Partly due to being highjacked by a story.  More later.

Hugs, kisses, etc.

 

 

I have read enough about the spreading and eventual hegemony of the Indo European culture to believe that:

a) it was not a race as such, or at least not what their own members would believe is a race.  I.e. in that time and in that place, race was akin to tribe which partook “extended family” and for that matter some might have been distinct sub-races when you think of the past and how isolated some families/tribes were for how long.  (I’m calling to mind the “generations” of occupancy in some place in Siberia that seemed to always consist of a man and several women, all of them relations.  Don’t go there.  The past is not just another country.  It can be icky beyond belief.  I figure the story of Lott and his daughters happened many times.)

b) part of other tribes and families starting to ape Indo-European culture and wanting to be part of it is that the Indo-European culture was full of “glamour” for that time and place.  To wit, we’re fairly sure part of the culture was massive banquets, at which story/sagas were told, in praise of the host, but also sharing common background “history” that made people want to be part of it.  Though the Aeneid and the Odyssey are, time wise, many millennia removed from those sagas (of which only a sense remains) they would have been something like: a rousing story of shared history (even if made up or mythological) telling the deeds of heroes past and inspiring the future.  The way they were told — and note that what survives is full of action and adventure, as well as heroism, even if some of the heroism has worn poorly in our eyes, because our morals are different enough that, say, slaughtering your hosts and making off with their stuff requires at least some sort of justification — made the other tribes, isolated families that the culture came in contact with want a piece of it, want to invent a genealogy or history that made them part of it, want to join up.

Why is this important?  Or even relevant?  Or has Sarah gone down the rabbit hole of ancient linguistics AGAIN?

Well, no.  For various reasons, (only half of them family, the rest being a friend in trouble who seems totally unaware of his situation, and whom I’m powerless to help.  This is going to end in freezing under a bridge, and there’s bloody nothing I can do.) I’m actually under such high stress that I spent most of the weekend reading about Gondwanaland dinosaurs.  Because dinosaurs are what I do when the derp gets too deep.  Also, I have a planet to populate.  Not with dinos, but it gives me ideas.

But I experienced this sort of cultural glamor.  You could say it was generational.

One of the saddest things to me is that again for various reasons, mostly because when he stopped working his health wasn’t good enough for the trip, my dad never got to visit us in CO.  Dad grew up on stories of cowboys.  He read books — both fiction and non-fiction — about the American west all the time.  In fact, an old train bridge about three miles from grandma’s was used for the filming of Spaghetti westerns, and formed a great part (literally “great” as in fun) of dad’s childhood memories.

To him because of the west, to mom because of translated Hollywood gossip of the “glamor” age, and to me at first because of the image of the moon rocket (and later, because of Heinlein, for more ideological or idealistic reasons) America was the promised land, where everything fun happened, and where barefoot immigrants could become wealthy.

Mom and dad never even wanted to immigrate, but they aped a lot of the perceived culture and talked about America a lot.

Hell, the world talks about America a lot.  I assumed all countries were more fascinated by what was happening abroad until I became an exchange student and discovered international news in the US ended up on page twenty of the daily paper, if at all.  (This is both a blessing and a curse.  It allows our “progressives” to imagine the world is just like America but with a bigger social net.

It is that glamour that brought “modernity” to the rest of the world.  When I grew up it was still normal for married women to cover their hair in a scarf, but only women of the “lower classes”.  Women like mom, who were influenced by Hollywood wore their hair short and permed.  Because it was “the modern way.”  Which is why I say “the future comes from America.”

The problem is that in our own country, the glamour has turned sour. You want Russian influence?  Look at what its agents and influence did to our culture for almost a century.

They too started with glamour: the glamour of being a communist and “caring” for the poor, which slotted neatly into Christian virtues, but was ever so much more exciting and interesting, not like those pious church ladies, but more like being warriors and all that.

And since creating world communism (which was always Russian communism, because “internationalism” was always Russian nationalism.  You can tell this by how ardently old communists will still defend the soviet union, as though it were the motherland of their dreams.) required dismantling the glamour of the free market and its wealth and free wheeling culture, and “they’re like Rome in the decadence” (a crazy accusation, since Rome was more like the Soviet Union) didn’t bring us down, so they had to start picking at the flaws, and comparing us to a regime that killed 100 million people as if we were equivalent.  We still get that, like “But people starve under capitalism” (well, yes, you can’t save everyone from themselves and humans are still humans.)

But there’s been 100 years of anti-glamour.  The problem is that it’s not really that.  America’s movies and stories are still loved the world over, partly because of habit, partly because the future comes from America.

So what our stories are now doing is not just destroying the image of America abroad, but in a twisted way making the world worse, because some amount of people still want to imitate America even though they think we’re a hell hole (glamour isn’t rational.)

They’re trying to destroy America, but in the process they’re destroying all of the west, and themselves too.  And when this doesn’t automagically result in utopia, they start picking at other things and dictating what messages your stories must have: more diversity, more social justice, more–

They think this will make the world what they want. Only it doesn’t work that way.  Because they still build worlds (and yes, even contemporary fiction worldbuilds) according to what’s in their heads, and they’ve been taught to be resentful and hateful of their own home culture, and everyone in it.  So what they actually write is futures of hate, resentment and envy, which frankly builds nothing.

On top of that, they write — because message first — stories so boring that they serve as reading aversion therapy.  I mean, haven’t they noticed no one is praising the “soviet realism” novels?  (Or maybe they are.  I refuse to keep up with academia crazy.)

So what to do about it?

Story first.  Always story first.  Then trust that your view of the world will leak into whatever you write.  And write things you love, not stuff you hate.

Western culture is dying of reverse glamour.  Let’s build ‘er up.

 

Sunday 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: Temper

Better Late Than No Promo- by Free Range Oyster

*blows off dust* Testing, ein, deux, treis, IV… Oh look, the mic still works! Hello, ladies, gentlemen, dragons, and assorted riff-raff! Feast your eyes on a new load of books. So much good stuff! So many pretty covers! Indeed I have brought you a wonderful trove of tasty pulp, with many brand new recent releases including two anthologies, one of them positively encrusted with names familiar to regular visitors of the Promo Post. [You’re trying to spin a month-long backlog as a good thing? –Ed.] Pay no attention to the man in italics! This bounteous promo is simply the result of my love for all you wonderful people and people-like entities. It has nothing to do with any supposed failings of time management or email synchronization. Nothing! Speaking of which, there is a new email address intended solely for promo material: promo(at)freerangeoyster(dot)com. Just drop me a link to the Amazon page for your book, and a blurb if you want it different from what’s at the ‘zon. So go, enjoy this week’s [month’s –Ed.] haul of books, leave helpful reviews, enjoy your weekend, and don’t call me for bail money unless there’s a really epic story to go with it. As always, future entries for the promo post can (and should!) be sent to my shiny new email! Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Minion Wrangler, Code Monkey, and Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief

J.M. Ney-Grimm

Livli’s Gift

Livli struggles with a secret she keeps from everyone, even her closest friends, and she must solve the problem at its heart before she’s discovered.

She’s certain the answer lies in a fragment of folklore and magic half-remembered from her childhood. Almost certain.

She wouldn’t need forgotten magic if only the men and women of her secluded mountain culture dwelt together. But the women—and Livli—inhabit their sister-lodge atop its lofty bluff, while the men live apart in their brother-lodge several valleys away.

Unless she can force a change, Livli stands to lose everything… including the most precious thing in her life: her son.

A story of secrets, shibboleths, and deep-forged strength told with all the insight and engaging intimacy that J.M. Ney-Grimm brings to epic fantasy.

M L Clark

Target Seventeen Must Die

Time traveler Jeremiah Gale kills people in the past to create a better present. He fails to kill target seventeen, but when he returns to the future, it is changed for the better. He’s on an orbital colony, everybody is friendly and kind, though a bit conformist. Gale thinks his mission is finished, but soon gets kidnapped and interrogated. It doesn’t take long for him to realize assassins from even farther in the future are hunting for somebody. Eventually able to capture one of the time travelers before she suicides, he deduces they wish to kill a novelist before he writes the novels that will bring down their fascist state. Instead of killing target seventeen, can he protect him and stop the time travelers?

Leigh Kimmel

Starlight Running

Eight lives depend on Kyle’s desperate trek across the Moon to get help. But someone – or something – intends for him to fail. Can he defeat it in time?

Pam Uphoff

Directorate School

The Directorate Book 1

What’s college without friends and enemies?

Ebsa’s reached the height of his ambitions with acceptance at the elite college that trains the people who will explore the worlds across the dimensions. Now all he has to do is survive it.

Amie Gibbons

Psychic Wanted (Un)Dead or Alive

The SDF Paranormal Mysteries Book 4

Hell hath no fury…

Halloween’s here and psychic FBI agent Ariana Ryder is ready to party. Sure, her and her boss Grant haven’t been in a good place since what happened in Miami; he’s basically acting like he doesn’t care and isn’t her friend anymore, let alone anything more, but she’s sure he doesn’t mean it. And besides, she has her boyfriend, Quil, so it’s not like she cares anyway.

And then there’s Carvi, vampire king of Miami, back up in Nashville with a warning.

That someone’s put a hit out on Ariana, and assassins are on their way.

But a psychic has a job to do, and when a ghostly curse of vengeance born from broken hearts starts killing men all over Nashville, Ariana has to psychic up and get her butt to work, cuz everything about these supposed suicides screams ghost, but it’s doing things no mere specter can pull off.

The clock’s tickin’ before the ghost strikes again, and Ariana’s going to have to face her own past to stop it.

Because it’s just set its sights on Grant.

Anthology

Calexit

When California declares independence, their dreams of socialist diversity become nightmares for many from the high Sierras to the Central Valley. Follow the lives of those who must decide whether to stand their ground, or flee!

In San Diego, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Group One finds his hands tied by red tape, even as protesters storm the base and attack dependents.

In Los Angeles, an airline mechanic must beg, borrow, or bribe to get his family on the plane out before the last flight out.

Elsewhere, a couple seeks out the new underground railroad after being forced to confess to crimes they didn’t commit.

In the new state of Jefferson, farmers must defend themselves against carpetbaggers and border raiders.

And in the high Sierras, a woman must make the decision to walk out alone…

Inn Between Worlds: Volume 1

Sitting outside of time and space is the Inn Between Worlds. Residents might say it’s a place for travelers, or a place to rest, a place to find excitement. Or they might say it’s dangerous and to be avoided at all costs because Reality Does Not Work Right inside its infinite walls.

Contained in these pages are three stories that all share one important point: Their events would not have been possible without The Inn.

“Gideon Wallace and the Sapphire Woman” is the first story in a new series by Thomas A Farmer, and shows what happens when a mortal man finds himself drawn into a fight between gods.

In “Chaos Candy,” by Amie Gibbons, supernatural bounty hunter Zee tries to uncover a dark secret and learns much more than she ever wanted to know.

Finally, Michael David Anderson’s “Flux” continues the adventures of Teddy Dormer, taking him once again to strange new places and showing him new nightmares.

 

Sorry this is so late.  Our internet has been up and down like a whore’s drawers which made compiling past posts kind of hard, but that’s done, in this page — Here.  And now, when last we saw our heroes…

*FIRST AND VERY IMPORTANTLY, THIS IS NOT CANON. THIS IS COMPLETELY UNSANCTIONED (okay, not completely. Larry said I could do this for you guys without his ripping my head off) MHI FANFIC.
Good, now that we got that out of the way, why am I doing this? Both Grant and Fado Negro (Portuguese Monster Hunters) have minuscule parts in Guardian, the MHI book I’m collaborating with Larry Correia on. However, obviously the Portugal of Monster Hunter is not the real Portugal (Really, no arcane creatures come stumbling out of the undergrowth there. If there were arcane creatures, the country would be chock-a-block with them, when you take in account the continuous human occupation since… well, forever.) And this story gives me more of an opportunity to firm the worldbuilding. (Yes, it would be MUCH easier to do this with a notebook and noting things down, but that’s not how my mind works, d*mn it.)
Okay, that’s the rational excuse. The real reason is that d*mn Grant Jefferson won’t leave me alone. (Always had a thing for men from Patrician New England families. Ask my husband.) So I’m torturing him in order to redeem him.
Will this ever be a book? Don’t know. First Guardian will get delivered. Then, this being finished, I throw it at Larry. And then it’s his SOLE DECISION. (Which means, don’t you monkeys hassle him.) It’s his world and his character. I’m just grateful he lets me play in it in Guardian and here for your amusement.*

Dark Fate 10

There is a point at which you become suicidal.  Since landing in this forsaken country, I’d been attacked by red caps, lamias and now revenants, and no one was explaining anything, and I was half-assedly (or perhaps not assedly at all) armed and I had run out of ammo, and I was heading to “the real outbreak.”

Also, my suit was ruined, and I was now out of suits and would need to buy — shudder — off the rack, in a country where most people were way smaller than I.

I texted back “What now?” followed by “Why are we working with the private Portuguese Monster Hunters, instead of their government counterparts?”

The answer came back almost immediately: “Classified.”  And then after a second “Also complicated.”

I texted back “Grrrrrr.”  There was no answer.

“WHY are we still headed to the outbreak?”  I asked, turning my frustrated anger on my companion who was driving like laws of traffic happened to other people while the wind whipped bits of safety glass in my face, as more of the windshield disintegrated.

She turned to me and blinked “Because otherwise sea revenants are going to eat all the population of the seaside, before we get there, and then there will be more revenants.”

“But we’re out of ammo,” I said.

“Nah,” she said.  “There’s more in the trunk. More guns too.  And more guitars”  She continued driving with, as far as I could tell, two hands, while with her third hand she lit a cigarette and started smoking.  Okay, she didn’t have a third hand, but that’s the impression I got, from the fact that she never seemed to take both hands off the wheel and we were taking some pretty tight turns down this street with houses and parked cars on both sides, and yet she lit a cigarette and started smoking.  Well, at least with the windshield out I wasn’t confined in here with the cancer stick smoke.

“I can see where guitars are essential equipment for monster hunting,” I said at my most sarcastic.

She grinned at me.  “They are.  Not only do they provide us cover from being anywhere at any time, since, you know, student music groups will practice all the time in the oddest places, but as you saw guitar strings come in handy.”

I remembered what I’d seen her do back there, and also her fury at my letting myself get jumped, and I felt my face heat up.  I said, “Yeah, well.”

Seriously, I’m not usually an inept monster hunter.  I’m not usually that inept with women, either.  Watching my father and his guests at my father’s parties, I knew how to talk to women and how to act like the suave, sophisticated man of the world from the time I was ten.  It had worked in the past, even with Julie Schakelford.  Okay, only for a while, because–  Never mind.  There were times when the smooth and suave act melted, and one of them was when the woman decided they preferred a savage half polynesian or something.

But I wasn’t usually this inept, and I couldn’t understand why this woman neither reacted to my charm, nor, in fact, why I couldn’t find the charm I usually had.  Mostly this small, slim, monster hunting, guitar-carrying female made me angry.  She made me angry in a way I couldn’t even understand.

I said, “You probably can’t even play that guitar!”

She smiled, as if I’d paid her a compliment.  “Of course, I can,” she said.  “I am more likely to sing, though.  I’ll sing for you sometime.”

Damn it, I hadn’t asked her to sing for me.  This too annoyed me.  I wanted to say something cutting, something that set up my superiority over her, but instead I said, “You know, I don’t understand any of this.”

To my surprise, she reached over and squeezed my thigh.  Which is when I realized my thigh was all bruised, but I think I kept my mouth shut and my face manfully impassive.

Oh, and it wasn’t a come on.  In any other circumstances, a cute female squeezing my thigh would be a come on, but this wasn’t.  It was a weirdly friendly and reassuring gesture.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “I understand Portugal can be bewildering for foreigners, and you’ve been having a very hard time of it.  This will calm down a little at some point, and I’ll give you a briefing, and you’ll get it more.  For one, I’ll introduce everyone better.  But right now we fight.”

We had entered a wider street, with houses set back well away from the road and surrounded by iron fences.

She stopped in the middle of the street and said, “Here, put this in your ears.”  This was rubber ear plugs, the kind of ear protection one should wear while shooting.  “They’re to protect you from the siren,” she said.

Then she hooked something behind my ear, and a mike, attached to it, got stuck on my face by my mouth.  She was doing the same.  “Testing, can you hear me?” she asked.

I said, “I can.”

She said, “Good.  We can neutralize the effect of the sirens, while still keeping in touch  Okay.  we’re about half a mile off, and the reports aren’t good.”

The reports, or at least I assumed that’s what they were, were coming in in a jibber jabber of Portuguese though the ear thing.

“Speak English,” Silvia said, sharply.

“Don’t see how much good that will do,” a male voice said.  “We’re being slaughtered out here.  We’ve dropped back to the circumvalacao and the police are closing it to traffic.”

“How many revenants?” Silvia asked.”

“Thousands,” the voice said.

Just then, we came across a police barrier.  Sylvia spoke to them, and they let us through.

We crested the road, and up from the ridge glimpsed the beach.

It was covered in undead, all shamblinging, limping and leaping towards us.

We weren’t going to get rid of them with bullets, blessed or not, and guitar strings so weren’t going to cut it.

“Merda,” Silvia said.

I agreed wholeheartedly.

(This is part one of this chapter.  Part 2 next week.  Between the internet issues and reading myself up to date on this, I haven’t had time to do more, but I promise longer next week.)

Spent the morning in medical appointments (no, nothing serious, but due to various relatives dying this year, a lot of travel and other issues, I dropped everything on the floor re: follow up on the thingy in the brainy and so on.)

Today it was doctors in the springs, (an hour away.) We’re going to move our doctor, but honestly, not until some stuff that was halfway through is stabilized.  Also the doctor in Denver (neurologist) also takes us an hour, because — argh — Denver traffic.

I want to clean up and set up a tab for Dark Fate, then write next chapter, but obviously the morning was NOT conducive to this.  So I’ll try to have the next chapter for you soon, but it’s going to take a while and MIGHT be tomorrow morning.

Guardian is with Larry now, and we should be able to deliver it on time.

I’m trying to setup a “bible” for the Dyce books.  I did it sometime in August but the file has more or less vanished into thin air.  I can’t finish the fourth book (editing) till I have it on hand again.

The things I’m trying to get out this year, before the end of December, A Well-Inlaid Death (fourth Daring finds book), Royal Blood (2nd Vampire Musketeer book), The Musketeer’s Confessor (sixth Musketeer Mystery book), and if I can get it typed in, what will now be called Alien Curse, the first book of Worlds Mage.  Oh, also if I can finish it, Witch’s Daughter, the sequel to Witchfinder.  I also want to resume posting chapters of Rogue Magic.

That’s about it, but Dark Fate either today or tomorrow.  How soon depends on how soon I get home.  This is hard to do remotely on a little screen.

Possess your souls in patience!

*Look, I told her that reading this book was bad for her mental health, and yet, Amanda S. Green PERSISTED.  Do try to buy her a drink, okay.  She’s taking a massive bullet for the team. – SAH*

HRC Gets ”Caught Trying”- Amanda S. Green

Welcome to the next installment of “How much more can Amanda read before she loses her mind?” Yes, I am continuing to plow through Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book, What Happened. No, that isn’t a misprint. She forgot to put the question mark at the end of the title. That is the first of many head scratchers where this book is concerned. I recommend the book to anyone who is a fan of HRC — or to those who want to see someone do the literary version of the “Side Step” from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG75FJkjr8

The next chapter of her book is, ironically, titled “Get Caught Trying.” This is her attempt to explain why she ran for president. Of course, in a chapter that is supposed to be dedicated to explaining her rationale in once again tossing her hat into the political ring, she spends a great deal of time attacking President Trump for actions taken after the election. Not that it’s surprising.

I ran for President because I thought I’d be good at the job. I thought that of all the people who might run, I had the most relevant experience, meaningful accomplishments, and ambitious but achievable proposals, as well as the temperament to get things done in Washington. (Pg. 39)

We obviously made a mistake in not electing her. Bad Middle America. Evil conservatives and libertarians. How could we not have elected such a humble, dedicated public servant?

Surprisingly, she comments on one of the reasons why she didn’t win. Not that she counts it as a reason — yet. Instead, she identifies it as one of the challenges facing the country, a challenge she felt she could meet and overcome.

Our diversity was an advantage, spurring creativity and vitality, but rapid social and economic change alienated people who thought too much was happening too fast and felt left out. (Ps. 39)

Yet, what did she do to ease those concerns? Nothing. Instead, she played on them, painting many of those who felt alienated and left out as rednecks, bigots, and worse. So where was her understanding and determination to bring the country together where they were concerned?

There are several pages dedicated to her work after leaving the State Department with the Clinton Foundation. She discusses other ventures she did as well, including various speaking engagements. We know from the election rhetoric that she was well-paid for those speeches, something she doesn’t deny. Instead, she has this to say:

I found that organizations and companies wanted me to come talk to them about my experiences and share my thoughts on the world — and they’d pay me a pretty penny to do it. . . I didn’t think many Americans would believe that I’d sell a lifetime of principle and advocacy for any price. . .That was a mistake. Just because many former government officials have been paid large fees to give speeches, I shouldn’t have assumed it would be okay for me to do it. Especially after the financial crisis of 2008-2009, I should have realized it would be bad “optics” and stayed away from anything having to do with Wall Street. (Pp 38-40)

Wait, what? This woman who believed herself to be the best qualified person to be President, didn’t see any problem with taking huge sums of money from Wall Street and others before running for office?

Then there’s the bit about a lifetime of principle and advocacy. I hate to say this, Hill — can I call you Hill? — your principles are not the same as most voters. Most of those who go to the election booth to their votes have integrity, something you proved time and again you lack. Without digging out every time she broke her word, I’ll simply say one thing: Benghazi.

Then there’s the whole bit about not thinking she would be attacked for what she did or said. I guess she was suffering amnesia when she wrote these pages because all she’d have to do was remember what they did to Sarah Palin. The Democrats did their best to make everything that came out of Gov. Palin’s mouth look foolish or like a lie or worse. Why in the world would Clinton expect anything different? Surely she’d paid enough attention during Bill’s campaigns, not to mention her own losing campaign against Obama, to anticipate the attacks.

Of course, she confirmed her selective memory on the next page when she talked about what a wonderful job Obama did when the Administration “reacted swiftly to shore up our public health defenses and support Ebola response efforts in West Africa.” (Pg 48) I don’t know what world she was living on during the Ebola scare but here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, it was our local and state health agencies and government that reacted to deal with the scare. The delay in putting precautions in place to prevent travelers who were carrying the virus resulted in not only one man’s death here but also saw two nurses contracting the disease. They have lost their careers. The Feds were late to the game, not that it surprised any of us. But to see Clinton talking about how great the Administration was in dealing with the issue in Africa, and leaving out the failures here at home, is bad enough. Her smug condemnation about what could be seen as reasonable fears of the virus being used as a weapon against us by ISIS is another.

Then, I guess because she needed time to remember what actually happened in Hillary-world, she spends a couple of pages attacking the Republican Party, in particular the Tea Party faction, and condemning them for doing all they could to destroy the government and the country. Even when she recounts a discussion Bill had with a long-time Democrat in Arkansas, she doesn’t get it. This old timer, a non-politician, told Bill he was going to vote Republican. He knew the Republicans wouldn’t do anything for him but, as far as he could tell, the Democrats had done nothing for him in all their years in office. Then he went on to say:

And at least the Republicans won’t do anything to us. The Democrats want to take away my gun and make me go to a gay wedding. (Pg. 50)

Think about that. A life-long Democrat recognized that his own party was not working for what he saw as important values. He felt alienated by them and, because of that, would vote for the other party. But Clinton did not listen and understand what he said.

Finally, 12 pages after first broaching the subject of why she ran for President, she gets back to the question. After telling us about all the good she had been  able to do with the Clinton Foundation, after talking about all those speeches she had given to share her knowledge and experience, this is her response: “It was a chance to do the most good I would ever be able to do.” (Pg 52)

You would think, reading the next few pages that she and Obama were blossom buddies. According to her, we have him to blame for her making the decision to run. Well, he and Bill. “I was convinced that both Bill and Barack were right when they said I would be a better President than anyone else out there.” (Pg 55) Better than the sitting Vice-President. Better than anyone else in the entire country. Modesty is not one of her virtues.

The more I read, the more convinced I am that she was anything but the best person for the job. I’m also convinced she needed a a competent content editor. If the purpose of the chapter was to tell us why she chose to run — again — for President, she needed to do that. Instead, she slipped and her paranoia and anger with the result of the election shone through. Why else would she deviate from her topic to throw attacks at President Trump for things that happened after the election? If anyone ever needs to know what button to push to send her over the edge, all you have to do is mention Trump and then step back. She will eventually shoot herself in the foot.

The audacity of the woman shines through when she writes, “We Methodists are taught to ‘do all the good you can.’ I knew that if I ran and won, I would do a world of good and help an awful lot of people.” (Pg. 54) Wow. If she believed that, she completely ignored what that shopkeeper from Arkansas had to say, what she had to say earlier in the chapter about people feeling isolated and left behind. These were the people she condemned and made fun of. These were also the people who helped keep her from being elected. Did she learn her lesson? Hell no.

And what about her claim of doing a world of good and help an awful lot of people? Sorry, Hill, I have a hard time believing you, especially after Benghazi and how you lied and lied and lied again until you could lie no more. Even now, you have failed to accept one bit of responsibility for what happened to our people there. So why should anyone trust you with their lives and the futures of their children?

As an aside, I think the book is really starting to do damage to my brain. I actually had fun reading this section. It is time to go buy some good booze and I’ll use the donations some of you sent to help do so (and many, many thanks to each of you who donated. It means a lot to know you’ve enjoyed the posts that much).

*Send the woman a drink-SAH*

I’m fairly sure it was sometime in per-history and lost to us that the first human (or proto-human) realized he could get power by riding on the backs of someone who had none.

It’s a neat trick, mind, and one that logically shouldn’t work, but does. Again, probably the first use was Ogg who pointed out under the leadership of his predecessor Grog, the women and children were starving to death because only the warriors go meat.  In the name of championing the women, he hit Grog over the head and the other warriors didn’t kill him, because, well, he had a point.  Look how many kids had starved last winter, and they weren’t even fat enough to be good eating.

One example of this is the French Revolution, where the ascendant middle class used the true plight of the poor (some of whom were starving) to destroy the monarchy and install a regime more favorable to them.

Not going to defend the ancien regime, but seriously, the rivers of blood in the revolution were because some lawyers and clerks felt themselves locked out of the upper classes by birth.  But they used the fury of the true dispossessed (and even for them things were going better, but helping us in the revolution meant yeah, some were starving.)

Because it’s hard to argue with starving children, or miserable old people, or the truly helpless.  Dave Freer tells me that the idea of fairness is in the human brain from the monkeys.  In the band there is an idea of “equal” or at least equitable distribution, and no one likes the monkey who boggarts the bananas.  (Yeah, I know,not bananas.  Never mind.)  So it’s easy to turn that sense of fairness against humans.

In the twentieth century, this is what the Communists and Fascists both did.  It always started with “but look at the people starving” before proposing a solution in which you killed more people than would have starved.

You’ll say this is used on both sides in the US, and you won’t be exactly wrong.  Sure, Trump used the “jobs being sent elsewhere” to get to power, but you know what, his solution is not “let’s give the middle classes of these states money.”  That’s the other side’s solution because they presume a lot of people are too stupid to take part in our present economy.  Trump assumes they can work if we halt globalization.  He’s half right.  The shipping of work abroad WITH INTENT AND MALICE will hurt those countries in which the lifestyle is more expensive/better.  Because while the great equalization is taking place, it will hurt us, materially.  Also, given the regimes in those other countries, I’m not sure it will ever bring them up to our level.  It might just be a matter of having serfs in third world countries forever do the work, so that people in the US can be given welfare checks and kept in doped-out submission.  Globalization is one of those ideas that only makes sense if you presume the rest of the world are Americans by culture, an idea that even RAH forsook once he had a world tour.  So, much as it hurts my open borders Libertarian self from 16 years ago to say it, he might not be wrong on that.  What he is is incomplete.  We need to reduce regulations as much as possible, and make it easier to start businesses.  What businesses could these people start, you say?  I don’t know, and neither do you, but I bet you they would if it weren’t so maddeningly difficult to start a business, particularly a food or service related business.  I have a friend who just started a food business and who is being pecked to death by ducks.  His product is good, people love it, but the regulations and pointless hoop-jumping take more time than the actual business.

I know, someone is going to tell me without the FDA we’d all be served tainted food.  There’s a stupid leftist meme running around about Paul Ryan, Rand Paul and Ayn Rand going into a bar and being served tainted alcohol, because there’s no FDA and they all die.

This is a part of the “and before government stuck its head in, we all died” version of history the left loves.  It isn’t true, it was never true.  People who want customers don’t poison them, and in the rare cases of real harm, there was still the remedy of the courts.  Shakespeare’s son in law had to run off to the States when he served tainted wine in his tavern, and if there was an FDA in Elizabethan England, they’ve kept it remarkably hidden.

This is the same school of thought that thinks that if murder were legal for a day, no one would be left alive.  Or who does old west or medieval shows where everyone kills everyone for profit, or whatever.  I don’t understand how these people’s heads work, unless they themselves are stupid enough to do all these things if there weren’t a piece of paper holding them back.

Thus endeth digression.

The point is, when the big chief Ogg takes over after deposing the iniquitous regime of Grog, mostly what happens is that the vast majority of meat changes hands from Grog’s cronies to Ogg’s cronies.  The women and children continue to starve.

Actually in the case of communism they starve harder and faster, because the economic theories of communism are so startlingly bad that there is less meat to go around.

In the case of socialism, well…. it depends on how close to Communism it is.  Venezuela’s is very very close to communism.

In Europe, as they’re trying to do it, they just think that the vast majority of people are too stupid for the elites to make ANY use of, and so it consists of having a vast underclass who are treated like children, and whose only escape is drugs.  And then you can use that vast underclass to say “what would they do if we stopped giving them their monthly ration of chocolate.  You must see they’re helpless.”

It’s a neat trick.  We know for a fact, because we have seen it in action, that the best way of getting rid of the vast underclass is not to pay them to remain an underclass, but to remove the obstacles to their developing their own business and bourgeois virtues that allow them to become productive members of society.  But that of course would not suit those who want to use them for power.

Oh, I think I just encapsulated most of the history of Africa in the last hundred years too.

And this is without counting the true crazies who then view the underclass problems as GENETIC and propose solutions indistinguishable from Hitler.

This movie has been on repeat loop since pre-history.  It’s time to shed the habits of thought that think we’re very smart, but others are poor things that we need to take care of (if we just put Ogg in power.)

Remove the trammels that keep people down, and people will rise.  Yes, even the “underclass.”  Humans are humans and we’re all clever monkeys.  And IQ measure, btw, not only is notoriously difficult to pin down, but take it from someone who has known a VAST number of true geniuses, it is not a measure of how useful or even functional you are in society.  Most geniuses I know have trouble staying out of the homeless shelter.  The difference between the “elites” and the underclass is opportunity, training and culture.  (The culture being the good old virtues of self-control and deferring gratification, i.e. planning, and a certain go-gettism I’d call ambition, only not in the sense of more money or whatever, but of “I could do this.”)

I was struck recently, while discussing citizen of the Galaxy with friends by their saying “Torby would have done well in any circumstances.”  Yep, he would.  It’s the hardware in the head, not where you start.  And not how much money you’re handed.  Or even, honestly, how smart you are.

Let’s start giving people the right hardware and removing obstacles to their inventiveness and industry.

You get what you buy more of.  We’ve bought sloth and passivity long enough.  Let’s start buying industry, thrift and invention.

Yes, I know you’ll say “won’t think of the children?”

I am.  I don’t want them to grow up in a world where they’re so bored and feel so useless, the only thing they can do is shoot up drugs.

Say no to the oldest ploy in the world.  Be a true champion of the underclass.  Demand they pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

 

*Yeah, I know.  I’ll do fresh posts later, but yesterday and today I’m taking a break from “word work.”  It’s not total loafing.  Yesterday I made the house look somewhat less like a pigsty.  But it allows me to clear the mind a little.  Sorry.  At any rate, I thought you’d find this one interesting. – SAH*

Days of Future Past – A Blast From the Past post from November 2013

Sometime ago I was talking to a friend who is an older science fiction writer.  This was so long ago that the kids were then in their early teens.  I was telling her how difficult it was, writing and (back then) unpacking into the new house, and cleaning, and keeping the boys on track for homework, and she said that yes, being a working mom was very difficult, and that they’d thought back in her day that by the time we got to now, with most moms working, there would be public refectories that would serve meals.

I remember I looked at her for a moment, then said “there is.  It’s called PF Chang’s.”

This was before 2008 and the entire economic crisis, and we’d just had friends from out of town visiting.  We’d driven from restaurant to restaurant, on a week night, trying to find some place with less than an hour wait where we could have a meal uninterrupted by servers trying to hurry us up.  (Right now, our go to for this is a little Thai restaurant, where the service proceeds at glacial pace, and which is easier on the purse – unless we go to Denver where, of course, we go to Pete’s kitchen, where we’ve been going since the kids were little, back when the neighborhood was actually dangerous instead of just being iffy as it is now.)

We finally did find a place to eat with our friends, but it was more expensive than we’d meant to spend and in the mean time we’d gone through a whole range that is well above our “I’m fried/we spent the day working, let’s grab something to eat.”  (These days that’s mostly Applebys and we try to make it on Monday for the discounted burgers, but never mind.)

All these places were full on a weekday night, and it didn’t take much listening in to realize most of the people waiting were people who came here twice or three times a week.

Now, I’m not going to cast stones.  Back before the boys were a glimmer in Dan’s eye, both Dan and I were working in high pressure jobs, which didn’t pay overtime but expected it.  When you’re both working 12 to 16 hour days, the last thing you want to do is go home and cook, or even assemble a sandwich.  And we rarely managed the time to go out grocery shopping, for that matter.  (In that year and a half we were both at those jobs, sometimes I bought clothes because I hadn’t had time to do wash – and I shopped by my usual method of running in, grabbing something that fit and running out.)

What surprised me about that tour of city restaurants, years ago, was not that they were packed, but that they were packed at that price range.  (Then again, I guess some people have less… skinflinty ways.  Also, most of them aren’t writers, so they get more regular payments, I guess.)

To return to the main point, any society that requires its women to work outside the home (and the combination of social and tax pressures more or less requires that) must have some way of doing the house work.

For the science fiction writers of the early to mid century (probably up to the seventies) in the US, the thing that made the most sense was to have the government provide nutritious meals at your local refectory.

Could it have worked?  In real life?

I fail to see how, short of a Stalinist regime, where you end up having turnips five times a week and like it.

Would it be possible to have them be something like a school cafeteria, with discounted food?  Sure.  But I bet you that absent compulsion or restriction, they’d be competing with all the restaurants providing the same service in the free market.  And while I imagine some of these centers would survive, particularly in the poorer neighborhoods, the customers would mostly be the desperately poor and derelicts, using government vouchers, and receiving the quality of food no one else would want, at prices that would come out as a big chunk out of the taxpayer’s pockets.

I don’t think I think this because my beliefs trend that way, but because I simply can’t imagine the level of complexity of planning and compliance of the populace necessary for this to work.  I think it would/could only work if individual food preparation were outlawed, and even then I bet you there would be a grey food market/preparation market.

Take my kids, (please, I sell them to you cheeeeeep.  You’ll have to feed them!) They went to an urban high school.  What this meant is that they went to school surrounded by restaurants, snack bars, fast food joints, etc.

Technically, only seniors had passes to go out at lunch, and everyone else was supposed to go to the cafeteria.  In point of fact, you had to be careful driving around downtown at lunch time, for the flocks of high school students headed to McDonald’s, Wendys, Carl’s Junior or, my kids’ favorite, Subway.  In four years in that school, when not brown bagging it, older son frequented Subways.  He didn’t even know where the cafeteria was until he had to find out because he was on crutches.  And then he found the reason everyone went out was that the choice was so bad and relatively expensive.

If high school students can do this, so can adults.  The whole “government provided meals” would never have worked.

Why, then, did it make sense to science fiction writers at one time?  Why did even Heinlein include it in at least one of his juveniles?

First of all, you have to understand we writers are creatures of iniquity.  We don’t necessarily write what we think is true, we write what we think sounds cool.  For instance, I’m – sigh – ninety percent sure flying cars will never be the main form of transportation, but I have them in my stories, because they sound cool.

In the same way, in an age when most women stayed home and tended to the home fires (quite literally) imagining a cool and liberating future involved imagining a future in which women could just grab their food ready-cooked, courtesy of the government.  And the government, which had just won WWII and done all sorts of big building projects across the land, had the “can do” image to provide this.

People didn’t think of what would happen if they couldn’t choose what to eat when, they thought “oh, cool.  This will be taken out of our hands, and we won’t have to worry.”

The end result of this form of thinking has stratified in many people’s heads this idea of the future where a cool and efficient government does everything humans have trouble with on an individual level.

It is a nice dream and it would be very good – if government were composed of telepathic creatures, capable of looking into everyone’s hearts and seeing what they wanted, and benevolent enough to want to grant it.

No government known to man has ever been that way.  Even in that post WWII time when government was doing and building, it was hardly the beneficent society of providing lollipops for all children.

Government is really good at force and indifferent bureaucracy, and while it did much that needed done, it often did it in a high handed and crushing way (talk to the people displaced by reservoirs, for instance.)

There are things that the government can do (I would argue not as efficiently as the free market, but never mind me) like put a man on the moon, and things the government can’t do, like take people out of poverty.  The difference is that one problem is susceptible to the application of brute force, and the other is too complex or too dependent on individual variables to work.

Yes, it looked good enough for a time.  And yes, it seemed – would seem – to be more efficient.  It would save on resources!  All that food uncooked/uneaten in the restaurants!  All the restaurants that go out of  business! And what about the people who can’t find a place to eat?  And those who can’t afford the restaurant they REALLY want?

But in the end, the people running the Public Feeding Cafeterias would not be super humans with no pity or favor, no confusion, no human feelings.  They would be as human as the rest of us, and some of them would be empire building little sh*ts while others would be just finishing their time and pushing paperwork around till Friday and maybe a few would be really devoted public servants (who get screwed by the empire building little sh*ts, since, this being the government it’s a really big organization and he who passes the buck fastest wins!)  And the cafeterias would offer burn turnips five days a week and burnt radishes the other two.  And people would start driving out into the country to buy eggs off farmers, under the table, and black market ovens would get sold, or things sold for other purposes repurposed “It’s really a foot warmer, but Bob fixed it so it heats to 350 degrees and has a door that closes.  I sell cakes out the back door of the mini-van by the side of I-75 on Sundays.  It allows us to buy fresh food to cook for ourselves, so we stay out of the government cafeteria.  I was so tired of turnips. Then there was that batch contaminated with uranium and all of Mary’s teeth fell off.”

That would be where the public feeding system would have ended up.  I prefer the imperfect and ‘wasteful’ system of private restaurants.

And what about all those dreams of a perfect, organized, top-down future?

Shhh.  It was just a nightmare.  Wake up and work for the real future.  Imperfect, flawed, sometimes more interesting than I want to think about – but possible, in a way those dreams of future past never were.

 

I’ve been thinking lately about a bunch of philosophical conceptions on the left side of the island.

First, I’m going to say that this is to an extent the result of self-selection that has nothing to do with politics.

The left has a narrative that is a just so story.  It is, as was pointed out here, in the comments, a Christian heresy, but one that caters to fake “rationalism.”  What I mean is that the narrative of the leftist/communist/socialist story includes all the comforting high points of Christianity but avoids the opprobrium of “superstition” cast by enlightenment onto traditional Christianity.

Leftism, whatever they call it, has its roots in Marxism, and Marxism offers a comforting view of paradise (primitive times, when property was communal and blah blah blah.  If the flavor is feminist, it was communal property and ruling matriarchs) fall (we discovered something that changed us.  These days it’s fashionable in academic circles to blame agriculture, which apparently was no good, very bad, terrible for us, even though, you know, it allowed us to colonize the Earth and have a vast and varied population.  In the seventies it was war.  There are as many candidates for the liberal sin that caused human fall, as there is for the Christian sin, and honestly, none of them make a heck of a lot of sense) and redemption (here it’s different from Christian redemption, where each individual redeems himself, but the species can’t be redeemed till the second coming.  Um… scratch that. Perhaps not that different.  It is assumed that the evils of the human species are because we are not designed to live in “capitalism” which these dodos seem to think is any kind of trade or hierarchy.  They actually do call monarchies “capitalist” even absolute monarchies.  And because we are distorted and made “evil” by this structure, when the communist state withers away into a perfect classless, communal society, we’ll be redeemed, as surely as by the second coming.  Frankly, at least the second coming is more plausible from a scientific point of view.  At least it doesn’t require a bloated, totalitarian state to behave in ways that no totalitarian, bloated state ever behaved.  And while our species might have no experience of the Son of the Creator returning again in full glory this time to rule over us, we do have endless experience of totalitarian states.)

However, all of this mystical belief is dressed up in “science.”  History is taught with the idea that it has an arrow and the arrow leads inevitably to collectivism, and because they only teach select portions of history, the poor kids are convinced of it.

This is partly what I meant by self-selected.  The people who tend to gravitate left, PARTICULARLY those older than say 25, are the GOOD kids.  This is something that is rarely appreciated, and poor things, they view themselves as daring rebels.  It’s sort of pathetic, actually.  (Having grown up in a village, I’ve had a great chance to observe human nature, and one of the inevitable funny twists of the human mind is that the most flexible of humans like to think themselves steadfast and inflexible.  The kindest flatter themselves they’re cruel.  Meek women think they’re termagants.  I’m not sure why, really.  It just seems to be an invariable part of the human “package.”)

They’re the people who went to school and listened really well, and answered what the teachers wanted to hear.  They’re the ones who internalized lessons, and explanations, and the ones who want to have a system in which to integrate everything they learn. Everything has to “fit” in their world view.

I kind of understand that because I too like “grand unified theories.”  It’s just that after the age of fourteen, I started discovery too many things that didn’t fit anything they’d taught me.

I think those of us on the conservative/libertarian side are more like that, because though we were raised in the same culture, a culture permeated with the mechanistic view of Marxism, we COULDN’T integrate every fact, and instead of choosing to ignore those facts, we realized it invalidated what we’d been taught.  Instead of shutting up and fitting in, we went rogue.  We went against the school, books, entertainment, the way news were reported, the way history was taught, and started looking for non conforming facts.  We, in fact, preferred to believe our lying eyes over their sacred narrative.

This makes us a little odd but also predisposes us to be able to process five incompatible facts before breakfast.  It doesn’t mean we’re always right, but it means we can go “Okay, that doesn’t fit what I would like to believe, and I’m okay with that.  I’ll wait more facts.”

The left’s beliefs aren’t in general that robust.  They must silence dissenting facts and opinions, because the dissonance is unbearable.  They’re terrified they’ll become “of us” you see.

Why is this important?

Because over time, with their dominance of the entertainment-educational-intellectual establishment (which let’s face it, like all ESTABLISHMENTS prefers good boys and girls) they’ve become more an more solipsistic.

They were always a little solipsistic, a little convinced that what you believed was most important.  What you believed (not what you did) made you good or bad.

But now they have to defend against so many attacks to their vision — be it blogs, or people talking peer to peer about the things the media would rather not be mentioned — that they’ve retreated into a sort of crazy solipsism.  Or if you prefer, a crazy religious frenzy.  What we believe is paramount, and making the right gestures — even when we know they’re futile or counterproductive (raising taxes.  Leaving the borders open and encouraging the destitute of the world to come in. Encouraging America’s enemies.) will eventually, automagically, bring about a world in consonance with their beliefs.

Obama’s administration was most obviously in thrall of this vision of the world.  Most of what he did — the apology tour; refusing to lower taxes (even though he admits high taxes depress the economy which is bad for the poor); refusing the pipeline, giving uranium to Russia and money to Iran who is still by declaration at war with us — were akin to sacrificing goats in front of a shrine, because then the rain will come.

That they do this while calling it scientific and proclaiming they’re the party of science is part of that humans liking to think themselves EVERYTHING they aren’t.

But it also makes their vision not only dangerous, but frail.  They can’t allow us to dispute it at all, because what people BELIEVE determines how the world is.

This kind of mentality led to most religious massacres in the world.  It is the belief system that is at bay and indefensible that goes on the attack, that must silence the opponent and make them BELIEVE OTHERWISE at all costs.

When you view antifa, or the other various children’s crusades, as well as their romantic imaginings of resistance, remember that’s what you’re seeing: a belief system that can no longer confront reality, and is therefore trying to impose itself by force alone. (This is probably why they have such high affinity for Islam.)

I’m not telling you it’s not dangerous.  Sure it is.  It is at this stage that belief becomes fanaticism, that annoyance becomes fury, etc.

And it’s dangerous in and of itself to have a religion masquerading as a political party, because sooner or later they win elections, and then you get… well… craziness.

Will there be blood?  Almost for sure.  How much blood?  Well that depends when and where and how many of them there really are, outside of “positions formerly of power.”  I can’t answer that, because part of what they did was corrupt all statistics and data.  Since what you believe is more important than reality, they’ve massaged data to be what they want, because thoughts create reality.

Solipsism is a fun set of believes, until the bus you don’t believe in runs you over, and unfortunately their bus can run all of us over.

But I do know something: in the long run what can’t go on, won’t go on.  In the long run reality wins.  And we at least try to understand there is a reality external to our skulls.

It’s going to be bumpy as hell, but be not afraid.

In the end we win, they lose.

 

 

Just let the Vignettes Ring, 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:Noisy