I think I’ve told the story here of shopping for a carafe for the coffee machine and finding the world’s strangest review, right?
If I haven’t, older son and I are cheap coffee fiends. No, this doesn’t mean we buy cheap coffee, just that we sometimes (coff or always) buy our coffee machines at thrift stores, provided the machines are very good quality. We, of course, clean them well before first use. Anyway, I no longer remember the brand, but in son’s last years in our house, we bought a very good machine at a thrift store. And, once cleaned, it served us well.
Until the day I was too sleepy to make coffee, and therefore dropped the carafe which shattered. This of course created an emergency and I had two choices: Buy another coffee maker (but there was nothing decent in the thrift stores near us) or buy a new carafe. Failing to find a replacement carafe in the local store, I hit Amazon. The carafe was $25, aka about five times what I paid for the whole thing to begin with, but since we loved the machine (and it was originally very expensive) I decided to order it.
Before I did, though, I hit the comments. There weren’t many one stars, but I find those are important to read. So I did.
Er…. So, the most vociferous one said that the quality had gone way down. This person had used their previous carafe for years to dig in their flower beds, but this one had lost the handle after a few uses. No, it wasn’t a joke review. I checked his other reviews and they seemed…. sane. Weirdly.
So, why am I telling this story?
Today we were looking for lids for our bathroom trash cans. (Indy, okay? He digs everything out, spreads it around the bathroom and bedroom floor, and thinks that q-tips are the bestest toys.) In the reviews we found they were being used for all sorts of other things, including as rodent defense in the garden.
None of the uses were as completely nuts as using a carafe for gardening, and they all made sense in context, particularly for the price, but Dan and I started talking about how people will pick something and do a completely unexpected thing from it, and sometimes it works and eventually a specialized version is made for it.
I can’t for sure prove that Americans do this more than other people. In fact I know that in totalitarian countries (in the former USSR for sure) people have to use very strange things to survive, because the things they actually need aren’t available. And we grew up improvising very odd things out of other very odd things.
However, in America it’s done not out of necessity, but usually out of abundance and sheer inventiveness. Like, you know, seeing these woven metal trash can lids and going “Hey, they’re very cheap. These would be perfect to protect my gourds from squirrels.”
I wonder if this is why we tend to innovate more: both the benefits of the free market and of a natural culture of “doing for oneself” which has most of us growing vegetables, raising chickens, and “yes.” And often not finding exactly what we want at the price we want it for our strange arrangements.
I can’t prove Americans do it more. But to the extent we have free market, (Yes, I do know how curtailed it is. Except compared to almost everyone else) it has unleashed both prosperity and leisure which allows us to innovate more.
And it’s a wonderful thing, even above and beyond the fact it amuses me greatly.
Sure most of the time it’s a failure, just like most mutations are ultimately harmful. But in the few times they aren’t, real progress is made that couldn’t be achieved by a thousand planners in a thousand think tanks.
Just because someone sat there, staring at a listing and went “What if I do this?”
Some years it’s easier to celebrate the 4th of July than others. This year is one of the others.
Unlike a lot of my co-religionaires (Usaians, unreformed) I don’t believe the republic is dead. It’s not that I don’t believe most of our government is corrupt and probably irredeemable (but what do you expect of people who frauded their way in? Respect for our laws and founding documents?) but that I believe we’ve been in this place or worse before, and came back at least to an extent.
It was an enlightening experience to read the things Woodrow Wilson did during World War I, and the Forgotten Man by Amity Schley is a very enlightening book. Or endarkening, because it will not put you in a good mood.
The current clowns’ malfeasance is neither new nor particularly original. In many ways too, it’s less competent than that of their ideological ancestors. Partly because they are less competent, partly because these days it’s easier to find out what they did, so even if they were actually competent, they’d come out as half assed.
And if you think there was no fraud back in those days, you truly need your head examined. What the fraud was is harder to discover, but reading biographies of the time… well. Will the cemeteries who voted for FDR please stand up?
There have always been people who consider themselves experts on how everyone should live, and this disease of the former “nobility” of Europe was made worse by mass industrialization and Marxist thought, both of which convinced pinheads they knew what the future was, and “if only everyone” did what they wanted, paradise would arrive. The fact that they believe that it’s possible for “everyone” to do this or that justifies my evaluation or their intelligence, regardless of the letters after their name, or their supposed IQ.
You can look at it one of two ways: One is that the Republic has been dead since shortly after it’s founding. There’s a name for that. What is it? Oh, yeah. Stupid.
Look, sure, there is a platonic ideal of the republic. It’s bright, free and perfect. Don’t judge me immune to its appeal. For most of the nineties I was a pure Libertarian, all shiny and chrome.
Then 9/11 took the paint off and reminded me of what I should have known all along. The world is a dangerous place, and a nation needs a government to deal with security and external threats, if nothing else. (Where external threats begin and internal threats end is a good question, she says, looking at his serene majesty Zhou Bai Den, Vice-Roy of Emperor Xi the Pooh.) Losing my beloved city to (among other things and facilitated by Fraud by Mail) feral homeless reminded me that sometimes there is a justifiable reason to violate individual liberty, and also how hard it is to decide where the line is and/or to trust any government with that.
Since then I’ve been locked into “As small as possible, as local as possible, and with functions constitutionally limited, and for the love of Heaven clean up the d*mn vote, so that the kleptocrats know people are watching them and can turn them out on their… ear.”
It’s not shiny or perfect. Neither is the republic. It never was. It never will be.
But in this world of imperfect things, and as imperfectly implemented as it has been, it has afforded — overall and seen from a distance — the common man a measure of authority and ability to climb through meritocracy that no other place has for as long. This in turn has poured out wealth, food and innovation onto the world in a continuous stream.
The other way to look at it is that the American Republic was founded as a way to rule a far-flung, poorly-connected nation of agrarian people. It’s no wonder that the industrialization, mobility and ease of travel of the twentieth century hit it like a shock, and that for a while there “top men” who could manage everything from the center and make it better was an alluring bait. And did we ever swallow that bait and run with it.
But the truth is — as the founders knew — that centralized government is not more efficient for anyone; that the information problem doesn’t get easier if you just relay things top down; and that the beautiful efficiency of the managed state is smoke and mirrors: it can only look like that if they have full control of the press now and for eternity.
Technology giveth and technology taketh away. The fax machine and the typewriter were banned in the USSR for a reason. Even those ineffective tools put cracks in the wall of propaganda.
Here the ease of travel and increased mobility of things were already casting the “Daddy knows best” government into disrepute. After all, Reagan did get elected, in face of a propaganda barrage of how he would kill us all. And since then, imperfectly, haltingly, we’ve started clawing things back. Look at the gun rights battle. Note it’s not just there, but there it’s the most visible.
And this has only accelerated since Trump pulled the masks off the Left and their collaborators/ass coverers in the press.
Yeah, sure, they frauded him out. But think about it: they’ve never had to spend four years running after an opposing president with elaborate accusations and (as proven) bullsh*t, and then lock the entire country down, and then still have to close the polls and fraud so blatantly that not seeing it is an exercise in willful blindness.
A confidently frauded in government doesn’t spend most of its first year behind barbed wire. A confidently frauded in government doesn’t throw grannies in jail for parading in protest for the fraud. A confidently frauded in government doesn’t choreograph Triumph of the Shrill or think that “Ultra Maga” is a negative thing (Ultra Maga, ASSEMBLE!) and a confidently frauded in government doesn’t spend every waking minute trying to discredit and imprison the guy they frauded out of power. Oh, and a confidently frauded in government doesn’t throw the borders open in a desperate effort to replace the citizenry.
This is the last gasp of a tyranny that thought they’d last forever, because they had the universities and the press. Now they have the mechanisms of power. They’re pushing their levers, but people aren’t responding as they used to. Partly because there are other means of information; partly because we know we’re not alone; partly because once you see the corruption you can’t unsee it.
Right now, like the last stage of a South American regime, they’re desperately trying to fill their pockets before they have to run for some tropical island, to hopefully live out their days in wealthy ignominy.
Obama was the last leftist for whom (partly because of the racial thing, and because no one dared pointing out the king was naked, because the king was tan) the press could fake a cult of personality. It might even have fooled some young leftists, but I saw the unsold books, the unsold calendars, the unsold cards, all on the tables at 10% the original price. Your mileage may vary. I suspect the cities bought into the evil idiot more.
From here on, it gets harder for them. Yes, they have the fraud. But it will have to get more and more blatant. As boycotts have proven, the left is much much smaller than advertised as a percentage of the population.
But why haven’t the people risen? Because Americans have had one civil war, and in many places it’s still remembered very clearly. Because as a people we’re always — always — slow to war. Which is good because when we go to war, we do it so devastatingly.
Can the Republic be restored without war? I don’t know. And neither do you. We’ve come back from the brink before and maybe it can happen again. Or maybe it won’t, in which case it will be terrible, devastating and even more perilous than it is now. (I have nightmares.)
But it’s important to remember the Republic is the people, and not the thin coating of scum who are barely managing to stay on top as is.
And the Republic — the best thing to ever happen to mankind — deserves to be celebrated. As does the wisdom of those men over two and a half centuries ago, who through argument, negotiation and sheer determination discerned a novel form of government which even at its worst is better than the best that came before.
If you’re a pessimist think of the Fourth of July as your chance to light a fire that will be seen by generations yet unborn and encourage them to try something like our Republic.
And if you’re — merely — realistic, think of how much the left hates the Fourth of July and everything it stands for and what that means.
Today, go out and let off some fireworks, to show that through this perilous night our flag is still there.
Still there and long may it wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave.
*There will be a post appearing below this (I’ll be writing it, but dating it earlier, so it’s below) for the blog funding campaign for 23/24, which starts today and will run through the nineteenth of July. Now go out and have fun.
Having proven myself unable to actually mail rewards on time or anything close to it — even email rewards — (though this year has been exceptionally bad on the personal front. Yes, I can tell you how, if you have a pint and two hours) I’ve decided to completely revamp the fund raising, so it’s “self fulfilling.”
THAT SAID, LAST YEARS DEBTS WILL BE PAID. I WILL PUT THE MP3 HERE FOR DOWNLOAD SOMETIME THIS WEEK, AND THEN THE LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE COLLECTION OF USAIAN STORIES. IF YOU DONATED TO LAST YEAR’S FUNDRAISER AT A LEVEL TO GET A FULL TUCKERIZATION AND/OR MENTORING, PLEASE CONTACT ME AT sahswag@outlook.com. AND IF YOU WANT PHYSICAL BOOKS, AND DONATED AT A LEVEL TO GET ONE (OR MORE) PLEASE SEND ME YOUR SNAILMAIL TO sahswag@outlook.com.
Anyway, meanwhile this year we’re going with three places to donate.
If you just want to keep this blog going, ensure I have some compensation for my work here every day, and that my husband has less cause to growl at my being head-down in the blog at all hours, there is a place to donate at GiveSendGo.
Note by the rules of GiveSendGo, I’m not allowed to offer incentives. All I can promise is that I’ll work at this blog as hard as I can for the next year.
Also that goal is for the TOTAL fundraiser, so I don’t expect to hit it on GSG, no. But it’s important to know what the total is. Years ago Jerry said I should be making 50k out of the blog and tried to push me to fundraise. This is not even really adjusted for inflation.
I also know everyone is having a tough time right now, so note THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY, it’s just an attempt to be paid for my work.
If GSG doesn’t appeal to you, there are two other options: I have started a serializing blog on Substack, called Chapter House, where I put two novels — Witch’s Daughter and Winter Prince — already started in public. Starting tomorrow I will start adding two chapters a week to each of them till done. I’d like to start a third — mystery — novel, but we’ll see how I do with these first.
Note that if you just hit subscribe on that, it will be the UNPAID subscription. Which means you won’t get the new chapters, though I’ll try to put up a new or old short story there once a month or so. For the paid subscriptions, and to help the blog’s funding roll, go here: PAY FOR SUBSCRIPTION.
I have no idea if substack is NORMALLY retarded about making it difficult to subscribe for money, or if I did something wrong in setting it up. I suspect the later?
AND also being updated tomorrow, with something, probably a cat story (TBH) is a new Patreon. (Note I’m also trying to provide non-political gathering spaces for those who want to hang but have turned off politics.) Sarah’s Patreon.
Will all the stories be about cats? I doubt it. You’ll probably get random cut scenes and art, too, just because. BUT stories about cats is the worst case scenario, and I want to provide truth in advertising, since I’m a crazy cat lady with a writing problem.
If you want to support the blog by check (or cash, wrapped in aluminum foil. You know who you are. And yes, more than one of you.):
Sarah A. Hoyt
304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
And that’s it for day one. The image above is free and released under creative commons, of course, as always.
I should by now have paid all the stuff from last year’s fundraiser. I will. Sometime this week or next. Except for mass and math deaths and tuckerizations. But it’s been slow and weird. (If you’re not sure, feel free to email me at sahswag@outlook.com. Yes, I owe one of you a zoom meeting to discuss your novel. Sorry. It should have been Thursday, but you know what happened. I’ll email you today.
I will, as soon as younger son puts the file up somewhere, so I can link, give away the moose and squirrel MP3 (Explanation, because I’m hosted BY wordpress, I cannot upload it here. It’s one of their security things.) And I’m actively assembling a collection of USAian short stories, which is the reward for $60 or more donation, if I remember correctly.
All of this has been hit by Helena-kitten’s death. Sorry. But like this post it’s taken hours to write, because I feel like I can’t think in a straight line. So sorry. Bear with me, please. I really feel it sucks that I’m this late, but it’s been a very…. chaotic year.
Now, of course, I meant to start this year’s fundraiser two days ago. That also got whacked hard.
However, let’s call this a slow rolling unveiling of funding for the year. And conscious of how hard it is for me to actually get anything together to mail or email (thanks to anti-spam measures, and the fact I’m too retarded to use email bulk services (no, seriously. I don’t understand half of what they’re talking about in the sign up) this year all the ways to support me, are things that I can fulfill on line.
The one funding effort already up is a substack serialization blog called Chapter House. As those of you who’ve been around for a while know, I used to serialize novels, until the wheels came off. But also, it’s difficult to do novels on what has become more and more a political blog. A lot of you who are aficionados of the blog couldn’t care less if I do or don’t write fiction. And a lot of people who like my fiction would prefer not to think about politics.
Frankly, a lot of people who LIKE the blog’s community are taking a break from politics for years, perhaps for life. (I don’t blame them. If I were less paranoid I might try it.) They would like to still rub elbows, but not in a political blog.
So, Chapter house is starting off with two novels that were started in public, more or less. One is Witch’s Daughter a fantasy which is about 1/3 done, I think. The other is Winter Prince, a space opera. For completeness, there should also be a mystery. Look, give me time. I’m committing to two chapters a week for each of the novels. This should be doable on the weekend, but this year has been a flaming disaster inside a dumpster floating down a river of fire. So…. Let me see how I cope, and if it works, I’ll add a mystery.
What I had so far (with Witch’s Daughter slightly backed up) of the two novels is up for free:
Future posts will be paywalled, but there will be some free ones, along the way, including an opportunity to buy the books (I’m not sure how to manage that yet!) at the end before I put them up on Amazon. Regular subscribers will also get the opportunity to download the books with no DRM at the end, before they go up on Amazon, as part of the subscription benefits.
Free ones: I’m hoping for a short story or so a month.
Anyway, that’s the first fundraising effort. It’s kind of like me trying to get advances for the novels, okay.
Chapters start next week.
And no, I have no clue why both main characters are redheads. That just happened to be the thing when I looked for books already started in public. (Rogue Magic and Elf Blood will eventually be put up under the Fantasy slot. If I can add a mystery it will be A Fatal Paws, an Orphan Kitten mystery.)
There will also be a givesendgo, which will be purely fundraising for the blog. Because of the rules of givesendgo, I can’t promise you anything in return, except that I will give my all to the blog. But I will try very hard to do that. (At least my half, the other half being fiction.) I will leave that up, and get a donation button linked, so you guys can donate whenever the spirit moves you.
This is separate, obviously, from the fundraiser for Helena. Thank you for that. I need to get it transferred since between the tests and ICU and the cremation and urn expenses the month was very owie. That one was an in-need fundraiser. The fundraiser for the blog is a “This blog happens almost every day” (I’m conscious of having been lax lately. Again, year from heck, please bear with me) “and I’d let to get paid for work other people do for pay” (Opinion writing.)
For some of you who have asked, I will also put up a Patreon. I know, I know, but– People HAVE asked. So, that’s fine. Patreon will probably have more personal reminiscences, pictures of cats, stories of cats, including a rainbow bridge retrospective for some of them, and recordings of Indy trying to learn to “speak” with buttons. (No results guaranteed. He’s brilliant, but also stubborn.)
If you want to support the blog by check:
Sarah A. Hoyt
304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771
Las Vegas, NV 89107
I’m going to try to set that stuff up after I post this. Be nice, I’m terrified of setting these things up.
I will do a fourth of July post. Soonish.
In the meantime have a picture of upside-down Indy in daddy’s lap. (He’s been very clingy with Daddy which is kind of funny, since Daddy was primarily Helena’s and Indy mine. I mean Indy still spends time on me, but he’s now clinging more to daddy.)
This is the famous “Rub my belly, please” pose. I get it early morning, since he likes to sleep between us but closer to m.
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
Bob thought he was going to get to enjoy a little down time on Charlie’s planet. You don’t need to be told that our shepherd had other ideas, do you? Bert and Ernie find a bot, new, but old, with quite a story to tell. Then Jossi and Lakki blow their cover, and need rescuing. A lot of work to get done, to get back to Earth in time for a wedding. Come watch Bob and the crew get it all done.
Marshall Jameson was an aspiring artist at the end of his rope. On New Year’s Eve he wandered into New York City on his last pennies, and stumbled onto a radio game show, won it… and found the perfect girl.
How could he know his good luck would lead him step by step into murder? But Elma was worth it, worth murder, and more!
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.
The Earth Space Force Military has a problem. Something so dangerous that they need the ultimate distraction. A way to keep all the news stations away from it. They need them to focus on it rather than the massive alien ‘thing’ being lowered into a pit in the desert near Area 51.
They have decided that Keith and nine of his crew will be that distraction. They choose to drop off Keith, the hero starship captain, and a bunch of alien women off at Comic-Con for a surprise appearance.
In the early 1900s, two sisters must navigate the magic and the dangers of the Fae in this enchanting and cozy historical fantasy about sisterhood and self-discovery.
There is no magic on Prospect Hill—or anywhere else, for that matter. But just on the other side of the veil is the world of the Fae. Generations ago, the first farmers on Prospect Hill learned to bargain small trades to make their lives a little easier—a bit of glass to find something lost, a cup of milk for better layers in the chicken coop.
Much of that old wisdom was lost as the riverboats gave way to the rail lines and the farmers took work at mills and factories. Alaine Fairborn’s family, however, was always superstitious, and she still hums the rhymes to find a lost shoe and to ensure dry weather on her sister’s wedding day.
When Delphine confides her new husband is not the man she thought he was, Alaine will stop at nothing to help her sister escape him. Small bargains buy them time, but a major one is needed. Yet, the price for true freedom may be more than they’re willing to pay.
FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, WITH STORIES BY STEVE DIAMOND, JOHN VAN STRY, JACK WYLDER AND OTHERS: Pinup Noir
Everybody loves the femme fatale; the tough-as-nails dame with the smoky voice and the legs that go on forever – almost as much as they love the cynical gumshoe with the strict moral code and the tiniest soft spot in his heart.
Hard-boiled detective fiction – America’s gift to literature – was introduced to the world in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, allegedly reached its height in the 1950s; and if you listen to the pundits, died out with the pulp magazines.
Hogwash. Hardboiled detective fiction lives on in its offspring: the roman noir, film noir, neo- noir, Mediterranean noir, and last – but certainly not least – cyberpunk.
Join these 8 authors as they explore the world of the hard-boiled detective and the dames they love.
Nigel Shirazi, the Speaker of the Merc Guild, knows that war is coming and he’s not ready. He needs to build up the mercenary forces after years of war, and he’s proclaimed the Phoenix Initiative to give people who want to start new companies the opportunity to do so. CASPers are cheaper and financed at lower rates, and the government of Earth is offering bounties to take the mercs from alien races off the planet. Now is the time!
Hearing the call to arms, a diverse group of startups, including a number of non-conventional ones and ones that originated on some of the colony worlds, have just taken their first missions. These are some of their stories.
Welcome back to the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates Humans from the majority of the other races. Edited by bestselling authors and universe creators Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy, “The Phoenix Initiative: First Missions” includes seventeen all-new stories in the Four Horsemen universe by a variety of bestselling authors—and some you may not have heard of…yet. Are you ready to strap on a CASPer and go out to make your fortune? Then it’s time to read the stories of these mercs and learn the lessons they’ve already figured out for you!
“With this sword, I can even slay the volkh lordling, were he not hiding behind his dwarven puppet”
Jeremy and Galena traveled with Bolgor to his home city, only to find the legendary city of the dwarves torn apart by politics. What was to be a pleasant visit turned into a struggle against the Dark attempts to corrupt it from within.
The young wizard, his bear-shifter lady, and his dwarven sword brother must find a way to deal with different political parties, monsters, and assassination attempts. They have to find the instigator in a different culture with very different rules. Rules that separate Jeremy from Galena. Among a people many of whom think the volkh are frauds.
And the fall of this city to Darkness would lead to a new reign of terror as its satellite cities fall and a new Dark Empire arises in the North. Only Jeremy and his friends stand in the way of a new age of war and the bloodshed that will bring.
Click above to join Jeremy as he faces the latest challenge of the dark. A challenge that threatens not only those he loves but an entire civilization and perhaps the world. If you like adventures set in a unique magical world, you will love the latest in the Avatar Wizard series.
Chris Anderson has everything. He’s the son of the richest family in town. He lives in a beautiful, loving home. He even has a fairy godmother. Chris Anderson also has nothing. He was born with a deformed arm, and when he gets angry he sees visions that terrify him. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, in a nation wrestling with faith and science, tradition and change, Chris will be forced to confront his own nature, and learn the meanings of freedom, love, and the grace of God.
In June of 2165 technicians find a way to send messages faster than light. They call it The Hyperion Signal, and if messages can move at translight speeds, why not machines and men as well?
We drive ourselves to the next frontier, and the next. And at each frontier another wonder lingers.
In Pyre and Ice, the job of terraforming Titan’s frozen wilderness falls to Jotunheim Station, but the threat within the station is as deadly as the cold outside. It takes integrity, courage, and teamwork to see the mission through.
With translight ships, we set out across the galaxy, seeking out marvels our mere telescopes only hinted about. The first two ships to make the translight quest were Petra and Henley, sent to survey a world where strange trees grow Under a Wayward Sun.
It’s not easy being married to the leader of the band, even in the best of times. When everything becomes political, you’ve got a nightmare on your hands.
Laurel had her doubts when her husband signed on to headline Governor Thorne’s Independence Day concert in Candlestick Park. Now that the band’s committed to the appearance, the Flannigan Administration has decided to shut the show down, with prejudice.
Laurel knows she has to fight this attempt to stop the signal. But doing so may put her in more danger than she could ever have anticipated, and risk those she loves.
A story of the Grissom timeline, originally published in Liberty Island Magazine.
This edition also includes a bonus essay on the era of dictatorship in Grissom-timeline America.
He fixed things — clocks, refrigerators, vidsenders and destinies. But he had no business in the future, where the calculators could not handle him. He was Earth’s only hope — and its sure failure!
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novella.
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.
At Liberty con, I was put — for the second time — on a panel called The New Weird. This put me in a mood, since the last time I was on it, no one could define the New Weird. Which in my mind is a failed marketing tag, and the equivalent of “New Wave without without the flashes of brilliance conferred by LSD.”
So I might have been a wee bit rude off the gate. Look, truly, part of this is that I was barely holding together with ducttape with Helena in ICU. (Her having died hasn’t made things easier. I feel like I’ve been cored like an apple. It’s not just Helena, but since Jan there have been two (human) deaths, one serious human illness with high likelihood of death close family (treatment proceeds), one serious human disease that will be fatal in a friend (RES’s beloved), and an awful lot of other things that wore on the nerves and heart. Never mind. I will recover, eventually. But as with physical injury, it is harder to recover with age.) And part of it was that I naturally have a sneering disdain for conscious attempts Pour Epater Les Bourgeois.
I see nothing wrong with shocking or surprising normal society, if that’s the story you want to tell or need to tell. I do see something wrong — scandal and abomination — in trying to distort a story in order to be shocked or “weird.”
Not that, mind you, I have anything against weird. I prefer Odd, but let’s face it: I — and probably most of you reading this — are by definition weird. It’s just I’m old weird. I’m weird because I approach life at an unusual — some would say abolished — angle.
Now do I know why? No. I don’t do it on purpose. Okay, so ADD explains some of it, as it apparently comes with other effects, but … well, mostly I’m just Odd.
This used to be why we gravitated to Science Fiction. It had weird, in heaps and buckets and whorls.
Mind you I read other things — and write everything — but I gravitate towards science fiction and fantasy as my place in the world, partly because … It’s all weirdos in here. In fact, I might sometimes ping too normal for this genre. Well, not when writing. But in my everyday life. I mean, until you hear us talk, we look like a nice, completely normal family.
But it’s the place where you can unironically and without explaining say things like “In a parallel universe, this would have happened” and no one bats an eye.
For those of you used to it, let me tell you it’s not normal. You try dropping that casually at your block party and best case scenario you’re going to be explaining what you meant for hours, and after that they’ll call you “The sciency dude in 1708” or perhaps “The crazy guy in 1708.”
Being Weird — Odd — means never having to think about how to epater the normals. They find us bizarre and sometimes absurd.
If you have to think about it, stop trying and go do something normal like Romance.
In fact on an earlier panel there was this …. lady. There was nothing absolutely wrong with her and she was trying to be nice and well, make noises to signal she was on our side. However, my reaction to her — instinctive — was low grade hostility, and I was amused when the two hun-women in attendance revealed they felt the same. You see, she would have been perfectly at home at RWA. Nothing against RWA, mind you, but they are way more normal and well adjusted than us weirdos. So, her tribal identification was wrong, and it was driving us all nuts. She probably wasn’t even aware of it.
But if you shock (and sometimes appall) people without meaning to, because you let your mind wonder? We’ll embrace you. Welcome home. You’re one of us. We even used to be pretty tolerant on the political thing. (And most people who aren’t aren’t us weirdos, either. They’re poseurs, thinking they’re shocking us. US!)
Now, we weirdos are (rightly?) reviled by all right thinking people. We stick out like a bur on the saddle. Humans like to think in stereotypes. It makes life easier. Suddenly finding a nail that not only won’t be pounded down but keeps changing into a fluffy duck and yelling cuckoo is … unnerving for the human system.
Of course that’s our value too.
Being social apes, humans tend to fall into patterns of group think. And when group think is leading the group over the cliff, it takes a weirdo to yell “Stop” and turn around and run the other way.
(As we saw during the Covid bs, I’m the weirdo for this job.)
And weird artists are important too. We can turn reality around in our minds and show a facet no one else has seen yet. And sometimes, sometimes, those are important for perceiving the whole.
But don’t call us new weird. We’re old weird. We’re the guy who knapped flint into a new shape, because the idea wouldn’t leave him alone; we’re the woman who wove a basket because grabbing fish with her hands was tiresome; we’re the grannies who made up stories of those things that maybe are and maybe aren’t in the dark; we’re the weirdos who set off in a small band to that place over the ridge, because there must be a better way to live.
We’re old, old weird. It only looks new if you are so beaten down by government schools and media signaling that you think weird you have to wear the right clothes the right way to be a good person.
Meanwhile we weirdos will find new ways to weird. Weirdly.
Events in the rearview mirror appear clearer than they are.
It is important to remember that though we are the victims of a 20th century “conspiracy” it wasn’t really a conspiracy. More of a prospiracy. A loose group of people blundering around doing things because they seemed right, who didn’t actually foresee the disastrous and terrifying consequences of their behavior, their ideological allegiance, or their corruption of what their profession should be.
Take war for instance.
A lot of us are quietly revolted at what the Trump presidency and those who oppose it revealed. We thought Trump was nuts when he spoke of withdrawing our support from things like NATO, or at least making the other nations pay their fair share.
And then– Well, the Trump presidency happened, with its twin revelations that the war in the Middle East, and our involvement in it, including our dependency on foreign oil was optional, and that the military industrial complex would do anything — ANYTHING — rather than let the permanent state of war end.
This has hit me very hard, coming from an Academia background (look, not my fault, okay? I got pushed into it) and having heard the left natter forever about the Military-industrial-complex. I don’t want to think they were right, including the hippie paranoia that young men were sent to die so old men could keep power.
But in the light of how hard the brass fought to keep us from withdrawing from the Middle East, and how strangely they seem to be cheering for a world war, it’s hard to keep from agreeing.
This has hit me very hard. It’s hit my military veteran friends harder.
However, it helps if you realize that no, you didn’t fight for a lie. You fought for what seemed from facts available as the best thing to do, at the time, for us and for our country.
First, let’s dispose of the sappy, bizarre idea of our er… friends on the left, who think the US military is a sort of charitable organization, which should be deployed abroad, whenever someone is being mistreated or even to enforce the left’s rather weird beliefs and gospel. (Hence trying to push transgender notions on Afghanistanis that give laughter belly aches to Iowa farm boys.)
That’s not the purpose of a military. That was never the purpose of a military. No matter how much you would like the military to be sort of missionaries of wokeness, that’s not what an armed force is for. An armed force is either to protect the homeland (which our current administration is singularly determined in refusing to do) or to invade other nations (which they want to do, but only if our boys can die to prove … I don’t know what. Maybe to protect 10% for the big guy.)
At least the American right’s use of the military is seemingly saner. Seemingly, because it tries to fit into those two uses. To be fair, into the first one. It’s just that over time it too has gotten corrupted and slid away from what is needed and into pie in the sky.
And then there is the tendency for any human institution to perpetuate itself, no matter how stupid or harmful its purpose, because it is the job of the persons running it. Suppose tomorrow there was a plague that rotted infants from the toes up, so that if you didn’t immediately cut an infants’ toes off, they would die sometime before five. An organization would be formed to cut infants’ toes off, and develop all sorts of branches and sub-organizations. Then twenty years later, someone discovered that a simple antibiotic stopped the death. Do you think the infant-toes-cutting-off bureaucracy would go away? Really? Why?
I bet you they would come up with a million reasons why cutting off day-olds’ toes was better for the baby, and stridently refuse to disband and/or change policy.
This is sort of how we got here.
No one meant to create a bureaucracy that would overshadow the elected branches, only… well, the future was self-obviously more organized and centralized. Look at how much better centralized production worked. And how more efficient it was. And educated people had a clear vision of what the future brought — dinned into their heads by statist and increasingly more Marxian professors — that they could make true, no matter what goobers were elected.
No one meant to create a self-perpetuating military that would hobble itself in order to lose wars to the world’s most liliputian militaries and be about as useful as a chocolate hammer, but less tasty.
But the US really despises foreign entanglements, as a culture. We want to live in our land and tend our garden. And we can. But WWI and WWII and the cold war were viewed as “they just won’t live us alone.”
Our intelligence services are even less useful than a chocolate hammer. Perhaps as useful as Kleenex soaked in piss. Part of this is that Americans born and bred are curiously blind to the uniqueness of America and incapable of understanding totalitarian regimes. So they took Moscow — and Beijing — at their own word. Which made them seem like a formidable enemy indeed.
So…. well, peace through superior firepower. We’ll finally get them to leave us alone. Which means we grew, and grew, and grew. And the industry and commerce associated with war grew along with the military. And all of it tended toward use. Not helped by the “threats” our intelligence agencies keep finding or manufacturing.
It wasn’t so much a fine tuned conspiracy. Back then with what we knew — and remember agencies and governments relied on the exact same corrupt prospiracy we call the Main Stream Media — we did what seemed right. We, both as a country and as individuals.
It is acceptable to sigh at how deluded we were. It’s not acceptable to think the delusion was carefully created.
It was the result of bad education, bad media, and people’s natural tendency to want their job to be important.
That it’s now revealed to be a tissue of lies is important too.
The human tendency is to lie to ourselves, to unify our fractured understanding by telling ourselves no, it’s all right, we were right all along. I think that’s why the left is chivvying us along to world war, and it will be through no fault of their own if we’re not at war in our territory by March 2024. At some level they want the dissonance to go away. They want “unity” inside and out.
But we can’t afford it. Either the war, or the false plastering over the truths we now know.
The world has changed. We see very clearly what’s been going on. After the crash everyone can feel, it’s important to remember this is above all the result of centralization and bureaucratization of government.
It’s important to go small, go local, go as specific as possible.
Because no matter how evil or temporary their purpose, bureaucracies will self-perpetuate and destroy the republic.
Let’s build the republic and prune back bureaucracy.
I will stop being a drip about the kitten, and go on with life. Not that it’s going to pass or I’m going to forget, mind you — it unfortunately doesn’t work that way — but because it’s not your fault, and you shouldn’t have to put up with it.
Somewhere mentally I’m still locked in… It’s not denial, because I know it’s happened. It’s more …. I want it undone. My subconscious is stomping its feet and screaming that it wants to go back a week and two days, to happy, healthy running around kitten.
The “stages of grief” are… interesting tools, but not quite…. right.
And I don’t see a difference between mourning for humans and for cats but then I have a hole in my head, where cats read as “people”. Not all animals. Just cats and some dogs. When we had mice or guinea pigs of of course Derpy fish, I was very sad they died, but it wasn’t the gutting grief of losing what reads as “people.”
No. I don’t know why. Hole in the head. Possibly because I was raised with cats from very young.
Anyway, for me the process is the same, and this is the third of three deaths this year, (One expected, two unexpected) which is why it hit especially hard. The other two were human.
For some reason grief always gives me nausea too. Which means I only want to eat bland vaguely sweet things like potatoes or popcorn. Not great for me, but since I don’t eat much, not terrible.
Anyway, there is a point to this post, and it is this: There are coping strategies to deal with grief. There are even official ones, but I don’t know any. I know what works for me.
So, in the past, what works is…. being nice to myself. Yes, I’ll allow myself that piece of chocolate. (Not large, because, well.) And short of stopping work (this is bad for reasons) I allow myself to take it a little easier. (JUST a little. Like knock off an hour earlier.)
And yes, I will go for that little walk, or spend fifteen minutes outside reading.
I won’t beat myself up when I feel the need to cry twice or four times a day.
I try to hug my current living kitties and husband.
And I try to work. Though today as is, this blog post and the one at Mad Genius Club, and having gotten showered and dressed might count as work.
I’ll do more tomorrow. Including a real blog post.
Thank you for bearing with me. I know some of you think I’m being silly. And perhaps I am. I know people have suffered bigger (recent) losses and that people have much bigger problems.
But between the surprise and the second shock in a short time….. well, it is what it is. I can’t argue that having a knife cut to the hand is better than one to the chest. But it still hurts and has to be dealt with.
I will build from this, step by step.
I’m not there yet, but I can kind of see the time I don’t cry every day.
Loving is worth it, even if we know we’ll lose the beloved, whether a kitten, a human or a republic.
And we should fight as hard as we can not to lose them as is.
I’ll be better tomorrow. This too shall pass. And eventually the pain will become a dull ache. And eventually a faint reminiscent twinge.
Helena died in her sleep last night, before we could get home to cuddle her once more. The doctor still has no idea why, and I’ve authorized an autopsy, to spare someone else this heartbreak; to maybe save another kitten.
I shouldn’t have had her spayed so young; I shouldn’t have boarded her; I shouldn’t have removed her from my shoulder when she was happy and purring; I shouldn’t have moved her from her patch of sunlight when she was sleeping, just so we could go outside.
I have toys and treats I was saving for when we got back home, so we could celebrate getting her back. We bought her a brand new carrier she only got to use in that last trip.
Indy will be alone now, poor thing.
I didn’t deserve her. And she has left, to be petted by angels where the sun never sets.
According To Hoyt 