

The words repeated, echoed in my mind, with an odd reverberation.  Once, when I’d drunk more champagne than anyone should drink in a night I’d woken up with that odd sound effect.

My eyes hurt.  My mouth felt dry and like I’d licked a Niarmus hole.  And I was immobilized, floating mid air.

“What is it?” I asked.  The syllables fell oddly in my ears.

“No games now, Rhea.  It’s been a good race, but you lost.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.  My voice cracked in the higher syllables.  Damn it.  How long had I been out?  What had they done to me?

I moved my fingers, testing my bonds, and felt them, like fine spider webs against my fingertips.  There was an edge of burn too.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.  And I heard the syllables coming out of my mouth.  Really heard them.  They were nonsense syllables.  There was a sound like Latin, maybe a hint of Romanian only none of the words were words in any language I knew.

“Don’t try us.”

I had a moment to register that I’d been answered in the same language, before pain hit.  It spread from my fingertips and the soles of my feet.  It met over my heart, it stopped my mind.

An eternity later, covered in sweat, my body spasming, I heard my hoarse voice say words I had never heard before, words that meant, “By the mother and the world, by the unborn and the eternal, I will end you.”

My interrogator laughed.  My mind scrambled, like a cat on ice, trying to get hold of something that identified that laugh.  There was a memory, there was–  The name slipped, but I had the image of the blond man who had invaded my home.

As though called by the memory he approached, stood next to me, arms crossed.  He’d changed.  No one would mistake what he wore now for gear off the pages of Soldier Of Fortune.  It looked like he’d fashioned a tunic out of flowing, molten silver metal.  Mowerelian. Something told me it was suitable to his rank.  I didn’t know what his rank was, but I knew his arms were crossed, and there was a superior, smug smile on his face.  “There have been advances you knew nothing about when you went to ground,” he said.  “Your outdated protections will not hold.  Your choice is speak or die, like Kreios Yirach died.”

It hit me hard.  I had no idea who he was talking about.  Not objectively.  Yirach was a strange name, pronounced with a liquid affectation at the end.  But grief seemed to choke me, wet and constricted in my throat.  I had an impression of a vast palace, of windswept rooms, a feeling of an arm around my waist, of a body entangled with mine.

My love, my lost love.

It was as though I had a mind within a mind, a memory within thoughts.  Even as part of me lamented, caught, a child crying, open mouthed, passionate, lost, the other part of me was thinking about that tingle on the fingertips, that sense of spiderwebs.  Yeah, the science might have advanced a lot since I’d gone to ground.  But I knew this bind.  I’d used this bind.  I knew the control points.  I knew how to short it.  All it required was effort and pain.  If I could move my shoulder blade just so, and twist my left heel to the right.  Painfully, I forced my body through minute contortions.  If only Ermis didn’t notice.

Because the contortions were minute, they were more painful.  They required incredible control to do.  Once I felt the field give under me, I played on my fingers.  I’d had someone escape from me this way … but I couldn’t recall when or where, or even who.

I needed to find the pattern, the weaving.  I did, finally, little finger of my right hand crossed beneath the palm, thumb and forefinger on the left stretched as far apart as they could go.  Then I wrenched my shoulder  half out of its socket, shoving just so on the lock point.

The shock of the snap of the grid reverberated through me, like a sharp note, making my teeth ache.

But I had no time to wait, no time to think.  Falling, I modified it to land on my feet.  Before Ermis could recover, I’d grabbed his gun from belt and was pointing it at his head, my arm around him, immobilizing him.

Men came from the shadows of the room, then, pointing guns at me.  It was a vast room, dark, maybe a cavern.  The men who came forth were fish men, fins flapping on the floor, their helmets shining in the light.  “You live with Rodans now?” I asked, my voice bitter.  “Rejected by free men.”  I spit.  “Master of puppets.”

He didn’t say anything, and I shouted at the fish men in their liquid, watery tongue, “Stop or he dies.  He dies now. Leave me a path to the mirror.”

Inside my mind, I didn’t know why I was saying this.  There was just the urgency, the certainty this was the only way out, the only way to escape.

I shoved Ermis ahead, the gun at his temple.  I could feel him trying to find a way to escape, trying to figure out what to say that would get him out of this.  I’d expect no less from him, but I shoved and pushed, in the direction the Rodans were leaving open.  It could be a trap.  Of course it could.  But none of them could stop me from killing their master.  And Rodans weren’t that imaginative.  There wasn’t that much in their makeup.

“You can’t escape,” he said.  “We’ll track you again if you escape.  It’s easier if you give it up now.  What good is to you anyway?  You don’t even use it.”

I cursed him in three languages I couldn’t even understand, save that I was consigning him to the deepest hell of parricides in the mythology of a long lost world.  We’d crossed half the cavern and I could see it now, at the end, the mirror, gleaming milky and sharp.  It was larger than my mirror had been, as it would be, of course.  Wondered what it handled.

I shoved Ermis again.  The Rodans were now behind us, in two lines.

I said a string of syllables, hoping it would work, wondering if it would.  If this mirror had once belonged to me—

For a moment nothing happened.  Then the mirror misted, and a voice said, “Rhea, Lady.”

“Mylarco Tenco,” I said, giving him the precise destination I needed seeking, though I couldn’t tell you how I knew that those particular words would take me back to the world from which I’d been dragged.  I didn’t even know why I had to go back there.  “Jump me.”

The gate opened, flowing like water, shining like molten gold, swirling like a dream.  I had ten seconds, enough.

Ermis’s body tensed, just before I pressed the trigger.

“Mother,” he said.

But I had no mercy left in me.  I shot, and I felt him go heavy, and I smelled the metallic scent of blood.

I held the ray pistol tight as I leapt through the mirror.

And landed on the other side, on soft grass.  I was naked, and there was a fire truck nearby.

First I threw up.  It was instinctive, the body purging itself from tension and recoil. 

On hands and knees, I was aware of a firefighter approaching, boots on the grass.  “Ma’am?” he said.  He was tall, dark, and spoke with a soft Southern accent. “Are you the resident?”

I had enough presence of spirit to shove the ray gun under one of the bushes, to wipe my hand and arm on the grass, where blood and brains had splashed it.  Ermis’s blood and brains.  Oh, mothers.  I had the image of a chubby blond child running to me across a tiled courtyard.

But there was a feeling that was many centuries ago, and loss and betrayal lay between, and it didn’t matter.  I didn’t know what had happened.  I couldn’t even think of the language now, but I had the feeling I’d done what I had to do.

“Ma’am?”

I was shaking, as I stood.  “I got out, when… something exploded.  I jumped through the window.”  I pointed.  “Second floor.”

He nodded.  “Yes, Ma’am.  We think it was a gas explosion.”

There was a woman firefighter with a blanket.  There was a cup of cocoa.  After a long, long time, in which I intermittently dozed and woke up as from horrible nightmares of which I couldn’t remember any part, I was told I could go in, to salvage what I could, but I couldn’t stay there, not in the condition the apartment was.

I went in with the tall firefighter beside me.  He turned his back while I dressed, then followed me, seeming to pay attention to every creak on the floor, looking up as though afraid the ceiling would give.

The place was a shambles, as though something in the kitchen had exploded.  But there was no sign of fire.  Only broken things, blown out.  My books, my papers.  Everything I cherished. From the bedroom, I gathered clothes, my purse, all my ID, all my papers.  The mirror on the wall was gone.

I absorbed its absence but said nothing.

“Do you have a place to go?” the firefighter asked.

“I will find one,” I said.  My throat hurt as though I’d cried for days.

“Good.  We need someone to do an engineering inspection, before we can let you back in.”

I knew I’d never be back in, never to this particular place.

In my car, I thought of where to go.  The problem is that I didn’t know who I was.  Or rather, I knew perfectly well who I was.  I was Kathy Jones, from Portland, Oregon.  I was sure of it.  I remembered mother and father, my childhood, my high school, the pimply young man who’d escorted me to the prom.

None of which explained the other, more intricate memories in my head, or any of what had just happened.  I couldn’t be going insane.  There was no insanity in the family.  At least not in Kathy Jones’ family.

I drove a little forward.  The firefighters were talking to my neighbors.  I rounded the corner, and came back through the darkened yard next door, to that same bush under which I’d shoved the ray gun.  I put it under my sweater.

Then I got in the car, and headed for Portland.  In finding out from where I’d come, perhaps I’d find the answers. 

And besides, something in me said I needed the mirror.  Or a mirror, at any rate.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I also have covers and descriptions for a couple of books I’ll EVENTUALLY write (might not be this year, as you know what I have on the slate this year. OTOH a miracle could occur, and I could take my adderal and get stuff done. I mean, what are the odds?)

So, ALIEN HUNTER

Cassiopeia Jones was left at the altar, waiting for a groom that never showed up. She assumed he had got cold feet. But her crazy aunt Marge (don’t we all have one of those) couldn’t leave it alone. When she calls Cassy for help, things have already gone horribly wrong.

Trying to save her aunt, Cassy finds out what happened to her fiance, and also that the Earth is disputed territory with 100 different species trying to take it. With various governments and bureaucracies in the pockets of an alien faction or the other, there’s only a few, competent and slightly insane humans fighting all the aliens for the sake of humanity.

And then there’s Cassy who– Well, Cassy is not elite anything, and she just wanted aunt Marge to leave her alone. But Aunt Marge didn’t. And now Cassy is the most unlikely Alien Hunter who ever was.

Does luck favor those totally unsuited for the job? Cassy is about to find out!

And A FATAL PAWS

Jane Blond already has too much to do. She has two teen children to keep an eye on, and that’s not counting her mathematician husband, whom no one can predict or even figure out. And they just moved to the small town of Goldport, where he accepted a job teaching Mathematics At Colorado University at Goldport — CUG — where the only acceptable house was a Victorian in need of a lot of repair.

Her daughter — Ada Lovelace Blond — is dating someone unsuitable, and her son — Blaise Pascal Blond — isn’t making any friends and she just can’t catch a break.

And then someone throws a bag full of newborn kittens from a car onto her lawn, and involves Jane in a mystery that she’ll have to solve or die trying.