Certain stories make the rounds about wild animals that get mistaken for pets. It can be someone from another country trying to pick up a skunk because it looks like a cat, a coyote or bear cub thought to be a stray dog, or a feral dog left alone with a house cat. The stories never end well. Once of the worse I heard (and some of these are true) was a young woman who found a badger cub and thought it a lost kitten so she took it home and put it in the basket with her kittens. Whether true or not, it makes a good model for a multicultural society that has scrapped the idea of a common culture, particularly when that culture ignores the differences between classes and ethnic groups for the simplistic broad groupings of race and sex. Whether you realize it or not, there are badgers in the basket.
All the above work off the idea that something you think you understand from your world doesn’t extrapolate to an outsider. It works both ways. If you read any of Rudy Payne’s work on poverty, many of the traits associated with generational poverty do not help one escape from it. Similarly many of the traits that make a middle class city dweller successful do not help them break into the upper class, survive in the lower class, or even be accepted in a rural middle class environment. Stories from the cities in the South with a large Yankee population during the aftermath of storms and hurricanes really highlighted this. One coworker commented that while his Yankee neighbors did their share during recovery from the storm, they did no more. They didn’t act as part of the community, they didn’t socialize, and they will be wondering for years why they don’t fit in. Similarly, despite the belief of most people, the signals aren’t money. I know one fellow who was told he’s got to be at least middle class because he “makes more coin than I do.” It’s not true – he’s pure working class who just got lucky in his skill set. His home life isn’t close but he’s smart enough to hide it. What do matter are the traits and patterns developed in your raising and, to a large extend, in college. The danger comes when these are misread: it can cost a promotion, a job, or your life depending on how and where you misread things. We see the social cost of misreading how people’s worldviews differ with the failure rates of certain groups at elite universities, in the government programs to extend home ownership, and in the inability of our political elite to understand the whole Middle East mess. Whether it’s not seeing the lack of certain skills you assume everyone has, the misunderstanding of a result for the traits that cause that result, or assuming all people really want to be liberal bobos, this mistake can be fatal.
Let’s look at some real life examples as we jump the fence and walk outside of the normal world most readers probably live in. All the names are made up but the stories are true. Some are amusing – others less so. Sometimes the kitten ends up among the badgers: for example, a young upper middle class woman was dating a biker type. They meet at a bar near college and ended up in the sack. He, let’s call him Bob, starts letting her, say Sharon, come with him when he hangs out with his bros. At one party, Bob is spending all his time talking to some old guy and Sharon is getting a little attention starved. First, she wanders over and tries to get his attention. She’s ignored. After trying a few things and being rebuffed, Sharon gets angry and tries to pick a verbal fight publically in front of the fellows he runs with. Bob first ignores her and then in no uncertain terms to, he tells her to act her age and shut up. Sharon loses her temper and slaps him. Without any hesitation, in fact you never even see his hand moved, Bob slaps her back hard enough she’s flipped over the back of the couch and lands on someone’s lap. Bob returns to his conversation without comment and the rest of the room does the same.
Sharon is shocked – she was always told you don’t hit ladies – and looking at the guys she landed on, says in shock “he hit me.” One of the guys guzzled some beer and replied: “you hit him first.” Sharon was horrified to find out not only did no one care, but they all thought she got what she deserved.
A few observations can be made: the old rule about striking a lady is very class specific and even there assumed certain conduct on both parts. If the whole concept of striking a woman is pushing your buttons, we have just defined your class. In other classes, letting your woman act like that to you means you’re a weakling. Note the possessive: it is intentional. There is a youtube video that shows an assault that starts with the assailant asking “whose bitch is this?” This is even stronger in other places where a woman’s value is a reflection of her man’s or her families. Over reacting would be the same if opposite error. The negligent slap makes it a statement. Negligent in that she’s just not that valuable. Striking with an open hand – how you discipline a dog or a child instead of a real opponents who require weapons – shows she’s not a serious problem. It was a nuisance: nothing to get upset when serious matters are on the table. Longer term implications depend on her response: accept of the correction or continuing to be a “problem” where her boyfriend washes his hands of her.
Another example of assuming your worldview is the only one can be seen with the “rape activists” on campus. Despite the claims of rape culture and oppression on campus, most activists have no idea of what a society that considers women lesser beings is really like. Most of them are smart enough not to go to Saudi to hold their “slut walks” or “take back the night.” There is a very definite belief system at work –these women are sure no one is coming out to beat them or pick them off one by one. That’s not the case in societies with actual rape cultures or where rape is used as a means of educational beat-down instead of killing her. Similarly a whole set of assumptions on rape and rapists can be seen in false rape narratives at Columbia and the University of Virginia. The advocates and academics know why all this happens and why women never lie about rape because they know better than we and are better people. The implications of their worldview that women are such delicate flowers they can’t deal with men or with making a decision seems to be invisible to them. This is inside their safe little yard. Outside the picket fence, rape can be motivated by lots of reasons and some of them involve an attitude toward women these people don’t or can’t imagine. In certain cultures, it is a survival trait to shut up and not tell anyone. In others, it’s a death sentence to end up in that situation at all. In many, rape can be a fact of life. Supposedly that why Mark Twain’s last Huck Finn novel was never finished: what happened to women captured by the Comanche was well known.
Another young lady, say Alexis, was studying martial arts to learn to defend herself. Having done the Woman’s Center self-defense class, she realized she enjoyed it and moved to a more traditional school – traditional as taught classically and not really neither a self-defense school nor a Mc Dojo. A petite and athletic woman, she soon enjoyed herself but was frustrated that often size and strength meant techniques didn’t always work. So one day she addresses these concerns with her instructor. They had the normal discussion about the multiple reasons for practicing a marital art and the multiple dimension of the whole concept of self-defense. Alexis still had concerns and asked “How do I defend myself physically from a rape?” This launched a discussion of rational preventive behavior and since Alexis wasn’t a feminist or a liberal art student, he was not accused of victim blaming. She was, however, concerned about a physical assault.
Alexis: So, if I was going to fight back, what do I need to do
Instructor: Well, it depends… How are you attacked?
Alexis: I dunno. How would you rape me?
Instructor: I don’t rape people. Sex with the unwilling would be boring
Alexis: Well, if you were going to rape me, what would you do?
Instructor: I guess I’d nail you across the back of the head with a sap, carry you off to wherever, and tell anyone we met you got drunk and passed out again.
Alexis: Couldn’t that kill me?
Instructor: “Maybe. But why would I care?”
Alexis left the school shortly after that. As extreme as that might sound, one has to realize the assumption human life has value is a cultural value, both in the value it as and what the culture says is permissible. Anyone following the news currently should be aware from both ISIS’s action with captured women and the actions of the refugees in German and Sweden that the Middle East is not a feminist place. Another example is what a female reporter was told in Saudi when interviewing a bunch of young men about for an article on Saudi life. A friend of hers brought her and while she didn’t realize it, she was considered “his” and under his protection. So everyone was very friendly and shared the homemade hooch, and she finished her interview. Somehow on the end the topic of women came up and she asked what would have happened if she came alone. She was told she would have been raped and probably murdered as there was lot of desert to hide the body in. This probably explains why feminists don’t go and protest in Saudi.
Consequently most people living within their own picket fence circumscribed by an agenda or social ideology don’t seem to understand is the myriad frameworks and social mores within their own country or with their carefully circumscribed world view. This is seen today in the US in the disconnection between the cultural elite and political class and the folks living in fly-over country among others. Comments about “NY City values” may get mocked but they reflect an understanding of different sets of rules in different places. (One could similarly draw from the other side of the political debate.) Sadly this belief that everyone really thinks the same has international implications too. Our policy in the Middle East has been seriously screwed up by the belief the people there think like we do. Some of this is being driven home in Europe with the crime problems caused by refugees – a situation to some degree predicted in “Camp of the Saints.” Historically, people have realized the clash of cultures bring the potential for violence, assault and death. We’ve lost that. Even within our country, there is NOT one homogenized culture as is currently believed. Our grandparents knew better. Similarly the world is not made of people who want to be little bobos or tolerant social justice warriors. It’s big outside the yard.
Rules, traditions of the past, and assumptions… all have been swept away by rapid social change. Instead of freeing people this has left us stressed, confused, unprepared, and unable to navigate different environments and situations that can be more than just hostile. Environments outside suburbia can become dangerous — especially for teens and young adults.
“Beyond the Picket Fence” isn’t a self-defense book, but it is very much about what will get you into trouble with people.
Arrests, violence, and rapes often befall young people when they go ‘out to party.’ Originally this book was — literally — about how not to get killed while outside suburbia and in places where it is easy to cross unspoken lines. Yet the best meaning prohibitions usually fall on deaf ears. This book takes a different approach. We’re not telling young people, “Don’t go.” We know they’ll go. Instead we’ll them what they need to look out for when they wander outside their home’s picket fence. We’ll help them stay out of jail or the emergency room.
At the same time, this book is about a whole lot more…
*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog. Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so. As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste. 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 (NICE NEW COVER!): Manx Prize.
Charlotte Fisher lives under colliding skies.
It’s the second half of the twenty-first century, and mankind has reached Earth orbit but not much farther. Orbital debris is a by-product of the industrial activity, and it’s dangerous both to everyone up there and the bottom lines of the corporations offering a prize to get rid of it. Charlotte heads up a team chasing the Manx Prize for the first successful, controlled de-orbit of a dead satellite. To win, she and her team must out-think and out-engineer a cheating competitor, dodge a collusive regulator, and withstand the temptations offered by a large and powerful seastead.
The sky’s not the limit. It’s the challenge.
If you like hard science fiction, impossible odds, and a touch of romance, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s Manx Prize. Buy Manx Prize to join the race for space today!
Facing poverty after a childhood among the wealthy and powerful, Lyddie Hartington decamps to Ceres, a newly colonized planet on the edges of the galaxy. Armed only with a change of clothes, a letter of introduction to the directors of the Andromeda Company, and a blaster, she is determined to make her fortune.
But Ceres is nothing like Orion-14, and before she knows it, Lyddie is witness to a murder- a murder that goes to the heart of the Andromeda Company and puts her life in danger. With the help of her new friend, an entirely too handsome captain of the Galaxy Watch, she must discover the murderer and solve the mystery of her family’s downfall.
He digs through the past to unearth his future. But will rocketing into the expanse blast him into deadly trouble?
Xenoarchaeologist Mark Fortune just needs one big find to be set for life. Roaming the post-apocalyptic galaxy in search of riches, the pragmatic loner believes he’s finally made the breakthrough of his career when he activates an ancient portal. But when he’s catapulted onto an unknown planet, he’s followed by a revenge-driven skybiker out for his blood.
For the sake of survival, Mark and the motorhead form an uneasy alliance until they can escape the strange and unforgiving world. But the only path back home pits them against a ruthless warlord in a flying space fortress armed with pre-holocaust tech and a horde of killer robots…
Can Mark tear down a dictator before his newest discovery is otherworldly death?
Fortune’s Fool is the first book in the edgy Fortune Chronicles science fiction adventure series. If you like throwback futurism, gritty action, and expansive worlds, then you’ll love Henry Vogel’s interstellar doorway.
Buy Fortune’s Fool to open the door to uncharted planets today!
The secret is out – the Mycenae system is the hottest new mineral find in the spiral arm. Now it’s about to become ground zero in a gold rush by every crooked company and asteroid thief in the galaxy.
Andrew Cochrane, with his crew of the finest veterans and cunning rogues, have an even better scheme. They’ve conned the owner into hiring them as a mercenary security company to defend the system. With no oversight but their own, Cochrane’s Company plans to seize the richest pickings for themselves.
But nothing ever comes easy. If they want to keep their loot, they’re going to have to outwit and outfight every smuggler, bandit and renegade after the same prize – and their boss, too!
A year after Calexit, the last US bases in Southern California are under siege, with their power and water cut off. Their perimeters are under constant probes by a now hostile nation. There is intelligence the government of California is planning a final all-out action to overwhelm the last bases and claim the spoils of victory for their own…
But the men and women in uniform aren’t going to let their bases be overrun, especially after the murder of their dependents. This is their story, a novella of the last military withdrawal from California. And if there’s one thing the Sailors and Marines are not going to do, it’s go quietly!
Any sufficiently advanced applied math is indistinguishable from magic…
Protest on campus are usually like grackles – annoying, in the way, and ignorable. But when Thalia Kostis invisibly crashes a meeting, she learns that outside money and organizers are planning for a full-out riot, complete with scapegoats and martyrs. Unfortunately, applied math isn’t magic, and she’s in danger when her cover’s blown . Now she and the rest of the misfits at Institute for Applied Topology must figure out who’s behind this and stop it, before more than just their own building goes up in flames!
People love easily. Look at most of your relatives or coworkers. How lovable are they? Really? Yet most have mates and children. The vast majority are still invited to family gatherings and their relatives will speak to them.
Many have pets to which they are devoted. Some even call them their fur-babies. Is your dog or cat or parakeet property or family? Not in law but in your heart? Can a pet really love you back? Or is it a different affection? Are you not kind to those who feed and shelter you? But what if your dog could talk back? Would your cat speak to you kindly?
How much more complicated might it be if we meet really intelligent species not human? How would we treat these ‘people’ in feathers or fur? Perhaps a more difficult question is: How would they treat us? Are we that lovable?
When society and the law decide these sort of questions must be answered it is usually because someone disapproves of your choices. Today it may be a cat named in a will or a contest for custody of a dog. People are usually happy living the way they want until conflict is forced upon them.
What if the furry fellow in question has his own law? And is quite articulate in explaining his choices. Can a Human adopt such an alien? Can such an intelligent alien adopt a human? Should they?
Of course if the furry alien in question is smart enough to fly spaceships, and happens to be similar in size and disposition to a mature Grizzly bear, wisdom calls for a certain delicacy in telling him no…
The “April” series of books works from an earlier time toward merging with the “Family Law” series.
A Dyce Dare Mystery When she was six, Dyce Dare wanted to be a ballerina, but she couldn’t stop tripping over her own feet. Then she wanted to be a lion tamer, but Fluffy, the cat, would not obey her. Which is why at the age of twenty nine she’s dumpster diving, kind of. She’s looking for furniture to keep her refinishing business going, because she would someday like to feed herself and her young son something better than pancakes. Unfortunately, as has come to be her expectation, things go disastrously wrong. She finds a half melted corpse in a dumpster. This will force her to do what she never wanted to do: solve a crime. Life is just about to get crazy… er… crazier. But at least at the end of the tunnel there might be a relationship with a very nice Police Officer.
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.
Alive and REALLY hope to do a chapter of Witch’s Daughter, but RL has ambushed me as it does. So in the meantime, I’ll leave you with some stuff:
This was written by a friend. I don’t think it will be that bad, at least not for most of us, but when things go bad, they tend to be erratic, and some places this might very well happen. It’s a good response to your blithe leftist friends who think (still) that their side is all rainbows and unicorn farts.
And yesterday I got so pissed at a smug leftist (is there any other kind?) on the book of faces that I was tempted into poetry. Unlike my friend, I don’t have a gift for poetry in English. It’s completely different in Portuguese, of course. In fact, my accent is in part because I don’t “get” the right rhythm for the language.
You With The Fist Upraised
How dare you? How dare you in the clear light of day Display a symbol under which 100 million Were sent into the dark of mass graves
But it’s a black power fist! you say What black power? Under the fist black people were killed For being black by that murderous psycho, Che Students were killed for being students Poor farmers were killed because Che liked it Under the fist black people in Africa Were crucified and starved and raped By communist guerillas Under the fist Asian people were shot For wearing glasses and knowing how to read
But it’s a gay power fist, you say Sure. Under the fist gay people died At the hands of the psychopath Che And are still jailed in Cuba today As for what happened to them Under communist guerillas in Africa? Don’t ask. You’ll sleep better.
But the fist is against capitalism Socialism and communism are better for people of color And women and gays I hoist the fist because I meanTo provide for all of them
Oh, thank you, great white savior! Because we people who tan Just like people of different sexual orientations Didn’t know
That our particular difference From the white heterosexual males meant We had no agency Or rational, individual thought And we’d never imagine That the system of trading what we have For what we want was evil for us specifically Or that the system that raised more people Out of famine and poverty than any other Was uniquely forbidden to us
We’re glad you’re here To tell us what we need
Without you we’d never guess That we’re supposed to be killed in batch lots Such as in China, Russia, Cambodia, Korea We’d never have guessed we’re supposed To be ruled by petty insane dictators Such as in China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea And we certainly wouldn’t understand That being brown or having off-beat sexual lives We were meant to starve Such as in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea
Without you, with the fist upraised We’d never have guessed Our rights and our abilities Are less than those of other humans
Then there’s this, from Synova, of course:
And this, because we, Heinlein’s Heretics (think about it. Consider the woke cult) also have a proud history. And we must make our names to shine. The Lieutenant expects it.
Someone at MGC suggested I do a self-promo with a random book and/or series every week. But I feel like just telling you “oh, yeah, I wrote this, buy it” is probably…. well. Look, I think if I’m going to sell you something, I should at least make the commercial fun. Perhaps not as much fun as those commercials that you end up singing the jingle for apropos nothing years later (husband was doing that yesterday night and I thought he’d gone insane, since I recognized neither the brand nor the jingle. Turns out to be something from when he was very young.)
Anyway…. If all goes as it should — the internal, self-sabotaging periods of absolute silence seem to be …. shorter now — I should have something new soon, and then, you know, a lot of things that I can link as promo. We also haven’t dropped the promo site thing on the floor, we’re just working on around everything else, and the last week was a weird wasteland of “I don’t feel like doing THAT.” On the interesting and “This must stop now” side, I’ve now achieved the level that I’m so self-isolated so long that going to the grocery store and maybe talking to the cashier produces the same reaction as going to a large, loud party with strangers used to. Note this is not happy making. Note also I’m not NEARLY the most introverted person around. In my normal state, I need to see strangers everyday — note see, not interact with beyond perhaps ordering some food, and/or paying for something — which I understand is a fairly high level of engagement for an introvert. So, we’ll deal with the silence, but this is freaking me out, for the record.
So, now for the self-promo…. And today — gestures towards lovely, non-existent assistant for reveal — we’re going to promo my Austen fanfics. Since I only have two up right now, and one is a short story, I’ll do them together. Actually if the lovely ontologically challenged assistant can wait till the end of the post, that might be best.
ANYWAY….
When I put this out on FB as “I wrote this” a lot of people were shocked and confused, and my response was to link the meme above.
But of course it wasn’t true.
For one, most of Austen fanfic I’ve written, both the finished and almost finished, and that needing only a good scrubbing with the editor’s sponge, was written for free. Because at the time there was no indie publishing and self-publishing required an enormous investment of time, plus getting Dan to typeset it, because typesetting was way harder.
It wasn’t however done for no reason.
Cast your mind back to the fraught and perilous times of 1998. My husband had a traveling job that involved being away from home 5 days a week, and a day usually spent preparing to go out. I was at home with kids aged 7 and 4. Sure, I went out and did grocery shopping, and because younger son was a picky eater and cooking for two has never been one of my skills, I knew every single “kids eat free” diner and restaurant around, and which days they offered this. (It was a wash. Younger son didn’t eat at all. Older son, OTOH ate like a farmhand, so particularly in buffets I made out like a bandit.)
I had a friend, also a writer, whom I called as soon as the kids were safely at school and before I sat down to write. She figures prominently in my “9/11 experience” story, as she was the one called me screaming “Turn on your TV.”
Normally, one of us called the other, and we talked about ideas, plans, where the story on the drawing board would go today, etc, all while walking around the house and doing a bit of clear-up. Flushing toilets, picking up kids’ clothes. Making sure the dodos hadn’t forgotten their books/homework. You know, the usual. And then I’d make and drink my coffee, sometimes while finishing the conversation.
But I was still lonely. Friends lived across town, and anyway, they had their lives and their routines. And most of the time it was just me, or me and two kids in the house.
At the same time, 98 was the year that tried writers’ souls. It was the year I wrote Darkship Thieves. And a lot of other stuff, to be honest. BUT everything I sent out was either rejected or — for contests — ignored. This while people around me were selling who had been writing a lot briefer time.
Now, some of that stuff eventually sold exactly as was; other had minor tweaks. There’s started novels never finished, which I need to make decisions about. But for the record, sure, there was something missing from my writing at the time.
I had reached the point in my acculturation 10 years after naturalization where I was no longer getting all the wrong responses. Not even close. But I still didn’t fully understand the audience. And I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure that this has anything to do with acculturation. It has more to do with the fact I’m a very strange person (as you’ll see) and I didn’t know where to aim for what other people look for in stories.
So–
More or less because I was bored, wasn’t sleeping much, needed time to unwind after the kids were in bed, I found fanfic boards. Which is weird, because as you guys know, I don’t watch enough TV/movies to really be a fan of visual stuff. And that’s what most fanfic is about.
At some point a lightbulb went on in the back of my head. You see, it goes something like this: part of the problem I’m having with writing is that I never get any feedback. “Thank you, this doesn’t fit our needs” is not feedback, as it might be true or not. And when I got feedback, it was often bizarre and made me go “arooo” like the one that accused me of stealing a TV show plot. Again, we had a TV (that thing I turned on on 9/11, but we were in a very small mountain town, and mostly the TV showed snow, with some vague images (it sort of did that on 9/11 which is why my visual memories are fuzzy.) Which meant while we bought tapes of movies and hows, occasionally, and the kids had a bunch of cartoons and stuff, we didn’t WATCH any series. I no longer remember what the series was but when I tracked it down I found that one of the characters had the same name as in the story and VAGUELY the same physical description. No commonality of idea or plot, but oh, well, editors.
Also I was pessimistic enough to think I might never get published, but writing isn’t complete if no one reads it, so fanfic would fulfill that.
I started actively looking around for a fanfic I COULD do. I briefly read a McCaffrey Pern fanfic site, but before I could write in it, it was shut down.
Which made me look for a fandom I a) understood the originals of. b) was not going to be shut down by the copyright owner.
Keep in mind at this time, I’d read no romance as such, save for Jane Austen, because grandma had Jane Austen and I read all of it, and then Dan gave me the leather-bound collection of her works when we were first married. (It would be five years before Dave Freer demand I read Heyer which was in a way the road to perdition. Okay, not really, I still don’t read a ton of romance, though I do revisit Heyer periodically.)
So, Austen wasn’t the first thing I thought of, and I don’t remember how I stumbled on it. When I did, though, I was perfectly happy to use it as my outlet. There were several sites, ranging from purist to erotica (I went to that one once, but never wrote in it, because — again — to me this stuff is not a spectator sport.)
What If He Were To Pick Me? Was my first work of fanfic. It got me thrown out of one of the more…. literary sites due to “unrully pillows” which frankly was not even a sexual allusion, just insanity that fed on itself.
In fact, the entire short novel is galloping and ever-ramping-up insanity. If you remember I was stuck at home with two genius-IQ kids, 4 and 7 and that most of my “professional” career consisted of getting rejections, some of them rude, I think you’ll get where this came from.
I’ll note that in reading over this before it went up, I found it was quite fun. Provided you leave sanity behind with no regret, of course. If you think about it as galloping madly down an increasingly silly path you’ll be fine.
He Turned Out Very Wild, OTOH was written four years later. And it was …. played for “serious.” There are others, including how Lizzy and Darcy’s son falls in love with Miss Collins, and a few others. But those are either not finished or lack internal consistency. As life opens up a little, I’ll try to get those up too.
Keep in mind, I’m not looking down on the fandom. I am the fandom. In fact, when stressed I default to reading Austen fanfic from KU, and get incensed if people change the characters completely, (kind of, on What If He Were To Pick Me, but it’s more like I made caricatures of the characters, which was necessary to fit the premise. Not like I just used the names.) I particularly get very upset when people take the characters and make them different for no Earthly reason. Particularly if they make everyone unpleasant.
The one where Jane becomes the villainess, they made some effort to explain it (amounting to “you can’t be that nice all the time without ending up resentful particularly when all people praise about you is your beauty.) and I read it in sick fascination. OTOH the ones where for no good reason people marry other people, and people behave quite differently from in the original work without explanation…. those bother me. And often get deleted. One which bothered me by having Jane marry the Colonel and not Bingley for what seemed like insufficient reason, I forgave when it became clear the author was a veteran who identified with the colonel. If you can’t Marty Stu a little in fanfic, and give yourself the prettiest wife, where can you do it?
I do think I’m somewhat askew to normal Austen fans, but it’s entirely possible I’m somewhat askew to the world in general.
Anyway, what fanfic taught me, that I could never have learned from a writing course was this:
1- Make your book easy to enjoy. No matter what your literature professors taught you, don’t make the reader work for the enjoyment. Sure, you can have little jokes, and fun stuff in the prose, but make sure it’s not something the reader needs to enjoy the work at its most basic level. This was much needed, because ABD in literature warps a woman.
2- People really don’t like to work hard. I.e. despite this being AUSTEN fanfic, the most popular stories were set in present day. Mind you, I don’t GET this. I still prefer regency Austen fanfic, but you know…. I’m not right n the head.
3- There’s surprises and surprises, and every fandom/subgenre has surprises they won’t tolerate. For the Austen fanfic, say you started with Fitzwilliam marrying Caroline. The cry would go up “Fix this now.” In the same way, making your hero the villain halfway through the book is not well received in any genre. Having the villain be impersonal forces also tends to p*ss off readers.
In fact, you could say what I learned was to respect and play fair with the reader. Which explains also why shortly thereafter I started getting published, and continued to this day.
Now, my beautiful non existent assistant will unveil the lovely fanfic books, to include the fantasy collaboration in the Witchfinder universe (but not world.)
Yeah I need to redo this cover. See, the computer was cr*pping out at the positioning stage, and I eventually gave up :-P I have a new card, so…
What if Mr. Darcy, trying to avoid the appearance of being lofty and proud, so far mistook himself as to be charmed by Lydia Bennet? How long could the fair strumpet lady hold his interest? How would Elizabeth Bennet feel about it? As all the Bennet sisters fall into the strangest of relationships, you’ll fear you lost your mind. But you haven’t. Just grab your sweetie and a whip – in case of unruly pillows – and hire a Bennet coach to Gretna Green. They have the best carriages, and guarantee no one will catch you. Then hold on to your hat. You’re in for the ride of your life.
In the original Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen there was only enough good between Darcy and Wickham to make a “good sort of man.” But what if this were not true? What if what we — and Darcy — think we know about Wickham was all wrong? What if sweet Jane Bennet were right all along, and there was some great misunderstanding? In this short story of intrigue and crime, one might end up feeling sorry for George Wickham himself.
A Pride and Prejudice Variation. In a world that puts shape shifters to death, Mr. Darcy was unfortunate enough to be born as a were-dragon. But the cruel laws don’t always find their victims. Mr. Darcy has survived and protected Mr. Bingley who is a werewolf. Meanwhile, in Hertfordshire, Lizzy has been protecting her sister Jane who turns into a beautiful hunting dog. When Mr. Bingley rents Netherfield, the Were-Laws and the shape shifting of three of them add extra complications to the flowering of romance between the well-loved couples. And Mr. Wickham. joining the Royal Were Hunters, lends additional danger to the situation. Will they get together despite the danger, Lizzy’s active imagination and Mr. Darcy’s excessive nobility of character?
And that ladies and gentlemen is the extremely awkward self-promo of the week! :D
I almost named this post “You are not psychic.” And I swear I already have four or five by that name, because the left’s favorite thing is to tell us what we’re really thinking when we say something. And what we’re really thinking is what they want us to think, so they can revile us.
This is how crazy sh*t became enshrined in their credo like “everyone to the right of Lenin is racist.” Because if you say anything — and I don’t mean remotely close to race — they don’t like the explanation is always “You’re saying that as a secret dog whistle.”
But this is more serious than the left’s belief that we all meet down at the ol’ conservative lodge (I can’t find one in our town) and agree on secret code words which we’re going to use to hide our racisssssm sexisssssm and homophobia.
I mean, that’s completely insane, because honestly the right has jobs and couldn’t meet every week if you promised us free beer and chocolate.
BUT the left believes it, with a gut-deep belief. Other things they believe: that the biggest problem in the US is white supremacy. That white supremacy can be multiracial (arooo?) That if you’re on time to work, are efficient, can read well and know how to do your job, you are a white supremacist. The list goes on. In the end — because the left ARE racists — they equate whiteness with competence and intellect and the white supremacy they’re so scared of is “people doing their job minimally well.”
And it’s not being psychic. They don’t actually claim to read our thoughts. They just “know” what and how we think because they were taught to believe this is true.
So, to begin at the beginning, the left are the “good boys and girls.” I honestly don’t know if this was always true, even back in the 1920s when Agatha Christie treated communists in her books as misguided, fundamentally good people.
We have this idea of the leftist revolutionary, not afraid to stand out for what they believe, etc, but we get that from the media and entertainment which has been in their hands for a century.
Having grown up in an old-style country, most of the hard left ping the same spot that the religious fanatics ping. Look, a lot of them, in Portugal, changed from insane Catholics, to insane Communists when communism was the “ruling” ideology. I’m not absolutely sure this isn’t true for a lot of the left in families that were…. how do I put this? “System religious.”
System religious is the type of person who does all the observances to the point of ridicule, but who cannot understand the larger picture, or that there is ANY give in the system.
The same type of older girl who would accost me outside mass and tell me I was going to hell because I’d turned away coming from communion and turned my back on the sacrament two seconds too early (and cause major collisions in the line) two years later was a communist and telling me that unless everything was redistributed to the penny, society was “unjust.”
This is because it’s the same type of mind. There are people who get confused by interaction with individuals, and annoyed by individual differences and preferences. So, instead of trying to figure it out, they try to find a system that explains everything. Bereft of one, they will build one. This is one of the stages of the development of teens. They build “explanation systems” for just about everything they are likely to see in daily life. It won’t take everything into account, or fit everything, but it fits their limited place in the world and experience, makes interacting with others less scary, and lets them function.
In the course of growing up, the system breaks. You meet people who don’t fit the matrix you created. You are exposed to more and more complex situations. Eventually the system is abandoned, and sometimes you — me for sure — look back and go “uh. I had everything upside down and sideways.” (The same can be said for my first three years in the US when I was desperately trying to find a clue and a way of acting that would work. I would take stray comments as gospel, etc.)
The problem with Marxism is that it’s adolescent system with DEFENSES. Also that it’s so pervasive in the media, education, news, etc, that most people don’t know it’s just a system of cobbled together explanations that don’t really work and have never worked anywhere. When you hear someone say something like “Oh, but Marxist analysis is really good for–” theory of music/literary analysis/historical study… whatever, it’s already too late, and that person might never break free. Marxist analysis is only good within the system because the system has defenses built in. Most of them are lies, distortions, or, more and more, outright crazy cakes. But if you don’t look outside the system, it appears to be “good”.
This is roughly the same as if the only way you had to judge the quality of a fiction book was a tape measure. Bigger books were held to be better. Awards were given by measuring the book. You never actually opened or read the fiction book (Or in the case of Marxist analysis used it for its intended ludic purpose. Yes, all fiction books have a ludic purpose, even if they also have a “message” or some redeeming social critique. Look, even if you’re reading a book in a foreign language to get proficient, there has to be enjoyment in it, or you’ll give it up. I have in my library a copy of Dandelion wine, with the cover encased in plastic [because it went everywhere with me for six months] and pencil marks above the words I didn’t get, with the Portuguese translation. If you met me at fourteen, you probably saw me with that book in hand and a pencil behind my ear. But, you’ll say, if I was reading it to become proficient, why desecrate Dandelion Wine? Why not read one of my brother’s engineering books, in English? Or my SIL’s medical books also in English? Because as much “eating live frogs” as the first three months of reading the book were, the story pulled me forward and was engaging. And the last three months, I was reading at almost normal speed, with sometimes total stops while I got out the dictionary. )
And if I told you “But that’s a stupid way to analyze a book” you’d say “No. All the fattest books win the awards, so the tape measure method works for literary analyzis.” That is what you’re seeing.
Look, every adollescent system has defenses too. That time we told younger son we were going to take him for ice-cream and he shrieked we hated him and ran from the room, that made sense in his system. (No, I have no idea how. Maybe he thought he was too fat. At the time he could walk between drops of rain without getting wet, mind you. Or maybe he thought the system worked by separating from us, and since we wanted to go out with him we were evil.) His defense against questioning the validity of whatever crazy-cakes system he’d concocted to explain his world was to decide we must hate him and run screaming from the room.
It helps if you see a lot of the left’s attempts at psychic-powers as being exactly the same. In their system, we’re required to do things for certain reasons. Because if we have other, rational reasons for doing things, the simplistic Marxist system of viewing the world breaks. And that can’t be allowed, so each of the positions has a further retrenching position.
Take the kerfuffle over the plastic rocket, for instance.
As most of you know I have a degree in Literature. Comparative literature, for my sins. Nothing that could be done about it. In the antiquated system I worked with, having a degree in languages necessitated one in literature.
I knew that objectively and by the experience of most of us who read a lot since childhood (it’s an addiction) the quality of the books winning the plastic rocket was in free fall. It’s not just that the use of words is somewhat lacking. It’s that the ludic enjoyment of such books has gone down to close to zero. (The two aren’t linked. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a hot mess on the word level, but his stories are fun.)
So when we went charging in on more balls than brain, I expected their defense to be on the uncouth level. “The things you suggest are uncouth, and you don’t have the refined palate to appreciate the things we love” (said the aesthete while smearing shit on himself, not like those uncouth clothes the peasants wear.)
Since I have been fighting attempts to make me act the class I was born into — or to quote mom “give myself my own respect” — since I could toddle, I was prepared for that.
What I wasn’t prepared for was being called racist, sexist, homophobic. Or being told I was “afraid of change.”
That later one is actually extremely revelatory if you view it as a psychological defense mechanism, which it is for the people of system. “If I defend the system, I don’t need to examine it, which would make me uncomfortable.” I hate to say this but at some deep level, they don’t want to change, and therefore, change is bad. So you must also be afraid of change.
The change we were afraid of was SPECIFICALLY that we were afraid of women and people of color taking over our field and doing better than us. Since three of the people in the group were and remain women, I have no clue what that was supposed to mean. Also whether I’m another race or not seems to depend on the department of the government and, oh, yeah my political beliefs. (That multi-racial whiteness, ya know?) I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about.
I particularly couldn’t figure out what they were talking about because I’d broken in 15 years before, and started attending conventions as a new writer. A newly-broken-in male writer was a rarity. A youngish male editor was even more of a rarity, and if he existed he was almost for sure gay. And most agents were female. Yes, most of the field was white enough to reflect an SOS to the stars. No, this wasn’t being helped by taking the field into a “academic” direction rather than an entertaining one, which was already happening back then.
In the times I had attended award ceremonies, 90% of the award recipients were either female or gay or legends of the field which yes, usually meant fairly old. That might reflect past dominance of the field by males (though only partly. And mostly because science fiction wasn’t “respectable” oh 50 years ago, and women care more about that sort of thing.)
But again, when I came into the field, it was mostly female. And yeah, there were a few darker faces in the crowd. (About as dark as mine if I get a tan.) I was almost the only one with a non-British accent, though. Not that I cared much, except when people couldn’t understand us in crowded rooms.
So, what “change” was I supposed to be afraid of, precisely? Same as it ever was.
In fact, progressivism has been in increasing control since I was born, (before that, too.) So, assigning winners and losers based on group you belong to? Always a thing. Being prissily supportive of the left’s ideas? Needed to get ahead and signal you had an excellent education and were “smart.” etc. etc. etc.
There is no change in that.
Yesterday someone posted a cartoon, in an Heinlein group of all places, with a heavily armed cammo guy standing in an intersection with muslims, a rabbi, gays holding hands, black people and it said something like “What is he so afraid of.”
In defense of the idiotic cartoon the poster brought up that people have guns because they’re afraid of change, or some like idiocy.
And my reaction was, “No, mostly because I’m afraid of idiots like you, feeling righteous and running in possession of a “system” that explains everything, provided you don’t look outside it. I have been alive a long time. In my entire life, I’ve never seen anyone run for a gun at the sight of the Village People, and mind you, they’re older than I am.
Now the left uses “minorities” and “Advancing minorities” as a way to impose its system and feel morally virtuous. It always amuses me to see the inherent racism in their positions — not psychic, they are necessitated by their positions, though Zhou Bi Den talking about poor kids being as smart as white kids doesn’t help anything — and that they don’t see it.
For instance, they need to help women and minorities achieve. They need to give them awards (in my field and others) and assign them the plum roles, because otherwise they will get discouraged (apparently in their world only white people are capable of persistence in face of adversity.) And they need to eliminate these requirements to be on time and be effective, because otherwise people who tan can’t succeed. (Listen, there is a cultural thing in Latin cultures. We’re not supposed to be organized, exact or on time. That’s CULTURAL not genetic. I learned. I learned to punctuate (on the blog? Oh, please. I don’t proofread) which is optional in Portugal, if you’re “creative.” I learned to be on time. I learned to format manuscripts. If you believe people who tan can’t learn these things, you are the racist.) We have to claim that 2+2 can be anything, so we’ll have more women in STEM. We have to–
The truth is that society has had incentives to achieve if you can tan the entire time I’ve been here. The truth is that if you’re consistent and capable, and know how to do your job, no one cares if you’re a woman or a minority. The absolute worst that will happen is some people will assume you’re an affirmative action hire/promotion, until you prove yourself capable.
The left acts as though this were circa 1950 and 1950 as seen in the movies: everyone is white, and everyone dresses and looks alike, and if the stranger comes in everyone is terrified.
I wasn’t alive in the 50s. And I sure as heck wasn’t in the US. It’s possible this was true? Maybe? Some places. I don’t know. All I know is the movies and the books, and at this point I don’t believe in any of them.
The truth? I don’t care about the color or sex of a writer. Never did. No, seriously. I’d start reading a book — still do — based on the book’s description, and if I’m enjoying it a lot, halfway through I’ll turn to the cover to see who wrote it, and — now — might sit at the computer to see what else they wrote, and probably buy it.
I have a lousy memory for names, so when you had to go and buy at the store, half the time I couldn’t remember which authors I’d enjoyed. I’m pretty good at remembering word choice and voice, though, and so after say three books I enjoyed by the same author, I’d write his/her name on a little piece of paper I kept with me for when I went to the store.
THAT was the amount of interest I took in the writer.
Now there were people who rose above. I found myself with some writers — male and female — I’d grown up reading, in a mailing list, and was completely silent for six months. If I’d ever met Heinlein, he’d probably think I was a life-like sculpture.
So, do I care if more people of color are winning awards? Well. Not noticeably. For one, I don’t pay much attention to what people look like. (Which I understand is ALSO white supremacy. Look, I saw a blond for the first time at six. I was terrified for days, and I had nightmares about him for years. You see, his hair and skin matched, and I thought he was a plastic doll come to life. So, really strange might do that. But you know, at this point it would have to be purple with pokadots.)
And that’s my big issues. The people of system are trying to institute their socialist/communist system (At this point the difference is degree. And you can throw fascist in there too. Yes, I know the definitions are different, but in action there ain’t a millimeter of difference between them. Beyond the rhetoric of the system.) Being good boys and girls, having been exquisitely educated and BELIEVING everything the authorities told them they believe that system will bring about the equality of the sexes and races (never did. Never will. Societies in stress and living close to the bone are hard on women and minorities, no matter how many ridiculous lies the NYT prints.)
Being people of system, they can’t figure out how to step out of the system and evaluate the system itself. If you challenge what the system says it wants, it must be because you’re against their objectives or because you don’t like “change.” And when you show them it’s not change, it’s what’s been in place for decades, they say you’re isssst and phobic, like a thirteen year old running away from the dinner table. Because they can’t let you break the system. This is also why in professions they take over they first destroy institutional memory. It might also be why they feel the need to destroy the past, including their bizarre fear of sculpture. Yes, even statues erected by freed slaves show how long ago that was. Why there’s no one alive who remembers it first hand. And the freed slaves could erect statues, that long ago. Well, that destroys their vision of themselves as forever storming the barricades on behalf of all that’s right and good.
Because the system must be preserved at all costs, no matter what ridiculous distortion and lying is needed to assure it. Without this system they internalized the world might as well be chaos.
Therefore–
Therefore, as the system breaks before their eyes, because the technological change is changing everything, and their attempts at holding things still, like the covidiocy, just end up changing things more, these are people in increasingly greater distress and anger. And they don’t know what to do with it, except attribute their feelings to us. Which is why they’re clamoring for “vengeance”.
It’s going to get very rough. And when it does it’s going to escalate quickly.
Meanwhile those of us who aren’t people of systems, and who wouldn’t recognize systems if they bit us in the ass must learn to work over and around.
Because weird as it seems, in the end, civilization depends on us to rebuild and to adapt and to make it work again.
Sometimes I hate what Sabrina Chase named “the mass industrial entertainment complex.” Mostly, you know, the news, movies, book publishers, the whole blind kitten (caboodle) litter of them. (Only blind kittens are cute.)
They have this irrepressible need to reduce everything to the minimum common denominator. I don’t know if it’s because their education was lacking or because since WWII our family structures have been more and more “off” and our kids more and more raised by strangers, or if it’s the need to sell concepts that don’t work really well with marketable buzz words in a corporate setting, but we often have to look at it and wonder if these people are actually human, or if they understand any of the fundamental concepts that have hemmed human lives since forever.
So, you know, once the industrial entertainment complex go hold of oh, love, it didn’t take very long (20 years maybe) for the concept of love of be submerged on a tide of “it’s really good sex.”
Look, I have been married 35 years, and I have absolutely nothing against really good sex (on the contrary.) Really good sex can be a bonding exercise, and it can take you through some pretty stressful times. I’m not that fond of reading about really good sex, but that’s mostly because… well, I’m not a voyeur. Some things are to be enjoyed, not described.
Romances used to be fairly clean, a kind of emotional porn (which by and large works well for women.) In the late seventies (well, I read a lot of older stuff) things became more explicit. Sure, whatever. Unless something emotional and important happens during the sex, I kind of skimmed it.
But around 2015, most Romances were becoming actual erotica, and if I skimmed the sex parts I could read a fat romance book in an hour.
Worse, there was no emotion. There was this weird, bizarre concept that if you had really good sex it meant you were in love, and it would last forever.
This is kind of the equivalent of saying that if you really like chocolate, you should just eat chocolate, because it means it’s what your body needs to survive. Or worse, it’s what your soul needs to survive.
I find myself annoyed by it, because stories — in turn — form people and give them an idea of what the world is like. And if you think really good sex is the equivalent of love, when you hit a time in your life when you’re too stressed to feel as much as you normally would, or when you’re sick and can’t have sex, or a myriad other circumstances that arise in a long marriage? You’re going to think the sex isn’t great, so you must not be in love anymore. And that can corrode a relationship from the inside.
I’ve seen this happen among younger people, raised on this.
Frankly, it’s not the only weird notion they’ve come up with. And they’re all sort of insane. Their notion that the books are supposed to be some kind of (mostly Marxist) uplifting influence on society translates to younger people having this totally distorted idea that victims are somehow holy.
I find myself trying to mentor young writers who think the way to create an admirable hero/protag is to have shit raining on him/her day and night, without his doing anything to solve the problem, until suddenly, automagically people realize he/she is oppressed and THEREFORE they must be admirable and celebrated. The heck? How? I mean, I know this was the structure of everything my kids got assigned in school, but seriously?
THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. No wonder these people keep becoming cry-bullies, since the highest form of heroism is to play the victim.
However, perhaps no concept has been so profoundly abused as the “Strong woman” concept. Apparently the retards of Hollywood (apology to mentally handicapped people) and the morons (ditto) of publishing could only think of a way out of the rather vapid pulp heroines (well, some of them. Some were fine. And some were even strong, but yes, there were a number of them who were basically “what men fight for” and very sketchily drawn as characters, particularly in the 20s or early 30s.) and that was: let’s make woman strong.
Nothing wrong with that. Every protag and supporting character should be strong. A villain is only as big as the villain and vice versa, and why would you write “small” books? (and hey, the same people who created our “strong” women would think this means I want to read 600k word books)
Except that most of these people are either privileged or maimed (or both, of course) and have the emotional maturity of toddlers. So to them strong woman meant “urr durr strong woman beat up men.” Which is like thinking Great Sex is LOVE. Sure. It can be ONE of the aspects. BUT it sure as heck isn’t the thing and the whole of the thing. And thinking it is breaks things. Well, people, mostly.
Someone the other day asked if it was even possible these days to make a series about an action hero who is male and which isn’t based on older properties. In traditional publishing or Hollywood? Probably not. I’m fairly sure Die Hard would never happen now.
The insanity of this is that while women can beat up men in a straight fight, if you go for an extremely strong woman and an extremely weak (or perhaps handicapped) man, it is not the normal thing, much less the predominant thing. Certainly not among assassins or trained spies or vigilantes.
It’s still possible, of course for women to beat up men, but it’s most likely to happen to if the woman takes the man by surprise and fights very very dirty. (I’ve won some battles that way. Mind you, I had the advantage of a 10 year older brother who was built like a brick shithouse. I learned early that fighting fair just meant I ended up crying.)
Once you realize that women OLYMPIC records match the high school athlete records for males in your average US highschool, you realize that this entire emphasis on women’s PHYSICAL strength is insanely stupid. And raising girls to think that’s the sort of strength they have or can have is– I don’t know. What’s a stronger word than criminally insane?
I realized this some years ago when a female childhood friend of my older son’s, at a party, told him, with absolute confidence, that she could beat him. Older son at the time was, I think, 300 lbs (and not really fat.) She was maybe 90lbs. He told her that. She said she was “90 lbs of get back” and tried to get him to “fight” with her.
Fortunately older son (both sons, really) because they were always outsized and much stronger than they should be at whatever size, had been trained not to hurt anyone smaller than him. But I kept thinking of this girl doing that to a less civilized man and the horror that could result. And I’m sure it’s happened to women raised with this bizarre idea. More than once.
Then last week as I was watching the thing with Gina Carano play out, I realized it’s not just that they reduce “strength” to physical strength. They seem not to recognize true strength when they see it.
Most strong women are exactly the same the same as most strong men. No, not physically. I mean, I’m fairly strong (or was) for a female, but my 14 year old son was stronger than I as I found out when shopping for cement.
But …. There is a strength that transcends the physical.
Off the top of my head:
Strong people live for something that’s bigger than them. This can be their religion, their nation, their family or their dream. Or, yes, all of the above.
Those things are important enough not to allow the person to be swayed this way and that. Important enough to make sacrifices for. Important enough to keep working for, even if you don’t enjoy it, even if you think you can’t, even if it takes everything else in you.
Strong people have principles they will not betray. You can, metaphorically, offer them all the kingdoms of the world, but they won’t do what’s wrong in their eyes to obtain it. Even if this means they lose everything, they will not bend.
Strong people don’t give up. They are what Dave Freer calls battlers. They can get pounded down, but you know they’re going to rise up again, and try. Again, and again and again. (Think of Inigo Montoyal, in Princess Bride, in pursuit of his revenge. Though what strong people pursue can be wholly constructive instead of reactive. In fact, it often is.)
Strong people will endure terrible conditions to make sure what’s important to them survives. They will often, themselves, live when they should have been dead, to complete the task they feel is more important than life.
Now, strong people make great heroes, but it takes a better writer than most of the people who write for Hollywood these days.
That said there is a type of strength that is peculiar to women. I don’t know where I read that women “glory in sacrificing for their families” and that might not be precisely true.
It’s more that strong women can make the exact same sacrifices as men but hide them better. I watched this with my mother and grandmother suddenly being “not hungry” and just eating a couple of bites when someone in the family was sick or had worked physically hard and needed the protein, when there wasn’t enough money to go around.
A strong woman can do the same as a strong man, but self-efface, and make the person who needs to think of himself or herself as the hero do so. It’s not always a family. Sometimes it’s a cause.
Casablanca resonates for a reason. She gives up love, because saving the world from totalitarianism is more important.
But at least growing up, mostly we saw it in family context, because that’s where most of us saw things up close and personal. Like the way my mom made the most work in the household for the first ten years of her marriage, but when dad was home she acted like a housewife, and never let him know she was doing two hard jobs, so he could do …. well, the equivalent of a training job, and get good at his own career (engineering.) Eventually his earning eclipsed her exponentially. And then she made jokes about the years that she kept us fed and clothed when he made barely enough for his work attire. BUT in those years, when it was so, even when they were arguing, this never crossed her lips. Not once. Because he needed to be built up, so he could do what he had to do.
So, I guess a strong woman is exactly like a strong man — in every way but physical — but can do it with grace, quietly, and build others up in the process. (Yes, some men can do this too. The personality type is just rarer. Again, every characteristic is a continuum.)
Or at least most women have the capacity to do that, unless an entire cultural complex is devoted to make them value their physical strength above all else.
And then once they find out they don’t have much of that, they’ll feel put upon and inferior.
Perhaps of course, that is part of the plan, creating permanent victims.
Because neither Hollywood nor traditional publishing have any idea what to do with real strong people, men or women.
I’m so old, I remember when the Soviet Union fell. I also remember what happened afterwards.
I suppose it makes sense for me to be beset with this sense of deja vu right now, because we live in a truly bizarre time. I honestly feel like we’re watching someone trying to build the USSR after the Berlin wall has crumbled and as everyone is escaping in every possible direction, and some imaginary, in cars that were more or less made of cardboard and spit, and which they drove until they couldn’t drive anymore, which is why Portugal was littered with Trabants.
I know why I’m having that sense of double vision. I keep running into people who talk about our current Junta as though it were an empire for the ages.
Which it would be, if you didn’t take in account a) the quality of the people who have staged and are running this travesty of a farce of a comedy or a f*ckup. b) their knowledge of how society works. Or, you know, in what general direction reality might lie, up to and including where their food comes from, what humans CAN survive on, what it takes to run a technological civilization, etc. ad nauseum. With bells on. They know none of it, and don’t even know what they don’t know. And if you tell them, they’ll tell you it’s an aggression of some sort. c) that the regime they’re trying to install is not one that can survive anyway, not in a nation that is the economic engine of the world. d) that in their crazed efforts to install it they have in fact castrated or perhaps put a stake through the heart of those fields they control, including but not limited to education, Hollywood, the performing arts in general, traditional publishing…. pretty much, yeah, everything they control. some of these fields were already dying, and some would die anyway, but they accelerated that demise.
Put it another way, the system they are trying to erect — not the utopia, yeah, I know that never worked — the total surveillance/controlled information/collectivist/everyone in cities/everyone living or dying at the say of the government never worked very well. In exceptional circumstances and after a major trauma, like say WWI (there is no substantial difference between this partnership of would-be oligarchs and industrialists and that of Germany, except for national versus international. BTW, the international version is insanity of people who never even talked to foreigners outside a university and who don’t realize how little power they actually have.) And yeah, I don’t need you all to tell me that Hitler also had, at best, marginal contact with reality and resembled these twits to an almost frightening degree, from vegetarianism, to paganism, to bizarre hollow-Earth theories. And yeah, that lasted 12 years, but only because it first consumed the majority of its own wealth, and then the wealth of conquered nations. These ass clowns couldn’t conquer Mexico if they tried. Hell, they couldn’t conquer Canada. It’s highly doubtful they could conquer Tim Hortons, even if it’s owned by an American company. Even if they managed to get our troops to go to war and invade our nearest neighbors, they’d become moored down in fairness and hearts and minds, and who knows what else. Between all the time they’d have to spend making sure that our soldiers weren’t mean to left-handed Canadians of fluid gender, and trying to decide under what flag our troops would march, invading our nearest neighbors isn’t a thing. But if it were, what would these countries give us, that would keep the country going for any amount of time? Yeah, pretty much nothing. In fact they would take more from us than we’d get from them.
There simply isn’t enough wealth in the world to keep the giant going, once it collapses. So no, they’re not building the kingdom of a thousand years.
Now mind you, if they hadn’t had to employ the crazy measures they did all through 2020 to break us enough to pull their massive scam, this probably would have lasted ten or fifteen years, by which time we’d have been seriously broken and broke, and rebuilding the republic would be probably impossible. We’d probably have ended up as many separate countries, and maybe closer to Mexico than Canada in lifestyle, productivity and general creativity and stability. (Not that Canada will be much better than Mexico if it doesn’t have the giant to help support its deficiencies.)
But they had to try for something extreme. They had in fact to shut the world down to attempt to bring us to heel. That they had to do that tells you the level to which they had already lost.
It doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. As I’ve pointed out before, there is nothing quite so dangerous as a wounded and dying wild boar. And these would-be oligarchs are closer to that than to any group of humans.
In fact the problem is they’re creating a lot of destruction, and the destruction will bring them down.
Again, I said this before, and I’ll stick by it, there’s an implosion coming somewhere between six months from now and two years from now.
No, I don’t think we can avoid violence. I don’t know if their fall will actually be sped by violence, but I suspect so, because they can’t leave well enough alone. They can’t be like other kleptocrats, fill their pockets and let us do what we can. No, they want to destroy us. Partly because they’re terrified of us. I’ve got absolutely no clue how bad the information is they’re trying to keep quiet, but it must be a heck of a doozie, because they’re convinced if we figure out what they’ve been up to these….what? 10? 20? 30? 50? years, we’re going to come for them.
They’re not precisely wrong, I bet you. I bet you, too, that the information will come out, and it will come in circumstances where they’ve done enough damage to the rule of law that instead of orderly trials, which might give them a chance to escape and live off the fat of the land in some third world republic, it’s going to get ugly.
How ugly? I don’t know. Look, until about a month ago I couldn’t “sense” anything ahead except a big break. And if you’re going to complain about that verb, no I don’t think I’m some kind of prophet, except I’ve read a lot, I’ve thought a lot, and I know — more or less — the shape if not the size of the corruption and scams these people have been running. All of which depended on a captive and UNIFIED culture, where all the information was fed from the top and where all the dissidents thought they were alone.
That’s broken, and the repeated unforced errors — of saying the quiet part aloud — these idiots indulge in is a sign of how terrified they are. They keep telling us we need “truth commissions” or truth and reconciliation commissions, and informing us that we all need to believe their dictated truth.
But there is a terrible quality to genii. Once we found out we weren’t alone, once we found out that after their massive “get orangemanbad” campaign orange man bad still beat them so handily they had to fraud obscenely, in plain view and in the light of day, none of us is going to believe we’re alone again.
I’ve said before, they can’t win.
The crash is coming. six months to two years, and I doubt we go to two years, though I think it’s going to start with isolated and spaced out incidents. “First slowly, then very fast.”
And they won’t win. In fact, they’re tarnishing their brand to the extent that “leftist” or “marxist” will be terms of opprobrium within this decade. The mush heads and loud mouths will turn on a dime. I’ve seen it before.
The problem, and what you guys might not even be seeing, is that every industry, every profession, every … routine of life has been infested by these people. Lefty insanity is a positional signal that the “upper classes” use to distinguish themselves from the peasants.
Yes, to a great extent this means they’ve made vast portions of our professional hierarchies and our industries and our fields of knowledge non-functional.
On the other hand, there is a hierarchy and humans live by hierarchies. And when those collapse….
It won’t be the first time. It won’t be the last.
But it will leave a vacuum of power. And more importantly, it will leave a vacuum of trust. And a vacuum of information.
Our likelihood of coming out of this a constitutional republic is still high. Why? Well, because societies under stress become more themselves.
I remember when the USSR fell. And out of the ashes Tzar Putin emerged, who is despicable, but not particularly out of keeping with Russian monarchy.
So, yeah, the pull of our culture will be towards the reestablishment of who and what we are and were: a constitutional republic.
But on the way…
Look, I remember when the USSR fell.
The people in the USSR knew they were being treated like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed on crap. They knew there was truth in Pravda. But they were used to having certain information, and interpreting it.
And there is something worse than reading the news in totalitarianism. You can get used to interpreting the news, and knowing the shape of the hole of what they’re not reporting.
But once you realize it’s all nonsense, once the coherence of the news breaks — and it’s doing so now, earlier than I expected, with the Times article, with the New York Times admitting the protesters at the capitol didn’t kill the police officer — once there are holes, but they’re not consistent, or they’re consistent, but then contradicted; once the narrative changes almost by the week, to the point it can’t be ignored, that’s the dangerous period.
I know I joke that by the end of this year I’ll have to apologize to the lizard-people conspiracy theorists. But the problem is that the lizard people conspiracy theorists can acquire respectability and a strange new respect. Or something even crazier. Heck, a lot of crazier things.
To an extent the 9/11 troofer conspiracies, which yes, are crazy and also anti-scientific were our warning shot. That they flourished and that to this day a lot of people believe them means that there was already a sense that the news made no sense, that there were other things going on behind the scenes that we weren’t aware of.
It’s going to get far, far worse than that, as the actual elites, the top of various fields fall like struck trees in a thunder storm. There is a good chance that authorities you rely on for your profession, or just for your knowledge have been compromised. A lot of our research is tainted by china paying to get the results it wants, for instance. And there’s probably worse. You already know most research can’t be reproduced, and that’s not even recent.
As all this stuff comes out, the problem is that people won’t stop believing. Instead they’ll believe in all and everything.
I don’t know how much was reported here, as the USSR collapsed. but I remember what I read in European magazines and journals. All of a sudden it was all new age mysticism and spoon bending and only the good Lord knew what else.
And that’s what we’re going to head into. So, when you find yourself in the middle of an elaborate explanation that someone constructed, well…
First find the facts. Pace Heinlein: Again, and again what are the facts. Never mind if your ideology demands they be something else. Establish the facts to the extent you can. Facts and math don’t lie. (Statistics do. So be aware you can lie with them. And any metrics that involve intangibles, like intelligence or performance much less sociability or micro anything? forget about it.)
From the facts, deploy Occam’s razor. What is the simplest explanation?
Then remember that humans run at the mouth, and the more humans in the conspiracy, the more facts are likely to leak out somewhere.
And while we’ve seen a lot of Omerta among leftists, note that they’re all afflicted by evil villain syndrome. Sooner or later, they brag about how clever they were in deceiving us. So, if your conspiracy theory requires perfect silence forever, it’s probably not true.
Above all and more importantly, remember there are no simple explanations. Yes, we got here through Marxism, but to get where we are took almost a century of small steps with a lot of crucial slips and stupidity. (Like the elites buying into just-so stories that make them feel superior.) It also took the crushingly fast technological development of the 20th century, which both drove the growth of Marxist dominance and, ultimately undermined it.
And whatever happens remember physics don’t change. Not for me, not for you, not for anyone else. So, yes, jet fuel does in fact cause steel to bend if the heat is concentrated enough. And spoons don’t get bent by your mind, no matter how much you wish them to. We don’t advise using jet fuel to bend them either, mind. If you really want to bend a spoon, we recommend using pliers. But mostly we recommend you leave spoons alone.
It’s going to get very scary. And what will make it scarier is the fact that the barrage of false information from the top that we were subjected to all through 2020 is going to be joined by streams of information from every side, much of it incomplete, corrupt or outright crazy.
Take a deep breath. There are — probably — no lizards among us. (Yes, I know, that’s what a lizard would say.) I do realize the evil incompetence we’re subject to can make you suspect that there must be aliens bent on our destruction.
Well, maybe there are. But what would be different if there were? or if all we see were merely the incompetent malice of humans trying to be good social apes while the fabric of life twists and racks under them?
So, deep breath. Try to get the facts. Don’t rush to join any new and shiny theories.
Keep your head on a swivel.
And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
*Also, yes, it’s long. You don’t skimp words or preparation. Also Doug Wishes me to make clear this is not precisely his, he just compiled it from various places — SAH*
Foreword: I started compiling ideas and source lists for emergencies some years ago. Not all of the material below is from my own research. Some of it is from other sources. I didn’t keep track of the sources at the time, since this was primarily for my personal use.
If someone claims this is their work; fine. I’ll split the proceeds with you. You can have half the zero amount I got. OTOH, I would note you as a source then.
The Absolute Minimalist BOB
The minimalist BOB is something you can chuck into your trunk and forget about until needed. It is for the family member who is resistant to the idea of a BOB, or meant as an extra bit of smart packed into each of your car’s trunks to augment a basic BOB.To assemble it you will need:
Several quart sized and one gallon sized Ziplock type bags.
A lighter. Fire is our friend.
One flattened roll of toilet paper with the cardboard tube removed. Toilet paper is also our friend. Once flattened, place in appropriate ziplock bag, squeeze out all the air and close Ziplock bag.
A pocketknife, preferably a Leatherman Supertool or something similar that is high quality. This is without a doubt incredibly useful. You shouldn’t even put it in the bag unless it is a spare, put it in your purse or on your belt. This isn’t a pocketknife, it is a toolset. It is a can opener, a knife, a saw, a file, an awl, a bottle opener, a pliers, a wire cutter, a crimper, a flathead screwdriver, a Phillip’s head screwdriver, and both a metric and English ruler. This ain’t your Daddy’s Swiss Army knife. Spyderco also makes a gadget knife with a blade so sharp you could do surgery, so check it out as well. http://www.SPYDERCO.com
Five Maxipads. This is optional, but in addition to their accepted use, they are very absorbent and sterile, so they can be used as pressure bandages in case of an accident. Put in Ziplock and squeeze out the air.
2 pint bottles of water. (optional).
2 or 3 power bars. If you can, get the horrible kind like they put in military combat rations, the dreaded MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat), these bars will last longer than commercial counterparts.
A flashlight. They now make small disposable LED keychains that are extremely bright and run off of a watch battery. Normally these things run under $1.00USD, although some places charge more. While this is good from a size standpoint (they are about as big as a quarter around), and from a weight standpoint (maybe a quarter ounce), they are not terribly rugged. Mag-Lite makes a very small flashlight that uses AAA batteries called a Mini Mag-Lite that is very bright and about as big as a man’s middle finger. All Mag-Lite flashlights can be used to kill or injure a grown man, so look at getting one of those. It is more expensive, but wow! Tough as tough can be, water proof, and they come with a spare bulb in the base. Leave the batteries in their package and stick the light into a ziplock bag with at least 2 extra batteries. Other light sources are http://www.MAGLITE.com, and http://www.surefire.com
If you have these items you will be set for the vast majority of life’s little curveballs. The Leatherman or a similar tool alone will solve the majority, but the others really do matter.
Take the stuff and put it into the gallon ziploc bag. Express the air and zip it shut. You can then take the second bag, place the full bag into the second so that the zipped portion is put in first, express the air, and zip the second one shut. This will provide a lot of moisture protection.
The Basic BOB
The Basic BOB is meant to be carried every day, and is geared towards an urban or suburban environment. This is something that, since it is meant for everyday carry, must be comfortable, rugged, and useful in daily life.
The bag itself. We suggest something inconspicuous and easy to carry,
but with an appreciable load capacity. A medium sized briefcase will suffice, but try to get a North Face or Jansport type bag that college students use as book bags. The bags will have extra external and internal pockets which will come in handy for little things you need to get to quickly such as toilet paper or food. The bags often come with Fastex buckles which allow the bearer to externally attach other items allowing the user to customize his carry.
A Leatherman Supertool or something similar as mentioned in the Minimalist BOB.
Spare glasses. If you wear glasses get a spare set and put them in. If you wear contacts, get a pair of glasses and store them in the bag. In an abrasive or caustic atmosphere you can seriously damage your eyes with contacts, and you may not be able to clean your hands enough to replace dirty or lost lenses. So, glasses it is.
One roll of toilet paper. Never be without at least one roll of toilet paper. For ease of carry remove the cardboard tube and smash it flat. Then take it and put it into a ziplock bag. Express the air from the bag and seal it tightly. If you’ve ever in a position where there is no TP, you understand the necessity for this one.
A multifuel lighter (zippo-type) or an unopened drug store butane lighter. If you don’t smoke you may never need it, but fire is man’s most basic tool, so get it and have it. If you get the Zippo, remember extra flints and fuel.
Food. Have some power bars or some cookies. The best way to figure your needs is to miss lunch, then see if one or two packs of Oreos or a power bar or two takes most of the edge off. The prepackaged cheese and crackers snacks for kids are a good idea also. Plan on a 48 hour period of relying on your BOB. Have six very small meals, each in its own ziplock bag. Eat them once a month and restock so they don’t go bad on you.
Water. Have a minimum of 4 20 ounce bottles. If you can stomach warm Gatorade, get that instead. Most hunger pains are actually thirst, so try drinking a half a bottle of fluid with each mini meal you eat.
Medicine. Be absolutely certain you have any daily meds you take. This may be something you have to put into and remove from the bag each day, but don’t forget them. If the medicine you take is not easily perishable and not a controlled substance, get your doctor to write an extra prescription and keep a spare bottle, that you rotate out monthly, in the bag at all times.
Space blanket. There are emergency blankets that fold up to about the size of a sandwich. They are inexpensive and very warm. They are also usually waterproof. Get one or two. http://www.SPORTSMANSGUIDE.com
Toothbrush and toothpaste. This is optional, but performing personal hygiene can make you feel worlds better in a bad situation. Put them in a ziplock bag together.
Money. A spare $100.00 is a very good idea. At the very least get a roll of quarters for vending machines since they may work in the absence of electricity. Be aware that money may not have much value in a true SHTF situation. Money is a good idea, but it only works in a civilized paradigm.
Deodorant. Very optional. This only applies if you are from the US. Other countries don’t seem to want it.
Spare clothing. This is optional, but not a bad idea. At the very least you will want some spare socks sitting snug in a ziplock bag.
Personal protection. Get the strongest pepper spray you can find and rotate stock every six months or so. If the button gets pushed, get rid of it. The can will leak.
Firearm. If you live in a free state, get a concealed carry permit so that you can carry your weapon without fear of arrest. If you are in a state where the rights of all people are not recognized, rely on the pepper spray. For a BOB firearm, the suggestion is for a something reliable. It has to go boom every time the trigger is pulled. A compact lightweight revolver such as Taurus or Smith & Wesson makes may be the ticket. Firearms are a very personal sort of equipment, and if you don’t know anything about them, get help and get good teaching. At the very least get a small semi-auto .22LR pistol and learn how to use and maintain it. Keep it in a holster or case so the sights and trigger can’t be bumped. Any gun is better than no gun when people around you lose their minds.
Feminine hygiene. Get some maxipads. Remember they can be used as pressure bandages.
Pencil and paper. Being able to write a note can be very necessary at times. You may need to write down a license plate or a description for the police, so get a small wire bound 3”x5” notebook and put it in a ziplock with a pencil.
Band-Aids. Always a good idea. Stick 10 or so in a ziplock bag and seal it tight.
Radio and batteries. A cheap transistor radio can be a big help. If nothing else it can tell you if there are road or bridge closings or if there is a shelter nearby. Make sure the radio isn’t a flimsy headset design that will break with rough handling, and make sure it is a RADIO, not a CD or an MP3 player when you buy it. Put the radio and batteries in ziplock bags.
A flashlight. Just as described in the minimalist BOB, get a small AA or AAA battery using Mini Mag-Lite or a LED keying.
A respirator. This is optional. Lowes, Home Depot, and other hardware stores stock painter’s respirators that run about $15.00 USD. They use replaceable canister filters that are really very good for what they are. This isn’t a gas mask of course, but if there is a lot of stuff in the air these cans will help keep it out of your lungs, especially dust in the event of a nuke or radiological “dirty” bomb. A respirator doesn’t weigh much, is about as big as a fist, and is cheap insurance. Get one and put it into a ziplock bag.
Soap. One or two bars of hotel sized soap can help with cleaning hands before eating or for just getting yourself a little cleaner. This is especially helpful in the event of a small wound. It may hurt to wash a scrape or cut, but it is the best way to avoid infection.
A fork and a spoon. Eating with your hands isn’t just bad manners, it is a health hazard. Remember the Four F’s of Food Sanitation: Fingers, Face, Flies, and Feces. Getting food poisoning when you have no ready way to care for yourself can be very problematic. Even freshly washed hands can carry enough bacteria to make you ill in dirty conditions, thus poor personal hygiene coupled with a failure of civil sanitation is a recipe for trouble. If you have a regular metal fork and spoon, you can sidestep this large potential problem. Put them in a ziplock so they won’t get lost and put them in the bag. You can make a cup if needed by cutting the top off a plastic pop bottle, or by using your can opener on a soft drink can.
Intermediate BOB
Now we move on to something a little more substantial. Since cold weather is the most difficult thing to deal with, this section is geared towards people who travel in rural areas and who may experience unpleasant winters. This is a BOB you will fill and put into your vehicle, opening it only to rotate stocks every so often or if you need it.
The bag itself should be larger. We suggest a medium sized rucksack with or without a frame. An internally framed ruck is better, but it is not necessary. A cheap solution is a medium sized military issue ALICE rucksack. ALICE stands for All purpose Light weight Individual Carrying Equipment. Leave it to the military to come up with a 7 word name for rucksack and then an acronym to shorten it. The ALICE ruck’s design was employed in numerous conflicts and to the best of my knowledge no one ever complained about the rucksack except to say the frame was somewhat flimsy. The frame is aluminum, and will bend if abused by being sat upon or in some other fashion. If it is used in its intended fashion, it will last a lifetime with no care at all. Read some reviews on the ALICE here-www.trailspace.com/gear/review/00002483
Another alternative is a gym bag of tough construction, preferably with 4 or 5 external pockets. Several sporting goods places on the web offer “range bags” or “shooter’s bags” that are made of very strong stuff and have many external pockets. Get one with good sewn in handles and, if possible, end handles as well as the standard top handles. Good quality gym bags can be found at most retail outlets like Wal-Mart.
If you drive a truck with no back seat, try to get a gym bag with a bottom width the same as the floor with the seat moved to the rear. If you have to put the bag in the back of the truck, try to avoid putting water in the bag as it will freeze and burst the container.
Consider this list a continuation of the basic BOB:
Clothes. Put in a spare set of jeans, a shirt, socks, spare boots or athletic shoes, a scarf, a balaclava or a ski mask, good gloves, a lightweight waterproof parka or windbreaker, and some long underwear. Put them separately into plastic bags and seal them as best you can. That which will fit into a ziplock, put into a ziplock. As always, get the air out of the bag before sealing.
Fatty, salty, and sugary foods. Get a can or two of Spam, yes Spam. I said Spam and throw it in there. A can or two of Dinty Moore stew should go in there as well as junk food like chocolate chip cookies, etc. A good rule of thumb is if your kids whine for it, you will want to carry a little of it for any potential on foot impromptu camping trip. Get also a few packets of dried noodle soups like Hot Ramen or Cup A Soup so that you can drink stuff to warm up. Hot chocolate packets and instant coffee is also recommended. The General Foods International coffees are about half sugar and come in a sturdy tin, but beware, after drinking a cup you may feel compelled to start talking about your feelings. When the temperature drops and you have to walk through snow and ice you need to eat and drink horrible crap like that. The drinks and noodles will warm you, fat will feed you, and the salt will constipate you. Constipation is good because who wants to stick their derriere out and squat in 10F weather?
A small pot. Get a 2 quart, preferably iron, pot for melting snow or heating water for drinking or making soup.If you feel that a 2 quart pot is too much to carry, there are alternatives. One may choose to go with aluminum cookware, but it may be damaged or crushed if abused in some fashion. It may also make your food taste nasty and is unhealthy from a long term perspective. Another suggestion is titanium cookware which will only crush your wallet.
Get a small camper stove. This is optional. They are simple inexpensive affairs of flat stamped metal that you can build a small fire under and put a pot on. Alternately you can have a small propane stove with a cylinder of gas.
Maps. Don’t forget the map if you have to ditch your vehicle. Try to avoid going out without one. You will want that piece of paper if you are unfamiliar with the area, and you will want it if you are. Things look different at 3 miles an hour, land marks won’t pass with that familiar tempo.
Yes you have a map function on your phone – how well does it work when the battery is dead?
A tent. Get a small inexpensive pop up tent and put it in your bag. A $20.00 USD tent will be more than enough to keep the wind off of three huddled people, which can be the difference between life and death in a nasty winter storm, especially if wet.
Candles. Get two or three emergency candles. You would not believe the amount of heat these things throw off in a confined space. Try it out. Get in the tent sometime, seal it up, and light a candle. You should have to start taking off clothes within 10 to 15 minutes. A note about clothes. If you are cold with your clothes on, try taking some off or opening them up. The cold may just be there because your sweat can’t get away from you. Dry is warm and warm is dry.
Sleeping bag. Get a decent bag. Try to get one that goes into a “stuff bag”. They compact the best and are easiest to carry.
Poncho. Get an army surplus or, better yet, a new poncho. We wouldn’t advise wearing one because they will make you sweat, which will make you cold, but they are great to rest a tent on. Also, they make a great hasty tent or sleeping bag. You can find quality stuff at http://www.rangerjoes.com.
GPS and a compass. This is most likely unnecessary except in a blizzard, but hey, be prepared. Get a moderately priced GPS with preprogrammable waypoints and an expensive compass. Preprogram your waypoints along your most traveled routes. Never be lost again, right?
Spare fuel. There are emergency fuel packs sold in Wal Mart, K Mart, Auto Zone, etc. These are “trunk safe” containers of mineral spirits that can be used in a pinch if you run out of gas. One or two is a good idea. If you have a diesel, cooking oil can serve as an emergency fuel, so keep a couple of gallons of vegetable oil in your vehicle.
A small can of red spray paint. This is optional. If you need to mark your way whether by marking trees or by leaving a directional arrow in the snow, have this item.
Water. If it is snowy, you have water. If it isn’t you need at least three 20oz bottles per day. Figure to have on hand a 3 day supply. Gatorade is better, but have something to drink.
A charcoal hand warmer. These can be found at sporting goods shops. Have one and extra fuel. Store them in ziplock bags. This item can be the difference between losing and keeping digits in a frostbite situation. If you can, get two so you can warm your hands and feet at the same time.
Personal protection. I know I am repeating myself here. Carry pepper spray. There are bad people in the world and you don’t want to get to know them. There are good people on the road, but that’s not the expectation you should use.
Firearms. Get a quality pistol and get good with it. Stick it in your parka pocket and zip it shut when you walk. If you have it on a holster it might show and people might not slow to help you. It will also be more difficult to get to under a parka. If it is in the pocket you can keep your hand in there and no one will notice. They will assume you are just cold. Make certain you zip of button you pocket when you walk as to prevent your weapon from falling out.
Advanced BOB
Oh dear, it finally happened. Some jackass nuked half a dozen major cities simultaneously, the food and petroleum supply has been disrupted, there is a plague that makes the Black Death look like a head cold and we can’t fight it, or Mike Tyson is in an elevator with you. Whatever it may be, it is time to haul ass in a big way, and you have a long way to go. This isn’t just getting home due to a bad hair day, this is Bosnia for a Croat or Rwanda for a Hutu time. It is time to “Run Forrest, run!” or “Run Luke, run!” depending on how grandiose your self image is.
When you go you know that travel may be uncertain. There may be roadblocks as is routine in rural Africa when there is one of their periodic disease outbreaks, there may be civil unrest like the Rodney King riots, there may be martial law declared so you can’t use the roads. Any way you slice it you have to maximize the chances of getting yourself and your family safely to safety, and this may involve transition from wheels to feet in order to get there.
Before you can even consider this level of planning you need to consider the goal. If you wish to go to Grandma’s farm 300 miles away, you need not one plan, or two plans, you need several alternates. What takes 5 hours by highway may take weeks with a family in tow on foot. Write down the plans in a notebook and have the appropriate maps. If you catch some Apache’s arrow, the rest of the family will still need to make it there if they can.
Consider the size of your family and their ages. This will be a major indicator of what needs to happen with regards to provisions.
Never try to carry any more than 50-60 pounds per healthy adult male, and never try to go 25-35 pounds per woman or teen.
Always plan for the worst. If you have 3 kids and a wife make every plan as though it would be made over land without roads and carrying at least one member. Figure that if you can go 15 miles a day with a family on foot, you are really doing well, so 300 miles equals a minimum of 20 days of travel, with a realistic expectation being 30 days. And an angry, dirty, whining, X Box withdrawal group of unhappy campers they will be.
This list is a continuation of the above BOB lists. The first two lists were just for a single person. Do the math. Multiply where you need to, more tents, ponchos, etc. Figure a roll of toilet paper lasts an adult male a week when he eats regularly, so multiply rolls times people times weeks. Family of five going 300 miles? 5 people X 4 weeks is twenty rolls of paper, which is a lot of volume, so everyone carries their own TP in their personal ruck. Another thing, get the roughest TP you can get. It wipes off the poop better, it stores better, and the women won’t use as much.
The bag or bags. Go to a dive store, that is a place SCUBA divers shop, not a store with cheap beer and cheaper women. Get one of the large dive bags they sell. These bags are designed to hold heavy and bulky stuff in harsh environments and are extremely rugged. Don’t forget to buy individual rucks for those who don’t have them. They make good book bags for kids, so tell them that is what they will use them for. It will get them used to carrying them.
A shovel. You will need to bury your poop and scrape a fire pit. You may also need to bury someone. If you have to bury someone, mark the location in your GPS. It may be important for you to return later. Bring at least a military issue entrenching tool. They are small, inexpensive, light, and they collapse.
A water filter. You cannot expect your wife or kids to drink ditch water. Get a reverse osmosis filtration pump with an iodide filter. An inexpensive backup that you must have is regular household bleach. 3 to 4 drops per gallon is all that is needed to make water safe for consumption, so get a small medicine dropper and fill it with bleach. Add the bleach to the water, stir or shake vigorously, and let it sit for an hour. It will then be drinkable. Try to avoid ingesting any sediment.
Binoculars. Have at least one pair. You may have a need to look at things at a distance. Don’t go cheap on binos, this is one area where expensive is good.
A wagon. Go to Lehman’s online catalogue or go to Lowes or Home Depot, etc. They will have very sturdy wooden wagons or metal garden wagons. The metal garden wagons typically have better handles, better wheels, better suspensions, and carry more, but they can be uncomfortable to touch in winter and they can rust. If you have to put an infant in one, you don’t want there to be a chance of instant frostbite just because he was fussy and flailing around. The suggestion is to go with wood. You can order a Lehman’s wagon with very large wheels for off road use. If you have small children who may need to be pulled, get two wagons. One wagon is for provisions and the other to carry rug rats. http://www.LEHMANS.com These wagons can carry two or three hundred pounds easily, so these are not your old Radio Flyer.
Food. Half a cup of dried rice is equal to roughly 1 ½ cups of cooked rice. That is a lot of rice per person, so no one should be very hungry. Figure a family of five eating twice a day is five cups a day times thirty days travel is 150 cups of rice.
With 16 cups per gallon two 5 gallon containers should suffice for a month’s travel. Get PVC buckets with pour spout lids.
Beans. Rice and beans twice a day for a month will cool ardor and may lead to acts of violence, but you will be pleased to see that they have plenty of energy to argue, since rice and beans will provide almost all the nutrients a body needs.
The question is, “How much of beans do we carry?” If you plan on canned beans figure 60 eight to twelve ounce cans. If you get dried beans, figure ¾ a cup dried volume per meal, or a little over 3 gallons of dried beans. The drawback to dried beans is that they have to be soaked for 24 hours, so you will have to start soaking beans 24 hours in advance of each meal which is a pain.
While dried beans are better in the long run because the excess can be planted at your destination come warm weather, you may wish to opt for canned.
Fat. Get a two gallon jug of Crisco. You will need it in order to cook wild game which is always extremely lean meat. You may wish to get a three pound block of lard instead. Lard would actually be better since it is a solid and can’t leak. It also tastes better, and takes up less space.
Salt. Carry a pound box of iodized salt. You will use it at your destination or for barter. Ever wonder where salt comes from? It most likely isn’t a local product. You will be sweating a lot on this trip, so you will need salt.
Meat. This will be provided by Mother Nature. Do you know the Iroquois word for bad hunter? Vegetarian.
Cookware. Bring a metal measuring cup. You need to measure that rice. Bring a cast iron skillet and a cast iron 2 quart pan with a lid. Get a metal serving spoon and a metal spatula. That should take care of all your cooking utensil needs.
An axe. Never be without a good axe. Get one with a hammer side if you can.
Soap. Carry a few bars. You need to bathe once a week, and daily hand washing is very important. Try to stock anti-bacterial if at all possible. Don’t carry liquid soap as it is heavier and can spill.
Radio. Get a hand powered radio. They will pick up shortwave, weather stations, AM, and FM stations. They don’t take batteries, so that is one more thing you won’t have to bring. Also consider getting some walkie-talkies. Have extra rechargable batteries and keep them charged.
Insect repellent. Get some suitable repellants for the older people and for any infants. You can’t use high concentrations of DEET on infants and toddlers because it can cause skin irritation and seizures. Remember, spray it on your hand and wipe it on the kid, don’t spray it on them.
Fishing tackle. You can make a fishing rig out of a bean can or a Coke can, some monofilament line, a float, and a hook. Fishing rods can get broken, so unless you are one of the lucky few with a Pocket Fisherman, you will have to improvise. They are available on Amazon.
Hammock. Get a cheap fishnet hammock for every member of your party except the littlest ones. The hammocks will serve as hammocks, naturally. They will also serve as a hasty stretcher and as a hasty fishnet with the use of saplings cut for poles. You can simplify putting them up and taking them down by tying a heavy duty D ring on the end ropes. You just wind the line around the tree trunk a few times and snap the D ring onto the rope to secure it. They are cheap and will roll up into a ball the size of a man’s fist. They fit easily into a small ziplock for carrying.
Rope. Get about 20 or 30 feet of stout ½ or ¾ inch rope. You may need it to pull the wagons or for some other unforeseen purpose. Learn some knots. A ready source (and free!) Is A. Hyatt Verrill’s Knots, Splices and Rope Work, on gutenberg.org. If your Bug Out is by water, his “The Book of the Sailboat: How to rig, sail and handle small boats” might be handy. But regardless, knowing a handful of useful knots will always be helpful. A couple of hundred feet of paracord will always be useful. An older copy of The Boy Scout Handbook would be handy.
Firearms. Have a .22LR rifle at the very least. It isn’t much of a self defense weapon, but it will kill rabbits and squirrels. A 12GA shotgun is also strongly recommended with a variety of loads. A centerfire rifle is even more strongly recommended. Every able bodied member should bear a long arm on the trip, even if they don’t know how to use it. If you carry some slugs, some #1 buckshot, and some #6 shot, you can take deer as well as small game. Again, firearms are a very personal choice, so make yours wisely, and get some training.
Personal bags. Each person who can carry one should have a backpack of some sort. In addition to toilet paper, let them put whatever they want into it without comment when you leave, they will need that psychologically.
Medicine. Over the counter meds are strongly recommended if you have needed them in the past. Also make sure you get some Imodium for the treatment of diarrhea. Diarrhea can be fatal in kids. Children’s vitamins are also a good idea if they are already taking them.
A sewing kit. A good all purpose emergency sewing kit will weigh only a few ounces and take up less space than a pack of cards. It is good not only for suturing clothes, but skin as well in a pinch. Get one and a few extra buttons.
Gas mask. A gas mask, better called a protective mask, may be something an individual may consider not carrying at all. Protective masks are good for filtering out nuclear, biological, and chemical threats. Lets talk about the three NBC scenarios.
Nuclear They work best against a nuclear threat where they will act to keep radioactive dust out of your lungs. Since an area that has been bombed will lose most of its danger due to fallout in days, hours if there is a strong rain, this mask will be of limited usefulness. In fact, this degree of protection can be approxamated by breathing through a wet rag, and an almost identical degree of protection can be given by a cannister type painter’s mask. A promaks is a good thing to have in this instance, but the remotenet possibility of an nuclear attack along with the extremely remopte chance of your encountering it may not justify the purchase of this item.
Chemical Chemical warfare agents are difficult to make, transport, and employ. They just plain old don’t work very well, and as a result it is almost an impossibility that even soldiers in a combat zone will ever encounter them much less a civilian.. A good quality mask will protect you from inhalation of toxic fumes for several hours to several days.
Biological In the event of a natural or man made plague a quality pro mask will provide excellent protection. Virises cannot easily pass through, bacteria certainly cannot at all. The problem here is that most likely by the time you discover there is a danger of infection, it is too late to don your pro mask.
The problem with pro masks is that they provide temporary protection. You can’t live in one, so you must leave the area. Another problem is that if you have a family you may be able to protect your adult and young adult members, but infants can only be protected by “Gas Tents” that use battery powered filtrations systems, and retail for several hundred dollars each.
A good source for these items is http://www.APPROVEDGASMASKS.com. This is another place where expensive most likely means good quality. Don’t skimp if you buy one of these, it is a false economy.
*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog. Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so. As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste. 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. ;)*
When a heroine in peril disguises herself as a minstrel to escape her treacherous, wrathful brother, she finds herself on a series of unorthodox adventures that raise from lowly minstrel to king’s advisor.
Working as a barista at The Purple Bear gives Fiona Albright the quiet life she wants. She loves how she can forget the outside world—and the abusive brother she ran away from—as she serves up coffee to the people of Laurel Springs, West Virginia.
Then Gabriel LaCroix comes in with tales of an extraordinary existence he says she’s forgotten, one she must remember at all costs: her role as mother of the universe next to his as father.
Guiding her through their memories as they sleep, Gabe shows Fiona the lives she’s forgotten. Times when she and he created universes and times when they were pulled to them to fix the problems.
But the existence she’s forgotten comes with a dark duty. Fiona and Gabriel must destroy the universe when people turn against one another. And the people of sleepy Laurel Springs are turning against one another quickly…and bringing the rest of humanity down the same path.
She knows nothing of the hall where she lives, alone, where sea serpents prowl the shore, except that it bears the name Hall of the Heiress — not even if she is the heiress it speaks of.
Rio Bell is leading a cattle drive up the Goodnight Loving Trail to Fort Laramie. It’s his first time as trail boss, but with trusted hands and hard work, he expects to be back in Texas by late September though fire, flood, or rustlers bar the way!
He didn’t count on a range war.
They didn’t account for the Rio Kid…
And he sure as hell didn’t count on the girl showing up!
Unexpectedly stranded in the Dallas, Texas, airport, on her way back to Manhattan in the midst of the Breakup of the United States, attorney Silvia Fernandez finds herself suddenly enmeshed in the new internal security bureau, ExComm, of the emergent Republic of Texas.At once a selfish opportunist to advance herself into power, Sylvia at the same time seeks to lay the groundwork to put an end to a state-terror organization before matters advance from the crucifixion of criminals to a bloodbath that will engulf them all.
Göll is a Valkyrie, a chooser of the slain. She takes those who die in battle first to Hel for judgement, then on to their final destination, whether it’s Valhöl or elsewhere. When her latest slain is an eight year old boy she finds herself facing a new challenge, one she had never before faced in all her centuries of serving the Lord of Battles.
Tommy Reilly and the misfit crew of the cargo ship Sabercat just managed to make it off of the planet Ararat with their load, but that was the easy part.
Now they have to land on a planet completely controlled by a church many consider more of a cult than a religion, all so they can get their hands on some information, information that could free all the colonies from the control of the Earth Defense Command.
Unfortunately, a master criminal got his hands on it first, which means the crew of Sabercat have to get it back, then escape from a planetary government known to shoot first and ask questions later.
Yep. It seems Tommy has landed his ship and his new family deep inside hostile territory.
From a missing hiker (with really bad taste) in the Appalachians to WYRD and Drako’s Dark Roast all-night show, to a water-expert with a talon-t for trouble, and a search for justice, this quartet of stories explore life in a world where dragons and humans live side-by-side.
Short story set, 15,000 words.
Mischief, murder, mayhem, and music to rock the night away!
FROM SARAH A. HOYT (who yes, will get the sequel out soon!): https://amzn.to/2ZmUKeNDeep Pink.
Like all Private Detectives, Seamus Lebanon [Leb] Magis has often been told to go to Hell. He just never thought he’d actually have to go. But when an old client asks him to investigate why Death Metal bands are dressing in pink – with butterfly mustache clips – and singing about puppies and kittens in a bad imitation of K-pop bands, Leb knows there’s something foul in the realm of music. When the something grows to include the woman he fell in love with in kindergarten and a missing six-year-old girl, Leb climbs into his battered Suburban and like a knight of old goes forth to do battles with the legions of Hell. This is when things become insane…. Or perhaps in the interest of truth we should say more insane.
…with a young woman desperate to leave her dusty planet for space … a British boy determined to end WWII all by himself … a cop in a dark world willing to do anything for a good read… an old cowboy with a final, heavy burden
…and more, in this collection of short stories from SF author Sabrina Chase.
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.
I swear I’m going to do a chapter of Witch’s Daughter soon.
Today is not that day. Mostly because I’m sitting here, debating between working, which I badly need to, and going back to bed, which is what I feel like.
I’m very late with finishing the current short novel, and I can’t be late, the schedule for the year won’t allow it. I should have finished it yesterday, I should. Only ten minutes into writing I found myself in the kitchen baking. And I have no idea why.
To explain, baking is what I do when the world becomes too much to deal with. The amount of baking I do has some proportional correspondence to how horrible what I’m dealing with is.
Dan has joked for years that my first week in any house I bake enough — cake, bread, cookies, whatever — to last a month. If the move has been unusually stressful, I will cook enough to fill a decent sized freezer and last us, in eating for six months.
I do not, btw, want to EAT the stuff — though the baking these days is still low carb, because we ill eventually eat it — I just need to bake.
There is no conscious thought, no “I feel bad, I’ll go bake.” No, what happens is that I’ll find myself suddenly in the kitchen and in the middle of a serious baking spree.
In 9/11, when the second plane hit the tower, I suddenly found myself in the kitchen making doughnuts. In fact, when I became aware of what I was doing, there were two dozen made. And then I made more. And more. And more.
So, you know what the level of “I baked all the things” discomfort? Chaos? Upset? normally is.
I have no idea why, having written a few words and being on track to finish the novel yesterday, I suddenly found myself in the kitchen, baking. Without ever thinking about doing it, btw.
Now if I had just gone to the kitchen and baked a loaf of bread, or even a loaf of bread and a tea cake, I’d just have gone “Okay…. I didn’t feel like writing and played hooky.”
Because one of the things with being low carb is that I do every so often (about once a week) bake a loaf of bread and a cake. And periodically, like one evening every two weeks, I make a batch of cookies. This is the stuff I have with my tea in the afternoon, or in the evening with a cup of hot chocolate, if I’ve achieved my writing goals.
But you know…. that’s not what I did. When I was done, I’d made six different types of crackers and three sets of cookies. Why? I don’t know.
I kept thinking “Why am I doing this? I am late on the novel. I have stuff to write.” and then I’d start another recipe.
We’ll eat it. It’s all in large cookie jars. We’ll eat it over time. BUT why?
I have no idea. I wake up with the horrors a lot, and apparently I’m upset enough to bake up a storm.
So– what do I do now? I’m going to try to finish the novel to go to my betas. That’s why. And I’d going to put up the short story and remaining novel of Kate’s con books with inkstain.
And then I’m going to find a cozy corner, and sit down and make a bible for the shifter series, so I can finish Bowl of Red.
IF i can get myself up instead of sleeping.
So next up are finishing the two shifter books, and then the two next Dyce books, while I edit Darkships for re-release.
In the middle of this there will several short novels to finish. And a bunch of them in the Schrodinger universe. The next one is Winter Prince.
But that’s, of course, supposing I don’t find myself in the kitchen baking enough for an army.
And I still don’t know what caused the bizarre attack of baking. Which worries more than a little.
According To Hoyt 