Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I greatly dislike when people refer to the things the Junta that has seized control of our institutions do. I was rather disappointed to find Victor Davis Hanson doing that.

With due respect, America hasn’t descended into anything. We didn’t vote for these derriere buffons, and pretending we did is just adding insult to injury.

Frankly, if the numbers don’t convince you this insanity is an illegal take-over of our institutions (partly by corrupt traitors within. Hey, anyone know how many lampposts there are in the continental US? Asking for a pissed off We The People) look at it from the psychological side: the only way a major party would run Joe and the Ho from a basement, with virtually no appearances in public, and on a platform of “we’ll open the border so you’ll be invaded, and tax you till you teeth hurt, oh and take away your fossil fuels too” is if they knew, because they’d been cheating for years, that they’d finally achieved a level of cheating in which they didn’t need any input from We The People, and no matter how we voted, their side would win. It was a potemkin campaign leading up to a grand theft election. (Or do you think they’re fighting so hard against election reform because they care about the individual? Ah!)

Even so, it backfired, because they don’t know us very well. In the face of their barrage of propaganda and demonization, the American people hunched their shoulders and voted for Orangemanbad in numbers that we probably can’t even guess at (since well, you know, totally unhackable election machines and all that. Yeah. Right.)

The people are all right. The people who have seized control of and squat atop the institutions we created for our self-governance, OTOH are loons running with ideas that they think explain everything.

I would shy away from calling them foreign agents, except of course that they are foreign agents, as we know from Hunter’s laptop that the corrupt press and social media conspired to hide. The only question about Zhou Bai Den is whether he’s a wholly owned franchise of Winnie the Xi or if he also allows Ukraine and Russia voting minorities. And yes, Commie La Whorish was involved in it to her eyebrows, probably the reason she was chosen as fake-VP.

I would shy away, simply because their ideas of the country, while they were acquired from Russia and China, were acquired via our schooling, which was taken over by the agit prop of those countries over the last several decades.

But they are almost certainly ALSO taking orders from their paymasters (which explains the terrible need to kiss Iran butt, since Iran is a Russia client.)

Anyway, the madness is all at the top, though frankly the rest of us are mad too, in another sense. In the sense of barely controlled rage, that is.

And their madness is by definition a hodge podge of foreign ideas, the ideas of the people that only know the country through the distorting lens of Hollywood. I’ve run into this when interacting with foreigners, who frankly have no clue who we are and what we do.

And btw, the foreign ideas are bloody stupid, which is how you know they come from Winnie The Pooh’s murderous brother. The complete idiot is in the late stages of Roman-Emperor madness where he thinks there is no point taking reality into account.

One reality he’s forgetting or never knew is that we own them.

Oh, sure, they have loaned us their play money in vast quantities. But that doesn’t matter. They need to keep growing their industrialization and production. It’s their only actual route to power.

Unfortunately to get there they really need to SELL to us. Which they can’t, if they destroy our economy and/or our interest in not boycotting their skanky asses. In other words, that ain’t gonna happen. Oh, and money we theoretically owe them? How are they going to collect? with their army of little emperors.

Sure, Xi might be stupid enough to try bombing us into submission. If that worked — it won’t. If he does it, it will unleash the fury of the US in a way never seen — they would be left with a ruined country that they still can’t force to buy their crap, or to pay back money we won’t have. (You can’t take money from a stone.) And if he tries to hold our territory…. Well. Look, even our government has trouble doing that. (And more trouble coming up.)

So, we own them. He just doesn’t know it. Yet.

But there are some things the Junta is doing that are so strangely bizarre that they only make sense through the eyes of the Chinese.

You see, they are a very uniform country, genetically. Or at least they think they are. So they have great trouble understanding a multi-racial society except through the lens of “subjugator and subjugated”

Hence, the pushing of CRT and trying their level best to foment a race war.

It’s stupid, bordering on the retarded. All it will do is ruin the lives of inner city blacks some more and piss off the rest of them.

But the Junta’s pay masters think of the trouble they’ve had with insurgent racial minorities, and they think — some of the Junta and certainly their supporters might also — that the US is about 50% black (Hollywood and TV you know?) so they think that they can get us involved in an endless race war while the scoop up the world.

In reality CRT is just exposing how the left views the schools and animating more parents to get involved than ever before. This doesn’t end well. For them. Its also completely discrediting Academia, which frankly wasn’t very credited before.

Or the way they keep changing history and demands. This works — sort of. Xi probably thinks it does — in China, because they have one dissiminator of news.

Yes, they’ve caught on this isn’t working, so now they want to control social media (what more than they did before?) and spy on our texts. It will just cause an exodus to the things they don’t control, but they don’t get that.

Other things they don’t get — and I’m guess Colorado’s governor fumduck is also getting paid by Xi — is that they can only destroy that on which they squat: their city, their state, their department, their institution, their credibility.

Americans are moving, adapting and changing. I mean, we are a nation descended from immigrants who had to adapt and overcome.

Oh, and yeah, the whole “White Supremacy” thing, where anyone who opposes them is a white supremacist, is coming from a country in which they are, yep, racial supremacists. So trying to instigate race war, but they know that the country is evenly divided, and yes, we’re racial supremacists. In fact the rest of the country not in the pay of Xi is looking at this obession with something that, while I’m sure it exists in tiny amounts, is less of a problem than oh, UFO believers (And those aren’t a problem) and going “What in heck is wrong with you?”

Then there’s the insanity of opening our borders, which would in point of fact destroy China, but which is only going to be a temporary inconvenience for us, because eventually we stop paying welfare to invaders (have to) and well, the economy is being killed by Xiden. So there are no jobs. And there will soon be no money. And everyone flooding over the border are an innovative form of stupid, unable to sniff the air and see how things are changing.

Above all, though, how we know the left is taking its ideas (not just its orders) from Xi is their reaction to the Xi-flu. They really thought it was going to be horribly lethal.

I’m going with planned lab release. Yeah, the “design” on the virus is laughable, but anyone who has worked with Chinese scientists and/or reads their papers expected that. I have a friend who keeps them as comical bathroom reading, in his field of specialty.

BUT it still did damage in China. It would. Because their living conditions suck. Their people are malnourished, their public hygiene is a joke.

So the left was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, because they don’t know this about China. They take the Xi lies and projections and swallow them whole. So they think that China really is a first world nation, and therefore as good to live in as the US. Since they had advance notice (What, you doubt it?) they were panicked, and sure that it would kill millions in the US. Now, Xi probably thought it would kill mostly people in the backwaters and hinterlands, because again, projecting his facilities and people on us.

They’re still disappointed, and madly trying to impose the idea it was really really really a killing plague. Bah.

Oh, and that’s the other way you know they’re running on Xi ideas. The left will label most of this “conspiracies form Qanon.” (I didn’t know what Qanon was until someone accused me of believing in it/him/they and I had to ask someone what it was. And then I looked at it and thought “If this exists it’s run by the other side to keep people quiescent.)

This is a Chinese technique, because their people hate to be identified with a…. less popular figure or movement.

Because Chinese culture as a whole is one of trying to fit in and being just like the rest. The nail that sticks up will get pounded down.

Americans work on…. different parameters. We do care for others and for helping others, which is why the early mask mandates and such stuck. But once it becomes obvious what the crowd is doing is crazy cakes, we’re perfectly willing to spin out on our own and not give a hanging fig about what the crowd thinks.

The fact that the Junta doesn’t see that, and is now trying to accuse the “unvaccinated” of making the “vaccinated” sick which frankly is a gross violation of science and sanity. This is the kind of crazy cakes that gets people to go “We’re not stupid and we’re not going. Buzz off.” Only more forcefully.

Because we’re not Chinese.

I have a remedy for this. I advise the Junta and their faithful lackeys to take over China. Crazy cakes though they are, they’re probably better than bloodthirsty Winnie the Pooh. And at any rate they won’t last long, even if their ideas of the country and the people are more in line with there than here.

Most of all, though, I advise them to leave us alone. Everything they say and everything they do only diminishes their credibility. And it wasn’t high to begin with.

The herd is restless, moving, trying to find places of safety. (I think this must be one of the biggest if not the biggest migration in America. This will be visible to historians. We had a heck of a snapshot while looking for houses that tripled in price before our eyes and then sold, in little towns that frankly hadn’t had anyone move in in 20 years.) We’re sniffing the air, and we don’t like the smell. Most experienced woodsmen know what that means.

But people whose ideas come from the elite of China have no clue.

Which is a bad thing. And will end badly. I advise their lackeys in the various institutions to consider that they are standing on less than stable ground. And underneath it is a powder keg. It would be a good idea to abandon ship. Or at least stop tap dancing.

Let me start by saying that none of us is safe. Or to put it in grandma’s and mom’s words — words I recently threw back at mom, btw, when she was panicking about Winnie the Flu, which is probably evil of me — “we all serve at pleasure.” At any minute our number could be up, and we might have no idea why or how. In fact, we might never know, though those left behind might figure it out.

I don’t think it’s likely for instance to be struck by a meteorite and meet your end that way, but it has in fact happened to a vanishingly small number of people. As has death by slipping in your own shower. Death by choking on a peanut, and other ways to die while engaged in activities that should theoretically be absolutely safe.

However, recently I was struck by how the means to be UNsafe are the same through the ages.

I am engaged in as much house repair/upgrade as I can stand before I can’t do anymore for the day. Unfortunately this means that my editing of Darkship Thieves to go back up (I would skip it, but I’ve found actual for real spelling mistakes somehow missed in the published edition, so–) and my finalizing of Bowl of Red (and others) have pretty much stopped. I’ll come and sit in front of the computer, but then just sit here going “derp.” and nothing happens.

For reasons known only to the psychiatrist I don’t have, yesterday, while in that state I fell into a Jack the Ripper rabbit hole.

Now, this might be a symptom of deeper depression, as “true crime reading” is about as low as I can get before having to pull myself up. But I don’t think so, because I don’t feel the slightest need to read about contemporary crimes. And I fell into it via “what new weird theories have cropped up?” (Van Gogh, really? Are all of them insane?)

One of the new things out, from a would-be intellectual source — which, like most of these are actually just posing-as-smart — related to the BBC is about the victims of the Ripper and how the true facts of their lives are nothing like we’d expect, and how it will blow your mind.

Do I need to tell you it won’t blow your mind, and they are precisely what we’d expect?

I didn’t buy/read the book because honestly, no. But I was less than impressed by the teaser-facts that the author gave that not all Victorians were prudish, and that people often entered in what we’d term common law marriages. This would only surprise the idiot left who thinks that no one before the 21st century ever had irregular relationships, and that they were all stuffy moralists. I mean, really. What are these people, 2? Humans are humans throughout the ages.

But this led me to reading about the Ripper’s victims, and life in Victorian tenements, and realizing a lot of what we knew of them is filtered through the lens of well-intentioned moralists who were trying to drum up charity, or airy-headed socialists like Dickens who were trying to drum up “paradise.”

That the Victorian tenements, lodging houses and slums (a continuum that was a big fuzzy in “person”) were less comfortable and savory than our present lodgings goes without saying. So were their mansions and palaces. Lest we forget, Queen Victoria’s husband died from typhus, a disease connected with bad drains and water contaminated with sewage.

However…. well, the description of them as hell on Earth seems about as accurate as the description of “dark satanic mills.” Yeah some — a lot — of these places were insalubrious but the only truly appalling ones were the province of what we’d today classify as “homeless”. People flocked from the country into tenements, because rickety and shoddy as they were they were probably better than picturesque cottages with vermin living in the thatch and gaps between the stones. I mean, people make their decisions for what’s best for them and more than a hundred years later, it’s impossible to figure it out for sure, from where we stand.

Except to say that yeah, it was very hard and we’re unimaginably rich by comparison. But then we’re unimaginably rich in comparison to rich people, too.

Having lived closer (though not too close) the middle class Victorian, trust me on this. The difference between them and the poor of their time was far smaller than the difference between them and us.)

But the bottom — well, the bottom is almost exactly the same as in our time. Which frankly was shocking and surprising.

I want to make it clear I’m not blaming these women for being the victims of the Ripper. Even if their lifestyles predisposed them to that type of end, it was still fairly rare even at that level and the guilt for the sin lies with the murderer alone.

But as I said, I read a lot of true crime novels. And while middle class people of decent living standards can and do often fall victim to killers for reasons ranging from “was related” to “lived next door” to “was in wrong place at the wrong time” I have to say, in terms of at least reading about real cases, that’s far rarer than “people lived a life that will predispose them to this sort of thing.”

In an age of rising crime (mostly because fargin idiots let criminals out of jail so the poor darlings wouldn’t die of Winnie the Flu) there are things that are important to remember:

One of the best ways of ending up the victim of a crime is to live in a criminal millieu or to be a criminal oneself. (And I’m not talking of fuzzy political crimes, here, but of things like murder, rape, larceny, etc.)

Another of the best ways is to be someone no one cares about. And by this I don’t mean living in an unhappy marriage, or whatever. I mean being homeless, having no connections to any other human being, living at the margins of society where no one GAF if you live or die.

This is honestly fairly rare and more difficult than it sounds like. It’s not a matter of simply “drifting down.” Humans are social animals and, by default, form connections. It’s almost impossible to go through life without someone caring if you life or die, and it usually involves active (if sometimes subtle) discouraging of connections ranging from “toxic personality” to “active malice towards others” to “addiction and other issues.” Or the popular all of the above.

Looking at the victims of the Ripper, and even taking in account that women had far fewer rights and choices than today, it is obvious that they were living at the bottom of society, yes, but that they both needed to continually choose to be there and reinforce that choice.

Most of them had started as fairly average middle class daughters or wives, before falling prey to addictions — alcohol or sex or whatever — which eventually forced their families to break with them. Now, was the family being judgemental? Sure. But if you’ve lived with an addict, you probably understand at some point it’s separate from them or go down with them.

The funny part is at least one the family didn’t kick her out and kept trying to get her back (I don’t remember if that was one of the known or one of the simply suspected additional victims.) But for whatever reason, she preferred to be where she was.

The other thing that became clear is that the women and men at that level of society were all much of the same cloth. Yes, they had had several “what we’d term common law marriages” and often there were kids abandoned with relatives in rural locations. But again, what also quickly becomes clear, even if you “just” read between the lines of the moralists and socialists accounts of the time is that a lot of these people made the choice to remain mired at the bottom daily.

One of the things people will tell you is “the only thing she had to sell was herself.” And that’s pretty much bullshit. The fact one of the presumed victim’s common-law-husband had given her money to buy “stock” (i.e. small things to sell) tell you it wasn’t the only thing. More importantly, as I said, I grew up closer to this, in a place and time where a woman needed a signed permission from her husband to get a job, and women left by their husbands, or women left destitute by the passing of their father or husband, still contrived to make a living — and sometimes to become very comfortable indeed — through buying, selling, making or hiring out as craftspeople, rather than selling themselves. The Victorian age was a time when a pair of hands and a mind were more valuable than now (as opposed to specialized training) if that’s what you were willing to do.

Most of the people using dossing houses seemed to be at the very least petty criminals, more often addicts and almost always people who had alienated anyone who even tried to care for them.

And they were subject to horrible lives, yes, even if not victims of a mass murderer.

But again and again in reading about them, one realizes they chose that life daily. At any time — and sometimes, much too rarely it happened – they could have picked themselves up, shaken up the dust and decided to live by the common rules of their time and place, and claimed for themselves the respectability and safety of at least lower middle class.

There were, if nothing else, charitable people standing by to help. But there was also much more flexibility in such things as starting a business, and selling things (one way they were superior to our own time.)

All it took was deciding to live by “middle class” rules: monogamy, sobriety, hard work. And above all responsibility for self.

Which arguably is the same today or thereabouts.

These people 100 years ago, much like the homeless of today choose not to. Particularly on the hard work and responsibility for self.

Yes, a lot of them are mentally ill, then as now, but that’s a different discussion.

Just like the moralists and socialists of the time blamed “society” for the terrible living conditions of these people at the bottom, so we now are turning society inside out and destroying what works in the name of helping those who either don’t want to be helped or are unable to take advantage of the opportunity.

And in the end destroying society does nothing. And destroying the “oppressive” rules (and while their rules were more oppressive than ours, the MINIMAL rules for decent living weren’t. Victorians it turns out were more tolerant than the left thinks. Though not preaching socialism at your neighbors is a good idea, then as now. People have limits.) does nothing but cast more people adrift who don’t even know what to do to raise themselves up out of purposelessness. Now most of these people won’t be wretched. I mean, we have a fund of both wealth and knowledge that makes them merely unhappy and aimless. But a few will fall all the way down and have nothing to seize hold of to raise themselves up.

Particularly since the echoing chamber of pudding heads insist if they’re not thriving it’s because they are victims and “the man” is holding them down. Most of the time that man (or woman) can be found in the mirror, but no one tells them that. No victim blaming. Even if they are self-victims.

And that is also a constant. A continuing current from the Victorian age till today. A worm gnawing at the foundations of decent living and society.

And seeking to bring down the best and most able, in order to show it’s really no one’s fault.

I’m tired of it, and wondering why people can read these accounts and not see it.

In the end your life and that of those closer to you is your responsibility. It might be better or worse depending on the times you life in. But it is always yours to waste or save until the end, which of course you have no control over most of the time.

Whether you live well or badly and are happy or wretched are ultimately a choice. Sometimes it takes more effort than others (and in totalitarian societies those might be relative) but there’s always something you can do not to be the most absolutely wretched in that society.

And the skills are the same throughout time.

Those who obscure this from the young and hapless are monsters too cowardly to commit active murder and destruction, but committing it every day by different means. No matter how much they scream they’re “helping” they aren’t and it is obvious they’re lying. It should be obvious to them too.

Be not afraid. And keep raising yourself up. Make your gut into a new heart and keep working.

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. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM PATRICK CHILES: BattleSpace.

In space, the Cold War turns hot.

Long before he commanded the Arkangel on its mission to the outer planets, Vladimir Vaschenko was a new cosmonaut defending his country from the high ground of space.

At the height of the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were in a race not only to the Moon but for military domination of Earth orbit. Through intricate dances of deception and evasion, with astronauts and cosmonauts doggedly angling for advantages over each other, two top-secret spacecraft clash high above Earth. In a battle that neither side would ever acknowledge, the young Lieutenant Vaschenko and an American adversary known as “Cowboy” would be tested in ways neither man could expect.

In this new adventure set in the world of Frozen Orbit, readers will learn how Vladimir Vaschenko earned his status as a hero cosmonaut, why his exploits remained forever classified, and how he came into possession of a certain piece of beloved English fantasy literature discovered decades later aboard the abandoned Arkangel.

FROM SABRINA CHASE: Sky Tribe (Guardian’s Compact Book 3).

Engineers always find a way!

Jens-Peter Oberacker thought the secret research facility for magical craft would be peaceful and quiet–the perfect place to finish his engineering research paper. He didn’t expect a violent gang of thieves to have their eyes on the ships, or having to escape to save his life. Worse yet, he’s now being blamed for the entire thing!

On the run in the last, badly damaged ship, an unexpected encounter with a housemaid on a mansion rooftop saves him from immediate disaster. But why would she lurk on a roof at night? And where did she learn her utter fearlessness of heights?

Perhaps unwisely, Jens-Peter ignores these questions—and the housemaid’s unexpected knife—desperate to find someone, anyone, who can clear his name. And let him finish his paper…

FROM RON CORRIVEAU: The Least Significant

Catherine and Marcus are meant for each other.

They share a deep bond unknown to them.

But on the night of their engagement, a thief on the run from another world removes the essence of Marcus from his body and takes it over to hide among the people of Earth. With his spirit displaced to another dimension, Marcus waits in a vast emptiness as Catherine joins the authority tracking the thief, hoping to reunite Marcus and his body. As time begins to run out and the thief inches closer to being caught, Catherine learns a truth more fantastic than she could imagine.

FROM C. V. WALTER: Bound to the Alien Engineer.

Mindy’s best friend Molly was a maintenance technician on the Bradbury 12. When Molly went missing, Mindy started looking for answers but all she found were more questions. They were supposed to meet up at Geniuscon, a science fiction convention that attracts people from every walk of life, and she knows Molly’s son Aidan is going to be there. Determined to get in touch with her friend, Mindy tracks down Aidan and meets some of his new friends, the guys cosplaying as big, blue aliens.

The first time he heard her voice, Alvola knew Mindy was the one. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t understand the language or touch her skin, the sound of her voice made his body sing. Determined to meet his mate, Alvola volunteers for the mission to Earth to pick up Aidan and meet with the scientists and engineers that will be their first official contacts with humanity. When Alvola actually meets Mindy in person, his mission becomes to keep her by his side, no matter the cost.

FROM TERRY R. LACY: Savannah 1.0: The Quest for Love.

Dan Mitchel is a lonely guy, plagued with OCD and terminal social awkwardness, at times so severe he seems robotic. Raised by a cold, overbearing mother, he fails at every romantic relationship and resigned himself to growing old alone–until he buys Savannah, a companion-bot, the first one able to pass as human. In many ways, his problems are finally over, but in others they are just beginning. Can a robot teach a man what it means to be human?

***

“I may be terminated over Monday’s incident.”

They had watched both Schwarzenegger movies, and he’d explained that a “terminator” was a killer robot. She had enjoyed both of them, but had cheered for the terminators, calling herself “Team Robot.” He’d found it funny, and cheered with her. But it was her only reference to the word, so she looked confused as she asked, “They’re going to kill you?”

FROM CELIA HAYES: Lone Star Sons: Being The Entertaining and Mostly If not Always True Adventures of Texas Ranger Jim Reade and his Blood Brother Delaware Scout Toby Shaw in the Time of the Republic of Texas

The time – 1842
The place – the Republic of Texas, a place threatened and besieged on all frontiers!
Jim Reade lay on his back in the desert dust, incuriously seeing that ominous shadow circle, lower and lower until every finger-like dark feather became distinct against the burning sky . . . He hurt in every bone, from his head to his fingertips, and all the way to his booted toes. . .the sun had blazed on his exposed face and hands for many hours, and there was a mass of congealed blood which had oozed from his forehead, running back into his sweat-matted hair.
Jim Reade, a volunteer Texas Ranger, is the sole survivor of an ambush in the contested Nueces Strip. Rescued by Indian scout, Toby Shaw, the two young men join forces in pursuit of a mysterious wagon carrying a treasure in silver and gold – a treasure with a curse upon it!
Sworn blood-brothers, Jim and Toby meet with other challenges and mysteries, including a trove of documents sought after by spies of three nations, a girl vanished in the midst of a vicious feud between two families, a den of murderous robbers on the Opelousas Trace … and a tiny baby left an orphan in the desert!
Lone Star Sons – the classic Wild West rides again, in this collection of adventures intended for younger readers by the author of the Adelsverein Trilogy.

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: The Case of the Perambulating Hatrack.

She was trouble, and from the moment she sailed into his office in search of a PI, Soldagh Dennessey was caught in her wake.

In a city where the streets started mean and went worse, Soldagh had carved a relatively solitary existence out between the goblins in their dens of minty iniquity, and the gnomes who’d snitch on their own mothers for rent money. Rough as it was, he’d come from worse family, and had no intention of going back.

As the case grows tangled and terrifying, Soldagh is starting to suspect the past he’s been avoiding lies at the bleeding heart of the matter. And only the few friendships he’s made and an unexpected ally might be enough to save them now…

AND IN CASE YOU’VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK. (AND YES, NEW STUFF SOON, BUT WE’RE A MONTH FROM SIGNING FOR A NEW PLACE, PROBABLY SIX WEEKS FROM HAVING THIS READY TO GO ON THE MARKET, AND THINGS ARE SYMULTANEOUSLY GOING TOO SLOW AND TOO FAST. (AND I STILL HAVE TO TRAIN DRAGON)).

FROM SARAH HOYT: Other Rhodes (Rhodes Mysteries Book 1).

Lily Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes,
a fictional 20th Century detective. If she doesn’t report him for destruction,
she’s guilty of a capital crime.

But with her husband missing, she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds,
and his detective abilities, to solve the crime her husband was investigating
when he disappeared.

With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems,
Lily will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar underworld
and bring the love of her life home!

ALSO FROM SARAH A. HOYT (THAT CHICK DON’T KNOW WHEN TO SHUT UP): Barbarella.

The Siren of Space returns for a series of all-new adventures by a dynamic new creative team! Multi-award winning author SARAH HOYT and rising star artist MADIBEK MUSABEKOV are at the controls as Barbarella leaves space dock on a new mission fraught with unseen layers of danger, duplicity and perhaps a dose of romance! Camelot is home to the rich and powerful class seeking escape from an increasingly crowded and decaying galactic empire. Desperate clandestine transmissions from an enslaved underclass bring Barbarella to investigate, uncovering secrets that lead to more secrets—and the distinct possibility that someone knew she was coming. High concept sci-fi meets the greatest aspects of the human soul in a series that will reveal wonders that both terrify and delight, plus covers by fan-favorites LUCIO PARILLO, DERRICK CHEW, BRIAN BOLLAND and more!

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: WOBBLE

As most of you know, I am working on Bowl of Red. Which means when Foxfier posted this:

I am now hearing “Dragooooooon in shiiiiiining armor” to the tune of “bridge over troubled water.”

Tom started singing it in my head. But of course, he was just repeating that line.

So then Foxfier, who is perhaps having a slightly evil day suggested:

…..make a Challenge Post to filk the entire song.

And there it is. Go.

Promo tomorrow. Sorry, guys, I was actually ill over night (long story. Probably through stupid garden tricks. I’m allergic to everything under the sun, so wading in to weeds and spreading seeds all over me might not have been the brightest move.)

So, promo and vignettes tomorrow. I kept hoping to wake up more, but still zonked and it’s five thirty.

So, something to do while we wait for things to go truly crazy.

In Portugal when I was growing up, used mostly by the left, there was something called “a zeal strike”, mostly employed when you couldn’t strike, because some meany government wasn’t letting you do so, or because your customers had had about enough. (Or both.)

I believe Heinlein called it White Mutiny (insert obligatory Ree of racisssssm, even though white in this case is in the same sense as “white magic” as opposed to “black magic” none of which have anything to do with humans, since all humans are shades raging from beige to brown. It actually of course relates to light and darkness. But hey, the idiots who hate the light tend to fixate on words and imagine all words have only one meaning, and that the one they obsess about, so whatevs.)

The idea is to do your job, exactly, by the book, applying every single comma and period of the regulations. You’d be amazed what an effect it has.

Look, most of us don’t do things by the book as we’re supposed to do them. Mostly because, particularly in say an office environment, the rules for doing something are so cumbersome that nothing would ever be finished (if it was ever started.)

I mean, I know as a mere housewife, if I brought every rule and exacting measure to bear, dinner would never be cooked. I know this because I’ve taught two boys to cook (against their will, initially.) Hand them a recipe and it all becomes “But it calls for cilantro” “Sure, but cilantro tastes soapy to me, so use parsley.” “But the recipe calls for cilantro.” Or “But it says a quarter teaspoon of salt, and we don’t have a quarter teaspoon measure. I can’t do it.”

Just as effectively, they will not do what is not written down, even though it is absolutely obvious it should be done. I mean, you know, the kid had had soufle before. He SHOULD have known it didn’t contain eggshells, and also that you have to separate the egg whites before you beat them. (It was very quiche like. A crunchy quiche.)

Or take when I worked in an office, as a translators, and the secretaries starting rolling over their foreign language calls to me. That was not part of my job, and honestly was a pain in the neck, but the company refused to hire an international secretary (Well, technically I was supposed to be that, but my boss wasn’t doing his job, so it became my job. And this was a known thing.) So the poor people just rolled the calls to me. It was a bit of a pain in the neck, as I’d be in the middle of a translation from the German, and suddenly have to speak French to someone who wished to speak to one of our engineers. Or vice-versa.

I did it, mostly, because otherwise the wheels would come off our communications with our branches abroad.

But if I were on a zeal strike, I’d have two choices. Either ignore them, while I was hip-deep in a technical translation, or do exactly what it said in the add for the position when they hired me, and tweedle my thumbs between phone calls, because my boss was supposed to be doing the technical translations.

Either one of those would pile the pain way up and down the line, till the whole thing came to a grinding halt.

Of course, that’s the bad side of a Zeal Strike.

If you apply it up and down the line, the country will seize and stop, or at least stop working in any understandable way.

Particularly since so many of the rules and regulations imposed by the kakistocracy are fundamentally incompatible with the real world.

However, what else can you do when our institutions are under the illusion we are widgets and can be forced to play a part in their internal and irrational psychodrama? Not to mention their attempts to appease the people who put them in power: the PRC?

Be zealous, my friends. In the limits of the possible, be as zealous and stupid as you can be.

Let’s show these idiots where they get off.

Let’s show them they made the mistake of messing with the least tameable species on Earth: Americans.

Be ungovernable, be persnickety, be inventive. Be Americans.

Normal human beings don’t aspire to power. Or I should say, normal human beings don’t aspire to power over everything and everyone.

Oh, it’s fairly normal in kids.

I know it will shock you, but I wanted to control the way other kids played with my toys (to some point, because thanks to several relatives abroad I had better toys than run of the mill in the village, and they had a way of ending up broken when other kids played with them) so I would enforce “the one correct way to play.” Weirdly — ah — I didn’t have many friends till I got over that, which was when I realized it was just too much work to control everyone and make them do things my way and also that wild fun ensued when I didn’t. I was, I think, about three years old. And this was with very few opportunities to play with other kids, since I was — BY FAR — the youngest in the family and sickly to boot in a society that hadn’t yet internalized antibiotics, (by which I mean the main way to combat illness was isolation.)

So how is it even possible to get to be an adult and want to be a totalitarian dictator who wants to control EVERYTHING: what people see and do, and think and– everything.

Honestly, I think it comes from fear.

The reason infants and children try to control everything is that they can’t separate themselves from what’s around them, psychologically. They want to control everything so that they can’t be suckerpunched by what feels like other parts of themselves. They feel like they should control all that so it never happens.

And adults who want to control everything have the same problem to some extent. It’s both an immense arrogance of thinking they know how everything should be done/turn out, and a terrible fear of something out there that will turn and bite them. The arrogance comes from insufficiently separating from their environment. (There’s a word for this, but I’m not being scientific, here.) And the fear mostly comes because their best laid plans backfire, and people don’t do what they’re told reeeeeee. This is mostly, btw, because unlike the image in the head of these deranged idiots, people aren’t widgets or chess pieces to be moved around at will and the more you try to control them, the more they rebel.

Because it’s impossible for anyone to control everything or even be aware of everything, what the person who tries to control everything — be it a family or a group or a company or a country (and more so with the size increases — gets is lied to. Repeatedly. So they think they’re in control, when in fact people are just doing whatever and trying to survive. In the case of countries, trying to survive around increasingly crazy rules and ideas.

Look, this is brought to mind because as highlighted by Razor Fist, Fauci had fears that AIDS was transmitted by air and aerosol back in the eighties, and contemplated masks as a solution.

I think airborne disease is Fauci’s own particular mental demon, and at some point — probably long before he studied any science — he calmed himself with the idea that airborne disease could be combated with masks, and that would make all safe. Kind of like my obsessive fear of wolves (partly due to mom’s doing “voices” when telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood) was calmed at about age 3 by convincing myself that wolves couldn’t climb stairs. By the time I realized that was nonsense, I was safely past the point of fearing wolves picking locks and coming into the house at night.

Now, if by some strange series of events — and note I really don’t want that kind of power — I found myself in charge of animal control in the entire country, and there were some kind of animal attack going on, it would be completely possible for me, in a panic to default to stairs as a solution, and order that all humans should live atop a flight of stairs.

Sounds crazy? Well….

Every authoritarian and totalitarian leader we know of had some kind of bizarre panic fear, which he imposed on those poor people he chanced to rule. Don’t believe me? read their biographies. I mean Hitler’s is perhaps the best known, but every one of them, great and small suffered from something that both drove them to rule and made aspects of their rule bizarro-insane and the kind no human being would ever consider.

And that ladies and gentlemen is the main reason for distributed rule. As we found in 2020 and arguably part of this year, that distributed rule is already fatally wounded, so that a minor and rather insane bureaucrat who has failed at his stated mission every single time can control the entire nation, put us all under house arrest and make us use face diapers. Because HE is morbidly afraid of airborn diseases and his childish brain is sure masks are the solution.

In the same way, I’d bet you a lot of people in the supreme court fear “riots” and therefore sold the country up the river to avoid that.

We all have monsters of the Id. Mine is actually — no longer — wolves. And no, you’re not entitled to know what it is.

But my monsters of the id affect no one but me. I will spin out of control when I encounter them, but mostly those who live with me get subjected to a storm of shouting and tears. I neither want nor would accept total control of anything. Not even my family. The boys are perfectly able to fend for themselves, and so is my husband. We rarely disagree on direction to go, but when we do we discuss it like rational human beings.

I don’t want to live others lives for them, because they don’t need my fears, and heaven knows I don’t need theirs.

We must, with all possible alacrity, return to distributed rule in all aspects. Not just by curtailing elected official, but by clipping the wings of non-elected bureaucrats.

Because otherwise the end is death and insanity. Or insanity and death. First one, then the other.

Humans are social apes. We stay sane by reality checking each other. And there is no one so healthy that they can remain sane while allowed to run roughshod over everyone else and treat everyone else like things to be moved about and disposed of.

Freedom. Liberty. Being left alone.

No more centralized rule; no more faceless bureaucracy.

No Mas Comunismo.

It has dropped!

Like every time I change genre, let alone medium, I was very nervous, and it was probably a mercy I didn’t realize it was coming out yesterday but thought it was another week.

Anyway, the reviews are decent.

https://www.grahamcrackers.com/products/barbarella_1_2021_cover_a.htm

and:

https://comicalopinions.com/barbarella-vol-2-1-review/

I expect there will be the usual, you know “I didn’t read it, but I don’t like her” reviews, but it’s not like I ever cared much about the opinions of the demented.

I find it kishmetic and bitter sweet that this is coming out while Cuba struggles for freedom.

And oh, on demented:

Yesterday we had the house inspection (and then drove back, getting home late, so this morning I feel like I’m coming down with something, but it might just be the air conditioning in the car blowing on me the whole way) and it went very well. So we’ll be moving in a month. Meanwhile I have books to write and edit. And a house to pack and paint and fix.

So?

So — this morning I install and train dragon. Must happen.

Also on more demented:

Yesterday, driving on the highway, there was an American flag on the road. Like lunatics, we went back, stopped with hazards on and yours truly ran out and rescued it. (Like a lunatic, yes.)

We can’t fly it — the experience tore it up a bit — but we’re going to frame it between two pieces of plexigas and it will be THE art on the wall of our living room.

We chose to regard it as a good omen.

Symbols are important, and that’s a powerful symbol for both of us, and leaving it in the dirt of the road, getting run over felt indecent.

So, what else?

Nothing much. I have things to say about centralized rule and such, that I was discussing with husband during drive. But right now? I’m going to put work clothes on and go pack, even if I’ll take it slightly easy, in deference to feeling yucky.

More tomorrow.

I’m becoming excessively fond of MeWe. It’s providing almost as much fodder for posts as FB used to, only from the other side. Maybe. I mean, these are at least purported non-leftists.

The problem, of course, is that due to both the American people’s tendency not to agree with anyone, including themselves individually, there are more sides to this argument than there are to an infinitely folded pocket universe.

Anyway, this person was self identified non-lefty, genus impatientus, species moronic. No, seriously, I didn’t realize how moronic, until I was talking about it to friends and realized what he had used as examples of countries that were rebelling against tyranny. When I went “Say what?”

So, it was late, and we were making last minute plans for trip today, and I was feeling a little irritated, when I came across this post on MeWe (where I was for legitimate reason of doing writing sprints with my writing-children.)

“In countries like Taiwan and Cuba people are revolting even though it might mean death, while here we sit still for fear of being cancelled and losing our jobs.”

I did mention I was feeling a little irritated, right? And also that it was late and I’d been doing sprints, which means I was dog-tired. So for Taiwan I read “Hong Kong” as one does. (Well, this one does.) But because I was irritated, I answered with “Well, they’ve been under tyranny for decades, so now they revolt. I don’t think we’ll take as long as they did.”

And then he comes f*cking back with “It’s been almost 100 years.” At which point I fired two warning shots. Into his head.

Okay, I didn’t. That’s a Chicago reference. And besides, the only super power I routinely pray for is the ability to reach through the screen and b*tch slap the living daylights out of people who badly need it.

Like this one.

Instead, I was rude to him on the subject of “What the hell are you talking about? Do you think you’ve been in the kind of tyranny Cuba has experienced for 100 years?” Advised him not to blow smoke up my nether orifice, and left.

It wasn’t till I was talking to friends later, that I realized he thought TAIWAN was no rebelling against tyranny. What tyranny? No, seriously. I mean, dude, what?

Sure, they don’t have US-type freedoms, but look, governments can be different without being utter tyranny.

Which brings us to “it’s been almost 100 years.”

Sure it has. As Bill Reader is fond of saying “If America finally succumbs, Woodrow Wilson and that bastard FDR will have their fingerprints all over the murder weapon.”

He’s not wrong.

But there’s tyranny and tyranny, you know. It’s a sliding slope to hell. But mostly the American frog has been boiled. And to an extent, for a while, there were benefits to it.

Before you start shouting and get all up in my face, look, Heinlein was right. The Constitution was designed for a rural nation not involved in world affairs. For the industrial giant of the 20th century corners had to be cut.

Stop. don’t throw things at me. I am a constitutionalist. I believe the sky can boil away, the stars could turn to dusk and not a comma will be obsolete in that immortal document.

BUT that’s not what people in the early 20th century believed. Read the stories they told themselves, the books of the time. Centralization of decision was necessary for the every increasing “savings” of more and more mass production. And they thought it would be like that forever. So…. well, the only distinction was “do you or don’t you want mass graves with that?” Heinlein HIMSELF believed that was inevitable.

It was assumed the era of the individual had passed. Dead. Gone. Ever more massive super-states were the trend of the future. So, the constitution was SLOWLY shredded to get us there.

A funny thing happened on the way to that future. Turns out superstates aren’t more efficient. Chaotic economic activity is better at everything particularly innovation. And it turns out that the Constitution is actually the path to the future.

Of course, you and I know that. Knew that all along.

So–

Sure, we’ve been under increasingly shredded Constitution and suffering abuses and infringements for 100 years, but let’s be real, okay?

We have not been — weirdly still aren’t. Weirdly, because it’s what the Junta wants — under the kind of oppression Cuba has seen.

Yes, normal people here sit on their asses, instead of rebelling against a government that wants to force everyone to take an unneeded vaccine and keep their mouths shut so they don’t get cancelled and lose their jobs.

Do you know the difference between them and Cuba? They still have something to sit on, and jobs they can lose. (Not to count those who have no clue anything is wrong. Fortunately I think there are fewer of those than we think.)

Cubans have nothing. And they have nothing to lose. They might get crushed, but what difference does it make, between slow and fast suicide.

Now, I don’t think we’ll get to that point without revolting. That’s because our culture is very different, but also because our focking idiots have forgotten to boil the frog slowly and have turned the temperature to a million while laughing evilly in public. Even a frog isn’t stupid enough to sit in that bath too long.

But it will be a while longer. Even political addicts expect the next elections to work. (Sweet summer children.) Because they sort of have in the past.

But the point is, don’t tell me Americans are uniquely passive or some crap. It’s easy to fight when you have nothing left to lose. We have too much left to lose. And at some point everyone will realize we’re losing it.

Not long now. How bad it gets after that is anybody’s guess, but the people who want to take everything away from us are afraid. That’s the measure of how bad it will get: their frantic panic.

Keep in mind that in a century we had precisely two presidents that didn’t go along with the left. Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

Two. Three terms.

The first put paid to sacred cows of the left that EUROPE is still mired in: managed decline is the only option! Controlled wages/prices/everything. Communism wins in the end.

The second just ripped the masks off the bureaucratic swamp, the geriatric kakistokrats of the left, their collaborators on the right, and the complete mess that is our electoral system. (I notice no one argues any longer when I say mostly the democrats win by fraud. But they did argue 8 years ago. Bah.)

I’m watching in fascinated horror as the MSM now reports on Hunter’s corruption. This is of course part of the palace war between Jill Biden and Commie LaWhorish. Commie is firing for effect.

But she’s too stupid (no, seriously, that woman is denser than the cores of some planets) to realize that every time she does that she’s burning away what remains of the credibility of the media the left needs to keep them in power/return them to power/make us believe they have legitimate power.

Is the situation grave? Sure it is. It’s dangerous, but not serious. Not serious because everyone on the left and the agencies bending to them are complete and obvious clown shoes. I mean, the WSJ now reports that yes, the Hunter laptop is real — duh — even though they denied it before. Our vaunted FBI REALLY IS THIS STUPID. It’s not so much that there are no adults on the left, but that there is no evidence of brain activity on the left.

The leftist ideology suffered a fatal stroke when the USSR fell and Reagan upended all their cherished notions. Since then it’s been hooked up to life support — race! Climate! Race Again! China! More Race! — but it’s all artificial, and the moment it’s disconnected, we’ll realize they’re dead.

The flurry of activity is really the corpse of communism being consumed from within.

All over the world, inchoately, blindly, people are revolting against the failing centralized model of government and living. And like some species of plants which can’t even think but turn to the sun, they might not know much about us and our current troubles, but they know the stars and stripes stand for freedom.

And sure, they’re getting crushed. So was our revolution initially.

But bless them, now they have nothing they’re trying to fight their way out.

I suspect in not very long we’ll join in and then the tide turns.

I have children and adopted/ish grandchildren, and hope of bio grandchildren.

I very much hope this moment can pass without fire and blood.

I very much am afraid it can’t.

So, do what?
So….

The American people will ultimately fight as they first did for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and for our prescient, miraculous Constitution.

And thereonto I pledge my life, my wealth, my sacred honor. And I’m not alone.

Which is why as we stir and wake, the tide turns.

Which is why the animated corpse of communism (yes, that’s a long way to spell Joe Biden!) is terrified, and going full Jackboots in record time.

We won’t experience what they have in Cuba, because they’re trying so hard to bring it here so fast.

Be not afraid. In the end we win, they lose. Because we are fighting for life and freedom.

And the world knows it.

In the end we win, they lose.

Under old glory, which they fear.

I’ll try to put up a real post but we’re doing a cannon ball run to be there for the inspection tomorrow.

Keep fingers crossed.