Category: Uncategorized

I’m having a thoroughly lazy day, having woken up late, then snuggled with husband till lunch time. I do plan to unpack this weekend, but only the bedroom….. so, slooooow

Sorry, it’s been a very busy month or so, with a lot of shocks to the system.

Our listing has been updated and we have …. showings? not a ton, but better than zero, right?

I’m very glad the Gofundme funded at more than double, because we’d planned on JUST paying the backlog, and we’re obviously looking at probably a few months of double mortgage. And we were going in the hole BEFORE adding another mortgage, so… (Gofundme is still up, but again, just because people asked. Comes down the 16th.)

It’s good not to be terrified, but it makes me sleepy.

I need to go over page proofs for fairytales and typeset them, to come out in hardcover, too. “suitable for Christmas gifts” And it will happen. Probably tomorrow. Today, I’m just being lazy.

This is fairly rare, so I plan to enjoy it.

Last night I dreamed I was making a purse, because the one I have been using for ten years — the think geek bag of holding made of fake leather — had finally fallen completely apart (it’s patched) and I couldn’t buy one, at a price I could afford.

What annoyed me about the dream was how plausible it is. I could make a purse. The only daunting bit is applying a zipper, as zippers scare me. (Shuddup. I’m just not good at putting them on. I KNOW the theory, but….) And I actually have high quality fake leather from the repurpose website (50 yards WIDE for $150, and I’m covering a bunch of chairs so the cats can’t baptize them. Like my editing chair. I have also threatened to make a coozy for son’s car while he’s with us, because it doesn’t fit in the garage.)

And I woke up thinking: you know, part of this is that if the left is hoping to hit the economy really hard with a hammer till the wheels come off, it’s probably getting frustrating about now.

Let me explain: to some extent this plan is always stupid because humans are resourceful. Even back in the seventies, in Portugal when the bakers kept going on strike (and to understand how much this touched the normal person, you have to understand that back then we were used to getting our bread delivered to the door before we woke up. Tie a bag to the back door, leave a note of what you wanted, wake up to crackling fresh rolls and baguettes. This is one the things I really missed when I moved here. Then I found bread machines, and made do.) The first couple of weeks were pandemonium and people were deeply unhappy because their routine — worse, their waking up routine — was disrupted.

And then things… changed. So, some people started making their own bread. Some people started making their own bread, other people heard and suddenly they were showing up at the back door and placing an order for the morning, then coming in the morning and knocking a certain way to receive your order. It was annoying, but life went on, and not everyone had to bake their own bread anyway.

Oh, and bonus, you didn’t have to pay taxes on the bread you sold. You were obliging your neighbors, and if they wanted to give you some money in return to help with expenses, it would be rude to refuse. (And since everyone was doing it, they couldn’t chase everyone, even in a tiny country.) Oh, and to understand this one, and the reason I use this expense, I don’t think people in Portugal had baked their own bread (Other than farmers makign broa) since before Roman times. Artisanal bread wasn’t a thing. But people found a way.

I do realize with so much of our manufacturing in China, and the supply problems, etc, it seems like the world is coming down on top of our heads.

But people find a way. Look, in Cuba, a tiny country, they’ve kept 1950s cars going all these decades. They might be repaired with washing machines parts, but they keep going.

The US is a huge country, with a ton more resources, and perhaps genetically (As we’re immigrants or descended thereof) more adaptable people.

We’re n the first shock, so not much being done to get around this cr*p inflicted on us from above. But in a month or two, probably before the anger reaches the level (alas) that #teamheadsonpikes comes out to play, we’ll adapt, improvise, overcome.

People are already buying direct from farmers. I have no idea how the Christmas gift shopping is going, because since the kids haven’t been little, we usually pick ONE interesting or meaningful thing for them, and anyway, Dan and I always want the same “A book and a music-vehicle (used to be a CD)”. This year, with worry over selling the house, etc. I haven’t even looked. I keep hearing it will be lean, but I suspect Americans will make more stuff/etsy will have a boom year. And life will move on. Heck, I know someone considering going into 3-d printing to make those pieces that are stuck in containers or that China is not sending off, or whatever, to repair your car/washing machine/air conditioning. Yeah, copyright problems, but if you market it as a “Stop gap while you wait” and market to local repairmen? I bet it works.

The point is we’re not Portuguese or Cubans. Not a small country, easily stomped. Out in the heartland, people will go over, go under, get around almost by default.

And even in Portugal, in the seventies things were…. fluid. Push hard enough and people don’t fall into line. At least not if your plan amounts to running around with pants on your head screaming “cuckoo!” So instead they do the other thing. The one you didn’t want.

So for instance when unemployment was something absurd like 70% (I probably misremember) everyone was busy, and eating and getting things done. Just not officially. We knew a family where the dad was laid off, and they found the local textile factory burned their “end of rolls/leftovers/trash fabric” at the end of the day. So the family asked if they could take them instead. Got four sewing machines, and sat around the dinner table making pot holders and small goods which they sold at the local fair. Incredibly lucrative? Well, you know, the material was free and they weren’t paying taxes. Eventually as things eased, they expanded the business and became fabric goods distributors. So, they didn’t do too badly.

More importantly, students were making stuff, and selling in craft fairs that popped up all over (did it occasionally, mostly for bus fare.) As a teen there was never a lack of affordable jewelry or decor items to buy. Of course, none of these were paying taxes, which is too bad for the central planners.

And again, there were places where you knocked a certain way and they sold you an already roasted roast or the produce or whatever. Even when the stores were empty.

HERE? In the US, with our distributed communication, our vast land, and our bizarre amount of abilities (Seriously guys, Americans take hobbies WAY seriously. I’ve never been anywhere else where pretty much everyone has a hobby and works hard at it. Most other countries, people go to their paid jobs, come home and veg in front of the TV. Yeah, mom sews, but it’s mostly mending.) I think those who want the wheels off are going to get a massive shock.

Now, keep in mind that this means the poor who are poor due to lack of will power or inventiveness will suffer. But some of them might actually discover they can do things. All of us will be very busy. BUT life will go on.

Of course the downside of this is that team #headsonpikes might not come out to play. (What? I never hid my bloodthirstiness. I just know it’s inadvisable, for a society.) That’s also the upside, of course.

Does it mean we’ll just endure the boot on our necks?

I don’t think so for three reasons:

1- the people wearing the boot are too stupid to pour piss out of it with the instructions written on the heel.

2- They’re in panic mode that they can’t help but keep accelerating, so the stupid crap they do will get worse, and even if we’re surviving, it’s going to piss people off. If they’re lucky, they get put on a container and sent to China. If they’re really lucky, we’ll punch in air holes.

3- What they’re doing is going to encourage more and more going under/going over/going around. Which makes people more independent and resourceful and less likely to fall for their bag of tricks. As everything they’ve done since 2016, they’re just accelerating the demise of their cult.

So, what I mean is, the country is vast enough and resourceful enough (I mean, just the repurpose site. And a million thrift stores, and and and) that the wheels never really come off. Or they do, but new wheels pop up from under them and we all go FIDO (F*** it, drive on.)

It’s the most likely outcome.

The point is the parasite class that thinks they’re elites don’t know that. And they’ve never done anything useful in their lives. And they think everyone is like them.

Buy popcorn. The story is about to get interesting.

Yeah, it will go nasty in spots. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

But remember what you’re watching is the stomping around of the Marxian regimes as they die. It’s a blind, fatally wounded monster trying to take us to the hash heap of history with it.

Don’t let it. Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.

Remember you’re Americans. They ain’t seen nothing like us yet. And they will….

One of the things that drives me insane — to be fair, it’s a short road and well paved — is when people bring out the old Soviet plan (or one of a hundred warning articles/books) and go “It’s working, it’s all working! They’re almost there!”

At some point there, halfway through the insanity, I start hitting my head on the desk and cursing in seven languages. (Which is difficult as I only really remember three, no, wait, four with some clarity. And that’s awarding me points for calling people things like “dishrag” in German. (Well, it’s German. It sounds threatening.)

Because when people are analyzing why “it’s working” they using “plotting logic.”

Look, in novels, you can give the impression of plans failing utterly, working perfectly or whatever, because you’re a writer. You pick which events to highlight. And you stop before the consequences come home to roost, or divide and have kittens and become incomprehensible.

In real life, things are more complicated. Certainly the left has been trying to follow the plan, and believes the plan is ‘working’. But the left has issues with the idea of unintended consequences, a hard on for power, and minds so willful they wouldn’t know they’re failing till it bites them in the nose. (As is starting to happen everywhere. Which is why, baffled, worried and scared, they’re acting like someone shoved active beehives up their behinds.)

Look, guys, the left’s plans never worked…. IN RUSSIA, which was a small, controlled, backward environment with early 20th century tech, (or worse) which did not permit peer to peer unfettered communication, and allowed the state to control the narrative utterly.

Worse, their plan hasn’t worked in Cuba: even smaller, more isolated, etc. etc. ditto.

It doesn’t work because planned economies, planned societies, planned progress and planned whatever the hell plain does NOT WORK. Not on humans. (It might work on yet undiscovered aliens. I can’t talk about undiscovered aliens. But I would assume if they’re intelligent and have individual minds, it doesn’t work on them EITHER.)

You can sort of plan your family’s future, or your budget, or what you’ll do provided two things: Your family is relatively small; you concentrate on the near future. After that, it all becomes subjected to the law of “oh, something happened.”

Because something always happens. The problem of statist planners, besides their absolute certainty that they know how the future should be, is that they can’t really even compute all the factors, much less take them all into account in the plan.

Sure, for instance, control all the means of communication. Meanwhile, a wild internet appears, and there are blogs, emails that span the globe in seconds, phone service becomes so cheap it’s virtually free and– why aren’t people believing the official narrative?

Or, take over the US, and then we stop the innovation and we can control the rest of the world. Except that one salient feature of communist economies is that they can’t feed themselves. For almost a century, the US surplus production has been feeding the world.

More importantly, emergent fascist (look it up) economies like China, need a big, prosperous and undiscriminating consumer. Without one, their economy collapses in a puddle of goo.

Of course, Xi is probably about as informed economically, as Occasional Cortex so he thinks if he takes us out, China gets all the money and all the control.

In point of fact, what China gets is complete bankruptcy and famine, followed by disintegration. And this is not if the US is even destroyed, btw. It’s just if we’re made very uncomfortable and stop spending. Which is already happening.

The best thing that could happen to Xi would be to actually succeed in taking out an American city with one of his missiles (I take every announcement of successful missile tests, etc. with a huge grain of salt. Statist economies don’t even KNOW they’ve failed. To this day we don’t know how many failures the Soviet space program had. And I doubt the Russians know, too. Or that the people at the top knew. In communism, Cover your Ass is the law of the land.) Because then with or without the Junta, the American people will destroy him and his cronies and a vast amount of their apparatus, which would at least be a quick and clean death.

But Sarah, you’ll say, you’re saying they can’t govern. But they can take over!

They could take over. Usually societies in such deep crisis that it makes our current state look like perfect order and prosperity.

These days, again, communication and hell even fabrication and selling having become…. fractured and the mass model losing hold by the day? Not so much. I mean, they’re trying. And in the US they’ve taken enough to make an unholy mess.

Which will blow up in their faces.

Ah, but it’s not blowing up!

Oh, please. You’re thinking movie and novel logic. This happens, and the glorious revolution arises.

I recommend reading history. A ton of history. Because real history doesn’t work like that.

Yes, we’re almost (but not absolutely certainly) going to get out of this through paying a massive butcher’s bill. But things (at least to the Junta’s incoherence and our seeing the idiotic commies behind the masks) are actually progressing faster than I expected.

Because there are factors going into it that you can’t see, I can’t see, and we’ll only notice when they spectacularly blow up n everyone’s face.

But Sarah–

Look, guys, not only are their plans not working, but they’re stuck in political quicksand. Everything they do to achieve a goal wields a ton contrary hits that they don’t want and will have trouble surviving.

The lockdowns? Sure. Pretty disheartening. But here’s the thing: what it’s actually doing is growing things they hate like homeschooling and working from home and city-shrinking, and people moving away from the big lefty centers. And the more they bear down, the more people realize it’s out of proportion and crazy.

And they have NO option but continuing bearing down. With increasingly stronger reactions in response, every time.

At this point, their best ending is the Romanian Christmas Gift. At least it’s quick. And no, they don’t see it, because they are doing the plan and plans must work! That’s at the center and core of their beliefs.

You, however, don’t have to believe it, just because they believe it. In fact, you’re required to keep an eye on reality, and therefore not be able to believe it.

In their minds humans and societies are neatly ordered spools of yarn, to be woven into any design they choose. In reality human societies and cultures are like several bits of yarn dropped into a basket and used as a play thing by your cats. Pull one end, and you’re actually creating a big mess elsewhere. If you’re lucky there’s no dead mice in the middle of it all.

There is a fatal disconnect. They’re champion planners. And they talk about their success, and therefore scare the living pants out of a lot of people.

But the only thing their plans have achieved is to destroy things that work and leave messes in their place. Their regimes don’t hold. Their longest-lived hold on anything is China’s fascist regime, and that only holds because we bought a lot of crap from them.

Don’t be afraid their plan is “all coming true.” Be afraid of the things they’re breaking as they lurch around with the beehives of panic and stupidity buzzing in their nether orifices.

In the end they can’t win. But we can lose.

We can lose by not being prepared. We can lose by falling to some better-sounding authoritarian regime that’s little better. We can lose by forgetting we’re Americans.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, and be prepared for Chaos.

We’re Americans. Planning always goes weird around us. Chaos is our natural element.

They’re throwing us into that briar patch.

Be not afraid.

When I was fourteen or so, I was listening to an American comedian and he said that “America is the only matriarchy in which women feel the need to complain about being oppressed.”

At the time I knew clear nothing about America, or how it was different from Portugal, so the joke went absolutely wide of the mark. But over the years of living here, it keeps coming back to mind at all sorts of times.

Look, I’m not saying that some women didn’t have a terrible time in the US, or that women weren’t discriminated against in the region they grew up in. The US is a massive place both in territory and population. It is possible to come across families whose idea of the relations between the sexes is practically Elizabethan. It is possible to come across towns/areas that are very sure women should be seen and not heard. I’ll point out that these days the first of those are very covert, and the second almost non-existent.

I’ll also point out that in the US, in 37 years, I’ve come across more tyrannical females than males, partly because the leadership and the myth is that women are oppressed (the myth is stuck circa IMAGINARY 1950s) and therefore any man pulling the sh*t women pull, from physical violence to actual “rule with an iron fist by psychological torture” in their families, jobs and circles, would be crucified in the public square.

In fact, it’s gotten so the only men who get away with being abusive/complete assholes are psychopaths who just don’t care and area good at putting a good face on it. (Which yes, means the cases there are are really, really horrific.) And the only women consistently victimized are NICE women, or those so broken they can’t find the door to escape.

But does that stop women bitching, moaning and complaining their heads off? Oh, deary me no. Because the Myth is stuck circa the IMAGINARY 50s, and they want you to know they’ve suffered.

Being a victim is cool. It excuses all your failures, it washes away all your short comings, it gives you permission to be a head-on-fire vindictive bitch and gets you declared Stunningbrave for saying things that will have absolutely no bad consequences.

And I’m sick and tired of it.

Look, I know the past confined women more, okay, but I still think these people have no idea and would have melted growing up in Portugal, which was nowhere near as repressive as most other Latin countries, let alone places like Middle-Eastern countries (excepting Israel.)

And I’m getting tired of what I’d call “Grubbing for oppression in my memories.”

I swear to heck that there isn’t a single SF/F panel I attended where — usually on a tangential point — a woman older than I (five to ten years) doesn’t get up and go “Well, when I was in eighth grade my math teacher told me women aren’t good at math, and I should pursue English” or something like.

I guess this is meant to absolve them from not being physicists. And look, it’s not that women aren’t as good, it’s that most women — as far as we can determine, in countries where people are free to choose — prefer people-related or language-related professions. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that, and we don’t need oppression to explain it. There are several evolutionary reasons we can guess at, and others. Again, no “OPPRESSION” necessary.

For the love of mush, my entire schooling (except for the all-girls’ school which was its own form of hell) I got looked at weirdly, and had teachers trying to figure out how I was “cheating” because I out-performed boys. Discouraging comments? Every day. Jokes about women’s mental prowess from complete strangers? check. And yet, I continued in school and pursued an education.

Honestly, I don’t even remember most of the put downs, though one sticks in my mind as hilarious: STEM club. Visiting physicist explains how to solve something. Then calls me, the only girl in the room. I go up front and demonstrate. At which point he says “So, I guess everyone understood.” Because it was assumed I was the lowest common denominator there.

Am I scarred by this? WHY SHOULD I BE? They neither stole from me nor broke my leg. It got as tedious as middle class American women complaining of the oppression of childhood, but you know, you roll your eyes and drive on. I knew that was the assumption of the culture, so why should it bother me? Precisely? I also knew it was false, and proved it routinely, so who cares what idiots thought? (I mean there wasn’t even Facebook, so I couldn’t amuse myself beating them up.)

I’ve always suspected these “harrowing examples of oppression” came from people who were too well off and too well treated to know they were alive.

Which brings me to the latest example, and I won’t name the author, but the thread immediately became infested with SF/F women bragging of overcoming patriarchy (one of them by marrying a woman, because, you know, lesbianism is apparently intentional and an achievement. Rolls eyes. I didn’t tell her some of the girliest girls I knew were lesbians. Never mind.)

The question posed begged it, because it asked, obviously with disapproval/tone of “see how we suffered” how many women had endured charm school/finishing school/coming out.

My first response on the thread was sort of a warning shot, that went unheeded. Something along the lines of “my parents never taught me manners, I had to learn them myself.” But it was half joking (if true.)

And yet they continued. Muh oppression, in being taught the unconscious signals of the upper class went on and on and on.

I get it that women went to this, not young men. Though young men of a certain class were definitely also taught in “How to behave” and it was often a much, much harsher school.

I get they were taught “highly gendered” ways to behave. Most of them were taught this at a time when the sexes dressed differently which also brought on different behaviors (cross your legs at the ankles when wearing skirts. Took me till my thirties to learn that, and I learned it from a casual reference in a book.)

I also get these women are also Odds by and large, or even more non-functional, so they resented and hated this social thing they had to do.

However: mom having married above her class and having no clue how to teach me manners, her contributions being limited to angsting that I had no manners, I had to learn them by myself and mostly as an adult.

I bet you a lot of the things they learned are still useful, and are the sort of things people judge you on before they are even aware they’re judging. The sort of things that get them to go “Oh, she’s a real lady.” Which, FYI still has respect and currency in the world today. Yes, even in the US.

Again, my mom married above her class by a bit. It distorted her whole life, and to an extent my brother’s, mine and even my kids. Because one of mom’s symptoms was fastening onto the idea all her descendants would have degrees, by gum. But in my brother’s and my case, it never occurred to anyone that most people who made it into (then) incredibly competitive colleges had tutors or went to private schools. Because village/public schools were designed explicitly to train peasants.

I don’t think mom ever understood what an herculean task she set us, or how bizarre it was we succeeded through sheer intimidation and fear. You know, she yelled us into college. Or what fishes out of water we were in our classes, sharing no experiences with most of the people. (There were a few of us.) And often lying about our backgrounds, just to be left alone.

And before you say the US doesn’t have that…. OH, dear. You see, MIL had a similar story, only she was an only child and her parents sacrificed everything to send her to those schools and give her a come out. But she still stuck out like a fish out of water, because she couldn’t spend like her friends and hadn’t had their experiences. It showed. Fifty years later, it still showed.

But at least she in theory knew how to behave, which mom never did. (To be fair to mom, I take a bit after her, so she’d probably have rebelled even if she knew. Like the way she intentionally mispronounced things, even though she knew perfectly well how to pronounce them. Shakespeare became Shogspierre, for instance.)

But look, in my attempts to learn how to behave without disgracing myself in public, I often become too shy. Almost all of my social anxiety is traced to that.

And women who got the lessons, and behave according to the old imprinted patterns often breeze in, and do things a certain way, without thinking. Which opens more doors to corporate VP rooms and advancement in the arts than just about anything else.

Seeing a bunch of well-off (At least as children) American women complaining that someone cared enough to try to give them these tools to get ahead in life struck me somewhere between sad and funny. Kind of like if they’d gone up to my mom who grew up barefoot in a slum and started telling her the tragic story of how their shoes were all funny looking, and had weird colors.

Look, I don’t know if the US is a matriarchy. Certainly the overculture is. And as in an out of control matriarchy, women are getting screwed by expectations and their own peers.

However, in law and in every day life, we have more rights and more ability to do stuff than women have had since EVER. And no that’s not some mythical oppression. It’s the result that when life is hard — and it was very hard till this century — men have the advantage of size and strength, and women need protection, which puts them in a position of vassalage.

Going around whining about your oppression or crowing how liberated you’re now, might feel good.

It’s also annoying to anyone who grew up in another country/time.

And frankly it’s one more irritant added to the out-of-control overculture.

We’re now in a position the Marxists are going to lose. We just might lose lose along with them. We lovers of freedom.

And one of the ways we lose is that cultures under stress revert to their basics. And for years y’all and the media that feeds you these illusions have sold the American people on the idea that “Made up 50s” is our base culture. It’s not. American women always had more freedom than the rest of the world.

To keep piling on these pieces of nonsense only makes it more likely that my granddaughters will have to rise through the same kind of low-level sludge that didn’t hold me down, but bored me to tears.

Or worse.

Take your privilege and enjoy it. No one actually expects you to be astro-physicists. (What would we do with all of them?)

ENJOY being women in the freest, most equitable country on Earth. And shut the heck up about your 8th grade math teacher. It just makes you seem like a petulant child.

And we need adult women to help build a free future in which both men and women can reach their potential without stupid expectations.

Be not afraid. And be not whiny either.

I lost another friend to the Covidiocy/complications of. Since he’s one of the people who got me through 2020 and so far through 2020 won, and since I never saw this coming, I’m still feeling gutted and out of balance.

I’m also feeling mad. Very, very mad.

Look, it’s not that I don’t believe Covid can be dangerous. Actually it can be dangerous, in spots, to certain people and often unpredictably.

I’m not one of those people who say it’s “made up” or “doesn’t exist.” It is a real thing, though it’s not the black plague, and it’s not nearly as lethal or scary as people think it is, or as its creators expected it to be. I think the Chinese got the idea it was profoundly more serious from the fact that any respiratory virus is more serious there. Mostly because their population is surrounded/smothered in so much pollution that even babies have the lung damage of having smoked 6 packs a day for 20 years. Let’s give thanks for our enemies incompetence at science.

But at the same time, our government immediately adopted the China model of combating what they expected to be a lethal pandemic. And when it didn’t turn out to be a lethal pandemic, they doubled, tripled and quadrupled on the insanity.

There has been lately an expectation that if there’s some sort of crisis, “Society will have to go communist to survive.” I’ve seen this said by a lot of university graduates about everything, ranging from supply issues to new space colonies.

This is wrong. This is also bizarrely stupid.

Having re-read The Forgotten man, by Amity Schlaes, recently, the entire “pandemic response” has a strong wiff of “do what the government bureaucrats wanted to do for decades, and use the pandemic to stomp on any rebellion. Make Healthcare an arm of the government? check. Make sure that every private company has to bend the knee to government directives, Nazi style? Check. Make sure the serfs realize they have no rights, and feed them and allow them to make a living only if they obey us? check. Create a massive financial crisis which might shade into famine in Winter, because then obviously only communism can get us out? Check.

What it has bloody nothing to do with is preventing deaths or even infections.

The Vaccine that doesn’t vaccinate — i.e. render anyone immune — is not a way to prevent deaths. You lose immunity in months. And the fact that they’re pushing it on people who have had the disease and for the first time in the history of bio-medical science denying that natural immunity exists means if we’re lucky ALL it does is make money for the medical companies. (Whom I spent years defending from charges of being money-sucking Bond villains. You were right. I was wrong. Or perhaps they were corrupted later.)

Look, none of this is normal. None of the response to it, even if it were what the government kept insisting it is — i.e. the equivalent of the black plague — the way to fight it is bizarre, strange and definitely counterproductive.

Never have we “quarantined” healthy people. Particularly never have we done it on reports from a totalitarian country of asymptomatic transmission. We actually have no reason to believe there is any such thing, beyond “pushed self full of OTC meds while sick, and dragged out to do things. That’s not asymptomatic. That’s part of a sick culture that forces people to go out and work/go to school while sick.

Never have we denied religious exemptions to vaccines. Not even when there are so many of those in some school districts that Chicken Pox or Whooping cough run rampant. You don’t have to show proof you’re a committed member of a mainstream religion, or that you practice regularly to have your kid not have vaccines. You just sign a statement. And they don’t even keep them out of public school for that.

Never has the government run around stomping on alternate treatments. Look, I had friends who had cancer and quit chemo to use alternate herbal medicine. The government didn’t make those herbs illegal, even when it was obvious they did bloody nothing. Hell, the government made pot legal for ‘medical” treatment even though in most cases that people claim they need it for it’s more useless than rubbing yourself down with mint and rosemary. (Note, not all. It’s fairly effective to raise appetite and to at least make you not care about the pain. However prescribing it for auto-immune or bipolar? Whatever dude. However, the government didn’t stomp on THOSE uses.) Yet it’s run around stomping on everything, and has tried to stop daily use of aspirin after years of encouraging it, because there’s a rumor it helps recover from Winnie the flu.

What kind of pandemic response is that?

For that matter, what kind of pandemic response is to take someone who is infected and showing symptoms and tell them to take OTOC meds and go home?

And DO NOT tell me that it’s because of doctor shortage. They’re firing doctors who rebel against their insanity, and just firing doctors anyway, because it turns out when you don’t let people come in for other conditions, the hospitals are empty.

This is not a response to a disease. This is a bunch of authoritarians trying to create their wet-dream society.

And in the middle of this, we can’t trust anything. We can’t trust government releases/statistics, even if they didn’t contradict themselves every other week. And we can’t trust other insanity floating around, probably orchestrated and encouraged by government sources. (To be fair, it’s hard to tell the glowies when they don’t want you to attack Wretched Whitmer.) So, we don’t know anything. And we’re being gaslighted. And people are dying from this. And from isolation. And from untreated conditions not Xi-flu.

Meanwhile Sweden who released everyone but the very vulnerable is …. normal. This if anything should tell you how ineffective our response has been.

Yeah, sure, Sweden will still have deaths. Look, this insane product of Xi and Fauci’s diseased brains is now with us to stay. Like all colds and flus it will UNPREDICTABLY kill. Neither masks, nor vaccine — now both religious talismans — nor invoking Fauci at bed time will save you from it.

There is a correlation though with less chance of death if you keep healthy. Lose what weight you can (You’re being told this by someone whose thyroid treatment is slightly-under for good and sufficient reason and who therefore can’t lose weight. Even when she forgets to eat for days. So, not a judgement), exercise as much as you can. Do stuff out in the sunshine and fresh air, if you can, even if it’s what I’m going to do: take your work computer out to the back porch, and work there for a couple of hours. Take your vitamin c and d and your zinc.

And for the love of heaven, if you catch it, stay put during recovery. A friend I lost and one I almost lost were both getting better when they decided they were well enough to make what would normally be for them mild exertion.

If this is what I had (in other countries, you could test, but not here) Jan 2020, it really beats you to a pulp. You stay weak and vulnerable a long time. I was actually sick for two weeks, but it was another month before I could go about normal life in a normal way. I felt almost-well, but fortunately I have long experience with that state and its dangers, so I didn’t push it.

Don’t go dying on me. We’re going to need every one of you for the rebuild, after we win, they lose.

The response is going to stay stupid and dangerous while the statist beast flails around. In fact, like everything touched by big government controlled by “progressives” (a worst case scenario. Big government is bad enough) it’s likely to get worse. You take care of you, and be not afraid.

And to Paul Bisdorf, who is now in a much better place but from where, if there’s justice, he’s reading this: I regret we never got to meet. I regret that instead of sending you the Christmas ornament painted with the snail war, I stupidly packed it, and was intending to send it to you for Christmas. But most of all I regret losing you too soon. Fare thee well, my friend, and if I’m good enough, perhaps we’ll meet again in the bright land.

*Sorry this is so late. Got a friend in to help with things I needed three hands for, and then we got delayed with… Talking. Sorry, sorry,sorry. -SAH*

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Transport and Deliver.

When flight on a boat jeopardizes all a family has worked for, can an errant son risk his life to save their future?

The Luwenthals—second generation settlers on the lost planet Not What We Were Looking For—confront the destruction of their past life, and are forced to flee. As the boat containing the family’s prized linotype crosses a river lit by the flames of the printshop they had to abandon, fifteen-year-old Tobias Luwenthal must face his father’s ire over what he sees as his son’s betrayal.  Disaster strikes, but will Tobias seize the chance to redeem himself at the cost of his own life?  Will his father learn from his son as Tobias has learned from him?

A short story that picks up right at the end of The Gear Engages.

If you’ve enjoyed the Martha’s Sons series, start reading now for a glimpse into what happens next in this dystopian lost world!

ALMA BOYKIN STRIKES AGAIN*: White Gold of Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Six.

Without salt, man and beast cannot live. Without fire and tools, man cannot prosper.

Tarno Halson and the other salt makers of Halfeld Fluss must have wood for the fires to boil spring water into salt. Farmers, builders, smiths, tool-makers, bakers, and all the other trades demand wood as well, and tensions have risen among the trades. Tarno, a widower, also seeks a wife. One of the woodworkers offers—insists on Tarno taking—his daughter’s hand. The arrangement might bring peace between two of the trades.

Danger unifies Halfeld Fluss, yet also divides it. When Korvaal’s Son dies, and winter grows harder, obsession and anger simmer like boiling brine—and prove equally deadly.

*I have no idea what she struck, but the email started that way, and it amused me.**

**It could be argued I’m easily amused.

FROM DAVID VINING: The Sharp Kid.

1880s Missouri is a time of gangs and civilization, finding a way towards modernity through the old scars of the Civil War. 16 year old Cal Braden joins his absent father on a journey of train robbing with the promise of a new life further West in San Francisco. But promises are cheap, as cheap as iron, and it’s a question of whether they’ll ever be able to get out of the life of criminality they’ve decided to take up.

FROM DALE COZORT: Nazi Treasure Hunt Book One: Marsh War

Marsh War is an alternate history novel set in the aftermath of an alternate World War II where Hitler went for Moscow rather than the Caucasus in spring 1942. As a result, World War II in the east stalemated deep inside Soviet prewar territory. The Soviets were too weak to push the Germans out, even when the western allies pushed into Germany. Diehard Nazis fled to the German-held Soviet Union and held out there for years until the western Allies crossed into Soviet territory and destroyed them.

With the Soviet Union battered and partially occupied, the United States emerges from World War II as the World’s only real Great Power. Great, right? Not really. In 1949, two years after they destroyed the last conventional Nazi resistance, the US still occupies large parts of the western Soviet Union and has been sucked into the treacherous politics of the Polish/Soviet border regions, with nominal allies close to war with each other over economically valuable and ethnically mixed areas.
Stalin pursues his intrigues in this dangerous region, while Nazi remnants scheme to regain power.

While the US settles in for a postwar boom, US occupation forces in the Soviet Union search for missing German scientists, Nazi advanced technology and looted Nazi treasures. They also search for missing loved ones and brace for a coming war they are woefully unprepared for.

FROM BEN MASON: The Headsman Detective.

Being a headsman is killing Raymond. Friendless, loveless, hopeless and everyone he meets on the job seems to hate him. Until he makes his first friend—who is imprisoned less than a day later.

It figures.

But if Raymond doesn’t want to lose his best (and only friend), or stop spending time with said friend’s cute sister he’ll have to go up against Duncia’s dark union underbelly, and—worse—its bloated bureaucratic nightmare of a government, if he is going to clear his friends name, save the day, and maybe get the girl.

For readers who like to limited government, lighthearted humor, and heroic heroes (and heroines)!

FROM AMIE GIBBONS: Psychic (Wild Wild) West: A Southern Psychic Mystery.

Besides her broken heart, psychic investigator Ariana Ryder hasn’t met a case she couldn’t solve with her powers, except for the damage wrought by the Fae. After their breach into our world four years ago, thousands of Fae have been spreading across the US, invisible to the psychic eye.

She’s out west to run a Fae tracking experiment with her friend Dr. AB Williamson, but first, they take a night to see AB’s famous Rodeo Queen sister’s debut with a big circus. When the night ends in murder, Ariana’s not going to let it rest.

One little trip back in time a few hours, and she can save an innocent woman’s life. But when you mess with time, it tends to mess back. Something’s after AB’s sister, and a little hop back in time isn’t going to stop it.

Until it discovers Ariana, and all the powers she has buried within. With her powers depleting, dormant sides coming online, and a strange sepia world that’s dug its claws into Ariana, she’s got more immediate problems than the Fae right now.

The sepia world wants all Ariana has. And it will take it from her, one piece of her soul at a time.

FROM KATE PAULK: ConSensual.

There are vampires in the lobby, succubi in the beds, and bodies in the bathroom.

It’s ConSensual, where the editors are demons, the writers are crazy and the vampires and werewolves might be the most stable people in the room.

If that isn’t enough, Dracula is staying at the hotel on a business trip for his wood-based hardware chain, and he brings with him the mother of all sirens, Leannan Sidhe.

Kit Marlowe is one of the authors, and there’s an out of control baby vampire to deal with. Once again, the “Save the World” department is caught with its pants down. It mostly consists of a vampire whose name isn’t Jim and definitely isn’t Hickey, a barely house broken werewolf, a very confused archangel and his succubus squeeze and other assorted misfits.
With heroes like this, who needs villains?

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: EXTRA-LARGE

Every day, in every way, I identify more and more with this guy:

We were away from home and on uncertain access. Or if you prefer, the big converted double decker bus was parked in a dead zone.

Anyway, I came back to cries of “you were gone forever, I counted” from Havey cat, who is now tapping my arm so he can get–oop. He’s on the keyboard. Sigh.

Forgive me for being late with post. I tried.

The Joys Of Running…A Substack Newsletter By Tom Knighton

It’s been a year for me. As of Friday, I’ve spent a year writing a newsletter on Substack titled Tilting at Windmills. In it, I cover politics that I don’t get to cover in my day job. Just one story a day, most days of the week.

And, in the process, I’ve made more money than I did on any blog I actually attempted previous to this.

Our beloved hostess, beautiful but evil space princess that she is, suggested I write up a guest blog for her on what that year has been like.

Let’s start with looking at how things were before I started with Substack.

Now, let’s understand that I make my living writing for blogs. I’ve written for PJ Media, Townhall, The Daily Caller, as well as a few other sites that no longer exist. Now spend my days as one of the main voices at Bearing Arms.

Writing a blog wasn’t the challenge.

However, actually making money with it was. Google AdSense is generally considered the gold standard for ad services on a blog. It’s the easiest to set up, too. However, AdSense can also cut you off in a heartbeat if it suspects you’re doing anything hinky. Even if it’s not you doing it.

For example, I once owned a newspaper. We went online only due to financial difficulties and used AdSense. Apparently, someone kept clicking the ads. I suspect it was either someone who didn’t like our coverage or, more likely, someone who was trying to help the paper out. Either way, Google yanked our account and all the money we’d earned up to that point.

So yeah, AdSense is less than ideal.

Plus, there’s the fact that you get paid based on traffic, and not a whole lot at that. In fact, the average payout is $2-$3 per thousand hits. Even if you’re getting a thousand hits per day, you’re getting decent traffic compared to a lot of sites, but you’re getting almost no money. You’ll have to do things like affiliate links or create your own products for sale to make any real money.

And I write politics.

Yeah…not the best avenue for money making, especially since I couldn’t think of a course I could really offer.

A year ago, though, I came across Substack in regard to a number of journalists who had exited the sites they wrote for and were now writing their own stories with their own voices and their own editorial control.

Yes, it’s indie publishing, but for news, politics, sports, or whatever someone wanted to write.

I’d thought about talking all about the steps I went through setting things up and really talking about Substack, but that’s really a better topic for another time.

Instead, Sarah suggested I talk about the experience of publishing a Substack newsletter, so I’ll do that instead.

Honestly? It’s not much different than writing a blog. You still write a story, provide links, blockquotes, and all the other stuff you normally associate with writing on a blog.

The difference is that you don’t really have to do a whole lot of backend stuff and monetizing it is ridiculously simple. You just provide some content for people to pay for and they will if they can see that the rest of your stuff is good.

Again, this is really indie publishing, but for more of a journalism flavor. Some newsletters have multiple authors. Some, such as mine, only has one and I do pretty much everything.

Like Amazon, Substack takes a small piece, but they’ve got to eat too, right?

The difference is that you’re essentially writing a blog that gets blasted to people’s email boxes and that they can pay for a portion other people don’t get.

And then you make money!

Now, let’s also be realistic. I’m making more than I did with my blogs, but I’m not making enough to do it full time. I’d love to be in a position where I simply can’t get fired by a company, but I’m not there yet. I need a lot more paid subscribers.

However, I have to be realistic about this first year.

Yes, I’ve written for some of the larger political sites out there, but my profile isn’t that big. Outside of the Second Amendment community, it’s almost non-existent, and the newsletter is for non-Second Amendment things.

There’s actually no reason anyone who didn’t know me personally would have signed up for the newsletter, at least in the early days.

That means I needed to market, which is something I need to get better about doing without being spammy. That last part is always the trick, isn’t it?

I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of my stuff posted at Instapundit thanks to a certain someone, and that has been a huge help, but there is probably more I can do.

You have to admit, it sounds a lot like publishing books indie, doesn’t it? That’s because when you go indie, either as an author or a journalist or anything else, it all falls on you. You don’t have a company to promote you. You don’t have people guiding you to do certain things that will sell better. You have none of that.

It all falls on you, but it’s worth it. No one tells you not to cover a certain story because that person is an advertiser. No one tells you not to cover that story because it’s not inclusive enough.

Picking what you write and how you write it? That falls on you too, and it’s great.

However, there are differences as well. I can’t write more and more newsletters so I can make more and more money. While some authors advocate cranking out a lot of books to make a living as a writer—not an inaccurate strategy, either, from what I can tell—that doesn’t cross boundaries.

With a Substack, the “thousand true fans” doesn’t necessarily help you out that much. Not without some other way to make revenue off of them or pricing your newsletter higher than I currently do. I can’t count on them buying four or five times as many newsletters per year if I just grind them out. That’s not how it works.

Which means you have to grow your audience beyond a mere 1,000 paying fans, and I’m not even close to even doing that just yet.

Yet let’s also be perfectly honest, marketing is what a lot of indies struggle with regardless of what they’re creating.

So, if I had it to do all over again, would I? Uh…yeah!

I mean, yes, there’s the money thing, to be sure, but there’s also the fact that I’m building something that can, in theory, be carried on after I’ve left this world. See, this newsletter isn’t just me screaming into the void…or tilting at windmills. It’s ultimately a business that can grow and potentially become more.

And there’s the fact that I’m not beholden to anyone except the consumers, the way the free market intended.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve worked for some great companies writing politics and I only regret writing for one of them—one that no longer exists—so I’m not complaining. But I’m also considered a freelancer, which means I can be cut with no recourse. There’s no severance, no unemployment, no nothing.

That can be a scary when you’re the soul breadwinner for a family of four.

And let’s face it, writing a Substack doesn’t take a huge amount of time. I write a post per day during the week, generally, and alternate which are free and which are paid in some manner. I did share the stories on Facebook and Twitter, but since no one ever clicked them from those places, I stopped bothering.

Still, marketing is the hard part, and I’m making it my goal for this next year to figure out some way to get a handle on it and grow even further. With luck, I’ll knock in out of the park well before this time in 2022.

Of course, along those lines, I’d be remiss not to include a link and a humble request to come and check my newsletter out.

Now you’ve done it. You’re going to have to send a rescue party to Plato’s cave. I hope you’re happy.

Actually, I hope you’ll indulge me while I work through some stuff, in public (because why not) and maybe, perhaps it will help someone.

The proximate causes of this post are two: My younger son has been practicing psychoanalysis without a license. To be fair to him, he only practices it on me. (And it’s facilitated by the fact he’s male clone, so he knows how my mind works.)

This morning, while lying in bed, I realized this entire GoFundMe experience is one of the turning points of my life. Which probably sounds really weird to the rest of you, and is really hard to explain, but I’m going to try.

There are inflection points in life. Things that happen, and after that, you’re never ever the same.

Some of mine are remarkably obvious, of course. Or are they?

There was coming tot he US as an exchange student. There was moving here. There was marrying Dan. There was having the kids….

Except that those are obvious and “things that happened” but not the real inflection points. Those either came earlier or “in the process of” and changed me, so other things COULD happen.

Like, I think the real inflection point while I was an exchange student came while driving past miles and miles of forest in Pennsylvania (they shipped me to my host family in Ohio via Greyhound) and realizing everything the media had fed me about America and the world in general (overpopulated/overpoluted, etc) was wrong. THAT changed me forever.

The inflection point on marrying Dan came earlier, when he proposed, and I realized someone really, really loved me, enough to propose when he hadn’t seen me in person for four years. I mean I was in love with him, but it never occurred to me it was mutual. And that changed my view of myself forever.

The inflection point on coming to America actually came when I went through citizenship ceremony. I’d decided, and gone through the process, but it was ALL intellectual. Then I came home, and went to the mailbox to get the mail. And suddenly it hit me, HARD, that I belonged. I had a country. And it was the first time I realized that for years (probably since adulthood) I hadn’t really thought of myself as Portuguese/belonging in Portugal. The feeling of belonging was strong enough it almost brought me to my knees, and I was drying on the driveway of a suburban house in Charlotte, NC, because I was no longer expatriate.

Think of it as your own, personal highlight reel of “this is your life.” Not what other people see, or would identify, but what you know changed you inside fundamentally.

In the same way, having the boys changed us, over time, in the last 30 years, but the defining moment was holding tiny #1son, blinking at me in the afternoon light (I slept 24 hours after delivering him. Or perhaps was in a comma. It’s hard to tell. And birth was pretty hard on both of us) and suddenly it hit me: this person is mine to look after his every need for the next 18 years. I need to grow up. And my life will never, ever, ever be the same again.

It hit me this morning the GoFundMe was that sort of moment, and I’ll explain.

But first, what younger son has been on me about: He’s been yelling that I need to value my time and my special abilities. Now, maybe this is because I dragged him through hell along with me. (The house is now up for sale, and while I’m not putting a link here, because I don’t want to invite vandals — who would have issues with Marines on either side, anyway, but I don’t want the boog to start in my house — I’ve shown it to friends who have been in the house, and the general reaction is “Dear Lord, you guys REMADE the place from the inside out, didn’t you?) Perhaps this is self-defense. He’s told me from now on I’m retired from the house-remodeling business, and anything (oh, half a dozen, like putting SOME covering on the stairs) that needs to be done in this house besides unpacking I should hire out. He’s also told me that my default position is “this needs doing, I’ll do it” and that needs to change. He says I need to value my time as a writer and my skills as a writer and blogger, and respect those, and learn to pay other people to do things.

He’s not wrong. And he’s probably NOT just trying to get out of doing it, since he’s intending to move out in the next couple of months, which means he won’t be available.

He says it’s a tweak that’s broken in my mind, probably because for years and years my worth to the household was how much I did (physically) to get stuff done that otherwise would cost us money. So stuff like rebuilding the house, but also cooking, cleaning, making curtains, reupholstering furniture, etc. Because you know for years and years no one was buying my writing, so it was obviously — in my head — low value.

As for the blog, well, I started it because a very misguided agent told me I should do it for publicity. It didn’t work that way, because I was deep in the political closet and was traditionally published, which meant I couldn’t talk about how corrupt and messed up the business was, and I had minor children, so I didn’t want to identify them or post their pictures, and– Anyway — it meant I couldn’t talk about any stuff that was important to me.

Oh, I could post “writers’ tips” but blogs for writers are self-limiting in audience. And anyway– So I didn’t write but like two blogs a month. I was told to go to Twitter and FB too, but I found it mostly annoying.

But agent kept insisting I blog every day, which meant I came out of the political closet, and dropped her and– where were we?

Anyway, by the time I dropped the agent, I had this community, and I write mostly for you guys who comment. Some days I go “I wonder what so and so (okay, often, but not always RES…) will say about this thought I had!” And lately I write to say “Okay, I’m hearing such bullshit someone needs to shout sanity, even if no one is listening, or not enough people.”

But I haven’t thought about it as helping others — yes, you guys told me, but I thought you were just being nice — or something worthy of being rewarded, which is why I’ve resisted fundraisers and such. Until I was in trouble and couldn’t see any other way out.

…. It’s going to take a while to process.

I haven’t read the comments yet. I’ll do it this afternoon, after I figure out how to break into my own GFM and get money out (what? Oh, it’s a process, and I just need to prove I’m me, and the account is mine, but you guys have to understand my reaction — normal reaction — to what I’ll call cyberbureaucracy is to run and hide, because I’m so bad at it. Like, upload the wrong thing. Or get such a bad scan of my license they think it’s fake, or — the current panic attack — can’t remember if I have my full legal name on my bank account. So I’ll have to take a deep breath, and brave it. And if I fail, Dan will do it tonight. BUT it’s on the list because otherwise I’ll try to avoid it.) The fact that I’m terrified of hearing nice things — my friends tell me they’re all nice — about myself should tell me something too. I THINK it feels like I’m impersonating someone else. Or like they can’t be really talking about me. Like when you get a birthday gift meant for someone else.

And yes, realizing that place is broken and doesn’t make sense, is the beginning of fixing it. It will take time, because the denial is so absolute.

However, BGE saying he wouldn’t have survived the Covidiocy mentally intact without this blog made my jaw drop.

Look, I’m not discounting blogs in general. I dedicated A Few Good Men to my boss at instapundit for all the years when he kept me from going crazy. Particularly while I was in the political closet. It was just THIS little blog, with my ranting and musing. Really? It made THAT much difference?

It made me think anew about this thing I do. And the fiction writing too. And that maybe younger son has a point.

BUT mostly — mostly? — I have this feeling that somehow everything has changed. That from now on everything will be different, because I’ll be different.

I’m not quite sure how yet, but it feels like a good change. Like, I’ll be able to “grow into myself” and fill my own outlines.

Which is weird. And I can’t explain.

But knowing what I’m doing matters, and matters for SO MANY PEOPLE has tweaked something deep inside me.

It will work itself out, like a piece of shrapnel, likely. Next thing you know, I’ll be outside raking leaves, and it will hit me, and I’ll cry like a baby, and confuse the neighbors. And then over years something will change.

Right now? Thank you for putting up with my spelunking in Plato’s cave.

You’ve given me just about enough courage to break into my own GFM. Things like that… Knowing I matter, and people have been helped, and …. just having a financial cushion so I don’t need to do everything myself (uphill, both ways) will make a difference over time. I just have to get used to it. The back brain is remarkably obtuse, and it takes time for it to get a new idea. But we’ll get there. The moment of blowing up the old one has happened, so now it’s possible.

Again, I’ll leave it up till — calculates — the 16th. Not because I’m greedy, but because I was specifically asked by some people who don’t get paid till then and would like to “play” (and again I’m not sure how this is play, but fine. I DO get people are enjoying themselves. I don’t have to understand HOW.)

There will be more stuff soon, including a free short story and the release of Odd Tales, the short stories I did here before.

For now, I’m going to shamble into the shower (don’t judge me. There was a cat who wouldn’t let me get up) and tackle the cyberbureaucracy dragon.

Again, thank you. I’m confused. Fundamental parameters of my life have changed, and I’m not even sure how yet.

And I have you to thank for it.

And I do. More than I can tell.