When I was little in the playground, and started interposing myself between bullies and their victims — with the understanding one of those times it was interposing between my elderly teacher and the delinquent multi-times-repeaters boys in the school next door — I realized I was a coward.

How did I know that? Because every time I looked at the bigger foe rushing towards me, and I understood I WAS going to get hurt, perhaps severely hurt, I wanted to puke and run away. I was terrified.

But I didn’t run away, because I couldn’t. Because if I ran away, evil would win.

However, I had no illusions about my courage. I’m not brave. I still am not. I’m a coward.

When I started speaking out — and for those who only became aware of cancel culture recently, be aware that in most fields it was operational my entire working life, and speaking out against the left meant getting destroyed — I knew I was limiting my career both in terms of who’d publish me, in span (how long it would last) and in reach, (because movie deals, etc, don’t go to wrong thinkers.) I was terrified. I still am. But the alternative was losing my soul. So I had to speak out.

I’m still not brave. I’m terrified. I just live with it.

I am not a happy warrior. I hate confrontation. Hate, hate, hate. I have taken hits in my career and am now fully indie, partly because I don’t speak out against stupid stuff, and don’t want to hurt people I have an even half-cordial relationship with.

But there are issues that affect others, and are bigger than myself, and then, well, the turmoil of emotional confrontation is worth it, compared to letting raw, naked evil go on.

And so I must stand. And be not afraid. Or at least be less afraid of standing than not standing. Because not standing against the onrushing bully and evil doer is death, and not just for me.

Note, I am not saying that horrible things won’t happen from here on out. There will be horrible things, and some of us, hopefully not many, will end up somehow being part of that butcher’s bill. I pray, and I’m sure a lot of you do too, that it will be as few as possible.

It’s even possible a miracle will occur and the butcher’s bill will be taken not in lives, but merely in part-lives. Years wasted, years of anxiety that take time off our lives, years of poor health care as society restructures. But not whole lives.

The thing is, we’ve looked at the face of the collectivists and the centralizers trying to command us. It’s a hideous face. And we know what their ilk has done elsewhere. Mass graves, blighted lives, destroyed economy, destroyed environment, the cause of freedom often also destroyed in people’s minds, guaranteeing generations of darkness.

We have no choice — none — but to stand. Not if we want to keep our souls.

And you know, in most cases what I’ve found is that when I do brave the bully the hurt I take is much smaller than expected. I won’t say they run away. A lot of them don’t. But the hurt they can bring is much bigger in my imagination.

Right now, too, it’s much much easier to build up how bad they can bring the hurt, because, let’s face it, half of their actions make no sense at all and it’s easy to imagine they have a terribly clever plan. That they’ll get us in the end, and utterly destroy us. That our sacrifice will be in vain.

This is easier to believe if like me you grew up in the time when they controlled all streams of information and made themselves seem omnipotent.

But you know, there have been enough cracks in the facade, you know it’s not that. Sure, they have plans. But most of their plans are based on a universe that doesn’t exist, where Marxism has the force of prophecy and holy writ.

Make no mistake, they’re still going to hurt us. And some of us will pay the ultimate price.

To quote the bard: we all owe G-d a death. It’s not like by accepting the intolerable and kowtowing to evil we’ll live forever.

It’s a matter of what we buy with our lives. And what is worth it.

Be not afraid. Yeah, they’re going to hurt us. Yeah, we’re cowards.

But looking at the horrors people of their mental and ideological bend have already visited upon the innocent of the world, can you really afford to do absolutely nothing?

I know some of you are in impaired positions where, to keep a beachhead in enemy territory you have to keep your mouths shut. I understand that. Be aware and alert, though. Things can change very fast.

As for the rest of us? Now is the time. This is the place. At this time in this place, it’s us who have to stand for what is worth it.

In the end we win, they lose.

Sursum Corda. Be not afraid!

Richard Fernandez had a post on Facebook in which he talked of the Canadian Truck Standoff as the beginning of a global preference cascade.

It might be. Maybe.

I’ll be honest, turning against the Marxist forms of government that have possessed (I speak advisedly) most of the countries of the world has been going on for a long time. But the powers that be, most of them Marxist and running a script, have managed to tamp down all previous outbreaks of rebellion, show them as something they were not, or just turn the cone of silence on them, until no one knew they were happening.

Of course that “hold” is weakening. The fact so many people voted for Trump (either time) despite the ongoing media blitz against him tell you there are cracks in the dam. And the Canadian truckers are a great big crack.

And one hopes. One hopes. One can’t help hoping.

Yes, preference cascades can get ugly — hello Romania! — but as ugly as they get they are possibly the lowest butcher bill we’re facing. A preference cascade would get the world off the path to crazy totalitarianism and maybe rescue the future while there’s still time. There would be — I won’t lie — a few ugly years. The crazy people have already corrupted so much of what makes an economy, let alone a society, actually work, but there is a good chance we could keep civilization and technology on the other side. And even — deep breath — our national identity. Oh, other countries would keep theirs too, but I care less for other countries even if these days I have a warm spot for truckers from Canada.

Preference cascades happen when people have been falsifying their preferences for years. They’ve in other words been lying about who they are, what they want, what they believe.

For my entire life — and again I’d like to point out I turn sixty this year — this has been necessary. One had — and many people still have to — fake being at the very least soft left, or be considered stupid, fringe and unacceptable, not to mention uncaring and evil. In both countries, while the left railed at all the “right wingers in power” or the power of the church, or the power of traditional family, everyone in control of whether you got a degree, or a job, or were considered a decent human being was either leftist, or pretending very hard to be leftist.

I broke, now going on fifteen years ago. I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt as if I were losing my soul. I could only pretend to the softest of soft left and it wasn’t enough.

To get ahead in my career, or go anywhere I had to loudly proclaim ideals that were not only wrong and repulsive, but which had put 100 million human beings in their graves. I could not do it.

I started to experience the feeling that I was self-hypnotizing into accepting these repulsive beliefs. The process is described here. (Warning the author typoes like me pre-coffee, but his ideas are brilliant.)

If you’re forced to repeat things you don’t believe in, after a while you start believing them and defending them.

For almost a century we’ve all parroted these leftist ideas, because leftists were so convinced their ideas were the way to paradise that they were willing to destroy you for dissenting. Granted, in western countries, most of the destruction is social or economic. All the same it has amused me as everyone became aware of “cancelling” because — oh, dear — it’s been going on for decades. DECADES. As in my entire life.

Now it’s changing. Here and there the dissent erupts loudly and visibly, like right now. In most cases, because the pablum you’re forced to spew is creating conditions you can no longer endure.

And it’s erupting sneakily everywhere: witness, let’s go Brandon.

Like Wretchard, I hope we’re close to the tipping point, if not already there.

And I reflect on the wisdom of Jordan Peterson: Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.

The lies our parents were forced to tell or told to be part of the ‘smart and enlightened’ set imprisoned my generation. And led us to a state where people who actively hate civilization and western civilization particularly are in control.

Their control is weakening. When the flip comes, it will be very fast — keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark and have an away point retreat in case of need — and probably will take even us by surprise.

But it will be the restoration of truth. No more falsification. No more creation of a whole fake reality.

The truth isn’t perfect or seamless, and so appeals less to ‘intellectuals’ than the honeyed lie.

But you can live in truth. The lies always kill.

ADDENDUM: If you can’t tell the truth, for reasons of job, for reasons of family, for reasons of safety, I understand. I lived like that for years.
But do yourself a favor: Tell yourself the truth. Outloud. In front of the mirror. Whisper at first, if it’s too scary. Remember who you are and reclaim your soul. So you’re ready for the preference cascade.

You’ve heard the joke, right? What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and reality?

About two weeks.

I think that’s a gross exaggeration. From where I’m sitting it’s more like two months.

This is probably where I admit that when people on mewe started talking about how the vaccines were damaging heart muscle, or causing heart attacks, or whatever, I thought it was of a piece with the chick who was so convinced they were putting a neurotransmitter in it that she was trying to glue magnets to herself.

Y’know? I grew up with books about the UFO conspiracy, the JFK conspiracy, the older civilizations conspiracy, and in fact I love them with an unholy and shameful love. Just like my friend who loves pyramids of skulls (don’t ask) even though he’s not remotely a cruel person or blood thirsty, I’m the rational person who gets all excited at a good “it came from Atlantis” book or “the aliens did it” book. The following words have been uttered to my husband who was trying to discuss household matters, while I was immersed in one of those books “Shhh. Give me half an hour. I just got to the good part. They just linked Gobleki Tepe to the age of Aquarius!” (And the face you’re making right now is probably the face he made, followed by a bemused headshake.)

What this means, though is that I’m a connoisseur of the finest conpiratorium in the world. Collectors can come to me and uncork the vintage, and I go “Ah, this is JFK was killed by aliens, 1975, French. A fine vintage.”

Back when we were looking for a place in Colorado from South Carolina we talked to a real estate agent who told us she rated people on the flaky scale, to figure out where they belonged. (Yes, Boulder was peak flakiness.) The fact she told us this while saying we were “Normal with overtones of flaky, so probably downtown area in the Springs.” tells you what amused me so much.

In the same way I rate conspiracy theories from the plausible to the pyramidal (And not of skulls.)

I never fell for the Q “trust the plan” bs, not because I’m very intelligent or aware (IQ is not dispositive in this. Smart people believe the stupidest things. And as for aware, I was having serious altitude-related sleep and oxygen issues) but because I recognized the tone and the deepening of weirdness. From the qui bono angle the result of all that was keeping the population quiescent while a color revolution took place. Which leads me to believe false flag organized psi ops, but it’s also perfectly possible that it was just wishful thinking and conspiratorium of people self-reassuring as what should have been impossible events took place before their very eyes. (I wonder what unrecorded conspiracy theories circulated in Germany as it sank into madness.)

So, in the same spirit, and because I know the people posting them, I didn’t pay much attention to all the people saying that the vaccines caused heart issues, or menstrual cycle issues, miscarriages or still births, or permanent sterility.

Serious side effects were possible, of course, from an insufficiently tested vaccine. I also happened to know the history of MRNA vaccines — which is weird as even doctors and people with scientific training seemed to be afflicted by sudden amnesia about those. The one for SARS1 had such horrific results that China — CHINA! — stopped administering it pretty quickly.

And I had no intention of taking it, both because I actually really do in fact have religious objections to how they were created, and because the almighty government wanted it in my veins so badly. And I’m part mule. You push too hard, I stick all four hooves in the dirt and go ‘nope.’ Add to that that I’m not particularly stupid. I can read print, if it’s in letters of fire, six feet tall Having looked at the numbers from the Diamond Princess, I knew that doing an MRNA vaccine for what was a “Particularly bad flu” was the equivalent of taking a chainsaw to your own neck to cure a headache. So no. My offer remains. I will take the vaccine when they let me inject salad dressing into the veins of the Biden Junta. (And they might have the better part of that deal.)

But in the back of my head was that eventually, maybe, after it became endemic, and after we knew the side effects better, in a few years, I’d consider taking it (except for that religious objection thing, so I hoped they’d develop a different one.)

However I looked at the claims and snorted softly to myself, because how could a vaccine cause that range of side effects? It wasn’t even plausible. And heart and reproductive system? Sure. Those are the things people fear most, so it made psychological sense, not rational sense.

And then the CDC admitted it caused heart issues. And now they’re admitting it disturbs women’s cycles.

They still say the still births and the miscarriages are the result of “catching covid” but since the spike protein is what the vaccine mimics I don’t understand how that would be different. And anyone in livestock knows you don’t vaccinate pregnant females.

To quote a commenter yesterday “I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if the vaccine was meant to sterilize people, I just hope they’re really incompetent.”

I also hope anyone reading this is saner than to give it to their kids or really anyone of reproductive age till we know the full story. Because, you know, the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is apparently two weeks.

All I can say is that this is disturbing me to a level I — as a connoisseur of Conpiratorium — can’t even begin to explain.

It’s difficult living in a timeline that appears to be scripted by drunk comic book writers, mainlining LSD.

From now on, I’m going to assume I know nothing about how reality actually works, and that JFK probably and for real was killed by dinosaurs circling the world in a spaceship.

Hold on to the sides of the boat, while the water gets choppy and Atlantis rises from the depths.

I’ll be in my bunker finishing a novel that involves Gobleki Tepe. (For real.)

Whatever you do, remember in the end we win they lose.

And be not afraid.

This weekend, I found that the truckers who have had enough of Little Castro’s Justin Trudeau’s insanity, enough to drive to the capital in convoy and who appear to be supported by a majority of Canadians are “really” Russian agents dressed like truckers.

My first reaction to this was to laugh so hard my son, who had just come into my office, thought I was having a stroke or heart attack or something. BTW this morning he tells me that now the NYT is running with the idea that everyone who is against mandates is “really” a Russian agent.

It’s all SO FAMILIAR. So deja vu. So full of repeat. So where have I heard that before.

Frankly, I almost titled this post “All the Truckers are Russian Agents, or How I became a White Mormon Male.” which would be a very accurate title, and also way too long, and would give whiplash to anyone who hasn’t been around for a few years.

Also, not completely accurate, because as well as a white Mormon male, I was also racist, sexist and homophobic (which is probably making some of you laugh till you hiccup) and and one time — briefly — a robot and a Russian robot. (I don’t know is Sad Robot Puppies is still active on Twitter (I never go there) but it was started by one of you adorable maniacs when that accusation came out.)

For those not around at the time, a lot of crap happened around and between, and if you guys feel you need clarification, ask someone in comments. Other people can explain. I woke up very late, and we were dealing with business taxes which makes me too cranky for words.

The 100 mile overview is that a number of us got very tired of the things that sf/f awards went to. Look, I’m semi-literary in reading tastes half the time, and I don’t even mind a lot of the more involuted stuff, but a few years ago, it went silly. No, really silly. To me, the foam at the mouth moment was “If you were a dinosaur my love” which did not take place in this world (at all. Our working class doesn’t drink gin) and was written at a level of cringe that would make 13 year old me hide if I had written it. Anyway, so Larry Correia said the award stuff made puppies cry (you know it wasn’t me, because it would be kittens) and we decided to do lists of stuff for people to read and consider voting on. And you know other people — including Locus — had been doing this for years, but suddenly what we’d done was create a slate, and we were evil racists and fascists, and we were against women (!) gays (!!) and people of color(!!!!) writing science fiction. In fact, we were denying them awards so they’d give up in discouragement. We were “Gatekeepers” and did I mention white supremacists. It all went very bad, and 2015 left a bunch of us with significant scars that still affect us. The attacks on us were as nonsensical as they were epic. People who’d never given a d*mn about science fiction or science fiction awards were suddenly running exposes and naming me as part of this evil cabal. My kids, in online gaming, had to defend me from total strangers.

This is what I thought of when I read the accusation that the Freedom Truckers (Truck off, Trudeau) were “Russian Agents.”

First of all, what’s with Russia! Russia! Russia? I mean even Putin said he backed Biden. (For good and sufficient reason. The last thing he wants is a functional USA.) Second I know how it started. Once you hang around the progs for a while, you realize they’re really simple creatures, kind of like those flatworms. They know pain and no pain and that’s about it. Anyway, their decision to accuse Trump of Russian collusion is because they are simple — stupid — creatures, who think we are the same.

They never understood our opposition to communism, so the fact we were suspicious and leery of the USSR must be because we hated RUSSIANS. Personally, you know? So, if they told us Trump collaborated with the Russians, we’d hate him too.

It didn’t work. But of course they might not know it didn’t work, since they convinced themselves that they won legitimately (Snort, giggle) so they are now trying to turn us against anyone who champions freedom by claiming they’re Russian. Because we hate Russians, see. Face>palm. Octopus face>palm, because it needs more hands.

At the same time there is the usual “racist, sexist homophobic.”

Look, the problem we have here is that the left today is a religion. It’s a religion that buys into a system that explains EVERYTHING and promises glory to those who embrace it.

There’s only one small problem: it has no contact whatsoever with reality. As a religion, it’s at the level of the People’s Temple: a scam run by corrupt paranoiacs on the vulnerable.

But it made itself a positional good by commanding the heights of culture: universities, media, entertainment. Only people who mouthed the platitudes were allowed in, and the more absurd the platitudes, the more you were required to mouth them LOUDLY.

This, as an article I read this weekend and can’t now find said, creates a form of self-hypnotism. The more you hear yourself lie to others, the more you believe the lie yourself.

So we have people walking around who whole heartedly believe in the arrow of history which points to perfect communism (Now apparently called the great reset, where you’ll own nothing and love it — while the tireless civil services roll in piles of gold, I suppose.) They believe that everyone — of course — wants this. And that this is rational and sane — look at all the studies, from respectable universities!

And they’ve been told that the only ones opposing this are “white males” who were “all powerful” and don’t want to give up their power.

Which is how I became a white Mormon male. I have to be. Or else, how could I object to a beloved genre becoming a blah pulpit for stupid ideas?

The truth is far more complicated. Of course it is. It involves humans.

It starts with the Marxist solutions have never worked ever, and there was never their original paradise where humans didn’t own property. Hell, our studies lead us to believe even apes have private property, for a given definition of it.

Trade and the free market and money have emerged over and over in human history, everywhere on the world. There is only one, exclusively European, colonialist imposition on the rest of the world, as far as philosophy goes, and that’s Marxism.

It goes on to I’m now almost sixty, and in my entire life, in the US, white males have had absolutely NO advantage. My husband is mostly white (as much as any human being can be. But he well…. he doesn’t tan.) and time and again he was held back by this fact alone. Jobs and promotions went to women or “people of color” (EVER so much more sensitive than “Colored people” innit?) or preferably both, regardless of ability to perform. Because the federal government was only interested in the numbers, and not the fact this wasn’t good for anyone, including the supposedly “favored.”

In science fiction and fantasy, specifically, I grew up reading women. And again, I am almost sixty now. And in trucking, 20 years ago, a friend told me most of the young truckers were “ethnically diverse.” (It ain’t a great job. It’s brutal and dangerous. But it does pay.)

A friend recently said that the erasure of women and ethnically diverse people that have gone before is so thorough he expects next wave of lefty idiots will claim to be the first WOMEN. There were no women before they were born. …. I wish I could say that’s unbelievable.

However, what we have to understand that for the other side this is reality. They have auto-hypnotized to the point they can’t see reality. They have no clue HOW anyone could disagree with their perfect, seamless theory. They have no contact with the real world.

And so the opposition must be Russians, or white supremacists. Or sexists. Or homophobes. Or white Mormon males.

And they’re honking us off. So, I’m glad the truckers are returning the favor.

But internally this feels like the sort of thing that can’t go on. They are effectively erasing us, refusing to believe that opposing points of view can even exist.

It’s funny, if you have a very dark sense of humor.

But it’s also a psychological break, a point of no return. And we too have reached the point we can’t back down.

We can walk away from awards, from games, from needle arts. But now they’re coming for the life blood of our economy: they’re messing with food production, with energy, with transport, all while screaming that there’s no supply issues or inflation.

There is no backing down. We can’t. Not if we want to survive.

It’s going to get very rough from here on out, and I want you to know that. Prepare, prepare, prepare, and gird your loins.

Just remember in the end we win, they lose.

Be not afraid, but don’t be rash.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: IF YOU SEND ME A BOOK TO PROMO, AND I DON’T USE IT, MY EMAIL USUALLY DID SOMETHING FUNNY AND/OR I THOUGHT I’D ALREADY PUT IT IN THE WEEK BEFORE. FEEL FREE TO SEND AGAIN.

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 KAREN MAYERS: The Ways of Winter – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 2)

TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES, CAN HE FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEFEND ALL THAT HE VALUES MOST, OR EVEN JUST TO SURVIVE?

It’s the dead of winter and George Talbot Traherne, the new human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is in trouble. The damage in Gwyn ap Nudd’s domain reveals the deadly powers of a dangerous foe who has mastered an unstoppable weapon and threatens the fae dominions in both the new and the old worlds.

Secure in his unbreachable stronghold, the enemy holds hostages and has no compunction about using them in deadly experiments with newly discovered way-technology. Only George has a chance to reach him in time to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, even if it costs him everything.

Welcome to the portrait of a paladin in-the-making, Can he carry out a rescue without the deaths of all involved? Will his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, help him, or just write him off as a dead loss? He has a family to protect and a world to save, and little time to do it in.

FROM MELISSA MCSHANE: Skies Will Burn

THE THRILLING CONCLUSION TO THE DRAGONS OF MOTHER STONE

A new year brings new purpose to Lamprophyre and Rokshan as they continue in their quest to find and defeat their mysterious enemy, the ancient dragon Sardonyx. But when a prophecy commands the ecclesiasts of Tanajital to climb dragons’ most sacred mountain, Lamprophyre must discover the truth behind the god Jiwanyil’s intent—an intent that may mean the destruction of humans and dragons alike.

With animosity between dragons and ecclesiasts rising, and Sardonyx’s threat looming, Lamprophyre and Rokshan will need every advantage to defend against the day when an ancient evil wakes.

FROM MAGGIE HOGARTH: Marda Quincesinger, Postulant (Coracle Book 1)

When the Adversary shattered the world, the Savior and her Companions kept the remaining pieces from falling into the void. The school they established trains young boys and girls to continue their work, healing the cracks, facing wrongbeasts, and reversing the aims of the Adversary wherever they can.

And all of this is work for heroes, as far as Marda Quincesinger is concerned. She’s more interested in the cake her mother’s baking her for her fourteenth birthday than in taking on the daunting work of an Outremer. But faced with the chance to help her family, she decides to see if she has what it takes to join the Outremers’ ranks.

Full half the hopefuls who arrive for their first year don’t return. Will Marda be one of them? Or will she find the hero in herself?

A gentle story in the tradition of the Chronicles of Narnia, Anne of Green Gables, and Harry Potter.

FROM C. J. CARELLA: Queen of Blood and Shadows: A LitRPG Adventure (The Godkiller Chronicles Book 2)

A Dangerous Woman

The thrilling tale that began with Godkiller Mode continues!

Stranded in a dying city by a treacherous Sphinx, Caitlin Strange and her friends will face Chaos Knights, the minions of Tiamat, armies of monsters and deadly Blood Cultists as she seeks to level up and gain some control over her new life. In the Realms, game-like rules are as real as the laws of physics – and just as deadly.

Follow Caitlin’s story in this action-packed LitRPG tale featuring character advancement, God Cores, and plenty of adventure.

Note: This novel contains Episodes 1-53 of the Vella serial of the same name. The story continues there, starting on Episode 54. Future novels will include those episodes.

She is coming. And the skies will burn.

FROM TIMOTHY SCOTT ROACH: Momma, May I Have the Moon?

“Momma, may I have the moon?”“Oh, my dear no! It would never fit in your room.”On the surface, this book is about unobtainable dreams and fanciful things, but if you look a little deeper you will see it is something else. A problem is presented and the reader is challenged to use his or her imagination to come up with a solution. This is engineering at its purest level — a level as accessible to children as it is to adults. Children naturally think outside the box, because for them there is no box. See what ideas your child can come up with to reach the moon and then draw and submit them for a chance to be in future editions of the book.

FROM BLAKE SMITH: In Pursuit of Justice: A Novel of The Garia Cycle

Garia and the East Morlans have been on increasingly rocky terms for years, and when Téo and Zara ran away together, they touched off the powder keg of war between their kingdoms. Now they have to fight for their lives while learning to live in a foreign land.

In the Morlans, Hanri and Alia are facing their own sets of problems. He must control and divert the single-minded vengeance of his father King Reynard, and she must sort the gold of information from the dross of gossip in a palace swarming with rumors. It could mean the difference between life and death for all of them.

FROM DEX QUIRE: Crocodile Words

Crocodile tears are fake tears, can crocodile words be fake words?
Joffrey Simpson O’Day moves from the dry badlands of Eastern Washington State to the lush greenscapes of Western Washington to a Seattle-like city called Sunbreak City. Hayseed, Joffrey attempts to turn himself into a big-city sophisticate but he commits the ultimate faux pas—he insults a book held sacred by millions. He draws upon his head the wrath of everybody. Crocodile words come at him from all quarters. Will he survive?

FROM CHRISTOPHER WOERNER: Rococo Coffee

A collection of all the jokes used in my published books. Every little bit of humor helps these days, more than Rococo Coffee ever helps. Then again, if you’re helped by imaginary coffee, you can still enjoy this book.

The B-side is longer pieces of humor, most notably “The Caped Avenger in If Fate Be My Destiny.”

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Space Race Trilogy Omnibus: Time Slips, The Secret of Pad 34, Beach House on the Moon, Plus two exclusive new essays

All three books of the Space Race Trilogy, now together with two exclusive new essays.

Time Slips

What if our most treasured verities were in fact wrong?

To be selected for Project Mercury and be one of America’s first astronauts was a dream come true for test pilot Deke Slayton. But fellow Mercury astronaut Al Shepard kept telling old stories from his native New England, tales of monstrous entities like Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth. Earlier generations had viewed them as demons, but might they in fact be aliens, here long before humanity?

Soon Deke discovers evidence that something is watching the US space program. Something that begrudges humanity the stars and would put a ceiling on human attainment. Something that can manipulate time itself.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we dwell on a placid island of ignorance amidst the dark ocean of infinity, and that we were not meant to travel far.

What might the US space program have looked like in a cosmos filled with hostile eldritch entities? Would they notice us as playthings? Or as a nuisance to be dealt with?

The Secret of Pad 34

Who would put a ceiling on humanity’s expansion into space?

That’s what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol.

His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary.

Beach House on the Moon

The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings.

But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be?

She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mind-bending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice.

Her life will never be the same.

Miskatonic University in the Cold War and Contemporary Era

How would H.P. Lovecraft’s famous fictional institution of higher education have developed through the second half of the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-first?

Space: Gernsbeck vs. Lovecraft

A look at the fundamental worldviews underlying the approaches of Hugo Gernsbeck and H.P. Lovecraft to the portrayal of outer space, aliens, and space travel.

BOOK BLURB CHALLENGE

For reasons known only to the internet hamsters (TM) I never got the word challenge for the vignettes, so I’m putting in a pretty picture as your prompt. (It’s from Pixabay.)
Normally what I say for picture prompts is: Write me the book blurb (back cover text) for which this could be the cover. Go!

The picture above came from a search at Pexels for “jungle cat” so, in case you wonder the day dawned just as insane as the last few thousands of days.

I’m more or less — at long last — alive today. Which means the generic cold seems to finally be gone. And I was investigating redoing the covers for the shifters series when I should be working, of course, because well…. because. And yes, I actually know this is work too, it’s just…. not as?

I’m taking the day off from politics, lest #teamheadsonpikes starts making pointed arguments that make sense.

I’m hoping to spend some time with husband and son, while we still have son with us.

Oh, and if anyone really wants to give me a “jungle cat” that looks like the one above, well…. Havey probably could use a friend. (He prefers boys, for some reason. Probably because he misses Greebo.)

And now I’ll go do something that at least resembles work.

The time has come to have the most serious talk in a hundred years, a talk that is overdue by at least a hundred years. It needs to be discussed, history needs to be known, and we need to change course as fast as possible.

I don’t know at this point whether we can — or should. More on that later — avoid the butcher’s bill. But I know the sooner we have this talk and change course, the smaller that bill will be. And the less time will be lost. And, hey, perhaps we can avoid, at least for a time, the reiteration of a murderous cycle that has already swallowed a century of history.

First let’s talk about levels. And getting off level. First of all, if I don’t use a level, everything I do tilts to the right (stop laughing) since I had major concussion. I don’t realize it, until I see the results later on. Then there’s the time I had a massive “silent” ear infection. I’m known for them, and won’t realize sometimes for weeks. One of the things it messes with is my balance. I start tilting slowly, until I’m walking almost sideways, still convinced everything is normal. (This is usually when husband corrals me and drags me to the doctor.)

What I mean here is that it’s easy for humans, individually or collectively, to get out of plumb and while thinking they are still completely normal tilt more and more until they’re doing something in a bizarre — or for society’s often monstrous — way, without realizing it.

Do you think that Germany woke up one morning and went “Hey, let’s kill six million people — men, women and innocent children — and use their body parts to make stuff? And treat them worse than we’d treat any animal?

No. Of course not. It started with what everyone knew and acknowledged as only sensible. They had just enough biological knowledge that eugenics seemed super-sensible. They’d also lost a war, were under financial pressure due to wretched leaders, but believed that “the best people should lead” and it was easier to turn on a minority in their midst than to confront their failures as a people, since part of their ideology (and still that of most of Europe) was that their nationality was a race, and superior to all others. (The only thing different between them and the rest of Europe is… well, nothing. Every European country considers itself the “master race” even if they don’t voice it most of the time. Turning on a minority, treating people as things, invading and plundering their neighbors: all of that was easier than confronting the bizarre and inherent contradictions in what “everybody knew.” But they didn’t decide it overnight. They did it a little bit at a time, to relieve psychological pressure, until they were full-on-monsters and still lying to themselves. Those people who said they had no clue what was happening down the street? Well, they weren’t precisely lying. Of course they knew, they could smell the smoke. But they couldn’t tell even themselves the truth.

Which brings me to the situation we’re in. There are now people who aren’t me (mostly because I didn’t say it, even when I thought it, except I think once at instapundit) saying that we need Nuremberg trials for the people — worldwide — who used a virus that they may or may not have cooperated in creating and unleashing as an excuse to make war on their own citizens.

Are they right? Have the crimes committed against the world reached that point? I don’t know. But I know the path we’re threading. And if they’ve not, they soon will.

These people have knowingly and with malice aforethought unlawfully imprisoned the citizens of their country; restricted them in the earning of a living and commandeered their private property and businesses through enforcement of mask laws which have no basis in science; closure of eating establishments, which ditto; closure and curtailment of the operation of stores. They have barred citizens of the use of parks, public buildings, and other community property financed from those citizens’ taxes. They have refused to allow their citizens the exercise of religion. They have forbidden the use of medicines which might or might not be effective, but seem to work in the rest of the world (and are not, at any rate, sufficiently harmful to be forbidden.) They have forced on a vast majority of the population an untried gene therapy and then at the same time hid the deleterious side effects while forcing people to take it to be allowed some measure of liberty.

They have done all this, not just with lack of proof, but in full contravention of proof that it does nothing. The highest vaccinated states have the same rates of hospitalization and death as the least vaccinated; the states that are ordering full masking and lockdown have the same effects as those that haven’t.

Perhaps less important — except to those affected — they have effectively banned international travel unless you take said untried gene therapy (Yes, I would like to see my father, thank you so much. No. I’m not going to mess with my wonky immune system for something that doesn’t protect anyone from illness and is insufficiently tried.) They have unnecessarily terrified anyone within reach of their mass media leading them to believe a “bad flu year” is the equivalent of the black plague. They have caused seniors in their final years to be deprived of contact with their family and friends, causing rapid cognitive decline and often death.

They have laid off health care workers and closed hospitals, denying critical treatment to those in dire need of it, and deeming everything that didn’t have to be done right then “elective.” Yes, this included cancer surgeries. No, this wasn’t while the hospitals were full. In fact most hospitals are more empty than they’ve ever been. Also least staffed. But fear not, they are importing Chinese doctors (And others, but a truly spectacular number of Chinese) by the plane full. As we know it is a culture that respects human rights and freedoms and would never use humans as experimental animals, so you have nothing to fear. (And I wish to make clear for idiots reading this, I have nothing against people of Chinese ancestry who have been raised as Americans and are doctors. I do have issues with our recent training of doctors, but they’re not worse than anyone else. On the other hand, people raised in the post-Mao and now Xi-poisoned culture of China have been poisoned by the same authoritarianism that has galloped through the west these last two years.)

Are these crimes worthy of Nuremberg trials? How many people have they killed and treated like penned animals?

We don’t have a count, and we’re never likely to, since, unlike the Nazis, they don’t keep accurate records. (Perhaps because they learned, perhaps because they are unable to find their own butthole with two hands and a seeing eye dog, being in fact 4th generation Marxists, which is to say idiots.)

But if treating all of your citizens as enemies, attempting to torture them, intending to destroy their economy, culture and long-accustomed ways and force them into an unnatural pattern of living and having — as has been stated often — the intention of reducing their numbers and their standard of living is not a crime comparable to those that led to the Nuremberg trials, then we owe the monsters there tried an apology. Because their errors were of the exact same quality and perhaps less ambitious in scope, since they didn’t make war and terror on the vast majority of the population of their country. (Well, they did, in a way, but that was not their aim.)

However that is not the level we must set; the conversation we must have.

It is important to realize why this keeps happening. By the numbers. In vast quantities. Over and over. If you want to go back far enough, I’d say since the French revolution. People in power imposing bizarre, insane rules on the rest of the population, and making people cosplay illusions and philosophical theories that have no basis in reality.

Just like the French revolutionaries forced everyone to give up the names of the normal days of the week, or attend temples to “reason” or other insanity, our would be lords and masters whimsically suggest double masking, or tell you to stay home, as if your car were contaminated, or make you give up Christmas and cancel fourth of July celebrations, because fireworks carry cooties, or–

All this: a small group turning a vast mass of people into experimental animals, whether social or biological; treating free citizens as widgets and things; demanding you conform to their internal psychodramas is rooted on one thing: the belief that a small number of people knows what’s best for society and can tell you how to live and what to do.

This has been particularly in evidence in the twentieth century, which is why it’s probably the largest graveyard of history. The experts knew what you should eat and what you should wear, what you should learn and what you should buy and how much you should pay for it. And always, even now, the experts knew which lives were worthy of life, and which… weren’t.

As long as that goes on, Nuremberg-like trials will be needed again and again and again, even if they aren’t in fact enacted. I still say we should have hanged Putin and all his ilk from their own rotten guts. Because it’s important for the monsters to die. And it’s important to know they were killed for crimes against humanity. We should have hunted down every petty Marxist, every bureaucrat, here and aboard, and tried them for their share of the 100 million dead at the hands of their ideology (and that’s those directly killed, not counting other casualties.) We should have rubbed their faces in the misery, death and deprivation their grandiose theories and their demand people enact them created. Yeah, some of them were merely idiots and not deserving of death. But they should have been tried, and made to feel their guilt.

We didn’t. And we didn’t — and this is very important — repudiate the poisonous and horrifying idea that a small number of people should have the power to enact vast, sweeping changes in the way the mass of people live their everyday lives.

Yes, there are times — rare — in which the common defense demands unified response. That was the lesson the Romans learned from Hannibal’s attack.

They are rare, they are limited in scope, and they should be restricted to those occasions in the Constitution (in America. Part of letting go of the poisonous idea of centralization is to say I neither know nor care how the foreigners choose to live their lives. I will have opinions, but so long as they leave us alone, it’s their bailiwick.)

All other powers should be exercised at the most regional level possible. And the rights, judgement and ability to choose how to live of the citizen shall not be infringed unless they are affecting someone else (and this would need proof. None of this “you wear a mask to protect me.”)

There might be a time a city block or a house needs to quarantine. Locking up an entire country is not quarantine. It’s false arrest and an act of totalitarianism. And it must be punished, but more importantly, all of them — every one, from the people who corrupted our legal institutions, to the journalists who propagandized fear and panic-porn — must be made to know what they did wrong and must make restitution. Let’s not make the same mistake we made with the fall of communism.

And let’s restructure. The Constitution was written by men who understood well the power and fear of epidemic disease, but they did not put a clause in there saying all our rights are suspended in case of a bad epidemic respiratory illness, nor did they create a post that allows some bureaucrat to play doctor to people he doesn’t know and whimsically dictate what they can and can’t do.

It’s time to get back to government by the people for the people, and to most rights devolving to states, municipalities and ultimately individuals.

Or we will need to hang monsters again and again and again. And millions will be sent to their graves in terror and abject horror again and again and again.

Centralized power kills. Efficiently or stupidly, but it kills.

Give no small group of humans the power kill millions. Start spreading the word. It’s time to level set. You know the tune:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-

According to legend—which means I don’t want to go look up the year and stuff—teabags were invented when a tea company sent out samples in pretty little scrap-silk bags, and the Americans were too stupid to know that was just packaging.  They dropped the whole thing into the pot.  Didn’t sell a lot of the tea blends, but they wrote back and absolutely raved about the wonderful little packets, could they get more of those?  Not being utter fools, the company’s response was a solid “Oh?  You want to buy?  Sounds great!” and now my kitchen has a few dozen different flavors of tea ready to go for individual cups.  But: stupid customers!  How dare they misuse my brilliant system?!?

Part of keeping kids alive is figuring out how to deal with someone who hasn’t been trained to all the systems that we don’t even notice– all the assumptions we can’t see, because of course that’s just what you do.  They do not inherently know what the important variables are when you say “do not touch that”– is it the effect on the thing being touched?  The effect on the thing doing the touching?  That if you touch it wrong, it will hurt you?  That would be the icing on the cake I’m working on getting mussed, harassing the cat is a bad habit, and electricity or boiling water is dangerous, respectively.

Kids aren’t, generally, stupid.  Nor are they failing to think– that theory was actually tested with brain-scans, and the researchers expected to find that adults were thinking more effectively before they made the obviously correct choice.  Nope.  Turns out that the adults weren’t thinking at all, because they already knew the correct answer, that’s why they were so uniform in giving it– it was the kids who were thinking, and considering vectors that the adults already knew had nothing to do with the problem being solved.  The kids hadn’t found those things out, yet, so they tried different things.  The more intelligent the kid, the more absolutely off the wall “what on earth were you thinking?” variables they could come up with, and test.  (Why, yes, I did remember that study because it fit so well with the “something so stupid only someone very intelligent could have created it” situation, and yes I have very little tolerance for the supposedly Einstein quote about ‘doing the same thing over and over,’ mostly because it gets applied when the person quoting it hasn’t bothered to check if it’s actually the same thing, or just variables that didn’t change anything.  The latter is called science.)

  Moving up a bit in the “what were they thinking?” olympics, Redneck Engineering.  Yeah, a lot of them are in the Hold My Beer category, but when it works, it’s stop-and-cuss brilliant, even when the folks who designed the system(s) and tool(s) used had never considered them being used in such a manner. 

Sometimes, it’s simply: why would you want to do that?  Video Game designers may be recognizing what was known at one point as the “dancing naked on mailboxes” effect, where what players want to do sometimes has absolutely nothing to do with what the designers were thinking people would do in the game.  Yes, someone made a video game where you control individual characters, put in an athletic and busty group of females that could 1) dance in a style based off of a very attractive young lady noted for her sexy dancing, 2) strip down to underwear and 3) jump well enough to reach an elevated surface that let them be seen over a crowd, and they did not realize people would be doing exactly that.  It took several re-designs of the system to make it so that mailbox dancers didn’t make it so you couldn’t access the mailbox.  One of the early fixes was making it so game objects to occupy the same space, thus dancers just fell through the mailbox.  This resulted in people deliberately causing distress in others by standing on the mail box, so it could not be accessed—both the want-to-be-seen dancers, and people who were griefing.  (Keep this dual effect in the back of your mind, it’ll come up later.)

The mis-match of designer expectations and user expectations can result in major confusion.  Users tend to have this crazy idea that systems should serve them, not the theoretical goal of the system designers.

 Sometimes, this is something you really need to fight, because the goal is to get a specific result for a third party.  Pencil-whipping documentation in the Navy is not going to make the measurements off of the system accurate, even if it does make things easier for the users. 

When the users are the ones who decide if the results are desired, then demanding that they use it the way you want them to is just silly.  My favorite example is the OK Cupid rating system, which was designed to help you find a date that was attractive to you.  So it sorted the results on a scale of one to five, with “one” being “not if she were the last woman on earth”– which, if she also rated you a 1, would send you both a note to that effect– and five automatically sending her a “hi, you’re cute” break-the-ice note.  The guys who designed the system then, with a straight face, a “https://archive.fo/BtTP2“reported that amazingly few women were rating men as a 5… (OK, mostly straight face, the profiles they used as examples are folks who work there so there’s teasing involved.)

Now, the data in the post makes perfect sense if you look at the system from the perspective of the results that an individual using it gets; roughly one in three men were rated as “I do not want to see this profile ever again, and tell him yeah, you too if he thinks I’m ugly” and low single digit percent were rated “automatically send them a note saying I think he’s cute.”  Meanwhile, women were rated in a rather nice rainbow-arch, slightly heavier to the least attractive but high single digit percent being among the most attractive.  Gals tended to contact guys who were below average on the scale, while guys overwhelmingly went for the top 25%.  If you’re aware that guys are very visual, while gals are tea-leaf reading off of everything from ‘the profile picture is sports gear, I don’t do sportsball’ to ‘this guy is way out of my league, I don’t even want to see this, probably fake anyways’, the pattern makes perfect sense.  If you’re expecting to get accurate data on visual attractiveness, you are going to draw the wrong conclusions.

So, is this an example of a foolproof system finding that the universe has made better fools?  Or that the ‘idiot’ user is just using the system in a way the designer didn’t expect, because it gets them the results they want?

This is an important consideration when you’re making any system– say, social safety nets.  It doesn’t matter that the idea is to help people.   You have to think about what people will actually do, both in innocence and with deliberate malice.  Like blocking off the mailbox in a game, because you can.  At the same time, if you design with an eye on nothing but the possible abuses, you block off the ability of people to do anything good, much less anything fun, and if you can’t force them to use your system…they’ll go somewhere else.

Yes, you absolutely are right. That is a terrible title for the blog of a Freedom lover. which is why I felt the need to do it. Because it’s one part of the whole “toleration/authoritarianism” paradigm I did not talk about sufficiently. I kind of glanced off it, in pointing out that allowing people to do whatever they want is bad for other people and you need to draw the line there.

This is absolutely true. I don’t care if you want to live on the street, but I draw the line at your attacking passerbyes, pooping on the sidewalk, being allowed to camp anywhere that’s “public” because that makes cities unusable for other people. And eventually other people get tired of it, and the totalitarian boot comes down. (Not that it’s not there, before, since other people are being forced to indulge you and give you everything you want to live in this way, and never say boo to it. The difference is only in who is being oppressed.)

However, and this is important, and a fine distinction, the people who are being indulged are not actually receiving any benefit from it, and might be destroyed by the indulgence, because they never learn to correct their behavior to what is functional.

So, all the compassionate cities who allow the homeless to just shit on the sidewalk? They’re telling them they don’t even consider them human. Because animals also poop on the sidewalk. (The irony being a dog owner will be fined if his dog poops on the sidewalk, but if he, himself does it? That’s fine.) Allow them to “camp” anywhere, which often seems to mean just slump on the sidewalk with a sleeping bag? Any number of them will die when the winter cold comes.

It’s not just the awful effect on other people it’s the awful effect on themselves.

Now, these “effects” are of a different order, and they require different ways of dealing with.

Take the homeless, because they’re such a found of floridly bad behavior and of being indulged.

Pooping on the sidewalk should definitely be regulated, because it’s not only awful for the person (it is) but it also makes the city unhygienic (real public health issue) and impassible. It makes often expensive downtown properties worthless. It makes tourists stay away. All of this affects other people. Heck, the germ theory of disease caused a whole lot of public cleanliness laws including “don’t spit on the sidewalk.” This might seem oppressive, but it really resulted in a lot less disease and early death. You can be as filthy as you want in your own, private property, but don’t poop/pee/spit on the sidewalk. (Emergencies, such as someone throwing up are obviously different.)

And no, you shouldn’t be allowed to camp in parks/sidewalks/public venues, because by doing so you’re limiting how others can use it.

And of course you shouldn’t be allowed to attack other people. It’s not their fault or responsibility that you’re feral. Attacking people, particularly random passerbyes, used to be known to be a bad thing, because of course it affects other people.

BUT you want to be homeless? Permanently stoned? Beg for a living? Well, buddy, that’s your bailywick, so long as you’re not interfering with anyone else.

You know what society — and by society I mean lefty (and weirdly some right) custard heads — shouldn’t do: Tell stories about how we’re all guilty of your homelessness; talk as if only people who are forced to this choose to do it; pick the three families that are legitimately and temporarily homeless and pretend every other homeless is like that; start charities to “feed the homeless” and therefore make it easy for people to live like that; start charities that enable that type of life to continue; give help without a sermon.

Look, yeah, people are allowed to self-destroy. We’re not REQUIRED to enable it. Yes, sometimes you’re going to help someone in that situation, but yes, you absolutely should do it with a “Sermon” because your explanation of how they got to this point might be the one that finally sinks in.

Self-destructive behavior should come with its own consequences. For the person. Because sometimes it’s the only way they’ll give it up.

And that ultimately is the highest help you can give them.

It is time — again — to talk of the glitzy, glamorous life of a working writer.

I think I’ve done a couple of posts on the fact that whenever I get an award, or this blog gets mentioned by someone bigger, and my phone starts ringing off the hook with congratulations, it’s always on a particularly blah day.

So, the last time Rush mentioned me, I was scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees when the phone started ringing.

The Prometheus award call? I was in the middle of a Piss-war with the cats, who had peed on the sofas so much they mildewed. So I’d just dragged the sofas to the curb, to be hauled away by trash, and bought cheap used sofas, for which I was making impermeable covers, because I do learn. And yep, Euclid had just peed on the covers I was sewing. (Euclid was actually the issue, since he’d never been box-trained. In fact, he’d been inverse-trained since the elderly person who owned him before apparently put down towels and newspapers for him to pee on. BUT once he started the other cats all assumed that was the place to pee. The only good thing about his dying is that the p*ssing out of place has stopped.)

When I won the Dragon we a) didn’t have the money to attend. (I will add that my preference is not to do the massive cons. I am too introverted for them) b) we were on an unavoidable trip in a tiny town (less than 3k people) staying in a shady motel. We’d just eaten at one of two restaurants — Mexican. The other was Italian. And they only opened on weekends, for the tourists — when Kevin texted me the image of himself holding the award. I texted back “Is this for real?” and then the phone started ringing with other people. That’s when I went back in, broke the low carb rule and had the fried ice-cream.

Those, ladies and gentlemen, are the HIGHLIGHT of the Hollywood glamour that’s my life.

But there’s also a rule that if someone recognizes me while out in public (not often) I’m invariably wearing my painting clothes, with my hair a complete mess, and frazzled in the extreme. Once, I was in my robe, had just locked myself out of the house, and couldn’t get the guys (all of them asleep) to wake and open the door. We lived at the corner of Weber and Columbia in downtown Colorado Springs. Weber is kind of busy. So I’m standing in front, trying to figure out what to do, and a car skids to a stop and someone I remember vaguely from a con in Denver comes running out. “You’re Sarah A. Hoyt. I know you are.” (Turned out useful. He let me use his phone to call Dan’s until Dan woke up and came to open the door. But we had to give him breakfast. Completely worth it.)

Anyway, the reason I was thinking about this: as you know, I wash my bed clothes, and Havey has diarreah. It’s a fact of nature. Havey is also super fluffy:

And his mommy might not have been around to teach him to clean himself.

So, yesterday was devoted to washing all the bed clothes. But I must have had a premonition, because I put an old quilt on the bed, rather than the eiderdown. wouldn’t you know it? Last night he jumps on the bed, and we caught a wiff.

I immediately jump up and grab the shaver.

There ensues a mad chase all over the house, because he caught on he was about to have his butt at a minimum shaved, and perhaps washed. He’s hilarious in these circumstances, because he runs while making a sound like “nope, nope, nope”.

Meanwhile Dan and I chase behind like silent-movie comedy. Only not silent at all, as often there are instructions and swearing in various languages. (To get an idea of how not silent, our previous house was in a not-that-close suburban development. During one of these chases, a neighbor knocked on the door to see if everything was okay, and did we need the police/ambulance.)

Fortunately Havey (besides being a filthy beast and running like a cartoon animal — he does, I swear his legs go binka binka binka) is also…. simple. So eventually he TRUSTED DAN and went to him. At which point — curse Dan’s sudden but inevitable betrayal — Dan grabbed him and proceeded to hold his legs, while I scruffed him and shaved the mess off him (Washing would have been easier, but then he’d get on the bed with a wet butt, and his fur is like a sponge.) Meanwhile he tried to pump his little backlegs and made sounds much like “nooooo” and “Squeak” in an attempt to escape by being pathetic.

He finally forgave me this morning, but the entire scene was both pathetic and roll on the floor laughing funny, in retrospect.

Yes, I’m sure Heinlein and Pratchett had moments like this. (For sure Pratchett because we got to talk about our cats more than once.)

BUT fortunately I mostly got into this job to get the stories out of my head and — if possible — help feed and clothe the family. If I’d got in it by the glamour I’d be seriously disappointed.

So, when you meet me, don’t be overwhelmed. Just imagine me in my nightgown and bunny slippers chasing Havey all over the house, while he meeps and nopes and his legs go binka binka binka.

It’s how I want to be remembered. :)