Equal – by Bill Reader

The Left does not use words the way that you use words. We say the same things. We mean different things.

If socioeconomically, white people are found to be doing better in one area or another, the Left will shout white supremacy. We understand that to be an accusation that we believe white people are intrinsically better. The Left simply regard it as a tautological statement—that is, if the system is resulting in more successful white people, it is a system which favors whites. Having determined that that is always bad regardless of cause, they then go searching for causes. When they fail to find secret Nazis—and can’t manufacture any, must be said— that’s when things get funny. That’s when you get them beclowning themselves creating pamphlets where they say an expectation that people show up to something at an appointed time, or work hard at a task they’re being paid for, is white supremacy.         Because they saw a system resulting in different outcomes. They searched for actual discrimination, and couldn’t find any because there was none. So then they looked for any difference at all that caused people to be treated differently. And those, they found, so QED, that the culture favors the things that the white people are doing is the problem. What the things actually are is immaterial. It doesn’t matter if those things happen to be predicated on respecting others and their time, doing what you’ve agreed to do, and other basic behaviors that minimize strife and maintain social trust. As a matter of faith we are told to accept that the world would be better if people didn’t hold these behaviors as models, and we’ll go ahead and ignore that history has to date been a long journey specifically away from human cultures where people didn’t hold these behaviors as models. That their codification has slowly and painfully elevated humanity out of what resembled Hell on Earth is immaterial; as it results in disparity at certain places and certain times, we must accept that Hell would be preferable. Reason be damned, I want this fence down now!

Yet for all that, the people who say so will not move to the neighborhoods where a majority of people abide by those rules, probably reasonably as they wouldn’t last the night. Oh, well, they’ll say, everyone there is so impoverished, you know, there’s a lot of crime. “Poor but honest” isn’t a characterization to the Left, it’s a paradox. And this makes a great deal of sense besides, as famously, people in such places who make a great deal of money almost inevitably become paragons of virtue once their impoverishment is alleviated.

They also effectively argue that those things are intrinsic to white people, that they’re baked in and immutable. The way they view the problem is: the rules favor these behaviors, and these behaviors cannot be taught to group A, and are intrinsic to group B, so the group B will always win. The only way to make the groups equal is to discard the rules entirely. Which is to say, they isolate and analyze the problem exactly as Hitler would. They believe, in full agreement with Hitler, that there are irreconcilable differences between races (this despite the fact that neither he nor they can actually define what a race is because it’s an extremely artificial concept, but I digress). They even concur that these differences are actually an existential threat to society. They consider themselves superior solely because faced with the same set of beliefs the lesson they’ve taken from history is that society will just have to go. And in the resulting new society that will emerge after, they imagine, they will be discriminated against, and that will be fair turnabout. In fact, they’re lining up to self-discriminate for brownie points now, and advising their fellow “whites” to do the same. The official anti-white-supremacist statement is thus that society will and should inevitably be taken over by non-whites who will reduce whites to chattel. Curiously, as near as I can tell, that appears to also be the official white-supremacist outlook. And obviously the only rational thing a self-identified white person could do, presented with those options and no other information, is side with the people willingly submitting to be subjugated.

And that’s how it has to be, because obviously traits aren’t teachable. If these were teachable traits, it wouldn’t matter that society favored them even if they were entirely arbitrary (and as discussed above, they aren’t). Non-white people would simply learn them and that would be the end of the problem. The only impediment would be, say, if non-white groups had malignant subcultures that encouraged people to resist learning ways of approaching the world that help them to get ahead, and punished people so severely for not fitting in with the group that, even if they would otherwise have made productive progress by rejecting the group’s ideology, they are pulled down into the crab bucket if they try. But such (purely hypothetical) cultures, you would not be allowed to displace because that would be favoring a “white” culture over a “non-white” culture, because per the Left’s definition, the only authentic non-white culture is a dysfunctional low-trust culture that punishes people for doing things that will improve their lot and the lot of the people around them. Remember, that’s the official stance of the self-proclaimed anti-white supremacists.

Behold! These are the so-called thought-leaders of Western civilization, on the one hand restating Hitler’s central and most destructive thesis, on the other claiming to oppose what they imagine is the incipient rise of Nazism. Here, naked and glassy-eyed, stares the core philosophy of, *ahem*, “anti-Nazis” and “anti-fascists”— Mein Kampf in Birkenstocks. All the same dumb, dead-end ideological poison, but now it’s suicidal, rather than homicidal, so everything’s better.

The Left says all the time that they think they don’t communicate their message well. I thank the good lord they don’t communicate it more clearly. If people actually heard and believed them we’d probably have the race war they seem to so desperately desire. Instead the world has the Patriot Front (Group), and other less-organized random groups of “Nazis” who curiously are never followed and identified when covered by the same media who track down and personally threaten any and every ordinary conservative who gets in the way of the Left’s agenda.

Because it doesn’t profit a journalist to delve too deeply into the affairs of intelligence agencies.

But obviously, there is an alternative to all of this stupidity. Americans are better, and more critically, American culture is better than these race hustling halfwits. The man beside me is equal to me before God. He ought to be equal to me before the law, and one day, God willing, he will be. Communities that are already struggling don’t deserve the scourge of having their worst offenders released back into their midst with barely an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, again and again and again. Justice is still blind— to race, to political party, to everything except the question in the balance of her scales. Americans understand that and respect justice. But counterfeits abound, sullying everything they touch. “Racial justice” is just racial supremacy for browner brown-shirts. “Social justice” is socialist tyranny, returned in its most wretched and contemptible form: a patronizing but demonic voice telling society to kill itself for its own good. These so-called forms of justice refuse to be blind, cannot accept that men are equal, and their judgments are accordingly perverse.

Well, fie on them all. We beat the Nazis when their leader was named Hitler. Now their stupider and more depressive successors have chosen Ibram X. Kendi as their leader, and we’ll beat them again. And we mortally wounded communism, but we didn’t finish the job. That was a mistake. This time we ought to learn the lesson we knew from the movies as kids, and not turn our back until the monster is definitely dead.

American culture is the ultimate inherited treasure of Western civilization. It is thousands of years of lessons on building the best, most productive, safest, most trustworthy human culture. It allows for cooperative coexistence of people with a wide number of harmless variations, broader than virtually any other culture, and well it should, for this treasure is the rightful inheritance of every American, of every race and creed, be they born here or abroad. Shared properly it is both more valuable than any redistributed wealth— not least because it is a source of ongoing success rather than the disbursement of stolen goods— and more durable than any material thing in this uncertain world. Embody it and teach it to your children. There will always be tyrants, arguing for why now, today, this time, one group or another is special and should be treated differently. But they are wrong.

               All men… all men… are created equal.

America’s Healthcare is not the worst in the world, but that’s only because the rest of the world is further along on the road towards socialism and everything centralized.

Since 2008 and the increasing centralization of everything, ours has gotten halfway to as stupid as the rest of the world except Canada which outright kills people and China, where they come to your house and kill you if they feel like it.

Thursday we had a doctor’s appointment and both of us got prescriptions which are urgently needed, not to say vital. We are leaving town tomorrow, on a trip we’ve nicknamed “The Grand Tour” that will keep us out of the house for two weeks.

…. and we’re trying to get the prescriptions for a week.

This is partly the doctor, partly the pharmacy. Somehow, when I asked the doctor to send my Adderal to the one store in town that had it on hand, not only didn’t it get sent, but I got transferred there. So I kept waiting for a call from my pharmacy to pick up the prescriptions…. and nothing. A call on Friday late resolved that.

And then the Pharmacy. So, the Pharmacy finds out from the insurance that our prescription isn’t covered, and they SUPPOSEDLY faxed the doctor. In a year and a half not a single one of those faxes has got through. IF they’re actually sending them, they have the wrong fax number. BUT never mind. (We have reason to think they never arrived, because the doctor was genuinely shocked at us still being without a prescription after a month.)

So we call the doctor. The doctor is trying to get things that will be approved. After… oh, an entire day of one of their people working on us non-stop, we get a call at 8 am today saying that we can have these alternatives. Note both alternatives are retarded. One is a different brand of something I tried before, which doesn’t work, and raises my cancer risk. BUT I have to try three of these, before they re-approve the med I was on for 5 years that worked, before our prescription insurance changed. Since we don’t want to spend $700 a month, we go “sure, we’ll try it. Get it out of the way.” THE OTHER ONE IS MAYBE $100 dollars cheaper than the prescribed, in a thousands of dollars med. WHICH IS URGENTLY NEEDED BY MY HUSBAND MORE THAN ME. I’m still waiting on a prescription from the replacement for Adderal, and that’s the doctor’s office, but they’re swamped, because, well, they’re dealing with the life saving stuff.

So, with that resolved and sent across town because our pharmacy can’t get it in before midday tomorrow, when we won’t be here, my husband calls on his prescription which was originally the same as mine that got refused. (Note that mine the substitution makes a little bit of sense, but none whatsoever for him. PLUS the pharmacy had told him it was “getting filled and would be ready Tuesday.” So he didn’t worry, and just called in case it would be easier at the other pharmacy where I was picking mine up. So he calls, and he gets told the pharmacy has “faxed your physician”. NOTE THAT THEY HADN’T TOLD HIM THERE WAS ANY PROBLEM WITH IT AT ALL. IN FACT, THE PHARMACY HAD TOLD HIM IT WAS “IN PROCESS” AND WOULD BE READY TODAY.

I can now pick up my modified prescription. So we tried to transfer Dan’s. We got the same “Your old prescription is being processed. We’ll call you when it’s done.” At this point I’ve been on hold with the doctor for over 40 minutes. I suspect they’re calling the pharmacy.

Look, this is all because of the bureaucrats in the middle. First it’s because medical insurance, which started to get around a fine bit of bureaucratic meddling “maximum wages” has morphed into an hydra of stupidity to the point that instead of being “insurance” it’s just a third party payer, which like all such distorts the market so you can’t afford to be without it. At the same time, of course, the government tried to “fix” healthcare by expanding insurance, because Obama is of course a foreign (In culture, I couldn’t care less where he was born) communist. And to him this makes perfect sense.

Like all government “solutions” this insanity is more wasteful than it would be without it.

Look, I don’t care how expensive my meds are. Tying up me, the doctor’s office, the pharmacy and doubtless someone at the insurance for almost three days has to cost more than that.

And BTW if I have to hear one more time to a COVID advert while waiting to talk to the pharmacy SOMEONE is going to die. Through a killing scream on my part.

It’s the same as the low-flush toilets you have to flush five times and therefore use double the water. It’s the same as the dishwashers that have to be put on pot scrubber and take three hours washing and use tons of water to actually clean.

All these central measures to save money not only end up costing more, but also end up costing lives.

We need to stop the insanity. Because this has gone too far and people are getting hurt.

There is on the left a peculiar blindness which in a way speaks very well of the people who have it, in another speaks very badly indeed, and in other ways makes you wonder if they’re aliens.

When faced with anything from disease to poverty to homelessness, they always come up with material causes. From the bizarre idea of the “Bee sting” that if you are poor you run into so many frustrating things that you can’t do anything to help yourself, to their very strange idea that poverty causes crimes and wars.

So, we end up with them being very sorry for robbers and murderers because they couldn’t help but do what they did, since they were so poor. This always makes me think of the once upon a time friend who was kidnapped at gun point in a grocery store and taken from ATM to ATM to empty his account and give the money to his kidnapper, but who ended this account with “I’m blessed that I’m not so poor I have to do that.”

If your jaw just dropped, mine did.

We have been poor — not right, now so much, because the kids are moving on to their own thing — and — when older son was tiny — poor enough that we didn’t know where food would come from. (Literally. We missed some meals. We sat outside a soup kitchen, but didn’t have the courage to go in. So next money we had we bought 50lbs of rice, and lived on that, more or less.) I have to say NEVER in the history of EVER have we felt we should steal money from…. anyone really.

Look, the part about the left that means they’re better than we’d expect, as people, is that they think it takes extraordinary circumstances for people to be lazy or larcenous enough to be “poor” (Poor now isn’t poor in, say, the middle ages, or even the early 20th century), they think it takes extraordinary circumstances for anyone to commit a crime (which means evil people wouldn’t exist), so they themselves must be relatively decent, self motivating, hard working people. On the other hand they’re probably envious, and view coveting someone else’s stuff or situation as reason enough to steal or hurt others. Or at least they view it as reason enough for other people.

The part where they are aliens? They seriously seem to think it’s all material.

“People are poor. If we give them money, they’ll be better off.” This when speaking as to the rest of human history, our poor are living better than the upper middle class of other eras, and might be living better than kings. (No? Well. Availability of food at relatively cheap prices; modern medicine — yes, ER but you know, it ends being more or less free –; heating in winter, cooling in summer; in the west relative peace and security.)

It is entirely possible the reason we have so many poor is that they already have too much and are too comfortable — as in they are getting what the monkey-brain, which was trained for the paleolithic identifies as “More than enough.” So, no they won’t do extraordinary work/effort. Because, well, no motivation. (Even for those of us who are broken and HAVE to do something sometimes it’s hard to make the effort.) In many ways the issues of poverty on the welfare system is children, living in their parents basement, because they haven’t been kicked out to sink or swim on their own.

In the same way, the left looks at homelessness and decides the problem is that there aren’t enough houses. This, btw, requires refusing to see that subsidized housing developments quickly become hell on Earth or that with few exceptions, the “homeless” are an interesting collection of addictions and mental illness, which is the real cause of their plight, and not some imaginary lack of “housing.” Which is why the left keeps building more and more subsidized housing, and the problem grows instead of shrinking.

This requires being aliens who have never met a human being.

Me? Personally I resent the “poor equals crime and war” thing the most. Because, you know what? The village was d*mn poor. We didn’t realize it, because everyone was poor. But you know what? Most of us were ‘poor but honest’. And you could, as a little kid, walk down main street in the dark of night, even carrying something relatively valuable, like food and clothing, and not be scared, let alone attacked.

It is insulting to all the people I knew in childhood — all that weren’t the one family who stole clothes from other people’s lines, and chickens from their hen houses — to believe that they “couldn’t help” but be thieves and murderers or even whores. Because none of that was true. Most people lived “tiny” lives, very restricted and carefully counted that they earned by the sweat of their brow. And they would have been furious if you called them poor, let alone criminals. They were also, always ready to hand over bread and butter to someone in need, even if they couldn’t afford to give an egg or a piece of meat (but that too, when they could.)

In fact, many times, the equation goes the other way. Someone decides he or she is too smart to work, and starts trying to make a living in shady ways. It’s not that crime doesn’t pay. It’s that like communism — who, now I think about it is also criminal — it only pays for a select few, at the top. The others? yeah, they barely manage a living, and often fall into addiction and other issues. And once you fall into crooked habits, it’s very difficult to pull up out of it and into “honest work” again, particularly if everyone assumes the bourgeois virtues are evil-bad and being criminal means you’re a victim.

So…. you know, this is how the left has rats in their head, and keep trying the same thing, now harder, when it doesn’t work.

I hated being poor, and I don’t know anyone who loves it. It hurts the rest of us to watch, particularly for children or other innocent victims.

But, as with the kid in the basement, at some point you have to wonder if you hurt the poor and criminal (as a class) and even the just poor on welfare by making the ride too cushy and being so incredibly compassionate that we let the public purse be extravagantly drained (Now for illegal entrants into the country) and let communities — we’re looking at you, NYC — live in fear.

Because as someone or other said, to be kind to the cruel you always end up being cruel to the kind.

The few people who live in public housing because of genuine issues and disabilities get their lives turned into hell by criminals and drug addicts and barely human feral creatures.

And those who live in cities where our compassion just turns criminals loose live in fear or die needlessly because of that “compassion.”

And people who could otherwise start at the bottom and learn skills and become valuable members of society and rich even maybe, never get started because of the false compassion of our welfare which not only gives them the “minimum” but makes it hard to leave and strive.

People are people, and the poor and even the criminal have agency.

Let’s stop enabling and start demanding they act as human beings capable of thought and action.

*Sorry this is late and semi-disjointed. It’s been a whole day of fighting with insurance to get a prescription filled. I don’t even know if it worked, as of right now.*

Book promo

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

FROM 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…

FROM CAITLIN WALSH: Mama Bunny #1: Comics and Stories

Parenting is tough, but it’s also rewarding. And occasionally even hilarious. Now collected for the first time, follow Mama Bunny and her family through this series of mostly-autobiographical strips and written stories as they navigate the ups and downs of dinnertime, chores, and all the other day-to-day adventures of a stay-at-home mom trying to raise and teach two children.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion in Paradise

All Col. Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., USSFM – the Lion of God – wanted was a little piece of paradise to call her own.

Being stuck on a desert world – even if she was the CO of the premiere battalion of the 1st U.S. Space Force Marines that was based there – was not getting her any beach time. Mostly because, without an ocean, there’s really no beach at all.

But she’s got a fix for that problem.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Highway to Tartarus

Insanity seems to run rampant in the immortal population, and Hades seems to be the one the Fates tap to contain them all; however, this time, Hades, and Kyra, the former goddess of War from Atlantis, have to find and catch the one who’s gone dangerously insane: Deshayna, Kyra’s identical twin, and the former goddess of Death.

Along for the ride are a pregnant Persephone, Hel from the Norse pantheon (and Hades’ and Persephone’s lover), Tyr and Thor, and Kyra’s adopted daughter Rowan.

The seven of them follow rumors, leads, and death-god connections around the world in an RV that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside, while trying to maintain a bare semblance of normalcy despite the chaos of never knowing when or where their Fates-assigned mission will end…or if it will end them.

FROM R. COOTS: Devour the Stars: A Dark Space Opera

He’s become the ultimate killer. Is it enough to make them all pay?

Fleet Warlord Syrus will never forgive the Empire for what they took from him. Pursuing his lifelong mission of vengeance, he’s startled to find two women in cryosleep on an abandoned planet and moves them to his ship. But his troubles triple when one of them wakes to discover she’s part of a harem and cuts down half his men in a bloody killing spree.

With alarms ringing in his head about the remote world and its lethal beauty, Syrus must quickly figure out the mysteries of this forsaken solar system. But when physical contact with the woman reveals an imposing secret, the disturbed commander will have to fight a mutiny and turn his quest for retribution into a battle for survival.

Can Syrus make it through the crisis alive and finally exact his revenge?

Devour the Stars is the explosive first book in the Devour the Stars space opera series. If you like brutal worlds, characters navigating trauma, and gritty action, then you’ll love R Coots’s dark tale.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Phoenix Dreams

In Greek myth, the phoenix is a bird that rises from its own ashes. Growing up in the city named for it, Toni knew the story well, and being a gamer made her used to death being negotiable.

During a visit to her grandfather’s ranch, she discovered a cache of books and videos from the lost golden age of space travel. Entranced by the enthusiasm of Roger Chaffee for his upcoming spaceflight, she was shocked and angered to learn the disaster that happened only days after his interview.

When she expressed her desire to get him his spaceflight, her family’s anger came as an even bigger shock. But she refused to forget, no matter how hard her parents tried to distract her, to prevent her from researching online.

Her determination would lead her along strange paths that would end in a desperate cross-country chase and the realization of a dream decades deferred.

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: The Hearts’ Enchantment

Heart’s Enchantment brings together 12 fantasy and romance authors to spin stories of love and romance set in medieval worlds. From retired warriors to spies and nobles, romance and love finds a way.

Authors include Cedar Sanderson, Misha Burnett, Mel Todd, Nico Murray, and more!

From sweet to spicy, there’s something to satisfy any fan of fantasy, romance, or both!

BY J. ALLAN DUNN, BROUGHT BACK BY D. JASON FLEMING: On The Knees Of The Gods (Annotated): The Classic Pulp Fantasy.

Peter Brent, American, steps through a laurel hedge in Greece in 1939 — and is transported back to the days of the gods! But getting Zeus’s attention isn’t always the best idea…

• This iktaPOP Media edition contains a new introduction giving historical and genre context.

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: CLEAR

The other day, in my second-hand-tv watching (Husband is watching something, and I’m nearby, working or chatting with friends via computer) I got caught by a documentary on Octopi and how smart they are.

For the record, and so people understand… Well, I was going to type that Octopus is a delicacy in Portugal, but that’s not actually true. Portugal is — or was when I was growing up — a staple. You would get it if there was no decent fish. And mostly we ate fish — which thank you I heartily dislike — except Sundays when we might have chicken.

So– anyway, I was watching that documentary, and there was stuff about how smart they are, and we saw this little pink octopus tap out words and enjoy pets and stuff, and I was feeling pretty guilty about all of its brethren and sisteren I ate over the decades.

And then Dan segued into a documentary about octopi in the wild….

Well, look, they’re very smart, yes. And the adults will eat the new hatchlings. Even their new hatchlings.

Suddenly I was feeling much better. Sure, I’d eaten beings that might be sentient, but heck, they ate each other too.

Which brings us to: Yeah, so do humans. Which wouldn’t give me the warm fuzzies about something eating us, but still…

The point is they might be really smart, but that doesn’t make them moral creatures. Just like we’re not naturally moral creatures, no matter how smart.

In fact most of the world doesn’t share our morality. And by that I don’t mean “Don’t sleep with your sister” or “don’t enslave other human beings” or “don’t eat other human beings.” I mean, sure vast portions of the Earth still infringe the first two, openly or not, and the third still happens, though not in most floridly visible areas and not in ways Westerners see. I’m talking about more basic stuff, like don’t kill, don’t steal to the point it can’t be said you have any concept of private property. Most of the Earth doesn’t consider anyone not of their immediate group human. Not really.

Which brings to: Intelligence isn’t moral. And it isn’t admirable in and of itself.

This is important because we’ve lost track of that. When we talk of our best and brightest, we mean it in an IQ and knowledge sense, and we assume this will make them moral. When we talk of “Such and such civilization was so creative and look at everything they invented, we ignore the piles of skulls and rotting carcasses of their enemies. And their enemies often being honestly someone who pissed off their king.

When we make IQ the equivalent of all goodness, we forget the millennia that humans spent doing art installations with freshly killed young men and horses.

I don’t actually care if they had the swiftest chariots and the most wonderful palaces. We are better than they were because we are at least civilized enough not to kill people for decorative purposes.

This stuff needs to be said.

Over the last several decades we’ve been soaked in the idea of noble savage and the left’s insanity with their nostalgie de la boue. We’ve been told natural is better; untutored is better; doing what comes naturally is the only way; live as if you were a simple savage and you’ll be a saint.

All this is poppycock. Morality and the ability to learn in a civilized society require learning and teaching, and curbing your natural instincts. No matter how yummy my babies were, I never chomped on them. No matter how tired I am, we don’t actually live in our own filth. (Or the cat’s filth, for that matter. Though Havey distributes it liberally.)

Noble savages are a myth. Savages are just…. savages. And savagery — barbarism — means that the humans caught in it suffer. All of them. Barbarism shortens lives, and not just because your neighbor needed dinner and you looked tasty.

There is a lot to be said for this artificial lifestyle of ours: food relatively easily obtainable, lights at the push of a button. Showers at not much expense. Homes that are heated or cooled.

It is artificial, sure. And it requires the use of tons of artificial stuff, which is why the cultists of nature are sure it must be destroying something and killing something. Because…. it’s not natural.

And thank heavens it’s not natural. Enough of fetishizing natural.

Keep doing that long enough and you’re picking the bugs off your neighbors carcass before you roast him. And I don’t care what your IQ is, that’s no way to live.

Even if you have a shiny chariot.

I don’t suppose I’ll eat octopus again, or at least it’s not likely. I never liked it much, anyway. (I used to refer to octopus rice as spoiling rice with octopus, when mom made it.)

But if I have to I won’t feel guilty. They might be smart, but they eat each other. So I will not feel guilty for eating them.

Now when Octopus develop a language and a sense murder is wrong…. Then I’ll worry about it.

And while I don’t intend to start eating murderers, I’m also not going to brood and cry over the past civilizations and cultures that vanished. I don’t care what they invented. if they killed each other for sport, and ate each other? They were savages.

Raw intelligence means nothing. Applied intelligence that creates a society in which most individuals are relatively free and prosperous.

That means something.

And that is worth preserving.

Now go do it.

Today I’m going to post the two certificates. So, if you were due that (and anyone above $20 was, I think), well, please take it. If you weren’t, please don’t. (Yes, I know some crazy people will take them for nefarious purposes, but those crazy people probably donated to take them for nefarious purposes all so they could “nefar” and I’m not in the mood to even imagine what those purposes would be.)

And if you saw a version of this post with more stuff earlier, you’re right. It’s another fine wordpress day.

Okay, so this first certificate was designed and made by Jack Wylder. You can see why it’s amazing, right?

If you can’t download properly, or you want to get the PDF version, send to the email (SAHSWAG at outlook) and I’ll send it to you.

This one, the fish was designed by the great Caitlin Walsh and I did the rest. Yes, the lettering could be better. In fact the fish and better letters would make an amazing t-shirt. Yes, yes, will get on it, G-d willing in July, yes?

Real post in a little while. I CANNOT explain how exhausted the new glitchy WP makes me.

Boy, I’m glad I warned everyone that last year’s fundraiser would be a mess. But I never imagined it would be a mess to get the electronic swag to people.

THAT was idiotic because I had in the past tried to start a “mailing list” and got the email bricked up. Now they just don’t send things out. Which is hilarious when you consider how many spam items fill my mailbox every day. Apparently hotmail only lets spam-spam through, not well meaning people who have had an account forever trying to send stuff out.

Then there were other things: I still don’t have a list of who donated at what level. It existed for about a minute. And someone tried to send stuff out. Then …. then it defaulted to younger son’s job. And younger son got…. for a while three other jobs. And a fiance. And in the meanwhile the list… well, let’s put it this way, I know more than three of you donated at level 9.

And scrubbing the data from paypal is — tears out hair.

There was also dereliction of duty on MY part due to the fact that this year has been “fun with doctors.” (Look, we’re in the home stretch, at least for tests. If you wonder why yesterday’s post was so late. “Fun with doctors.”) As in I haven’t finished the one original story or ASSEMBLED the collection of USAian stories. They exist. I need to assemble the dang thing (This weekend. Has to be.) I also haven’t fulfilled the tuckerizations and mass deaths (And one MATH DEATH. You know who you are.)

Yes, you can send out things with stuff like mailinator. But at this point the emails are a mess.

So, here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going on the honor system. Because the piper has played and will be paid. Or the piper has paid and will play, whichever you choose.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to do a post with things to download, for the various levels where the content was digital. (Yes, including finishing the short story, and giving a book funnel link to the book.)

In the mean time, I’ve established an account: SAHSWAG at outlook.com.

If you donated anything that warrants more than the MP3 of Moose and Squirrel and anything physical or involving my working at it, this is important:

1- Physical books or other things I need to mail: will be after July 4th, because we’re going to be gone from early next week till then. Sorry. In the meantime, send me an address I can mail (I think books is all, really) to. I.e. snail mail address.

2- If you donated enough for red-shirting, I’m ASSURED we have that list, and your number will come up. (Eheheheh. Math death.)

3- If you donated enough for personalized, extensive tuckerization, one person sent me the details. Two might have, but in that case I lost the second and my email is not disgorging it.

4- So, if you paid for a personalized tuckerization, I APOLOGIZE PROFUSELY but please email to SAHSWAG at outlook. And again, tuckerizations should happen through this year. Sorry it’s late. Writing has NOT happened because…. well, it’s about to get resolved, anyway. Sometimes I will hold off because the one I have is for a military gentleman who should be honored. I don’t want to insert him in the cavalcade of silly in the cozy mysteries, for example.

5- If you paid for critique/mentoring: I have two of those on deck, one of which will be “paid” at Liberty con in person (the other one should be emailed this evening. I might have questions.) But there’s more people who qualify. Again, please send to SAHSWAG at outlook, if you have not contacted me about this yet. (ALSO the person who got one through donating to Lawdog)

6- No one paid to fly us somewhere for dinner, so you’re out of luck if you claim that. :D

ANYWAY, please contact me at the email SAHSWAG at outlook for anything but the electronic content, which will be put here on the honor system before the end of the month for sure. (Again, doctors and also getting ready for 2 weeks away, including boarding the cat-tle.)

ALL of this is for the blog fundraiser almost exactly a year ago, not the rescue fundraiser Nov. 21. I can’t give anything for those, because IRS. I.e. it wasn’t a “business” thing.

And I’m sorry this has been such complete insanity. The problem was basically that I couldn’t/wouldn’t use gofundme for obvious reasons. There it’s easy to see in the back panel who donated at what level and have ALL the info. With Paypal, which is now well, not usable, it was a massive headache involving hours of work I couldn’t do, and couldn’t get anyone else to reliably do.

Which is why going forward plans are…. different.

The pledges except for kill and tuckerize (which will probably take till September) will be fulfilled by the end of the month, because, as much as I hated it, and as confusing as it was, yes, I will be doing a blog fundraiser, starting on the 4th of July.

NOTE this will NOT be a rescue fundraiser but a “I read Sarah’s blog, and think it’s worth paying for/supporting.”

Because I learned — the burned hand teaches best — next year we’re going on simplified mode and almost self-fulfilling. There will be… options.

I’m not sure if one of those will be Stripe. Haven’t started an account there. If I do, it will be fulfilled the same way as checks.

Other than that this is the plan ahead, and no you don’t have to read further, because that’s not yet. Unless you want to make suggestions, or whatever.

THE PLAN for this year.

Give Send Go – they forbid giving incentives or really anything back. (Probably because they don’t want to have to report to the IRS. It’s fair.) I’m going to put the total wished for there. (About the same as last year, maybe a little more, but not much. And last year, btw ended up fulfilling on the nose with late checks.) I don’t EXPECT IT TO FILL there, given no incentives, and some people might not want to use the service, for whatever reason. Again, if you donate there, all you get is my gratitude.

So, there will be other options.

Patreon: I am — and yes, okay, I have issues with it — going to put up a Patreon. It will not contain political stuff, but it will have personal stories, and probably videos of my cats “speaking” with buttons. We bought the system and we’re going to try it out. Should be fun, maybe. Anyway, it will have something every week of the personal reminiscence/cat event/look at this funny thing/whatever. Yes, I know the problems with Patreon, but M. C. A. Hogarth informs me that some people like to use it for their writer support. So, hey, it will probably a day of my time setting up, but it will get done. (And heaven help me, last time I tried it was super complicated.) That one will be a subscription/automatic fulfillment type of thing.

Substack serializing blog: As you guys know I have things like Witch’s Daughter, Rogue Magic and Elf Blood started and they stopped due to health/move. Well, the idea is to give you at least two novels and a bunch of short stories per year, and there will be subscription levels ranging from “gets to comment” to “gets to make suggestions, including suggesting self-insert.” (The comment thing, to be fair is a new substack thing.) It will be regular postings of chapters, and in the end you get the ebook in three formats (kindle/epub/pdf.)
I say AT LEAST two books but I’m going to try to run one fantasy one sf and one mystery, because I know you guys all have your specific preferences.
I HAVE NOT set up this substack yet. I don’t know what it will be called. I thought of calling it something like “String writing” but that is a reference to a Portuguese term and…. eh. Yes, I’ll accept suggestions. No, don’t make me carp you.

The substack I currently have is different, it’s for a newsletter (because I can’t figure out more traditional newsletter software. I’m very stupid, in highly specialized ways.) Look, yes, I’ll enable payment there too, because you guys keep trying to give me money there, but understand that’s just a newsletter announcing my stuff, and making fun (hopefully) quips about what I’m writing. And you CAN get it for free. So, I don’t know why, but yes I’ll enable that one too on payments.

Other than that, there will be the option of checks, but please — please, please — anyone donating by check — or cash, wrapped in chocolate wrapper. Really, you guys! :D — should send me an email (unless they REALLY don’t want to.) And I’ll email each person as the donation comes in, and send back something. I don’t know what yet, though I’ll figure it in the next 2 weeks. Either a collection of (mostly previously published) short stories, or a novella. I’ll let you know depending… well, on how the doctor’s report and prescriptions turn out, etc. I’ll know by the time I put it up.

Oh, and I MIGHT make a highly specialized wish list, specifically for books and things I use for work. I mean, I’ll still have to pay taxes on this stuff, but if you guys want to donate and be ABSOLUTELY anonymous that’s a way to do it. Maybe. I need to test something first.

Anyway, that’s for this year, and upcoming, (July 4 to the 16th) and you can see (right?) it will be much easier. Because 2022 really was a mess. And I hate being frustrated and stressed while trying to fulfill promises.

And no, donating is not NEEDED. The blog will continue barring disaster. And this is not a rescue fundraiser. I’m still immensely grateful for that one, but it’s not what this is. This is just “Well, the blog eats half my day and maybe I should get paid?” And going on what people get paid for editorials. (And they do like an editorial a week, not 4 or 5.)

Anyway, that’s all. Now let me go do a critique and write a short so I can assemble that collection. So I can fulfill the electronic part of the pledges.

Because I hate being in debt and unable to pay. It messes me up.

Oh, yeah, and if tests are anything bad I’ll let you know. I DON’T expect anything bad. Most of the uh weird symptoms are clearing. This is out of an abundance of caution. It just eats a ton of time. But yes, I’ll let you know.

Thank you for your patience . These posts embarrass me beyond belief. But they must be done.

Yes, the left’s technique, when trying to destroy a country is always divide and conquer. Find or CREATE a malcontent minority that you can use to tell everyone how the country/polity sucks because of how they treated this minority. Then weaponize the minority itself against the majority. Or find a minority (you know which, usually) and blame them for all the trouble fear and strife in the country and make destroying them the sacred mission of the country, while weaponizing everyone else against them. (Because, yes, Nazis were leftist they used this.)

I bring you news of great joy: Whether you are the majority or the minority you are not obligated to fall for this. You don’t have to fall for the brainwashing, the carefully picked screaming heads and the general insanity. It’s not true. it never was true. And it’s playing right into where the left wants you.

I had a friend who is frankly way smarter than this but was black-dogging fall back on “we need to expel every black person, because they’ve been weaponized against us.” Yes, I was pissed, but not awake enough — it was late at night — to tell him the logical “They’ve also weaponized women AS A MINORITY against the nation and everyone else. Do you want to expel all women too?” I suspect in his state of mind he would have told me women need to be burkaed and enslaved. And not realize the monstrosity of this, just like he didn’t realize the monstrosity of defining people by level-of-tan.

So, for those of you who might find yourselves going insane in that way: no, minorities aren’t the problem, Marxists are.

Let’s start with black Americans who are, yes, our most visible minority, in that most of them are physically distinct, kind of. Let me tell you right now, that unless these are people with a recent — i.e. immigrant. Voluntary — African ancestor, most people raised abroad can’t tell they’re black. For all the screaming and tantruming, Meghan Markle could walk the streets of Portugal and be identified as “black” less than I was while wearing an affro perm and a tan.

Most “American blacks” (No, I will not use the ridiculous African-American. Just like I won’t call myself Portuguese-American. I’m American-American, thank you so much. I worked for it.) as far as racial classification goes are what’s known as “Caucasian.” They will have, at most, a drop of black blood. To call them black is to subscribe to the South’s rule where octaroons (eh.) counted as “black” because they had one black great grandparent. The definition of this is “insanity.”

Yes most Americans can or think they can “detect” black. Whatever they look at might not have anything to do with appearance, but with culture and behavior. And those are not genetic. Trust me on this, because the behavior and culture of the black community in the US has changed completely after they became targets of indoctrination as “aggrieved minority.”

Do you know what other communities are going that way? Well, most people in the US perceive Hispanic/Latin as a race. HOW in heck they do that baffles me, but I know they do because they throw me into it. Technically Portuguese are…. mutts. Greeco Roman with bits of the rest of Europe. Neither Greeks or Romans are perceived as Latin/Hispanic, but Portuguese are.

I suspect most of this is hearing of the person’s origin. It does wonders for people’s perception. I remember the guy who having heard that I was from Portugal kept telling everyone I sounded JUST LIKE Ricky Ricardo. For the record, no I don’t. Which makes perfect sense, because our languages of origin are nothing like in sound. But having heard I was Portuguese before meeting me, he literally heard me with a (Cuban?) accent, like someone who spoke Spanish. Because, yes, most Americans think Portugal is in South America. Never mind.

The point here is that when the State department considered Latin/Hispanic separate “culture” within the US, they didn’t consider it a race. But everyone else considers it a race. And then goes looking for it.

To be fair, I’ve heard of Arabs being assumed to be Hispanic/Latin too, so the spectrum is really broad.

So, how come they/we are now an ethnicity? Well, because the state declared us a separate category, and that’s how humans work.

If you got rid of every visible minority — I’m not sure how getting rid of women works, but hey Johns Hopkins has ideas, apparently — the Marxists could create others out of clear blue sky. I mean, everyone knows gingers are discriminated against in film. How hard is it?

And once the state starts considering you a special, treated as special category, several things happen, none of them good for you.

One is that people start assuming none of your achievements or hard work are real. This applies to women as well as black people, Hispanics, etc. (Really glad for changed first name and married name. At least I escape some of that in writing. Well, not the woman. I am still, I swear, going to write mil sf under a male name and dare you to find me.) AND you are indoctrinated from day one to see every set back as the result of systemic discrimination, which in turn makes it hard — really hard — to improve and learn to be resilient.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with black people in America that being treated in a color blind way, and given the real history of world slavery (Everyone has slave ancestors. Yours might be a little closer. So what? And that’s a MIGHT since in the rest of the world there’s still a lot of slavery, sometimes under different names) wouldn’t fix.

It’s not genetic. It’s active manipulation.

And even then most blacks, most women, most Latins, etc are NOT the entitled stereotypes you see on TV and read about. No, those are the biased media amplifying them.

Most gay people are not the stereotypes you hear about. (When I went door to door for the republicans in get out the vote efforts, I hate to tell you how many gay couples I ran into, including the gentleman who was baking a cake, apron on and said “Do we need to go? It’s my partner’s birthday” (This was pre gay marriage in CO) and I said “we’re reliably told the dems have an advantage right now.” He took his apron off, and went inside yelling, “Honey, we have to go voting.” I was a door down, when I saw them pull out and drive away. Are they the majority. No. But they were sold a bill of goods about communitarian politics, which I explored in AFGM, actually.)

For heaven’s sake, most of the trans, particularly those who transitioned well before this, are not like the crazy idiot who wrote the Johns Hopkins thing talking of Men and Non-Men while saying he’s always been a woman. (For that deranged person only biological men can be women, I guess???) They’re just people who want to live their lives.

What the media sells you as versions of these groups is wrong. And if you got rid of these groups, they would weaponize other groups.

The cure is not to attack the people they tell you are the enemy, but to attack the ideology, and to point out that what you see on TV/online is not reality. (I have it on good authority most of the people you see online are dogs. Arf.)

And while the idiots exist, they are nowhere near a majority or even the numbers the media tells you they are.

It’s just gaslighting. And you’re not OBLIGATED to fall for it.

Also,could all right-side commenters stop saying “The country/republic you knew is gone” and variations thereonto? It’s stupid: the country and republic are occupied. Arguably this has been going on for oh… almost 100 years, but we just noticed now, because barn, horses, etc. (Also thanks to blessed Trump the mask-remover. If he did nothing else that would be enough to call him blessed!)

Our “elites” are a thin and brittle mask of scum at the top.

The people? The people are all right. A lot of us are broke, a lot are unemployed, and an increasingly large bunch are trying to figure out how to survive day to day.

BUT always remember in face of the most determined psi-ops against Trump and the right in general, which included mass house arrest to keep us from talking to each other and get us to watch TV again, people hunched their shoulders and voted for Trump — or against the leftists, more like — in unprecedented numbers.

The republic isn’t gone. Stop falling for the gaslighting. More importantly, stop aiding the gaslighting.

The republic — the PEOPLE — of these United States of America are fine. We are just occupied. But we are fighting back in myriad ways, including refusing going along with the narrative.

I do realize saying it’s all doomed, or it’s the fault of x minority, or even that “the republic is gone” excuses you from having to do anything about what’s going on. You can be depressed and tranq yourself into uselessness by one mean or another.

BUT is that what you want to do? Is it really? Or do you want to stand on two and build over, build under, build around?

I know which I want to do. Be not afraid.

We’ve got this.

Book promo

*This is not an excuse for this being late. It’s a “argh” stop giving me things I didn’t ask for, directed at wordpress. No really. WordPress decided to add an experimental “AI assistant” to help me “write your posts.” So, something I don’t need, which gets invoked whenever I want to do something more than image and text, or even to format a blog. And when it comes up, it bolixes everything. Not just wordpress, which hangs up on an infinite loop, but also the browser. For something I don’t need, didn’t ask for and frankly don’t want. GRRRRRR. So this is my FOURTH attempt at this post, and …. three hours! Word press always delenda est, of course, but could it please stop trying to be smart? We can deal with its stupidity. This attempt at intelligence on the other hand is over the top stupid. – SAH*

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

Edited by Jamie Ibson, with a story by Dan Bridgwater: We Dare: Old Age and Treachery.

Fifteen outstanding authors. Fifteen stories about people who have been there before!
Never underestimate an old man in a business where men die young.
War is a young man’s game, and one where failure usually leads to your death. There’s a reason some people survive when others don’t—they’re faster, stronger, smarter, and usually luckier than everybody else—and you antagonize them at your own peril!
From knowing how to judge the intelligence data to understanding how to play “the long game,” or just having the experience from past operations to be able to tell when things are about to go wrong, these old men and women know what they’re doing… and woe betide the new recruits who don’t listen. Be careful, because that old timer sitting next to you—the one who doesn’t say much—may have a skill or maybe even a robot that’s going to kick your butt!
For, as the old-timers know, an ounce of experience is worth a pound of youthful exuberance!

From Karen Myers: Broken Devices: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 3)

Book 3 of The Chained Adept
CHAINS WITHOUT WIZARDS AND A RISING COUNT OF THE DEAD.
The largest city in the world has just discovered its missing wizards. It seems the Kigali empire has ignited a panic that threatens internal ruin and the only chained wizard it knows that’s still alive is Penrys.
The living wizards and the dead are not her people, not unless she makes them so. All they have in common is a heavy chain and a dead past — the lives that were stolen from them are beyond recall.
What remains are unanswered questions about who made them this way. And why. And what Penrys plans to do to find out.

From Holly Chism: Lizzy’s Tail

A small, plush horse learns what it means to be real when a little girl chooses her and takes her home. Through adventures and accidents, Lizzy the horse becomes real to her little girl, Carrie, even though she is still a toy.

By Robert J. Horton, Revived by D. Jason Fleming: Three Riders (Annotated): a pulp western omnibus

iktaPOP Media proudly presents three classic westerns by pulp author Robert J. Horton!
Rider o’ the Stars
When he was hired on to the Diamond H Ranch, the stranger gave his name as Dane. After seeing his skill with rope and gun folks started calling him “Lightning Dane”.
Was he a gunman? An outlaw? Why was he here? Nobody knew except Dane himself. And he wasn’t talking.
The Prairie Shrine
Annalee Bronson and her mother left everything behind when her father died, setting out to homestead in the prairielands of Montana. But being from the east, they simply don’t have the experience to cope with all the circumstances they find themselves caught up in.
Luckily, prairie poet and loafer Andy Sawtelle and mysterious gunman Silent Scott are more than willing to lend a helping hand.
The Man of the Desert
It starts with a stampede, and never lets up from there!

From Leigh Kimmel: The History of the Implementation of the Library Computer System (LCS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Originally the author’s thesis for a master’s degree at Illinois State University, this work examines the history fo library automation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from the earliest beginnings through the implementation of the Library Computer System (LCS) under the leadership of Hugh Atkinson to the creation of the ILLINET Online (IO) system. All of the chainges are studied in teh contest of the Illinois Board of Higher education (IBHE) mandate for library resource sharing throughout Illinois’ academic libraries to reduce expenditures while maintaining quality scholarship and education, and of the effects these changes had on library services to the user population.
The process of implementing LCS is studied to show the way in which the library administration handled the various crises as they arose and what effects these decisions had on the long-term structure of the system. Following implementation, it continues to study the subsequent developments of the online computer system to increase service to the library’s users. In addition, three doctoral dissertation are examined which used LCS as a research tool for the study of collection and use patterns in academic libraries. Finally, the author examines the results of automation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the context of the academic community and the state of Illinois at large, and draws conclusions from them.

From Lawdog: The Africa Files (The LawDog Files Book 2)

Africa is different.

Most people who grew up in the Western world don’t realize just how different.

In this volume, LawDog relates stories of growing up in West Africa, including run-ins with the flora and fauna, a younger brother, their engineer father and redheaded mother.

The Africa Files isn’t just a collection of childhood shenanigans, though there’s a lot of that, but also a fond recollection of a time and place that shaped a Texas lawman.

From Blake Smith: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle.

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl- riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends- and she has nothing to wish for.
Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

From Pam Uphoff: Aslanov (Fall of the Alliance.)

The Three Hundred Families control the Three Part Alliance. To the Elite, their Family is their first priority.
Twenty years before the Fall . . .
Lord Dzon Konstantin Aslanov returns Home after a five year long assignment to another World to find his Family as poor a fit as ever. He is about to find out the cost of disobedience.
If only they’d tell Konstantin why he needed to marry so soon, to the right woman. And not like his idiot brother eloping with . . . the daughter of Kon’s new boss at the Bureau of Intelligence. And why should Kon marry this particular woman when her aunt was so much more interesting . . .
As Kon investigates government contract fraud, he begins to suspect his Family is involved . . .
And the consequences . . . deadly

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: TASTEFUL

I was born female in a country that was profoundly patriarchal and, back then, patriarchal without guilt. So, it was acceptable to make jokes about women being dumber than men. And it was acceptable for teachers to assume you were dumb because female.

Most of these things amused me. It was always fun in mixed classes after the first test to watch the teacher look at my test and at the boys in the class trying to figure out what parent was so cruel as to name their son a girl’s name.

I enjoyed breaking people’s minds. And once I was known in a group or place, I was not treated as inferior. The only things that truly annoyed me were the ones I thought were arbitrary restrictions, like not going out after 8 pm alone. Took flaunting them a few times to find out they weren’t arbitrary. Or rather, they were arbitrary but since culture-wide flaunting was dangerous, and I was lucky not to pay for the flaunting with life or limb.

Yes, I went through a phase of screaming that I was just as good as any man. Then realized it was true and stopped screaming it.

Then got married and had kids, and realized I was just as good but different. I could do things men couldn’t do. Parenthood is different as a woman. And none of it mattered to my worth, just like being short and having brown hair doesn’t make me inferior to tall blonds. Just different.

And even though I’m a highly atypical woman, at the beginning of my sixth decade, I find myself completely at peace with the fact I am a woman and not apologetic at all for it.

Imagine my surprise when I found out women don’t exist. There’s only man and non-man.

This nonsense, from here, has got to stop. When you get so “inclusive” you’re excluding an entire biological sex (but curiously not the other) you might want to re-evaluate your principles. Also, your sanity.

Yes, I know, saying this makes me a TERF, which is nonsense. Maybe a TERNF, since I’ve not called myself a feminist since I was 18 and realized feminism aimed for making women “win” at men’s expense. It wasn’t aiming for equality but for “equity” and since I never needed a movement to outcompete males, I decided it was spinach and to h*ll with it.

Also I’m not trans-exclusionary. If women don’t exist, what the heck are men who are trans trans TO? Non-man? Uh… what? What are drag queens imitating? Is it just non-man?

Dylan Mulvaney is a TERF, since he keeps referring to his “days of girlhood.”

Look, Portugal was sexist and patriarchal. It assumed I was less because I lacked a penis. It told me there were professions and fields of knowledge I shouldn’t try because I was born female. It told me that men would always outcompete me.

This was annoying — and they were largely wrong — but I could overcome it.

I’m not sure I can overcome this idea that I’m imaginary. Because when people get to the point of denying that women exist or are a sex of humanity, they might be too far gone to realize what they’ve become: Rank misogynists.

So, at the risk of shocking them: I exist. I’m a woman. My experience in life, and my experience in this body is bound up with being — in fact — a woman: a being born with female sexual organs and genetics, who experienced periods since the age of 11 and who could and did conceive and give birth.

I’m sorry if that’s terribly hurtful. I have nothing against adults who think they were born into the wrong body. If changing their body into a broad facsimile of a female’s brings them relief, so be it.

But what are they changing into if females don’t exist? And why must I pretend that I don’t exist so they feel better?

Sorry, but just as the rules I was born to, I don’t feel like pretending to be lesser so you feel better.

Your delusions don’t obligate me to be delusional.

I’m a woman. I’m not no-man. That’s a joke from the Odyssey. And even the ancient Greeks in their machistic glory didn’t imagine it applied to women.

WOMAN — say it. Get used to it. The female half of humanity.

I’m a WOMAN. I exist. Lots of us exist. We’re a majority of humanity. You might convince those of us who are soft headed Marxists to deny themselves. Heaven knows they have been trained to believe a million impossible things before breakfast, poor kiddies.

But most of us have had just about enough of this. This has gone too stupidly far.

Now it stops. We’re your mothers, your grandmothers, your wives, your sisters, your daughters. And we’re not going to be erased.