According To Hoyt

It occurred to me yesterday that my issues with accepting care and being taken care of are sort of a microcosmos of a societal thing.

I came out of the hospital to full Holiday swing around me (I’m not doing much swinging, since Robert brought me home halfway through an attempted grocery shopping trip and told me not to go out of sight of his father.  Not sure yet what is wrong, but I definitely flagged halfway through the trip.  Possibly because it was so cold and for whatever reason my blood pressure remains too low) and to the usual scolds.

What usual scolds?  Oh, you know.  “It’s the commercialism” and “Why are we wasting energy on lights?” and….

This is a subset of the normal scolds.  You know the ones I mean.  The people who tell you that you should use a square of toilet paper only, or (like the particularly disgusting actress) that you should wash and reuse toilet paper.  (EW).  The people who go on about how much electricity we use, and how much water, and how we’re awful for using all this stuff.

Beyond the fact the people who bitch about this never follow through with it, and live lives of unimaginable luxury (by and large) compared to the rest of us, this bizarre call to repent of our wasteful ways seems misguided in more ways than one.  Particularly when the same people then complain about hungry children or whatever.

So, a few thoughts on this:

The world is not zero sum.  If someone is having snickers bars for breakfast, it doesn’t mean someone else needs to go hungry.  In fact, thanks to the magic of the free market, the opposite is likely to be true.  If you’re having snickers bars (or lobster) for breakfast, your demand for these things will make them cheaper for everyone else, and make it less like that someone else starves.

A belief in zero sum economics and distributing finite wealth has created real famines and filled real graves.  The free market only fills the sort of theoretical grave where we’re told that “opportunities are lost” or we should mind “our privilege” or that we shouldn’t be happy because we don’t live in an utopia.  I’m quite willing to dance on the grave of the redistributionists hopes.  It is real graves, with real people that I dislike.

Using human ingenuity to its outmost to make a buck has led to the most comfortable and well fed citizenry in the world.  Yes, I know, it would be better if we only ate things in colors that appear in nature, and if the stuff we ate were recognizable to our great grandmothers.  However, if our biggest problem is that our poor don’t always make the wisest food choices, our ancestors would laugh at our whining.  As they should. Humans seem to like weird colored food in bizarre shapes and textures.  But hey, we’re living longer than ever, and maybe it’s time to relax and accept it.

Speaking of which: Unfettered humans are often crass and tastless, and yes, something should be done about those horrible sweaters your mother in law sends you.

And yet, Christmas is by and large a vast outpouring of love of others.  Look, I never even know what I want, though this year I asked for two specific art ad ons, coming to about $50, but I love spending time and money finding the stuff my guys want/need.  It’s an altruistic holiday, in which we delight in making others happy, and it supports commerce and the economy?  That by itself might be the American triffecta.  Look, sure, I could make gifts out of pine cones and spit, and they’d be deeply meaningful and stuff.  Maybe.  But in the end it would be  still pinecones and spit, and more importantly, the economy would tank, since the market for pinecones is kind of depressed.

My household should probably moderate how many lights we leave on all the time.  Rumors I’m afraid of the dark are… perfectly correct.  However, let me tell you that there is no virtue in darkness.  It just makes you crave light more.

And overall light is what distinguishes us from willing savages like North Korea.  Wherever light glows, there human spirit thrives.

Those who wish to preach mortification of the flesh, be it in food and drink, in clothing, in gift giving or in light usage: do it yourself.

Self-discipline and control can be beneficial when exerted by oneself on one’s own behalf, or in the service of a greater religious vision.

But we will not turn off the lights and freeze in the dark in the service of sanctimonious scolds.

We will shine the light and shame the darkness.  And we will not be ashamed.

 

 

Yes, there will be vignettes later.

First, though, now that I’ve slept 12 hours or so, and I’m feeling more like myself, I’d like to present from my perspective the view of the last few days’ insanity.

First of all, it kept running through my mind “D*mn tedious waste of two days” in the voice of the A & E Pride and Prejudice mini-series character who refers to the Merryton Assembly as “D*mn tedious waste of an evening.”

You see, if I’d been alone when I collapsed in the shower (and according to Dan appeared to be dead) I wouldn’t have gone to ER.  In fact, experientially, from my POV, I fell asleep and had an hour long dream.  (Never mind that Dan says it was about a minute, because dreams like fairyland have no contact with the real world.) I was not in my dream but that is not precisely unusual for me, either.

I would have woken up, been surprised the water was still warm, got out of the shower, perhaps lain down on the floor a few minutes if my vision kept blacking when I stood up (this would not be the first time this exact sequence of events happened) then crawled back to bed for an hour, and then got up and resumed normal life.  The blog would have been a little late. By the time the guys got home from work, I’d have forgotten about it.  (Again, this is not the first time.)

This is why Dan dragged me to ER kicking and screaming.  Or it would have been kicking and screaming if I had had the energy to kick and scream.  No one was more shocked than I when the EKG showed abnormal “muddy” and out of kilter rhythms.  (Which is what they think happened.  They think it went out of sequence and got caught in a minor electrical loop which, fortunately, reset itself.  BUT it was set off and combined with a bunch of other stuff, which mostly amounts to “not enough blood getting to brain.”)

The thing is I have a strong feeling if I indulge my body and give consequence to its fits of weirdness, I’ll live in ER.  So instead I ignore what I can and stop what I can by sheer will power, and I don’t end up losing two days to writing, don’t worry anyone and things keep going.

Which brings me to my issues with being in ER and then in the hospital beyond the fact that I feel apologetic at increasingly more bizarre test results and like I’m somehow perpetrating a prank on the doctors and should beg pardon.

I don’t do well being taken care of, or receiving well-wishes.  Don’t misunderstand me, I’m deeply grateful for the outpouring of love and affection, and in a way it helped but it also made me feel self conscious and bad that I was worrying everyone and causing everyone to make a fuss, because I should not have let my body give way, and I should not be weak.

Perhaps we can sum it up with what dad used to tell me when I hurt my knee, when I was little, “Legionaries” (in the sense of Rome) “Don’t cry.”

I feel that the very fact I need care is a deep personal failure, and everyone I “put out” is someone I’m inconveniencing, and I shouldn’t be.

I realize, from an external point of view this is deeply screwed up, but I can’t stop feeling it just because I realize that.  And if I try to explain it to someone, I feel like I’m giving a wrong impression.  Like, for instance, I get the feeling that they think I shouldn’t be cared for because I don’t value myself as a woman and feel no fuss should be made, and no resources wasted on me.

Instead, the truth is I shouldn’t have to be cared for because I’m the Mama, and the mama (which in my head is still my grandma) holds the sky and the Earth together.  You can’t give way in those circumstances.  It’s unforgivable weakness. It’s deserting a post of honor.

Anyway, my medical emergency proceed as such things proceed for me: Increasingly stranger findings that lead to at least three different diagnosis, which means this was either “perfect storm” or “Wait, what?” and I should have kept the d*mn thing under control and not have bothered anyone.

Though, mind you there are a couple of things, one of them urgent, that were incidental findings to this.  Meaning, they didn’t cause the emergency, but one of them I should get seen really quick because it could lead to ah… serious issues.  Like death.  PROBABLY not, but possibly, over time. Yes, I’ll keep you appraised, since if it’s an issue, it will require surgery.

But over all this is a case of “Sarah allowed her body out of control and permitted her heart to have issues.”  For that I’m sorry, and I’m sorry for worrying everyone and giving so much trouble and fuss.  And I’m sorry for spending time not wring.

And yes, I’m aware this IS stupid, and that I really should learn to accept care.  But it feels like a breech in protocol when I do.  I’m supposed to be the one who cares for others.

ANYWAY…. several things to try to prevent this happening again:

I’m going to continue with the blog, but I’d like some more guest posts, please and thank you.  I’d like to write no more than 3 original posts a week.  I’ll be honest, part of this is because it’s eating my fiction writing.  BUT the eating of my fiction writing increases stress, and I need to bring that down.

I’m going to try to limit facebook to an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, and reduce the instances of hopping all over facebook getting in fights.  It’s addictive, yes, but the stress thing, again, and seriously, it’s not my job.

I’m going to re-center on my writing, because it’s fun and it reduces stress too.

These should help keep my stress to a minimum which will keep the autoimmune feedback to a minimum too.

I’m going to try to drink more water and sports drinks too, because I have a frightening tendency to get clinically dehydrated.

I’m implementing a series of supplements for my tendency to shed minerals.

I’m going to start scheduling a day a week to “do fun cr*p” preferably with Dan, but if he’s not available, it might amount to sitting around and reading.  There haven’t been any of those days in decades, and perhaps this is needed.

I’m following through on the medical weirdness, including the incidental medical findings.

And now please return to your scheduled insanity.  I’m going to nip over to FB for a few minutes, and then clean this place and write.  Because this has been a d*mn tedious waste of two days.

 

 

 

Keeping this mostly  blank, but wanted you guys to know I’m home, and I’m okay for now.

So, for the record, I’m still not dead.

While I did have some sort of a heart event, with continuing irregularities after, it is not in any way a “conventional heart attack.”  Those are the good news.

The contributing factors to this debacle seem to be in no particular order: auto-immune paroxysm of some sort which made my breathing very ineffective, mineral imbalances (I seem to SHED potassium and sodium, aka why I can’t wear contact lenses)  persistently low blood pressure and low heart rate.  Apparently it’s a bad idea to put less oxygen on your low-pressurized blood.  Who knew?

The bad news is that no one knows how it got so far so fast, and “keep your d*mn autoimmune under control” seems to be at the top of the list.  This does mean diet, exercise, regular breaks for fun things with family, and less facebook, I suppose.

They haven’t ruled out all possible causes, and I’ll have to come back for an MRI, since the autoimmune does things to your brain too (Yeah, you knew that. And no, not that way.)

BUT we’re inching ever so slowly to their letting me the heck out of here.  The hospitalist said one more evaluation and I could go, so expect a couple of hours or three.  Hospital time is different.  From “we’re going to discharge you” to walking out has taken anywhere up to five hours..  Then I can go home, take a nap and finish this novel.

Okay, I might shower first.  I’m gross and haven’t even rinsed conditioner off my head for two days.  (I collapsed in the shower.)

As of right now, not only is my demise not expected, but I’m being given the oddest orders you ever saw from a cardiologist.  OTOH raising blood pressure through stress is counterindicated as that sets off the autoimmune.

So, stop that incursion into the infernal regions right now.  Go bribe someone to get me checked out, instead.  You know what would lower my stress?  Getting home, getting some writing done, and maybe getting a party of you reprobates to go off with us to see the lights at the Denver zoo sometime next week.  That would be amazing.

Apparently my life was getting boring so this morning, in the shower, it seemed a good idea to have a cardiac episode.

Now, I sort of assumed this was my body being my body and giving it attention would just encourage it, but my husband doesn’t have the jaundiced view I have and insisted on driving me to emergency.

There seems to be something wrong with the electrical part of my heart and typing this is really frustrating because I have a sensor on my middle left finger.  Anyway there’s something about  a circus rhythm.  (I hate clowns.)

I had planned to work today, d*mn it.

I feel stupid and guilty for letting my body get out of line and encouraging it in its nonsense.  But they’re keeping me under observation till tomorrow, and I can’t even type with this thing on my finger.  And I’m worrying my family.

So.  That’s where I am.  More when I  can type.

I’ve set myself an amusement for the holiday season.  You see, I have a bad habit.  If I’m not at the computer, writing, I have to be reading something.  If I’m not, I get the shakes, and things get blurry, and next thing you know, I’m flopping around on the sofa yelling “The book, Watson, the book.”

The problem is that looking for something to read often takes more time than reading whatever the heck it is.  And that I’m looking for a specific type of book, preferably short and not so absorbing it’s going to keep me from finishing way overdue books.

Which is why I tend to get on binges — usually mystery — of finding an author who is innocuous and reading everything he or she has.  Only I’m trying to keep it cheap.

Also, I’ll be honest, since my brother sent me the list of SF/F books we owned or read at some point, I’ve been riled at how few of them I remember.  I used to have a near-eidetic memory but concussion and other health issues have dented that.  I can now start reading a book and only realize in the middle that I read it before.  Saves on books, sure, but it’s very annoying, particularly when I realize it’s a book that dented the wall.

My memory is better now, part of the whole thyroid adjustment thing, and I thought “What if I find these books and re-read them?”

Now, this has some issues, as some of the books aren’t available at any price, some are available at crazy prices (I am not going to pay 4.50 for a badly formatted fifty year old A. E. Van Vogt to which the agent didn’t even bother to find a generic cover, but has a picture of Van Vogt on the cover.  That foretells of horrors I don’t want to deal with inside.) Some are available from Gutenberg, and I’ll have to transfer (soon.) And some are available but… well, let’s say I’m returning Three Go Back, because someone missed the “just scan the pages and put it up.”  They seem to have decided they should put up the PICTURE of the scan instead of running it through ACR.  My eyes are NOT that good, and also what the heck?

Anyway, the first one that sort of fell in the category “I can read this and it doesn’t make my eyes twist” was The Green Man of Graypeck by Festus Pragnell (which I hope to Bob is a pen name).

Wow.  Holy unadulterated pulp, Batman.

However, if we must — I come to praise pulp, not to bury it.

There is one very good thing about the unadulterated pulp.  It has a punchy and immediate beginning, and it keeps the action rolling along on a steam roller.  That’s something most of us practitioners of a slightly (ah!) more nuanced art could learn.

Now the world building is … not bad, but rather a collection of stereotypes, and I finally found that one “the women are decorative, and treated as baggage” sf.  I haven’t looked at when this was published, but mind you there is more to it than that, since the world has several more or less primitive civilizations, in which the women are “inferior” beings, by lack of body strength, as most women were in uncivilized societies.

OTOH the collection of stereotypes is no worse than the ones we get in most novels now, just a different KIND, and at least to me they were refreshingly novel.

The fun part of this though is seeing that people still felt a need to justify writing novels about a future that never existed, by bringing in some “relevant” “lesson.”

The story is that a man is catapulted into another universe, a very small universe in atoms of our world (go with it.) Given this you expect the almost Tarzan feel of a completely different world (though why some of the people would be humanoid at all… never mind.)

BUT this makes no sense at all when he explains that the collapse of civilization came about because they didn’t listen to Aige Geewells (spelled something like that) about scientific governance.  And unless I’m missremembering  there’s also a bit about eugenics, which at any rate is implied in the “Status” of the “races” in that world, because eugenics is an old (and crazy) obsession of the left.

Anyway, this is stuck in, where it makes absolutely no sense, and is only about three paragraphs.  I remember, when I was a little older (if I read this before, I’d have been very young and not seen the incongruity) just skipping such paragraphs.

I don’t remember when that became impossible, but I think I figured out why.

Look, this books worldbuilding is offensive to my principles at several levels, from the worldbuilding with Superior and Inferior races, assumptions about how women will act, etc.  OTOH it is not offensive, because it’s such a different world, the society is so different, and it’s very clearly “Tarzan of the Apes” in Space.  (With perhaps a dash of the Odyssey.)

Also, I don’t know how to put this, but it comes across as almost innocent.  The writer clearly believed in this load of bull.   There is sort of an internal consistency to how the world is organized that tells you he didn’t even think about it, so he either believed it, or thought his audience would without thought.  And that makes it more bearable, as does the rip roaring non-stop plot.  Why?  Because it keeps you reading.  You can ignore any truckload of carp, provided the story isn’t boring.

Now am I going to say this is the quality of science fiction I’d like to see?  Oh, heck no.  For one, I suspect the idea for the story was disproven before it started. Though it was a fun way to get someone to a completely different world.

On the other hand, I also realized why I read these back to back as a kid, even the ones that made me roll my eyes and go “oh, this is so stupid” or “Bud, your politics reek.”  They caught you.  They did their job first and preached at you second.  (And sometimes incoherently, improbably, and in a few paragraphs.) Which I’m cool with.

So, should you read it?  If you wish.  It’s on Amazon.  It’s readable.  Do I recommend you pattern your writing on it?  Uh… no.

But you might want to look at how he sets up a beginning with a man accused of his brother’s murder, then drags you through a plot that doesn’t stop.  Take that and do a bit of better worldbuilding and fewer crazy assumptions (though for his time these might very well have been state of the art assumptions) and you might have a winner.

After all, cringingly strange world building and all, these pulp novels sold and publishing was a money-making business. Mostly because the books were fun to read, and people read them for fun and not out of a sense of obligation.

Perhaps that’s something we should contemplate more often.

Reading a ludic enterprise, not a moral one.  One shouldn’t be ashamed of reading (or writing) in a fun way.

The Light and The Darkness- A Blast From The past Post from Dec. 2014

As you know I’m working really hard to finish Through Fire, interrupted by some health stuff which is getting me down. So the world’s most awesome husband took me away from the keyboard yesterday night and on a date to the Denver zoo, to see the Christmas lights.

It was just starting to snow, as we approached and we were afraid we’d get frozen but it was surprisingly mild the entire time we were there, and the lights were awesome.

We’d gone once with the kids, when they were little, and the lights were mostly stationary, but now there are a number of moving light shows, and also stuff like oriental lanterns in the elephant area.

Because we went relatively late (had an appointment that let out at six thirty, so no choice there) and because it was starting to get nippy, we weren’t as mobbed with kids as you’d expect. At the end, we might have turned around and gone again, except there was a light drizzle of snow falling. So we adjourned to Pete’s kitchen, where we sat at the window, watching the snow paint patterns in the window and the wind shake the lights outside, while we sat inside all snuggly and warm.

Did I have a point to this, other than bragging about my husband?

When I was a very little girl, I thought the holidays were magical. You see, they used to outline the little medieval church tower in white lights. In a village where streetlights were few and far between and most of the houses not only had only one lightbulb per room (usually naked, in the middle of the room and like 40 watts, no matter how large the room,) but everyone also kept an oil lamp or candles, because the light was off as much as it was on, the lights outlining the tower in the dark (glimpsed from my window late at night) was a miracle.

Fireworks were miracles too, particularly the more complex ones that made pictures.

And of course, festas in summer were a thing of beauty, because of all the light and sound. In retrospect, these were rather pokey ambulatory festivals, mostly booths selling crafts (only these weren’t cool crafts, just most of the stuff around there and then was hand made.) And there were maybe three rides, one of them the obligatory tethered airplanes and the other probably bumper cars, leaving the third to either a roller coaster or a carousel.

Why am I going on about this, just now?

Because in the middle of that amazing light show it occurred to me “as bad as things are…” As in, back then, my little self would have thought that lighted zoo a wonderland out of dreams.

My kids, of course, take it for granted.

But there is a difference between taking it for granted and imagining that, somehow, strangely, the past, with its privations, the past without any of these marvels, was a wonderland.

I’m not going to say my childhood was awful. In many ways, it was a magical place. But it was a magical place despite the privations and the lack of entertainment.

I was blessed with a father who would walk with me through the local fields and woods and not only show me the local fauna and flora (and tell me stories about it) but also read the inscriptions in Roman ruins we stumbled upon. I had a father who in the summer would walk me to the nearest pond to see the fireflies over it, and who taught me to make a pan flute out of reeds. (And who would also take me on an expedition to feed and observe the ants in a massive anthill down by the fields. And always, always, be ready with history or legend, or poem to illustrate something. And I was blessed with a grandmother (dad’s mom) who made up stories for me involving an alternate of the village populated with shape shifters and magical beings.

Add to that a brother and a cousin who were willing to let me tag along with them on their expeditions and who tolerated my thievery of their books, and it was a very good childhood.

What it was lacking was more on the material front: non-scratchy clothes, heated rooms (and bathrooms!) in winter, medicine that wouldn’t be available for decades and – well… entertainment.

Look, I’m a very boring sort of person. Even now, my favorite entertainment is reading. Surrounded by games and movies, I choose books.

But back then even the books were limited. Not only couldn’t we afford them that often, but fewer were printed than here, so the choice was far more limited.

Of course we read everything – I read history and mystery and romance (and when my brother found it SF) because I read everything everyone in the family bought.

Even the newspapers’ serializations of old books ended up clipped out and kept to re-read later.

I don’t think any kid born here and now understands that re-reading wasn’t a choice. You re-read because you simply couldn’t find enough to read.

That today I can research anything – I was just looking up hot buttered rum (shut up) – by typing a sentence on the net, would be enough to make me think this was paradise when I was a kid.

And this is why all the programs of the progressives have been outstripped. They had plans and ideas to bring about equality in 1930s terms. One stack-a-prole apartment, one ration of chicken a week, two suits of clothing a year: EQUALITY.

Instead, we have people living wildly divergent lives in the way they want to live them, and all these people can do is bleat about class and equality.

How do you determine class when, even if I were twice as rich, my life wouldn’t be much different day to day? I’d still live in a house that’s warmed in winter and cooled in summer; I’d still have light and music for the asking (I remember my brother’s transistor radio being a seven day wonder in the village.) I’d still have a computer and be able to read a vast amount of things for free. (And write with minimal effort.)

How do you determine equality when how happy and contented people are has a lot to do with what they choose to do with this immense common patrimony of science and abundance we have?

How can you even insist on equality?

In the end all their bleating is revealed for what it is: a plea for power. They want to control who gets the light, and who is shunted off into the dark.

Well, they’re going to have to think again.

We won’t go quietly into that good night. We’ll stay here and bask in moving pictures made of light.

They like the past so well, they can start their own self-restricted communities. We can always use more Amish at least for the cheese.

As for me, and my house, we’re going to go see Interstellar again tomorrow. We might even go do it in Imax. Because we can.

Yesterday one of my sons came to me about an argument (religious) two friends had got into.  He was furious at both of them, because both were “arguing” in the terms and from within their rather deep belief systems, and getting increasingly mad at how “stupid” the other was, when there was no intelligence involved on either side.  Or rather, whatever reasoning there was was coming out in terms that the other side either could not decode or would interpret as fighting words. (My son mostly just wanted to vent so he did that, and then he was fine.)

I have banned a total of about 8 people (if you count ten or so of them as being one very notorious troll) from this blog.  A couple I banned were for religious nonsense, and one was of my religion.  But when you come in quoting the Bible as though it “proves” something about a current political situation, you’re not arguing in terms people can discuss.  You’re shutting down the discussion with something you think is irrefutable, because it goes beyond logic.  This might be very convincing in a group of like believers (not always.  Doesn’t convince me.)  BUT in an open group, where people of all religions and none gather, this is just annoying and the equivalent of shouting insults, or reciting meaningless mantras.  UNDERSTAND this is not saying “oh, the situation reminds me of this” as we’ve all quoted the Bible, Kipling, or even songs or movies in that manner.  I mean giving a quote from the Bible and saying “And this ends the discussion” because if everyone believed in the quote and interpreted it as the quoter it would, only people of course don’t.  So such a tactic just drives other people insane and ends meaningful discussion.

What brings this up is not religion, per se, except in the sense that some political movements seem to have acquired religious overtones.

I have long ago realized that when the left says “check your privilege” they are doing exactly the same as people quoting the Bible in a discussion-ending way.  They are saying something that from within the deep halls of their religious belief is meaningful and discussion-ending.  But to the rest of us, it’s mumbo-jumbo and annoyingashell.

Look, I have a liberal arts degree, and I learned in a country that was at the time (probably still is) nuts for Marx.  I understand what they were taught about institutional racism, privilege and all that.  I just happen to think they’re wrong, because individuals are individuals and should be treated as such, not as broad classes.  I refuse to believe Obama’s daughters have fewer opportunities than my sons because they’re female and a little darker.

So to me when a Marxist screams “check your privilege” what I really hear is “I’m a brain washed idiot.”

This is worse if it comes in the middle of a comment or rant that makes sense otherwise, say something about the culture of recent immigrants can hold their kids back.  I’ll be reading along going “Okay, I see you’re coming from the left, but there’s common groun–” and then we hit the “magic words” and my brain goes into instant “these are my middle fingers.”

Recently we’ve started getting the same from the soi-disant right.  It’s an “European right” that treats races and classes as groups, not as aggregations of individuals with wild variation.  Look, they’re mostly young, and mostly rather stupid.  I’m not saying some of them aren’t individually smart, because some of the ways they’re stupid are ways in which only smart people can be that dumb.  Like believing the melanin content of the skin correlates with IQ, or that culture is hereditary.

Mostly they’re kids who realize that they’ve been lied to all their lives, and think that by turning the lies completely around they’ll find the truth.  The world is never that simple.

The problem though, is that their lingo has acquired the same properties as the left.  It has spread to older people who should know better, and who use it because they can and because they think it’s a thumb in the eye of political correctness.  But what it actually does is argue from “deep cult” and shut down discussion for anyone not already along for the ride.

I was reminded of this, recently, while reading a comment to one of my posts at Instapundit.  I don’t often do it, because lately there’s been a lot of crazy.  But the comments were interesting, and this particular one was very good (and no, I can’t remember about what) and made perfect sense/explained things beyond where my post was.  All except the last line who referred to the Halfrican Queen.

It took me a moment to realize from context it was talking about Valerie Jarret.  But beyond making the comment more opaque and signaling a brain-shutting cultish type of thinking, it did more than that.

It introduced completely irrelevant emotional distractions.  Halfrican, and all the other stupid epithets of that ilk is not an argument.  If it were an argument, you’d have to explain why the fact that Valerie Jarret is half African (is she even?  I thought she was mostly Arab) has anything to do with the fact that she works for the Muslim brotherhood or is a red diaper baby.  I mean, sure, there’s some covalence there, but that’s cultural, and part of her being indoctrinated to believe she was hard-done-by due to her skin color.  But there are many people who fill the same role without the genetic heritage.  Obama’s lily-white mother was a red diaper baby and so are half of the lily white, upper class darlings of science fiction.

The term, besides not sounding nearly as clever as it does inside the cult IS anti-pc, but it is anti-pc in a way that not only brings irrelevant arguments to the discussion but that like “check your privilege” proclaims “I come from so deep within an echo chamber that I consider this a clinching argument.”

I’ve gotten to the point that my middle fingers come up automatically when I hear one of these words.  Cuck, for instance, means “I don’t understand parliamentary procedure or governmental structure in the US and I want to impress it with how angry I am.”  Halfrican means “I have no clue how human intelligence/DNA/culture works, but I want to be superior to someone.”  The rest of the vile lot means a bunch of other things such as “I believe in an international Zionist conspiracy, just like Marxists and Palestinians, because I think those two are beacons of sanity.”  Or “I believe in magic dirt, because if you’re born on the land for x generations you’ll have the right culture/beliefs, even if the schools and society are no longer teaching them.  And I’ll ridicule others for believing in “magic dirt” when people do their best to BECOME part of the nation.”

In fact, all of these terms aren’t cute, aren’t funny.  They’re creepy eructations that mean “I joined a cult.”

They have the added “benefit” of making people who don’t fully agree with you and don’t come from the deep cult shut down on you.  And of making people on the other side FURTHER believe they were justified, are victims and should hold on hammer and tongues to their victimhood instead of actually listening to what they’ve been doing wrong.

In fact, these thought-stopping and substitute for thought words do the very opposite of shattering the PC bubble and making people think.

We have to fight with words, or surely we’ll fight with actions. But fighting with words that stop thought and discussion will only make things worse.

And yes, I know, because I’ve seen this in posts by Stephen Green or other of my friends, some *sshole will come along and say because I don’t like these cutesy words that mean nothing I’m a “closet democrat” or a “communist.”  Being called a communist is one of my new and favorite pastimes, considering I’ve broken more communist heads than anyone not a veteran of the armed forces and that even before I had a political philosophy I knew I was anti-communist.

But before you do that, explain to me how using stupid made up words makes your point that communism is bad, or that the democrats are Marxists.  Make it cogent.  Show your work.

Because all I’m seeing are people coming from deep-cult and thinking that the short cuts around thought that they’ve gotten used to will work on everyone.

And that’s tragically wrong.

 

Okay, first to get a bit of off-topic business out of the way: Sarah sucks at scheduling things, yay and verily, like a Dyson with the animal hair attachment.  And I’m very sorry.  All I can say is between the auto-immune that clogged my breathing and reduced me to a fraction of the oxygen I should have (making me go into respiratory distress when lying flat) and the steroid to combat it, I’ve been even more like a cat with ADHD than normal.

In practical terms this means I totally forgot to schedule A cyber Monday sale.  Fear not, though, starting on the thirtieth there will be something of mine on sale for 99c through the end of the year.  I’m also bringing out author’s editions of the Magical British Empire and of the furniture refinishing mysteries which have now reverted.  The fourth one of those and the sixth musketeer mysteries are in various states of completion, which means I might or might not be able to bring them out by Christmas.  We shall see, but I’m gonna try.

Meanwhile today I must run an errand and send an overdue outline to KJA.  Then resume work on Darkship Revenge this weekend.  I’m sending the book in “sets” to my betas as I finalize portions, hoping to get it done faster that way.

Which bring us to a very short blog post, before I run off.

For years now, I’ve been telling you guys that this country is functionally occupied.  Sometime between the forties and the seventies, a significant portion of our most promising young were proselytized and converted by the then USSR, an enemy that was not markedly skilled at much, except subversion, but who were very skilled at that.

This means, as my friend Bill Reader says, that “we’re doing all right, we just lost the cold war.”

Oh, we won it, economically and militarily, and everywhere else, but they’d taken our culture, and their long march had acquired all the command positions, and therefore they were in control.  And having been, effectively, turned into enemy agents, even after the enemy had disbanded, this meant that they treated us like an occupied land.

This is the only way to make sense of the oikophobia of our cultural “betters” and of their desire to dismantle the culture that gave them birth, as well as their certainty that factually-disproven means of government like communism and socialism (both really the future of the past) are still the coming wave of the future.  It is also the only thing that makes sense of, say, flying the American flag being considered an act of aggression ON AMERICAN TERRITORY while every other flag is not only accepted but encouraged.

We’re doing okay, it’s just that we’re occupied.  And the couple of days have been an “oh, boy, howdy, and how!” as we watch people who pretend to care for the fate of the republic and to be proselytizers for freedom and liberty deliver themselves of painful and cringingly-awful encominiums to Castro, a man who would have been Stalin, had he had more territory than Cuba to rule over; a man who enslaved his own people and who, by hiring his army out, like the Hessian mercenaries of old, but worse, laid fire and waste to Africa and perpetrated (there) racist aggression as was rarely seen under European powers (except maybe by the Belgians who were special all over Congo and of course the soviets who were the masters of the Cubans.)

It’s been breath taking to watch the masks drop, and the would-be officials of our own country act like quislings and traitors.  Their beards all seem to have grown longer overnight, (particularly the women’s) and the noises that comes from their mouths are no longer the sounds of rational human beings, but the eructations of the long-dead masters who possess them.  They are channeling Marx and Lenin, Stalin and Pol Pot, standing atop the pile of corpses of their victims, and speaking with the rotten voice from the grave, lamenting the passing of one of the last of their comrades to resist the encroaching of liberty, and to carry on their carrion-tainted legacy.

Remember them.  Keep in mind that moment when the masks dropped.  They will try to don them again, and look, once more, impartial and over it all, and like gods among men.  Don’t forget though, the death-marked visage they revealed and how their empathy for this repulsive tyrant reveals what they’d do, given a chance.

We’re doing all right, for a country that lost the cold war.  We’re doing very all right.  While they were busy taking over the formal mechanisms of power, the sons of Martha — almost ours to a man — have created alternate structures to the ones they stormed and occupied.

We have means of communication and organization, and the resistance is making a comeback.  Don’t get cocky.  The vichy are still in power in all relevant positions of external power, and — as with publishing — they’ll try to get things under control again.  Look at all the fuss about “fake news” by which they don’t mean the ones who have, so gleefully, been trying to gaslight the nation for decades, but the people doing yeoman work, mostly unpaid, to reveal their deficiencies.  Look at traditional publishing, in increasingly ineffective ways, trying to grasp once more the power they had over the nation’s intellectual life.

There will be tussling back and forth.  Be not afraid, nor despair.  Keep working to build under, build around.  Keep working to take the weight of the corrupt edifice when it falls.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and take enough of the political establishment it never really falls, just totters and firms up again, but you can’t bet on it.  You have to keep working, to remember we’ve been occupied for almost a century, and we’re just now fighting back.

On the good side, the technology for communications, for learning and hopefully soon for manufacturing (to some extent) is going the way of individual freedom, unlike the technology of mass production and mass marketing which gave birth to socialist/communist mental map.

In the end we win, they lose.  But you must keep working.

Now go work.

 

song

Hail and well met, my friends! I return at last with a blessed batch of beautiful books. So go, read! Review! Give constructive feedback and sheckels as appropriate! If you have books for the next promo, please make sure to send them to my email as soon as possible. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Word polisher, code monkey, and proud member of Hoyt’s Horde of Huns

John Van Stry

The Hammer Commission

Mark’s job seems pretty dull to others, but that’s just the window dressing. He’s actually an elite member of a thousand year old secret society that hunts down devils, demons, and other evils: he’s on the front lines of the secret ongoing war between Heaven and Hell that has been raging for millenniums.

For decades now, things have been at a stalemate, but all of that is about to change…

On sale for 99¢. You can find the other books John has on sale this weekend at his website.

Tom Simon

Angel Keep

Where Angels Die Book 1

‘A demon is the spirit of a bad idea. The Taken are just its victims. If they kill you, you lose. If you kill them – you lose. The only way to win is to kill the idea itself. That’s where we come in.’

Enter Revel Enfield: paladin, exorcist, Knight of the Covenant of Justice.

Every enemy is hidden.

Every friend can be turned.

Even the Angels of Life can be killed.

This is his war.

Kal Spriggs

Renegades: Out of Time

The Renegades Book 3

The Renegades are running out of time.

Captain Mike Noguchi has led his band of Renegades out of the heart of a interstellar war, forged them together into a privateer crew, and has learned of an ancient alien facility that may hold clues to a conspiracy which seems bent on his crew’s destruction.

But that facility is on a planet conquered by the Chxor. The Renegades will need to slip across the battle-lines, infiltrate a conquered world, and find their way inside a facility which has kept its secrets for untold generations. Along the way they’ll need to fight genetically engineered monsters, a psychotic military commander, and an entire army of Chxor.

Yet even if they manage that, some secrets may be too much for them to handle. Their enemies have already done terrible things with the knowledge found there… can the Renegades survive secrets from outside of time?

K. M. O’Brien

The Sculpted Ship

Starship engineer Anailu Xindar dreamed of owning her own ship, but she didn’t find the courage to actually go for it until she was forced out of her safe, comfortable job. She goes shopping for a cheap, practical freighter, but she ends up buying a rare, beautiful, but crippled luxury ship. Getting it into space will take more than her technical skills. She’ll have to go way outside her comfort zone to brave the dangers of safaris, formal dinners, a rude professor, and worst of all, a fashion designer. She may even have to make some friends… and enemies.

“The Sculpted Ship” is set on the outskirts of an interstellar empire where FTL travel is commonplace but intelligent robots are rare and expensive. Though the Iris Empire has stood for a thousand years, a talented individual can find plenty of opportunity. But the nobility of this empire guards its privileges jealously.

Alma Boykin

Three Winter Tails

A Cat Among Dragons Story Set

Faith, Hope, Love, and bar-fights.

“Peace on Earth, good will to all” doesn’t apply to Rada Ni Drako and Yori dar Ohrkan. At least, not without close adult supervision, as these three winter-themed stories reveal. Colonel Adamski may lose all his feathers from stress-molt before spring finally arrives.

Mary Catelli

Journeys And Wizardy

Drunken mermaids – a clan cursed to become crows – a magic book that even the Nameless Necromancer fears – and more in this reprint collection of thirteen stories and a poem.

Now in print