Feeling Awful? Check Your Thyroid by Holly Chism

I’ve been fighting my own body for the past decade and a half, now.  Almost exactly, as of the middle of this coming May.  All from one itty-bitty gland not doing what it was supposed to do. 

My son is sixteen, now.  When I had him, I was warned that I’d be exhausted for a long time.  Well, they were right, but it went on a lot longer than it should have: the exhaustion should have passed within about six to eight months, especially since he started sleeping six to eight hour nights before he was three months old. 

Unfortunately, despite my first pregnancy having fixed several issues (too tight ligaments around one knee, a bad gallbladder, and reducing menstrual issues), it also triggered my immune system to attack, and kill, my thyroid gland.  Nobody caught it.  I went two years with my thyroid non-functional.  And then I fell pregnant with my daughter…and it got noted. 

When you attend your first prenatal visit, your practitioner will schedule a bunch of tests, mostly blood work.  One of the things tested is your thyroid levels.  Mine were…bad.  Really bad.  Bad enough she thought it was a typo, and sent me back—twice—to get the tests redone.

The way things work is that your body signals the pituitary gland that it needs energy.  The pituitary sends out thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) to tell the thyroid gland to uptake some amino acids, iodine, and cholesterol to turn into thyroid hormone (T4), which your body breaks down (T3, RT3) to use. Your thyroid gland does what it’s told, and everything’s golden. 

Mine didn’t.  It tried, but my immune system had more than half-killed my thyroid gland.  Autoimmune disorder.  It happens, and pregnancy can trigger it. 

So, while my thyroid was straining to comply and failing, my pituitary thought it wasn’t listening, and pumped out more TSH.  And more.  And more.  My TSH, when tested, was nearly 11.  It’s supposed to be no higher than 3.5. 

I shouldn’t have been pregnant.  I shouldn’t have been able to get pregnant.  Not with a non-functioning thyroid gland.  Shouldn’t have been able to stay pregnant, either…and could have lost the pregnancy (which I may have done before that one), or it could have led to really nasty repercussions for the baby.

But I was pregnant, I got treated, and I had a gorgeous baby girl who didn’t have any nasty side effects from my body dropping the ball…but I also had a thyroid gland that continued to fail.  And then to swell, and develop nodules. 

Backing up.  The TSH your body produces is inversely related to the amount of thyroid hormone you have.  If your body is not producing thyroid hormones, your TSH skyrockets.  If your body is producing too much thyroid hormones, your TSH plummets.  Ideally, your TSH should be between .5 and 3.5.  4 is subclinical hypothyroidism.  All that means is that your thyroid isn’t working quite right, but it could kick back off.  Your thyroid will slow down if you get really sick—it drains your energy so you sleep off whatever ails you.  Endocrinologists prefer to take a wait-and-see approach until your TSH eases up to 5. 

Here’s the fun thing: they can’t tell if your thyroid is working or not without drawing blood.  The symptoms are too diverse. 

So, what are you likely to face with a low- or non-functioning thyroid? 

1. Exhaustion.  You’re not going to have any energy to do the things you need to do.  You’ll sleep a lot more, and it won’t help. 

2. Weight gain.  No, it’s not just because you’re too tired to move.  It’s not because you’re eating too much.  Your thyroid runs your metabolism.  You’re shuffling everything to storage.  Not burning it.

3.  Hair, skin, and fingernail nonsense.  You start shedding like a nervous cat.  And it goes gray prematurely.  It’s dry—your hair dries out and conditioner doesn’t work. Your body hair thins—yes, everything from your eyebrows to the fine down of hair on your arms and legs.  Your nails soften and break.  When they’re not peeling.  Sometimes, they do both.  And your skin dries out, flakes, and you get itchy.  You can use all the moisturizer in the world, and you’ll still be dried out and itchy. 

4. Temperature regulation.  You’re cold.  You’re cold all the time.  And you can’t get warm.  Your body temperature actually drops.  Remember what I said about your thyroid running your metabolism? Yeah, your body temperature is part of that.

5. Digestion problems.  Your thyroid malfunctions, your digestion slows.  All of it.  Oh, and you’re more prone to reflux, so enjoy that, too.  You can take acid blockers, but only short term—long term, they cause damage to other parts of your body and digestive system.  And the reflux is caused by slow emptying stomach anyway, because your digestion has slowed down. But when your digestion slows like that?  Guess what?  You’re eating less than normal, still gaining weight, and your body starts sucking the moisture out of what’s moving through you, and you get constipated.  Eating more fiber makes it worse.  Drinking more water doesn’t help.  Laxatives can, but that can cause severe, long-term damage. 

6. Reproductive issues.  Your libido tanks.  If you’re female, your cycle goes longer, gets heavier and more painful, and you lose more iron.  It’s harder to get, and stay pregnant, because all of your hormones are influenced by your thyroid levels.  All of them.  Some of the symptoms can be masked by birth control pills…but those will actually make the underlying issue of a non-functioning thyroid worse.  Because estrogen binds the bit of thyroid hormone your body is making into its permanently inactive form that your body can’t use.

7. Blood pressure/cholesterol.  Your blood pressure can drop…or it can skyrocket, because your body’s under a ton of stress.  Your cholesterol will go up.  Because your body’s not using it to make the hormones you need to live.  Doctors will push statins at you, but those will just make you feel worse, because the root issue—a non-functioning thyroid—is still untreated. 

8. Cognitive symptoms.  You get forgetful.  You can’t focus.  Your thoughts move at the speed of molasses in January, if they move at all.  You can’t get interested in anything, can’t maintain interest in anything.  You get depressed, and nothing helps.  Not sunshine, not antidepressants, not talk therapy. Nothing.  Everything’s gray, and life sucks.  And it’s not clinical depression, because it’s not caused by brain chemicals going out of whack.  It’s your thyroid…which no one will actually test for, even if you have presented with treatment resistant depression. 

9. Pain levels.  You get more prone to headaches.  Not sinus headaches, not blood pressure headaches, not tension headaches, not migraines.  Just…random, mild, run-of-the-mill headaches.  Oh, and joint pain.  Your joints will ache.  And you won’t know why, and not much will help…because there’s nothing that you’ve done to hurt yourself.  Your body is just being an asshole.  Oh, and your muscles will ache, but you won’t have done anything.  (Doctors will actually test you, at this point, for Epstein-Barr, for fibromyalgia, for a bunch of different things…but not thyroid.)

10. Eye issues.  Your vision will go wonky.  You’ll go near-sighted, and may develop astigmatism.  And it will worsen, and continue to get worse.

11. Nerve issues.  Low thyroid numbers can cause tremors and spasms.  Because like your brain needs thyroid hormones to function properly so does your nervous system.  If it’s bad, it can look like Parkinson’s.  But it won’t be. 

If you stand back and look for patterns?  There isn’t one.  Not really.  And general practitioners look for patterns.  Symptom clusters.  That normally tells them where the problem is. 

Unfortunately, your body uses thyroid hormone to regulate literally everything.  There isn’t a single system in your body that it doesn’t touch. 

The absolute hell of it is, TSH is an easy check.  Most doctors don’t know what it signifies, but it’s easy to keep an eye on.  If it fluctuates, there’s a problem.  And if it’s not functioning and not treated?  It can cause severe and worsening problems. 

Including cardiac issues.  You read that right: untreated or under-treated hypothyroidism can lead to heart failure.  And early death. 

It’s an easy test.  Ask for it, if it’s not in your annual panels.  Keep an eye on that TSH number.  Remember: you want it between .5 and 3.5.  Lower than .5, and you’re hyperthyroid (different set of symptoms and risks—mostly inverse), and higher than 5, you’re hypothyroid.  Both can—and should—be treated. 

You deserve to feel better than this. 

*Yes, Holly has been badgering me to see an Endo. Now if only I get the test results back and the doctor knows what to do about it… Holly is an author, and this is the link to her Amazon page. -SAH*

Revolution!

*For those of you worried about how late I am: My thyroid has gone a big insane again, in the sense of extremely low. Yes, tests have been made and blood drawn for further tests. I’m currently waiting for results so we can figure out how/where to start with medication. Until then, I’m back on aderal, simply because the alternative is being almost comatose. But I’m having trouble functioning and, as per aderal, go down many many rabbit holes if I’m tired. It’s like Super-ADD-SAH*

I don’t know if you guys are aware of this, so I thought perhaps I should write about it.

I know there are no tanks on the street, and that I know of, no TV station has gone solidly to playing Green Acres back to back and this was not what I expected when I voted, so it took till a couple of days ago for me to go “Dear Lord, this is a revolution.”

Let me unpack that sentence above because I can see several people taking it wrong.

So, let’s start with “this is not what I expected.” It’s not. I expected the first term all over again. This doesn’t mean I ‘regret’ it or “am upset”. I will capture a tweet from Jagi Lamplighter about that, because I can’t put it better than she did:

Now that we’ve established that, moving on: what I expected, in my wildest dreams, where somehow Trump got beyond the barriers that held him back in his first term was the roll back of some of the crap that made the US a basket case under Biden. You know, actual semi-effective border control. Maybe a few thousand deportations. Perhaps a reining back of the stupid regulations, and some drill baby drill.

But I didn’t actually expect revolution. A revolution that rolls back the now long established corruptions imposed on our system by the likes of FDR.

At first I was in shock at the speed and compass of the EOs and other work going on. And then–

Well, part of it is my health, but I’m having real trouble controlling this. I will read the news on my phone first thing in the morning, because it’s weird and exciting. And then I have to fight to work during the day, because I’m fascinated by this show which is more interesting than anything Hollywood has produced in decades.

And in the middle of all this it was only a couple of days ago that I realized this is a revolution.

Well, you’re in luck, because I have a lot of experience in revolutions. No, not in leading them, unless you count “revolutions in a classroom” or something like that. And even then, I was usually too lazy to do anything.

BUT I have experience in finding yourself in the middle of a revolution where everything is changing and things you always thought permanent and immutable get yanked out from under you. Of course, this revolution doesn’t seem to be going in the way of things get worse, not in an overall thing (though they can be for individuals) so that’s an improvement over the ones I know.

But with that in mind, here’s some advice:

1- Don’t be scared. Yeah, I know, fast change, even fast change you wanted is always scary. And this is very fast change. But control it, okay. think clearly about what it’s happening, and what the consequences might be. This is very important.

2- First, it will allow you to NOT fall for propaganda, like the idiotic idea that they’re going to abolish social security, something even Trump said in his inaugural speech he won’t do. (I’m hoping they phase it out and stop taking separate taxes for it, so that in 40 years they CAN shut it down. I realize a good way to start doing that is means testing, and that that is likely to affect us, as we’ll never fully retire unless incapacitated. I’m fine with that.)

3- It will also allow you to fight back the fear that if we do this “they’ll do worse to us when they win.” If we do this right, when they win they’ll be a different party. We’re moving the Overton window at a fast clip. Reagan moved the overton window enough that the next time they won they were the “new democrats.” This demands a far bigger change on their part. Also, they did this to us pretty much under both Obama and Biden. Only not as fast/thorough because they couldn’t. They never succeeded in getting us to give up guns, so they couldn’t.

4 – Be aware there will be glitches and hard times. Look, if someone waved a magical wand and the federal government was suddenly within tight constitutional limits, there would still be bad consequences.

Sure, most of what the feds are financing is utter bilge, when not actively anti-American, and making things worse for everyone in the world as well as the US. (In fact, that’s the shock. Guys, this is me speaking, and I didn’t know how much of the leftover USSR bullshit propaganda and lies we were financing across the globe. Censorship, even.)

But some of it has little sub branches, and not immediately obvious connections to what you, yes, you do for a living. Like, you might have no hand in growing worse viruses to kill humans, but your lab might still be tied to federal funding (Partly because the government ran out/limited all other sources of funding.) In which case things will get lean for a while. And you should have prepared for it last year, but the next best time to prepare is now.

The same with apparently everything from game makers to magazines. They shouldn’t have been getting fed funds, but they were, and so you might be affected/find yourself temporarily unemployed.

And obviously a lot of people work in the bureaucracy who aren’t bad people, etc. And they will be unemployed. This is sad and in some cases tragic, but there it is. Things can’t go on, and change will hurt someone every time.

Now, if you are offered the 80k, take it. I bet you in eight months there will be other job opportunities. And you don’t want — don’t want — to be laid off instead.

But you know your situation better than I do. The point is, instead of being locked in “This is all terrible, because this terrible thing happened to me” you should be thinking through options and what to do to improve your chances of coming out of this smelling like a rose.

5- The minimum you can expect is supply disruptions, say on the level of covid lockdowns. People are being deported and self-deporting and there’s talk of e-verify. Just in trucking remember they MADE companies hire illegals. And frankly the empty factories gave me the pip. Yes, it needs to be done, because when there was a quarter in which NO ONE born in the US was hired, we have massive problems. Also it’s been used to depress wages. Also frankly mass immigration isn’t healthy for anyone, even those coming in. So it needed to be done. (And honestly they’re being very gentle, it’s just the propaganda is causing more self-deportations than they counted on.) Still, it’s another, even I hadn’t realized problem had got that bad, and therefore I now know there will be massive disruptions. Not because Americans don’t want to work, but because it’s illegal to hire them at under minimum wage. Also don’t worry too much. The money we save on the social services that permit illegals to work for almost nothing will reduce prices of some things, like medical care.
It will fix itself, but meanwhile be prepared for supply disruptions. As someone who tends to I’m telling you not to go overboard, but having enough essentials for a couple of weeks are a thing.

6- Be aware there will be opportunities and new enterprises and ways of doing things opening up. Keep abreast of what’s happening in your field. Don’t assume it’s all bad and get locked in depression. Even bad revolutions open up new (usually in that case counterproductive) job and enrichment opportunities.
In this case, if they remove the constraints on business even a little, I bet you there will be plenty of new opportunities and chances to work at whatever level and career you work.

7- Don’t be scared, but be prepared to throw your weight behind less-disastrous alternatives. Not only is this a revolution, but people are very angry. Such circumstances are slippery. I don’t think the people in charge right now are a danger, as such, but any disturbance, like, say the idiots on the left killing the employees going through records, and things could tumble completely insane.

So be ready to be the “slow down” voice and the one that tries to at least dissuade people from gallows.

8- At the same time, hold on to your principles. All of us will face difficult circumstances and choices because again, things changing very fast, and every time that happens opportunity and jobs appear and disappear, and you’ll have to decide what you can do, and how you can survive. Hold on to your principles. If at all possible to survive without compromising them, do so, because there is a price for compromising them. For you and for society.

9- Hold on to your hat. This year promises to be LIT and I’m not sure next year will be any slower. DO try to do at least some work, rather than spend the time trying to track everything.

I suggest you limit yourself to say half an hour of news reading, then go work.

And meanwhile, enjoy the revolution. Yes, we need a miracle for everything to go right, but we’re already in the middle of a miracle. What’s one more?

10- If you come here, and there’s a clip of the Green Acres opening, THEN it’s time worry.

Deals With The Devil

What would you do if a gentleman with horns and a pointy tail met you in a dark alley — or a bright sunlit office — and offered you fortune, fame and love in exchange for your soul?

Well, obviously, whether you’re a believer or not, you’ve heard this story often enough that you’d say no. If you’re a believer you’ll say so even if the well dressed gentleman — a man of wealth and taste — offers you the kingdoms of the world. Because you’ve read THAT story.

Alas this is rarely how you sell your soul these days, and the whole thing is way more subtle. This came up in conversation today as we were talking about a number of people — after my husband watched several specials about the music world (being a musician himself, though not professionally, he watches a lot of those) — who had everything and the world by the tail, but were miserable and fell into various forms of self-destructive behavior.

This is by now a proverbial story, one that all of us know. It’s the fame and fortune bring death and destruction story. It’s so trite it’s not even worth writing. And yet, it keeps happening again and again and again. And not just in music. Or writing. We see it in people who do very well in politics or business. People who do well in sports. People who win the lottery even.

Of course not all of those people destroy themselves, but enough do that you wonder if it’s a function of being creative, or good at sports, or even successful in other things, or having a lot of money.

I don’t believe it is. I don’t have much more than my personal experience, but for what it is, and for what it does I’ll be glad to relate it. (Alas my experience is NOT with having an immense fortune handed to me.)

At least twice I was offered deals with the devil. The first time I sort of started taking it, but the results scared me so much, I bounced all the way out of the political closet.

This was when I was writing for several publishing houses and kept getting pushed into explicitly writing leftist stuff, endorsing it, casting militant Marxism into my stories. I sort of did a little here and there (to wit there’s a trilogy my assistant is working to clean of those little bits so it can be brought out again.)

But the feeling it gave me was … Well, I realized if I went much further, I’d not be able to look at myself in the mirror. I’d be broken. Some fundamental wellspring of who I am and what I do would be broken.

I had a referent for this because, as an author, I know when you break a character it can be almost impossible to revive it. Put a pin in that and I’ll explain it later.

The second offer of a deal with the devil didn’t even offer me fame and fortune, just the chance to keep working, to keep making what wasn’t terribly impressive money. But it was a chance to keep working, and at the time I was terrified of going indie.

Note that the second — except for the final instance, and that’s complicated — was not maliciously done. It was simply the mechanics of keeping being published at the time, the way things were (and probably still are. Having gone indie, I haven’t looked closely at what is going on in traditional.)

On the second, it was a slow drip of prioritizing what I would guess would be bought, of shading my work so it would be acceptable, of writing the next book and the next and the next.

As happened I got a demand I couldn’t accommodate, because it made absolutely no sense, not even remotely. And that led to my being pitchforked head first into indie publishing.

In retrospect that was the best thing that could have happened to me. Though I didn’t think it at the time, and it took me till this last year to come back, to even thinking of writing the things crying to be written. (Not the ones on this blog. I always do that on this blog. But not in fiction, see. Oh, it’s starting, if I can stabilize the health enough to finish the edits.)

Now, I’m not telling you never to do things you want to do for money. That’s normally known as “having a job” even if that job is word slinging. You write for money, you have to write what people will buy. Absolutely true.

Remember that pin we put on the breaking a character thing?

I’m now going to explain how to break a character, something I found by doing it twice and then figuring out how it was done. (And that killed two books, by the way. Fortunately not already contracted books.)

When you create a character, the character has certain characteristics. To be able to perform its function, the character has to be that way. If you confuse an incidental characteristic with a vital one, and have the character act in a way against one of his vital characteristics, one that breaks something essential to the character, you will break the character. And sometimes even if only you know it, you can’t bring it back.

If you think back to a series you lost interest in, you’ll probably find that the author killed the character in that way.

But Sarah, you’ll say, humans aren’t characters! Well. Maybe. But humans too have things in their own heads that they don’t want to/can’t break.

And sometimes you don’t know it. In my case never writing the stuff that was screaming to be written was the problem. Forcing myself to write what wasn’t screaming to be written (even if interesting) just made that worse.

I got so extremely burned out, I only figured it out once the burnout lifted. But I should have figured it out.

Signs that you are on a bad path and not doing whatever it is that feeds your soul are that you’ll become more and more depressed, have less and less energy. And at some level, you’ll become very angry.

At some level, too, you know you’re harming yourself. I did. I just didn’t see any other path.

I find this is more likely to happen and cause damage if you’re one of those people with a vocation. Something you feel your born to do. Some work, some pursuit that makes your mind and soul (pardon me, but it’s the best word) sing.

If you’re in that position, find a way to pursue your vocation on the side, somehow. Find a way to do things that matter to you. And find a way to change jobs so it doesn’t violate the things in your head that if you break them will make you not-you.

This applies to writers, musicians, artists, probably actors and for sure programmer too. I’m sure it applies to a lot of people and professions I can’t call to mind right now.

Jordan Peterson says if you’re creative and don’t create, you’ll die. It kills you.

I’m telling you sometimes you don’t die physically, and something else takes your place. That thing, mind you, might be rage at everyone, but most of all at yourself. But whatever it is will destroy you.

The price of the gift, the talent, the drive, whatever those are, are to DO IT. To do what you feel you have to do. And if you’re doing it right, it energizes you. If you’re not… it drains you. Till you’re all gone.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but someone out there does. Find a way to exert what gift you have. Even if you have to do it after the paying work. And don’t let your gift get twisted. Don’t let others use it the wrong way. Don’t let it be trampled.
The price of the gift is to use it. Because life is too short to hate yourself.

And deals with the devil, regardless of songs and movies, never end well.

Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

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

FROM PAM UPHOFF: In Plain Sight (Chronicles of the Fall)

A short story taking place after the Fall

Bryanne Volkov is sixteen and moving from a small town to the capital of the Alliance, as her Grandfather is about to become the head of the entire Volkov Family. And her new home is not much like what she expected . . . the servants, odd, and an Executioner much too interested in the family.

FROM HOLLY LEROY: Malibu Blues: A Short Story.

Movie executive Robin Wolff and P.I. Jim Krag had something personal going on. Unfortunately, his business—and hers—got in the way, and they drifted apart. Then she was found shot to death in a dumpster behind the Hollywood Paramount Theater. Krag is going to find the killer and mete out justice as only he can.

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: Tanager’s Flight (The Tanager Book 2)

Captain Jem Raznick of the Tanager dreams of nothing more than sailing the stars with his crew—a family forged in the vacuum of space. When a mysterious pirate threat looms, what seems like a routine trading run spirals into a cosmic adventure!

Family isn’t just blood—it’s the bond that holds the galaxy together.

Every time the enigmatic Jade Star enters their orbit, routine turns upside down. Jem must outwit the treachery that lurks in the shadows of space to keep his crew alive. Prepare for a journey between planets where loyalty, betrayal, and survival are the only constants. Join Captain Raznick as he navigates through danger, deceit, and the deep, dark unknown!

FROM LAUREN RITZ: Guardian (Demons Bay)

When enemies attack the palace, young Lord Orin is given the sacred charge of protecting the Soul of Tien, an infant princess he names Insi. After the child’s nurse is killed, Orin must continue their journey, caring for the baby as best he can. Their goal is a small village at the edge of Linan, where the King said Insi will be protected from the enemies that would give anything to prevent her from taking her throne.When they arrive the village is dead, the only things left living the ancient sentient trees of the forest. The Elder Trees around the destroyed village in Linan still remember the oath they made to a long dead Tiene king. Protect the Soul.Lord Orin is destined to fulfill a future he never imagined. In order to protect the princess, he needs to become more than human—to die and live again, to be more than just the Guardian of the Soul of Tien. If he is to truly protect her, Linan itself must gain a Soul.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: A Sudden Departure (April Series Book 9)

The Earth below is a house in disorder. The spacers increasingly just want to be left alone. They need less from Earth all the time so many don’t really care what they do down there on the Slum Ball, but what if improving technology made it easier for them to bring all their old factions and sects and rivalries among the stars? The three partners April, Jeff and Heather hope to beat them at that game and find a firm foothold out there before the Earthies arrive. The book is also laying out details leading up to the merge of the “April” series of books with the story of the “Family Law” series.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: The Hartington Inheritance (The Hartington Series Book 1)

Almira Hartington was heir to the largest fortune in the galaxy, amassed by her father during his time as a director of the Andromeda Company. But when Sir Josiah commits suicide, Almira discovers that she and her siblings are penniless. All three of them must learn to work if they wish to eat, and are quickly scattered to the far reaches of the universe. Almira stubbornly remains on-planet, determined to remain respectable despite the sneers of her former friends.

Sir Percy Wallingham pities the new Lady Hartington. But the lady’s family will take care of her, surely? It’s only after he encounters Almira in her new circumstances that he realizes the extent of her troubles and is determined to help her if he can. He doesn’t know that a scandal is brewing around Sir Josiah’s death and Almira’s exile from society. But it could cost him his life, and the lady he has come to love.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Monsters, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That

A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That

MONSTERS – Xenoarchaeologist Vartan has promised his young daughter Liza one of the many enigmatic lamedh objects that litter the site of a vanished alien civilization.

No one can figure out what they’re good for, but Liza finds a use for one.

ADAPTABILITY – The Webster Marble Deluxe Woodsman, Model 820-E, has been offline for quite some time. Quite some time indeed.

Good thing Webster has a manual to consult, and a great many special functions.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1).

Something or someone is killing shape shifters in the small mountain town of Goldport, Colorado. Kyrie Smith, a server at a local diner, is the last person to solve the mystery. Except of course for the fact that she changes into a panther and that her co-worker, Tom Ormson, who changes into a dragon, thinks he might have killed someone. Add in a policeman who shape-shifts into a lion, a father who is suffering from remorse about how he raised his son, and a triad of dragon shape shifters on the trail of a magical object known as The Pearl of Heaven and the adventure is bound to get very exciting indeed. Solving the crime is difficult enough, but so is — for our characters — trusting someone with secrets long-held. Originally published by Baen Books.

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: holiday

An Order of Values

I was raised by a father who loved nature. He believed very much in not doing any damage to nature that didn’t strictly need to be done. For instance, instead of cutting a Christmas tree he would cut a branch of a tree, so he wouldn’t cut an actual tree.

On Saturdays he would take me on nature walks in the nearby woods, and he knew the name and habits of every bird and animal. He showed me the tadpoles in the little creeks, and took me in the evening to see the fireflies by the lake. He rescued puppies and kittens, and firmly believed in not hurting any of the Earth’s creatures.

Unlike the rest of the culture, he believed we shouldn’t litter. The whole “leave only footprints, take only pictures” would have appealed to him, if we’d owned a camera back then.

I’m still a naturist that way. I haunt natural history museums, and if we can get the Mathematician’s knees fixed, we’ll go for hikes again.

I don’t know what my dad’s opinion is on this strange cult of Gaia that has swallowed the world these last thirty years or so, since the fall of the USSR.

I don’t know if he realizes it is a substitute and stalking horse for communism. We don’t speak much about politics unless he initiates it, because he’s only getting his news from European news sources, which assume our news are dangerously biased to the right and seek to correct them. So, in a way he is living in a parallel world, and there’s no point talking about it.

However, I’ve been horrified by the vague and benign “we should take care of the Earth” which frankly those of us who are religious believe we should do, becoming “You will destroy humans to “save” the Earth.”

Yes, I know what they want is actually is to impose communism, or at least the ones at the top.

But on the street it has turned into this vile bizarre hatred of humans, a desire to “save” the Earth specifically from humans.

And the philosophy has penetrated enough for a lot of people to have decided not to have children, or to lead strangely hopeless lives in which they try to self efface.

Let’s leave aside the nonsense about a catastrophic climate change. While it’s entirely possible this could happen, it’d hardly be instant — unless we’re hit by a meteor or the like.

So putting that side, who are we saving the Earth for?

The Earth is not sentient. it doesn’t want this or that or the other thing. So who are we saving it for? Both of which are far far worse for the environment.

I know most of you probably agree with me, at least the regular readers of this blog. But I have to get this off my chest:

It’s all very well to look after your immediate environment. It’s perfectly acceptable to like to be outside with the trees and the animals. It’s great to study how animals interact with their environment and how evolution shapes the world.

It is however the greatest insanity to think that the Earth is somehow sentient and that it wants or needs this or that. It is insanity to believe that humans, creatures of the Earth as much as any delta smelt, are somehow unnatural and a danger to the Earth itself. It is insanity to believe there is even an ideal state for the Earth and we’re supposed to somehow achieve it. So many things we thought were good or we were doing for the better had unforeseen and bizarre consequences, even in our own lives, much less in the lives of a complex interchaining of ever changing and adapting organisms on an ever changing and dynamic environment.

If you think humans, specifically are going to destroy the Earth and need to be eliminated, you have joined a cult. An evil one.

Get up off your knees, go outside and take a deep breath.

The Earth will be here when you and everything you know is dust. What it will look like and be, and what inhabits you is not for you to control.

Enjoy it while you are here and don’t harm things — particularly living things — when you don’t have to (I interpret having to liberally. Humans are omnivores and do need animal protein).

Leave the things you enjoy for your children to enjoy, even if they enjoy it when they come back to the mother planet on vacation.

The business of humanity is humans. Go make more humans or build a better future for humans.

Gaia was always a fanciful construction, and the Earth will take care of itself.

So I’m a Sociopath.  So What? – by Holly Chism

I’ve seen, over and over, on farcebook and other social media spots, a new bunch of calumny. 

First: that letificles are empathetic.  They just care so hard, y’know? 

And second:

I call bullshit.  Twice. 

First, that leftists are empathetic: no, they’re not.  Leftists are split between narcissists who play victims, sociopaths who enjoy using people and watching their pain and confusion, and victims that emote rather than thinking.  Leftists tell themselves they’re empathetic.  They tell others that they’re empathetic. 

But.  Look at the programs they espouse: murdering the helpless (abortion), murdering the inconvenient (MAID in Canada), keeping their chosen, favored victims in a hole by promoting crab-bucket social politics (DIE, or whatever they’re calling it now).  Or worse (feminism/communism). 

Is that empathy?  If it is, it’s empathy that should be wiped out with napalm. 

Second: I examine the source of pleas for kindness and empathy.  If it’s a woman who’s having trouble finding a way out of hard-left politics’ social programs to keep her poor (SNAP, welfare benefits)?  I will absolutely help.  I will help to the limits of what will hurt my family (who absolutely come first).  If it’s a teenager who doesn’t want to murder her unborn baby?  You better believe I’ll help. 

If it’s somebody who screamed at me because I refused to mask up?  If it’s somebody who screamed at me because I didn’t want to participate in this decade’s Tuskegee experiments?  If it’s somebody who screamed at me that I hate women because I don’t want to pay doctors to cut up unborn babies, or that I’m a TERF because I don’t want men in the same locker rooms as my daughter, or that I’m a racist because I won’t let animals wearing the guise of humans act rabid?  If it’s someone who covers up grooming and rape because it’s “just their culture?”  If it’s someone calling me racist because I want the border closed, because I want the cartels gone?  If it’s someone calling me a sociopath because I understand the consequences that their minimum wage laws will have on all of us? 

Yeah.  I lack kindness and empathy for those groups.  And I lack kindness and empathy for the people saying I should have kindness and empathy for those groups.  The most I can, or will do, for any of those is pray for their souls as I pull the trigger, if they endanger my family. 

I’ll pray for their souls anyway, even if they stay out of my way for the rest of their lives (they’ll live longer if they do).  I’ll pray for their enlightenment, and I’ll pray for their ability to feel remorse for the damage they’ve done to themselves, the targets of their “sympathy,” the victims of the targets of their “sympathy.”  I’ll pray for the victims’ healing. 

I may quietly enjoy their suffering if they ever do realize the wrong and evil they’ve done in the name of “good,” but I’ll also rejoice if they actually change.

But I will not give them one shred of kindness or absolution for the things they’ve done, or the things they’ve cheered on.  I will not grant them forgiveness when they’re not sorry.  I will not grant them one bit of help when they’re in trouble (much as I wouldn’t piss on California right now). 

The most I will do is keep my gloating to myself when the gods of the copybook headings come home to roost on them, and pray that they learn from it this time.  Even as I hold out little to no hope that they will.

Because granting them help before they’ve realized that the trouble they’re facing is the direct consequences of their choices and their actions?  That’s not helping.  That’s not kindness.  That’s not empathy. 

That’s enabling.

(Holly is a science fiction and fantasy author. These are some of her latest books:

The Law of Magical Contagion.

Meals on Wheels.

Light Up the Night)


Attack On the West

I’d like to point out what’s been happening on our Southern border is not “immigration” of any kind. Not legal (obviously) not illegal (though what is happening is illegal) and not refugees of any kind, either.

What’s been happening is unprecedented, it’s happening all over the West (look up poor little Italian islands overwhelmed by waves of illegals from Africa and Middle East) and it is in fact an attempt at extinguishing the West and its uniqueness.

Now you can insert a lot of stuff here about race, and replacement of races, but that’s not what’s happening either. The problem would be just as bad if they were channeling exclusively from the underclass of Europe. (Some of whom are in fact here.)

Whether that’s what the left thinks it’s doing or not, that’s something else, since the left is utterly convinced that cultural is hereditary in a genetic way (yes, there are hereditary basic character traits, but those are very malleable. Humans are creatures of culture as well as genes, and the split is so close no one has ever identified one as a decisive factor over the other. Defects, like autism or actual, verifiable mental issues DO win over culture, but that’s a different kettle of fish. And the heredity of such defects is… debatable in many cases, and we should have more research on it, tbf. ) I mean, back in the nineties I had an argument with someone in the letters column of analog. The poor idiot thought that Chinese were genetically more “community oriented” and “non materialist.” Where they get these idiocies, only Heaven knows.

Yesterday I got bogged down trying to write this because I got caught in a rabbit hole of attempting to figure out how the left came up with this mode of attack. There are many reasons it has the support of their base who doesn’t view it as an attack, but as a way to utopia. See above. They believe certain races/heredities are more “communitarian” and “natural communists.” (Please, if you invent a time machine go beat Gramsci black and blue for me, okay?) Which is just part of their being the same genocidal eugenicists they’ve always been, right? They just changed targets.

But also some of them firmly believe we owe the third world supporting them and giving them anything their heart desires, since in the leftists’ blinkered, narrow minds there is no wealth creation, and the only way some countries/cultures are more productive is that they have “stolen” the “Wealth” from other countries. This is the whole rage against “colonialism” ignoring that most countries in the world have been both colonies and colonizers and that if your culture is broken, being a colonizer and actually for real stealing wealth (Hello USSR) does not do you any good and you’ll remain a sh*thole.

These same cartoon characters believe that people become instantly productive and rich by moving here. Call it the Garden of Eden effect (You shall be like gods…)

And for the bunch of you who are going to tell me no one on the left believes that utter nonsense, your argument is invalid. Find a recent college geography book (probably history too, but geography is where I found it for my kids. And yeah, we repaired the ceiling above where I went off like a rocket when I read that some countries were poor because other countries stole their “natural resources.”) Also talk to anyone under the age of… oh, 35. Particularly someone who is nice and not a particularly deep thinker. Sooner or later you’ll get them to say that they’re poor because we’re rich. Or some other piece of nonsense.

If you want to look up why they’re more communist than the US, do not look at genes, but at the fact that most of them were under a (heavier than here) concerted barrage of propaganda by the USSR for its entire existence, and the fact that their best and brightest learned communism everywhere from Patrick Lumunba University in Moscow, to Harvard and Yale. The worst colonialism ever perpetrated against the third world was exporting communism to them. Also, for the record, they’re poor because they’re communist. Communism (and socialism) destroys wealth and kill humans (the only different about socialism is it does it slower and with crappier writing and art telling you that you should love it.)

But all of this is utterly irrelevant as I’m convinced the leftists at the top, the ones who designed this strategy, have no warm fuzzies for third worlders, any more than they do for the west. All they have is will to power and a naked thirst to dominate all of humanity. Or perhaps to exterminate it. They don’t seem to like humans very much. In fact, they seem to despise humans to the point that one wonders if all the jokes about lizard beings are just jokes.

What happened was this: the left — the powerful on the left — always imagined they’d get all the power, as the west succumbed to over population and lack of resources, was conquered by the USSR, and post collapse became a wasteland ruled by them as overlords.

Some wrenches dropped in the way of their grand plans, one being the fall of the USSR, another being that the overpopulation crisis failed to materialize, and even demographers are becoming aware that statistics are not reality and that no economy, no every day reality corresponds to “too many people.” Not even in the third world.

To add to this, humans — the pests! — came up with an agricultural miracle that feeds everyone we have. And continue to be endlessly adaptable.

Most of these horrors of communism, these international villains that would make a James Bond villain blush are older than I, or not very far off my age.

Your sixties, no matter how well you’re doing, even in the first world, are when you start thinking “Whoa. At this point, I might live another forty years, or I could die tomorrow, and it wouldn’t be exactly a surprise.”

A lot of these people are in their eighties and nineties. And they’re starting to suspect they’ll never rule over the world and everyone in it, while most humans die or grub in the dirt for subsistence. And they were PROMISED.

Well, they really couldn’t hope to conquer the West. Or let’s be blunt, America. Europe is still too free for them — which should give you pause. Or fill you with rage. Or yes. — but America? America is two middle fingers raised in their sight. We were supposed to have collapsed from our prosperity (“decadence”) by now. We were supposed to be conquered by the USSR. We were supposed to be communists, the seat of their power.

Instead, we keep denying them their promised glory and just being…. America.

They couldn’t attack us frontally. Or with armies. Look, even under Biden, with as much as they’ve done to destroy our military, there is no one in the world who can take us. And even as wimpy as Europe is, their soldiers are better fed and generally better equipped than, oh, the Chinese. (No, really. If you believe in the amazing Chinese might, you should remember that totalitarian regimes not only lie, most of the time they don’t even know they lie, because the lies are baked in at every level of their society. And that fact alone means they can’t fight free or mostly free countries that have a clear sight of their capabilities. In the end, information is the most powerful weapon.)

China has been their great hope since the nineties, but it’s now obvious it really is a paper tiger, and one that is smoldering if not outright on fire.

So they came up with a last desperate strategy: send the third world in waves, masses and unimaginable multitudes into the west, particularly America.

The strategy is brilliant on the level of damage it causes: It destroys the high trust society when there is a large number of strangers who do not share our assumptions, our morals or our culture; it exploits and destroys our social welfare net (you know what I think of it, but we have it and I can’t convince people to get rid of it) which is enough to bankrupt us; it challenges the West’s Happy Go Lucky belief in human potential and the value of every human; it creates deep ethnic and nationalist rifts within society that leads to nepotism which by itself destroys productivity.

Like all smart weapons, it takes advantage of the best qualities of those attacked and weaponizes them against the victim. (Not that it’s in any way helping the people used as weapons either. More on that later. Put a pin in it.)

But Sarah! You’ll say “It’s just people who want a better life, who are, at worse, economic refugees.”

Well, no, it damn well isn’t. Go look at the series here, by Bill Reader. He did a deep dive, and it was obvious, early on that the “caravans” were being filled with communists. Devote, dyed in the wool commies, who came here to “conquer.” (Remember all the flags and anthems sung at the border? Yeah.)

Since then, it’s got complex, simply because there aren’t that many commies, even in South America. (I do wonder though if that’s what allowed sanity to happen in Argentina and El Salvador. They sent the commies North.)

However, if you think the flow at the border is natural, you must believe in “global warming” or another widespread disaster that could cause that. Study history. That much of a movement of people simply doesn’t happen just because they “want a better life” and a rich country has its border open.

I do realize we’re an attractive nuisance. (And the only way to get rid of it is to stop both welfare to all illegals, but also to revoke minimum wage laws, which make illiterate, lost peasants worth it because you can pay them less. This is what’s known as a signal that our minimum wage is too high. Economics is a bitch. You can’t really legislate it. You can try, but you just end up with pathologies like illegal immigration.) BUT even so.

Look, humans are social animals. That means we’re creatures not just of economic well being, but of connections to family, friends, to the way things work.

As someone who immigrated, and who comes from a family where a lot of people immigrated over the generations (not here.) I can tell you that the drive is neither universal nor particularly widespread. Dad’s family is WEIRD. They’re born with wandering feet and tend not to fit where they were born, so they leave in search of where they belong. Sometimes they even find it.

Mom’s family is more normal and seems to be the pattern of normal human beings: Stay where you’re planted, unless there is a major push to make you move. How major? You and your entire family will otherwise be murdered. Or you’ll starve to death.

Go look at the great migratory movements of the world. That is exactly what’s happened. If you see places emptying themselves to go elsewhere, they’re either being invaded or climate change (real one) has made it impossible to feed themselves; or there is some other form of destruction, including governmental. (See Irish Potato Famine.)

The thing is that you need to get to the point of famine in stupid government tricks for people to move in any amount worth noting. The USSR didn’t manage it. The DDR didn’t manage it. CUBA hasn’t managed it. There are immigrants into the US and the west, sure, but never en masse.

The people movement we’ve seen over the border is too large for it to be just the people who naturally seek better. (So those of you Libertarians who feel queasy about supporting deportations, stand down. This is not the movement of free people or free markets.)

Even if countries aren’t emptying (and one hears stories) the numbers coming over our border indicate something is going on other than “I want to earn a living for my family.”

Also, honestly, look at any picture. I remember reading Simak’s Our Children Children and their talking about how the refugees from the future didn’t behave as any other refugee in the history of mankind. This was taken as evidence that they were more “evolved” or something. The thing was that Simak was a journalist and he nailed it on what refugees look like. They usually look hungry. They almost always look tired, ragged, and clutch with hopeless despair a few possessions, some of which are nonsensical. A teddy bear. A sheaf of papers. A bag of potatoes. Something that gives them security when entering the unknown territory ahead.

This is not what we see with the people coming over the border. By and large they’re well fed. Most of the few women who come over are actually better dressed than I on any given day. They clutch no few possessions. Most of them are male, which negates refugees, but not economic immigrants. Most economic immigrants start as unaccompanied males who hope to ‘send for’ family, or to send money home and eventually return.

So, what is going on here? Where are these people coming from? Who are they?

Well, we know for a fact that a lot of them are the prison populations of communist countries, ala Mariel boat lift. There will also — we’ve captured several — Jihadists bent on revenge against us. There are probably still communists, particularly from China, Europe and Africa, who come here to destroy America, as their holy mission.

But I honestly think — based on the reports from people who work border patrol, and who talk off the record — that a lot of the people being flung against us are actually coerced to come.

Coerced, you say? Well…. Mexico is a failed Narco state. The biggest resorts, the most powerful families are up to their necks in drug trafficking and other public. And the way the society works is Lords and Peons. (Throughout most of the American continent south of the border, to be fair.) If the Lord make the Peons move, the Peons will move. Through debt, or attrition, through terror or orders, they will move. Because the alternative is death.

I think that’s how we end up with people who quite obviously come from so far from civilization that they have no clue what a toilet is, and think it’s a water fountain. (Yes, fairly regularly, it does happen.)

More importantly, Spanish isn’t the majority spoken language of those coming from south of the border, and many of those we can’t find interpreters for. (The dirty secret being that most Spanish-Speaking American countries are actually and for real ultra-racist against their tribal “Indio” populations. So getting rid of them is a bonus.)

But I suspect if the media cared to look, a lot of favelas, remote, poor villages and slums in Mexico, Central and South America and for that matter the rest of the world have been cleared and sent to the border. Once here, they are ruthlessly exploited by the cartels and the other criminal elements of their own or associated countries already here. The over a third of a million missing children aren’t the only ones exploited. Yes, women have been trafficked too. But I bet you anything men are working in conditions of inhuman servitude and compelled not to leave.

If you read “missing family” reports, you’ll find some of them still did, heading mullishly back to the border and back home. They were just overwhelmed by people coming the other way.

Of course, in this there were also the people that preferentially want to go beyond the sidewalks, or to the totally strange place. BUT those are a minority of humanity.

I think most Americans, and a large number of Europeans are unaware of how much of the rest of the world is run by “mobs” o a sort or the other. Either hereditary power of a few families, or power of armed gangs, or true mafioso organizations run most of the world for their benefit. And until this past week it was to their benefit to send their serfs to invade, exploit and destroy the West, particularly the US.

(Real immigration doesn’t need well-funded NGOs to chase the “migrants” towards your border or give them what they need to survive here.)

This has been a disaster to the countries of origin as much or more than the US. Okay, so maybe not the sending us their criminals, though kindly remember that “criminal” in places like Venezuela might just mean “doesn’t sit down and shut up”. Probably sending us their underclass (and tomorrow or the day after I’ll write about underclass and what makes an underclass, a group that has more to do with each other across races and cultures and TIMES than is comfortable to contemplate.) also doesn’t hurt them. Maybe.

But an uninterested press has ignored the rumors of children kidnapped to be sent North, the stories of entire villages left empty, and of course the stories of places left without men (which to be fair happens with real economic migration, too.)

It has also been a disaster for the people sent over. Yes, even those put in luxury NYC hotels. Again, humans are social. These people have been ripped from their society, culture, and ways of living, and are fish out of water in ours. The fact we don’t appreciate their effects on us is just icing on the cr*p cake. Most of them don’t fit, don’t have the skills to fit, and are either exploited or turn utterly feral.

So… For the sake of humanity, for the sake of our country, for the sake of the future and our children, the best thing is for them to leave. The best thing is for them to go home, if possible. But if not possible, well… “You don’t have to go home. You just can’t stay here.”

As for the hand wringing over who will pick our crops or work in our factories: Frens, what we’ve seen are people being laid off and having to subsist on various kinds of welfare and assistance while the illegal immigrants are moved in to work at very low wages and in substandard conditions. Yes, minimum wage laws are an abomination onto economics, but you know, we can bridge that with technology. Automate more and hire locals for where you need them. (Which honestly would already have happened without this source of sub-standard but very cheap labor.)

More importantly, our economy will benefit greatly by having the burden placed on it lifted. Burden? Well, since we — malgre people like me — live in a society that insists on having a governmental safety net, illegal immigrants who can barely look after themselves are a drain on the collective resources.

How big of a drain? Oy, people. Even before the last four years of insanity? Ask anyone who works in an urban hospital, say, how many of the people filling emergency rooms were here illegally/didn’t speak English; ask any social worker how much of their case load are illegal immigrants who don’t speak English and who might or might not be passing the same six kids around amid various families, for extra benes; ask any school teacher in a place not utterly isolated how many of their students are non-English speakers and poorly socialized; have anyone who works for a charity food distribution tell you how many illegal immigrants they feed; figure out how much of homeless encampments are actually non-English speaking illegal immigrants, whose struggles to survive/criminal activities make our cities unsafe.

How big of a drain? I don’t know. I’d be tempted to tell you half of our expenditures are going to support people who shouldn’t be here, and who are paying mordida to some sort of criminal overlords. I have a cold feeling in my stomach that I’m way underestimating the numbers, though.

I was relieved when Trump declared this an invasion and the cartels enemy non-national organizations. Because it meant he saw what I saw.

The West has always welcomed those in true distress and willing to adapt and acculturate (a process that is not easy, and might be impossible for those without the desire or ability to thrive in the US) but this is no normal migration.

This is people being used as weapons by other people who don’t view humans as individuals or, frankly, human, and who are throwing them at us hoping to take us out and to finally achieve the world in which we are all serfs and they are the few, god-like overlords.

The only way to counter these human weapons is to send them back. As fast and as economically as possible.

I firmly believe even in the short run the money we safe on social services will more than pay for the price of deporting them.

We don’t have to hate them. If I’m right they’re not even here of their own volition. And we don’t have to despise them. And we don’t have to make sure they go “home.” The integrity of their culture and their nation is their lookout, not ours. (Their standards are also not ours.)

For our good, for their good, the attack has to stop and reverse.

We don’t in fact care where they go. They just can’t stay here.

As the days begin to lengthen the cold begins to strengthen

By Holly the Assistant

Some of us really enjoy the snow and cold, and such outdoor activities as are available this time of year.

Rocket, living her best life.

Others prefer to find a warm spot and glare balefully at the world.

Gertrude, on top the microwave. (You explain to her that you need to wipe the top of the microwave. I’ll watch from way over here.)

Humans being humans, and fairly stubborn and defiant at that, when it’s 2 F out (that’s -16.67 C), and hasn’t been above freezing for a month, tend to start planning gardens and thinking about what trees to try in the orchard and generally trying to rush summer along.

This is NOT the planned planting!

Quicksilver (orange and white) and the Wolf (all white, except for dirt) doing their best imitation of house plants. That is a jalapeno pepper Wolf is sleeping on, and Silver has a couple struggling green onions getting smushed.

(Sarah told me to post something silly, she’s exhausted. I said, Ok, I have Silver and Wolf in pots, that’s silly enough. I could have shared Wolf ‘helping’ me with electrical problems, but honestly that’s just scary, the electrical, not the Wolf. Yes, the Wolf and Silver are Indy, Circe, and Muse’s younger siblings, and the Wolf is very similar to Indy.)

Hope you all enjoy the four-footed crew here!

Thank G-d Almighty, Free At Last

I was very happy when I heard Affirmative Action was ending. The only friend of mine who was happier was the one whose husband is from Africa, and whose kids have even more to lose than my little (huge) mutts.

“To lose?” You say. “But Affirmative Action gives preference to people of color! Surely the fact you were so happy means you want to hold minorities down!”

You — the imaginary voice in my head, or the liberal reading this post to try to figure out the depths of my evil — really need to stop making me hit my head so hard on this here desk that I leave dents.

Affirmative Action meant that people were advanced on the basis of color or declared/perceived ethnicity, yes. But what that meant, in actual fact, is that people got advanced without the least interest in their competence.

And because this started with colleges — or earlier, to look good on paper — it was harder for people who tanned to get decent educations. (Or women. Of course women — white women — were the largest contingent to benefit from AA! Which is how “the lady’s A” became a thing in a lot of places, and women crumpled when faced with a real challenge. Put a pin in that.)

The truth is that Affirmative Action, being a numbers game, isn’t a matter of giving preference to someone who is otherwise the same as every other candidate but has a slightly deeper tan or happens to be a woman.

No, being run by the government, it is the bluntest of instruments, so they will promote anyone with the irrelevant characteristic and since the random person isn’t particularly competent well, there you have it.

So what it does is sort of establish a nobility of birth — anyone born with this characteristic gets a leg up despite merit or lack there of — reduce the overall competency EVERYWHERE, cause resentment in people who know they are more competent than those advanced above them (whose work they often have to do) and oh, yes, multiply “victim categories” as everyone wants to get a piece of the AA pie. As part of it, of course, since the people advanced are unlikely to be competent (picking for any reason other than competence dilutes competence) it also increases racism and racial tensions. And of course those who feel themselves resented will attribute it to racism — which it is, even if incited by the stupid rule.

What it does, in fact, is fracture American society, men against women, people who tan against the pale, the pale against those who tan, the varying shades of tan against each other. It also makes everyone concentrate on everything BUT the mission. if you’re counting heads, you’re not thinking about your main work objective.

Look, we’ve had over sixty years of this. If it were going to bring about magical integration and an erasure of race, we’d know by now.

Instead it has multiplied “ethnicities” and a sense of resentment, victimhood, and people hating each other as general classes of human widgets.

Turns out the way to make sure there’s no racism is to stop talking about race, thinking about it, or even considering it. And if you are a liberal and thinks not noticing race makes one a racist, you’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed you have not a hint of a glimmer of a link to reality.

Yes, I do know that a lot of people are scared by the end of AA. That’s because they’ve been extensively lied to.

As my friend told me when we heard of this, “Finally, Dr. King’s dream is coming true, and people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”

And it’s about d*mn time.

Free of being lumped into arbitrary categories at last. Free of thinking of each other as arbitrary paint chips or what is between our legs. Free of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Free to advance as far as our minds and ability and willingness to work at last. Free to be Americans at last.

Thank G-d Almighty, all of us, free at last.