There are many descriptions for politics, one of them being that it’s what people do, instead of smashing each other’s skulls open with a club.

For the record, I’m instinctively the club (wooden, heavy) kind. Partly because I hate and despise mean girls and their cliques. I think life would be much easier if people who have trouble with other people got in a fist fight.

I’m also aware that’s not the way to run a society, unless you have a codified way to go about fist fights, and their resolution, afterwards. Which societies used to, mind you. But that too is politics.

As much as some of our founding fathers imagined a revolution a year or so, there really is no way to make a society work with that, not in actual functioning.

People like to know the next day will be more or less like today (weirdly, no matter how bad today is, until it gets to the point of no return.) And that dictates all sorts of compromises and accomodations.

I suspect this is a way in which my brain is more hunter-gatherer than settled agricultural person. Besides the ADD, that is.

Which brings us to the fact that bizarrely I’m a politics addict, and follow it way more than is good for my brain and blood pressure.

This is precisely because I don’t fully understand it, and don’t trust those who engage in it. I’m not fond of politics (which is why we’re not at home to anyone insisting that I should run for office in any way shape or form.) I’m just …. um interested in it. Or at least accurately aware that it’s interested in me. I’ve been bitten by revolutions, uprisings and riots before, and now, like someone in an area with unstable weather, I refuse to look away.

I want to have warning to grab that club and or run away, you see?

But the one thing I’ve never done, until very recently, is let politics rule my life or my associations.

In college, where I kept my politics strictly under cover, my friends ranged from the preppy “right wingers” to the communists, and each group was absolutely sure I agreed with them. I was even part of the (in retrospect I think we impressed other people as mildly creepy, but I don’t care) hyper religious group who headed for the nearby church before attending classes. (Usually at 7 am, when the services were.)

Here’s the thing, I was friends with a small number of people in each of those groups, and they were generally people I could trust not to want to — much less do — bash my skull in.

I tried to maintain the same balance and stay in the closet politically, in my career. That didn’t work, because by then it had become absolutely necessary to vocally endorse everything of the left to stay in the good graces of the establishment. Oh, and those things changed. And we were supposed to change with them. We were also supposed to banish anyone who didn’t.

I don’t work that way, which is why I hate politics and politicians.

But because practically everyone on the left whom I’d considered friends banished me when I came out of the political closet (I was on the suspicious list, for insufficient enthusiasm before, mind.) I’ve been worrying lately that I let politics dictate my life.

I do, also, instinctively flinch away from people proclaiming certain politics, because I’ve found I can’t trust them. So I’ve been wondering if I actually have become a political fanatic and the mirror image of the left.

I’m glad to report I haven’t. And I thank the current international situation for doing the clarifying.

There are some of you who are friends as well as fans, and with whom I’ve found in the last week that I have a very significant political disagreement with.

You see, I have — malgre moi — become something of an isolationist. While I think that the US should have a strong defense, and a policy of “Don’t start none, won’t be none” Aka “Touch us and die” aka “So much blue glass.”, I don’t think we should be the world police. I think internationalism, in the form of very strange alliances has been the industrialized world’s bane.

That said, I do recognize the arguments of the other side, including “But they won’t leave us alone.” It’s the mirror image, in fact, of self defense vs. an active and intrusive police protection which can go sour on you.

While this disagreement with some of you is pretty significant, it is also completely irrelevant for the fact I still consider you friends and allies. It doesn’t affect my feelings for you.

While I have decided opinions on it (When don’t I have decided opinions) and am ready to talk your ear off in all conditions, I can see your side of it. I think you’re wrong, but only by a whisker.

The problem I have with the left, is that I can’t be friends with people who wish me dead, despoiled or permanently silenced.

Barring that, I’m open to discussion and argument. Mostly because politics is always interested in me.

But a large portion of the population has decided it’s my way or the highway, and we’re supposed to be obedient widgets, who own nothing and like it (That is to say, slaves. If you own nothing, you’re dependent on others for your very existence, and therefore can be absolutely controlled by government which even at its best is never made of angels.)

And that’s why we’re in mid-fall, waiting for the parachute to engage.

It very well might not. May G-d have mercy on our souls then.

All we can do is wait and see if it does, and then decide appropriately.

I feel a hard crash and the sort of scouring that will make me overnight a hard leftist, without ever changing my positions.

Brace. Times are about to get even more interesting.

It is said that when the going gets weird, the weird go pro.

Well, boys, girls and winged wombats: Hold my Port Wine and watch this!

Let me first register that I’m profoundly uncomfortable living in a time when the difference between conspiracy theory and reality is more or less two weeks and shortening.

Look, I’m in a profession where assembling fantastical patterns of events is my trade, okay? That means I’ve striven my entire life to not bring work home.

Normally the most obvious explanation is the real one. If I come home and there a bunch of white fur on the back rug, the explanation is likely that Havey-cat has been rolling in it again, not that aliens with white fur came in through the back door to steal data from my computer. I mean, the second one is admittedly more fun, and incredibly flattering (The aliens want MY data) but the chances of its being true are very, very low.

Now imagine I come home and there’s the same white fur on the rug. Well, it’s mostly white, but the middle is bright pink and the ends are a beautiful rose gold.

Yes, it is entirely possible that my son lost his mind and dyed the cat strange colors. But it’s probably less likely that this happened than that some creature with fur yet unknown came in through the back door, for purposes unexplained.

Right now, world news (and to an extent national news) wise, I’m sitting here staring at rug with white/bright pink and rose gold fur, and trying really hard not to get carried away.

But the problem is, you see, that once we eliminate the impossible (say son wasn’t home to dye the cat) the improbable, no matter how improbable must be the truth.

I’ve felt this way in the recent past, when the Covidiocy began. I really didn’t want to assume the whole thing was overblown and that a panic was being instigated by our idiot left (in cooperation with the idiot left that is the establishment in the rest of the civilized — no one can call it free — word) for the purpose of unseating Trump (Trump’s going along with, and cooperating still makes me profoundly uneasy.)

But facts are facts. And the fact that the masses of homeless, who were not actually subjected to any restrictions in association, and who — oh boy — were camping all over Denver in big grotesque masses while the tax-payers were subjected to house arrest, weren’t dropping like flies meant this was not the black plague. This was corroborated by the fact that in the Diamond Princess cruise ship, under horrific conditions and with a compromised population (Very old, often very sickly) the death rate was that of a severe flu season (probably less than a severe flu aboard the petri-dish ships.)

This meant that everything, from the initial house arrest, to the ever lengthening two weeks, to the relentless fear propaganda, the bizarre muzzle mandates, the experimental RNA treatment mandates…. all of it, all the entire scruff and ruff and disgusting mess were not needed and were in fact put in place for some reason having absolutely nothing to do with public health.

I won’t lie: I felt like I was going nuts, because it was so obvious. And yet, businesses, churches, schools meekly closed, when the data was available everywhere. And people I was used to considering sane, or at least not complete raving lunatics, were chasing me all over facebook to wish me death on a ventilator. (And btw, my inside knowledge didn’t help here, because most deaths on a ventilator are because of the ventilator settings, which most doctors are iffy on using. Or were at least at the beginning of this. And which btw are always dangerous to the extreme elderly who have fragile tissues.)

Now it’s been two years of two weeks to flatten the curve, and even though my new doctor appointment cautioned me that I have to wear a mask (SUCH nonsense) even the CDC is admitting the muzzles of stupidity do nothing, even when they are the triple muzzles of complete stupidity invented by Mengele Jr Dr. Fauci. And the “Vaccine” is no longer necessary because “We did it, Joe” and the magic of the incoherent zombie has, between one week and the next vanished the dread plague that never was. Of course, dealing with the people who are still freaking out after two years of propaganda is going to take years. Our children have permanent cognitive deficits that might never be made up (no, seriously, the time for formation of language is short, and it does close) because they were unnecessarily barred from seeing human faces for two years. Young men have permanent damage to their hearts from the completely unneeded vaccine. More children and elderly have died from not-a-vax than the virus. People have lost jobs, careers and businesses. And the horrific torture of seniors, who either died alone or fell off he cognitive cliff because of house arrest has scarred the psyches of those of us aware enough to know.

But, hey, it can all be swept away just before the State of the Union, so that maybe the Marxist Spokeszombie’s numbers can be bolstered. (They can’t. And given the origin of those polls I suspect his real approval is in the single digits and confined to those seniors who have been shut in with a television for 2 years, and exquisitely indoctrinated college graduates who because of the lock downs have never held a job.)

So, no. I wasn’t crazy. The massive, nonsensical power grabs truly were gratuitous and for the purpose of stealing an election (Which is why it was a potemkin election, where fraud was always supposed to give them victory. Which tells you how large it was to begin with. The fact it failed and forced them to cheat more at the last minute, in front of G-d and everyone has them in a panic since. Hence the fencing around the capitol, the insanity with Jan 6 and the fact they didn’t immediately let us go back to normal.)

So, not crazy, even if in the grip of disabling-levels of anger.

And isn’t it weird that the moment people stopped wearing masks and communicated clearly they’d had it and also, incidentally, that they were in a rebellious mood by donating to the Canadian trucker convoy, a new thing appeared to suck all the air out of the room? Internationally. Overnight. So that our own convoys (and yes, there are others than the glowing one) disappeared from view, and that talk of a general strike was swept under the rug? And isn’t it weird that the new crisis is of a sort that allows our occupying government to declare a national emergency which allows them to control opposing speech? And to declare any actions — say general strike — in opposition to their genocidal and bizarre agenda “treason” and “comfort to the enemy.” And note, please, that they can apply these tags whether it makes any remote sort of sense or not. See the screams of Trump collusion with Russia, or the accusations that we are all in Russian pay, even though I’ve hated Russian influence and the Russian government since they wore the mask of the Soviet Union. (International socialism was always Russian nationalism, and anyone who pretends otherwise is trying really hard not to see through the gauze-thin mask.)

“But Sarah! You’re insane! I mean Putin just invaded the Ukraine when he did. Why woud you be suspicious?”

Well, why indeed. Considering two years of the rankest lies and propaganda, a jolly new call to arms when we were getting tired of the covidiocy, and “climate change” (Which has brought out new extra alarming predictions, to match all the ones that have never come true) wasn’t getting the traction they really wanted it to get, seems…. uh…. made to order.

And to quote my mom, when the alms are too big, the beggar gets suspicious.

How big is this alms? Well, the incursion into Ukraine is sure to get rid of the evidence of the Biden Crime Family meddling with that sovereign country. Also, in the future, it would make it unlikely that anyone would mention that meddling, because, well, do you want to be accused of being pro-Russia. Because you’d be. Because wars reduce things to binary choices. In addition, see the ability of the current Junta to slam down draconian controls on the populace, a la Woodrow Wilson. Why — that might allow them to impunely steal the 2022 elections. And maybe the 2024. And no one will dare say they were stolen. And the military won’t rebel, because more wars mean more promotions (why twinkle bottom Vanilli Milley lied and disobeyed a sitting president.) Hell, keep the war going long enough, inflict enough damage, and the global “elites” can keep power forever and establish the Great Reset as they meant to! (No, they actually can’t, because the entire idea is the kind of idea only a deranged idiot who has never met a real human being would believe in. But they can, actually and for real, destroy civilization. I am however talking about what a desperate, losing-power largely senile and addled or congenitally stupid group thinks they can do.)

Color this beggar very suspicious.

“But Sarah,” you’ll say. “You’re positing that the Junta is collaborating with Putin. How can that be, when they’re slamming down on Russian accounts and talking about how evil Putin is worldwide.”

Um….. yes. Yes, they are. Now consider that Biden is wholly owned by China, and that China has a treaty with Putin’s Moscow.

Note also that this isn’t necessary, in the sense of a full on cooperation. Putin is an old guard international socialist looking to conquer the world for Russian nationalism, that is. All it would take would be signaling that Biden would be okay with Putin annexing Russia, to get us where we are.

But–

But…. Look, yeah, Russian bombast, but has it ever occurred to you that there are too many lies floating around about the brave and plucky Ukranian resistance? That it’s passingly bizarre that the Russians are losing the part of the war they’re really good at (making up shit and propaganda) to Ukraine? That the left is suddenly very chicken hawky and demanding that we go to war and that of course Putin isn’t going to nuke us? And that Putin has gone from being a cagey and weird corruptocrat to sounding exactly like a Bond Villain? “If I can’t have Ukraine, I’ll nuke you all!”

Uh Uh. Perhaps the same Hollywood that can no longer write anything but remakes is now scripting his speeches? Which would mean, yes, that he is in on it, and looking to– I don’t know, but there are several upsides for him in this:

Even if he “loses” he’s likely to have gained territory, and leaves the door open to gaining more and maybe restoring his dream of a world-powerful Russia. Sure, China is in the way, but China is, has been and will always be, a “Potemkin superpower” and Putin likely knows it. He’ll get rid of young men who are likely to — always — cause trouble. And he can institute draconian measures at home (more than usual) and quell incipient rebellion. He can also divorce from Western bank and work with China which will facilitate further repression, etc.

And honestly, it’s better for that old horror if our “elites” stay in power. Pissed off people in control of their own destiny might give Russians ideas, no?

So, looking at the jolly war going on, it seems to me the international globalists are putting on a show for the peasants.

Sure, Ukrainian people are being killed for real, infrastructure destroyed, and lives ripped to shreds. And of course, yes, Russian young men are all so getting killed.

So? People aren’t real to these would be aristocrats. They never wore. They’re numbers on a paper. Nothing more.

The only question remaining is whether they’ll actually nuke a few American and maybe European cities, just to cow the population and make yet another power grab. (It won’t work, not in the long run. By which I mean a year or two. But one shudders to think what they’ll do when that falls apart.)

Which brings me to where I am: Yes, I hate Putin. He’s KGB. I’ve hated the KGB and the Soviets (Aka Russian imperialists) longer than many of you have been alive, and while the left still though they were their beau ideal. Besides, to be fair, I hate and despise all totalitarian regimes and all regimes that treat humans as markers in a game. (Tiddly winks. None of the current crop is up to chess.)

Yes, I think Ukraine is suffering, and that real people are dying.

But I think our getting involved will just be playing into the plan that started this. And frankly, the longer we delay in getting socialism into the midden of history, the longer and more bizarre their plans will get, and the more people will die.

I feel for the Russian people, losing their sons in this nonsense, but I don’t think anything can be gained by adding our sons and our livelihoods to this.

Russia needs to clean house and get rid of Putin. I don’t even know if that’s possible, because honestly I don’t understand Russian mentality very well. And their press has been controlled so long, there’s nothing to lean on. Not from the 20th century onwards.

So, I more wish and hope than know that they’ll step up.

And we need to clean house. Peacefully, if possible. Which starts with stepping up to the plate and telling the Junta and its machinations “No. And also no. Let me suggest where you can stick it and with how much force.”

And it requires we ignore the distractions thrown at us, and fight for our own freedom. Then and only then can we help others free themselves.

In other words, secure your own oxygen mask, before helping others.

Don’t be distracted. No matter what the sideshow is, the fight remains the same.

Get rid of the would be aristoi, and make sure that government of the people for the people shall not perish from this Earth.

It is the cause of Humanity, and the civilization depends on it.

*I’ve been having trouble keeping my equanimity “in these trying times.” Also I need to finish a Dyce book for a wife (not my wife, one of your wives. And that’s after the Shifter’s book.) Fortunately guest posters come through again – SAH*

State of the Union Bingo — Wrongfun for the Whole Family – by Ellsworth D’Silva

We don’t actually recommend that you subject yourself to the State of the Union address, but if you absolutely must because –say– a mush-head relative insists you must watch it, we suggest you print and distribute these bingo cards. Wrongfun for the whole family.

We also suggest you don’t make it a drinking game. Even Stephen Green doesn’t have a good enough liver to survive that.

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 M.C.A. HOGARTH: Business for the Right-Brained: (A Guide for Artists, Writers, Musicians, Dancers, Crafters, And All the Other Dreamers)

A career as a freelance artist? Not possible, you say? The Three Jaguars beg to differ! In this cartoon and checklist-filled guide, Marketer, Business Manager, and Artist walk you through the challenges of starting and building a creative business. Topics include productizing your work; metrics and tracking; communication and networking strategies; Day Job wrangling; pricing; branding; and even how to market yourself without feeling (*shudder*) slimy! If you’ve been looking for a clear (and humorous!) guide to the philosophy and practicalities of being a professional artist… this is your book. Also, did I mention the cartoons?

FROM JAMES YOUNG: Eagles, Ravens, and Other Birds of Prey: A History of USAF Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) Doctrine, 1973-1991

In January 1973, the United States Air Force (USAF) concluded operations against North Vietnam in seeming disarray. With heavy losses to tactical aircraft and B-52s during Operations Linebacker I and II, the USAF’s conventional capabilities were at their nadir. Instead of a potent sword protecting the West against Communist aggression, the Air Force appeared to be an obsolescent weapon to be shattered by new, potent Soviet air defense weaponry.

In January 1991, the USAF spearheaded the Coalition’s air attack on KARI, the Iraqi Integrated Air Defense System. Considered by contemporary analysts to be the most effective air defense system outside the Soviet Union’s, planners expected KARI to exact heavy casualties. Instead, in less than ten days, Coalition forces shattered KARI and prevented it from overseeing any organized defense. Indeed, so complete was Coalition air forces’ dominance that the Iraqi Air Force (IQAF) chose to flee to Iran, their bitter enemy, rather than face certain destruction on the ground.

This journey from near irrelevance to triumph did not occur by accident. Air Force military and civilian leaders made a controversial choice: accept hostile air defenses as priority targets equal in importance to manufacturing centers, military formations, or political leadership. Eagles, Ravens, and Other Birds of Prey examines how this chain of decisions both helped win the Cold War and culminated in the greatest American aerial victory since 1945.

Dr. James Young is an airpower historian, aviation enthusiast and military analyst. His writing credits include the USNI’s 2016 Cyberwarfare Essay Contest, articles in Armor, The Journal of Military History, Marine Corps University Press Expeditions, and USNI Proceedings. In addition to his historical work and the critically acclaimed Usurper’s War-series, he has collaborated with bestselling authors Sarah Hoyt, S.M. Stirling, and David Weber.

FROM J. M. ANJEWIERDEN: Black Salvage (The Black Chronicles Book 4)

Morgan and the crew of STEVE have captured the pirates’ command ship, but can they keep it?
After a harrowing battle on the mining station and in the Black they won an incredibly valuable prize – an armed starship that, once repaired, is capable of subspace jumps without a gate. All Morgan and her skeleton crew need do is make the long journey home and they will be rewarded handsomely.
Unfortunately, not all the pirates are accounted for, and their nimble frigates are still out there somewhere, plotting to take back what Morgan rightfully commandeered…

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: A Gift of Koi

Ancient and wise, the grandfather Koi knows at first sight that this human bears a hidden wound. But how can a mere fish, even one as old as himself, be of any aid to a human?

Astronaut Tyler Lanham had come to Grissom City, first and oldest lunar settlement, in search of the medical expertise he couldn’t find on the far side of the Moon. When he sees the scar on the ancient koi’s side, he knows he’s found a kindred spirit.

But an enemy is stalking these lovely gardens. A danger that will change both man and fish.

A short story of the Grissom timeline.

FROM LIANE ZANE: The Flower & The Blackbird: Book Two in the Elioud Legacy Series

Six months ago Anastasia Fiore, an intelligence officer in Italy’s foreign security service, led an even more secret life on the side. She ran off-the-books missions with her friends Olivia and Beta, American and Czech foreign intelligence officers. The three women shared the same goal: take down predators.

And then Stasia’s life got way more interesting.

After a complicated, surreal mission that went sideways, Stasia learned that she has angel blood, making her an Elioud. She’s seen what Elioud warriors are called to do, and she’s not interested. Stasia can handle herself with a traditional surujin, a British WWII combat knife, or a 9mm handgun. But she prefers crafting a cover identity so compelling she can charm what she needs from her target instead. In fact, she’s so skilled that the Carabinieri’s Art Squad requests her help tracking down a stolen Rembrandt painting.

That’s what she was doing when Miró Kos, a Croatian Elioud she’s already chained, slashed, and drugged, showed up. He was there tracking the buyer, and whether Stasia likes it or not, she’s now inside another surreal mission. One that will make her question what her Elioud blood means. And what the quiet, intense warrior means to her. For his part, Miró cannot let another woman come before his duty. Or near his heart.

As Stasia sets out to recover the Rembrandt, she and Miró discover that there is more than a stolen painting at stake. And more than one Dark Irim stalking Stasia.

FROM MAX BRAND, EDITED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Three Outlaws (Annotated): Three Classic Pulp Western Adventure Novels

iktaPOP brings you three classic Max Brand pulp western novels!

Jerry Peyton’s Notched Inheritance

When Jerry Peyton’s father Hank died, he left him an education, a ranch, enough cattle to grow a real herd — and The Voice of La Paloma, a pistol famous throughout the West from Hank’s outlaw days. Everybody in town knew that Hank had been an outlaw, and everybody knew the son would follow the father’s path. They knew it so well, they started to lynch him for a crime he didn’t commit. It didn’t work.

And once Jerry Peyton recovers, nothing will stand between him and vengeance.

Bandit’s Honor

Leon Porfilo knows the only thing harder to outrun than the law is a bad reputation.

After outwitting and outwaiting the last governor, Leon is ready to present his case to a newly elected man. He’s banking on fresh eyes to see the self-defense shooting that started it all for what it really was.

But the governor’s not the only one who believes the legend instead of the man. Before he can win his freedom, first he has to convince a starry-eyed kid of eighteen not to be “just like” his idol…

Gun Gentlemen

For as long as anyone can remember, Lucky Bill has led a charmed life, but now someone has framed him for a hanging offense. He’s wanted by every tin star in the West and by every greedy gunslinger out for the price they can get for his no-good corpse.

But Bill is no yellowbelly—he’s aiming to clear his name and he’ll take on any bushwhacker who stands in his way!

This iktaPOP Media omnibus includes introductions and afterwords by indie author and editor D. Jason Fleming that give historical and genre context to the novels it contains.

(THANK YOU TO D. JASON FLEMING, FOR KEEPING THE HISTORY OF PULP ALIVE – SAH.)

FROM D. A. BROCK: Texas at the Coronation (Republic of Texas Navy Book 1)

For seventy years after a devastating war, the Republic of Texas kept to itself. But it would be rude not to attend the international naval review celebrating Britain’s new king, George VI. So with war clouds over Europe, Texas sends the elderly armored cruiser, San Antonio, and her new captain, Karl von Stahlberg.

While making new friends and meeting Texas’ ancient foe, can Karl and his men avoid sparking a war?

FROM DAVID COLLINS: Prelude of Fate: The Obsidian Valley

It started as a “normal” commute… He looked down for just a second…

When his eyes returned to the road, everything exploded in blinding white light. An instant of sight and sound saturating and overloading. Every nerve in his body, everything fired at once, pain, hot, cold, sound, pressure, everything.

Then blackness!

FROM C. V. WALTER, ON PRE-ORDER: Pursued by the Alien Pilot

Book description coming soon.

(But, come on, some of you are following the series, so…. -SAH)

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: Crook

*Just so you guys don’t worry. No, unfortunately this isn’t me finishing a novel. It’s family stuff, and it’s not bad, just busy. So Saturday went sideways and I don’t have time to put up the promo post today, so, have a ghost post. Promo post tomorrow. Thank you to Francis for stepping in – SAH*

We Need Non-inflationary Cash

by Francis Turner

This essay makes the case that we are in the process of needing a non-governmental form of cash. This is because governments are busy tracking what we do with the money they print and because they are mostly printing a lot more of it than they should so its purchasing power is going down (inflation). These factors make it a poor store of value and hence an unreliable unit of account and medium of exchange.

Note: readers who didn’t read my essay from about 7 years ago on Money and Cake, should probably do so, and it won’t do any harm for those that did to reread as a refresher. It’s a light-hearted introduction to most of the key concepts of money.

Note. I am not a tax lawyer. Nor do I even play on on TV. Your local tax-gatherers and governments may object to you trying to implement your own non-inflationary cash. This should not necessarily stop you from doing so, but you should plan accordingly.

What’s the problem

The fundamental problem is the governments and large commercial organizations are unkeen on the concept of people exchanging clinking and folding cash money for products and services as opposed to balances of electrons being changed in various locations. There is a global push for going ‘cashless’. I.e. doing what The Register called “Pay by bonk” or possibly pay by QR code or other mechanism. In Sweden the switch away from cash is very well advanced; if I recall correctly, a majority of shops, cafes and the like no longer accept cash at all. Other countries in the developed and developing world are not far behind.

This isn’t just a government thing there are lots of large companies who also like the idea of consumers not using cash. Companies like it because they can take a cut of every transaction. It’s small on a per transaction basis (1-3% usually) and usually taken from the seller, but it adds up enormously over millions of users and billions of transactions. In addition they can often track spending habits and target ads and offers to entice consumers to buy more. In fact it seems to be popular with most of the “bureaucratic-commercial” complex everywhere, particularly in the land of Winnie the Pooh, err West Taiwan.

In Canada Truckistan, the government has declared an emergency which allows it to tell banks to freeze arbitrary bank accounts without any evidence presented to a court or similar (and to let banks do the same thing on their own if they feel like it, with no fear of court order reprisal). So you can put your money into the bank but you may not be able to get it out. Of course they justify this as “temporary” and “only going after the evil REEEE bouncy castle protestors” but

a) this pretty much defines “thin end of the wedge” and
b) how does anyone appeal when they make a mistake (not if, when because they will)?  

Meanwhile in the land of the ‘free’, the ‘Let’s Go, Brandon!’ administration and their buddies in congress are trying to get banks to report all transactions into and out of bank accounts with more than $600 in them.

This is, clearly, a potentially huge problem. It’s a problem two ways. First is the obvious government tracking one. Even if you assume the government is a wonderful organization staffed purely by the most competent and morally pure the chances of them making a mistake and bringing the full force of the law down on some poor housewife buying, say, fertilizer for her garden and a can of kerosene for emergency heating is higher than one might prefer. Given that in the world we live in the government is not staffed purely by ethical angels, the chances for abuse and error are very high indeed. And that doesn’t even get into the government criminalizing transactions that should be perfectly fine and so on.

Then there’s the problems of availability and fraud in a cashless society. If the power goes out you can’t buy a candle in a cashless society. You can’t buy anything if the internet goes down, if your financial provider has a problem and so on. Also if your provider is hacked (or your cash payment token is, or…) then you stand to lose more than just the cash in your wallet.

Fundamentally there’s a centralization and a corresponding lack of local personal control. There are benefits but there are plenty of drawbacks even before you worry that the government might abuse its knowledge of your financial life.

So keeping cash sounds like a good idea. However, there are potential downsides. Any replacement for cash needs to be able to avoid those downsides

The most obvious is to do with the supply of it. Currently there is, as mentioned earlier, a certain upward spring in the prices of things these days if you buy them in dollars (or pounds or euros – though here in Japan, in yen, not so much yet).

And that is a problem for people who like the idea of cash. As Zimbabwe, Venezuela, various other South American nations, Israel and Weimar Germany all can attest to, cash is a complete disaster if the currency is suffering from hyperinflation. In all these cases cash quickly became useless. Indeed even in times and places where inflation is in the 5%-20% per year range (i.e. much of the 1970s and early 1980s for most of the world) cash is a poor store of value although it still works as a method of payment. Cash coins are slightly better than notes though because the metal will have a base value, so much so that at various times people have taken low denomination coins of various countries and melted them down to sell as refined metals.

Plus the other problem with cash as a strictly physical object is that it is hard to pay for things remotely using it. Which is why bearer bonds, letters of credit, cheques/checks, hawala and so on developed all the way back in the 17th/18th centuries (or about a millennium earlier in the case of hawala).

So to sum up, we have a requirement for something that can act as a reasonable store of value and unit of account (in Japan the yen has been amazingly stable for the last three decades but most other currencies have not, and in Japan the cause has been periods of no growth and deflation), be easily exchanged by buyers and sellers for good and services and yet not fall under the control of the government.

Fundamental requirements

Our cash needs to be the following:

Non-inflationary (and non-deflationary).

A ton of things work better if the cost of something is predictable because the currency itself is stable. This doesn’t apply necessarily to every transaction, but the ability to be able to plan investments and calculate expected returns is made far, far easier when the unit of account remains constant over time. In most of the developed world people who are younger than about 40 have no idea what even fairly moderate 5-10% annual inflation does to your financial planning (though in a year or two they will) but it is an important issue. It is worth noting that some currencies have historically been reliable (the pound sterling for the long 19th century up to ~1914, the US dollar for much of the twentieth) while others (the French Franc, the Italian Lira) have not.

As noted in the last 30 some years the Japanese Yen has been amazingly stable in terms of in country pricing. I first came to Tokyo in 1991 and prices for all sorts of things – from soft drinks from vending machines to train tickets to restaurant meals to property prices – have remained very much the same. Some have probably gone down a bit (property in some places, some restaurant deals) but generally speaking things have been stable.

The key seems to be that the money supply should not expand (or contract) in relation to the underlying economy. As we are (re)discovering with all the covidiocy money printing, when you increase the amount of money in circulation without increasing the economy to absorb it, you see prices rise. And, as we will undoubtedly see in the next few years, having got on the inflation train it is very tricky for a national economy/currency to get back off it again. [We know how to do it though. You raise interest rates and cut government spending (and government money printing) and it stops. But it is a painful adjustment as was discovered by all the countries in the 1980s that did it to end their 1970s stagflation.]

For our replacement money we want something that is a good proxy for the underlying economy. An example could be crude oil or the various refined products of it. It is true that the crude oil price varies considerably in dollars or other currencies but crude oil itself has tended to be produced (and consumed) in roughly proportionate amounts to the size of the global economy (see this graph). So if you had a currency of pints of crude then it would not be inflationary or deflationary (also it is worth noting that prior to the end of Bretton Woods and the 1970s oil shock, crude was remarkably consistent in US$ as this graph illustrates)

Independent and Decentralized

Independent means independent from governments. See above note about covidiocy and inflation for reasons why this is bad. It would be nice if it were hard to track by governments so they couldn’t tax you but that’s a nice-to-have, a must-have is that governments (or anyone else) cannot print more of it to suit their own needs.

It would be good if the currency had no single control point but could be replicated by anyone. That makes it hard to shut down if (when) governments get upset about it. They may manage to stamp out Alice’s Spondoolicks, but Bob’s Quatloos (which are readily convertible to/from Spondoolicks) can continue to be used just fine. Also if it turns out that Charlie has been sneakily coining extra Charlicrowns the only people who are impacted are those who have some. Owners of Spondoolicks, Quatloos or Dave’s Doubloons are just fine.

Decentralization also helps with scalability. While it is true that in the past a reference currency (the Thaler, thePound Sterling, the US Dollar) was extremely helpful, in a world where information is easily passed everywhere and where we all have handy dandy massively powerful computers in our pockets, it’s quite not a problem for everyone to have the exchange rates of Doubloons to Quatloos, Quatloos to Spondoolicks and Sponddolicks to Charliecrowns and therefore calcluate how many Doubloons make a Charliecrown.

Based on Something Physical

Actually this may be a nice to have, rather than a must have. But currencies based on actual gold (or wheat or cowrie shells…) have built in warning signs for when they are being inflated because you can do the sums and see that 1 billion ounces of gold probably doesn’t fit in that warehouse over there. Relatedly it is also possible to audit banks etc, and actually count the reserves of gold or wheat or cowrie shells. People can, of course, have fake bars of gold, plastic cowrie shells etc, but it is trickier to do compared to just modifying a few electrons here and there.

Hard to counterfeit or fake

I’d prefer impossible to counterfeit, but I’m prepared to go with hard. Most current cash can be counterfeited but the percentage of counterfeit cash is probably well under 1% of all cash. Again the point here is that someone (a government) cannot simply make more without investment in whatever backs the currency. A currency that can be faked is one that will soon be one that people lack trust in so we need to avoid that. One benefit of a decentralized system is that it should be possible to decouple and deprecate specific instances if they turn out to have been abused without losing trust in the entire currency. There are examples of this working in various places with existing currencies. For example in both Scotland and Hong Kong bank notes can be printed by a number of banks not just the government/central bank. If a particular bank gets into trouble then its notes may end up trading for less than face value.

Functional when the power is off

As you may have noticed significant parts of the world are learning the downsides to “green” energy with respect to its intermittency and general unreliability. The PRC has shot itself in the foot by trying to boycott Australian coal thinking that domestic suppliers and other countries could provide it instead (narrator voice: but they couldn’t). The Europeans have shut most of their coal, some of their nukes and gone for a mix of renewables and gas. And the gas all comes from that beacon of good governance and free-markets: Russia. Parts of the US (California particularly) are doing the same.

If the power flickers on and off that will affect everything that requires electricity including the internet and services based off it, as well as smartphones and so on. It would be really nice if, when push comes to shove, you can pay for that gallon of fuel, roll of toilet paper or loaf of bread in some kind of off-line token. Ideally (see below re remotely transferable) there would be a way to print out tokens, use them and have the recipient scan them back in and destroy them.

Anonymous

We need to not be able to track the origins of cash or who pays whom with it. See above re: governmental oversight. But it isn’t just governments. Any number of large commercial organizations (e.g. Amazon, Walmart or your friendly local supermarket with their loyalty card) love the idea of tracking what you spend your money on so they can target ads and offers to entice you to spend more. All of this tracking has privacy implications. Given that you can’t trust institutions to either hold the data securely or use it ethically, anonymity is a really really good idea.

Remotely transferable

There has to be a way to pay a distant supplier for a product they will ship you that does not involve you, the supplier or a middleman trucking a physical lump of money from point A to point B. It must be noted that systems like Hawala have done this mostly successfully for a thousand years or more so you don’t need an internet (or even a telegram system) to do this. But – obviously – it will be better if it is possible to use the internet if it is available.

Convertible into fiat currencies when required

Paying for things in quatloos, spondoolicks or whatever is fine as long as the other party accepts them. Unfortunately in the near future people you want to pay for goods or services are likely to insist on dollars, euros, pounds, yen etc. so there ought to be a good way to swap quatloos for the required currency. There will also be a need to convert dollars, euros, pounds, yen etc. into quatloos. It is perfectly fine for the conversion process to be costly but it needs to exist.

Usable for small purchases

It seems obvious now but in the past less divisible coins have been a problem. If you get paid 10 spondoolicks a day you probably want to be able to buy things in small fractions of a spondoolick. So the currency needs to be able to support denominations that are small enough. Roughly speaking the current major currencies all have their smallest coin as something that is too small to buy a single thing these days (but you could 40 or so years ago), but where a small number of them can buy say, a single candy or something equally minor.

Why not Bitcoin? or $otherCryptocurrency

Current blockchain based cryptocurrencies don’t work well as quickly transferable cash and have a bunch of other issues. This long blog post covers a fair number of them (you may ignore the glowball wormening part).

A few of the issues: Transactions take a while to be confirmed (minutes to hours) and it is typically complicated to handle fractions of a coin. If you want 1000 widgets to be delivered next Tuesday then a cryptocurrency is fine. If you want to buy an ice-cream or a cup of coffee to eat/drink right now it is not so easy.

Bitcoin is designed to become progressively harder to mine. That’s not stable because it’s not tied to the size of the economy.

No current cryptocurrencies that I am aware of are designed to be turned into physical tokens.

Most cryptocurrencies (bitcoin particularly) are not anonymous either. They are pseudonymous which is similar but not as strong on the identity protection front. It is possible to track every bitcoin transaction back to the origin and people do that, which is why ransomware crooks no longer want bitcoins.

That’s not to say a new cash currency would not use cryptography – in fact it almost certainly will use it for something – but not as the source of the underlying value.

So what do we want?

We want some kind of hard to fake physical token that is based on possession of a physical thing of value.

That physical thing needs to be something that is universally understandable, and available. And it should be reasonably portable at need (think bars of bullion vs say ownership of a plot of land) even if most of the time it doesn’t get transported

That physical thing needs to be (roughly) tied to the size of the economy so that it won’t cause or be subject to inflation or deflation

There should be a mechanism to transfer promises of tokens to distant locations (“I promise to pay the bearer 1oz gold”).

Energy as the fundamental physical base

I think a good thing to base the currency on is energy. That could be just a measure in Joules or BTUs or it could be physical things that have known energy values such as gallons of gasoline or pounds of coal, or it could be both.

I do not claim that an energy based currency will work. But I think it meets most, if not all, of the criteria above. It’s readily understood, readily available, easily transportable and energy usage is tied to economic activity. Its also easy to understand exchanging it, so 1 gallon gasoline == N KwH of electricity == Y lbs of coal and so on.

Tokens

You can print any token you want, but if you add a serial number that includes some crypto validation key that will be helpful for identifying fakes. There probably should be an online “validate this token” thing that can be used to confirm that the serial number is legit.

But it’s you who is on the line to produce the energy if requested. So potentially bank runs could happen but that doesn’t necessarily destabilize the whole system. It would make sense if the people who backed the tokens were people with ownership of energy (e.g. the owners of fracking wells). But you could run an electricity generator and a hydroelectric dam or simply build a load of tanks and store gasoline (or diesel or..) in them if you wanted to. Or people could trust you when you promised to pay for them to refill their car at a gas station. Or… there are lots of options and lots of ways to store energy and use the store to back a currency.

Online resources would be useful to confirm the validity of non-local tokens and some might not be always accepted by everyone. Perhaps you would discover that only special dealers would accept weird Nova Scotian tidal power tokens and then only at a discount to their face energy value. On the other hand the local Stop’n’go tokens would be accepted by everyone and regularly exhangeable for BP tokens from the nearby town or Duke Energy ones….

Energy tokens are easily printable in small amounts and easily understandable. e.g. 1 KwH would be about a (US) dime. 1 fl oz of gasoline is of similar magnitude. Energy tokens are easily exchangeable from one type to another. Swapping a 1000 KwH of electricity for 20 gallons of gasoline (note I have NOT checked the exchange rate, this is an example) is dead easy and in fact you can have some guy with a gasoline powered generator do it very precisely for you.

Remote transfer

We know how to move energy. We know how to trade ownership in energy. All we need is a way to trust the exchange of physical token to virtual one. This is actually a place where the blockchain becomes useful because it allows everyone to confirm that X tokens have been deposited at store S and store S has transferred the value to user U. At some point later when store S receives a withdrawal request it can also log that transaction in the blockchain. Note that

Works when the power is out

Indeed can be used to get the power back on because you can easily swap 20 gallon tokens for 20 gallons of gasoline right now. etc.

How to set up your cash system

See disclaimer at top of post. Talk to a practising tax lawyer. Pay them for their time. This will help you avoid steps that will bring the wrath of the government down on you. However in general, despite the disclaimer, this is how I would work (and these steps are not particularly ordered).

Start small and local. Use barter and IOUs as the basis of your system. “IOU 5 gallons of diesel” is unlikely to be considered a legal currency. Nor is “IOU 5 lbs of zucchini”. Or even the handing around of actual zucchini (or the traditional cigarettes and bottles of booze).

Code words. Squids, zuchinis, etc. have innocuous meanings that can mean they will be ignored when the authorities read your emails/text messages. Use archaic counting: score, dozen, gross. Use Roman numerals. “I want LIV dozen squids and a score zuchini” is less obviously cash that 648.20 $currencyname and so on.

The key is to keep local commerce working when the national/international stuff is not. So work on blockchains and electronic transfers later. For now having a trusted person at the other end (a la Hawala) will suffice.

If you need to make coins then washers that are engraved would work well. A modern CNC engraving tool could easily engrave the serial number of the coin if you wanted to do that along with a pattern that would be hard for a foger to replicate if he doesn’t have the pattern.

When you get to electronic banking, transfers etc. avoid all the things that have allowed crypto currencies to be insecure, most of which turn out to be stupid software bugs. Even large banks can write insecure code for this kind of thing so try not to need to write software of any sort. Or to have online portals etc. If you have to have an online thing open source the s/w and get someone to review it

Know your customer/trading partner. This reduces the chance of informants and criminals.

Other options

I like the idea of energy. But I’m sure there are other things. Even perhaps cryptobased things that I haven’t thought of. Also I’m sure there are things I’m missing. Don’t be shy. Comment away

Perhaps that title isn’t as reassuring as it should be, because, well…. we all know I use fish for ballistic missiles. (I’d say I mean well, but I know you all have a finely trained bullshit detector, so I won’t.)

I should write a post, I should. I started yesterday, but couldn’t explain why my gut says all this with Russia and China is just something that their execrable leaders and whoever has his hand up Biden’s butt cooked up, before the stolen election. After all, all of them, including those who are — very nominally — our countrymen want to see America destroyed. It’s an absolute conviction, and yea, I could find the bunny trail, but I’m not in the mood to write a ten thousand word post just now, sorry.

Of course there is no reason to expect any of this to turn out better than the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, because there might be honor among thieves, but there isn’t even a thought of honor among authoritarian shitweasels (in the case of no longer our countrymen those shitweasels are, to boot, idiot Marxists, who think that if you destroy America paradise ensues. And actually, Putin is an idiot Marxist his own self variety “if everything collapses, Russia will be glorious, glorious” and by Russia he means himself. I wonder if he knows there are penis enlargement surgeries available? Would save the world so much trouble.)

All of which means…. well…. I DID tell you that the thrashing, dying spasms of international socialism (communism is just the extreme of socialism) which has gripped our world for almost a hundred years and our “educated elites” for longer than that was going to be hell to go through. I remain hopeful — but not certain — that they won’t manage to kill civilization with their stupid, insane hatred of everyone who is happier than they (which is actually everyone. Including some people with terminal illnesses. It’s not just that evil is tedious, but it makes its adherents so uniformly miserable.)

So — who asked for interesting times? Because I certainly didn’t. And honestly, if I find who did, the chinelo is going to do a number on their behind.

In the middle of all this, writing my books seems like the most futile pursuit in the world, except for two things: The last time I lived through interesting times, sometimes the only thing that held me (just barely) this side of sanity was the knowledge that that month a new (to me) Heinlein, or Simak or Bradbury would be released in Portuguese, which meant, between reading and rereading twice (which started as soon as I hit the end) that would give me 10 hours of not waiting for the hammer to fall. (And honestly, right now? No pressure on anyone, but Pratchett is dead, I could kill for a new Dave Freer, a new Ringo, a new Weber (or even better, please, mo’e prince Roger?), a new Correia. I crave this like an addict craves a cigarette, which means when I’m stressed, I need it more.)

The second thing is that once at 33 I faced the certainty (well, everyone who should know said it was inevitable) I would die in hours or at most days. And I hadn’t written the books I’d been dragging around inside my head since I was fourteen. (Yes, No Man’s Land is getting done. This year. There are things I have to do to continue series before I start that one, okay?) I don’t want to face that again, and the weather for the next several years is scary, with a heavy chance of individual death. So I’d best be making with the writing yes?

And then I was looking for something to hide a hole in the wall of my office. (Look, it’s a big round hole, and there’s a bunch of cables in it. I have no clue what the cables are, and left to my own devices, I’d cut them, slap a dry wall patch on it, and call it a day. But I suspect Dan would make that sound he makes when I say “Oh, that weird gizmo? I didn’t know what it was so I put it somewhere in the basement.” It’s like a combination sigh and cry of despair. It’s sad. So, I’m not doing that. ) BUT it bothers me, to have that huge hole right there. So I considered buying one of those “doorbell chime covers” to hide it, except the pretty ones cost the Earth, and I got this thing offering a canvas print for $9 with free shipping. Only what the heck do I put on the canvas? I mean, I could steal someone’s art, but I don’t do that.

So I did a quick render and looked for a Heinlein quote. (The chick, btw, is the woman from Space Magic, which yeah yeah I need to finish. It’s in the queue. Which is why “gone fishing” is actually “gone writing.” But that sounds weird, since this is writing too.)

I’d never seen this one, but you know what? The man was right. And suddenly writing stories in the middle of apocalyptic (hopefully not literal) chaos makes a lot more sense. After all, who knows what will survive? Stories have as good a chance as anything. Maybe a better one, considering we still talk of the tales spun by the blind seer, Homer.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, dragons, pterodactyls and reticulated giraffes, possess your souls in patience, while the writer lays down some words (and maybe finally finishes typesetting and putting up some stuff that’s finished.)

I’ll see you on the flip side.*

*Yes, that IS dating myself, which is illegal in 32 states and iffy in Utah.

This is not a religious post. The title is the title because it’s one of those undeniable bits of wisdom. More important, blessed are those who believe without touching.

It’s not most of us.

Okay, so the posts this week could be entitled in common “An unfortunate series of posts, composed of Sarah having experienced unfortunate things, knowledge of which she dearly hoped would never be needed in America.”

Yet, here we are.

Other than my suspecting that the People’s Convoy glows in the dark, I know there are many other convoys with spread-out start dates. I worry for all of them. I agree that it would be a lot more rational for truckers (and anyone who does real work) to just stay home for a week starting today.

But unfortunately this type of situation isn’t rational. It’s emotional gossamer, composed of feel and see and touch. Because humans aren’t rational about things that matter deeply for survival, like “How can all of us live together? Under what rule?” Or how to make things better when they’ve gone profoundly wrong, like now.

Look, yes, a general strike of truckers or of anyone really would be far more effective in bringing the country to its knees. (It also would make it much easier to demonize people. Bear with me.)

A general strike is usually, for good and sufficient reason, the last step in this type of thing, not the first. You have to know you’re not alone, first. You have to be bonded as a group, first, to be able to say “We’re all staying home” and get any significant buy in. (The left seems to have forgotten this. They knew it in the old days, but now they’ve tried it several times to no effect. And for us, of course, it’s all new.)

Look, a general strike would have done much better than the demonstration at which I almost got shot, back in the seventies. But it probably wouldn’t have rolled tyranny.

And the trucker convoys are more dangerous individually than a general strike — prove any individual person isn’t just staying home because they had a positive COVID TEST (particularly since they have. I mean, if you take fiver tests in a row it’s almost guaranteed one will be positive. Papayas and Mangos can test positive and so can you.) — but it is also far less effective.

Sure we now have the internet, and can know things the media doesn’t show, but there’s still a difference between various podcasts of people staying home, because they’re trying to bring “I can’t believe it’s not socialism” to its knees, and seeing a convoy go by with normal people honking their horns and their trucks plastered with flags and slogans about freedom.

The first is easier to demonize, to believe these are a small fringe, that these people are weird (everyone looks weird on camera on the net) etc. As opposed to seeing people just like you, who have had enough.

This is why the Trudescu regime wanted to take down the bouncy castles and harmless dancing, national anthem singing truckers. Not because they were evil violent nazis, but because they were normal working people. Normal working people opposing the left is like apocalypse for them. It can’t be reconciled with their cosmogony, and therefore it must be destroyed, so they can keep their illusions.

It is why the tea party in the US had to be demonized and destroyed. And the January 6 protesters too. Because unlike the ante-fa with their utter bizarre weirdness (most of them move like aliens, or psychos) and the anger that pours out of them, or beardo the weirdo on the corner, waving his “No blood for oil” sign, the tea parties and the January 6 protesters were bog standard Americans, and usually had all the indications of your nicer family members.

I know, I went to three tea parties. I was probably the weirdest person there, and I’m honestly not weird enough for my own circles. These were nice, middle class people. (Though at least in the springs, there was probably proportional (national) representation of races. Which is amazing because the springs is more white than the rest of the country.)

But it was effective, and though the demonization was effective too, briefly, it didn’t stick. Because almost everyone knew someone in the tea parties, or had driven by one, or seen pictures. It’s very hard to get up there and scream blood murder about neo nazis, when mostly it’s aunt mildred, with her pink pouffy jacket, and a sign that says “Taxed Enough Already.” Because you know aunt Mildred carries little packets of candy to give kids, and never cares what color the kids (or the candy, for that matter) are.

The tea parties were the beginning of the end for the left controlling the image of the right. And so, probably are the trucker convoys in Canada. Here, if they can avoid the glowies doing something stupid, it shoudl be at least the middle of the end.

That’s one side of “why in person?” Because people are social. they need to see, and feel and smell before they believe.

The other side is humans being social. Having a party over zoom is not the same. And having a demonstration long distance is not the same. Sure, you might get a lot of people who say they’re going to strike, but when push comes to shove it’s all “Look I had to go in, because my kid needs shoes, and that day’s pay–“

Because humans are social. There’s a reason when some place is on strike, people are expected to show up for the picket line.

A general strike — and it MIGHT come to that — would be way more effective and have more participation of you say “everyone on general strike go to your neighborhood meeting point. There will be signs to hold.”

Yeah, okay, it is more dangerous, both because of glowies, and because, well…. tyrants still have power, as the Great Asshole of the North proved. They can get you beaten or worse.

But that too works, because it means evil has to remove its mask, and attack completely normal persons, that could be your next door neighbor.

And people will remember that. And the world changes.

So, should we have trucker convoys? We’re going to need a lot of things like. Convoys and marches, and demonstrations.

People out there need to know they’re not alone in resistance. They’re part of a greater whole. The country isn’t happy.

Yes, it’s very dangerous.

It’s also necessary.

Let’s try to avoid the glowies and minimize the butcher’s bill.

Unfortunately it might not be fully avoidable.

And yet, in the list of causes you can give your life for, human liberty is up there (granted below some for me, but not many things.) Because even the Author wrote us with freedom to choose. Who is mere human to take it away.

If the time comes for you to march, or drive, or light a candle in the window (um…..) or whatever is called for to say “I’m here, and I am against tyranny” pray that you have enough strength.

Then do it.

Hi. I am your friendly neighborhood storyteller, and I’m here to remind you of one very important thing: STORIES AREN’T REAL.

Understand I’m not throwing stones here. To an extent, because storytelling and belief in stories is an evolutionary selected for trait, (because if the story teaches you that tigers bite, you don’t go near the tiger and live to have descendants — particularly important in a pre-literate society.) humans have always had trouble confusing story and reality.

The trouble comes with the fact that we are living in a society hyper-saturated in story, from “the news” to the narratives fed to us in education, to stories in songs, to movies, to novels. (Movies are particularly pernicious because they bypass our brain’s “this isn’t real” filter. It is literally “what are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?” The lying eyes win every time. People have done experiments in which things watched in movies get incorporated as real memories.

The trouble is compounded that for the last several decades, the storytelling in all those fields has come exclusively from one side of the political spectrum, and to make things worse that is the side that actually doesn’t know how things and/or people work.

What it means is that in places for things like “what causes a revolution”or “what the future holds” or various other relevant check points, what we have in our head is a complete fabrication.

There are outright lies fostered under “Those who win shape history”. This article is interesting in that sense, he has pierced the lies surrounding early smallpox/polio vaccines, but he still believes the people heading to the cities in the industrial revolution were “economic slaves” and that they lived in appalling conditions compared to the countryside. Because that’s the narrative we’ve all been fed. In fact, we’ve seen industrialization in real time in my lifetime in third world countries, and no, people don’t have to be forced to move to the cities, and no their living conditions in the cities aren’t worse than in the countryside. In fact, if you read stories written at the time of the industrial revolution, all the lords and ladies in the British countryside complained of their servants and tenants escaping them for the greater freedom and better living in the cities.

Now were those conditions wretched compared to ours? Sure. But so were the conditions of kings. And part of what made the spread of disease rampant was that they simply didn’t know what caused it. Having grown up in a society that hadn’t fully integrated the germ theory of disease, I can tell you sometimes the things they assumed made you sick — frequent baths, say — was the diametrical opposite of reality.

So, in the early 21st century, it’s not just that we’re completely soaked in story from waking to going to bed. It’s that so much of it is so absolutely and bizarrely true.

And that’s a danger both ways.

One of the things that had my jaw dropping was all the people going “well, Canada is lost. Game over, man.”

The same people tend to draw an A to B to C line on our own demise. It goes something like “The left does a thing to get martial law. They go door to door and confiscate guns/put people in camps. They control everything forever.”

It makes me want to scream and then line people up so I can slap them all at once. (I need bigger hands.)

That’s not reality. That’s a movie.

That kind of thing works well in movies, because then the credits roll and you know it’s bad forever. “Game over, man, game over.”

It also works well in movies because the filmmakers are steeped in the “ways things work” in movies (but not in reality.) Oh, and because Americans and probably Canadians, have no idea how vast their own country is, or how different from the countries in which this sort of thing has worked.

The only country as vast and complicated as ours (or close to) that has managed unending tyranny is China, and right here I want to put down two caveats. Caveat number one is that we THINK so. From the outside. It’s impossible to know how complete the tyranny is on the door-to-door level. And I’d bet you money it’s far less than we (or Winnie the Xi) think(s). Second, China is a radically different and from our perspective highly weird culture. (I’m sure we’re the same to them, though they might not know it.)

I do firmly believe that if Zhou Bai-den wanted to he could round up every liberal middle class and above urban person in the US, take their guns and put them in camps.

The problem the Junta faces is that those are not the people who they want to do that to. And there are places in flyover country I not only wouldn’t encourage them to invade, I wouldn’t encourage them to look at sideways while considering invading. Because if they go into these nice, bucolic places, nothing will come out, except perhaps deep regrets. And I doubt even that.

They don’t realize that, of course. After all all those people in the hinterlands are stupid. And if they haven’t fired yet, they’ll never fire. Except everyone fights when it comes for them. But that’s not a movie thing, it’s just a people thing.

Movie thing is people being rounded up, by the numbers.

Honestly? WHERE WOULD THEY GET THE MANPOWER NEEDED EVEN? If you think they have enough or they can use random illegals, you’re out of your mind. They don’t begin to have enough people. And they’ll have even less after the first wave disappears. Worse, once people realize what the idiot liberals tried to do, they’ll chase them all over the country and beat them to death with their “in this house we believe” signs.

The left doesn’t realize that, because in their heads is the simplified mind shot of conservatives being rounded up.

And the right doesn’t realize that because in their heads is what happened in Nazi Germany. Only conservatives in this country are a majority. They are also armed to the teeth. In the places where Jews were armed, they put up a fight that had to be beaten back at enormous cost. Here we are armed, thank you so much. The cost if Zhou Bai den wants us in camps will be everything the left has. And in the end we win.

I’ve also been surrounded by people assuring me they’ll “die” in he first wave, when the squads come for them. First of all, are you out of your mind? Second, why would they come for you?

Remember, we’re the majority. They know it, we know it. (Yes, they know it, hence the barbed wire around DC for months.) They can’t and wouldn’t be able to round up everyone who has ever run his mouth on line. Or bought a gun. Or talked about buying a gun. Or joined the NRA. Or– whatever.

Yes, we’re all on lists. So are another 300 million citizens. Excepting babies and toddlers. And those might be on lists because someone misspelled a name. If you’re not on a list, you’re probably on a list for weirdos that aren’t on lists. You really should watch the German Movie The Lives of Others. The DDR with far less data collecting capabilities had data on everyone and everything. What they didn’t have is a way to correlate it. And the first of you that says “computers” gets hit with a carp. Because computers aren’t magic. And AI for that kind of thing sucks. See, for instance the non-malicious errors that Facebook makes. “I might have to kill you for being so sick” counts as “coordinating harm” to an AI that doesn’t get humans.

Like self driving trucks, an AI that can sort these things properly looks simple, and is always around the corner, but might actually be impossible

The best that they can do is gaslight you into believing they can reach and and kill you/stop you because they “know everything.” In fact like most totalitarians they know nothing. And the more data they collect the less they know.

For instance, the Facebook algorithm considers me politically “moderate.” They’re actually right, of course, if the spectrum is conservative to libertarian. But I don’t think that’s what they mean.

In fact, having lived through this before, I assure you that most people who dissent from the regime won’t be bothered. Most people who dissent but are very visible probably won’t be bothered. Even the USSR kept around dissidents “for show”. They kept an eye on them, and of course they didn’t get any perks, but you know, they weren’t killed. (I might be big enough for that, maybe, thanks to instapundit.)

It’s the people in the middle: the small blogger, the little guy like Joe the Plumber who shoots his mouth in front of the cameras (or smiles, embarrassed, like the Covington kids) who get publicly destroyed, with the hope this will keep the rest of the dissidents from going feral. (And these examples aren’t really working very well for the left. Sure, the Jan 6 political prisoners, but they are simultaneously displaying them and hiding them, and mostly pissing everyone off. But they lost the Covington battle. And the Kyle Rittenhouse one, and–)

Most of you will be perfectly safe and live to fight another day.

“But they’ll freeze our bank accounts.” Yeah, that’s a funny once trick that communists like to do. Again, the middle is in greater danger. But here’s the thing: even that is not “game over.” It requires inventiveness and ingenuity, and you might not be wealthy, but there are ways to get around it. (I can think of three that apply in my case, and heck I’m not divulging them, since they’re highly specialized.) Make your own lists. Now might be a good time to figure out how to get fake ID. I bet there’s a way even with “Real ID” TM. (You know, fake birth certificates aren’t even vaguely hard, and you can always claim to have lost your ID in a fire. Or a move. No, really. “I had it packed. It just never arrived. But here, I have my birth certificate.” Now there’s better ways to do this, that they can’t even track, but again, no not laying them out.) Here’s the thing: our government, even when it really tries, can’t prevent illegal immigrants from working. They can’t prevent porn from being paid for.

The only ones they can prevent or incapacitate are the extremely law abiding. So? Don’t be extremely law abiding. if your government goes rogue against you, go fluid.

The left has it in their head that if they just find “this one simple trick” we’ll all obey.

And they’re getting ignored and subverted. And if they continue making us mad, they’re going to get their asses kicked.

And that’s because reality is not a movie. You can’t script it perfectly and write the end.

The other side gets a vote. And our side is just starting to vote in the culture wars.

Hold on tight. It’s going to be a wild ride.

And don’t fall for cheap tricks that solve everything. This one is going to be won in the day to day and the details. In reality. Which is dirty, slow, painful, but has the advantage of existing.

Be not afraid. I doubt even Canada is “Done” (if you believe their polls or don’t remember they got Dominion machines before we did, you’ll only make me snort giggle. Everyone came out to support the truckers. Every Canadian just about. I know. I saw the pictures, and I counted (Joke, but yeah. A lot of them.))

Stop thinking in the stories the left tells, and definitely be not afraid.

In the end we win, they lose.

Hurray and there she glows, hurray and there she glows. Hurray and there she glows, so early in the morning….

What, oh, never mind me. I was just thinking of this “People’s Trucker Convoy.” Sure, sure, I’ve been assured that people I know know some of the organizers and they’re totally not sus. But you know, we all have dumbass and gullible friends.

Okay, so to level set: I’d heard of trucker convoys forming last week. The earliest started March 1st. (From the North East.) There were others.

And then suddenly there is this People’s Convoy — which is totes a name we’d choose. Totes. Remember that “Descend on DC” thing they wanted us to do with Maoist imagery. Yeah. Like that — starting a week before the others.

And I was like “Is it real, or memorex?” but reserving opinion, because you know, people are weird, and it might be perfectly legit. And then I read that post over at Gateway Pundit.

Look, guys, if that post is real, the Convoy isn’t. Or at least there is someone manipulating its formation, objective and outcomes who is not on our side.

And the best result we can expect from it is that merely discourages real trucker convoys. (Arguably, marginally less dangerous, truckers could obtain the same benefit by being “sick” for a week or two. Though not as public, and could get weird.)

Look, go read the article. I’ll wait.

Okay. Done? Right. So, first there is the weird bravado. They have a thousand truckers, but they’re going to “swallow” DC like “an anaconda” who the heck does that kind of bragging on what amounts to “we’ll take up one lane and cause a traffic issue?

Then there is the “I figure we’ll stay for two days.”

ER…. WHAT?

Look, if you’re going to do this thing, and risk being arrested or worse, you stay as long as you have to stay to see the mandates rescinded. And hell, if I were doing it? I’d demand an investigation of the elections and that the Supreme court look into the case too, before I went home. Otherwise, knowing what you might be required to pay for this, what’s the point?

This would be like “Give me Liberty, or I’ll give you a traffic jam for two days.”

I’ll always be very suspicious of any supposedly big initiative that has no clear objectives, or no clear way to get there. This is why Jan 6 still strikes me as weird. It was never clear why Trump wanted all those people in DC. (Well, yes, maybe Mike Pence told him if there was a lot of people there, he’d object to certifying the results of the hinky elections. MAYBE. But why did Trump believe it? Never mind. His hiring was atrocious. Must be different in politics and business.)

As it turned out it was “get ahead of potential real demonstrations/riots, by having a fake one, and stomping on it hard enough that the right is terrified of doing it again.”

<Looks at trucker convoys. You know the left has no imagination, and uses the same plot over and over again. See however many people didn’t really kill themselves, right?

Okay, it is entirely possible that they expected if they started rioting, the right would join in — I call this the OWS maneuver where they think if they start it people will do what they want. It’s stupid, but it’s something that would work in a movie, and the left mostly has movie logic — and then they could stomp on anyone who opposed them because look at the horrible things these people have done.

So, if there are other trucker convoys, I’d look into them, but this one? Yeah. Well. It glows in the dark.

I figure it’s an excuse for Biden to declare them terrorists, with minimal effort and go after everyone who opposes him under the patriot act.

Or you know, it could be so he can declare victory and claim all other trucker convoys are useless. THAT’s the optimistic view, btw.

Again and again I say to you “What good thing can this possibly accomplish” should be your test for what you want to participate in and/or support.

Keep in mind that to win, the left must implicate you in shady stuff. No, seriously. You guys keep imagining them coming door to door or whatevs. That only works in movie-logic. Think of the US and how big it is. It might work in a city, among middle-class liberals. That’s it. Try it anywhere else, and none of the gun grabbers come back. Because when they come for you, you have to shoot back. And it’s horrible optics for them.

Remember the left cares about optics. Even if they gain power, you’re relatively safe, unless they can get you to be “bad.” Now for me being bad might be “Spreading disinformation” after they forbid it. But it still has to happen for the hammer to fall. And frankly, the more visible people will be safe. And the least visible. It’s the people in the middle who will get hit. (I don’t know. I THINK I might now be big enough. Mostly due to instapundit.) Even the USSR kept dissidents “for show” who weren’t killed.

And they won’t gain power that long — but that’s a discussion for another post — or be that secure, ever.

However, they might think they will. I think the Junta has been advising Justin Castreau, and view what happened there as a test case for here. Eh. I don’t think Canada is done with them, at that. And as for Americans being the same…. They do completely misunderstand us every time, don’t they?

Now, yeah, their trucker convoy cosplay could get them to declare some really bad stuff. And things will almost certainly, one way or another, go very bad for a while. Very bad in the sense that our money is becoming worthless, supplies are scarce, people and businesses we need are being crushed, and frankly the Brandon motto should be “I will try to bury you.” Because that’s what they’re doing.

I’m not saying it’s sunshine and flowers. I’m saying they can’t win long term.

I’m also saying we can survive. Yes, even if your bank accounts are frozen and people aren’t allowed to work. This isn’t a new maneuver. It was pulled in Portugal in the seventies. And people survived. FOR YEARS. It can and will be done again. And there are techniques. You just have to be flexible. Look, they can’t stop Porn and Criminals from making money/trading. What makes you think they can stop you?

Give a long side eye to anything that makes you go “What do they think is good about this?” or “What do they think will result from this?” Whether they’re asking for your support, or asking you to participate. At best people doing things where they can’t win — they can’t — are stupid. At worst they glow in the dark. Neither is good for you.

But be ready to support things that are worth it. Because frankly, my internal clock says it’s very near. Now my clock might be wrong. This has happened in the time, because I’m so politics-obsessed. So when I feel “two weeks’ it might be a year. But from the anger on line, it’s not much more.

Unless they can convince us it’s useless, of course. So take down that “Abandon all hope” sign and be alert and ready.

I’m not even sure the “faux convoy” won’t spark a reaction our lords and mistresses will …. not like. I wouldn’t at all be surprised. To quote — I think Friends? — “You’re playing with fire” “I thought you said I was swimming with sharks” “Yeah, you’re playing with fire and the sharks don’t like it.”

When things are as on edge as right now, starting a “faux riot/rebellion” is one of the stupidest things you can do. But then these people think in movie logic, and couldn’t organize a bonk in a brothel, so what do you expect, exactly? Stupid can’t be ruled out.

Stay alert, keep your powder dry, and don’t be unduly trusting.

Strap on and hold tight. The ride is about to get bumpy.

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 ALMA BOYKIN: Familiar Paths: Familiar Tales Book Twenty

Arthur goes Hunting . . . and Kelly Boudreaux (and Stead) go on vacation.

Seven stories both Familiar and new. Arthur must deal with both family tension and the undead as Martha shelters the Lone Hunter from storms outside and in. Deborah learns more about her roots (and berries, and stems.) Kelly and Stead take a much needed break from chasing wild land firefighters while a coven sorts out the passing seasons. And a dead man’s legacy haunts Thomas Arthur Chan Lestrang.

Return to the world of Lelia Chan Lestrang and the Familiars, a world of adventure, humor, mystery, magic, and the occasional mundane mess.

FROM JAMES Y. BARTLETT: Glitter Girl: A Swamp Yankee Mystery

The smallest town in the smallest state has some BIG problems!

His Dad’s in jail, a local guy and his fishing boat disappeared at sea, the RI Attorney General has appointed a Special Master to oversee his department and he’s got a touch of PTSD. And then SHE walks in … the Glitter Girl: young, beautiful and involved in something right up to her gorgeous eyes!

Not to worry: Chief Gus Haddock is a Swamp Yankee. He’s got this.

This first novel in award-winning author James Y. Bartlett’s Swamp Yankee Mystery series, Glitter Girl will take you inside small town police work where who you know is often more important that what you know.

FROM TONY CARDEN: The Sorcerer’s Lackey.

How could Tony be so dumb as to choose a hopeless Hero for this story? I mean, really! Everyone knows that playing around with a dragon is playing with fire.
Hapless, an unsuitable Hero with not a shred of the usual qualities. Dragged – unwillingly, it must be said, by his foster mother – into being the sorcerer’s lackey, he is sent by his master to collect some unmentionable ingredients for his magical experiments.
His trip to “Here Be Dragons”, it does not quite go to plan.
The story is, they say, … is … well … complicated … confusing … chaotic … comic…
A hopeless hero…
A ruthless villain…
A rabble of helpers…
What could possibly go wrong?
What could there be not to laugh over?

FROM D. W. PATTERSON: Spin-Two: Complete: A Future Chron Collection.

The complete Robot Series of three novels:

Spin-Two: The increasing production of dark energy, found by robotic physicist Dag Mach, fit the model of the cyclic universe exactly. But the dark energy was causing problems in the current universe. Areas where dark energy density was greatest were experiencing a breakdown of space. The accompanying destruction and loss of life would only get worse as this cycle of the universe sped to an end. Dr. Mach discovered how to stop the cycle but had a choice to make. And the magnitude of that choice was overwhelming.

Change the natural order and destroy the cycling and all future universes but save lives in this one? Or do nothing and know all will die? Fellow physicist Ally Mekur called it “playing God”. And Dag didn’t want to play.

Robot Planet: Yes, robots dream of electric sheep. They also dream of freedom. But as Robot Planet is about to find out, it ain’t easy being free. Follow Em (emulated brain) based robot Dr. Dagmar Mach and his fellow robots, Sigmund, Walker, and Hanson as they fight proxy battles for humanity. Against deadly black-hole bombs and gravity-wave generators, they pit intelligence and courage.

But finally, they realize that buying their freedom is not the same as earning their freedom and the respect that comes with it. That’s when they face the biggest threat of all, annihilation.

The Lattice Of Space: Even with Robot Planet in ruins and the deaths of hundreds of their robotic compatriots the three robots Dag, Sigmund, Walker, and Hanson are working hard to save humanity from extinction. All they have to do is restart the Big Bang to prevent the destruction of spacetime. If they can.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School.

FROM M.C.A.HOGARTH: Business for the Right-Brained: (A Guide for Artists, Writers, Musicians, Dancers, Crafters, And All the Other Dreamers)

A career as a freelance artist? Not possible, you say? The Three Jaguars beg to differ! In this cartoon and checklist-filled guide, Marketer, Business Manager, and Artist walk you through the challenges of starting and building a creative business. Topics include productizing your work; metrics and tracking; communication and networking strategies; Day Job wrangling; pricing; branding; and even how to market yourself without feeling (*shudder*) slimy! If you’ve been looking for a clear (and humorous!) guide to the philosophy and practicalities of being a professional artist… this is your book. Also, did I mention the cartoons?

FROM DALE COZORT: New Galveston Book 1: Operation Croatoan.

In February 1939, with World War II looming, the US Navy held a massive naval exercise in the Caribbean, involving almost fifty thousand sailors and marines. President Franklin Roosevelt personally attended.

In this alternate history novel, the US of 1939 disappears at the peak of the exercise, along with the rest of the New World. In its place is a New World still inhabited only by Indians.

While the US remnants try to make a new home for themselves, Nazis, Fascists and Japanese Imperialists scheme with Aztecs and other Indian powers to take over the resource-rich and now nearly defenseless New World. A mysterious “Operation Croatoan” is at the core of their schemes. Milo Gentry and a handful of other Americans race to figure out what the Axis powers are up to and stop them.

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: 202202 Thought.

A pamphlet covering current events of the last month. The Freedom convoy, the leftist tyranny, the upcoming war with Russia, all of it’s in here on the A-side along with random thoughts on history or whatever comes to mind for the B-side.

In-between each essay are current news headlines and there’s a lot of those. The headlines are in chronological order, the essays are in chronological order but they do not merge. Unusually for my books, I continue the news headlines on the B-side so it’s as up-to-date as possible.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: War Party

Ice is a powerful magician and trained warrior. His day job, however, is political analyst, and it is once again election year.

Hopefully with fewer explosions and snipers than the last one, but in the Empire of the One, what sounds like a boring desk job is anything but.

Especially when al old flame gets pissed enough to jump into the presidential race.

Between assassins on the loose, duels to the death, and a sense of something nasty coming his way, Ice is going to be busy.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: A Summer in Scarborough: A Pride & Prejudice Sequel

Miss Anne de Bourgh was delighted to receive a letter from her cousin Georgiana, explaining that she would be spending the summer by the sea, and requesting the pleasure of her company. A glorious few months of balls, shopping, and walking by the sea awaits- a wonderfully diverting holiday for Anne, who has rarely left Rosings before.

But Anne is a de Bourgh, and life is never simple. Before long, she finds herself caught between the attentions of two very different men, and must choose if she will follow her heart or disoblige her family. One must be disappointed, and Anne has never been very practiced in the art of disobedience. Must she give up everything she has ever known, will she find the strength to search for happiness elsewhere?

FROM HOLLY LISLE: The Longview Chronicles: — The Giant Omnibus Edition — All Six Books in One Huge Volume!

It’s a fine interstellar line between recapture and freedom. Her one act of kindness will trigger an epic fight to restore cosmic justice.

Box set: Over 600 pages of massive intergalactic battles exposing the dark heart of a vicious, futuristic humanity.

In the deep reaches of space, escaped slave Melie longs to captain her own ship. And with a promotion on her current vessel, she’s in reach of the goal that will set her free from the rich and powerful’s brutality. But when her protégé commits treason, a failed attempt to help gets her demoted and delays her flight from the galaxy’s merciless gladiatorial system.

Dreading having her identity discovered, the jaded woman scrapes by seeking some way to improve her fate. So when a sensational public massacre stirs rebellion, Melie seizes the opportunity to enlist a misfit band of victims to spearhead the ultimate trap for the elite.

Can Melie rally her eternally persecuted peers to overthrow a ruthless regime?

The Longview Chronicles contains six books in the fast-paced The Longview Chronicles dystopian science fiction series, and doubles as the third book in the Cadence Drake series. If you like underdog heroes, sweeping galactic action, and darkly envisioned futures, then you’ll love Holly Lisle’s gripping suite of adventures.

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: ELITE.