According To Hoyt

*Hugo Season is here again, and the cry of the butthurt is heard in the land.  I don’t have time to deal with it, so nip on over to the inestimable Nicki Kenyon’s blog for … well, blunt opinions, language, and some criticism of a sometime beloved science fiction author and a never loved science fiction poseur and some totally unwarranted insults to a fermented body secretion. Given what’s going on, it’s time to rerun the post below.*

A Game Of Mirrors – A Blast From The Past From February 2015

I remember a more innocent time when we watched Law and Order AND didn’t snert behind our hands at “Ripped from the headlines.”

Now we don’t watch it, but my eyes on twitter has been branching out, and he told me their gamer gate episode was about how all these guys were upset at there being a female game developer, so they kidnapped her and raped and stuff.

Uh.

How can they even? I mean, the worst PROVEN thing that happened to one of the SJW shills in gamergate was that someone wished she would kill herself, which she helpfully translated as “death threats.”

And Dan works in software and has for 30 years (though now the software has a math component at last) and the only time he hasn’t had a colleague who is in the same profession in his office and is female is for the last three years, and that’s because there’s only two developers. (They do have a female co-worker, but she does non-software stuff.)

Now, I know software isn’t the same as game design and gaming, but I’d be willing to bet there’s a massive overlap/similarity of conditions.

Female developers isn’t even a surprise. There might be fewer than men (not where my husband has worked, but hey) but not many fewer and they run the gamut. From what I understand, there are fewer in game development but if they are true geeks, they’re not only accepted but lionized. (I’ve experienced a similar effect as a space/science fiction true geek, (meaning I spaz on the concepts/science, not the feels) a community in which females are pretty scarce. Let me tell you, once a guy realizes I really am interested in space travel, it doesn’t matter how ignorant I am (and I am.) All their lives women have looked at them quizzically over this obsession. Finding out a woman shares it brings forth their very best.)

Besides, though I admittedly am not a gamer, I have skimmed enough articles to know that the problem here is not that WOMEN are writing anything, it is that there was suspicion of corruption in game journalism which happened to involve women. And also, as the catfight extended, that some gamers disliked a certain type of games they felt were getting unfair good reviews. Is that true? Don’t know. However, judging from the arguments the other side put out “games shouldn’t be fun” and “escapism is bad for you” I’d say whether journalists were corrupted by coochy or not, they’ve been corrupted by the same sort of “fake promise of prestige” that has seduced science fiction reviewers. In other words, they’ve become convinced of the rather juvenile idea that the purpose of entertainment (which is ultimately what science fiction and games are) shouldn’t be fun, but should be a lever for “changing society.”

And then I started thinking of other “moral panics” driven by the media (and they never tell you they were driven by the media, no matter what basis there was or wasn’t for things.)

Take the militia panic of the nineties. Every TV show, every conspiracy, the answer was “militias.”

There never was any real basis for it. Sure, there were crazy people. Fundamentalist cults. White supremacists hiding out in the country.

There always are. This is a very large country. There were even militias. We know. We were friends with a guy who was in one. He owned a large amount of guns and so did his friends. On the weekend they engaged in healthy exercise and shooting up targets.

Were they a menace to the government? Not any legitimate government. Not even Clinton. They were however concerned with the direction of the government expansion and they were survivalists preparing in the eventuality the S would hit the fan.

So, how to spin an entire moral panic out of this?

Well, you see, the media was guilty. To wit they were guilty of covering up for Clinton when his attorney general caused the death of the Korresh cult and when his ATF killed a family of white supremacists. [It has been pointed out to me Ruby Ridge happened under George H. W. Bush.  I checked and this is true. [And not a surprise.  H.W. or his son for that matter, were not exactly anti-statists] It is interesting in my mind I remember it as happening later, under Clinton. Now, I got my news at the time from TV and the papers.  It tells you something that when I heard a lot about it was under Clinton, to justify crackdowns on “militias.” The murders might have happened earlier, but the full court press was under Clinton.]

I’m not saying, understand, either of those sets of people were good people, but they were the victims here, not the perpetrators.

In this country there are always crazy people doing crazy things. There are very few crazy things anyone deserves to die for.

But under Clinton this stuff happened, and the only way to deflect it was for the press to go on an almighty panic about “militias.” Until people forgot what the question is.

Or take the “satanic child abuse” panic of the eighties. If you hear the media talk about it now, this was the result of some fundamentalist parents going crazy and stuff. (Rolls eyes.)

In fact I was there and lived through it. I remember the TV programs filled with speculation, when they weren’t trotting out psychologist-abused children to babble lurid details. I remember newspaper articles going on and on about ZOMG satanic cults, their history, etc. For pages and pages, and pages.

I don’t remember any PROGRAMS on it, but then back in the eighties I was new in the country and the shows Dan and I watched were mostly vintage star trek and old sitcoms. There probably were some, though. These things always seem to be a coordinated effort between news and entertainment, one winding the other up.

Anyway, just from the headlines/tv programs, one would be excused in thinking that every daycare was a danger. So everyday parents who had to work and put kids in daycare worried. As they should have, given the barrage of “truthful” and “respectable” sources claiming this.

The truth behind it was a little more complex, and has been swept very deep indeed. I don’t know how many of you even remember this, because possibly you might have needed to be in the circles I was at the time (mostly my brother’s circles, which were hippie/ex-hippie/avant guarde. I mean, in my teens we watched an Ingmar Bergman film cycle in the smallest theater in town. You know what I mean.)

There was a very hip, very transgressive, very intellectual and credited in intellectual circles, idea that children were (and should be) inherently sexual with adults, and that to withhold sex from them retarded their development and trampled their rights. (Now my brother’s circle – at least to my knowledge – never engaged in the active side of this, not being thus inclined. One of the fondest memories of my childhood was going to the beach at eight with a group of ten or so long haired (male) hippie freaks, and – since we couldn’t afford a changing booth and they just wore their swim trunks under their clothes – having them form a circle facing outwards, so I could use the center of the circle to change in.)

I heard an echo of that in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s testimony. It was clear she’d heard this theory and internalized it, which caused her to buy the excuses of her pedophile husband. Science fiction writers – and readers – being Odd are capable of convincing themselves of the strangest things. As in “you have to be very smart/an intellectual to believe that utter bullsh*t.”

And I can’t tell you this for sure, because a) I was very young. b) there was no alternative media and this stuff has been pretty thoroughly memory-holed, though you can sometimes find echoes of it, particularly in European stuff, but I suspect our media and intellectual establishment fell for that theory head over heels.

Then when they realized the absolutely horrendous results and that child abuse leaves the victims scarred for life, (if not in therapy.) they swung around and created a whole moral panic over those other people abusing children. In this case the “other people” being some sort of mystical believers, though at the time they weren’t bold enough to accuse Christians. But after all, Satanism if a co-dependent belief with Christianity, so that was fine.

And then when that panic was revealed to be crazy, they accused everyone but themselves of it.

Now the panic is that in these geeky/low prestige fields people the journalists don’t fully understand are afraid of “the other” be they women, people of other races or sexual minorities.

This one is so weird that it leaves me trying to grasp it. As I said, all the geeky fields I know are not just welcoming but ridiculously welcoming of women who are genuinely interested in their passion. It’s the only thing that explains why at my age and avoir du pois I count as “hot” in my circles. But not only is it what the other side believes and resets to, but it is clearly and obviously the “narrative” that will be pushed.

They want to believe the issue people have with the way science fiction has gone, the way games are reviewed, etc are because some imaginary troglodytes, in a cave, probably in Alabama, object to the fact the people creating sf/f and games have innies instead of outies.

The thing doesn’t pass the smell test.

So, what is the truth of it?

The press and the intellectual establishment (which includes the publishing establishment) have been pushing science fiction into an unsaleable/unpopular direction for years. They had, for a while, control of what ended up on shelves, and people didn’t see anything else. They still have control of news.

And the direction they’ve been pushing in is “it shouldn’t be entertaining. It should effect social change.” (But why must it always change TOWARDS Marxism? Marx is after all a dead white male. Eleventy ;))

That is the prestige position in journalism and academia, and so that’s what’s got pushed.

However it’s been disastrous for print runs. So, as the field lies gasping and they’re all out of excuses (indie has proven that people DO still read and no, the American public isn’t illiterate) they have to justify their stunning lack of success. “It’s because we have women and minorities! The evil troglodytes hate women and minorities.”

The fact that women writers are now a majority in the field (and have been my entire professional life) and that if you add in that most editors are women there’s mighty little difference between SF cons and RWA doesn’t even give them any pause.

They’ve got to convince the public that the problem is hatred of women and minorities, because then the explanation for the collapse of the field is someone else’s fault, and they’re the enlightened heroes.

And the same, of course, goes for the gaming field. “Don’t look at the crap we’ve been praising and pushing you to buy. Don’t look at how difficult it is to find something you actually want to read/play. Buy the stuff we tell you, because otherwise you hate women and minorities, you evil h8ter.”

In fact, it is the games books vehicles of social change they’ve been pushing that are excluding of “others” if the “others” are male, or working class, or religious (of a religion not Muslim) or most things that are not white females in an academic environment.

But they hope to make enough noise and use it as the plot of enough TV shows (ripped from the headlines! Eleventy) and movies and articles to convince us they were right all along, the collapse of the field is not their fault, and we should believe them, not our lying eyes.

But we have an internet. And pointing fingers. And laughter.

I don’t think it will work.

Yesterday I was thinking, always a terrible mistake, while I did the cat boxes and scrubbed the toilets (it was that kind of day) about how part of our problem today is not only that parts of our culture don’t know each other, but that parts of our culture actively know stuff about the other parts that absolutely isn’t so.

This is a problem for various reasons, one of them being that various parts of this vast and varied nation think they need the government to protect them from “those fellows over there’ who in fact have no intention of doing anything about/to them. And this is a problem because our system is not designed to give a centralized government that much power; our nation is too varied/different/peculiar for every spot to be justly ruled from a central location (take the $15 an hour boondoggle.  Btw, this is $2 less than than most medical interns make an hour, but I digress.  In some places in the country this is what an adult with practice in his trade — say retail manager — can hope to make, and you absolutely can raise a family on it.  In other parts of the country even $15 is poverty and destitution.  Having a centralized government dictate a minimum wage for everyone regardless of local cost of living makes as much sense as making only shoes in size 8 for the left foot.)

Now it’s always been normal, and it’s part of that human tribal thing, to believe that those guys over there, across the bridge and over the mountain are REALLY weird.

My grandmother as she got very old read newspapers full of marvelous accounts of women giving birth to snakes and other such odd “news”.  I almost swallowed my tongue reading Truth by Terry Pratchett because it pictured that so exactly.  No woman in the village would ever give birth to snakes, but we were civilized and nice, and who knew what those people over the mountain did?  If someone said they did and it was right there in the paper, surely the paper wasn’t allowed to print falsehoods, right?

This might sound like a bumpkin’s idea, but really it isn’t and there is more about this later.  All humans are susceptible to this to some limited extent.  And people who are quite shrewd in one or two areas can be absolutely dumb in things they don’t pay much attention to (see current election for examples.)

For instance, once when I was 15 or so, I needed to get to my high school at indecently early hours.  I don’t remember why, it’s entirely possible it was to finish an art project or to do some volunteer thing.  To get to the highschool I took a train from the village downtown.  We weren’t a station (though the village has one now) but a very informal stop at which maybe one in ten trains stopped (and sometimes scheduled ones forgot and I had to call dad from next village over to pick me up, or if it was early walk the five or six miles back.)  Anyway, the only train available before five am was full of people from the villages beyond the mountains, who came to sell at the big city fairs.  These were sharp people, and small business people.

However, it’s unlikely in those days that their remote villages even had good radio reception, and newspapers would probably have been difficult to obtain. While they were in the city they were working and would absorb any gossip they heard, but not seek out newspapers and news.  At any rate, likely, these people had third grade if that much, and reading might have been a chore.

I was sitting by the window, listening to them talk, and let me tell you, they sounded absolutely as smart as my parents or anyone else.  Until….

A young man with a Spanish accent moved down the carriage telling a story and getting money.  He was a refugee from the Spanish civil war, and all his family had been killed, and he needed money for a new start.

No, don’t tune your receivers.  There was no civil war ongoing in Spain in the seventies.  BUT these people hadn’t paid attention, had vague memories of hearing mom/grandma/great grand say something about a civil war in Spain. They opened their pockets and gave deep.

Rustics, you say.  And yes, it was always part of high culture to make fun of rustics.  Cozened literally comes from the con game in Elizabethan England where a con men would approach a new comer from the countryside, pretend to be their cousin and trick them/rob them.

But now we have something completely different.  While the Rustic in Elizabethan England was a stock character in London, if a person from London traveled in the countryside, it is likely after a while they’d become aware not everyone there was simple, or gullible.  They’d learn to see the countryside as it was, not as they were told it was.

The problem we have right now is that this is near impossible, and the divisions aren’t only geographic.  It’s very easy to set one race against the other, one orientation against the other, even micro cultures against the other.  (The number of times I’ve been informed I spend my weekends wearing Spock ears don’t bear mentioning.)

We’re back to not only the fact that we’re more pervasively immersed in entertainment than any people before, but also that our entertainment, particularly in movies, but also books, is designed to create “false memories.” We are supposed to believe that we lived this.  That’s what the narrative techniques do (if they’re good.)

I’m fine with that, as I read to enjoy being someone else for a time.  And it would be fine if for a while there every news channel, every sitcom, ever movie, every book hadn’t been a unified force selling the same version of reality.  Reinforced experience (aka the big lie) becomes doubly real because “everybody knows.”

Examples of “everybody knows” involve for instance that everybody knows Southerners will be hostile just because you’re not “from around these parts” and also that they’re all inbred ill billies; that no gay man can step outside safely at night without being beat to death; and that everyone on the right is not only Christian, but insanely, unthinkingly Christian and takes orders from their pastors.  And don’t get me started on the ‘murders of abortion doctors’ which many people think rival the numbers of Islamic terrorism, 9/11 and all.

And take the kerfufle over bathrooms and transgendered people using bathrooms.  BOTH sides behave as if they lived in an imaginary and very strange country.

The “You must let transgendered people into your bathrooms” people suffer from the “If you were a dinosaur, my transgendered love” syndrome, in that the only world they really know is the faculty lounge or the privileged country club where the right people assemble. They’ll believe anything of those people out there, beyond hte hill, including that those  people will stop an effeminate looking man or a butch looking woman from using the bathroom and demand they drop trou to prove their identity.  Seriously, what is this actual cr*p about the transgendered being unable to use bathrooms of their assumed sex?  I have friends who are butch women or effeminate men, (and most straight) and none of them ever got stopped at the door and told to prove they were male/female.  So if any transgendered person is making even token efforts to pass, no one is going to question them.  Because in the hinterlands, outside the enlightened faculty lounges, everyone knows people don’t match any label, and there is no defined “masculine” or “feminine”.  If someone looks like they sort of belong, we assume they know what their genitals are.

And then you get into the “but what if it’s just a guy who says he feels like a woman?”  Well, in saner times that would be idiotic, but nowadays it’s possible, thereby justifying a fear of the people against this.  OTOH when the people who say transgendered people are more likely to get assaulted in the bathroom of their birth sex, CANNOT be referring to people whose external appearance entirely and congruently matches their birth sex.

(As for fears your kids will be assaulted, I feel for you, but you realize no one is checking genitals and there are no bathroom guards, so people can and do sneak in and assault the unsuspecting, anyway.  Yes, yes, no reason encouraging it, but seriously.  Making a law against people using the other bathroom would obligate you to check genitals, and you know that we’re not going there either.  Ideally, as a friend suggests, we should have individual bathrooms, like the “family restrooms” available in airports.  This would both equalize the male and female bathrooms — one always over the other always under supplied — and permit people like me who only have children of the other sex, to keep an eye on them when they’re frankly too young and nuts to be trusted in there alone.  And for reasons unknown to me, women objected to Robert in the ladies’ room when he was little more than 3 and to Marshall at 6.)

What you have here is extreme suspicion of a vast majority (people outside the academic lounge and the entertainment industry) built by all our entertainment and news, until people decide a slightly less butch male and more butch female walking into a working class bar would get beat to a pulp for the crime of looking different.  Which is insane.  And which makes every little subgroup feel they need the government to protect them.

This is a dangerous road to go down, because no minority fares well under a totalitarian regime.  That is, the same people who help usher in the tyrant, because they think they need protection from their co-citizens, are the ones who end up suffering the most under it, because in the hard times that accompany tyranny, minorities must be made invisible or destroyed.

Yes, there are new ways to reach the public, and I’m imploring you, if you have an ounce of talent, start running blogs, writing books, doing what you can to wake our co-citizens out of the unrealistic consensus reality that is pitching them against each other.

We must — must — stop seeing each other without the blinders of the ideas pushed on us by those who would be our masters.

Only that way can we remain free.

Because when we get to the point we need the government to tell us where to go to the bathroom, the hour later and the situation far more serious than I thought.

 

 

 

I’m horribly late, partly because I slept late, but also because I feel still groggy.  In explanation, we have an accepted offer on a house — not short sale — and hopefully will be permanently housed in a month and a half.  Early days, yet, but tentatively that’s the plan, and just this is farther than we’ve been since November.

I must have been under a great deal of stress I didn’t even realize, because not only did I sleep better than I have in months, but I woke up late and still feel rather “boneless.”  I also actually feel like working, it’s just that all the little stuff getting there (breakfast, admnistrivia) took forever.

So, establish that I’ve been under a lot of stress.  In such times I tend towards horror.  In the days of the old writers’ group, my friend Becky Lickiss used to say she could tell when I was really depressed, even if I was putting a good face on it, because I always wrote horror.  And the darker the horror, the more depressed I was.  I’d never noticed the correlation.

Now Horror is qualified, when it comes to reading.  I write horror, I can’t read it.  Or at least I can’t read straight up horror, with the meaty skulls and snakes, if you know what I mean, or iow gross-out horror is right out.  And as for creepy horror, well, supernatural horror can scare the bejeezus out of me, but as someone who grew up with a definite tradition and local stories, most of it just makes me roll my eyes and go “that doesn’t make any sense.”

Most of the horror I read is in fact dark fantasy, and about the darkest is Repairman Jack, by F. Paul Wilson.  (Some books are darker than others.  And some are terrifying, but the thriller aspect and… well… it’s human wave fiction, definitely, keeps me reading.)

There are some interesting observations on the series, which appears to have been written from several points inward.  What I mean is that he started with several isolated stories, which are then tied in into a grand theory or conspiracy or something.  Being a writer one can’t help but wonder if he started out with the world built and then went several places in it, or if he simply had these stories and novels, and came up with a world to fit them all into.  It doesn’t matter, of course, but as a fellow craftsperson, one is curious on how the thing one likes was made.

I’m not going to go any deeper into Wilson’s work, though at some point there MIGHT be a post about it.  I do like it very much.

I will mention in passing that the vaunted craftsmanship of traditional publishers never fails to amaze me.  I realized as I was reading the books that my copy of bloodline would not open and kept saying it was licensed to another user (which is stupid.  Look, there’s only one user for this kindle.  That’s doesn’t even… ow, my head hurts.)  After a session with Amazon’s customer service, the problem was fixed and I opened the book for the first time since I first bought it…

And stared at the title page wondering if I’d made a mistake or they had.  The title page says this book is By The Sword, another book in the series.  I decided to read some of the text before complaining — I re-read By The Sword recently — and hot d*mn the book is not By The Sword, but Bloodline.  Which has, atop of it, all the title and copyright info for By the Sword.

I am forever deeply impressed with the craftsmanship and professionalism of the great houses, and the professional care they give to every one of the books contracted to them.  This is me, doing a slow clap in appreciation. And for this you charge the price of a paperback for an ebook.  Of course.  I mean, there’s all that expert help you need to pay and layers and layers of fact checkers and all…

So, where was I?

When I realized I was worsening my depression by reading horror, I decided to read fluffy regency romance.  I read a lot of these.  I don’t require historical accuracy.  I don’t remember most of them a minute after I read them.  It’s just something that doesn’t use up brain cycles, but feeds the need to read.  I read it usually when I’m writing something COMPLETELY different, so that my writing doesn’t become taken over by someone else’s vision/style.

Now, again, while some regency romances (Heyer!) compare well to any other book of any other genre, most of the field’s production (like any other field.  Only regency tends to have happy endings and has relatively less PC bs to fight through)  is what could be called “popcorn”.  They are not well researched, they recycle plots, the characters are extremely well dressed stereotypes, etc.  That’s fine.  As I said above, they tend to be relatively “happy” and angst free, and that’s what I read them for.

OTOH I didn’t feel like spending money (none of the better authors had anything out in a series I follow) and I didn’t want something so riveting it ate up brain cycles.  So I went to Kull and started looking at the better rated regency romances.

I downloaded one with 300 reviews and something around four and a half stars.

And then I started reading it.  By page seven I was wondering if this was written by someone with a cognitive deficiency or just a product of our education system.  It told me, for instance, that London was divided into two sections, the High section where the rich people lived and the low section or low town where the “disadvantaged” lived.

I thought “okay, that’s weird.” but decided perhaps the author had thought that she’d fill in stuff later, then forgot in one section.  I mean reducing the richness of Regency London to “two sections” was a little odd, as though it were Podunk, population 300, but okay.  Give the dog a bite.

By page eleven my eyebrows were attempting to meld with my hairline.  This woman described the day of the Baron’s wife and his daughters and started by telling us that every morning they went around and bought all the food for the household, which they then brought home and gave the servants to cook.  And, btw, older daughter wonders why they can’t just cook it themselves.  After all it’s a family of four.  She often sneaks down to the kitchen to cook in secret.  (Wait, what?)

There follows a highly unlikely escapade in which the two girls go to a street fair (which sounds rather like a high school carnival) in the middle of the night.  yes, in Regency London.  Two young girls.  Middle of the night.  There is a bit of “what are chaperones needed for?  We know the way” — chaperones or GPS?  We report, you decide — but that’s really not any more egregious than in the average Regency, even /particularly traditionally published regencies. (Because feminism, and girls should be allowed to walk around unarmed, after dark, because men and women are exactly alike, and don’t you go talking of different body strength and ability/likelihood of pregnancy in an age where there was no real way to avoid it, you sexist.  We KNOW you just want to keep women down.  Eleventy)

Anyway, I kept reading.  And then the dark stranger who saves them (of course they require saving.  This in no way makes them inferior, you sexist) upon being accosted by the older girl the next morning (She told mom she was going on an errand for an elderly neighbor.  Because Regency ladies ran errands to the store instead of sending a servant.  Totes) tells her he hates the guys who tried to attack her the night before.  As in “I hate those guys.”  Verbatim.

The book didn’t go against the wall because it’s Kindle, and kindles are expensive, but sweet mother of pearl, what a mess.

It’s very clear the writer is trying very hard — and failing — to think herself into another time and place of which she had vague inklings through reading maybe a couple of regency romances.  She knows the ladies of the family spend a lot of time shopping, and being innocent of any knowledge about the incredibly complex rituals and manners of the time, or of the difficulty of showing up every day in a somewhat different attire during the season, she decided “well, they didn’t have refrigerators.  I know! They’re buying the food for the servants to cook!”

Then there is the whole cooking matter.  It is clear that this woman is unaware of the difficulties of cooking “for a family of four” using only coal fired (or perhaps wood fired) stoves, and no dishwashers or refrigerators, no microwaves or other conveniences.  Particularly when the class of the family dictated they host meals and balls.  “Cooking for a family of four” was probably a full time job for at least two, more if entertaining and/or visitors came into it.  But I’m fairly sure this writer was imagining microwaves, only more steampunky.  And viewed people having servants at all as some sort of social injustice.

We’ll look away at her idea that chaperones aren’t needed and somewhat demeaning in a world where a family’s honor (and sometimes fortune) depended on an unsullied daughter.

And we won’t even mention the serious malappropism of “those guys.”

Instead, I’m just going to remind you that this woman has 300 highly favorable reviews and an enviable rank on Amazon.

And that both she and her reviewers likely vote.

Have a happy Monday!

Just slept really late, and dealing with an excess of blood in my caffeine stream.  Post soon.

*Yes, yes, yes, Royal Blood, the second to Sword and Blood will be coming out in May.  Might be mid-may instead of early, because of other obligations and the round of house viewing, but it will come out. Then Eternal Blood in June, come h*ll, high water, comicon OR moving.)

The Promo, the Good and the Readable- Free Range Oyster

 

 

J.M. Ney-Grimm

Hunting Wild

Young Remeya – fosterling and maid-in-waiting to King Xavo’s sister – worships the forbidden horned god alongside the princess. A worship made taboo half a millennium ago. Performed still in secret by a few. Quietly tolerated by the king. Epic fantasy in which old beliefs and old loyalties clash with hidden magic in the Middle Ages of J.M. Ney-Grimm’s god-touched North-lands.

Cedar Sanderson

Inktail & Friends

A Coloring Book

Inktail is a coloring book for all ages, with designs that encourage the user to add their own creativity to the existing art. There is also a section on learning to draw your own dragon.

Leigh Kimmel

Grandmaster’s Gambit

The disastrous war of 1913 is over, and young journalist Isaak Babel has used his fame as a war correspondent to win a peacetime job covering an international chess tournament in New York City. However, trouble is aboard the airship Grossdeuschland, in the form of the notorious Bolshevik terrorist Koba and his henchmen. Men with a dark plan, and New York City will not welcome their visit

Yesterday I posted a meme on Facebook about those who call themselves children of the Earth being welcome to stay here, while the rest of us went to the stars.  I did it mostly because the million face book memes had made me pissy with the bathos and environmental pieties of city dwellers who wouldn’t know nature if it took a raw chunk out of their left buttock.  It annoyed me in the exact same way the constant evocations of religion by people who are clearly non-believers do.  And in the end that’s what it is — a public evocation of what “everybody knows” to be a “good thing” which then absolves the speaker of actually trying to do something for another human — or animal — being or even of having to lead a minimally decent life.

It didn’t help my mood that the whole Earth Day thing is an abominable boondoggle.  It was created (as we all probably know now) by a Murderer and it’s not based on the sound conservationist practices that anyone close to the land learns — say Dave Freer, or even my dad — to keep that particular plot of land healthy for generations to come.  No.  It’s based in making much noise about the Earth as a whole, a Rosseaunian mal-apprehension of nature always being indefinably “better” and it leads its devotees down a path of undefined animism and hubris, in which, somehow, the Earth is sentient, we can harm it by having our houses just a little too warm (even in aggregate, our scale is minimal compared to say volcanic processes) AND a belief that the way to “salvation” (of the Earth) is either to eliminate all humans or to get government to severely restrict the comfort of THOSE OTHER PEOPLE, over there.  The devotee, of course, though he might engage in rituals with plastic bottles and the sacralized utilization of cloth bags, is not required any drastic sacrifices.  As a true apostle his “sacrifice” is to spread the word.  Vid, Al Gore and all the Hollywood celebrities who worship “Mother Earth” by spreading her gospel with private jets.

When I get annoyed I post stuff poking at the annoyance, which is what that post was.  I don’t remember the precise words of the post, but it was something like “You’re children of the Earth.  Fine.  But some of us are orphans of the stars, and we want to go back to our real family.”

Within a couple hours a commenter had posted that I was greedy and entitled (!) and was an ugly American.

The bizarre lashing out was all the more bizarre because I have absolutely no clue what in my post gave any impression of my being “greedy” or even “greedy” for what.  (Stars?)  Even if she had read yesterday’s post (she did, because she accused me of pointless and wasteful consumerism, for wanting to turn on all lights during Earth hour.  Pointless in her mind.  In mine it was clearly telling these idiots where to step off and that no, some of us will not go quietly into the night they wish to impose on us.)

I realized then that “Greedy and entitled” had become the new all-purpose insult, as the old “raccciiiiiiisssss” has gotten frayed.  It’s more useful to the forces of statist obscurantism being vaguer.  Greed is something no one is very sure what it means, except for a nebulous idea of “wanting more than they’re entitled to” (and who decides what you’re entitled to?) and “entitled” is the new cry of various people.  The only person I’ve seen use it in any way that makes sense is Amanda Green who mostly uses it for spoiled children that never grew up, like the kid who thought he shouldn’t be tried for crimes, because he grew up too rich to know good from evil.

But most people use “entitled” to mean either “has more than I do” or “expects more than I think he or she should.”  In such a usage, it is the raised finger of envy screaming “I want what you have.”

The accusation was bizarre not just because it was unprovoked by anything in the post, but because the insult of “ugly American” showed that beyond not knowing her references, this person knew absolutely nothing about me.  What set her off was, very plainly, that I refused to bow to the pieties she thought EVERYONE should bow to and make public obeisance to.  (Which again proves she knew bloody nothing about me.)

Am I greedy?  I have a million sins I could be accused of, but unless the greed in question is for chocolate and I’m depressed (the rest of the time I control it, but I am a stress eater) it’s not even in the realm of possibilities.

Greed is defined as an abnormal or excessive lust for riches, which is so great it harms the individual and those around him.

Uh…

Do I have a lust for riches?  Well, about once a year I remember to buy the lottery (it’s not exactly on my list of priorities) so I can spend a couple of days daydreaming of what I’d do with upteen millions.  You know, the usual: I’d like to establish some sort of competitor to Amazon, because that particular choke point worries me, as more and more of my friends depend on the company for their livelihood; I’d like to pay an honest to heaven publicist to publicize me and my friends whom I think deserve more recognition; I’d like to pay off my sons’ student loans and a bunch of my friends’ debts; I’d like to be able to fly back to Portugal a couple of times a year to maximize the limited time I have with my parents; I’d like to fund the research of a dear friend who is a brilliant scientist specializing on the brain, I’d like to establish a little retreat somewhere — a refurbished hotel or a bunch of cabins or something — where writers whom life has down can come and work and be refreshed.  (Maybe a place with babysitting so older son by adoption can come and work, and take a break from full time child care.)

What I never really dream about is holding on to the wealth and mwahahahahaing over it, because I’m keeping from others.  (No, I wouldn’t twirl my mustache.  Okay, I’m a Mediterranean woman of a certain age, but there are limits on facial hair growth.  Also, there’s hair removal wax.)

Let’s suppose I were so blessed as to win the lottery.  Would this be money I took by unsavory means and which I’m not entitled to?  Depends.  Some people disapprove of games of chance. But I’d be taking the money in exactly the same way other people who buy the lottery hope to.  And legally I’d be entitled to it.

That pecadillo aside how greedy am I?  Well, I do wish I had more money, about three times a day.  Being able to buy a house outright is not very different, since we qualify easily for loans, but being able to pick above the tight spot for finding homes in this region would make a big difference.  And then there’s the kids’ student loans.

Look, being blunt: we did our best to raise our kids on parity with the kids of our friends who had two income families (okay, technically so do we, but if I get sick or things don’t go well, there have been years where my income was 3k)  We never bought them the latest games or the trendy clothes (America is such a blessedly RICH country that by buying from thrift stores and being about five years behind the curve, we made the kids happy, and spent very little.)  BUT we did spend money to enroll them in classes in subjects they showed an interest in; we bought them books and art materials; and we took them places (okay, mostly Denver, but interesting places in Denver.)  I won’t say I have no regrets.  I wish I’d been a little greedier for vile lucre.  We’d be in better shape right now.  But I thought writing was eventually bound to pay off (and maybe it will, as I do more indie work) and though we were tight most of the time, none of my regrets involve the mindless pursuit of lucre long beyond what my family could be said to need.

As for entitled…  Sure, I am that.  I’m entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, particularly the rights codified in the United States constitution.

And I think that’s what rubbed that commenter wrong.

You see, these priests of environmentalism, like all tin-pot dictators and despots are both “entitled” (in their minds) and GREEDY.  They might think — some of them, the smarter ones are out for all they can get in coin of the realm too — they’re very pure because they’re not pursuing lucre.

But their vile hectoring, their attempt to infringe others’ liberties, their appalling  lust for government intervention in the every day activities of otherwise free citizens, is Greed.  It is a much dirtier greed than mere desire for money (particularly if one is willing to work for that money.)  They are greedy for power.

They think they are entitled to tell what you should have and how much of it.

Having swallowed the insanity of closed-pie economics (mostly because it serves their purposes) and the siren song of “To each according to his need, from each according to his ability” they realize such a society necessitates an arbiter of need and ability.  And they want to be that person (or one of a group of such persons, though the cannibal feast tends to ensue then.)

It’s not an accident that every “socialist” dream society ends in an (often hereditary) feudalist nightmare.  It’s baked in the cake.  To take and give, you must have someone who purports more than normal status, and the ability to see into the heart of others.

And these people who come out frothing at the mouth, screaming “Greed and entitlement” are the ones who are greedy for power to tell you what you deserve, and who think they are entitled to ride you, like a puppet master on your back, controlling your every wish and thought.

I advise them to read the very end of Puppet Masters.

And if they can’t stand that, then, well, just be aware that we are free men and women, and we will never give you that power.  Froth and scream, and thrash about how unfair that is.

We are not obligated to gratify your greed for control nor your obscene lust for power.  In fact the millions of graves your system of thought filled in the 20th century obligates us to resist you with every fiber of our being.

And we will.

 

I think the first time I became aware of Earth day must have been right at the beginning of it.

I don’t remember precisely, you see.  It’s not just that as you get older the days before about fifteen get really fuzzy, it’s that they were fuzzy at the time.  These were revolutionary days in Portugal and the essence of a revolution — as I tried to capture in Through Fire, which in its very final form and fully proofread (mostly I added a word here and there to shore up the romantic element, as I was sort of out of it when I wrote it and that’s a very subtle element that got lost.  I also — think — I removed the impression of a double ending.  I was surprised my betas didn’t get that it was intended, so I tried to make that clearer.  Paul, aka Drak will be excerpting the book in my conference on Facebook as well as in Baen’s bar and also other conferences at Baen’s bar until its release date in July) has gone to Baen.  You don’t control a revolution.  Not even if you started it.  In A Few Good Men, I have them sort of in control of the very early phases, but even then there are contretemps as other people take the bit between their teeth.  And in the end it’s clear that they’re no in control, just trying to keep what’s important to them.

So revolutionary times have this quality of a whirlwind, where things happen, you deal with them, and sometimes you’re not even sure why or who caused it, and the TV reports are more often than not erroneous or useless.

All this to say that in retrospect, I have absolutely no clue what school year this was, nor what was going on.  I THINK I was 11 or 12, and that it was somewhere around fifth or sixth grade.  And I don’t know if this was the teachers’ idea or if some revolutionary junta of older students took over the school and did this stuff.

What I know is that periodically we got to the school and were told we had no classes that day and that we were going to: run a marathon (that was fun.  I was in pumps); paint a mural; demonstrate against whatever.

Earth day was relatively innocuous as they had us paint a mural on the outside wall of the school.  Crappy art, of course — the idea that untutored children do the best art is one of those noble savage things I just don’t get.  It’s demonstrably not true — but we were out in the open, and once I ascertained I wasn’t being graded, I just kind of stood where the supervisors (a lot of long haired guys and unwashed girls) couldn’t see me and used the day very profitably to daydream.

After that Earth day got more militant, and the Gospel of the Wronged Earth started taking over everything.  It was sometime in the late seventies that I realized the people who used to talk of going to the stars were now saying we couldn’t leave until we had found out how to “take care” of the Earth.

And it was several years before I realized the sheer unabashed delusion and hubris in that sentiment.

Fortunately in between there was Heinlein who not only encouraged humans, heartily, to go out beyond the last spinning planet, and gave the reasons why (having all our eggs in one basket was dangerous) but gave me the single most liberating concept of all: that I shouldn’t feel guilty for being human or think humans were wrecking the planet.  Beavers change their environment to suit them, too, and we don’t say “let’s kill all beavers” because of that.  So why should we want humans to go extinct?  I’m a human and I’m loyal to humans.  If humans change their environment to suit them, it will suit me.  Yay team human.

I don’t remember the exact quote, but I remember it was so heretical it rocked my world, and started me into reexamining all the near-shamanistic devotion to “fixing” or “healing” the Earth, which somehow always amounts to “let’s eliminate humans.”

I knew the concept of fixing a place by staying in it was loopy, anyway, even at a young age, because I’d studied the discoveries.  Europe, and its petty quarrels and its old feuds wouldn’t have been fixed — ever — by staying there.  Sometimes you have to leave to get a better perspective.

Some of this idea of “we have to fix the Earth” came with the idea that aliens out there were more “evolved” than us and would judge us when we got there.  This idea has no basis in reality and makes no sense whatsoever, since aliens are by definition alien (talk about your true multi-culti.)  If they exist, their values are by definition NOT our values.  Evolved in what direction?  Do they eat their babies with self-guided forks or what?

Again there was Heinlein.  And I started noticing cracks in the narrative and things that were just completely insane.  Mostly how this “eco” movement seemed to gravitate to human hatred and voluntary self- extinction.

Then I started learning more about biology, partly as research for Darkship Thieves.  Boy.  Did you know that every species is a colonist species.  Every species that has arisen on Earth seeks not only to colonize new territory, but to change it to its preference, all the way from the simplest lichen to us.  So that whole thing about us being uniquely bad?  Yeah, the only species that neither colonize nor conform their environment to themselves are… extinct.

And the more I learned the more this Earth Day thing seemed not just like a cult, but like a reversal to paleolithic anthropomorphication and worship of the world and the environment.

Like, at the Natural History Museum, of all things, they were playing — in the lobby — a cartoon telling kids that the Earth is their mother (a DAMN abusive one, if you ask me) and that before they go to other planets they must appease Mommy Earth and not “hurt” her.  At the zoo, they had a mirror and “Take a look at the only animal capable of driving others to extinction” (this is so far from true it’s laughable, and only religion could cause a biologist to suspend thought long enough to believe this unremitting cr*p.)

Look, religion is religion, and one man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh.  (And my own religion is often my own belly laugh.)  Another thing Heinlein taught me.  And I don’t run down other people’s religion, unless they try to force me to live by it.

All this Earth Worship crap was started by a man named Einhorn who was so devoted he composted the girlfriend he killed, but again, just because a crazy man starts a religion, it doesn’t mean it won’t bring comfort and improvement to other humans.

They want to worship the Earth, go for it.  They want to think they’re the children of rock and dirt?  Go for it.

Just don’t try to impose it on us, and don’t try to drive us to extinction to appease your murderous goddess.

You might be a child of the Earth.  I’m better than that.

I will not feel guilty.  I will not go extinct.  I will not turn my lights off for an hour, but I’ll celebrate human achievement hour by turning on EVERY light in the house including the ones in the closet.  Because bringing light out of darkness is something we humans did and it’s pretty awesome.  I will NOT go quietly into that good night.

I will work every day to make sure my grandchildren or my great grandchildren go to the stars.  Because we shouldn’t have all our eggs in one basket.

You stay on the Earth and beat your chest about changing anything.  Have a happy Earth day.

WE, the children of Heinlein, are going to the stars.  And we’re taking cats with us.

Happy Human Diaspora Day, and don’t forget to celebrate Human Achievement Hour.

 

Okay, you reprobates.  There will be post later, but I’m not sure when.  Someone neglected to tell me we had an errand this morning that required me to be in a place without this computer till early afternoon.  I have alternate arrangements.  If they work, post very soon.  If they don’t work, post in the afternoon.

Till then ABSOLUTELY no rotating the Earth on its axis, and NO running slaloms around the sun again.  Are we understood?  Beta Centauri has complained about you kids….

Me? I’m a homebody.  I like having my routine.  Without serious provocation or enticement, I will get up at the same time, shower in the same water temperature, have the same thing for breakfast and sit down at the desk at the same time to churn out words.

It’s not so much being boring, as getting the little decisions out of the way, so I can sit down and face the big decisions: what is motivating this character?  What does she do now?

Or if you prefer, I’m a sorry little woman who lives only vicariously.

Ever since High School I displayed both a passion for routine, and a low boredom threshold.  What this meant is that my ideal job was of course one in which I do the same thing every day and it’s always different.  Writing is like that, and so are a number of other mind-professions.

If you squint and shake the snow globe, you could say that I’m removing the stress of breaking routine so I can have the stress of creating.

All of which would be true.

The problem is that life doesn’t stay still, and this year (and last) just about the only family member not in a transition/major change situation was younger son.  And frankly we’re not at all sure about him, since he’s very introverted and secretive.

What this means for a family that has more or less always lived in each other’s pockets is that not only has my cheese been moved (all of my cheeses, including physical) but also that the movement of everyone else’s cheese is reflected back at me too.

Things I recently found I no longer know how to do include shopping for this family, because we never know if Marsh will be in for dinner or not, and what I cook for a dinner routinely lasts Dan and I two meals.  So stuff I bought just sort of accumulates.  That’s okay.

This is all made worse by knowing I’m in a temporary location, so I can’t really settle in to a routine.

This is not an excuse for being this late — no, the excuse for being this late is that I was sidetracked to look at house listings, which I’m sooooo tired of doing and which vaguely depressed me — but it’s what I was thinking about, because all of us go through periods like this.

Transition.  Things sliding in all directions.  You can’t tell what the final configuration will be.

I was sort of okay housewise, while I thought I knew where we’d be moving.  Not okay, but far less stress than having no idea where we’ll end up or what configuration.

But then, in these transitions, and leaving aside the house matter, that is often the essence.  And when you think you know how things will end, it’s often not so.  I.e. I know I thought Robert moving out would play out a different way.  I both miss him more and less than I expected, and the change gives us BOTH a chance to grow in different directions.

Transitions are needed because often people like me get ossified into a routine and don’t even notice it doesn’t fit them anymore.  No, you do what you’ve always done.

They are difficult, because breaking routine is difficult.

But as I deal with this unusually prolonged house search, the hope I hold onto and what has been true more than once in these transitions, is that on the other side of all this mess there will be a new, can’t dream it yet, and even more satisfying routine for me.

One that will allow me to put up blog posts on time, natch.

Girl can dream.

*Sorry about the unholy lateness.  The short form of this is we were putting an offer on a house, when someone got there first by hours, again.  ARGH.*

Liberty and Safety, a Blast From The Past Post, August 24 2013

It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is a bad thing – a very bad thing – to make Sarah berserk out over breakfast, which is why most sentient species, some invertebrates and some single-cell life forms have learned to avoid it.

No, this doesn’t mean Dan and the boys are in trouble.  No, that’s fine.  What happens is this – after week from hell, I was running around with a headache so bad I could barely think through it.  In case it wasn’t obvious from the rate of typo to word in the last few posts, I also could barely write through it.

As happens we found a hotel that met our low-price-to-low-flea rate and Dan and I ran away so I could get work done on the overdue Baen novel.  (It is unique in writers that our vacations involve the chance to write MORE.  Shouldn’t be a great shock, though.  Our “let’s go out to dinner” nights involved “I need to work out a novel plot.”

This was particularly needed because on top of the situation with our friend Alan – who should go home from the hospital today and start a new course of chemotherapy, so that’s good news – my kids are having beginning of school year issues.  Since it is written (I don’t know where, but if I ever find out, I’m setting fire to it) that nothing the Hoyts do can be easy or simple, they’re both adding second majors and weird ones at that, and giving the bureaucracy hissy fits.  This for some reason causes them to run into my office at the rate of a kid every five minutes, to p*ss and moan.  So, the office gets impossible to work in (also smelly.  The cats hate competition) and I lost two entire days to this.  Which also added to my blazing stress headache.

So we ran away for three days and two nights to “get writing done.”  So far so good, right?

Yeah.  Except that breakfast is included in the room special promo sale.  Which is why we stayed here.  Have breakfast latish and you don’t need lunch, so that’s one meal less to pay for.  (Hey, we’re writers.  We’re cheap.  Also, largely poor, our days of being rich beyond the dreams of average – sic – having crashed at the same time the towers turned to rubble and the tech boom collapsed.)

So we went down to breakfast.

Just when you thought it was safe to go down to breakfast…

We were in a little isolated table but separated by a curtain from a large group table.  I heard the words “They can’t expect Obama to fix everything with one measure.  I mean, things were so bad it doesn’t have a quick solution,” and I told Dan “Right then, I’m going to order an omelet, before I start ranting.”

When my calmer half said “I don’t know.  I’m kind of hoping they make you start ranting.”

So I went down to get the omelet, and I came back and sat down.  The large group of unmitigated stupid seemed to be talking lower – at least.  If I said the multiplication tables backward in my head, I could tune out the occasional break through sentence like “What we need is more business regulation.”

And then, zero to nothing, I heard something, and I started shaking – painful body-long shakes – trying to suppress the berserker.

The phrase was “the problem is we have too many liberties in this country.”  Like that.  Like that, I found I was putting my head through the curtain and saying “If you discuss politics in public, I’m going to intervene.”

I want to point out that when I’m fighting the berserker, my voice gets really weird, and my eyes get this bizarre “one step over the line and you’re dead, Mister.”

I’ve been known to make postal workers run away (true) and airline employees bend over backward to give me anything I want, while I’m being perfectly polite and suppressing the berserker.

But these people were wrapped in an invincible mantel of stupidity.  They said – I swear to Bob – “What?  This is a public space, we can talk about anything we want.”

I said “Absolutely.  And I can correct you anyway I want.”

At that point the better half who is a New England gentleman intervened. “Yes, it’s a public space,” he said.  “And we’d like to have breakfast without your politics intruding on it.  Can you keep it down, please?  Particularly if you insist on being ill informed.”  (When calmer half feels the need to put in the knife, imagine what my excitable self was feeling.)

And so I downed as much warm coffee as I could, because if you can’t find alcohol, warm liquids will help, and eventually the shakes subsided.

Too many liberties…

There are three things to take from this encounter: first, it is polite and proper, if sharing a public space with other sentient beings, to try not to say anything offensive out loud.  I tend to discuss the latest scientific developments, a novel I just read, anything innocuous.  I’ve gone to dinner with PJM colleagues and not discussed politics loud enough for the other tables to hear – and shut up when the waitress approached.

Look, guys, there was a reason that Englishmen who had servants said “not in front of the help” – it wasn’t just to avoid gossip.  It was also to avoid making another human being, not in a position to retaliate, uncomfortable.

Good manners and all that.

So, if you have politics to discuss, keep your voice down or save it to your room.  UNLESS you’re sure that the entire room is taken up with your coreligionists.

Another thing is that these people looked fairly normal.  I didn’t see any badges of the little Satanists for Stalin or anything of the kind.  This scares me beyond belief and I’m trying not to be depressed.  They really think Obama is fixing “this mess.”  I… Look, go over to the Zero Hedge guys… just read this.

A tiny excerpt:

#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.

#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been “created” in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.

#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.

#4 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers now make less than $30,000 a year.

#5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

#6 When the Obama era began, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks.  Today, it is 36.6 weeks.

#7 During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” soared by an astounding 8,332,000.  That far exceeds any previous four year total.

There is more.  Oh, yes, there are 33 of these facts.  But the mainstream media won’t report it, and those who are dumb beyond the dreams of average (sic) swallow it, hook, line and sinker.  And what can we do?  I’m serious.  WHAT can we do?  This is sort of like before the French Revolution when people demanded Necker be returned to power because when he was borrowing and spending everyone was doing so well.  There are no words.  To paraphrase Heinlein, stupidity is the only capital crime.  The punishment is always death.  Unfortunately when it’s public stupidity, the death often falls on those who weren’t stupid.

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it and take the rest of us along for the ride.

The third point though…

There are few things you can say that are so HEINOUS that they send me into automatic “Must suppress the berserker” mode.  Look, guys I’ve got through entire dinners with communists without getting there, and without looking speculatively at the silverware and considering how to kill someone with a fork.  (Okay, I lie about the second one, but all the same. Thoughts are, thank you, private, and my hobbies are my own.)

But that “we have too many liberties” got under my shield and went directly to the “attack” and immediately as well to the “you can’t go berserk in a public space.  No, really.”

How can anyone think we have too many liberties?

Oh, I know.  They think that because they believe in the myth of the “superior man” who will take care of them.  The man on the white horse who knows better than everyone, and who can run everything so that no one is ever afraid or poor or sick or marginalized.

In other words, they dream of the ideal childhood.

The rest of us know that never in the history of the world, not even the calmest, has there been a time when a leader could guarantee safety, health and contentment to everyone. There will always be poor, unloved, suffering people.  You can’t help that.

You behave in a way you help those around you and you try not to be a burden, but even then at times that will fail.

Those of us who are religious believe a time will come when we will live like that, in perfect harmony and contentment with a superior being watching over us.

But last time I looked, neither king, premier, president, emperor or satrap had the power to look into the hearts and minds and judge everyone perfectly.  And no, the NSA spying ain’t it.  And none of the above were the creators of the universe.

They are all, in fact, fallible men, usually fallible men attracted to power over others, who want to run you not for your own good but for their own internal satisfaction.  And since people who crave this sort of power tend to be more broken than writers, their internal satisfaction might be something that even they don’t understand.

There is no man on a white horse.  There is, always, an old trickster, coming to town and promising eternal peace.  If you look carefully, you can see the horse is a mule that has been painted white.  And the man is just using the same old promises the human brain is wired to crave, but what he wants is quite different.  And even if he truly believes what he says, he can’t deliver.  He’s just a man.  He can’t know what each individual wants and needs.  Only each of you can know what he wants and needs.  And sometimes not even that.

Clearly the people on the next table would like to believe in the man on the painted mule.  I would too.  The idea someone will look after you perfectly is SO appealing.  But I’m grown up.  You can’t go back to kindergarten.  And even my kindergarten teacher had no clue how to handle me.

I’ll handle myself, thank you.  Even to the point of making sure I don’t berserk out at the breakfast table.  It can be done.  It’s just not easy, or comforting or pretty.

It’s a horrible way to live.  Except for every other one.  I’ll keep my liberties, thank you.  You want to give yours up, I can give you a list of destinations willing to oblige you.  It starts with Cuba.

No kings, no queens, no lords, no ladies.  We won’t be fooled again.