According To Hoyt

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

*Some of these books are getting pushed two weeks in a row because now (crosses fingers) they have images. Apparently it makes a huge difference. Who knew? – SAH*

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: SPOTTED

*Yes, yes, this time it worked. Well spotted! Granted it worked in a slightly different format, but I think I like it.
Anyway, didn’t quite finish the book yesterday, despite a valiant effort, so going back to head down. If you need me, some of you have my # (you just have to play find the person.) If you can’t find someone who has my number, and you don’t have my number, you don’t need me. Keep the dragon out of my office. He’s liable to get his nose bitten off. And try not to wake Havey, who is sleeping instead of bothering me. Thanks – SAH*

Hoping this will actually get written and show up, which shows you the triumph of hope over experience, I’m going to put it up super fast:

I’m okay. The reason there was no post yesterday and there will be no promo post today (promo post probably tomorrow) is that WordPress is embuggred.

We have again the return of “no picture will post, and if it posts, it disappears seconds later” and now with extra special “The post too will disappear suddenly and with no explanation.”

Comments too are having issues.

For the more paranoid among us, of whom I OFTEN am one:
No, I don’t think they’re messing with me personally. I think they did an update, and because I’m using a really old theme it hits me harder than other people. I’m saying this because last time I had to go into the bowels of the post and fix a bunch of crazy settings that had got flipped by the update before I could “post with images” or even read your comments normally.

I’m trying to finish a book, so I won’t have time to do that today and (maybe) tomorrow.

It might be time to change theme. I might even have to — gasp — get a paid theme.

I’m not the only one getting hit by this nonsense, and it’s really seemingly correlated to age of theme (I think mine is from 2016.) I just hate changing themes, period.

Anyway, wanted you to know it’s nothing major. It’s just the forces of evil (technology) messing with me again.

See you tomorrow.

I’m actually not sick. I am tired. Tired, with a bone-deep tiredness, but not sick.

Well, I just had one of the worst eczema outbreaks of my life — please, no recommendations for treatment. I’ve had this since I was 1. I’ve tried EVERYTHING. One thing works, a medicated prescription cream (Triamcyclone, I think. I have a huge tub of it, but managed to pack it and lose it in the move — which is double weird, because it’s been years since I’ve had anything half this bad, and because low altitude usually stops my outbreaks.

On the other hand, the infallible trigger for my eczema is stress, and between the last few months of the move/fix and the house sale that was ratcheted up to insane levels. By the times things slowed enough, my arms were raw flesh AND infected there were outbreak patches in the middle of my back and some on my back thighs. And I didn’t want to go to the doctor again. (For one, I couldn’t drive. My prescription was way off, and I just got new glasses yesterday.)

But I don’t really count the outbreaks till they go nuclear, so the last two weeks. (But seems to be on the downstroke, now. And almost okay. I no longer look like I have critical burns all over my arms. At one time someone at comicon asked what the outbreak was. He was so kind of advocate for disability, and he was super impressed I was wearing short sleeves, with my arms as bad as they were. Meh. I don’t actually even notice it until it’s affecting my sleep, etc.)

I am tired, though. Boy, am I tired.

Some of this is I suppose normal, considering what the last year was.

But some of it is being super-tired of…. life in the last two years.

Look, when I used to visit Portugal for one or two weeks, it felt like I was spending time in “frustration land.” Anything, no matter how simple ran into delays, contretemps, parts not being available, waitstaff being dilatory (I realized I’d become completely American when I stood on a chair and made like a semaphore to get the waitress who’d been ignoring us to come to the table. The rest of my family who had been waiting for an hour groaned and hid their faces. I wasn’t even vaguely embarrassed. I might to have done it, to avoid retaliation, if what we were waiting for wasn’t the bill.)

I mean, stuff like “I need to buy a notebook” turned into an epic expedition over ten stores, and most of an afternoon because a store would be out of the type I wanted, send us to another, who swore they’d never carried it, then–

And I can tell you it wasn’t lack of familiarity. It was how you lived there. Someone made a comment about how much creativity it took to live in the USSR. Forget it, Jack, it took creativity to live anywhere but the US. You learned to make do, to haggle, to exchange favors. And when to ignore the law. (It was my inability to convince my husband to go the wrong way on a very short street that almost got our rental car wedged in the medieval part of Coimbra, to the point only a helicopter could get it out. Seriously. We managed to get out, but it took 3 hours of turning by inches. And he was like “How come this doesn’t happen to locals” Well, because no one cares about the one-way sign, that’s why. Yeah, it was PROBABLY a source of revenue for local policemen, but better than getting your car wedged. Back then you could bribe a traffic cop for $20 or less.)

It was a relief, like a massive weight lifted off my shoulders, whenever we landed in the US. No matter how crazy the airport, tight the connection, hassled the airport restaurant servers, we knew life had just got massively simpler.

I wish I could take a plane back to the US before people who think they’re universal experts started f*cking with everything.

It’s not even that there are shortages. It’s that the shortages are utterly random and unpredictable. And service? Yeah, there’s a shortage of employees in jobs that are mostly taken by women, and I assume that’s because after the covidiocy many women decided to stay home with the kids, which is a good thing. Statistics seem to indicate so.

But even short-staffed, there’s a curious lack of service in the “dead hours” of the day. And almost everyone I know who is working, their companies have cut staff to the bone and are abusing the remaining employees with crazy schedules and/or overtime. Because, well, yes, the companies are pinched (the war on energy does that) and therefore they’re trying to cut in human resources, as they always do. (And not the actual HR. If they cut HR efficiency and service might go through the roof.)

More importantly, “the way to do things” got broken during the covidiocy. Now you never know if you come in, if you do it from a distance, if they’re going to require masks (And some of us at this point get hypoxic at the thought of wearing masks) if they’ll have what we need in stock, if we’ll have to wait for months, if–

I’ve been trying to get an estimate for some simple work on this house for…. 3 months now. It’s– slow and unreliable. Not as bad as in Colorado, but still slow and unreliable.

And I’m slow and unreliable.

I’m tired. There’s the constant stress of knowing we’re now living in a coulrocracy (*government by clowns) and not knowing what they’re going to do next to fcsk things up for everyone. And no, they’re not making this easy by talking about “possibilities of nuclear war.” No, it’s not panicking me. It’s making me angry as heck, though. I wake up in the night punching something, and then have to apologize to husband or cat.

But it’s exhausting. It all is exhausting.

The new neo asked if everyone had aged 10 years in the last 2. In my eyes, most people, myself included, did.

It’s the stress, the not sleeping well, the waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Nothing is as harmful to the human mind and body as continuous uncertainty.

When will it change? I’m uncertain.

Can someone direct me to the waiting area for the flight to America circa 2017? Thank you.

The last time I was in Portugal I got to witness (actually the time before last, while running through the Lisbon airport) something I’d only previously read about as being normal in the soviet union: structures that were being built and decaying, simultaneously, which seems impossible, but I assure you it’s not.

As the idiots on both sides try to hurry us into war, and the custard heads try to side with Russia and cite as a reason “But Ukraine is corrupt” I stare at the mind-boggling staggering amounts of corruption necessary to bring Russia to the level of incompetence on display in the battlefields of Ukraine, and I think “If that’s a reason for Russia to invade a country, they’re going to invade all of the world, and the US only escapes on a “relative” scale. (Mind you, that is precisely what Putin wants, but that’s something else.)

The question is: competence has existed, and had high marks. We know it existed at various times, because their works survive: the landscape of Europe is still littered with Roman bridges and aqueducts, not to mention Roman roads. Cathedrals and monuments abound. Our own country has marvels of engineering and construction still standing and you don’t have to fix daily.

So, where did that competence go? And why does no one seem to know how to do anything. (Here as an aside, almost everything I learned to do competently had to be learned on my own, and often against massive resistance.)

Well, for about a hundred years now, we’ve been under the ideological ascent of socialism. And socialism — international socialism, to be precise — is only good for creating picturesque ruins. (The romantics would have loved them.)

Note that I’m not defending national socialism. As I’ve pointed out before, when the government takes over the economic life of a country, and directs what the companies can or cannot do, the tendency is to quash innovation, and as a rule everyone becomes very poor.

It’s just that it depends. Like empires (which to an extent they are) national socialist regimes can do okay under an extraordinary ruler. I had a mini-dispute with Herb in the comments on whether Franco was or was not Fascist. He absolutely was, both in the economic, and in the repressive, take over every minutia of life aspect. He was also better than the average bear at directing the economic life of the country which is why before his death we used to go shop in Spain, where more and better goods were available than in Portugal.

Relatively speaking, Salazar was a softer leader. Or at least, he stomped less on the opposition (while making more noises about stomping. It’s the Portuguese way.) But as an economic leader (director of the economic life. Fuhrer if you will. Or where did you think that came from?) he sucked. He sucked upside down and sideways and with his head in a sack. And that’s because he was raised by Jesuits, and got his economic theories from them. Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know. So over his rule, everyone became increasingly poorer. But weirdly not incompetent. (In fact, as a person who — there and here — likes to follow craftsmen around watching how they do things, the average craftsman who learned his trade under national socialism, was probably way better than anyone else.)

Which brings us to: how does international socialism/communism not only destroy competency but introduce incompetency and corruption to the degree it is enforced/implemented.

At first I thought it was due to enforcement/non enforcement of laws. But that dog won’t hunt. Laws in Portugal at least were as inconsistently enforced under one as under the other. And of course the darlings of the regime had, if not carte blanche, at least a certain amount of immunity.

So what does it?

Some people will of course jump to its being the egalitarian ethos of international socialism, the fact that it’s supposed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat, and that nothing can be enforced.

But that’s actually buying the propaganda of the international socialists, and their propaganda has absolutely nothing to do with reality. You are free to believe this is true, but you are also free to believe the Easter bunny is saddling up his egg distribution system.

No, the international socialists are just as totalitarian as the international socialists. In fact, they are usually more so, since they require you to believe– Oh.

Look, the national socialists — other than the Germans, and yes, that is a huge “other” but truly, everywhere else they gained hold wasn’t QUITE that insane and neurotic, let alone murderous — are evil thugs who gain control and rule from above with a heavy hand. Even if one or two exceptions fail to immiserate their populations quite so much, they do in general clamp down on innovation and enforce whatever their strange idea of economics might be, with predictable consequences.

But the totalitarian rule they do enforce is usually in tune with their people. So, Franco encouraged and endorsed the Catholic church, and FDR made noises about good, midwestern values and how “decent” people should live.

It stomps on anyone even mildly different, of course, but the rule it enforces is what most of the native custard heads would think is right and just at least externally. (Yes, I do realize what that says about the Germans of the 20th century.)

So while — in general — it impoverishes the populace and destroys industry and innovation, not to mention free trade, it brings with it an ethos of “poor but honest” and “I take pride in what I do because I belong, and this nation I belong to is the best in the world.”

It slots into the portion of the head that wants to belong to something. And it it gives an appearance of working just long enough that people tend to think of it as right, just and “the natural order of things.”

Which is why so many conservatives– may G-d have mercy on their souls — think of the FDR rule as “the way America should be.”

Meanwhile international socialism (which for a large part of the 20th century was actually Russian nationalism projected outward) while as intrusive and crazy cakes comes with a set of shibboleths that self-admittedly are impossible. And are impossible from the beginning.

Because the international cult dictates that you not only believe but endorse principles that are obviously idiotic, even to the most idiotic of human beings. In fact, it takes years of expensive education to be able to say these things with a straight face. (See the current nominee for Supreme court who is unable to define “woman” because she’s not a biologist.)

In the early stages of this international insanity, it was all about the workers being naturally better than the managers, and therefore if the workers were in control marvelous things would ensue.

Only even the workers know they’re not qualified to manage (No, seriously. I’ve been a worker several times. I suck as a manager.) And the manager seriously know it. And given the workforce of the early 20th (or late nineteenth) century was often illiterate and more provincial than someone born and raised in NYC now, it was obvious they couldn’t manage anything.

Which was okay, because — in an also obvious move — intellectuals took over from the beginning, and managed the “worker’s” revolution, in fact ordering the workers around as the managers never had.

What was even more obvious is that these persons were crazy and had absolutely no clue how anything worked. They were “experts” on everything, on paper, and completely unable to figure out the simplest things in reality. So once they took control things went wrong very very fast.

Which is where incompetence and insanity came in.

Look, it’s like this: When you look at the virtual destruction of the country and the economy, and you like to eat, and perhaps remain clothed, in self-defense, you start making side deals, compromises and side-pacts.

So, that cement for that stack-a-prol building? Well, obviously it can’t go there, because the guys building the sea wall that the government doesn’t think is needed, need it. So the cement takes a walk, and sand is used to make up the difference.

That’s how it starts. And then it expands, until the entire economy is a vast network of lies, arrangements, side deals, mordida and bullshit.

Because there is no real central coordinating authority. There is a crazy person at the top who depending on their particular time in the line of insanity, says — and heaven help us, some of them believe it — that they are ruling in the name of workers, oppressed races, the poor, the gay, the transgender, but who in fact can find his/her/its own ass with two hands, a seeing eye dog and sonar.

And under it there are atomized individuals who can’t trust anyone, because anyone at all could turn them in.

There is no family, no friendship, nothing in which the crazy people won’t intrude.

Now imagine doing business under a regime like that (And all socialist regimes, from euro-socialism, now ruled by an unelected bureaucracy from Brussels, to the hard communism of the USSR are like that. The only question is how hard it comes down on you when you come under its notice. Will you simply lose your job and be made unemployable, will you be thrown in jail,or will you go to Gulag?)

Well, all business is corruption. The only thing that works is the black market, and that doesn’t work very well. It’s all pass the buck, cheat the next guy and cover your own ass.

And for those who will say that Putin has more in common with the old style national socialism than this. No, not really. He too claims a sort of divine right of kings to know what is right and wrong, even if he does pay lip service to old Russian society. From what I understand in Russia it is obvious it is only lip service. (Though the poor bastages are grateful for even that, after what that society has been through.)

More importantly, the bureaucracy, the mobs, everything he inherited are from the old structure. And he didn’t change them. So, yeah, they are also plagued with corruption and inefficiency. In fact, all the old Eastern block countries are, from what I understand including East Germany. (And it tells you something that the crazy-cakes regime managed to make Germans inefficient and slovenly.)

Socialism is not just lethal. It is a force that — by enshrining the rule of “experts” and “scientists” who are neither — makes it necessary to become an inefficient anarchist and a scammer to survive.

If you’re looking around and saying “Uh oh” yep.

We are already well on our way there, and have been for oh, thirty or forty years.

But there is still time. It starts with cleaning up our governance and getting rid of the masses of unelected bureaucracy that make mere survival almost impossible.

Can we get there from here?

I don’t know. The bridge is out, and from that roar, I think there is a fire coming.

What it leaves behind, G-d only knows. But if we can take from it nothing else, take this: Self governance works. Rule by “experts” doesn’t. You’re the only expert in being you. And humans, trading freely, survive and thrive.

As long as you remove the boot from their necks.

*I thought this was worth rerunning, even if less than 2 years old, because we find ourselves casting from history on what will happen here, and it’s important to understand certain things: How different we are from other nations; how different this crisis is from crisis in the past; and, more importantly, how corrupt our understanding of the past is, because of our establishment’s corruption. Sure, those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. But those who believe Marxist versions of history are doomed to be very surprised – SAH*

The Wrong Story A Blast From The Past From August 7 2020

Having dealt with what I’m sure is yet the same troll in the comments, telling us that without Marxism the “upper classes” wouldn’t give a fig for the lower classes, world without end, connected with something that has been going on in my head all morning.

Anyway, this morning I was reading a book from a non-woke author who has been pounded in reviews for daring to tell the truth about pre-conquest Mexican history, and yet, in analyzing previous Mexican/indigenous societies he speaks repeatedly of “class warfare” and seems to think it’s a normal part of civilization.

Which made me pound my head repeatedly on the breakfast table.

Class warfare isn’t a thing. It was never a thing until Marx brought it to the vocabulary. Hell and damnation, it wasn’t even a thing in the French revolution.  No, I’m serious.

The fact that some people have more and some have less has never caused war or the fall of any civilization.  What causes war or the fall of civilization is closing pathways to “having more” to large segments of the population.

The French revolution wasn’t class warfare. Yes, aristo, aristo a la lanterne.  But what it actually was was the violent reorganization of a society whose ruling elite had become obsolete and unable to adapt to new economic circumstances, and also who refused to let society change normally.

Which I can completely understand is something that would make our current self-proclaimed ruling elites uncomfortable, since that’s exactly what they’re doing.

French aristocrats were often not the wealthiest people around. In fact, their means of wealth had been falling for over a century, and most of them were deeply indebted. What they had by law, though, was power over everyone BORN under them.  It wasn’t economic, but state power, ultimately.  And they not only refused to relinquish it, allow the bourgeois (often far wealthier) into their circles, but kept coming up with more and better ways to keep the “interlopers” out.

They were in fact doing what a lot of our soi disant “elites” are doing, trying to silence dissent and return to a way of life that hasn’t been normal or healthy for a century or so.  (The left’s ideal time is the 1930s for instance. Only with more sex stuff, and — in their heads but nor really since they’re now for straight up apartheid under the guise of safe spaces — racial integration.)

But it wasn’t “classes” in the sense that Marx preached them. It had nothing to do with wealth, income levels, or daily occupation. (The nobility QUITE lacked means of production, that being part of the problem, in the industrial age.)

It was more accurately castes: i.e. privileges given by the government depending on the condition of your birth.  Which, again, is what the left is trying to institute here.

Anyway, there has never been “class struggle” in any history ever, in the Marxist sense.  That was Marxist…. Well…. Marx was a high functioning autist and invented patterns even where they didn’t exist. And he wanted to plug in to the romantic ethos of the time and make the industrial revolution bad. So he came up with that load of fecal matter. It means nothing.

If you believe in Marxist “classes” and “Class warfare” and you’re not a leftist, kindly consider you’ve been profoundly mal-educated.

(If you are a leftist, you’ve also been profoundly mal-educated, but you like it, you believe in it, and by gum you’re going to wallow in it like a pig in muck.)

History could more accurately be described as a battle of memes.

Humans live not by bread alone. Regardless of how food and the other necessary goods of society are produced, that’s not what makes people happy/unhappy, etc.  It’s the story in their heads about the society and what makes it tick that counts. And the story always lags reality. And is often used for the rulers’ purposes.

Hence the romantics were an attempt to make life pre-industrial-revolution wonderful. And convince peasants living in rural submission was better.

At some point, though, the story breaks, when its fit to reality (it’s NEVER 100% because human life is fluid) becomes glaringly broken.  This is when revolutions happen.

For instance, it was easy for rural French peasants to groan under the oppression of the nobility, because there was a unified narrative that you were supposed to serve in the place you were born to. And because honestly, the noblemen were different enough so as to be another breed, almost.

It was when the industrial revolution advanced enough that there was a vast group of wealthy people who were told they were inferior “by reason of birth” that the wheels came off. Particularly as the bankrupt nobility tried to push them back into rural subjection.

In the case of the book I’m reading, he talked about pre-Mexican peasants rebelling against the priests who lived so much better, because class warfare.  This is not real. Or serious. It’s more likely they rebelled (we don’t know for sure, as we have no written accounts) because the priests failed in their role according to societal narrative.

I.e. they were supposed to keep bad things away, and didn’t.

In the same way the current covidiocy and intentional crash of the economy is an attempt to reverse the clock and to implant the narrative that “we’re all in this together” thereby giving the Marxist intelligentsia of the west control over the story in people’s heads.

“The heroic people and their heroic leaders defeated the virus with the power of government and therefore the government must have more power and narratives must come from the top and be unified.”

This is their preferred narrative. It leaks out with things like DeBolshevik wanting a ticker tape parade “when we defeat” the virus. Or their being really upset at Trump for not falling in line with “government is the way to defeat this” or imposing unified solutions from the top.

It’s not going to work. In fact, it’s hitting hardest those places they have full control of: Arts, entertainment, news, education–  What they’re actually doing is destroying their areas of power to gain power. Which is a ghost dance typical of what happens when an “elite” displaced by a change in circumstances which makes their story no longer fit tries to hold on to power.

The more they do, the more they flail around, the harder the fall will be.  Which frankly is scaring the shit out of me, as I think it’s going to be guillotines and terror. Not their fake attempts at terror, but the real one, where people Have.Had.Just.About.Enough and have no way to make the bullshit stop except a massive spasm of violence.

This is the way civilizations DO fall.

But the picture in everyone’s head right now is “classes” in “permanent war” which is an invention of Marx and has no contact with reality.

History is not permanent class warfare.  History IS permanent change.  And when the story in people’s heads doesn’t match the narrative, a time comes when it is reset VIOLENTLY.

The Marxist narrative was never right — which is why it brings death, starvation and destruction wherever it gets power — but it made sense to people in a regimented post-industrial world.  It also poisoned them for any practical solution, but hey, the ruling classes could USE it to get more power.  So it worked, after a fashion.

Only in the information age it doesn’t. And people are buying it less and less. And know all the ways in which it breaks.  But still retain fragments of it in their head. Which means as it falls apart, it will fall faster, harder and more violently.

The more it has penetrated everything and cued people for the wrong reaction, the more violent the outcome.

But screaming the story louder, or having seeded it everywhere doesn’t stop its fall. It just makes the fall more violent.

Reality is a bitch. It always wins.

And the current “elite” inability to understand that, or even to process that they are in fact in charge and not bold rebels (which their Marxist upbringing insists they are) is setting us up for a “blood to our ankles” situation.

Pray that I’m wrong.

Some people are born for the burning times.

Most of us who write or read here were born for strange times.

Look, I do understand the left’s fascination with “the excluded” and “diversity.” It’s just that being collectivists/part of the herd by nature, they go about it backwards and sideways.

They’re not looking for pink monkeys/people who inexplicably are rejected, or even people who think so differently they have trouble explaining how they got where they got, because it’s obvious to them, and they think it should be obvious to everyone.

No, the left doesn’t like those “excluded.” Being the herd, and having instituted themselves as “leaders of the herd”, masters of signaling belonging and judges of what must and must not be accepted, they actually hate those who are true non conformists. Their attempts to enforce herd uniformity descent to levels of “not one thought out of place.”

Because the society where they’re trying to enforce this is one that has long valued the excluded and the off-beat (Partly the Christian heritage, partly, in America, the conciousness we’re descended from/or are those who came here to get away from herd enforcement, and also that as a country we’re completely weird.) they still pretend to accept the excluded, to value the strange, and to enshrine the iconoclast, only they have no clue what those actually are.

Like that song “we are the renegades” which then goes on to cite a bunch of Hollywood and business darlings that are considered “innovative” because they did some slightly new things, and which makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it.

Because they have absolutely no clue about people actually getting excluded for no reason, they try to force the acceptance of people who are excluded for reason, and when society rebels they blame the group for the evil of those excluded.

This is a ploy that works, because it gives the “leaders” of the herd more power, of course.

As the new media and a plethora of individual contact opportunity gave us — the outsiders, the goats, those who giggle at the conformity of the herd — a chance to be herd and create alternate networks, the herd and those who enforce the conformity of the herd started losing their minds.

They didn’t even know we existed, much less that anyone could actually be that different.

Now we’re stuck somewhere between them trying to make us shut up, and them trying to lead the herd off the cliff to prove they can.

But the herd, though it values conformity, is not actually stupid, and is refusing to do as told.

So these crazed sheep are running around biting other sheep on the butt and telling them it’s sheepdogs and the wolves are coming.

Partly because the end of their reign feels like the coming of the wolves to them.

Okay, I might have stretched that analogy a bit. If the left were sheep-leaders, they’d be sheep with some kind of unknown disease that keep trying to infect everyone else, beause patches of fungus and sh*t are the latest trend, and you should be wearing them too.

As humans they’re miserable, desperate to fit in at all costs, yet pretending to value diversity, attaching to irrelevant things like skin color for “diversity” while stomping on any thought that’s out of line, and generally acting insane.

Unfortunately in the years of submersion, the years when we couldn’t be heard, they had seized control of the — well, everything. All the levers of power.

So, now they really are trying to destroy everything they don’t control. And it’s worldwide.

Great evil is being done, and evil is headed to all of us, at speed.

This is good. No, stop glaring at me. It is good, because for many years evil has been accepted as “normal”. It’s been beaten into people that crime is “society’s fault” for instance, when it is no such thing. It’s been impressed upon people that it’s better to beg than to be self-sufficient. And a great evil of mediocrity has settled over all creative endeavors, where sticking out has been considered the only true crime, no matter what they tell us. In my profession, my whole time in it, I’ve been told that they want something “new” exactly like the last “new thing” that is. And it’s like that everywhere, till mere competency is a de-facto crime and punished as such.

Well, it’s good to see that this stuff is all evil. Because turning away from it is the only way we, as a society and a culture, save ourselves and go forward.

What is not good is that chains of supply, institutions, companies, ways to earn a living in the modern world are all going to crash for a time. And people will be in real danger. And the herd will be starving.

And the herd, ladies and gentlemen and the occasional dragon, is most of humanity. They might not be like us, but they’re our kith and kin, and as such we should value them. And it’s not good when the innocent starve.

Fortunately we do exist. We’re the goats, the excluded. Mostly because we think weird, which often leads to our behaving weird, at least in the eyes of those who never had a weird thought in their lives.

Now, granted, many of the weird have gone wrong: those brought up with an amoral disposition, those who just got really angry and traipsed into doing harm as a vocation, those who want vengeance on the herd.

With the shower of sh*t that’s about to rain on all of us, and how many of us have at best a marginal hold on survival, (being by disposition likely to be on employment and money-making ventures that are fringe or odd, themselves) it is easy to think it is a grander purpose to destroy. Heaven know that’s what a lot of “normal” people will conclude. “Everything is wrong, so let’s burn it all down.” And how much easier it is for us to think that?

But it’s not right. Yes, the institutions and structures of society have been turned against it, but it doesn’t mean that the structures in themselves are evil or wrong.

Sure, some are, because the perversion of the normal and good started a long time ago. But not all. “Mere anarchy” being loosed upon the world might briefly feel good, but it is in fact the end of civilization.

We’re not the left, and we do not — if we’re even marginally sane — assume that “destroy everything — ??????– paradise.”

It is important to rebuild or shore up as fast as things fall down. And it’s important to take an unusual eye to things and figure out what’s actively harmful, what must be removed, what can be adapted and what can be salvaged.

Fortunately, we’re nothing if not unusual. As Kate Paulk is likely to say “Think outside the box? What box? I can’t find the box.”

You know the saying “When things get weird, the weird go pro”? It is wrong. We wouldn’t know what pro means. Even those who are professionals in some thing or other, we aren’t really professionals in anything. We’re making it up as we go along, because rules that apply to sheep fit weirdly on goats.

So…. if your entire life you’ve been told you think too much. If you were the kid other kids wanted to kill in kindergarten, because you were so weird. If most of your friends — your friends! — say you’re strange. If your opinion tends to be not only different from mainstream, but sideways and upside down so that the conventional thinkers can’t figure out if you agree/disagree/are completely insane: stand up.

No one is going to ask you to go pro. You wouldn’t know pro if it bit you in the fleshy part of the butt. And that’s how it should be.

We’re asking you to stand up. We’re asking you to go active. Think, plan, build. Prepare.

Build under, build over, build around, and get ready. Because when it all crumbles, we’re the ones who have to not let the herd go over the cliff.

They’ll still hate us, it’s a given. But in the middle of it, we might be able to bite a few butts. And we’ll make sure there’s still a herd and a pasture, when it’s all done.

In the mean time…. we’re going to do some very weird things we never thought we would. We’re going to have to become different people, which will hurt. And we’re going have to face our own weirdness, unflinchingly.

And yeah, a few of us will die. But hey, that was baked in since we were born. If we manage this, not all of us will die.

THINK. Prepare. Act.

This is our song, this is who we are. Be not afraid. This is our time.

Yesterday was one of those days. I actually woke up early, to get the promo post up early. Of course of all the posts in the week, the promo post is the one that requires me to paste images, right?

So, I first tried the normal thing, where I copy paste the cover from Amazon. It didn’t work, as in…. at all. It just showed a blank and acted like it was an image.

So, I uploaded it to my computer, then pasted from there. It refused to.

Finally I found a work around of a screen shot, and it seemed to work, so I set about doing the promo post. When I put in the last book I paged up…. and the images were gone, replaced with “insert image here”.

By that time it was twelve thirty my time, and with a might ARGH I decided to fly without images, which I realize will materially impact hits on the books.

And then I went to have coffee and breakfast.

Would you believe the entire day was like that? Everything I touched broke/didn’t work/ did something bizarre I didn’t expect.

I’m trying to finish BOR (aka the TRULY cursed book) but by the time I sat down to write (four thirty?) I just didn’t have the brain.

And so, here we are.

I’ve done a backup of the entire blog, so that should things get froggy I can take it elsewhere. In my copious spare time I might do a backup with everything setup, so it’s a flip button. The problem being, the backup doesn’t seem to have downloaded.

This morning I woke up and thought I’d finish the typeset work for Odd Magics. I did, using atticus. I’m perfectly happy with it, but the ebook export isn’t working. The print is, mind, so I suppose I can do the print in atticus, then go back and format everything with kindle create. And I will, if I still can’t get the ebook to download by this evening. But seriously… Must everything be like this. Like the last two years aren’t enough.

That ARGH you hear is mine.

I wish the internet hamsters would find someone else to torture.

This post is mostly to figure out if I can, indeed, post something with an image. If I can’t I’m probably going to go Librarian, and no one has any frog pills to hand.

Part of me just wants to go back to bed, but we need my income, so I suspect not.

You know what? When it all blows up it will be over someone having a day like this, not over some grand philosophical dispute. Like the vegetable vendor who set himself on fire at the beginning of the failed Arab liberation.

No, I’m not going to set myself on fire. I usually set the internet on fire.

But again, seriously — looks up — can the simple things just work? Just for one day?

*SORRY ABOUT THE LACK OF IMAGES ON THIS POST. I SPENT HOURS TRYING TO CORRECT IT AND I’M OUT OF TIME. HOPEFULLY I CAN FIX IT DURING THE WEEK. WORDPRESS IS A’HOLE-SAH*

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM ROY M. GRIFFIS: The Thing From HR: a Cthulhu, Amalgamated novel.

“A Cthulhian romp that’s equal parts Terry Pratchett and Mel Brooks… and it just might be the funniest novel I’ve ever read.” – Upstream Reviews
I laughed far too much…you’ll enjoy dark humor, dry wit, slapstick moments, and elements of romantic comedy. – Amazon 5-star review
What’s a nice Shoggoth like him doing in a dump like this?
Narg was content working as a Damnation Services-10 in HR. Sure, he was related to one of the Elder Gods, but a little nepotism never hurt any Thing. His life was just wailing and gibbering, right up until his Uncle needed a small favor from his nephew.
All Narg had to do was go down among the humans…and pretend to be one of them.
These are not your Grandfather’s tales of Eldritch Horror: this is the untold story of the ghastly, unappreciated (and entirely expendable) minor monstrosities that support the Inscrutable Plans Of Dark Gods And Elder Things Beyond The Knowledge Of Men.
The Cthulhu, Amalgamated series is a comic romp full of action and mystery, including, of course, Sanity-Shattering Horror––and that’s just the paperwork. Even H.P. could not conceive of the Corporate Terrors that await The Thing from HR.

FROM AMANDA S. GREEN: Foil of the Gods.

Evil has taken root in the Adrean Imperium. Soon it will rise up, destroying everything in its wake. If Balaar wins, the world will fall to a darkness the like of which it has never before seen.

Aimsir, to the west of the Imperium, is the birthplace of the Order of Arelion, enemy of Balaar. Cait Falconer—Knight-Cleric and heir to Queen Maeve Porgisl, ruler of Aimsir—knows danger draws near. Aimsir’s borders have been safeguarded but at a great cost. Now Cait and the Order work with the Queen and her military to make sure Aimsir never falls to the coming evil.

Then the unthinkable happens. Allies fall. Others become enemies. The followers of Balaar march inexplicably toward Aimsir. If it falls, all will be lost.

FROM DAN MELSON: Preparing The Ground (Preparations For War Book 1)

It started innocently enough. Joe was the engineer on one of Earth’s first explorations beyond the Solar System, using borrowed Imperial technology. Captured on a hostile planet, he has to make a plan for his crew to escape – and then he discovers his real mistake!

He becomes a Missionary of Civilization on a primitive planet caught between massive empires – and the enemy has to think it’s all native ingenuity!

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Home World (Fall of the Alliance)

Roland house Jaeger is in desperate straits after being brutally used to distract his father while his enemies move.

Lord Seigbert Fey needs help to gain custody of his orphaned grandchildren, and desperate enough to take a chance on a battered angry teenaged boy.

Together, they start to pull their lives together. But their Transdimensional Empire of thousands of Worlds, the Drei Mächte Bündnis, the Three Part Alliance, is heading into rough waters, and about to hit the rocks that will shatter it.

Can a small family survive the fall of the Alliance?

FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot-42 Book One – Stalingrad Run

At the height of World War II, an apparent time anomaly cuts Europe and part of the Middle East off from the rest of the world. Trapped in Northern Iran, with no way to contact the world he knew, United States Army Engineer Jim Edwards is forced to flee from both the Germans and the Soviets. His only companions are a mysterious Russian woman who may be trying to assassinate Stalin, and a man who calls himself “Loki”. Is he any more trustworthy than the Norse trickster god he’s named after?

In a desperate bid to get to Great Britain, Jim finds himself in a treacherous race across Nazi-occupied Europe. His mission? To prevent the Nazis from overrunning Europe, then sending their war machines against an alternate United States that’s still armed with black powder muskets. The freedom of mankind’s future may depend on his success.

FROM MALCOLM JAMESON, WITH AFTERWORD BY D. JASON FLEMING: Too Young To Live! (Annotated): A classic pulp space opera.

After suffering a catastrophic failure that almost destroys their ship, the crew of the Thuban manage to gain some control inside of a dark nebula, and land on the mysterious Athanata — a planet where age is immortality, and youth is a death sentence!

First published under the editor-mandated title Quicksands of Youthwardness, iktaPOP Media is pleased to bring this long out-of-print Malcolm Jameson tale back to readers everywhere.

This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new afterword by D. Jason Fleming giving historical and genre context to the novella.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Flight of Miss Stanhope: A Short and Sweet Regency Romance.

Marianne Stanhope is in trouble. Her family is urging her to accept the attentions of a most odious suitor, so she turns to a gentleman of her acquaintance for aid. But Mr. Firth has his own reasons for assisting Miss Stanhope, and it falls to her childhood friend Mr. Killingham to convince her that she’s made a dreadful mistake.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Familiar Tales #2: Vaguely Familiar and Oddly Familiar

The Off Ramp of Doom meets an ancient evil . . . Lelia Chan and her Familiar Tay cross paths with a piece of obsidian that’s more than it seems. When the local magic community runs out of ideas, Morgana Lorraine asks a trained shadow mage, André Lestrang, to help. The stone remembers evil. Evil calls to evil. Lelia and her friends must stop that call.Less than a month later, the Off Ramp of Doom strikes again. The police ask Lelia to look into the matter – literally. Meanwhile, Shoshana Langtree’s art attracts unwanted – and possibly related – attention. When trouble at work leads André to return to Riverton, shadow mages and friends have their hands full with stolen art and Halloween follies.Will they solve the mystery in time?

FROM C. V. WALTER: Captivating the Alien Captain: Alien Brides Series, Book 4.

Some women aren’t meant to be tamed…. 

Some men would rather love a wild woman…. 

Trina’s been in love before and is done with all that nonsense. After a lifetime of not being able to count on anybody but herself, she’s happy with the life she’s created, thank you very much. She’ll love her fabrics, and dote on her grandchildren, but leave the romance to the young and foolish.

Enter Captain Maikedon Cretus. He’s smart, sexy, and interested in more than Trina’s body…and very interested in that, too.

Careful and patient, he’s laying siege to her heart until the walls she’s built start to crumble. He’s willing to wait as long as he has to in order to win his lady’s love, and it’s not looking like it’s going to be as long as she thought…. 

Until the alien dress Trina is altering for the wedding of the century turns up questions and a story of betrayal. Can they work together to solve the mystery and lay to rest an Emperor’s dark past, or will the tangled web of woven lies and truth tear them apart?

Contains mature themes.

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.

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.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: OPTIMAL

It is important not to attribute magical powers to the other side.

Yes, they do have plans, and they post them quite blatantly.

Part of this is to convince themselves and those on their side that everything is going fine. Look, there’s a plan!

The other part is that, as always, they’ve been so profoundly indoctrinated into their one-end-of-history paradise, that they think if you oppose them it’s simply because you have failed to be properly informed. Think about their war cry “Educate yourself.” Because if you only educate yourself, of course you’ll agree with them. (When in fact, to dissent from the “truths” proclaimed by the media-industrial complex requires quite extensive research and self-education, because it’s a hard step to take (agreeing with the mob is always easiest.))

Also think of what happens when they lose? Granted our side tends to go “I guess the people want stupidity now” which is…. stupid, particularly when we know the massive margin of fraud. But their side just goes “We need to explain to them better. The people are so dumb. We must educate them.”

Always with the assumption that if we only knew their full plan we would of course love it. Hence “You’ll own nothing and be happy” because they — rightly in this case — think “you’ll own nothing” and can’t make the leap to “and be happy.” So they have to tell us we’ll be happy. Everything we want or need will be provided by the kindness and care of supreme government. Why don’t we love that. (Mostly because if the government gives you everything it can take everything away, and that we’ve all grown up since kindergarten and want to take care of ourselves, than you so much. But they can’t imagine not trusting government see. Remember the creepy DNC interviewee? “We all have to belong to something, so we belong to the government.”)

Yes, they are quite amazingly good at breaking everything, but that’s not because they have a plan. It’s because we fail to act as they would/as they expect, and so they try to herd us towards it, one step at a time. And they never think further than that one step, because they know they’re smart and we’re dumb, see? If we were smart we’d be on their side, after all. All the smart people are!

And lately it’s all been blowing up in their faces, and they’re trying to figure out why, and of course it can’t be their fault, so they keep getting more and more outrageous.

Take the covidiocy and lockdowns. I’m not sure — precisely — what it was supposed to lead to, precisely. I think they honestly locked us down simply to ruin the economy and mess with the election. Remember that they were “praying” for a recession and trying to figure a way to smash the economy in late 2019. So, the one step thinking (Two, because the middle one is underwear gnomes) was: Release a virus — ???? — ruin the economy.

When people started protesting the endless two weeks, they were surprised. SURPRISED! And started cracking down and hitting us with more panic porn, because, d*mn it, if we weren’t going to vote their way, they had to keep us locked down till November, so they could fully establish the…. what was it Zhoe Bai-Den called it? “The most extensive network of fraud”? Something like that.

At the same time, the destruction of our inner cities with the effective removal of all vagrancy — and pooping or doing drugs in public — laws had already started, but at least in Denver they saw a golden opportunity and allowed the homeless to camp on sidewalks, while the tax payers were locked up.

I’m not sure this was even one step thinking so much as a result of two basic assumptions: “The bourgeois must be afflicted. Only that way will they care about the homeless” and “We’re kind.”

It never occurred to them — ever — that the ability to telecommute plus the profoundly unpleasant urban environments would contribute to an exodus from the cities.

Now they are trying — oh, so belatedly — to clean up the cities (Or at least Newsom, but as usual with a creepy overreach that will allow him to use mental hospitals for dissidents, as the USSR did) and begging people to come back.

Mind you the ability to telecommute has been there for 20 years, but management wouldn’t allow it. Now — well, as a friend said “Today was our third “you absolutely must come back and work in the office.” I think one person did.”

Managers and gregarious people absolutely want everyone back, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. A lot of people like myself — and at this point most of my friends — have taken themselves off to more rural and congenial pastures. (I’ll confess it’s also because we see what is coming, so we want to be near where the food grows.)

Which brings us to the next instance of one step thinking.

This is even more underwear gnomish. Gas prices. First of all they’re sure that we can stand much higher gas prices, because Europe has had them for years. Because, you know, we’re exactly the same as a scrap quilt of countries where to swing a cat you have to get it a passport. Second, they think it will curb pleasure travel. Since apparently making air travel even more unpleasant only caused the deplorable masses to drive everywhere. It never occurs to them the most important use of gas in the US is not even close to being people driving around in their cars. Just like it doesn’t occur to them that most people can’t afford and wouldn’t want electric or hybrid cars. But the most important use of gas is to transport goods, many of them essential, across our continent-sized nation. Well, that and to power our mechanized agriculture, so there’s food to transport.

You see, they only use power to drive around, so it must be what everyone uses it for. So, get an electric car, peasant. Or walk, fat. (Oh, yeah, they also almost all live in urban environments, where walking or biking, or renting one of those insufferable by-the-hour toy cars is an option.)

But now I’ve already heard the gloating, even while they’re begging people to come back to semi-abandoned, lawless cities. “With gas being so expensive, living in the city will be popular again.”

Care to lay a small bet, lefty one-step thinkers? I bet it won’t. You can’t squeeze that paste back into the tube. It’s going to go all over you.

You’re just going to encourage more remote work, and further fleeing to places where food and essential goods still reach. You’re also going to achieve making everyone — everyone — aware of your failures and stupidity.

And that’s how things blow up in your face.

So, guys, as I said before, if one of their five year plans ever works, it will be the first since…. ever.

When they had control of all the means of communication, they could erase their failures, rewrite them as “we meant to do that” and stigmatize anyone who pointed to the true as a crackpot.

That toothpaste is out of the tube, too.

Now all they have is panicked toddlers in charge of a complex mechanism, madly pushing buttons trying to get the desired solution.

And it’s not working — of course.

Yes, it’s destroying everything. It’s going to suck like heck. But on the other hand, we’ll manage somehow. And it’s making clear once and for all for those on the margins that this crazy stuff just doesn’t work.

There are no magic unicorn farts. Once people see that, plainly displayed, they’re not going to believe in the unicorn farts and magical government again.

If nothing else, this is giving people a salutary distrust and cynicism about government and all its initiatives and all its way. Even, or perhaps particularly, those dressed up as “science.”

We’ve seen the quality of minds trying to force us to go their way. We’ve seen where they think their way leads, and we want none of it (thank you, you’ve explained quite enough. It’s time to let other points of view display themselves!) And we’ve seen where these things actually lead, and we also want none of it.

Resistance is also fighting back. Stick your feet down and resist with all your might.

We’re not stupid, and we’re not going.

My life is a very exciting novel. It seems like every time I’m set into a pattern and happily following my own plans, it takes another and weirder turn.

The happiest times of my life, even, involve massive change, like moving across the world or across the country, or having little ones that bring a surprise everyday.

The unhappiest too, are strewn with changes that leave me stranded, staring and going “What now?” as everything changes around me.

None of them compare to now.

No, nothing particularly bad is happening, but we just moved, and stress experts assure us that the stress — though obviously not the grief — of moving is the equivalent of losing a spouse. This seems to make sense, since it’s a profound disruption of your daily routines.

In my case, though I love the new place, there is an amount of grief too, because Denver was my homeland of the soul even before I was perfectly sure in what country it was in. Heaven only knows where these things come from. My religion doesn’t believe in the pre-existence of the soul. We believe body and soul are a unit and created to go together. (One wonders what is auto-immune of the soul, I wonder idly. Perhaps the nagging doubt and unbelief, the continuous testing. Who knows?) As such, though I joke about being meant to be born in America and only ending up in Portugal due to a massive cock up in Stork Central, I do know it’s not true.

But it is a mystery, anyway, that the first time I saw the city it felt like the home I’d long been looking for. I was not blind to its problems, mind. Considering I tend to hang out in ethnic diners and working class neighborhoods, I couldn’t be. But it just felt … like home.

And leaving home (again) is hard and induces some grief. Before you condole, this is mitigated by the knowledge the city I loved is no longer the same, that in many ways my love was not tenable any longer. And that the last two years put a knife through its heart. Kind of like I didn’t stop mourning for the village of my childhood, but I know the only way to return is in my mind and in increasingly fading memory, because it has become just a suburb of the large city, filled with stack a prole apartments. It doesn’t make me stop missing it. (The Portuguese elevate missing something or someone to an art form, and have a particular word for it: Saudade.) But it’s not serious and urgent grief.

The main problem right now, though, is shock. It probably is for most of us.

I have quibbles (not kibbles. My cats have that) with the book from Ace of Spades co-blogger title “The End of America, 100 days that shook the world” both because I doubt it is the end of America. I think the rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated. And inimical government –and we’re not the only ones to suffer from it in history– or even, dare we say it, inimical occupation doesn’t end a country. In fact, it can clarify things and bring it back much, much stronger. Will it? I believe so. The fundamentals of the country, the people, are all right. Not great, but after 100 years of indoctrination by the enemy, better than could be hoped for. And we have a great guideline. I believe there’s nothing wrong with us that a reversal of most of FDR’s “innovations” won’t cure. Though the cure will hurt and take a lot of time.

In other words, to quote grandma “We’re going to eat the bread the devil kneaded” and that when there’s bread at all, but I don’t think we’re done. We’ll continue, and resume being a city on the hill and a thorn on the side of the tyrants of the world.

And I think he’s wrong about 100 days. This has been going on, this sustained attack on what we are and what we stand for, for a good 100 years, accelerating for the last 20, even as the model imposed on us had obviously and spectacularly failed in the eyes of everyone. The 100 days was the culmination.

But he’s not wrong that for most people the last two years have been like hammer blows to the head. Yes, most people, of whatever political persuasion.

For us, we’re in shock, dismay and anger at the dismantling of free society, and the other side is in stunned disbelief that the majority of us isn’t falling into line, like the good widgets we’re supposed to be. They’re in shock we disbelieve the institutions more and more. They’re in shock what we have the nerve not to believe them. And for those still in touch with reality there is a nagging, gnawing difficulty with accepting that all their policies they’ve been told are good are causing so much misery. That part will increase. The other part? The other part is responsible for the witch hunts against “racism” and “white nationalism.” You see, they think the other side are cartoon depictions of opposition — which they always cast in those terms, perhaps because their philosophy being profoundly racist, they assume everyone’s is — and when we don’t fall in line with their plans, they think they are surrounded by these caricatures.

So I thought I’d give some pointers. You see I’ve been through this before. Both the upside down feeling and the sh*tty times (I don’t know if here will get worse than that. In Europe it will, and yes, I’m worried about my relatives there, though there isn’t a heck of a lot I can do and no one would believe me.)

There are things you can do to prep, and I suspect most of us are doing it, and Lord, I’m out of practice gardening, but I’m going to try. I’m going to try. I’ve been preparing and need to buy soil and build flower beds, and figure out how to get rid of the gopher without running spikes into him, because unless it’s directly threatening me, I can’t really kill an animal for being itself. And I’m patting myself on the back for having the foresight of buying a house with a well. (Need to get it serviced and made easier to access. Wonder if there are solar pumps.)

I have lists for that running in the back of my head all the time (which, yes, I know, adds to the stress) and I’ve just realized I should keep them on paper.

But this post is about dealing with the stress. You have to realize even if you’re not one of the 75% of my close friends who relocated across country in the last few months, that you’re under massive stress.

You might not be moving, but your country is moving. Things are changing too fast to process. You’re having to change your thought patterns to adapt.

For instance, I’m of the “Save and buy things a little at a time” but faced with the erosion of the currency, I’m looking at “Well, maybe buy now, because the money is vanishing as we look. At least as to value.” Which is what occasioned the mad building of shelves (which needs to happen again, this time in the living room.)

And I’d just convinced myself to throw away clothes that didn’t fit quite well, or blankets that were worn out, but I’m now looking at it as “how can this be redone and repurposed?”

Those are habits of mind and that’s hard as heck to change. (Or why most traditional writing professionals are floundering on the transition and mostly defaulting to teaching. [And yes, I’d like to teach also, partly because prepping is expensive, partly because I want to pass it on, but I need to re-establish the WRITING habit first, or it will stop it. Trust me, I’ve seen it.])

And then there’s the everyday things. Something needs replacement or fixing and suddenly it’s “it’s not available, and we don’t know when it will be” or you go to the grocery store, and the things you’ve bought for years aren’t there.

Yeah, I know, it’s not a terrible thing yet (though don’t ask my cats, okay?They have ONE brand of kibble they’ll eat and not throw up all over.) But it’s getting worse, and it disrupts your routine.

And to make things worse, our employment situation is changing for everyone. For some work is going away and not coming back (not for most skilled people. There’s tons of jobs open, but they really are what’s considered “unskilled” labor (It’s not really. Having waited at tables, and having friends in retail, I can tell you that it has its own set of skills. It’s just that the skills can be picked up without classroom preparation.))

As gas reaches $5 it becomes impossible for truckers to break even. If you wonder why they’re one of the segments getting really upset, it’s because of that. They’re being put out of work. When that unspeakable idiot, Obama, talked about the price of gas necessarily skyrocketing? We’re seeing that in his third term. The problem is that he, like other bien pensant idiots, can’t understand why gas prices here aren’t the same as in Europe, and thinks it would be salutary for us to be thus humbled and “learn to do with less.” And the problem is that these bizarrely mal-educated babblers never look past what they were taught. Yeah, yeah, global warming is not likely to be our problem (Curse you, John Ringo, for giving the Author ideas! Though I suppose Jerry did it first.) But beyond that, these idiots never look at the reality on the ground. The US is not and cannot be Europe, because we’re a continent-sized nation (blah, blah, the EU, but trust me, it’s not the same) and very interconnected in supply and demand. It is impossible for us to subsist without trucking, without widespread manufacturing. And given our climate and farming methods, we can’t subsist with fuel at crazy prices either.

So there’s another big shock coming, and it will be scary, no matter how well prepared you are.

Once you make sure you’re physically safe-ish and as comfortable as you can, you still have to deal with shock and stress. Particularly since it’s of the “Waiting for the other shoe” kind.

Shock and stress can make even normal people act like ADD. It will make you touchy. It will tire you out.

(I know I’m still under massive amounts of both because everything I’m reading is popcorn books (At least no longer true crime, eh?) and I’m still baking up a storm, despite the fact the house sold. Also, lately, I’ve taken to grinding my teeth till all of them hurt. Yes, I have an appliance, somewhere. But it didn’t work super well.)

The ways to combat it have a lot to do with babying yourself. Carve time to do things you enjoy. Keep your daily environment in some sort of order. Keep a routine, if you can.

Keep unpleasant stuff and unpleasant chores to a minimum. You can’t avoid them all, but do try to minimize them.

And while eating is comfort (oh, dear, I’m highly food motivated) do try to indulge a minimum, and try to keep it to “foods I love” but not an excess. And do exercise, it does help with stress, though it doesn’t seem to. If nothing else, it will help you sleep. One of the issues we’ll have coming up is catch as catch can medical care for a while, and some of us — near sixty or those who are past — need to be particularly careful.

Above all, be kind to yourselves and each other. If you can. Remember that the entire country is under massive stress.

Smile at strangers. Help people get things from high shelves. Don’t get upset at minor slights. Learn to laugh at crazy strangers. Love your family, and do nice things for them when you can. I’m here to tell you that the old saw about giving being more blessed than receiving is right. I’ve always felt great satisfaction in practicing semi-random kindness. Remember the Heinlein instruction on gifts: not so expensive the receiver is upset, but something they want but wouldn’t buy for themselves. This is also true for doing/making things for people. Again, the best Christmas gift my husband ever gave me was a little glass owl. Because he took time off work at a time they weren’t letting him and went to a store to get it, and spent his lunch money on it. Look around. Look at what people around you need or want and what you can do without hurting yourself or your family.

Look, it’s the looking away from your own mounting anxiety that helps. The additional fact that you’ll be putting out stuff into the world to counter the unrelenting depression and negativity also helps. You and others.

The other thing is dealing with what is going on with our countrymen.

A lot of you — eh, you! — have been on the edge for years, and wondering why we haven’t yet “started stacking bodies.”

Well, part of it is that you and I, my sad friends, are political addicts. Even though I suspect most of us don’t like politics, we keep an eye on it, as most sane people would keep an eye on a rabid feral dog. For reasons.

We keep a rock in one hand, and keep saying “nice doggy” but are aware we might need to hit it hard with a rock.

But most people don’t know the signs and think of politics as “involved and boring.” I know because I lived with one of those people till very recent years, and even now he’s likely to find out about something outrageous two or three months after I got mad about it.

So there’s that. There’s a lag. Most people don’t even realize that the inflation and shortages are now permanent as long as we’re on this path/occupied. They’re starting to realize, but you have to give them time.

(And also stacking bodies might not be the best solution to it. Like Sargent Mom over at Chicago Boyz, I’m whispering “Aristo, aristo a la lanterne” but still praying — oh, a lot –that this cup will pass us by. Because that kind of firestorm is not discriminating. It takes the good with the bad, and it leaves scars in the soul of a country. France is still suffering from it, at some level. Yes, yes, it might be needed, but again, I hope this cup passes us by.)

And realize that a lot of people are numb or depressed. The feeling of wrongness, the feeling that it will get worse, worse, worse, and there’s nothing we can do twists people inside, and many will be numb and seem impassive. Or unreachable.

There isn’t a lot you can do, except be nice to them. And make sure they’re not doing something stupid.

But remember in many people — ah! — extreme depression is a way to dampen suicidal and/or murderous urges. It is one of the mechanisms we berserkers learn early. Not a helpful one, but one nonetheless.

It’s not that hey don’t see and don’t know. They’re just holding with ragged fingernails to the edge of normalcy before they explode and take friend and foe alike. And it’s important to remember that, too.

Berserker fury isn’t rational. I’ve learned to dampen it, because when it activates my size, strength and health don’t matter. And it’s not a “righteous” fury. It’s one that will have the strength of mom-that-pulls-Volkswagen off kid, and indiscriminately go after anything that catches attention. For most of twenty twenty, I was afraid of blowing up at the first masked Karen who glared at me in the grocery store. Because it would do nothing, but more evil. And probably end up — optimistically — with me in orange. I look terrible in orange.

In a way I feel like the entire nation is about to fall into this berserker fit. It’s part of what has me on edge.

And it might happen, but it’s not something to desire.

What’s to be hoped for is a calm and methodical dismantling of unhelpful/no longer helpful mechanisms and institutions, and their replacement.

Is it possible? I don’t know. I can’t say I’ve seen it in the history of the world, but America is different.

The fury…. well, it bays and screams in the corridors of the mind. And it’s warranted. Oh, it’s warranted. But it will only destroy us.

Remember, the berserkers of old were celebrated and feared both, and often killed friends and loved ones along with the enemy. On a nation-wide level that’s less than to be desired for.

Remember everyone around you — everyone, even those in the thrall of the puppet masters — are suffering from shock and stress. Do what you can to minimize it.

I feel like we’re about to tumble into much graver peril, into great turmoil. I hope it’s a deception of the baying beast. But it might not be.

Forwarned is forearmed. Prepare, prepare, prepare, physically and psychologically.

And be kind to yourself and those around you. Heaven knows it might not be for very long.

Be not afraid. Fear adds to the stress. At this point, the juggernaut has gone so far most of it is out of our hands. Perhaps it was from the moment we were born.

Reinforce the good. Combat the bad. Don’t panic.

In the end we win, they lose, and it’s important to remember that, because there will be days (and nights. Oh, heck the nights) of raw and unblinking despair.

But the only way out is through. Keep going.