Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

The last time I was in Portugal I got to witness (actually the time before last, while running through the Lisbon airport) something I’d only previously read about as being normal in the soviet union: structures that were being built and decaying, simultaneously, which seems impossible, but I assure you it’s not.

As the idiots on both sides try to hurry us into war, and the custard heads try to side with Russia and cite as a reason “But Ukraine is corrupt” I stare at the mind-boggling staggering amounts of corruption necessary to bring Russia to the level of incompetence on display in the battlefields of Ukraine, and I think “If that’s a reason for Russia to invade a country, they’re going to invade all of the world, and the US only escapes on a “relative” scale. (Mind you, that is precisely what Putin wants, but that’s something else.)

The question is: competence has existed, and had high marks. We know it existed at various times, because their works survive: the landscape of Europe is still littered with Roman bridges and aqueducts, not to mention Roman roads. Cathedrals and monuments abound. Our own country has marvels of engineering and construction still standing and you don’t have to fix daily.

So, where did that competence go? And why does no one seem to know how to do anything. (Here as an aside, almost everything I learned to do competently had to be learned on my own, and often against massive resistance.)

Well, for about a hundred years now, we’ve been under the ideological ascent of socialism. And socialism — international socialism, to be precise — is only good for creating picturesque ruins. (The romantics would have loved them.)

Note that I’m not defending national socialism. As I’ve pointed out before, when the government takes over the economic life of a country, and directs what the companies can or cannot do, the tendency is to quash innovation, and as a rule everyone becomes very poor.

It’s just that it depends. Like empires (which to an extent they are) national socialist regimes can do okay under an extraordinary ruler. I had a mini-dispute with Herb in the comments on whether Franco was or was not Fascist. He absolutely was, both in the economic, and in the repressive, take over every minutia of life aspect. He was also better than the average bear at directing the economic life of the country which is why before his death we used to go shop in Spain, where more and better goods were available than in Portugal.

Relatively speaking, Salazar was a softer leader. Or at least, he stomped less on the opposition (while making more noises about stomping. It’s the Portuguese way.) But as an economic leader (director of the economic life. Fuhrer if you will. Or where did you think that came from?) he sucked. He sucked upside down and sideways and with his head in a sack. And that’s because he was raised by Jesuits, and got his economic theories from them. Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know. So over his rule, everyone became increasingly poorer. But weirdly not incompetent. (In fact, as a person who — there and here — likes to follow craftsmen around watching how they do things, the average craftsman who learned his trade under national socialism, was probably way better than anyone else.)

Which brings us to: how does international socialism/communism not only destroy competency but introduce incompetency and corruption to the degree it is enforced/implemented.

At first I thought it was due to enforcement/non enforcement of laws. But that dog won’t hunt. Laws in Portugal at least were as inconsistently enforced under one as under the other. And of course the darlings of the regime had, if not carte blanche, at least a certain amount of immunity.

So what does it?

Some people will of course jump to its being the egalitarian ethos of international socialism, the fact that it’s supposed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat, and that nothing can be enforced.

But that’s actually buying the propaganda of the international socialists, and their propaganda has absolutely nothing to do with reality. You are free to believe this is true, but you are also free to believe the Easter bunny is saddling up his egg distribution system.

No, the international socialists are just as totalitarian as the international socialists. In fact, they are usually more so, since they require you to believe– Oh.

Look, the national socialists — other than the Germans, and yes, that is a huge “other” but truly, everywhere else they gained hold wasn’t QUITE that insane and neurotic, let alone murderous — are evil thugs who gain control and rule from above with a heavy hand. Even if one or two exceptions fail to immiserate their populations quite so much, they do in general clamp down on innovation and enforce whatever their strange idea of economics might be, with predictable consequences.

But the totalitarian rule they do enforce is usually in tune with their people. So, Franco encouraged and endorsed the Catholic church, and FDR made noises about good, midwestern values and how “decent” people should live.

It stomps on anyone even mildly different, of course, but the rule it enforces is what most of the native custard heads would think is right and just at least externally. (Yes, I do realize what that says about the Germans of the 20th century.)

So while — in general — it impoverishes the populace and destroys industry and innovation, not to mention free trade, it brings with it an ethos of “poor but honest” and “I take pride in what I do because I belong, and this nation I belong to is the best in the world.”

It slots into the portion of the head that wants to belong to something. And it it gives an appearance of working just long enough that people tend to think of it as right, just and “the natural order of things.”

Which is why so many conservatives– may G-d have mercy on their souls — think of the FDR rule as “the way America should be.”

Meanwhile international socialism (which for a large part of the 20th century was actually Russian nationalism projected outward) while as intrusive and crazy cakes comes with a set of shibboleths that self-admittedly are impossible. And are impossible from the beginning.

Because the international cult dictates that you not only believe but endorse principles that are obviously idiotic, even to the most idiotic of human beings. In fact, it takes years of expensive education to be able to say these things with a straight face. (See the current nominee for Supreme court who is unable to define “woman” because she’s not a biologist.)

In the early stages of this international insanity, it was all about the workers being naturally better than the managers, and therefore if the workers were in control marvelous things would ensue.

Only even the workers know they’re not qualified to manage (No, seriously. I’ve been a worker several times. I suck as a manager.) And the manager seriously know it. And given the workforce of the early 20th (or late nineteenth) century was often illiterate and more provincial than someone born and raised in NYC now, it was obvious they couldn’t manage anything.

Which was okay, because — in an also obvious move — intellectuals took over from the beginning, and managed the “worker’s” revolution, in fact ordering the workers around as the managers never had.

What was even more obvious is that these persons were crazy and had absolutely no clue how anything worked. They were “experts” on everything, on paper, and completely unable to figure out the simplest things in reality. So once they took control things went wrong very very fast.

Which is where incompetence and insanity came in.

Look, it’s like this: When you look at the virtual destruction of the country and the economy, and you like to eat, and perhaps remain clothed, in self-defense, you start making side deals, compromises and side-pacts.

So, that cement for that stack-a-prol building? Well, obviously it can’t go there, because the guys building the sea wall that the government doesn’t think is needed, need it. So the cement takes a walk, and sand is used to make up the difference.

That’s how it starts. And then it expands, until the entire economy is a vast network of lies, arrangements, side deals, mordida and bullshit.

Because there is no real central coordinating authority. There is a crazy person at the top who depending on their particular time in the line of insanity, says — and heaven help us, some of them believe it — that they are ruling in the name of workers, oppressed races, the poor, the gay, the transgender, but who in fact can find his/her/its own ass with two hands, a seeing eye dog and sonar.

And under it there are atomized individuals who can’t trust anyone, because anyone at all could turn them in.

There is no family, no friendship, nothing in which the crazy people won’t intrude.

Now imagine doing business under a regime like that (And all socialist regimes, from euro-socialism, now ruled by an unelected bureaucracy from Brussels, to the hard communism of the USSR are like that. The only question is how hard it comes down on you when you come under its notice. Will you simply lose your job and be made unemployable, will you be thrown in jail,or will you go to Gulag?)

Well, all business is corruption. The only thing that works is the black market, and that doesn’t work very well. It’s all pass the buck, cheat the next guy and cover your own ass.

And for those who will say that Putin has more in common with the old style national socialism than this. No, not really. He too claims a sort of divine right of kings to know what is right and wrong, even if he does pay lip service to old Russian society. From what I understand in Russia it is obvious it is only lip service. (Though the poor bastages are grateful for even that, after what that society has been through.)

More importantly, the bureaucracy, the mobs, everything he inherited are from the old structure. And he didn’t change them. So, yeah, they are also plagued with corruption and inefficiency. In fact, all the old Eastern block countries are, from what I understand including East Germany. (And it tells you something that the crazy-cakes regime managed to make Germans inefficient and slovenly.)

Socialism is not just lethal. It is a force that — by enshrining the rule of “experts” and “scientists” who are neither — makes it necessary to become an inefficient anarchist and a scammer to survive.

If you’re looking around and saying “Uh oh” yep.

We are already well on our way there, and have been for oh, thirty or forty years.

But there is still time. It starts with cleaning up our governance and getting rid of the masses of unelected bureaucracy that make mere survival almost impossible.

Can we get there from here?

I don’t know. The bridge is out, and from that roar, I think there is a fire coming.

What it leaves behind, G-d only knows. But if we can take from it nothing else, take this: Self governance works. Rule by “experts” doesn’t. You’re the only expert in being you. And humans, trading freely, survive and thrive.

As long as you remove the boot from their necks.

*I thought this was worth rerunning, even if less than 2 years old, because we find ourselves casting from history on what will happen here, and it’s important to understand certain things: How different we are from other nations; how different this crisis is from crisis in the past; and, more importantly, how corrupt our understanding of the past is, because of our establishment’s corruption. Sure, those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. But those who believe Marxist versions of history are doomed to be very surprised – SAH*

The Wrong Story A Blast From The Past From August 7 2020

Having dealt with what I’m sure is yet the same troll in the comments, telling us that without Marxism the “upper classes” wouldn’t give a fig for the lower classes, world without end, connected with something that has been going on in my head all morning.

Anyway, this morning I was reading a book from a non-woke author who has been pounded in reviews for daring to tell the truth about pre-conquest Mexican history, and yet, in analyzing previous Mexican/indigenous societies he speaks repeatedly of “class warfare” and seems to think it’s a normal part of civilization.

Which made me pound my head repeatedly on the breakfast table.

Class warfare isn’t a thing. It was never a thing until Marx brought it to the vocabulary. Hell and damnation, it wasn’t even a thing in the French revolution.  No, I’m serious.

The fact that some people have more and some have less has never caused war or the fall of any civilization.  What causes war or the fall of civilization is closing pathways to “having more” to large segments of the population.

The French revolution wasn’t class warfare. Yes, aristo, aristo a la lanterne.  But what it actually was was the violent reorganization of a society whose ruling elite had become obsolete and unable to adapt to new economic circumstances, and also who refused to let society change normally.

Which I can completely understand is something that would make our current self-proclaimed ruling elites uncomfortable, since that’s exactly what they’re doing.

French aristocrats were often not the wealthiest people around. In fact, their means of wealth had been falling for over a century, and most of them were deeply indebted. What they had by law, though, was power over everyone BORN under them.  It wasn’t economic, but state power, ultimately.  And they not only refused to relinquish it, allow the bourgeois (often far wealthier) into their circles, but kept coming up with more and better ways to keep the “interlopers” out.

They were in fact doing what a lot of our soi disant “elites” are doing, trying to silence dissent and return to a way of life that hasn’t been normal or healthy for a century or so.  (The left’s ideal time is the 1930s for instance. Only with more sex stuff, and — in their heads but nor really since they’re now for straight up apartheid under the guise of safe spaces — racial integration.)

But it wasn’t “classes” in the sense that Marx preached them. It had nothing to do with wealth, income levels, or daily occupation. (The nobility QUITE lacked means of production, that being part of the problem, in the industrial age.)

It was more accurately castes: i.e. privileges given by the government depending on the condition of your birth.  Which, again, is what the left is trying to institute here.

Anyway, there has never been “class struggle” in any history ever, in the Marxist sense.  That was Marxist…. Well…. Marx was a high functioning autist and invented patterns even where they didn’t exist. And he wanted to plug in to the romantic ethos of the time and make the industrial revolution bad. So he came up with that load of fecal matter. It means nothing.

If you believe in Marxist “classes” and “Class warfare” and you’re not a leftist, kindly consider you’ve been profoundly mal-educated.

(If you are a leftist, you’ve also been profoundly mal-educated, but you like it, you believe in it, and by gum you’re going to wallow in it like a pig in muck.)

History could more accurately be described as a battle of memes.

Humans live not by bread alone. Regardless of how food and the other necessary goods of society are produced, that’s not what makes people happy/unhappy, etc.  It’s the story in their heads about the society and what makes it tick that counts. And the story always lags reality. And is often used for the rulers’ purposes.

Hence the romantics were an attempt to make life pre-industrial-revolution wonderful. And convince peasants living in rural submission was better.

At some point, though, the story breaks, when its fit to reality (it’s NEVER 100% because human life is fluid) becomes glaringly broken.  This is when revolutions happen.

For instance, it was easy for rural French peasants to groan under the oppression of the nobility, because there was a unified narrative that you were supposed to serve in the place you were born to. And because honestly, the noblemen were different enough so as to be another breed, almost.

It was when the industrial revolution advanced enough that there was a vast group of wealthy people who were told they were inferior “by reason of birth” that the wheels came off. Particularly as the bankrupt nobility tried to push them back into rural subjection.

In the case of the book I’m reading, he talked about pre-Mexican peasants rebelling against the priests who lived so much better, because class warfare.  This is not real. Or serious. It’s more likely they rebelled (we don’t know for sure, as we have no written accounts) because the priests failed in their role according to societal narrative.

I.e. they were supposed to keep bad things away, and didn’t.

In the same way the current covidiocy and intentional crash of the economy is an attempt to reverse the clock and to implant the narrative that “we’re all in this together” thereby giving the Marxist intelligentsia of the west control over the story in people’s heads.

“The heroic people and their heroic leaders defeated the virus with the power of government and therefore the government must have more power and narratives must come from the top and be unified.”

This is their preferred narrative. It leaks out with things like DeBolshevik wanting a ticker tape parade “when we defeat” the virus. Or their being really upset at Trump for not falling in line with “government is the way to defeat this” or imposing unified solutions from the top.

It’s not going to work. In fact, it’s hitting hardest those places they have full control of: Arts, entertainment, news, education–  What they’re actually doing is destroying their areas of power to gain power. Which is a ghost dance typical of what happens when an “elite” displaced by a change in circumstances which makes their story no longer fit tries to hold on to power.

The more they do, the more they flail around, the harder the fall will be.  Which frankly is scaring the shit out of me, as I think it’s going to be guillotines and terror. Not their fake attempts at terror, but the real one, where people Have.Had.Just.About.Enough and have no way to make the bullshit stop except a massive spasm of violence.

This is the way civilizations DO fall.

But the picture in everyone’s head right now is “classes” in “permanent war” which is an invention of Marx and has no contact with reality.

History is not permanent class warfare.  History IS permanent change.  And when the story in people’s heads doesn’t match the narrative, a time comes when it is reset VIOLENTLY.

The Marxist narrative was never right — which is why it brings death, starvation and destruction wherever it gets power — but it made sense to people in a regimented post-industrial world.  It also poisoned them for any practical solution, but hey, the ruling classes could USE it to get more power.  So it worked, after a fashion.

Only in the information age it doesn’t. And people are buying it less and less. And know all the ways in which it breaks.  But still retain fragments of it in their head. Which means as it falls apart, it will fall faster, harder and more violently.

The more it has penetrated everything and cued people for the wrong reaction, the more violent the outcome.

But screaming the story louder, or having seeded it everywhere doesn’t stop its fall. It just makes the fall more violent.

Reality is a bitch. It always wins.

And the current “elite” inability to understand that, or even to process that they are in fact in charge and not bold rebels (which their Marxist upbringing insists they are) is setting us up for a “blood to our ankles” situation.

Pray that I’m wrong.

Some people are born for the burning times.

Most of us who write or read here were born for strange times.

Look, I do understand the left’s fascination with “the excluded” and “diversity.” It’s just that being collectivists/part of the herd by nature, they go about it backwards and sideways.

They’re not looking for pink monkeys/people who inexplicably are rejected, or even people who think so differently they have trouble explaining how they got where they got, because it’s obvious to them, and they think it should be obvious to everyone.

No, the left doesn’t like those “excluded.” Being the herd, and having instituted themselves as “leaders of the herd”, masters of signaling belonging and judges of what must and must not be accepted, they actually hate those who are true non conformists. Their attempts to enforce herd uniformity descent to levels of “not one thought out of place.”

Because the society where they’re trying to enforce this is one that has long valued the excluded and the off-beat (Partly the Christian heritage, partly, in America, the conciousness we’re descended from/or are those who came here to get away from herd enforcement, and also that as a country we’re completely weird.) they still pretend to accept the excluded, to value the strange, and to enshrine the iconoclast, only they have no clue what those actually are.

Like that song “we are the renegades” which then goes on to cite a bunch of Hollywood and business darlings that are considered “innovative” because they did some slightly new things, and which makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it.

Because they have absolutely no clue about people actually getting excluded for no reason, they try to force the acceptance of people who are excluded for reason, and when society rebels they blame the group for the evil of those excluded.

This is a ploy that works, because it gives the “leaders” of the herd more power, of course.

As the new media and a plethora of individual contact opportunity gave us — the outsiders, the goats, those who giggle at the conformity of the herd — a chance to be herd and create alternate networks, the herd and those who enforce the conformity of the herd started losing their minds.

They didn’t even know we existed, much less that anyone could actually be that different.

Now we’re stuck somewhere between them trying to make us shut up, and them trying to lead the herd off the cliff to prove they can.

But the herd, though it values conformity, is not actually stupid, and is refusing to do as told.

So these crazed sheep are running around biting other sheep on the butt and telling them it’s sheepdogs and the wolves are coming.

Partly because the end of their reign feels like the coming of the wolves to them.

Okay, I might have stretched that analogy a bit. If the left were sheep-leaders, they’d be sheep with some kind of unknown disease that keep trying to infect everyone else, beause patches of fungus and sh*t are the latest trend, and you should be wearing them too.

As humans they’re miserable, desperate to fit in at all costs, yet pretending to value diversity, attaching to irrelevant things like skin color for “diversity” while stomping on any thought that’s out of line, and generally acting insane.

Unfortunately in the years of submersion, the years when we couldn’t be heard, they had seized control of the — well, everything. All the levers of power.

So, now they really are trying to destroy everything they don’t control. And it’s worldwide.

Great evil is being done, and evil is headed to all of us, at speed.

This is good. No, stop glaring at me. It is good, because for many years evil has been accepted as “normal”. It’s been beaten into people that crime is “society’s fault” for instance, when it is no such thing. It’s been impressed upon people that it’s better to beg than to be self-sufficient. And a great evil of mediocrity has settled over all creative endeavors, where sticking out has been considered the only true crime, no matter what they tell us. In my profession, my whole time in it, I’ve been told that they want something “new” exactly like the last “new thing” that is. And it’s like that everywhere, till mere competency is a de-facto crime and punished as such.

Well, it’s good to see that this stuff is all evil. Because turning away from it is the only way we, as a society and a culture, save ourselves and go forward.

What is not good is that chains of supply, institutions, companies, ways to earn a living in the modern world are all going to crash for a time. And people will be in real danger. And the herd will be starving.

And the herd, ladies and gentlemen and the occasional dragon, is most of humanity. They might not be like us, but they’re our kith and kin, and as such we should value them. And it’s not good when the innocent starve.

Fortunately we do exist. We’re the goats, the excluded. Mostly because we think weird, which often leads to our behaving weird, at least in the eyes of those who never had a weird thought in their lives.

Now, granted, many of the weird have gone wrong: those brought up with an amoral disposition, those who just got really angry and traipsed into doing harm as a vocation, those who want vengeance on the herd.

With the shower of sh*t that’s about to rain on all of us, and how many of us have at best a marginal hold on survival, (being by disposition likely to be on employment and money-making ventures that are fringe or odd, themselves) it is easy to think it is a grander purpose to destroy. Heaven know that’s what a lot of “normal” people will conclude. “Everything is wrong, so let’s burn it all down.” And how much easier it is for us to think that?

But it’s not right. Yes, the institutions and structures of society have been turned against it, but it doesn’t mean that the structures in themselves are evil or wrong.

Sure, some are, because the perversion of the normal and good started a long time ago. But not all. “Mere anarchy” being loosed upon the world might briefly feel good, but it is in fact the end of civilization.

We’re not the left, and we do not — if we’re even marginally sane — assume that “destroy everything — ??????– paradise.”

It is important to rebuild or shore up as fast as things fall down. And it’s important to take an unusual eye to things and figure out what’s actively harmful, what must be removed, what can be adapted and what can be salvaged.

Fortunately, we’re nothing if not unusual. As Kate Paulk is likely to say “Think outside the box? What box? I can’t find the box.”

You know the saying “When things get weird, the weird go pro”? It is wrong. We wouldn’t know what pro means. Even those who are professionals in some thing or other, we aren’t really professionals in anything. We’re making it up as we go along, because rules that apply to sheep fit weirdly on goats.

So…. if your entire life you’ve been told you think too much. If you were the kid other kids wanted to kill in kindergarten, because you were so weird. If most of your friends — your friends! — say you’re strange. If your opinion tends to be not only different from mainstream, but sideways and upside down so that the conventional thinkers can’t figure out if you agree/disagree/are completely insane: stand up.

No one is going to ask you to go pro. You wouldn’t know pro if it bit you in the fleshy part of the butt. And that’s how it should be.

We’re asking you to stand up. We’re asking you to go active. Think, plan, build. Prepare.

Build under, build over, build around, and get ready. Because when it all crumbles, we’re the ones who have to not let the herd go over the cliff.

They’ll still hate us, it’s a given. But in the middle of it, we might be able to bite a few butts. And we’ll make sure there’s still a herd and a pasture, when it’s all done.

In the mean time…. we’re going to do some very weird things we never thought we would. We’re going to have to become different people, which will hurt. And we’re going have to face our own weirdness, unflinchingly.

And yeah, a few of us will die. But hey, that was baked in since we were born. If we manage this, not all of us will die.

THINK. Prepare. Act.

This is our song, this is who we are. Be not afraid. This is our time.

Yesterday was one of those days. I actually woke up early, to get the promo post up early. Of course of all the posts in the week, the promo post is the one that requires me to paste images, right?

So, I first tried the normal thing, where I copy paste the cover from Amazon. It didn’t work, as in…. at all. It just showed a blank and acted like it was an image.

So, I uploaded it to my computer, then pasted from there. It refused to.

Finally I found a work around of a screen shot, and it seemed to work, so I set about doing the promo post. When I put in the last book I paged up…. and the images were gone, replaced with “insert image here”.

By that time it was twelve thirty my time, and with a might ARGH I decided to fly without images, which I realize will materially impact hits on the books.

And then I went to have coffee and breakfast.

Would you believe the entire day was like that? Everything I touched broke/didn’t work/ did something bizarre I didn’t expect.

I’m trying to finish BOR (aka the TRULY cursed book) but by the time I sat down to write (four thirty?) I just didn’t have the brain.

And so, here we are.

I’ve done a backup of the entire blog, so that should things get froggy I can take it elsewhere. In my copious spare time I might do a backup with everything setup, so it’s a flip button. The problem being, the backup doesn’t seem to have downloaded.

This morning I woke up and thought I’d finish the typeset work for Odd Magics. I did, using atticus. I’m perfectly happy with it, but the ebook export isn’t working. The print is, mind, so I suppose I can do the print in atticus, then go back and format everything with kindle create. And I will, if I still can’t get the ebook to download by this evening. But seriously… Must everything be like this. Like the last two years aren’t enough.

That ARGH you hear is mine.

I wish the internet hamsters would find someone else to torture.

This post is mostly to figure out if I can, indeed, post something with an image. If I can’t I’m probably going to go Librarian, and no one has any frog pills to hand.

Part of me just wants to go back to bed, but we need my income, so I suspect not.

You know what? When it all blows up it will be over someone having a day like this, not over some grand philosophical dispute. Like the vegetable vendor who set himself on fire at the beginning of the failed Arab liberation.

No, I’m not going to set myself on fire. I usually set the internet on fire.

But again, seriously — looks up — can the simple things just work? Just for one day?

*SORRY ABOUT THE LACK OF IMAGES ON THIS POST. I SPENT HOURS TRYING TO CORRECT IT AND I’M OUT OF TIME. HOPEFULLY I CAN FIX IT DURING THE WEEK. WORDPRESS IS A’HOLE-SAH*

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. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM ROY M. GRIFFIS: The Thing From HR: a Cthulhu, Amalgamated novel.

“A Cthulhian romp that’s equal parts Terry Pratchett and Mel Brooks… and it just might be the funniest novel I’ve ever read.” – Upstream Reviews
I laughed far too much…you’ll enjoy dark humor, dry wit, slapstick moments, and elements of romantic comedy. – Amazon 5-star review
What’s a nice Shoggoth like him doing in a dump like this?
Narg was content working as a Damnation Services-10 in HR. Sure, he was related to one of the Elder Gods, but a little nepotism never hurt any Thing. His life was just wailing and gibbering, right up until his Uncle needed a small favor from his nephew.
All Narg had to do was go down among the humans…and pretend to be one of them.
These are not your Grandfather’s tales of Eldritch Horror: this is the untold story of the ghastly, unappreciated (and entirely expendable) minor monstrosities that support the Inscrutable Plans Of Dark Gods And Elder Things Beyond The Knowledge Of Men.
The Cthulhu, Amalgamated series is a comic romp full of action and mystery, including, of course, Sanity-Shattering Horror––and that’s just the paperwork. Even H.P. could not conceive of the Corporate Terrors that await The Thing from HR.

FROM AMANDA S. GREEN: Foil of the Gods.

Evil has taken root in the Adrean Imperium. Soon it will rise up, destroying everything in its wake. If Balaar wins, the world will fall to a darkness the like of which it has never before seen.

Aimsir, to the west of the Imperium, is the birthplace of the Order of Arelion, enemy of Balaar. Cait Falconer—Knight-Cleric and heir to Queen Maeve Porgisl, ruler of Aimsir—knows danger draws near. Aimsir’s borders have been safeguarded but at a great cost. Now Cait and the Order work with the Queen and her military to make sure Aimsir never falls to the coming evil.

Then the unthinkable happens. Allies fall. Others become enemies. The followers of Balaar march inexplicably toward Aimsir. If it falls, all will be lost.

FROM DAN MELSON: Preparing The Ground (Preparations For War Book 1)

It started innocently enough. Joe was the engineer on one of Earth’s first explorations beyond the Solar System, using borrowed Imperial technology. Captured on a hostile planet, he has to make a plan for his crew to escape – and then he discovers his real mistake!

He becomes a Missionary of Civilization on a primitive planet caught between massive empires – and the enemy has to think it’s all native ingenuity!

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Home World (Fall of the Alliance)

Roland house Jaeger is in desperate straits after being brutally used to distract his father while his enemies move.

Lord Seigbert Fey needs help to gain custody of his orphaned grandchildren, and desperate enough to take a chance on a battered angry teenaged boy.

Together, they start to pull their lives together. But their Transdimensional Empire of thousands of Worlds, the Drei Mächte Bündnis, the Three Part Alliance, is heading into rough waters, and about to hit the rocks that will shatter it.

Can a small family survive the fall of the Alliance?

FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot-42 Book One – Stalingrad Run

At the height of World War II, an apparent time anomaly cuts Europe and part of the Middle East off from the rest of the world. Trapped in Northern Iran, with no way to contact the world he knew, United States Army Engineer Jim Edwards is forced to flee from both the Germans and the Soviets. His only companions are a mysterious Russian woman who may be trying to assassinate Stalin, and a man who calls himself “Loki”. Is he any more trustworthy than the Norse trickster god he’s named after?

In a desperate bid to get to Great Britain, Jim finds himself in a treacherous race across Nazi-occupied Europe. His mission? To prevent the Nazis from overrunning Europe, then sending their war machines against an alternate United States that’s still armed with black powder muskets. The freedom of mankind’s future may depend on his success.

FROM MALCOLM JAMESON, WITH AFTERWORD BY D. JASON FLEMING: Too Young To Live! (Annotated): A classic pulp space opera.

After suffering a catastrophic failure that almost destroys their ship, the crew of the Thuban manage to gain some control inside of a dark nebula, and land on the mysterious Athanata — a planet where age is immortality, and youth is a death sentence!

First published under the editor-mandated title Quicksands of Youthwardness, iktaPOP Media is pleased to bring this long out-of-print Malcolm Jameson tale back to readers everywhere.

This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new afterword by D. Jason Fleming giving historical and genre context to the novella.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Flight of Miss Stanhope: A Short and Sweet Regency Romance.

Marianne Stanhope is in trouble. Her family is urging her to accept the attentions of a most odious suitor, so she turns to a gentleman of her acquaintance for aid. But Mr. Firth has his own reasons for assisting Miss Stanhope, and it falls to her childhood friend Mr. Killingham to convince her that she’s made a dreadful mistake.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Familiar Tales #2: Vaguely Familiar and Oddly Familiar

The Off Ramp of Doom meets an ancient evil . . . Lelia Chan and her Familiar Tay cross paths with a piece of obsidian that’s more than it seems. When the local magic community runs out of ideas, Morgana Lorraine asks a trained shadow mage, André Lestrang, to help. The stone remembers evil. Evil calls to evil. Lelia and her friends must stop that call.Less than a month later, the Off Ramp of Doom strikes again. The police ask Lelia to look into the matter – literally. Meanwhile, Shoshana Langtree’s art attracts unwanted – and possibly related – attention. When trouble at work leads André to return to Riverton, shadow mages and friends have their hands full with stolen art and Halloween follies.Will they solve the mystery in time?

FROM C. V. WALTER: Captivating the Alien Captain: Alien Brides Series, Book 4.

Some women aren’t meant to be tamed…. 

Some men would rather love a wild woman…. 

Trina’s been in love before and is done with all that nonsense. After a lifetime of not being able to count on anybody but herself, she’s happy with the life she’s created, thank you very much. She’ll love her fabrics, and dote on her grandchildren, but leave the romance to the young and foolish.

Enter Captain Maikedon Cretus. He’s smart, sexy, and interested in more than Trina’s body…and very interested in that, too.

Careful and patient, he’s laying siege to her heart until the walls she’s built start to crumble. He’s willing to wait as long as he has to in order to win his lady’s love, and it’s not looking like it’s going to be as long as she thought…. 

Until the alien dress Trina is altering for the wedding of the century turns up questions and a story of betrayal. Can they work together to solve the mystery and lay to rest an Emperor’s dark past, or will the tangled web of woven lies and truth tear them apart?

Contains mature themes.

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.

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: OPTIMAL

It is important not to attribute magical powers to the other side.

Yes, they do have plans, and they post them quite blatantly.

Part of this is to convince themselves and those on their side that everything is going fine. Look, there’s a plan!

The other part is that, as always, they’ve been so profoundly indoctrinated into their one-end-of-history paradise, that they think if you oppose them it’s simply because you have failed to be properly informed. Think about their war cry “Educate yourself.” Because if you only educate yourself, of course you’ll agree with them. (When in fact, to dissent from the “truths” proclaimed by the media-industrial complex requires quite extensive research and self-education, because it’s a hard step to take (agreeing with the mob is always easiest.))

Also think of what happens when they lose? Granted our side tends to go “I guess the people want stupidity now” which is…. stupid, particularly when we know the massive margin of fraud. But their side just goes “We need to explain to them better. The people are so dumb. We must educate them.”

Always with the assumption that if we only knew their full plan we would of course love it. Hence “You’ll own nothing and be happy” because they — rightly in this case — think “you’ll own nothing” and can’t make the leap to “and be happy.” So they have to tell us we’ll be happy. Everything we want or need will be provided by the kindness and care of supreme government. Why don’t we love that. (Mostly because if the government gives you everything it can take everything away, and that we’ve all grown up since kindergarten and want to take care of ourselves, than you so much. But they can’t imagine not trusting government see. Remember the creepy DNC interviewee? “We all have to belong to something, so we belong to the government.”)

Yes, they are quite amazingly good at breaking everything, but that’s not because they have a plan. It’s because we fail to act as they would/as they expect, and so they try to herd us towards it, one step at a time. And they never think further than that one step, because they know they’re smart and we’re dumb, see? If we were smart we’d be on their side, after all. All the smart people are!

And lately it’s all been blowing up in their faces, and they’re trying to figure out why, and of course it can’t be their fault, so they keep getting more and more outrageous.

Take the covidiocy and lockdowns. I’m not sure — precisely — what it was supposed to lead to, precisely. I think they honestly locked us down simply to ruin the economy and mess with the election. Remember that they were “praying” for a recession and trying to figure a way to smash the economy in late 2019. So, the one step thinking (Two, because the middle one is underwear gnomes) was: Release a virus — ???? — ruin the economy.

When people started protesting the endless two weeks, they were surprised. SURPRISED! And started cracking down and hitting us with more panic porn, because, d*mn it, if we weren’t going to vote their way, they had to keep us locked down till November, so they could fully establish the…. what was it Zhoe Bai-Den called it? “The most extensive network of fraud”? Something like that.

At the same time, the destruction of our inner cities with the effective removal of all vagrancy — and pooping or doing drugs in public — laws had already started, but at least in Denver they saw a golden opportunity and allowed the homeless to camp on sidewalks, while the tax payers were locked up.

I’m not sure this was even one step thinking so much as a result of two basic assumptions: “The bourgeois must be afflicted. Only that way will they care about the homeless” and “We’re kind.”

It never occurred to them — ever — that the ability to telecommute plus the profoundly unpleasant urban environments would contribute to an exodus from the cities.

Now they are trying — oh, so belatedly — to clean up the cities (Or at least Newsom, but as usual with a creepy overreach that will allow him to use mental hospitals for dissidents, as the USSR did) and begging people to come back.

Mind you the ability to telecommute has been there for 20 years, but management wouldn’t allow it. Now — well, as a friend said “Today was our third “you absolutely must come back and work in the office.” I think one person did.”

Managers and gregarious people absolutely want everyone back, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. A lot of people like myself — and at this point most of my friends — have taken themselves off to more rural and congenial pastures. (I’ll confess it’s also because we see what is coming, so we want to be near where the food grows.)

Which brings us to the next instance of one step thinking.

This is even more underwear gnomish. Gas prices. First of all they’re sure that we can stand much higher gas prices, because Europe has had them for years. Because, you know, we’re exactly the same as a scrap quilt of countries where to swing a cat you have to get it a passport. Second, they think it will curb pleasure travel. Since apparently making air travel even more unpleasant only caused the deplorable masses to drive everywhere. It never occurs to them the most important use of gas in the US is not even close to being people driving around in their cars. Just like it doesn’t occur to them that most people can’t afford and wouldn’t want electric or hybrid cars. But the most important use of gas is to transport goods, many of them essential, across our continent-sized nation. Well, that and to power our mechanized agriculture, so there’s food to transport.

You see, they only use power to drive around, so it must be what everyone uses it for. So, get an electric car, peasant. Or walk, fat. (Oh, yeah, they also almost all live in urban environments, where walking or biking, or renting one of those insufferable by-the-hour toy cars is an option.)

But now I’ve already heard the gloating, even while they’re begging people to come back to semi-abandoned, lawless cities. “With gas being so expensive, living in the city will be popular again.”

Care to lay a small bet, lefty one-step thinkers? I bet it won’t. You can’t squeeze that paste back into the tube. It’s going to go all over you.

You’re just going to encourage more remote work, and further fleeing to places where food and essential goods still reach. You’re also going to achieve making everyone — everyone — aware of your failures and stupidity.

And that’s how things blow up in your face.

So, guys, as I said before, if one of their five year plans ever works, it will be the first since…. ever.

When they had control of all the means of communication, they could erase their failures, rewrite them as “we meant to do that” and stigmatize anyone who pointed to the true as a crackpot.

That toothpaste is out of the tube, too.

Now all they have is panicked toddlers in charge of a complex mechanism, madly pushing buttons trying to get the desired solution.

And it’s not working — of course.

Yes, it’s destroying everything. It’s going to suck like heck. But on the other hand, we’ll manage somehow. And it’s making clear once and for all for those on the margins that this crazy stuff just doesn’t work.

There are no magic unicorn farts. Once people see that, plainly displayed, they’re not going to believe in the unicorn farts and magical government again.

If nothing else, this is giving people a salutary distrust and cynicism about government and all its initiatives and all its way. Even, or perhaps particularly, those dressed up as “science.”

We’ve seen the quality of minds trying to force us to go their way. We’ve seen where they think their way leads, and we want none of it (thank you, you’ve explained quite enough. It’s time to let other points of view display themselves!) And we’ve seen where these things actually lead, and we also want none of it.

Resistance is also fighting back. Stick your feet down and resist with all your might.

We’re not stupid, and we’re not going.

My life is a very exciting novel. It seems like every time I’m set into a pattern and happily following my own plans, it takes another and weirder turn.

The happiest times of my life, even, involve massive change, like moving across the world or across the country, or having little ones that bring a surprise everyday.

The unhappiest too, are strewn with changes that leave me stranded, staring and going “What now?” as everything changes around me.

None of them compare to now.

No, nothing particularly bad is happening, but we just moved, and stress experts assure us that the stress — though obviously not the grief — of moving is the equivalent of losing a spouse. This seems to make sense, since it’s a profound disruption of your daily routines.

In my case, though I love the new place, there is an amount of grief too, because Denver was my homeland of the soul even before I was perfectly sure in what country it was in. Heaven only knows where these things come from. My religion doesn’t believe in the pre-existence of the soul. We believe body and soul are a unit and created to go together. (One wonders what is auto-immune of the soul, I wonder idly. Perhaps the nagging doubt and unbelief, the continuous testing. Who knows?) As such, though I joke about being meant to be born in America and only ending up in Portugal due to a massive cock up in Stork Central, I do know it’s not true.

But it is a mystery, anyway, that the first time I saw the city it felt like the home I’d long been looking for. I was not blind to its problems, mind. Considering I tend to hang out in ethnic diners and working class neighborhoods, I couldn’t be. But it just felt … like home.

And leaving home (again) is hard and induces some grief. Before you condole, this is mitigated by the knowledge the city I loved is no longer the same, that in many ways my love was not tenable any longer. And that the last two years put a knife through its heart. Kind of like I didn’t stop mourning for the village of my childhood, but I know the only way to return is in my mind and in increasingly fading memory, because it has become just a suburb of the large city, filled with stack a prole apartments. It doesn’t make me stop missing it. (The Portuguese elevate missing something or someone to an art form, and have a particular word for it: Saudade.) But it’s not serious and urgent grief.

The main problem right now, though, is shock. It probably is for most of us.

I have quibbles (not kibbles. My cats have that) with the book from Ace of Spades co-blogger title “The End of America, 100 days that shook the world” both because I doubt it is the end of America. I think the rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated. And inimical government –and we’re not the only ones to suffer from it in history– or even, dare we say it, inimical occupation doesn’t end a country. In fact, it can clarify things and bring it back much, much stronger. Will it? I believe so. The fundamentals of the country, the people, are all right. Not great, but after 100 years of indoctrination by the enemy, better than could be hoped for. And we have a great guideline. I believe there’s nothing wrong with us that a reversal of most of FDR’s “innovations” won’t cure. Though the cure will hurt and take a lot of time.

In other words, to quote grandma “We’re going to eat the bread the devil kneaded” and that when there’s bread at all, but I don’t think we’re done. We’ll continue, and resume being a city on the hill and a thorn on the side of the tyrants of the world.

And I think he’s wrong about 100 days. This has been going on, this sustained attack on what we are and what we stand for, for a good 100 years, accelerating for the last 20, even as the model imposed on us had obviously and spectacularly failed in the eyes of everyone. The 100 days was the culmination.

But he’s not wrong that for most people the last two years have been like hammer blows to the head. Yes, most people, of whatever political persuasion.

For us, we’re in shock, dismay and anger at the dismantling of free society, and the other side is in stunned disbelief that the majority of us isn’t falling into line, like the good widgets we’re supposed to be. They’re in shock we disbelieve the institutions more and more. They’re in shock what we have the nerve not to believe them. And for those still in touch with reality there is a nagging, gnawing difficulty with accepting that all their policies they’ve been told are good are causing so much misery. That part will increase. The other part? The other part is responsible for the witch hunts against “racism” and “white nationalism.” You see, they think the other side are cartoon depictions of opposition — which they always cast in those terms, perhaps because their philosophy being profoundly racist, they assume everyone’s is — and when we don’t fall in line with their plans, they think they are surrounded by these caricatures.

So I thought I’d give some pointers. You see I’ve been through this before. Both the upside down feeling and the sh*tty times (I don’t know if here will get worse than that. In Europe it will, and yes, I’m worried about my relatives there, though there isn’t a heck of a lot I can do and no one would believe me.)

There are things you can do to prep, and I suspect most of us are doing it, and Lord, I’m out of practice gardening, but I’m going to try. I’m going to try. I’ve been preparing and need to buy soil and build flower beds, and figure out how to get rid of the gopher without running spikes into him, because unless it’s directly threatening me, I can’t really kill an animal for being itself. And I’m patting myself on the back for having the foresight of buying a house with a well. (Need to get it serviced and made easier to access. Wonder if there are solar pumps.)

I have lists for that running in the back of my head all the time (which, yes, I know, adds to the stress) and I’ve just realized I should keep them on paper.

But this post is about dealing with the stress. You have to realize even if you’re not one of the 75% of my close friends who relocated across country in the last few months, that you’re under massive stress.

You might not be moving, but your country is moving. Things are changing too fast to process. You’re having to change your thought patterns to adapt.

For instance, I’m of the “Save and buy things a little at a time” but faced with the erosion of the currency, I’m looking at “Well, maybe buy now, because the money is vanishing as we look. At least as to value.” Which is what occasioned the mad building of shelves (which needs to happen again, this time in the living room.)

And I’d just convinced myself to throw away clothes that didn’t fit quite well, or blankets that were worn out, but I’m now looking at it as “how can this be redone and repurposed?”

Those are habits of mind and that’s hard as heck to change. (Or why most traditional writing professionals are floundering on the transition and mostly defaulting to teaching. [And yes, I’d like to teach also, partly because prepping is expensive, partly because I want to pass it on, but I need to re-establish the WRITING habit first, or it will stop it. Trust me, I’ve seen it.])

And then there’s the everyday things. Something needs replacement or fixing and suddenly it’s “it’s not available, and we don’t know when it will be” or you go to the grocery store, and the things you’ve bought for years aren’t there.

Yeah, I know, it’s not a terrible thing yet (though don’t ask my cats, okay?They have ONE brand of kibble they’ll eat and not throw up all over.) But it’s getting worse, and it disrupts your routine.

And to make things worse, our employment situation is changing for everyone. For some work is going away and not coming back (not for most skilled people. There’s tons of jobs open, but they really are what’s considered “unskilled” labor (It’s not really. Having waited at tables, and having friends in retail, I can tell you that it has its own set of skills. It’s just that the skills can be picked up without classroom preparation.))

As gas reaches $5 it becomes impossible for truckers to break even. If you wonder why they’re one of the segments getting really upset, it’s because of that. They’re being put out of work. When that unspeakable idiot, Obama, talked about the price of gas necessarily skyrocketing? We’re seeing that in his third term. The problem is that he, like other bien pensant idiots, can’t understand why gas prices here aren’t the same as in Europe, and thinks it would be salutary for us to be thus humbled and “learn to do with less.” And the problem is that these bizarrely mal-educated babblers never look past what they were taught. Yeah, yeah, global warming is not likely to be our problem (Curse you, John Ringo, for giving the Author ideas! Though I suppose Jerry did it first.) But beyond that, these idiots never look at the reality on the ground. The US is not and cannot be Europe, because we’re a continent-sized nation (blah, blah, the EU, but trust me, it’s not the same) and very interconnected in supply and demand. It is impossible for us to subsist without trucking, without widespread manufacturing. And given our climate and farming methods, we can’t subsist with fuel at crazy prices either.

So there’s another big shock coming, and it will be scary, no matter how well prepared you are.

Once you make sure you’re physically safe-ish and as comfortable as you can, you still have to deal with shock and stress. Particularly since it’s of the “Waiting for the other shoe” kind.

Shock and stress can make even normal people act like ADD. It will make you touchy. It will tire you out.

(I know I’m still under massive amounts of both because everything I’m reading is popcorn books (At least no longer true crime, eh?) and I’m still baking up a storm, despite the fact the house sold. Also, lately, I’ve taken to grinding my teeth till all of them hurt. Yes, I have an appliance, somewhere. But it didn’t work super well.)

The ways to combat it have a lot to do with babying yourself. Carve time to do things you enjoy. Keep your daily environment in some sort of order. Keep a routine, if you can.

Keep unpleasant stuff and unpleasant chores to a minimum. You can’t avoid them all, but do try to minimize them.

And while eating is comfort (oh, dear, I’m highly food motivated) do try to indulge a minimum, and try to keep it to “foods I love” but not an excess. And do exercise, it does help with stress, though it doesn’t seem to. If nothing else, it will help you sleep. One of the issues we’ll have coming up is catch as catch can medical care for a while, and some of us — near sixty or those who are past — need to be particularly careful.

Above all, be kind to yourselves and each other. If you can. Remember that the entire country is under massive stress.

Smile at strangers. Help people get things from high shelves. Don’t get upset at minor slights. Learn to laugh at crazy strangers. Love your family, and do nice things for them when you can. I’m here to tell you that the old saw about giving being more blessed than receiving is right. I’ve always felt great satisfaction in practicing semi-random kindness. Remember the Heinlein instruction on gifts: not so expensive the receiver is upset, but something they want but wouldn’t buy for themselves. This is also true for doing/making things for people. Again, the best Christmas gift my husband ever gave me was a little glass owl. Because he took time off work at a time they weren’t letting him and went to a store to get it, and spent his lunch money on it. Look around. Look at what people around you need or want and what you can do without hurting yourself or your family.

Look, it’s the looking away from your own mounting anxiety that helps. The additional fact that you’ll be putting out stuff into the world to counter the unrelenting depression and negativity also helps. You and others.

The other thing is dealing with what is going on with our countrymen.

A lot of you — eh, you! — have been on the edge for years, and wondering why we haven’t yet “started stacking bodies.”

Well, part of it is that you and I, my sad friends, are political addicts. Even though I suspect most of us don’t like politics, we keep an eye on it, as most sane people would keep an eye on a rabid feral dog. For reasons.

We keep a rock in one hand, and keep saying “nice doggy” but are aware we might need to hit it hard with a rock.

But most people don’t know the signs and think of politics as “involved and boring.” I know because I lived with one of those people till very recent years, and even now he’s likely to find out about something outrageous two or three months after I got mad about it.

So there’s that. There’s a lag. Most people don’t even realize that the inflation and shortages are now permanent as long as we’re on this path/occupied. They’re starting to realize, but you have to give them time.

(And also stacking bodies might not be the best solution to it. Like Sargent Mom over at Chicago Boyz, I’m whispering “Aristo, aristo a la lanterne” but still praying — oh, a lot –that this cup will pass us by. Because that kind of firestorm is not discriminating. It takes the good with the bad, and it leaves scars in the soul of a country. France is still suffering from it, at some level. Yes, yes, it might be needed, but again, I hope this cup passes us by.)

And realize that a lot of people are numb or depressed. The feeling of wrongness, the feeling that it will get worse, worse, worse, and there’s nothing we can do twists people inside, and many will be numb and seem impassive. Or unreachable.

There isn’t a lot you can do, except be nice to them. And make sure they’re not doing something stupid.

But remember in many people — ah! — extreme depression is a way to dampen suicidal and/or murderous urges. It is one of the mechanisms we berserkers learn early. Not a helpful one, but one nonetheless.

It’s not that hey don’t see and don’t know. They’re just holding with ragged fingernails to the edge of normalcy before they explode and take friend and foe alike. And it’s important to remember that, too.

Berserker fury isn’t rational. I’ve learned to dampen it, because when it activates my size, strength and health don’t matter. And it’s not a “righteous” fury. It’s one that will have the strength of mom-that-pulls-Volkswagen off kid, and indiscriminately go after anything that catches attention. For most of twenty twenty, I was afraid of blowing up at the first masked Karen who glared at me in the grocery store. Because it would do nothing, but more evil. And probably end up — optimistically — with me in orange. I look terrible in orange.

In a way I feel like the entire nation is about to fall into this berserker fit. It’s part of what has me on edge.

And it might happen, but it’s not something to desire.

What’s to be hoped for is a calm and methodical dismantling of unhelpful/no longer helpful mechanisms and institutions, and their replacement.

Is it possible? I don’t know. I can’t say I’ve seen it in the history of the world, but America is different.

The fury…. well, it bays and screams in the corridors of the mind. And it’s warranted. Oh, it’s warranted. But it will only destroy us.

Remember, the berserkers of old were celebrated and feared both, and often killed friends and loved ones along with the enemy. On a nation-wide level that’s less than to be desired for.

Remember everyone around you — everyone, even those in the thrall of the puppet masters — are suffering from shock and stress. Do what you can to minimize it.

I feel like we’re about to tumble into much graver peril, into great turmoil. I hope it’s a deception of the baying beast. But it might not be.

Forwarned is forearmed. Prepare, prepare, prepare, physically and psychologically.

And be kind to yourself and those around you. Heaven knows it might not be for very long.

Be not afraid. Fear adds to the stress. At this point, the juggernaut has gone so far most of it is out of our hands. Perhaps it was from the moment we were born.

Reinforce the good. Combat the bad. Don’t panic.

In the end we win, they lose, and it’s important to remember that, because there will be days (and nights. Oh, heck the nights) of raw and unblinking despair.

But the only way out is through. Keep going.

Secularize that door and come sip down. Oh, yeah, take off your clock and give it to the foodman. He’ll put it in the closed.

Eh?

Okay, I run the absolute same test for indie books as I run for trads, and 99% of them pass them, same as trads: don’t hit me with five typos in the first paragraph, and we can stay friends. Otherwise I return the book and get another one.

(Weirdly, one of the ones that didn’t pass was a thriller with thousands of reviews, and the typos while not as bad as that paragraph above were bad enough I realized I was struggling to figure out what he was saying by the end of the second page, and I just didn’t want to work that hard.)

No. I’ve never come across that paragraph above, though I’ve seen typos in all those words, in different books.

And yeah, I know, right? Like I should throw stones on typos.

I don’t. Honestly I don’t. Except when they a) throw me out of the story. b) are really, really, really funny. Sometimes I feel I should keep a file of funny typos, because well….

I don’t really sweat the wrong verb tense. Putting a d at the end of a word happens, and is really hard for copyeditors to catch. And my “the things that copy editors miss” is pegged at someone killing a character twice and it making it to publication. (Phillip Jose Farmer, last book of the World of Tiers. At least the edition I read. And heck, in Noah’s boy, I introduce a character twice and not only did all copy editors miss it, but so did I. I should go in and fix it, I should. And I will within the next month.)

I also don’t sweat things like breathe and breath, even though it’s one of my pet peeves (I cuddle him, and feed him, and call him George.)

But normally the truly bizarre typos are easily understood, either a letter confusion, or a letter added or removed. Like when the regency gentleman hands the footman his clock. It threw me completely, because I’m seeing the movie in my head, and suddenly he’s taking a grandfather’s clock out of his pocket and handing it to the footman. Took me a second to realize he handed him his clock and his cane and go, OH cloak!

And I confess that I’d never before realized those were one single letter off.

However periodically you come across an author, who seems to be an English language native speaker (I’m if anything too sensitive to signs of ESL) and who writes well, but consistently uses a word not just wrong, but BIZARRELY wrong.

In this case, the author kept having people secularizing doors. And I kept going “were they religious before? did they give entrance to some kingdom yet unknown?”

It was done with such regularity — and yes, she obviously meant SECURING — that it’s either a single, massive search-replace snafu (say she misspelled secured — I don’t know how. You figure it! — and decided it was easiest to replace it all and somehow typed in secularized. (I once had one of those, where I accidentally replaced a misspelled word with a copied paragraph. My manuscript grew three times…. Eventually I figured it out))

Or, and this is the hypothesis I find fascinating, she was — like me — a precocious reader, too lazy to have recourse to the dictionary, and assigned words meanings by context.

I, for instance was in my teens when I realized that “aboriginal” (in Portuguese) did not mean savage, but “The original of its kind in the region.” And I only found out because I used it in an essay and the teacher kept asking “Aboriginal from where?” and I couldn’t figure out why that was germane…. And we won’t go into the fact that I thought sperm meant seed (well, it does! From the Greek) and started expatiating on the seed of something or other, but using the “classy” word at the table, and mom sent me to bed without dinner for indecent talk.

I mean, is it possible this woman somehow got the idea that secularize meant to secure? I can’t actually figure out a context in which she would think so, but the idea amuses me greatly. Mostly because sooner or later she’s going to use it in speech. “I want to secularize these documents.”

Of course, this is the way long running jokes are created in my family. Mostly through younger son’s spokeo’s. Like when he asked to be crucified AFTER death. (By which he meant cremated.) Or when he told his grandfather our newly purchased Victorian had Syphilis in the basement. (He meant asbestos, and that one truly is a complete puzzle to me. How did he confuse those two? I don’t know. And extra points to my — New England native — FIL for just going “uh uh. How interesting.”

A friend’s typo accident means we now have an effrontery door. As in he told me he’d come by between eleven and twelve, and if I were in the backyard, leave the effrontery door open.

That poor door is now the effrontery door forever. As in, Dan will shout from his office: “Can you get the effrontery door? Someone rang and I can’t go.”

Strangers will probably think we’re crazy.

But at least we always secularize the door when we’re done.

Can’t have the door going around doing Gregorian chants or something. It will cause talk.

Being in an Earthquake is an interesting phenomenon. The only one I went through awake, I’d just hit the stairs, on stocking feet (mom’s stairs are very polished highly varnished mahogany) at a run, to answer the phone. I was holding the banister. And yeah, I shouldn’t have been running on the stairs, in my stocking feet. Except I had done it hundreds of times in the past. And never fallen. I knew how to position my feet, so I didn’t slip. I was fine.

And then suddenly the ground went off from under my feet. The rail shook the other way. I tried to balance and hold, but the things I counted on weren’t there.

I was airborne. And then I was landing. Fortunately on my behind, which is padded. I was lucky. Nothing broken, but it hurt to sit for a week.

Some years ago, I started noticing a weird phenomenon.

Most of my friends were somewhere between 50 and 65, and times were unstable — kind of like now, but a little slower — and people would get laid off. When that happened, they seemed to become paralyzed.

It was bizarre to watch.

I mean, this often happens to young people, laid off for the first time often have that issue, because they simply don’t know how to look, or where to apply, and are scared.

But these were people with years and years of experience jumping between jobs, finding work, being productive.

And suddenly…. they weren’t. They couldn’t even get up and look. Even as finances got strained, most of them continued derping in place. Heck, you could throw them offers, and they would let them slip, or hesitate a lot before taking them.

I thought it was depression, and we did what we could to cheer them up. Most of the time it didn’t work.

It took me years to figure out what the real problem was. And yeah, I had to live through it. I’m only now, slowly, emerging from it. And yes, it’s hitting friends who are “laid off” from writing too.

You see, it’s not depression, though in the beginning at least it might have elements of it. It’s actually shock. Paralysis coming from shock.

They are in shock because they never saw the layoff coming. They have experience, they’ve been laid off before, just like I’d tripped on the steps before. They know the signs. They also know how to look once it falls, but suddenly ….

It’s all different. Their field might not exist at all, or exist in a form so different they can’t quite conceptualize it.

And they feel betrayed, and don’t know the way to go on.

Yeah, I lived through this as I got “laid off” from Baen. Over the years I’d built my identity as a writer into Baen. I was a Baen author. At signings we tended to sit together. Most of my friends were with the house.

For at least two years I knew it made me less money than going indie, but I felt I owed the house something, and all my friends were there.

And then — whammo. Earthquake.

And you’re at the bottom of the stairs, on your butt going “But what happened?”

Mind you this is still somewhat of a mystery, but what isn’t a mystery is that I was stunned, stupified, and it’s taken me three? four? five, I guess, years to even come close to normal functioning. (And the return of my IP helped.)

I know what to do. I have the tools. I’ve done the research.

But still, even now, somewhere within, my mind is going “but why do I have to start again?” Because of course, we expect a certain roadmap and feel out of it when it stops being there. It’s not… natural. And the older you get, the more ideas you have of what is, or should be, natural.

The problem is that over the next two/three years, and for good or ill, everyone’s roadmap is going to change. And for most people their career and daily routine as well.

Which means for those of us on the lee (and slidy) side of fifty, it’s going to be hard.

All I can tell you is it’s easier to be prepared, to be ready for the bump. To be braced. You might still fall, if the shake is big enough. But you’ll be ready.

And it’s easier as if, as for every major traumatic (happy or not) event, you have a plan. That’s why women make “birth plans” because it helps to feel at least a little in control. And that’s why you have routines.

So, prepare now. Make sure you have “Well, if I lose my job/house/town/family” this is the first thing I do. And this is the second. And–

We might not have control over what will hit us. That’s at a level beyond our control.

But we can control the aftermath. And cover our butts with a pillow, so they don’t hurt quite so badly.

Now is the time to do it. when planning food storage, and the worst case scenario, prepare for medium-bad too.

What if you lose a job? What if your spouse does? What if you have to help your parents/children/siblings.

It might seem impossible to survive, but it never is. Make lists. What do you do first? What are your secondary skills people might pay for? etc, etc, etc.
In the end, “never give up, never surrender” should be the motto of life.

Have a plan. Have two. Have three. And be prepared to keep on going when the worst happen and plans one and two fail.

You’re capable of more than you think you are. So are most people.
Be not afraid. And keep battling on.

I didn’t read fairytales till I was in high school. Not the big, illustrated, classical fairytales.

But I’d heard them before, the way they were supposed to be transmitted. (And read them, in little tiny booklets sold at checkout in the grocery store, and begged for in lieu of candy bars when I was very young.)

Okay, so grandmother’s fairy tales weren’t canonical. She made up an entire set of stories about an alternate fairy-tale village. I want to say that while not canonical, and not pertaining to really old stuff, they were in spirit the same old fairy tales. Look, I’d often have nightmares afterwards. Sometimes I refused to let her tell me stories for a week, because people died in them and horrible things happened. But then I’d come back, because they were fascinating.

On the other hand, I heard fairy tales from just about everyone else. The old ones, with crunch and blood, where the happy ending had to be fought for, and the moral, while not told to you outright, was there clear as day, ten feet tall: Don’t go into the dark woods; the old shouldn’t feed on the young; parents shouldn’t abandon children; self-centeredness kills; undeserved good opinion of yourself leads to a downfall, etc. etc. etc.

Fairytales are very old. So old, we don’t know how old they are. Like the Illiad, the Odyssey and certain parts of the Bible, they are almost for sure MUCH older than they appear and might (MIGHT) if linguistic traces can be trusted date back to well before the written language traces we’ve found.

Me? I suspect the roots of them go back further, much further, to shortly after language became complex enough to transmit them.

They have that feel, of extending back, with roots in time and the mind of men, to the time an ape developed enough symbolic thinking to go “this sound stands for a broad range of things that are like this thing.”

Their warnings, therefore, are deep-set, scary and…. well, important.

Things don’t get transmitted that deep into history, unless they’re important and they enhance survival.

So, how in the name of all that’s holy, did we end up living in a time where evil fairy tales come to life?

Look, yea, they always existed in places like Afghanistan and other lands where Islam wiped the land clean of fairy tales and substituted its own version. (Because totalitarian philosophies and religions can’t afford competition.) And I think in Russia also, after communism. You find children killed and served to their parents, and children traded away to be eaten, and animals treated with awful cruelty, and–

But we’re not like that! Right? We live in a land of plenty and ease, and are cognizant of the evil fairy tales, the deep ones, and–

Are we? Even Jordan Peterson, who has his head screwed on straight, bases his fairy tale talks on the Disney versions. The Disney versions are actually a good illustration for this.

They started out as being slightly nicer than the original, though not by much, I admit. The bones are still there for Snow White, less so for Cinderella.

But by the time we hit Little Mermaid they were actively messing with the plot to give them what they thought was a happy ending, and thereby castrating the deep meaning.

And now? Now they’ve gone off the deep end. There seems to be a deeply-laid consensus that the girl and the boy can’t get together, that the girl will have something more important to do (and the boy will be a dolt) and that in the end things like getting married, or obeying your duty to your kingdom (important if you were an hereditary ruler, and that was the system) matter less than “self-actualization” and “finding yourself.”

Which means the fairy tales have mutated from things that are actively against survival for the species, sometimes for the individual.

And which explains why we’re living in a world of evil fairy tales, where its perfectly all right to use parts of aborted babies to extend the life of the old and wealthy, it’s perfectly all right to sacrifice your children to your pursuit of “finding yourself” by ignoring them/farming them out/getting divorced to pursue a career, etc; it’s perfectly all right to convince your little boy (under puberty) that he’s a girl, because you wanted a girl; it is perfectly all right to convince yourself you’re the real princess and take her place, by demanding that you be promoted ahead of those with ability/talent, because you’re you; and self-esteem in absence of any accomplishment is promoted as a panacea.

It is progressing, as the old fairy tales warn, in the way such stories usually do: in madness, horror, death and unending darkness.

Because human nature doesn’t change. Culture shapes it, but the nature itself doesn’t change. In the end those who live only for the pursuit of transitory pleasure always find themselves alone. Those who pursue self-agrandizement turn into monsters. Those who eat children to survive will be punished with a long, horrible life and also by turning into monsters.

The warnings are there precisely because human nature doesn’t change, and what seems to be pleasurable/enticing often leads to horror for everyone concerned, including the person doing it and thinking they want it.

And things like “Marries and has children” is how the species continues. Or doesn’t. And that’s in the end very important for survival of the species and sanity for the individual.

However the warnings have been erased in our culture to “be nice.” And of course, due to mobility, and mothers working full time (ah!) and various other factors, we don’t actually have any other means of transmitting these old, old stories.

So they are dying. And society is coming unraveled, because the deep set warnings were never given. Or were perverted.

Humans are far more complex than we tend to think. At least humans as something else than apes. We are creatures of language, of transmissible knowledge, of story and of culture.

The modern era has both submerged us in a bunch of modern narrative that often portrays things that just ain’t so (a lot of it, but not all, based on Karl Grifter Marx), and cut us off from the deep, deep roots of our culture.

The results aren’t pretty.

Sure, we can relearn the lessons. But can we learn them before civilization crumbles? because stuff like “Sacrifice so the next generation will be better off” is the very foundation stone of civilization. All civilization that hopes to survive.

We don’t say things like “don’t eat children” because we think it’s not needed. And so, it leaks in, around the edges, in using abortion parts, like using children for sexual affirmation, like not giving kids what they actually need to grow and be healthy, whether by raising them vegan or by starving them of true learning.

Listen to the voice of the early, dark fairy tales.

They’re not kind, or nice. And sometimes they’re horrible to read/listen to. But they fascinate for a reason. They are the sign blinking in the night saying “drive off this ledge and you die.” They are alluring to package and transmit a very old message, hard fought and learned with difficulty by your ancestors.

Those who fail to learn them are condemned to repeat them.

And the land of evil fairy tales is hard to escape.