Category: Uncategorized

I’ve said before that the left in the twenty first century seems to have a curious form of autism, in which groups are essential, and people who belong to groups are interchangeable widgets.

Not only that, but they have the duty of being interchangeable widgets. How else do you explain the left calling someone a race or gender “traitor” for not thinking exactly the thoughts the left assigned them?

This is a great part of their mind reading schtick. If you oppose them, they know that you wish for the exact opposite of what they claim to want, and therefore you must for sure want the opposite.

So, say you say something like “Sure, we should encourage girls, but we can encourage boys too.”  Because — being binary — by “encourage girls” they mean “promote female supremacy” they KNOW that you want to promote male supremacy.

But it goes way beyond that, to the point that one thinks they must be robots thinking in 0s and 1s and nothing else exists in the world.

The same people who keep accusing their opponents of seeing the world in black and white, think “all lives matter” is opposition to “black lives matter” AND is “white supremacy.”

Because in their heads, at the moment, there are only two races (rolls eyes.) and therefore if you say all lives matter, it’s a covert way of saying that only white lives matter. Because obviously you’re opposing black lives matter.

In fact that name for the movement is the perfect trap, if you’re an idiot who thinks there are only two races, and “you’re with us or against us.”

By proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” — a statement that’s akin to “the sky is blue or occasionally shading to grey” or “humans are usually bipedal” to most of us who thinnk HUMAN LIFE MATTERS — when no one has ever said “Black Lives don’t matter” what they’re doing is saying you can’t oppose them. Because if you say anything but what they say you’re denying them.

This would be stupid enough if all the movement were really doing were opposing unwarranted police killings. ALL OF AMERICA opposes unwarranted police killings, no matter what the color of the person killed. Because we know we’re all potentially in the crosshairs.

But in fact the movement has a long list of demands that have absolutely zero to do with that and include a bunch of “collectivist” stuff that white Marxists like.

This is in fact just like Kwanza which was created by Marxists and all the principles attributed to what they claim is an African holiday (hint, Africa is very diverse, as any place which had poor roads till recently is. “African Holiday” is like “Unicorn, purple.”) are Marxist bull excreta.

The Marxists on the left, in search of their revolution, have turned to stoking tribal hatreds and to attributing to people who tan the values they want people who tan to have.  These include “no private property” and similar bullshit which simply doesn’t work for humans, period.

In this they show their roots as a racist movement. Only racists think culture is genetically inherited, or that black people born in America have more in common with black people in Africa than with other Americans.  Also, only racists think the family-sharing that is prevalent in Africa (as is necessary for survival in any stressed society) is the same as their Marxist collectivism.

In fact this dividing people in groups and simplifying every conflict to two sides and “you’re either with us or against us” is racist. And sexist. And anti-human.

Humans aren’t that simple. Society isn’t that simple. The world is that simple.

The leftist compulsion to try to compel you to agree with them by presenting the choice as binary is a fool’s game.

If they keep playing this game, they’re going to regret it. Because they might stop people saying what they think, or even compel them to say what the leftists want to hear.

But ultimately disabling the fire alarm doesn’t mean you’re now safe from fires forever more.  Silence speech and declaring thoughts not merely unsavory but unthinkable? Doesn’t mean we won’t think it.

It didn’t work ever in history.

Claiming there’s only two choices (hey, how about sexes? Oh, wait. Not believing in 57 and a half genders is transphobic, because…. I don’t know. Cheese?  Oh, yeah, because you need the can to match the contents, and we’re either against you or for you. I see.) and that we’re either with you or against you means we’ll be against you.

Because ultimately?  I’m against whoever forces me to choose in a false binary.  No, this doesn’t mean that I’m against black people.  Because that would be stupid. But I’m against any deceptively named movement that implies someone else is saying black lives DON’T matter.  And I’m against any brainwashed, virtue signaling idiot who claims that believing each and every human life matters is the opposite of black lives mattering.

Keep pushing, leftists.

The backlash from this is going to be epic.

And you’ll never see it coming.

 

 

Waiting For The Miracle _ A Blast From The Past From February 2014

*Yes, I do have guest posts. No, I haven’t even read them yet, much less contacted people to know what name they want them under. It will come.
When we got back there was a lot of “house stuff” and “gardening stuff” to catch up on, and we’re still in the middle of the great office move and reflooring.  BUT I’m making time to look at submitted guest posts this week.  Writing first, is all, which is part of this post below. As I reorient, I’m making fiction a priority which it’s never REALLY been.  Because frankly I probably don’t have an excess of time. (Now if the stupid subconscious doesn’t lock me due to living in insane times.)
However today none of this applies.  We just slept really late, and I just finished breakfast.  Nno, neither of us knows why, except perhaps after-shocks of the trip.  This getting old stuff SUCKS. — SAH*

As you guys know, this last weekend I was attending a seminar here in town.  One of the presentations (which I’d got to audit last year and already knew was great) was James Owen’s Drawing Out the Dragons – go look, for the book and/or CD which I understand is a close approximation to being there in person.

I think it’s great and inspirational and I wish I’d got it thirty years ago, when we didn’t have dependents (other than the cats) and when – frankly – we were afraid of our own breath which is why I’d write novels and spend years not sending them out.  (Okay, we also didn’t have money for postage, but we could have sold something.  (Not one of the cats, though.  No one would buy them.))  If you’re relatively young (younger than I) you definitely want to buy the book/CD and go through it.  It might be the kick in the pants you need.

Keep in mind, though, that you’re not him.  Take a sane and rational assessment of your drive, your qualifications and your need to do whatever you really want to do (writing, cooking, painting or playing piano) instead of what you’re doing.

I am aware of my own limitations and my own internal issues.  Just listening to this doesn’t turn me into J. K. Rowling – by which I don’t mean the writing itself (yes, she is a good writer, but she also hit at the right time, in the right place, and I might be as good as she was and as lucky as she was at some point.)  I mean that if I were a single mother, on public assistance, even if I weren’t so poor that I couldn’t afford heating, the paranoid side of my brain would lock the writing down absolutely tight, and I’d be getting a minimum wage job, just to bring in some money and set my foot on a ladder.  I know I have the crazy paranoid person inside my head who spends most of her time locking my writing down tight.

Okay – let me backtrack – James Owen’s presentation is about having the courage to let go of your stupid, go-nowhere “safe career” to do what you really want to do.  He says, right at the beginning “If you want to do something, no one can stop you from it.  If you don’t want to do it, no one can help you.”

You should listen to it, and consider his point, but you should also consider who you are.  For instance, I wish I’d listened to this 20 years ago, so I’d have had the focus to work without the near death experience, and even more importantly, to have more focus for the last twenty or thirty years.

Near death experience?

We were talking about this session – my husband and I – and we went back to the fact that part of the effect of the presentation was achieved for me when I was 33 and I found myself on my back, in an hospital bed, with pneumonia, and thinking I was going to die.  Or rather the doctors thought so.

I had a kid who was 5 and one who was a year and a half, and I thought I was going to die.  There was the usual issue when you have children that age.  I worried about my husband and my children, of course; I worried about who would look after my kids when Dan was working.

But what surprised me – shocked me to the core – is that I was guilty and worried about the books I’d never written.

Now, yes, I’ll probably die with books unwritten, but all of my worlds were dying with me.  One of the worlds was one I had had since I was fourteen – and when I died all of those characters would also die. (Part of the conversation this morning is that this world will have to be written.  And those of you who know exactly what I’m talking about, yes, what I mean is that world, and yes, it will be a pen name.  Closed.  But wouldn’t it be hilarious if that is the series that takes off.  It will be written, as time permits.  It will have to be published indie.  This is for my own conscience.  The rest is not important.)

When I actually recovered (and that’s a story in itself and not here) and went home, even before the year of recovery passed and I was fully recovered, changes were made.  That illness is part of the reason my children went to kindergarten and later to public school – so mommy had writing time.  They were still getting taught at home after school.  And yes, if I had the time again, I’d homeschool and write while the kids were working.  When forced I found out later on that I could do that.  But that’s besides the point.

I’d been writing before I almost died.  In fact, I had been part of a writing group, and I thought I was serious about my writing.  But in fact, I only sent a short story out a year or so, and though I was working on my writing everything else took priority.

After I came out of the hospital, even in my lowest-fiction-writing year (aka 2013), I’ve never written fewer than two novels and several short stories a year, and I sent them out, and I started seriously applying my time and effort to getting things published.

Because if I went back to the hospital, I didn’t want to be lying there and knowing there were worlds that lived only in my head and were dying with me.  I didn’t want that guilt.

That alone was enough to seriously focus me, though I had distractions – still do – and last year I got sucked into a whirlpool called non-fiction writing and consecutive illnesses, and finally had to step back, take a hard look and realize I couldn’t go on with that and is it what I really wanted to do?  (Yes, I’ll still be writing for PJM, but we’ve arranged things differently, and I’ll be writing less and have only one deadline for four posts a month.)

That is what a near fatal illness will cause you to do.  And I think it’s possible that Drawing Out Dragons will perhaps give you the same drive, the same focus (or close enough) without a near fatal illness.  (I get no portion of these sales, so if you can sit down and do this calculation yourself, do it.)

But think about it.  If you find yourself in bed, dying tomorrow, what would weigh on your conscience?

If you find yourself regretting that you spent so much time writing and so little playing with your kids or holding hands with your spouse, for the love of G-d, stop writing now and go do that stuff.

No.  Wait let me explain.  You’ll always feel a certain regret on those things.  When I get to take a walk with my husband, and spend the whole afternoon just the two of us, I treasure those days – or weekends.  Yes, the canoodling ones – and would like to do a lot more it.  And the other day I found myself crying into a box of pictures of the kids when they were little, because you can never hug them or play with them enough.  (They’re wonderful kids now, but they’re really not kids anymore, since both are legal adults and the older is the age I got married at. I miss my littles.  And no, I didn’t hug them enough.)  But this is the stuff you never do “enough.”

The question is do you regret that MORE than you regret not having published those worlds that have haunted you since the age of six?  If so, just go and play with your kids now, and devote ten years being a mom/dad or wife/husband.  Later, when the kids move out, revisit this question.

On the other hand, if, as with me, you feel bad about the times not taken to cuddle the kids, but what you REALLY mind is all those worlds – find a way to be serious about writing.

No, seriously.  Find a way.  Remember who you are.  Quitting your job might only make you neurotic and lock down your writing.  So you might want to keep a job, keep a safety net, whatever.  And yeah, you might still want to take time to spend with the kids and the husband – but put in two hours a day (say) hard and fast so you can write.  Or whatever it is you really want to do.

Because few of us (ah!) come back from their death beds.  And you might not have a second chance.  And waiting for the miracle when everything is perfect for your great work, just means it will never get done.

The New York Times, that bastion of lies and wrongness who went from justifying Holodomor and sweeping it under the rug, to claiming that America was founded to BE a slave state, had a headline that obtruded on my attention when I finally sat down at my computer today (Sorry to be so late, I’m catching up on things left undone the last couple of weeks, including the Everest of laundry.)

It said “America was not a Democracy until Black Americans fought to make it so.”

There are so many errors in that as to make me want to march into the Times offices in full Portuguese mom mode, my slipper in one hand and ask them if they’re proud of themselves and the lies they tell.  (Probably, as a “journalist” tweeted yesterday, journalism is not about making friends. It’s about agitation.  That right there should get all her colleagues to drum her out in a chorus of disapproval, but they won’t.  Among the many things our ladies and gentlemen of the press are ignorant about it’s what they’re actually SUPPOSED to be doing.  Which is telling what happened with neither favor nor malice.)  But if we started up a team of moms to wash the mouths (and fingers) of NY Times Jornolists Journalists, we’d never be done, because they are so far steeped in lies you can tell they’re lying because their fingers move.

Let’s start with the idea (there was a line underneath about the ideals of the founding) that America was SUPPOSED to be a democracy.  Our founding fathers had seen the effects of democracy.  There is a reason we’re a democratic republic.  A democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner.

A democracy: one man one vote, and the  result being counted that way is exactly what the left wishes for America. They want the president to be elected by popular vote.  To the extent that they’ve managed to implement it in the states (is there a constitutional lawyer in the house? Are we not granted a republican form of government in the states as well?) we have seen how that works.  Not only do the cities with higher population get to elect the governor and representatives — which means the interests of the country side and rural populations are completely forgotten — but also, because it’s much easier to fraud the vote in the cities, the party of fraud tends to have a lock on the vote and be able to experiment with their terror techniques and such brand new ideas as a Committee of Public Safety instead of the police. (How long do you think till the tumbrils roll? Look, I have issues with the mentality of a lot of big city police departments of us vs. them not to mention the militarization of the police.  However abolishing the police force all together, in a city already riven by division and agitation is going to end badly.)

Furthermore, a democracy over a country the size and diversity of ours would not work. It would devolve into a shooting war within days if not sooner.

That’s number one, against the New York Times.  The second part of their insanity is “Black Americans fought.”  From the Civil war to the civil rights movement, black and white people walked together and fought together against injustice.

But what the agitators journalists of the Times are doing, as well as what the whole left has been doing — for generations now — is convincing black Americans that a) The US is the most racist place ever.  b) slavery was invented to enslave black people because white people hate them so much.  c) there is this invisible “systemic” racism that causes white people to treat black people in ways that force black people to commit crimes, and/or live in poverty. d) there is some magical, beautiful place where everyone gets along and black people assume their rightful place of superiority to all.  A lot of black people in the US have been told this is Europe (snort giggle) Others have been told the Arab countries are that place.  In fact, many of them are told that Muslims are much less racist than any other religion (it would be snort giggle, but I’m too busy choking on vomit.) And then there was — though it seems less widespread now — the idea that Africa is a magical paradise because of the lack of “racism.”

All of these, ideas that there is a perfect land for American people who happen to be black, btw, last until a black person from the US moves to this supposed paradise, to live as a LOCAL.  Then it blows up spectacularly.

The others hold up for various levels of holding up simply BECAUSE the lies are so all pervasive, disseminated not just by “journalists” but by entertainment, by education, by casual conversation, and by EDUCATED white Americans.  If everyone tells you the same thing you believe it. At least unless you’re a cross patch and insist on believing your lying eyes over what they tell you.

These lies have destroyed the black community in America and the lives of countless Americans of all skin colors.

Back in the late eighties at a party I was witness to an argument between a black lady about my age, and a gentleman my dad’s age.  He was an historian and he asked her why so many black Americans convert to Islam, when it was Muslim traders who mostly captured and sold slaves to America.

The young lady erupted in the kind of irrational name calling and screaming that was (besides being very atypical to her) the sign that something she believed without examination was being challenged and she didn’t know what to do, because it formed part of who she thought she was. To challenge it was to challenge HER and what formed the center of her identity.

Prompted by this I started evaluating what they taught people in school about African slavery and found that they were taught no other race had ever been enslaved and only whites inherent racism (no other race being racist) caused them to create it, to enslave the black man.

I have no intention — this is for the skimming trolls — of defending slavery, a revolting practice as is any practice that infringes on the natural rights of man (and woman, since the skimming trolls are too stupid to infer.)  I hate it as much as communism, which I consider a sub-branch of the practice (and if you don’t I enjoin you to study history.)

I do know however, partly because I read a lot of archeology and history, that slavery has been part of the evils that mankind has been beset with and beset others with since the dawn of mankind. If you have homo-sapiens blood (and even though I have way more Neanderthal than most, I still have a lot of homo-sapiens) you’re descended from slaves and slaves. And those were all colors.  Both of them.  And even though there can be no proof, I bet you there were slaves stretching back to when there were five or six human species.

At the time I first realized the mal-education black (and indeed all) Americans were subjected to on that point, I thought they were trying to do it out of kindness.  Yes, I was naive. I thought teachers were trying to say “this is an aberration, and it wasn’t your ancestors fault. They might have been slaves, but they were without evil, and now you can start anew.”

I was wrong. It has since become clear I was wrong. The purpose of obscuring that there had been slavery since always, as well as that there is still slavery notably in Africa (and not all by Chinese overlords) was the contrary. It was to convince all young Americans that America was uniquely evil and therefore to convince them to destroy this, the last hope of mankind.

I presume the destruction of actual black lives was part of the plan as well. If you tell people that they alone are descended from people who allowed themselves to be enslaved, and that they are so hated that STILL there is this invisible “systemic racism” destroying all their attempts to better themselves, you’re going to keep them mired in despair and poverty.  Which are fertile ground for hatred.

(And yes, I know poor people get treated differently than the rich by the police. If you look back through my posts, I posit that replacing punching someone who offended you with taking them to court as a societal practice inherently favors the rich and diminishes the dignity of the individual. But there are also pathologies of being poor in America which are a discussion for another post. And poor is by no means by skin color.)

Look, I’ve told before on how, first arrived in America, I associated mostly with other immigrants. And because assimilation is HARD we often hit our nose on the wall. And told each other just-so stories about how everyone else was keeping us down.  I realized the stupidity of this, severed links with these people and started trying to ignore “discrimination” as a cause.  Is it a cause?  Oh, in some cases. But we’re all discriminated against for various things, sometimes stupid things like “I don’t like your face.”  It’s best to do what we can and ignore THAT. Because if we have a ready-made excuse for failure you’ll never succeed.

Now imagine that the entire culture and all the mechanisms of society, including those supposed to help you, do nothing but tell you that you can’t succeed and that no one will let you….

And with all that the funny thing is that black Americans, by and large, are no more resentful (let alone hateful) than people their age and economic standing.  In fact, the riots tearing America apart — while another thing to convince black Americans that they can’t just live like other Americans — are mostly fueled by white college students taught the same nonsense and filled with rage and hatred, because they’re convinced they live in the worst country in the world. (And the rich ones having gone on vacation to Europe “know” how much better it is. … because they’ve never lived there as locals, and don’t understand enough of the language to know what is said of them behind their backs. Never mind.)

The technique being used was used to flip the colonial powers out of Africa by the same people using it here.  And while I’m not going to defend colonialism as a whole and even the BEST colonial regimes were still awful in some ways, let me tell you that what came after in every circumstance was worse.  The worst colonialism did to Africa was allow socialists and communists to infiltrate it.

But in Africa black people were a majority. Here they are a small minority, and frankly not all of them — not even most of them — are collaborating with the left’s attempted revolution.  Because most of them are sane.

However if the “agitators” continue their work, all black people will suffer for it.  And people like me who can be confused for black, if we have a tan (I’ve been working in the yard) and their hair is worn a certain way will suffer for it as well.

The left is no more going to get their revolution than they were when they thought that OWS would cause the “grassroots” to revolt.  Their fundamental disconnect with reality causes them to act in ways that make no sense and then be bewildered when their sacred texts don’t come true.

But if this goes on, they’re going to get something.  And they won’t like what they get.  But neither will I or most of my readership, even the lilly-pale ones because Odds don’t fare well in a society that enforces mass conformity.  And as for our children and grandchildren….  Well, I have no idea what my biological grandchildren might look like. We’re such a mixed lot as a family Dan and I had no clue what our children would look like. They might be blue eyed blonds, or look half-African or…. anything in between.  With the grandchildren, at least of the married son (we have no idea what the younger son will find or drag home :) ) even more so.  Though we’re fairly sure they’ll be large, muscular and smart.

Black Americans didn’t “fight for democracy.”  That would be a stupid thing to fight for, and as all other collectivist bullshit the left has tried to push on them.

ALL colors of Americans fought and bled and died together for the ideals of the Founding.  From the beginning.

It’s time to start calling the liars on their lies.  It’s time to find out what they taught our young and correct it.  It’s time to remember who and what we are.

Color?  Who the heck cares. It correlates poorly to either intelligence or character.

It’s time the irredeemable racists of the left stop painting all whites (and white in America is a very fluid thing, mind you) as racist and all blacks as victims.

It’s time to remember we’re Americans. We’re born in a country that grants us our natural rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Anyone selling a paradise that infringes on those for any of us of ANY COLOR doesn’t come in peace and doesn’t want what’s best for us.

And they should get no foothold here.  Anywhere.

 

 

Book Promo

*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 MARY CATELLI:  Jewel of the Tiger.

 

With their lands withering for want of protection from the wind, they hear a demand from the wizard: the jewel of the tiger.

Jyron, realizing it may be simpler than it looks, sets boldly out to get a jewel from the lair of a man-eating tiger. To find that simplicity does not mean ease.

FROM PAM UPHOFF:  The Lawyers of Mars: Three Novellas.

Three Novellas. The first has been previously published.

Xaero was a good IP lawyer, a junior partner with the family firm. Until she successfully defended an environmental terrorist. Now the Red Ever Mars rebels have kidnapped her cousin and something suspicious about the police response leads her to believe she’d better rescue Ralphe herself.

A spoof of lawyers and a look at what Martians might have done as their world died. A lighthearted series of adventures. With scales. And briefcases. And mad scientists.

FROM KAL SPRIGGS:   Vernian Space Gun (Army Space Corps Book 1).

For over 225 years, the United States Army has fought every enemy of the nation from around the globe, but now there’s a threat never before seen and it comes in the form of a transmission from a nearby star.

The transmission shows a war, a war on a scale never seen by man. And that war is on Humanity’s very doorstep. Major Daniels knows that Earth isn’t ready for that kind of war. In an era of fighter jets and smart-phones, we don’t have the technology or infrastructure to begin to fight aliens with the power to travel the stars.

But that’s the impossible mission set before him and his team. The United States will need defenses, ships, stations, bases, and weapons capable of fighting that enemy. The first hurdle: finding a way to stage supplies and materials in orbit for the massive surge in space infrastructure. It would require every scrap of lift capacity in the entire world five times over and Major Daniels has to find out how to do it fast.

His solution is simple: build the world’s biggest gun and start firing payloads into orbit. The execution is what’s wrought with peril. Because even if bureaucratic infighting and simple physics aren’t enough to stop his project, then real enemies here on Earth might well be.

Daniels has to figure out the problems with his Vernian Space Gun and keep an eye on his back, because some nations on Earth see the alien threat as an opportunity to settle old grudges and they don’t care about what might happen to all of Mankind in the process.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: CRUSH.

Sorry for not updating yesterday or really today. Sorry for not doing a chapter of Witch’s Daughter.
That will happen sometime this week.
I’ll probably resume normal posting tomorrow, but…

We were helping #1son and spouse move. Because the cheapest way was to drive u-haul and their cars, this involved all five family members in a multi-day drive, not counting the way back.  Because they got shorted on u-haul (look, everything is upside down and sideways and as was they had to drive 200 miles to get A u-haul, even if smaller than they wanted)  we had to rent a large size vehicle, to take the additional stuff.

Other things: finding hotels that are not likely to be in kinetic zones.  Dealing with outright bizarre and contradictory rules in restaurants: you can it out, you must eat in, you can get your own drink, no drinky touchy, etc. etc. etc. until you puke from ad-nauseum.

The conclusion from dealing with all the crazy rules (in hotels, too like some have a no housekeeping rule. Others, though they took our reservation were closed and sent us elsewhere… where we didn’t want to be. Etc) is that this is a completely irrational and complicated cos-play and I want NO part of it. If we’re going to cosplay, let’s do something fun instead.

Anyway, on way back with #2son stopped some fun places, but because of the issues it all took too long, so we were always rushed. Also, we didn’t get a decent sleep for three nights. (Yeah, I know, bitch, bitch, bitch…. ah, well.)

I had the Huns dinner for the SECOND time this year (Really? Dear Lord, the year has been crazy) and yes, it was sort of thin.  But it was a taste of normalcy.

BUT other than that…  nothing much has happened all day today.  I’m so completely out of sync I tried to set up a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow….

So forgive me. I’ll probably resume normal posts tomorrow.  Today I’m still out of sorts.

I’m very busy this week — some of you might have noticed ;) — and while I have guest posts I haven’t even opened my email since Monday and because last week was crazy (though not as crazy as this one) I haven’t even OPENED any of the guest posts.  So, if you sent something you haven’t been rejected. I just haven’t got to it.

I should be back home tomorrow and back to normal routine (now actually with more normal — long story — on Monday.)

Till then please excuse somewhat haphazard posting at strange hours, and often in a rush.  I know it’s the last thing you need right now, when you are feeling isolated and besieged. And yet it’s unavoidable right now, and we knew it was going to be like this since December (though not which exact week.)

I know, because a lot of you are my friends or are with me in mailing lists and groups, that you’re feeling like we’re losing this battle, or outright defeated.

Let me assure you that you’re not.

The left is and has always been — even in their governmental incarnations, such as the USSR — good at agit prop (Agitation and propaganda.)  One of the things they’re really good at is giving the appearance everyone agrees with them and everyone wants what they want.

Part of this is that they’re good at turning leftist insanity into a positional good.  They’ve made themselves look cool and smart — which is amazing for an ideology that always leads to brutish rule of the dumbest and most power hungry bullies and always ends in starvation and mass graves — which you can do when you own establishment news, education and entertainment for a century.  So a lot of people MOUTH their idiocy without even examining the words they’re saying, just to “look good.”  It’s been amazing to see so many intellectuals support the rioters until their own ox is gored.

Also their ownership of education has taught a lot of brainless young to mouth stuff they were taught, not aware it’s all lies.  Kindly, if you are responsible for one or more of those, keep them out of the fun happy riots, and tell them to keep their traps shut. If I’m right this will turn on a dime.  The professional agitators are smart enough to escape fast, but those brainless young might get killed. Tell them the life they save might be their own and that they’re “safer at home.” And away from the keyboard.

But in the end? The rioters and their hardcore mouth pieces are not even 20% of America, and the police taking a knee…. well, the police is on the police’s side. Maybe this will finally put paid to the myth of the heroic, always selfless policeman.  But what you can be absolutely sure of is that a lot of those taking a knee are doing it and feeling really, really angry.  Which means, btw, that the people who claim police was targeting them is ensuring they REALLY will.  Only harder, and faster.  Which is terrible, since most people who will bear the brunt of this ARE NOT GUILTY OF THE RIOTS.

Still, this will all shake out when it becomes obvious it’s failing, that it’s not bringing about the glorious revolution.  This is in fact OWS 2.0.  It’s part of the reality in the left’s heads (but not outside them) that everyone is groaning and suffering under oppression in America, and if they astroturf protests or cosplay revolution, 90% of the people will join in, having taken the clue.  They never understand why this doesn’t happen, and never question their assumption that everyone is waiting for the revolution.

When it becomes obvious this too will fail, they’ll switch to something else. Given what the left is today, it will probably be surreal and bizarre.  More on that later.

But in the end we win, they lose, because they’re responding too and trying to influence people and events that exist only in their own heads.

2004, when it seemed that the left was everywhere, an older friend in Heinlein fandom told me “Nah, they’re losing. You can always tell the left is losing because they get louder and louder.”

So, remember that.

And if you remember nothing else of this post, remember this: What you’re seeing is not the coming apart of America. What you’re seeing is the dropping of the masks.  Since the 70s at least all the institutions now failing have been corrupt, all the classes of people declaring their allegiance to revolution were already Marxist, and your own government was acting against you on many fronts.

Would you rather be ignorant and continue aiding the destruction of America by believing the enemies are friends?  Or would you rather SEE CLEARLY?

(I believe we’re living in a bad novel. It’s the only explanation for what is coming out in 2020….)

Don’t curse their sudden, yet inevitable betrayal.  Instead be aware of who they really are and also that people and movements who are strong don’t work at silencing the opposition and amplifying their screaming to seem like there’s more of them.

This is their ghost dance.  Keep calm.  And be not afraid.

This is going to end badly. Very, very badly.  And the water is going to get very choppy.

To everyone who is old enough and those of us who aren’t but who have read about the sixties and particularly those of us who have followed the glorification and idolization of what was a Soviet agit prop operation using stupid American middle class kids, this is starting to feel like one of those bad remakes.

Mostly because it is.

Older son was born in the last year of the echo boom and for our sins we raised him in a hippie mountain town, and then in an urban area inhabited by college professors.  We didn’t pick areas for the politics but for walkability (this one is the first house not in that criteria) because if I don’t have a reason to walk I don’t, and then I start getting ill.

This means I was exposed at school functions to more “we totes were at Woodstock” and “Come the revolution” types than I ever want to see in one place again. All about ten years older than us.  (Something happened there, because younger son, about 4 years younger was in a class where we were CONSISTENTLY the oldest parents by about 10 years.  I know we spawned late thanks to infertility. But I don’t know when my generation had kids.  Maybe they all married and had kids early? We did the first.)

And these kids came and played at my house, and I heard their talk.  It is not an exaggeration to say they were raised with the idea that revolution and protest, “resistance” and (incoherently) government work is the highest good.  I suspect that J. K. Rowling was raised that way too, from the fact that the only things she could think of for her characters to aspire to were government work.

Now they’ve been wound to a fever pitch by losing the election in 2016.  You see, their idiot parents and their idiot teachers, usually one and the same, have raised them with the idea that history comes with an arrow, and their beliefs and ideas are what the future will approve of and glorify.  Which is mental on many levels, the most important one being that their beliefs and ideas have no future. They do have a past, a miserable one of failure and oppression and mass graves from the USSR to China, from East Germany to Cuba, from North Korea to Venezuela.

But the kiddies don’t know that. They know that America is evil and unjust because it broke their parents’ and teachers blood-red wagon.  It’s “capitalist” and “Capitalism kills” (because homeless, and drug addicts and stuff) and it must be torn down so the great new future comes. It must also be overwhelmed by brown and black immigrants, because those have automatic moral virtue, written in their genes.

Orangemanbad won and is derailing the train of ruin and invasion by illiterate hordes that will bring about the glorious future, so orangemanbad must be destroyed at all costs.  Even if it means that the kiddies destroy their own country and their own society to do it. We deserve it, or orangemanbad wouldn’t be president. And besides America is the most racist country ever and the most patriarchal. (Those burkas? Safe spaces.  The ridiculous racism of Chinese? doesn’t exist. The casual racism of Europeans? Well, the kiddies never even heard it.)

Which brings us to what is going on.  Besides the fact that a lot of it is pre-planned, financed and pre-prepared by leftist agents who need a distraction before their kleptocratic malfeasance comes out into the public. The kiddies are willing joining into destruction and tearing down because a) they have no clue what destroying the economy would do to them personally. The only economics they know is Marxian cargo cult, and they’ve never been hungry a day — or an hour — in their lives. b) In many ways they are engaging in a ghost dance, a doing of actions they’ve been told are merit-bearing in order to bring about the future they’ve been told was inevitable and which now is in doubt. c) this is not in any way rational and sane. It’s a cult facing the tumbling down of their most cherished beliefs and what they do to hold on to them has nothing to do with real life.

Which brings us to Vanilla ISIS and its depredations.  These are NOT — in case you’re someone who only gets news from CNN and BELIEVES it — peaceful protesters.  (In other news, sorry guys, but there is no Easter Bunny and Santa Claus as you heard of him, is also not real.)

Why do I say this won’t end well?  Because it never does.  Cults last stands never end well.  Normally they end in suicide by the cult, but along the line they often do untold damage and destroy innocent people and lives.

Are we pitched into the Khaki and is what emerges completely different?  I don’t know.  And I don’t think anyone does.  It depends on how quickly this crazy gets put down, or whether we continue into even stupider sh*t after.  I’m frankly a little worried about what they do for an encore.  What we’re seeing is people being dumped from their blog hosting (and I mean blogs I read, so no, not evilbad unless anything to the right of Lenin is) and a friend has got permanently booted from Facebook for posting — not political at all, but this is what they told him — about the SpaceX launch.  So we know some of the new offensive looks just like the old offensive “If we stop them posting things that disagree with us, their opinions disappear.”  We’re dealing with people who think covering their ears changes the world.

A friend says that if they’re following the Recreate 68 playbook, it will be car bombings and assassinations.  Of course this crew is profoundly incompetent, so who knows what THAT play will turn into.

Hold on to the side of the boat, and stay away from/be ready to defend from Vanilla ISIS.  (Yes I stole the moniker, but it’s so perfect it MUST become a thing.  Antifa was always named by opposites. They are in fact Vanilla ISIS.) Mostly? Stay away from them while they burn out.  This riot gambit is such bad optics they’re already trying to deflect and claim it’s someone else doing it.

So the question is what comes next. And how supremely stupid it turns out to be.

It’s going to be rough for a little while, but be not afraid: in the end we win, they lose.

 

 

While some blogs on the right have declared that the United States are already dead, I don’t believe that. After all, a lot of us are still alive.

No, okay, I know we are in a rather icky place, but let’s please be aware that a) this doesn’t mean we’re losing. b) Jerry is probably trying to hack into the email system to send us an email from the afterlife, and the email will say “Despair is a sin.” c) be not afraid.  In the end we win, they lose.  Sursum corda.

But rituals are important. And humans live by them, and by oaths.  So this Blast From The Past seemed needful, and perhaps comforting.

(And for the record, I’m okay.  This entire week I’m away from home, though and my schedule, time, (and access to electricity) is not my own.

Yesterday, on a private forum a friend of mine who here will go under the name Sam Anderson said the following:

Patriotism is good. Nationalism through a patriotic lens, seeing your country as worthwhile, as having prospects and things to be proud of, is not only acceptable but necessary for the health of any nation. But MOST especially the United States, because it’s one thing for the French to be ashamed of being French, but at the end of the day, they’re still going to be French. France is established on ethnic and historical foundations, and even if the French think they suck, there can still be citizens of France. Just not very long, since self-loathing aligns you, first metaphorically, then inevitably in practice, with enemies who ALSO loathe you.

But an American just CAN’T believe in nothing, CAN’T reject the philosophy underpinning America, and be one. Philosophy IS America. There’s nothing else to base it on, and there’s no “philosophy on the side” option. There’s no “shared values” or that bullshit. There’s a piece of paper that lays out precisely how the government functions, tells it what it doesn’t get to do, and tells YOU to go shift for yourself. Now yeah, maybe you can quibble with a point or two of it. Lots of people did then, too. But people who reject, wholesale, that that makes sense as the foundation of a country- who complain about negative rights, who call the constitution outdated de facto, aren’t American, the same way you couldn’t be a Catholic but not believe in G*d. A-philosophical American is a contradiction in terms. The most they can do is live somewhere between Mexico and Canada. We’ve got a lot of that kind of “American”.

But nationalism is only a problem when it starts to supersede rather than represent a people. The American people, left mostly to their own devices, with most of their own money and most of their own time, even if they only SORT OF try to adhere to their founding principles, can turn the world upside down. It’s not because of any particular genetic, ethnocentric, economic, or whatever reason. You could do it with anyone… they’d just have to agree to the challenging but rewarding terms of freedom, which historically much of humanity would rather trade for security. But America, the national body- the government bureaucrats meant to represent the people, who increasingly act in contravention of same- that America cannot find its ass with both hands. It’s just the resurgence of a far inferior product coming back under a much more successful and respected brand.

One of the lines you can draw between right and left is, when a conservative roots for America, they mean the individual entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, and scholars- the millions of little people who even now, every so often, by the grace of determination, judicious risk taking, and hard work, manage to do a few really big things. When a liberal roots for “America”, they back the bully-boys in the government with the private jets… the big institutions that nevertheless manage routinely to fuck up thousands of little things.

THAT’S the form of nationalism that’s toxic.

Let’s go back to what Sam said “Philosophy IS America.”  If you don’t believe in the founding principles, you’re not an American.  You’re at best a permanent resident who grew up here and behaves generally within the law.

We’re a volitional citizenship.  Yes, if you were born here, you are LEGALLY an American.  You can legally be a lot of things that you’re not even close to being in reality.  Take all the college people running around screaming they want to be protected from micro-micro aggressions.  They are legally adults.

My younger kid is also legally an adult, and although closer to an adult than most of the micro-aggressed, he still lives at home and has never had to provide for his daily upkeep.  He’s a legal adult, but not an adult like say any of you who have to work for a living.  (We let him only because he’s taking two stem degrees concurrently and not taking accommodations for his sensory issues.)

Do I think it was a mistake of the founders to allow citizenship of birth in a nation of volition?  You bet your beepy I do.  They got so much right, though, and they were only human.  They couldn’t believe anyone born here, enjoying the blessings of liberty could possibly wish to believe that a system where “we belong to the government” is better.

They were wrong.  In a way, again, understandable, since they’d given their life, their fortunes, their sacred honor for this endeavor and many lost them.  (Read a book called Signing Their Lives Away, if you haven’t yet.)  On the other hand, not understandable, since they knew how revolutionary their system was.  Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness?  You must be mad.  The government as a servant to the sovereign citizen?  Cooee, what world do you come from?  Separation of powers to make it difficult to “get things done”?  Mister, you must be one of them escapees from the asylum.

And yet — and yet — some of us are very much citizens of the volitional nation.  We embrace the vision of the founders, we work to protect the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.  We took an oath, and we keep it.

Come on.  Go ahead and take it.  Take it by yourself in the privacy of your heart; take it with your family; take it with a co-worker.

Take the oath.  Then keep it.

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen [or a moonstruck admirer for those on the right and left who think those people abroad have a better idea- sah]; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

 

So who has markers on UFO landing for 2020?  Rain of frogs? Plague of Locusts?
Oh, wait, I’m confused, aren’t I?  Even though I’ve picked up a friend’s resounding refrain of “Let my people go!” the script 2020 is running is “Let’s keep the people captive, and we’ll inflict what we have to on them, up to and including complete and utter destruction, as long as we can keep our spurs on them and our seat on their backs.”

Look, it was predictable. It has been obvious for decades to those of us whose experiences predispose them to keep a weather eye for tyranny on the horizon.  By the time I came to the States I was startled to find not only was it not the bastion of freedom I’d hoped, but even though then — at the pinnacle of the cold war — it stood as the opposite pole of communism, the reality on the ground was not …. quite as advertised.  Among the intellectuals and soit disant thinkers even in the early eighties, communism was cool and socialism was “compassionate.” Just like in Europe.

Because you see, the cold war had two sides: the USSR and our elites, who had been corrupted and taken over for a long time thanks to the communist agents who had long-marched through our media, our entertainment and our bureaucracy.

Heinlein claimed the Democrats had been taken over by communists, secretly, by the 40s. I have no reason to doubt him. I’m sure most of the bureaucracy and governments in Europe had been taken over that way also.

Even so called conservatives assumed communism would eventually win, because according to the numbers coming out of the USSR and the reporters visiting the USSR — anyone know where Duranty is buried? there should be a line to piss on his grave — they were just so much more efficient. Scientific governance, you know? And anyway, technology was going to be so advanced that most humans would be unemployable, and by the way, there were more and more humans every year, so it was impossible to have all these bourgeois luxuries.  So communism, efficient, compassionate, communism was the future, the only way.

The realists who saw it was the only way were willing to do anything to bring it about. Because the people who weren’t as intelligent/well informed would otherwise destroy the world and bring about unimaginable catastrophe.

“Conservatives” were merely those who wanted communism to arrive slower and be a little less violent. Communism with a human face. Socialism on the way to communism.  Easing us into our role as cogs in the machinery of the future — where there was no room for personal frills or really emotions — with gentle pneumatic shocks, instead of with the excesses of the Russian and Soviet revolution.

All of this btw is based on three glaring fallacies (phaluscies, since you have to be a dickhead to believe them particularly now.)

1- People are a drain not an asset. They are also a sort of robot incapable of changing behavior in response to changing circumstances.

2- Wealth can’t grow, nor can the carrying capacity of the Earth improve. So since humans can’t respond to reduced infant mortality by having fewer children, the only way to feed everyone is to reduce everyone’s rations. Forever.

3- It is possible for “the best”, properly educated people to be utterly selfless and to administer everyone’s wealth equally and for the common good. They will not revel in power, nor will they avail themselves of any excess.  Because, they are absolutely moral and all seeing.

Note the left is still running this script.  And some on the right too (Hello, Pierre Delecto!) not to mention all of Europe, left and right. Also note #1 conflicts with the left idea that they can bring about a future in which humans change to be all selfless, etc.  But that’s actually complicated and tied in to their myths, which honestly are a Christian heresy, complete with paradise lost.

I know when they started out, the USSR thought it could “engineer” a new human.  Homo Sovieticus.  But I don’t know enough of  Soviet myth to know what underlay that. Maybe it was a behaviorist thing and they thought humans could be trained into being completely selfless automatons.  I know by the time I was reading communist theorists (no, I didn’t buy their arguments, but I was required to read them, given when and where I grew up) in the seventies, the philosophy had fallen prey to the agitprop notion that people in madhouses in the US were political prisoners just as in the USSR. (BTW this is part of what underlay the closing of the madhouses.) And that was part of a push in the seventies, as the malfeasance of USSR was starting to be glaring, amid escaped dissidents and escaping information.  The push was to “prove” that both systems were equally bad. (The left is still flogging that dead equine, too.  So Cubans and Venezuelans are starving? So how many people die of anomie and not being loved enough under capitalism? REEEEE.)  So, since Soviets put dissidents in mad houses, so did we. But that necessitated that people who widdled on themselves and/or thought they were a lampshade with a set of dishes thrown in be completely sane “political dissidents”.  The only way to do this was to attribute anything communists don’t like to “insanity brought about by capitalism.”  This led to crazier byways of thought.  For instance, it led to the idea of the pre-historic, pre-agriculture paradise, where everyone was equal, there was no poverty, need, greed, or the heartbreak of psoriasis.  A sub-branch of the church believed women were in charge and everyone worshiped the mother goddess.  And some of these “scientific, atheist socialists” also believe the goddess actually exists, though G-d doesn’t.

So, forgive me for taking this long digression through complete insanity, but it’s important because it’s part of how the left argues.  This is how “capitalism” (which is their bizarre name for the free exchange of goods and services) is responsible for everything from neurosis to murder, from your art not being appreciated to war.  If we just did away with private property, we’d have a “brotherhood of man” (and for the current form of the cult, it must be said and can’t be understood that man includes woman, people who have to look in their pants to figure out what they are, and people who look in their pants every morning to remember what they are, and people who look in their pants and don’t like what they see.  And people who think they’re wingless dragons and ornate buildings) where no one is ever greedy or mean.

This is the picture in the left’s heads right now.  The fact that it has bloody nothing to do with reality doesn’t matter.  They have begs and explanations for all the glaring discrepancies.  Because these require bending backwards and folding your mental processes into a mobius strip and really believing in received wisdom, they believe this makes them “smarter.”  It is part of what led to the idea that having the right (left) opinions was the definition of being “smart.”

Anyway, this was the landscape when I came to the US. If you were so uncouth as to say you supported Reagan, you were obviously either stupid or crazy. And you were definitely an “extremist.”

Which brings to where we’re now.

A funny thing happened in the middle of the Long March on the way to the great socialist paradise.

Other than the fact that Reagan dismantled the USSR and exposed their lies.  (Though don’t expect the left to admit it.)

You see, the more convoluted and cult-like the left became, the more the people selected as “smart” and given positions of power or accolades for their achievements are not even second rate.  They are, instead, typical “followers” and cult converts. Which is a definite personality type, and one known neither for flexibility or creativity.  (Which explains the sorry state of our establishment arts and literature and, really, any entertainment.)

It also explains why they keep getting sucker punched by change  And why their clever plans are starting to resemble Wile E. Coyote “genius.”

And we live in a time of extreme change driven by technology. All their efforts to drive us back to the 1930s keep backfiring, because you can’t put tech back in the bottle.  So, you know, they took over the media only to see it become completely irrelevant. And the more they tighten their grip, the more irrelevant they become. They drove genre publishing into the ground by allowing ONLY the approved opinions.

And they’re in the process of losing what remains of their power by trying to hold onto it.

EVERYTHING — everything — from the Obama administration preparing a coup on his successor and violating the law in ways that should make everyone apologize to that old statist Nixon, to the insane attempt at an impeachment, to the overreaction panic the media drove over Winnie the Flu which has managed to destroy the economies of the US and the west, to the current riots to avoid the “danger” that the economy will recover before November elections: ALL OF THIS are attempts to hold on to power.

The fact that the attempts are increasingly crazier, and keep backfiring in more and more spectacular ways is your measure of how inadequate the left is to the task of coping with reality, and how much their foundational myth is letting them down.

Yes, it’s going to get rough. They’ve proven they’ll do anything and destroy anything in order to get power back. Not a surprise. They are the ideological kin of those who rule in Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. Reigning in hell is what they do.  They’ve also proven they don’t understand the US is not any of those and that they just don’t GET us or just how prosperous and inventive the US is.  In fact that’s part of their problem. They don’t GET either creativity or invention.

Someone said the Trump superpower is to reveal what is going on behind the leftist pretences.  Maybe.  At least he’s not cooperating in the farce (in most cases. I still have issues with his going along with the Winnie the Flu “experts.” Though he learns, and I’m fairly sure it’s the last time he’ll do that.) But to an extent this was going to happen.

Sooner or later the left was going to hit reality. They’ve been on a collision course a long, long time. Their attempts to hold on to power have been getting more and more outrageous.  Sooner or later, it was going to explode in their faces.  It was just a matter of timing.

Well, the time is now. 2020 is the year of seeing clearly. Just remember what you’re seeing, the sewer of leftist corruption, power-greed and insanity has been there a long time. Maybe eighty years.  What you’re smelling is OLD.  It’s part of the reason it’s so bad. Due to the complexity of the media, it’s been festering a long, long time.

Hold on to your hats.  It’s going to get worse. And the plagues they visit on us, in an attempt to re-mount are going to get more outrageous.

Just remember this is not the result of their being strong but the result of their — literally — losing their grip.

Stay ungovernable, my friends. Stay American. The left can’t stand that.  And it is the way we’ll win, they’ll lose.  Be not afraid!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Promo

*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. ;)*

I WROTE THIS. NO I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THE CHICK IS BLUE. IT WAS THE FILTERS TO THE ARTWORK…  I’LL EVENTUALLY FIX IT, BUT NOT HIGH PRIORITY RIGHT NOW:

FROM ALYX SILVER –  What if He Were to Pick Me: A Pride And Prejudice Variation With A Dash of Insanity.

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.

For those of you who are Sarah Hoyt completists, or like to keep track of everything I wrote or something…
This was written in 1998. (At the same time as DST, which wouldn’t sell for over a decade after that.)  My husband had a traveling job. I was stuck home with elementary schooler and toddler alone for five days a week.  Though I knew every place in town where kids ate free, I was lacking adult conversation/companionship. I couldn’t give DST away for love or money, even though I was convinced (still am) it was my best work to date.

I needed to do something. So I acquired a hobby of doing Jane Austen fanfic. And went insane. The second part is obvious.  This was my first fanfic. The others are more aux-serieux .  And yes, I’ll be putting them out.
Also incidentally, this is free to the end of today: But He Turned Out Very Wild.

This one is serious. TWISTED, but serious.

Eventually Alyx will branch out into regencies.  Some of you know what those are and that they are started.  BUT I promise it’s still a hobby.  I.e. what I do when I’m brain fried, in the evening, or (if I can afford Dragon Naturally, because the others aren’t working and that will take — sigh — some money. I’m considering auctioning a couple of cloth dragons, to buy it. More anon.) in dictation while cleaning/gardening/remodeling the house.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE:  Saving the Spring: A short fantasy.

Jack Randall knew immediately something was off when he pulled up to the old roadhouse.

Little did he know that crossing paths that night with the establishment’s beautiful bartender and her handsomely-rugged boyfriend/cook would lead to him recalling his former life as a god – or fighting a rematch with the god who had stolen his memories.

https://amzn.to/3dfZyrT

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Dragonfire and Time.

An angry dragon demands justice of the king.

Mae, a royal wizard, is assigned the task: the dragon had metted out her own justice, burning a thief with dragonfire, but she had seen him since, whole and sound, and this she will not tolerate, so Mae must put an end to it.

Mae goes to discover the truth of this before the dragon leaves its lair to extract her own justice. And in her search of the spring festivities, learns more secrets than the dragon had even guessed of.

FROM ALMA BOYKIN:  Horribly Familiar: Familiar Tales Book Twelve.

Love, romance, curses, and . . . chaperones?

Nothing aside from magic comes easily for two shadow mages. André Lestrang relocates to Riverton just in time for the summer humidity and storm season. He and his fiancée Lelia Chan struggle to balance work, magic, their relationship, and his Army career. When someone sends a magical package bomb to one of their friends, a chain reaction of trouble ensues.

Add in two Familiars determined to ensure that their mages don’t get “in trouble” before the wedding, the usual mischief a ring-tailed lemur, kit fox, wolverine, and others can devise, and a dash of new responsibilities to the magical community. Lelia and André discover that the summer starts to feel . . . Horribly Familiar.

 

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

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

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

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: EFFICACIOUS.