Preparing For The Long Rains a blast from the past from December 4 2012

As many of you know, I’m watching Foyle’s War, kind of the way I watch things these days: when I need to iron, or do something else that occupies the hands but not the eyes (much) or the mind (at all) I turn on a couple of episodes (thank heavens for Amazon prime.  I remember being very much broke and not having cable – as we don’t now – and not being able to watch anything.  With Amazon prime and the stuff free for kindle, I’d have had a much easier time of it.)

I’ve before talked about sudden insights, things I’ve known all along, but which suddenly seem fresh and new.  Like “they didn’t know they were going to win.”  It also started me reading about the World Wars again, which means eventually there will be some blogs related to that, but I need to be more “with it.”

Today is the first day I don’t feel I’m at least partly dead or about to fall asleep in… over a month.  OTOH I forgot to bring my computer to the office, which is why this post is so late.  (Don’t even ask.)

The most amazing thing of all, though, is that despite all the restrictions they lived under, the rationing, the coupon books, the collecting of every piece of scrap, most people lived as though the war weren’t happening.   (I’ve often considered, too, that while the idea of rationing was completely wrong-headed economically and might have FED scarcity, it might have been the right thing to do PSYCHOLOGICALLY creating that sense of unity of purpose.  I’ve also wondered if the problem was that after 9/11 we weren’t asked to plant victory gardens or buy war bonds, but simply to “go shopping.”  Yes, I know it was sound in many ways, but it might have made a difference psychologically if people felt they were contributing.  Or perhaps not.)

Of course the series is a mystery series, and there is usually something involving the war – because that’s how they sold it to the producers – but you sort of catch glimpses of people around, and you get the feeling most people were… what was it people were doing while Noah built the ark?  They were marrying and being given in marriage, having babies, worrying about where to live.  Even when the war affected all of those, it wasn’t the main concern.  The main concern was everything else: who loved whom, who hated whom, what the crop was going to be, and why the kid was acting weird.  All this without knowing if they’d win or lose, or what the next year (or month) would bring.

Right now, sometimes I feel as though this is what the whole world is doing around me.  They’re making plans, getting comfy, settling down, fixing what’s wrong with their lives – or perhaps trying to survive unemployment, illness, other life stuff.

And then periodically I get together with a friend, or sit down with an old acquaintance and I hear how much more seriously they’re preparing.  It’s all guns and canned food, and why am I still living in an urban area, have I gone nuts?  And don’t I realize it’s time to set aside the writing/publishing thing and worry about preparing to survive the collapse.

And then I feel like it’s me who is going about every day life, unaware that there’s something big coming down the pike.

I am aware there is something big coming down the pike.  I think even those who “aren’t” or who deny it, know it at some level.  There is a … tense feeling in the air, and everyone is sitting on the edge of their chairs.  There is a suspended-breath feel – waiting for the next shoe to drop.

The thing is that no one knows what the next shoe will be.  A light sneaker?  An army boot?  A baby bootie?

Each of us has a mental image of disaster, mine formed by experiences (and books, and movies) and other people’s by THEIR experiences and books and movies.

The problem is no one knows.  This has never happened before.

And before you start screaming at me, that of course it has happened before, that even recently the USSR folded like a pack of cards, that we know exactly what collapse looks like… sigh.  No we don’t.

Oh, sure, we can look back to say the French revolution and see what happened when the leading power of the day got buried in deficit and went mad.  We can look at the collapses in Argentina, and… everywhere else in the 20^th century.  But the parallels aren’t right.

If you go back far enough – the French revolution – you’re dealing with a completely different state of affairs, not just mentally but also at the economic/material level.

You see, America has changed the game, both ways.  I remember hearing it mentioned that the USSR still commanded loyalty because peasants STILL lived better than under the Tzars.  A similar thing was said here about Scandinavia and socialism.  Their life improved.  And the same could be said about Portugal under its strong-man regime.  People can point to how poor Portugal was, but we thought we were rich.  As a child, I always wore shoes, for instance, even if the summer “sandals” were the shoes that had stopped fitting in winter strategically cut.  I had winter coats.  We had coal delivered.  I didn’t have to do what mom did and go, barefoot, along the train line, gleaning coal dropped by the trains.  I got Christmas gifts, usually a variety of plastic stuff.  It wasn’t just “we’ll have some fruit for desert and that’s how we know it’s a holiday.”

This was because things that started in America – including the improvements in agriculture, the new processes and new materials – allowed a level of prosperity that was still better than anything the world had known before.  Even in countries doing their best to slit their own throats, the easier ways of producing things and the abundance of food made a difference.  Things got better.  (And everyone got used to thinking that was the way of the world.  BTW I’m aware this process didn’t start with America.  It started with Great Britain and the Industrial Revolution.  But then the torch got passed and things accelerated.)

The other part of this – influencing all collapses in the 20^th century – is that America tends to support other countries in trouble.  This is a double edged blessing, btw.  There is reason to wonder if the USSR would have survived nearly as long, with its dysfunctional regime, without the grain we were willing to provide at bargain basement prices… because we had it.

We don’t have an America to bail us out, and we don’t have an America to keep innovating as we collapse.  We ARE America, and there is no one to pass the torch to.

Please, please, please, don’t tell me that Brazil or China stand ready…  Brazil is in a pretty good place now, partly bolstered by our petro dollars, but let’s not kid ourselves.  Until they fix their political culture, they’ll continue going through the boom and bust cycle in a way we can’t even imagine.  As for China…  China will not survive our collapse, and as it cracks it will show us what a crack up really means.  All of those who are my age and were astonished that the USSR didn’t fight like a wounded bear as it died, might yet get to see this process.

By the time Great Britain started its self-inflicted decline, the US was already well on its way to moving into the lead industrially and agriculturally.  There is no country in that position.  There are countries that can pretend to be in that position, but not when you look at internals.

So, what will the collapse look like?

I don’t know.  And you don’t either.  All we know, because we can feel it, like sand grains shifting on a dune in the first movements of something that is not even fully visible, but which will suddenly remake the landscape, is that we’re already in the process of collapsing.  For a definition of collapsing.

What I’m betting on, of course, is a collapse that collides full-on with the catastrophic innovation of tech.  What this will look like is like an accelerated version of what we have right now, and, to an extent of what Portugal had in the seventies.  The old ways and those in control of them at all levels – from education to production; from politics to news – will be collapsing but at the same time they’ll be each day less relevant, as they get replaced.

This is sort of – if you need a visual – like making a train into an airplane while it is running.  It’s chaotic, very scary and not painless.  Some people will get crushed as gears get moved, and some people will fall out by the wayside and die as the shell is changed.  And some others will fall from great height, even, as the plane takes off.

Or, to leave the overstretched metaphor behind:

It won’t be pretty, and I advise to have prep stuff on hand – you know, guns and canned, and such.   Whether to move to the city or rural is something else.  Yes, I know what you guys hear – and the instinct to “go and hide.”  But I’ve read accounts of Argentina’s collapse, and the worst stuff happened in the countryside, where isolated farmhouses were raided.  If you were in the city, for the most part, you were all right. (Which I’d say was more likely if your city has military presence.)

But again, there is no way of KNOWING.  All you can do is sort of guess and sort of prepare, and of course, ideally you’d have a town residence with a rural getaway, or vice versa, but not if you’re as broke as I am.

HOWEVER because you expect the new to emerge from the old, with preparing for the collapse of the old, for interruptions of supplies, for disruptions in electricity, etc, if you believe this is the sort of collapse that’s coming, you’ll be doing what you can to prepare your profession for the new order.  In my case, this means getting as much as I can up electronic, so I might have at least some income should paper distribution collapse.  I don’t know what it would be for your profession, but if I were a computer-person, I’d be trying to establish the ability to have different contracts on the side.  (If your current employment contract allows it.)  As we’ve spoken of before, what you should be trying for is as many and as varied streams of income as you can.  If you’re a writer not making much, yet, married to someone in a traditional industry that’s going to get whacked, I urge you to do what I’m doing, and write like mad and put it up as much as you can, in as many genres as you can.  (Though I’ll note, for me at least, bubblegum seems to sell best.)

I’m doing this because I don’t believe we’ll collapse totally.  Can we?  Well, sure.  Again, as I said, we’ve never seen anything QUITE like what we’re starting on.

But here’s the thing – if we collapse totally… well… I can’t afford to buy a farm.  I can’t afford to store enough food for the next fifty years.  The best I can do is buy books on building log cabins and trapping animals, and supplying the kids with bows and arrows.  Then if the unthinkable happens, we shall go and colonize the national forest.  (No?  Why not?)  As long as I have some food to survive till a crop can be got in, well, it’s much like preparing for the catastrophic change – except that we never get to be civilized again and therefore all the ebooks count for nothing.  Worth trying, anyway because you never know.  And what else are you going to do if you’re not massively wealthy and able to prepare for the fall of civilization?  Sit around knitting your total collapse blankie?

There is a third option, and for all I know it might be the most likely.  It would be the most likely if we had an America to save us.  It’s called the “modified hangout.”  You slide and slide and slide, and there’s no ending to the slide.  Africa has gone through this and Europe is heading into it (though we’re helping it by propping it up – yes, we’re still giving foreign aid to most of the world.)  This is a world in which services become worse and worse starting with those the government provides, from supplemental income to mail to (where it does so) electricity.  All of it becomes unreliable, untrustworthy, subject to the whims of bureaucrats and how much baksheesh you’re willing to pay. Every year is a little worse than the last.  And you just… hang on.

At the end of this is the world of Heinlein’s Friday, with everyone in armored cars and people in guarded compounds, and the rest of it resembling what a total collapse would do, but crossed with the world of Mad Max.

I wouldn’t bet on this last one.  It is unlikely.  To get there, you need someone subsidizing you, because your society stops functioning long before this to the point where it keeps food and clothing available, much less keeping someone very wealthy.  I don’t think America can keep itself on this path without outside help and – get this very carefully – there is no outside help.

At the same time, even if it happens, how do you prepare for it?  Well, the best thing is to have some stuff laid by so you can protect yourself and yours and provide in case of shortages.

BUT most of all, the best thing is to be very wealthy and able to afford a private enclave.

My plan – though it’s unlikely it will bring me enough wealth – is to do exactly the same I would do in the first instances.  Because if there’s any chance of my being wealthy it is to have a book (or more) hit.

So, right now, I’m very busy – which has the advantage of keeping me from fretting too much.  (You should see me when I fret too much.)

The best thing to do when the rain starts falling and you don’t know if it’s just a severe shower or forty days and forty nights is build your ark.

Even if it’s just made of words and electrons.

Do go on with life — it might be important and your “peacetime activities” might yet be the most important thing in making the collapse non-permanent — but keep an eye on that rain.  And prepare for any eventuality.

There is so much need out there nowadays. You guys know. I share, here and at instapundit, the fundraisers of people I personally know who are in a tight spot. And there are a lot more than there used to be, say 4 years ago. A lot more. I’ve never before had to put a personal limit on what we donate, because otherwise I could easily spend everything I make helping five or six people a month: and that’s just in our personal circle, and people we know and are willing to vouch for. And to whom what we can give makes any difference.

But let’s face it, even if I could give to everyone, for their immediate need or disaster, it’s a bandaid. Not minimizing it: sometimes we need a bandaid. Or a tourniquet to stop bleeding out. But for almost everyone, what they actually need is what we took for granted for so long and not that long ago: decent jobs, stable cost of living, societal structures that work and aren’t infested with crazy psychopaths and fields of endeavor that haven’t gone crazy on woke, or worse, just crazy.

I can’t give people that. And it tears me up.

Just like at the back of my head I have two lists of people I know, even if just on line, looking for mates — right now I have a great mismatch on ages and religion, but the networks extend, and there’s a chance or ten — and will pounce at the slightest sign of compatibility or maybe potential for friendship; I also have a list for jobs, and for people looking for jobs. And there’s an odder list for “I need to sell a car” and “Someone might be able to afford this car”/house/whatever.

Sometimes it works. But too rarely for my tastes.

However, I can give you something: If you’re struggling, in trouble, if you feel like you’re falling short, there’s a very good chance it’s not your fault.

There are great crises in this country right now, crises no one talks about. From the fact that any number of professional people who haven’t been unemployed for any significant amount of time are now laid off and can’t find jobs; to youth unemployment which in turn is affecting their ability to launch/start their lives; to people quietly draining their savings away; to businesses failing because everyone is poorer; to … a lot of other things. This is a consequence of everything being broken, and of people being stuck in this dissolving system and unable to make their way against the falling apart of the “blue model” of society, and the crazy Marxist attacks on the emotional and relational structure of the West.

I won’t belabor it, because I’ve gone into it so many times, but while it’s possible for centralized society to work in small scale, the larger the country and the more complex society, the more it’s going to fall apart. It worked for a time, maybe. I mean, do we know if it worked, or if we simply didn’t know about the failures, because of the centralized means of communication. To the extent it worked, it did because it coasted on the remnants of shared ideas: honor, duty, work, fair dealing. All the bourgeois virtues.

That the Marxist project which captures those same institutions mounted an attack on, from education to entertainment, to news “reporting” to… well, everywhere. Over the shared idea of “decent behavior” it wallpapered the idea that every single human being is despicable, so there’s no point struggling for more, that the highest virtue is envy, and that the world divides into the oppressed and the oppressor in every single circumstance. Which means the highest thing you can aspire to is being an oppressed victim.

And the world started coming apart. At this point our institutions are falling to a tidal wave of incompetence. Our schools are corrupt. Our children are being destroyed.

No, not everything is doom and gloom. There is a strong and real counterculture — REAL counterculture, not the tear everything down pretend Marxist counterculture — building. If their project weren’t coming apart, they wouldn’t have locked us down. If their project weren’t falling apart, they wouldn’t have a corpse-in-charge. They are barely holding onto the saddle, as the whole society buckles under them.

Which is part of why things are falling apart faster and faster. because every one of their attempts to stay on backfire.

Yes, we’re starting to build our own structures, slow and under it all.

But … But you can’t predict everything. And we’re in the middle of a massive rolling turmoil, where each person can’t do much. We can try. We’re all battlers, we all struggle like heck, and none of us likes to be a burden on anyone else. And all of us are driven to do our best. We make plans. when the plans fall apart, it’s hard to keep things in perspective. It’s hard not to feel responsible, not to feel like it’s all our fault.

But the times we’re living through, as a friend said yesterday, all of us are going to have something we love and depend on slough off. It’s not our fault. It’s just the way the world is, in the turmoil we’re going through.

I can’t find jobs for everyone. I can’t help everyone. None of us can. And sooner or later I’m going to find myself in a situation where no one can help me, either, except perhaps with a bandaid. All of us are.

When that happens lay down part of your burden. It’s not your fault. Stop beating yourself, examining everything you did, dissecting every situation. Stop figuring out why the things that looked so logical, so obvious, so close in your future didn’t turn out that way. Or why the path everyone told you was what one should do didn’t bring the success everyone promised.

You are not stupid. It is not your fault. We’re caught in a maelstrom, a hurricane, where we can’t control everything, or even perhaps most things.

You will of course continue trying. And all of us are trying to harden various parts of our life, and prepare, but seriously? You can’t protect yourself completely or flourish completely in this mess.

So, as you try to rebuild, as you try to create, as you try to walk against the driving wind: don’t carry guilt over the failures.

There’s a very high chance it’s not your fault. And as difficult as it’s going to be for us individually and collectively to build under, build over, build around, you don’t need that extra burden.

Lay the guilt down. Take a deep breath.

What happened happened. All you can do is do your best going forward.

Now.

When I was young — at least after the revolution — May day was international labor day, and the entire TV was given over to people draped in red, wearing uniforms, carrying the flag of butchers, and parading endlessly past dais draped in red. On the dais (daises?) sat senilocrats (totally a word) trying to look dignified while they plotted how to put a knife in the other’s back.

They did it all, constantly, for a little bit more of foreign goods purchased at the state store, another dacha for their protracted vacations and, the worst part, all the treachery and everything they got for keeping other humans enslaved mind and body? Got them a lifestyle about the level of middle-middle class Americans or the inhabitants of any other relatively free country.

The truth is that tyranny is the fast track to starvation, while freedom produces so abundantly that even the poor, even now, in our country, live a lifestyle that would be the envy of the richest in eras past.

And yet, like the senilo-kakistocrats of the past, our own would be forever rulers prefer a regime that enslaves all and makes all poorer, in exchange for their being just a little better off than, say, a steady-working craftsman in the US.

I think they prefer to be somewhat poorer provided they are envied, because the rest of the country is starving and grubbing in the dark.

I don’t understand it. Perhaps because I never cared how well others do, provided I can do fairly well myself.

But some people can’t enjoy their good, unless others are destroyed.

Which is what those endless parades meant. “Look how strong and wonderful we are. Look at our might and despair.”

Don’t despair. Those parades were a lie, complete with recycling military vehicles, etc. to pass before the podium.

Tyranny is always weak. In the process of starving everyone, it destroys its own strength. So it can’s last.

Sure this is more comforting when watched from across the world, in some place of warmth and abundance.

But it is still comforting nonetheless. The dark times don’t last. They can’t. The boot can’t stamp on the human face forever. we’ll chew through the leader and bite the foot well before that. But also, the leg has no strength because it hasn’t eaten in several days, and the foot in the boot is a skeleton.

Years ago — and you’ll have to forgive the slightly hallucinatory tone of this post. For some reason ear infections always make me not quite able to focus. Right now literally, I believe due to fever — a friend said that the left always screams loudest and appears strongest when it’s losing.

Since then I’ve seen no reason to doubt him. In fact, I believe the more they try to appear powerful, the more insecure they are.

And I think the current insanity is a mark of how scared they are. They’ve glimpsed the abyss, and it’s a long long way down.

Does this mean I think they’ll lose the elections? No. Unless something very strange happens. We should still vote — against them — in case a miracle occurs.

But at this point people are saying and seeing things that were literally hidden and hushed up before. We’re thinking things that were unthinkable.

They’re not winning. They’re making a much bigger display of control, precisely because they lost it. And they know it.

We’re not losing. We’re coming back slowly from the totalitarian folly of the 20th century.

It takes time.

I don’t like it any better than you do. I likely have less time than a lot of you.

But would you rather, like Moses, perish having seen the promised land of freedom,or be one of those who lived in calmer times, and died without ever even knowing they were prisoners, body and soul? Or that the future wasn’t endless red parades forever?

I’ll take our fraught time, our chance at freedom, our chance at rebuilding an imperfect Republic that cherishes individual freedom.

And that’s a labor I can believe in.

I spent the morning outside today, clearing the vegetable beds (meant to get it done last fall, but it never happened) and putting in the seedlings: squash of various kinds, cucumber, tomatoes. (This was probably inadvisable because I woke up yesterday with an ear infection. Better today. Hopefully the exertion doesn’t make it worse again, but it had to be done, because there’s a timing for these things.)

Before this year, I’ve had vegetable gardens three times. Once in NC pre-kids, and once last year, when we got invaded by tomatoes that wouldn’t stop till first frost. Oh, cucumbers too, but the tomatoes were outright hostile in over-producing.

This is one thing that has changed since 2020. Objectively, I know that five tomato plants, three cucumber plants and a bunch of squash aren’t going to save us from starvation. Heck, even the madly laying quail (no really. They do two eggs each a day I swear.) But I feel an utter lack of trust in the food being in the store when needed. Planting is anxiety-calming, more than anything else.

There are other things that have changed. We now don’t really go out unless it’s for absolutely necessary shopping/picking up something or eating out, or church. We used to go out for all sorts of things, from long and interesting walks, to just exploring a new area, to — even — museums, etc.

Now, sure, part of this is the move, though there are museums and zoos within driving distance, and we used to drive to Denver from the Springs for this, so it’s not a problem. The problem is internal. Or perhaps just something shifted. I no longer feel the need to go out and be around people even passively. I think I know why. I think I feel betrayed. And also guilty. Neither of which is sane, and more on it later.

Part of the problem is that all the things we loved to do, our spontaneous fun outings, like going to a diner at midnight to plot is impossible in the post 2020 world. And not just because we moved. We’re in a smallish (compared to Denver) town, but not so small it shouldn’t by rights have at least a 24/7 greasy spoon. I used to brag I could be released to the wild anywhere in the US and find the best one in a half hour range within a day. This was true, and not only because I had an affinity for decent diners, but also because there were so many. Now, even in Denver, our old hangout, Pete’s Kitchen, closes (I think at 10, except on weekends when it closes at midnight? I think that’s it. We were shocked when we went back.) And throughout the country, in smaller places, a lot of them have just closed. (Partly I suspect because the clientele are mostly those who have had to cut out eating out, not merely “cut back” as we have. Though we have a plan for our entertainment budget. It’s just going to take time to get it going. Yes, merchandise, including t-shirts, etc. but also hand made stuff. I just need some time.)

The thing is, taken in aggregate, our lifestyle has changed almost 100%. I truly can’t underline how much it’s changed, or how strange it is. It’s particularly strange because I’m not climbing walls, which used to be my response to not getting out of the house for a couple of days. (Though to be fair, I’m outside a lot. I have the tan to prove it. Farming is not something to do inside, in this house.)

Now, of course, things change, and as the newly empty-nesters we are, it was going to change anyway. (We were semi-empty nesters for years, due to the fact our previous house had a spacious and independent basement apartment where first one kid, then the other lived. But it turns out semi-empty is not empty. It’s different. Even with younger son living closish-by we don’t see him every day. (Though we tend to talk everyday, for at least a few minutes.) Which means our life is more us-oriented now. And it would have changed.

But I can’t rightly explain how radical a change this is.

Add to it that I don’t like large gatherings or even small ones much anymore. Or at least, I get the horrors before any gathering of any size. I have found that small gatherings of friends for dinner/hanging out are actually good for me. I just resist them before they happen. And psyching myself up for cons is so DIFFICULT.

The not liking to be out, even in the middle of strangers/seeing strangers is because I realized I’m made at strangers in general for falling for the Covidiocy and at the same time feel guilty I didn’t SOMEHOW prevent the lockdowns. How could I have prevented them? No rational way for me to even know how to. I just feel I should have. SOMEHOW. (Did I say this was in any way rational?) So a lot of the people watching no longer interests me. Now, how good this is for my mental health, I don’t know. I know that I used to need a minimum amount of seeing people I don’t live with. I suspect I still do, but am suppressing it.

Anyway, my scars are minor. The lifestyle I arrived at is functional.

Besides the fact of all the friends who died because of that nonsense: because no medical checkup, because were vulnerable to covid and real treatment wasn’t offered, because… And besides their having used the “emergency” to seize control of the country and destroy everything, I emerged on the other side sort of okay.

A lot of people’s scars from the last four years are bigger and more obvious.

The scars fall into two groups: the people who know it was a scam, many of whom knew it from the beginning, others who gradually caught one.

They are suffering various forms of fatigue. They’re mostly tired of being so incredibly angry and having nowhere to put it. It becomes a form of stress.

On top of which they no longer trust… anything, really. Most of us — because I fall in this group — are disturbed to find ourselves looking at most conspiracy theories we used to dismiss out of hand and going “OTOH… 2020.” A short list of things we no longer trust includes various authorities from religious to scientific to anything in between. We’ve gone way past trust but verify to “Don’t trust, verify, and dig past initial seeming confirmation before you allow it might be true.

Thing is, once you’ve seen the authorities running around with their pants on their head, you’ll never see the the same way again.

To us the last four years weren’t shocking in what happened, so much, only the magnitude of it. “Government oversteps” is not a shock for those of us raised in the cold war. But to see the entire west go nuts over a danger that wasn’t, and the level of complicity from every authority and institution (even as the individuals often rebelled, of course.) was mind boggling.

So what it left us with was a profound distrust of every authority, even the ones we thought were okay before.

Meanwhile a minority in the us but PROBABLY a majority abroad — this is hard to know for sure as their news are more tightly controlled than ours — think they lived through the equivalent of the black plague and that the authorities were wonderful in getting us through it.

Then there are the even smaller minority who are running around still wearing masks and convinced they’ll die at any minute.

How those later two views survive without piles of bodies at the street corner I don’t get!

So we’re all running around with different sorts of scars. I’m tempted to say us skeptics are the most functional to emerge from this, but you know even we have fractures.

How it’s all going to play out as the loonies in control become ever crazier I don’t know. They should know not to mess with people who aren’t exactly sane. But they don’t seem to realize there’s any danger.

Interesting times ahead. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark and be not afraid.

As for the anger, I don’t know what to tell you. Mine is barely under control as is. All we can do is keep on and try not to lose our minds.

Hanging’s Too Good by Holly Chism

In 2015, right at the beginning of the year, I was having a meal. I got half choked when I had a sudden sneeze attack, and inhaled a bit of rice. 

The rice…didn’t come out while I was trying to hack up a lung.  And I developed pneumonia from it.  I was laid out with the pneumonia for about six weeks, even after I’d had the antibiotics to clear it out.  Yeah it took that much out of me. 

Toward the end of February of the same year, the kids brought home a nasty stomach flu.  I guess I was still weakened from my bout with pneumonia, because it hit me a lot harder than it did everyone else.  Imp was down for a day, Pixie was down for three days; Other Half was down for about three or four days, but no more than that.  I was able to get them through their cases before it hit me. 

My digestion…stopped.  I didn’t just get hit with the symptoms of evacuation from all directions, my stomach stopped emptying southward.  My guts quit moving things through.  There wasn’t even any gas noises.  For five days.  And I ran a vicious fever for all five days.  Slept a lot, too. 

It passed, as all viruses do.  And I went for the usual “been sick” foods: saltines, to start. 

And I thought the symptoms were returning.  Because that bloody hurt.  Same with the plain tortilla I tried the next day.  And the toast.  And the soup. 

Broth was fine; clear liquids were fine; meat was fine, dairy was fine…but that virus had left me with a lasting allergy to wheat.  Not gluten—wheat. 

It also left me with a nasty case of myalgic encephalomyelitis.  Also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or post-viral malaise. 

It’s been nine years, and I still haven’t recovered from it.  I don’t have the energy levels or stamina levels I used to have.  And I can’t rebuild them.  I’ve tried.  I seem to be allergic to my own body’s fatigue toxins, and if I do a little bit too much, I pop a fever (a good one, too—103 or better) and get laid out flat for days. 

Some days are almost normal.  I can do housework, writing, child-tending, and cooking.  If I pop a fever, it’s at the end of the day.  But usually, on good days, I don’t pop a fever.

Other days, it’s a challenge to get the kids to school and back.  Standing up and moving triggers me into popping a fever, and I can’t focus on anything enough to even read.  And supper is leftovers…or my other half brings home rotisserie chicken and sides from Sam’s Club. 

There’s always some level of joint pain in my major joints: both ankles, both knees, both hips, both hands (and now, my right elbow, for whatever reason).  On good days, it’s pi—low level, but never ending. 

On bad days…it starts at a six and jumps every time I have to move.  And I can’t stay still because it builds if I do, and I have to shift positions, until I find another way to sit or lay to relieve it. 

In the near-decade I’ve lived with this, I’ve learned techniques to minimize flares, hacks and workarounds to maximize what I can do, and mitigation for when flares hit in spite of my best efforts.  Oh, and pain management.  Rather, I’ve gotten…okay…at ignoring pain.  Because neither NSAIDs nor Tylenol do anything for this, my liver can take only so much alcohol (which actually does work), and I’m allergic to opiates.  And everything else makes me puke. 

In the near decade I’ve lived with this, I’ve come to admit that it’s not a handicap.  Not really.  It’s a disability.  When it hits—and it does, sometimes without warning—I’m rendered incapacitated.  Completely.  As in, I can stare at the ceiling, and not much more.  Because it also brings pea-soup brain fog. 

I don’t have the mental or physical energy for rage, anymore.  It’s why I haven’t been paying attention to politics for the past decade. 

I can’t afford the ME/CFS attack that rage will kick me into.

I’m there, anyway.  Because I recently learned—and confirmed—that the COVID vaccine triggers encephalomyelitis in some people.  It’s a very small—vanishingly small—percentage of those vaccinated.  And the vaccines, they have begun to admit, weren’t safe in the first place, contrary to what they said first. 

Hell, they’re starting to admit that they’re not even effective.  Not really, and not for long. 

The COVID vaccines weren’t totally untested.  There’s actually a history of mRNA vaccines…and that history has proven that they’re completely ineffective, and that the side-effects are worse than the virus they’re trying to prevent. 

Hm.  Let’s see.  We’ve seen, as a side effect from these vaccines, a massive upsurge in myocarditis, blood clotting disorders (namely, blood clotting when it shouldn’t), strokes, death; nerve disorders, paralysis (temporary and not), and now…now, they also admit that it’s triggering encephalomyelitis and transverse myelitis (inflammation of brain tissue that strips the myelin from the nerves).  An inflammation of nerve tissue that causes weakness, exertion intolerance, crushing fatigue, an inability to think clearly.  It’s not “myalgic”—i.e., accompanied by systemic pain—but that’s about all I can say for it. 

The smallpox vaccine had horrific side effects, too, and sometimes killed the people who were vaccinated.  And yes, I’ve heard the comparison. 

However.  That comparison falls flat.  Very flat.  Smallpox—the virus itself—had a horrific death rate. Outbreaks have been compared to the bubonic plague. That would put it somewhere in the neighborhood of 10%-40%, depending on region and outbreak.  The smallpox vaccine killed 1 person per million vaccinated. 

COVID…the overall death rate from all causes during 2020-2022 didn’t hit 10% of the world population.  All causes.  ALL CAUSES.  Including car accidents, plane crashes, old age, cancer, and heart failure. 

We don’t know how many people COVID actually killed.  The stats have been rat-fucked ten thousand ways from Sunday.  But I can confidently say that…it probably was about the same as a bad flu year.  And many of those deaths were caused by the medical care that purported to be trying to save them: lungs blown out by intubation and too high of pressure; medical neglect and isolation; dangerous experimental medications that caused death in many cases of respiratory failure and/or acute kidney failure. 

We also don’t know the rate of severe adverse reactions to the COVID vaccines.  None of the official studies will actually admit to anything other than easily obfuscated raw data.  Anecdotal evidence, however, puts it far higher than the smallpox vaccine’s death rates.  Especially in the younger populations.  Too many “died of suddenly” cases pop up and then vanish.  It’s a hell of a lot higher than one death per million vaccinated, though.  And it’s a hell of a lot higher on the “permanently crippled” front.

Cancer rates have exploded recently, too.  I’m not sure if that’s attributable to vaccination, or lack of medical care catching pre-cancerous states, or stress breaking people’s immune systems to the point that cancers aren’t caught and eliminated before they’re a problem. 

The statistics aren’t just being deliberately obscured.  Doctors and researchers are not being allowed to look into the negative side effects of these vaccines…and we are still being told they’re safe and effective. 

Not just by idiot politicians that wear loafers because they’re too stupid to be able to tie their shoes without tying them together.  By “experts.”  By the FDA.  By the CDC.  By the WHO.  By the Surgeon General.  By the AMA. 

These people are lying to us.  Blatantly, egregiously, and deliberately.  They’re causing death, permanent disability, permanent disfigurement. 

I suspect that, when it all comes out in the wash, these people will be rounded up and vaccinated with their own medicine.  Repeatedly. 

Because hanging’s far too good for these bastards.

Book Promo

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

FROM RORY SURTAIN: Psyker: A Dark, Dystopian Science Fantasy Novel

Dystopian science fantasy – “Where minds are weapons and hope is heresy.”
They call it dark energy or chaos or the Warp. It leaks into our universe at an unpredictable rate.
Those sensitive to it can wield its immense power in unimaginable ways. In the Imperium of Mankind, anyone born with such a gift is labeled a psyker and outlawed at every level of society.
Enter Paric Kilhaven, a scion of a noble House and a young man as clueless as he is clever. His future was set until a genetic aberration, a freak encounter, and a curse turned his life inside out. Reality set in. He wasn’t like anyone else. He wasn’t even considered human, but at the end of the day, he was merely a pawn.
Paric navigates the darkly alluring world of his city’s underhive, hoping to escape the fate of an outlawed psyker. Rival gangs and chaotic forces align against him in a fight for the planet’s survival.
Can Paric outlive the nightmare? Can you? Grab your copy today!
Part adventure, part mystery, this dystopian science fantasy novel is appropriate for Adult and Young Adult readers.

FROM ALLENE R. LOWREY: Einarr and the Shining Valkyrie: A Viking young adult action-adventure

A high-seas chase…

After wintering with the Runemaster alfs of the Shrouded Village, Einarr is finally deemed ‘safe’ to leave the village and rejoin the Vidofnir. But the alfen High Roads have become unstable, so he has to find another way back with his new friends. It seems as though they’ve hit a stroke of luck when an old friend of Einarr’s father makes port. At least, it seems like they’ve found a ride back to Kjell.
But, not long after they set sail, a ship of the Order of the Valkyrie appears on the horizon… and starts following them.

FROM SABRINA CHASE: Red Wolf: Scout Part 2

Despite injury, capture, and enemy pursuit, Nic and Feng Guo succeed in finding the camp of the mysterious northern general — a man who also seems to have a common enemy in the rebellious General Zeng. Other good news is sparse. Suspicious of strangers, the northern general Bai Yan does not welcome their presence. Will they have time to convince him to join their alliance before they must return to Shanmen Fortress?

As Nic and Feng Guo race to return before his absence is detected, Zeng’s nefarious plans for Shanmen are already in motion, trapping the soldiers behind the walls. Only a shunned monk and Nic’s cross-time special forces team remain to defend the people of the town …

FROM MICHAEL HOOTEN: Wizard’s Heir (A Bard Without a Star Book 1)

Gwydion ap Don is a talented harpist, and a known rogue. But his Uncle Math sees something more: a young man with the magical talent to succeed him as Lord Gwynedd. But to learn magic, Gwydion will also have to learn self-control, duty, honor, and the martial arts. He’s not sure which will be the hardest. And when his training in magic begins in earnest, his whole world will change, as well as how he sees himself.

Based on the ancient Welsh myths from the Mabinogion, but set in the world of Cricket’s Song, this new series looks at one of the three great bards of Glencairck, Gwydion. But long before he became a great bard, he had to learn how to be a good man. This is the story of how his uncle tries to temper him into a leader, and a suitable heir.

FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Golden Summer

Early ripe, early rotten, or so the proverbs claim.

Pjtor Adamson Swendborg defeated the Harriers and opened NovRodi to the lands across the White Sea. But his wife has not born another living child, and there are whispers that Godown has cursed her or him. He chafes at the old men and old ways that surround him. He may be emperor, but even he must bend to the will of the nobles and the church. As Pjtor wrestles with his past, he discovers that defeated enemies do not always stay defeated.

In his haste to save his world, Pjtor’s impatience may undo all that he has won so far.

FROM ILLENE KAYE: What’s Wrong with Being a Princess?: A short story

What happens when a Fae princess wakes up in a mortal’s bed? TROUBLE!

Eglantine – ‘Tina’ to her friends – just wanted to visit the mortal realm to help her forget her upcoming marriage to a minor demon lord. She didn’t expect him to follow her!

Boat Night is always crazy, but he never expected to be picked up by a Faerie princess!

Brad was just working his shift at the bar when he was suddenly compelled to take the pointy-eared girl home with him. Now he’s being chased by winged hellhounds and an annoyed demon lord.

It’s the morning after neither one of them expected. The question is: Can they survive the day?

FROM CELIA HAYES: Daughter of Texas

A woman’s life in Texas, before the cattle drives, and before the Alamo – before the legends were born… She was there, and she saw it all.
On the day that she was twelve years old, Margaret Becker came to Texas with her parents and her younger brothers. The witch-woman looked at her hands, and foretold her future; two husbands, a large house, many friends, joy, sorrow and love.
The witch woman would not say what she saw for Margaret’s younger brothers, Rudi and Carl – for Texas was a Mexican colony. Before the Becker children were full-grown, the war for Texas independence would come upon them all and show no mercy.
During her life, she would observe and participate in great events. She would meet and pass her own judgment on great men and lesser men as well; a loyal friend, able political hostess . . . and at the end, a survivor and witness. But in all of her life, there would be only one man who would ever hold – and break – her heart!

FROM TOM KNIGHTON: The Essence of Man: A Real Guide To Masculinity In The 21st Century

Popular culture argues that being a man is a simple matter. It’s all about what you think you are. If you think you’re a man, you’re a man. Nothing else matters so long as you feel better about yourself by saying, “I’m a man.”

Historically, that wasn’t the case. Being a man was something earned, something attained through a rite of passage, and those days are mostly gone. However, why should that change the concept of manhood?

Author Tom Knighton has been forced to watch in his role as a journalist and blogger, but that has given him an opportunity to formulate what it means to not just be a man, but to be a good man. This is the guide for taking masculinity into this century without betraying the core of what it has always meant to be a man.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past to change it. And in the face of extinction, you do what you must, regardless of who stands in the way.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Wolf and the Well-Tempered Clavier

With the coronation fast approaching, the Cathedral of St. George the Dragonslayer cannot afford trouble. But come it does, while the cathedral choir director is at the Dragon’s Breath Organ, practicing the anthem he wrote at King William’s own request. While explaining some technical terms to his understudy, the choir director decides to show off a little.

In the process, he releases an ancient menace from long before humanity came through the worldgate to this place. An entity that strikes him blind, and threatens further harm to anyone who tries to play the Dragon’s Breath Organ.

However, they dare not disappoint His Majesty, not on the most momentous day of his reign. Someone must cleanse the Dragon’s Breath Organ of this malicious entity, and the choir director cannot. So the task falls to Miss Anne Teesdale, understudy organist.

Now she must delve into the history of the cathedral, and the mysterious ancient magic that fills the organ’s windchest. A secret that may well cost this young woman her life.

Or worse, her sanity.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Morning

It is time once more to talk about how things go down the tubes. How the proverbial excrement hits the proverbial rotating object. How the center cannot hold.

There are two proximate reasons for it. The first is that my husband, the apolitical one, as we’re considering a new-to-us car was tying himself in knots about a car that could be adapted to run on fuels of convenience, like fry-oil, say. When I realized this was his source of confusion, I got confused. “Do you have some reason to expect a meteor to hit the Earth? Or–“

“No, no. But if they fraud their way in the way they’re going–“

I had to laugh. You see, I’ve lived through a collapse. It never hit bottom, and it turned around very vast after 78/79, but it hit low enough particularly where most people I knew lived. And it wasn’t remotely like that.

Granted it was a peculiar collapse as we started at the national-socialist “very poor” but the gears used to grind us are the same being applied now: raging inflation and encouragement of crime and criminals and disorder in general. Two more we’re also suffering from, in our case deliberately, were not deliberate then, I think (Though they might have been. And they might not be exactly deliberate now, just a manifestation of their rats in head): the oil crisis of the seventies, which I presume was the same thing as all over the world. I’d say that couldn’t be deliberate for international communists, but when you consider the only thing that Russia makes money on internationally… well. The other being inflicted on us I’m almost sure was accidental in Portugal: the dumping into the country of a very large, un-digestable or un-digestible quickly population. I think it was accidental in Portugal because the left being massive racists worldwide and bizarre dreamers besides, probably anticipated that white people would abandon the African colonies they handed over to Russia and its Cuban mercenaries, BUT they couldn’t imagine that black people, and barely acculturated to the 20th century tribal people from Africa would also leave and come to Portugal by all means possible and some that still seem impossible in retrospect, in a massive sauve qui peut.

You see, the left tends to assume that people who tan are natural communists and will embrace their regime with joy, forgetting that even among the non-literate ones, there is a lot of rumor and talk, and the millions of people who tan the left has killed around the world whose relatives and friends talked.

Anyway, I’ve lived with the same gears grinding a society and the same kind of lunatics in power. Now it was a smaller country, which is good and bad. It will have some effect but what effect it has is difficult to quantify. I’d say the greater ease — qualified by the fact the country didn’t have even A highway system of any kind — of transporting goods is nullified by the fact that the population in general is more credulous and trusting in authority, and more likely to allow the nose of officialdom in. Besides the fact that officialdom is just much closer, kind of like in our big cities.

So I watched the coming apart. And yes, it was more sudden at the onset due to an open revolution which removed existing institutions, or changed the way they worked so no one was sure of the instructions. (Instructions unclear. Insert porcupine where?)

It wasn’t as though a meteor hit. It wasn’t the end of the world as we know it. Not fast, not slow, not in the mid term.

And then we come to the second catalyst for this post: the closest I’ve heard the effect explained, ever: The Ghetto-ization Of American Life.

Honestly, I’d argue this has been going on since 2009 and over the various Summers of Recovery. There was a momentary respite with Trump, until the Covidiocy took hold, but before that, in real terms, we’d become a little poorer each year. Note not in monetary terms. We made the same, or a little higher money every year. Except every year things cost more or were harder to find. Our reserves got stripped more and more every year, and things that should have been easy to find/source/hire someone to do became either difficult to find, expensive, or impossible. And where I was living at the time, daily life became more and more difficult and fraught. Our little grocery store was robbed. We had trouble finding stuff that had been easy before. Etc.

The list in the article is this one:

1. The residents can’t afford to live elsewhere.

2. Everything is a rip-off because options are limited and retailers / service providers know residents have no other choice or must go to extraordinary effort to get better quality or a lower price.

3. Nothing works correctly or efficiently. Things break down and aren’t fixed properly. Maintenance is poor to non-existent. Any service requires standing in line or being on hold.

4. Local governance is corrupt and/or incompetent. Residents are viewed as a reliable “vote farm” for the incumbents, even though whatever little they accomplish for the residents doesn’t reduce the sources of immiseration.

5. The locale is unsafe. Cars are routinely broken into, there are security bars over windows and gates to entrances, everything not chained down is stolen–and even what is chained down is stolen.

6. There are few viable businesses and numerous empty storefronts.

7. The built environment is ugly: strip malls, used car lots, etc. There are few safe public spaces or parks that are well maintained and inviting.

8. Most of the commerce is corporate-owned outlets; the money doesn’t stay in the community.

9. Public transport is minimal and constantly being degraded.

10. They get you coming and going: whatever is available is double in cost, effort and time. Very little is convenient or easy. Services are far away.

11. Residents pay high rates of interest on debt.

12. There are few sources of healthy real food. The residents are unhealthy and self-medicate with a panoply of addictions to alcohol, meds, painkillers, gambling, social media, gaming, celebrity worship, etc.

13. Nobody in authority really cares what the residents experience, as they know the residents are atomized and ground down, incapable of cooperating in an organized fashion, and therefore powerless.

Number 13… maybe. But the rest? it’s absolutely what happens in these circumstances. Little by little by little. Each year is just slightly worse than the last.

I’m here to tell you two things: there a point that people have had enough. It’s just impossible to predict when. In Portugal it was a crazed attempt to consolidate power by arresting everyone to the right of outright communist. The arrest of the socialists panicked people, even though “great reasons” for it were advanced, etc.

Here I’d guess it would be something like trying to lock us down for bird flu (you can see them wanting to) or “climate emergency.”

Already you can tell their attempts at getting a summer of love going aren’t working, because people find the bizarre obsession with Palestine… bizarre. And people remember terrorism and which side of the isle does it. And 10/7 was far too raw and obvious even with their attempts to deflect.

But I don’t have a crystal ball, and I can’t tell you what will be the last drop. I’ll point out of all the causes declared in the Declaration of the Independence, the one that got people moving and doing something was… a fee on official documents.

Of the multiple abuses and grinding that Canada has endured, so far the only thing that got the truckers to rebel was the jab mandate. And once that was withdrawn, they went back to sullen acceptance of insanity.

What will do it here? Only G-d himself knows. More importantly, what of a hundred little rebellions will make a difference in the end? Only G-d himself knows.

Unbeknownst to most of us fed “the revolutionary war as a story” there were a bunch of false starts, before it took hold. And when it took hold was probably the most improbable of the issues.

Unless a revolution is a show imposed from abroad, they tend to be erratic and frankly a little stranger. And unpredictable after they start. When the dice is in the air, only G-d knows which way it will land, even if the inherent culture and population influence it.

Which is why most of us who are still sane hope this can be resolved in the election. That we, MIRACULOUSLY come out in enough numbers they can’t fraud. It is worth voting and trying it, even if it will TAKE A MIRACLE (I’m not naive) because the alternative could go unimaginably bad.

Or it could not. Portugal never recovered all the way past socialism (and are right now in the paws of a Communist/Green cohalition, last I checked, though a slightly defanged, euro one, more like our Democrats than anything else) but it did recover from the very bad times. And it bounced back with a series of demonstrations all over the country that scared the “elites” enough to stop stomping on the face of the economy.

Law enforcement still sucked, and the inflate the currency to escape debt plan of the PIIGS continued through the EU assimilation. And now to a greater extent, they’re living from the savings and land of previous generations. They’re selling their patrimony to foreigners and most can no longer afford to live in their own country.

However, for a moment late seventies to early eighties, it recovered. And it recovered unimaginably fast. Once the throttling rope was removed, the economy started to breathe again. (And everyone got a little or a lot richer than they’d been under national socialism, too.)

I’m not under the impression that our “elites” will be smart enough to get scared if there’s a series of vast demonstrations. But who knows? They almost did with the Tea Party. Almost. And that was pre masks falling down and most people distrusting officialdom.

Or it could be something else. So far they’ve managed to throttle two would be trucker strikes, mostly by deploying the three letters. But that only works so long, you know?

I’m all out of crystal balls. I don’t know when the tip over comes. I know it might be past the end of my life, particularly if it turns out I only have ten years or so. (This would be weird, since my family tends to live at a minimum to their eighties, but two members of my generation went in their late fifties and early sixties, so it’s not out of possibility.) Or it might come tomorrow. Though I doubt it. I think everyone is holding his breath till the election. Which means any tampering with that could get ugly fast. (This is why I’m not planning any trips in November. Not a single one. And I’d advise the same to you. And do your Christmas shopping early.)

One of the pressures the left isn’t seeing because they drink their own ink is something I’ve been observing in my own circle. Why Are There So Many Americans That Can’t Find A Job Even Though They Are Desperate To Be Hired?

They’re believing the official figures, and honestly puzzled as to why people don’t believe the economy is great, but I’ve been watching the unemployment creep up in my circles.

It was bad under Obama, but it’s now catastrophic. I’ve never, in my adult life, see so many of my friends get laid off and being unable to find work for months and months. Sometimes something shows up, eventually, but it’s not a given, and people are running through all possible resources plus some while looking. Older people, a year or so older than I are often just giving up and taking social security, putting more pressure on the already strained system.

Again, I don’t know when it cracks or if it will be peaceful or insane, but it literally can’t go on, and sooner or later, something becomes “intolerable.” Maybe something political, like jailing the opposition. Or something financial, like raising interest rates again. Or something crazy, like forbidding meat/killing most meat animals. Or something dictatorial like another attempted lockdown.

Could be anything really, and our “elites” are crazy-stupid enough to do all of that and even dumber things.

My guess is if we can just get the boot off our necks, the recovery will be unimaginably fast.

But until that happens there isn’t going to be a sudden reversal to the middle ages.

We just, each of us, become a little poorer. Have a little less choice. Every day.

This is already happening. I realized recently that there really aren’t 24/7 diners (or grocery stores) left anywhere. Are those essential for my well being? Well, no. but they are things I enjoyed greatly. For most of our married life, I calmed my fears of growing overseas by telling myself that we’d go by Pete’s Kitchen on the way back from the airport, as a special treat. This was possible at any hour of the day and night.

Heck, between midnight and two in the morning, in Denver, Pete’s Kitchen was like a gathering of every writer in the area. Like going into a convention, I’d walk to my table to a smattering of “oh, hi Sarah.” And plotting sessions with Dan or son would be interrupted for industry discussions with colleagues.

But even our little respites — weekend drive somewhere. Cheap restaurant meal (I LIKE diners, okay?). The occasional fair, or small purchase — are becoming rarer as we simply can’t afford them as often as we used to. Christmas gifts will likely be at least half homemade as a combination of “expensive and can’t find what I want for x.” And we might have to cut Son of Silvercon this year. (We’re really trying not to, but it’s a combination of time and money.)

In my case it’s also tied in to not writing as much, I admit. or writing on an epic I can’t publish yet. I must work on both/and. But that was after 2009 too. Until the year of the six books in a year broke me utterly, and then I couldn’t do it at all.

Anyway, things become hard to find/too expensive. You accept reductions in your lifestyle. At first little ones, then slowly bigger and bigger ones.

It’s never a “and now everything breaks at once.” Look, even blasted places as Cuba or Somalia still exist at a level of modernity. It’s just you get used to living in ruins, and subsisting on very little.

Now there’s reasons that worked in the places it did. I don’t think it works in America.

For one we’re used to a certain standard and their attempts to sell misery as chic are failing. (Outside crazy people and college campuses. BIRM.) For another because they’re pushing much too far too fast. And they don’t realize they’re doing it in the open. For years they destroyed every institution and hollowed out every guarantee of equality under the law, but they did it undetected and no one who didn’t run into it head first knew.

Now… it’s in the open.

If I have to guess — do I? — the turn around comes first very slowly (we’re already there. The sullen resistance to their insanity, in this land, has gotten to the point of having physical weight) and then suddenly.

The best thing would be an election miracle. But it would take a miracle.

Until then, we each get a little poorer, a little more limited every day. The nation gets a little rustier, a little more worn out. On and on and on.

Until it flips.

Imagine you were a crazy person who actually believes all the statistics that are collected, as well as books written by alarmist idiots (rich alarmist idiots, mind you) like Paul Ehrlich are G-d’s holy writ, handed down from mount infallible to your tiny little mind.

And imagine this is around the fifties, and you look around all these families with four and five kids a piece, and you think this means there is a population bomb and ahrgle bargle, gasoline gargle, you’re all going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie when the population bomb goes off and reeeeeeeeeee!

You could stand at the corner and scream non stop that people should stop having kids, but that wouldn’t work. At best people would point and laugh. At worse they would give you the much deserved beating of a lifetime.

Or, if you are the type of learned idiot, who has connections, you could start ensconcing yourself in institutions and, more importantly, the highly centralized centers of communication and entertainment media in this country, and from there slowly and gently — shall we say painlessly — poison the minds of the young so that they will OF COURSE decide not to have children. Because they’re “smart” and “educated” and, of course “of a higher class.”

Humans being social apes, you can sell almost anything to them as higher group social signaling. I mean, look at the things that have been sold to humans as denoting higher social class, from pallor so white it required the taking of small dosages of arsenic, to wearing miniature ships on your head (that had to hurt) to the bizarrely convoluted garments of various eras, to living in a big ol’ drafty palace where all the food arrived cold, and where you had to bankrupt yourself and your estates to remain, to the twiggy-thinness of the eighties, to sterilizing yourself and destroying your future …. today.

And that’s how a childless lifestyle, and frankly voluntary extinction was sold.

Oh, they tried the direct method too. Showing pictures of mismanaged third world countries and assuring you that’s where we’d be without serious population control; or showing you pictures of children in Africa, starved by their kleptocrat rulers and pretending that this is the result of your having enough to eat and having children.

Somehow it never worked or never very well. Like convincing people “rationally” that we were running out of fossil fuels.

In fact, like the “climate crisis” they can only terrify the extremely neurotic, the borderline autistic, and people so smart that in everyday lives they function like complete idiots, and can be convinced of everything that someone sells with enough gusto. I.e. no matter how much they scream and stomp, only a small portion of the population falls for it.

The rest continue to live in a sane way and know that fossil fuel is not scarce. The exploration and sale of it is being strangled in its crib by the malevolent idiots in power. Like food distribution in Africa.

Because when things are presented frontally people have defenses against the bloody stupid. Or at least most people do.

There are signs. Like, when I was in high school they gave us the contracts in which we promised — pinky swear — to never have children in 11th grade. By my kids’ generation they were presenting it in the seventh, trying to get in below the age of even mild reason.

Of course those don’t work, even when you get kids to sign them because they want good grades. Because kids aren’t stupid, and at some gut level you know contracts signed under duress aren’t valid.

Ah, but then there is the slow poison, and the intimations of social signaling.

So… We’ve been watching a lot of old mysteries/thriller series in the evening. By “we’ve been watching” you should as always understand that what this means is that Dan is watching them, because this is his activity of choice when his brain is fried from real work, and I’m doing the next day’s blog (as you can tell from time of posting, not recently, but that’s because of sleep disturbances. Meds are being adjusted.) I get bits here and there, between work, enough to get the gist. I mean, these are not high-demand shows (no tv show is, really. Colombo, maybe, but how long ago was that?)

Because my brain is divided and squirreling on other stuff, back and forth, it took a while to sink in, and in fact I didn’t see it at all. Dan did. And then I reviewed it through my head and went “Oh. Oooooooh.”

Two days ago, early morning, as I was getting dressed, Dan said, “You do realize that these shows, none of the “aspirational” married couples have children? Even the happily married ones have a dog or a cat, and if asked about children laugh and say it’s not for them. The only children are either conceived by single women in abusive relationships, or are the children of divorced mothers who obviously had bad marriages? Children are always associated with poverty and abuse.”

I reviewed it my head, and yep. It is exactly like that. Plus, mind you, the wife and the husband usually both work, the husband in some sort of corporate or high stress career and the wife makes JUST as much, and her job is just as vital, but the wife works at some artsy fartsy field, from outright art to catering, to custom cakes, or whatever. But she’s massively successful — everyone of them is — and makes a lot of money, and they both go out to eat or get take out, or cook GOURMET meals all the time, and dress in the dernier crie of fashion, and look down on the poor dumb peasants who don’t live like them.

Upper class. Totally unrealistic, bizarrely self involved upper class.

Yes, yes, I know. You’re all laughing at me now, “TV shows are unrealistic, news at 11.”

But that’s not the point. The point is that they’re all unrealistic in the exact same way. Like, they’re all reading from the same song book and only one song will be allowed, sung in perfect harmony.

I’m not proposing there is a conspiracy — though heaven knows, there might be, as recently it came out there’s yet another incarnation of the journolist, this time with the rabid left and the Never Trumper “right” (they must be so proud to be included! I hope they realize they’re still on the elimination list, and ahead of us at that) deciding how to report things to make it so that Potatus can fake a win in November. (Selling their country for a mess of attaboys. Pottage at least you can eat.) — but a prospiracy. These people who control what you see are hired and promoted by the media-news-entertainment-complex because they are either true believers or so ambitious they’ll sell their grandmother to an Havana brothel for a crust of bread, or a bit of social approval.

I.e. they’re not pushing this nonsense because they want to save the world — though some of them are probably stupid or smart enough to (the extremes really touch in this case) — but because they really believe these things they put in fiction. It couldn’t — wouldn’t — be so pervasive if they hadn’t internalized it.

And the problem is that the serving of poison in small measures works, where screaming at people won’t work.

It has been established that our Neolithic brains don’t process very well the idea that what we see on the screen isn’t real. And we internalize a lot of it as having happened to us, or as being our real social circle.

So, for instance, we tend to include characters of frequently watched sitcoms in our count of people we see every day. And we will describe events and things we saw on TV as having happened to us. (Why I don’t hold against Hillary describing disembarking in Sarajevo in a hail of bullets. And as for FJB his dementia has scrambled his brain, and he was always a filthy liar, but seriously, at this point the barrier really is gone in his mind, and he probably really believes Ol’ Uncle Bosie as eaten by cannibals, because he saw it in some show in the forties.)

And so, insensibly, our young people are internalizing that having children means being very poor the rest of their lives, or getting divorced. And women are internalizing that wanting children means they’re abused.

Children are still happening. Weirdly, this means they’re happening more concentrated. I.e. fewer families have children, but those that do have large families. Because they are stubborn and mullish enough to buck the trend. Which also means the future presents itself with four feet stuck in the ground and screaming “you can’t make me.”

But even those of us who raised children (granted my body didn’t allow us many) are going to lose much of the next generation to this subtle propaganda.

Yes, many of us said the reason that the birth rate is falling is not that the new generation is deprived compared to their distant ancestors. But then we’re not in the stone age, and if you try to raise ten children in a grass hut in the middle of the field, social services will come and take them away. However, and more importantly, young people all have, at the back of their heads, the certainty that if they have children their lives are over.

How many times have you seen the “studies” on things like raising a child to 18 is a quarter million or a half a million dollars? We were enormously flattered by these when we were raising ours. Because heaven knows, you feel pinched and exhausted (when they’re toddlers) and you feel like at least you’re saving that much. But is it true? Is it ever true? I know that we didn’t make enough to pour that much into each kid. No way. It would be more than 10k per kid per year, and you’d have to count “lost wages” if I were in a well-paying job, instead of staying home and trying to be published in that. And you’d have to not count all the money I saved by buying used furniture and refinishing, buying the ingredients and making food, buying thrift store clothing, etc.

Now, yeah, the kids did cost time, and I was in one of those artsy-fartsy jobs that don’t pay for decades. Eventually they might (or might never) but they don’t pay much while you’re breaking in.

And yes, we were very poor for a long time, but honestly? We’d have been even without the kids. Maybe poorer, because the kids counted as our entertainment system for a long time. (No, seriously. Now I’m not saying everyone has enormously amusing children, but we did.)

But the studies, the talk, the shows, all assure young people their lives will be over if they have even one or two kids.

I didn’t realize this, until one of you said it, but the lifestyle being sold as aspirational is “College student with money.” The marriage is just like living together in college, but both of you are making pots of money. And this is sold as what everyone should be doing.

Now– Does that lifestyle sound great? Sure. Though Dan and I never partied as college students (since — back when this was possible — both of us did college very cheaply by keeping high grades) but we did have our first six years of marriage as a sort of poor-man’s version of this. And when I was working as a high-rent version of this.

The thing is it’s not as fun as you think. The work in your twenties if you are in a high-demand, high-pay position (which wasn’t artsy-fartsy for me, more soul killing) is brutal because everyone expects you to do 12 hours, no paid overtime. So the eating out, the clothes, etc? Well, we did it, because we had no time to do anything else. And yeah, we had a group of friends who were like us, and we went to comedy clubs and music shows, and movies with them. But I was usually too exhausted to enjoy any of it. And at the end of the year, we had almost no money left.

More importantly, and left out of these shows which shows people in their forties living this lifestyle: it wears out. It palls.

The subtle poison won’t sell itself for more than a generation. Because not having kids is an ugly lifestyle as you age. Yes, I know. There are social services and charitable organizations. Do you want to count on them as you age?

We’re not seriously impaired yet. In some things, we are very much like people in their thirties, and on the good days I still do that level of work, no problems. But Dan’s knees have given out (we’re finally trying to get back on track on the replacement that the lockdowns derailed) and in physical work, I do about half what I think is my normal rate, so things take forever. (I have a list. From yard work, to painting, to tuck pointing, but it will probably take the whole summer, instead of a couple of weeks.)

But there are days, and there are times, already, that if we couldn’t call on one of the sons to help me take a piece of furniture downstairs, or to come help when we tried to bring an exercise machine in ourselves, and Dan fell and literally can’t get up, and I don’t know if he broke something. (Seriously. That was terrifying, because the treadmill was across our door, and he was outside. I had to lock the cats, then go around to even see if it looked like he broke something — he hadn’t –) Without the kid dropping everything and coming over to lend a hand (thank heavens he works from home) we’d have had to call the fire department and the ambulance and wait.

I’m not going to say we’re in big trouble yet. We always did stupid things. We’re not old enough to be in bad trouble. But we can see old age from where we are and the vulnerabilities and dangers of it.

Now, I’m the last person to rag on anyone who for good and sufficient reason chose not to have kids. (And good and sufficient reason includes “because no.”) Or anyone who tried to have kids and couldn’t. We were almost in that boat. And though I got married in my early twenties, I was an old maid by village standards, and I am also not going to rag on anyone who never found anyone to marry or stay married to.

However, it’s not a dream lifestyle where you get to be a college student with money forever, as the shows sell it. Eventually old age comes to us all. And while having children is not a guarantee of having some help, (we’re really very lucky that for now sons are within driving distance and one close-ish) it is more likely than if you don’t.

Sacrifices to raise them? I guess??? Though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly. I lost years of life and tons of hair over their schooling, but that was mostly because I was stupid and thought I couldn’t homeschool.

Still, their sales job, the subtle poison of “no children is better” is working. And though even government shills and some establishment lunatics are waking up and realizing that the “overpopulation” let alone the “population bomb” were likely always snow jobs, and the correction has been disastrous, they’re having trouble turning the boat around.

Partly because the poison continues, and is out there in re-runs too. And partly because when you establish that kind of social signaling in the culture “children are low class” it’s really hard to reverse. China, who, being China, forced it at first, now can’t overcome the “one child is plenty” expectation of the culture. And this is China, who if you remember, we were assured was in irreversible population explosion, such that if there was a line of Chinese jumping off a cliff, more would be born in line so it would never run out.

The rest of us…

The invasion over the border is giving people the idea the rest of the world is overpopulated for sure. But like high prices giving the idea that fossil fuels are scarce, this is not true. None of it is true.

Not happy with making our children into useless pensioners, we’re stealing the third world’s children to do the same to them. In their wake are left empty countries who can’t do anything, because the young people have left. Not quite fully visible yet, because as in most first waves of migration, it’s mostly young males. The females are left behind for now, as old-maids and functional widows even if married. And some of the older people are thirty and forty. But in ten years it will be obvious.

(BTW I never understood this part of the population bomb gospel. Mostly it wanted the first world to stop reproducing. But didn’t they realize that just meant we’d import people, and the total would be more or less the same? I did by 35. I wrote that story. Couldn’t sell it of course. I’m now amazed I was stupid enough to think I could.)

Because this fall in population is worldwide. Partly because the convincing by entertainment affects the entire world. Everyone watches American and English shows. Our left never understands that.

The more far-seeing population experts are now screaming about a catastrophic population drop, and extinction level event.

It’s funny I could see this twenty five years ago, when they thought I was crazy and tried to shout me down. Yeah, I know, Cassandra didn’t get half the beating she deserved.

Is it early enough to reverse it? Who knows? How low can we go before we can’t hold a technological civilization? Who knows?

It’s stupid. It’s bizarre. The entire species was convinced to commit slow suicide. Still is being.

Not by sudden catastrophe, not by preaching and raving on the street corners, but by slow dripping poison, convincing us that the next generation was just too much trouble and too expensive, and that if we didn’t give them life, we could live forever, young and golden in the isle of the blest.

I have no counter to this, except that we need to write stories of families, stories of happy parenthood. And we need to be open enough to explain how having kids was worth it — probably the biggest challenge and the best experience we ever had — and how humanity is worth it and worth investing in.

Oh, and how no one is perfect, childless or parent, and we’re all broken and do the best we can. And that’s the best we can hope for.

We need to believe and invest in life. Either creating it or adopting it and guiding it. (And I don’t mean legally. We’ve covered that.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m human and I’m for the humans. I don’t care if beavers, or lobsters, or insects are better.

I’m #teamhuman all the way. #teamhuman is worth it.

It might be too late. It might be hopeless. But grandma always said “While there’s life, there’s hope.”

Go and work for Team Human. Go work for the future. Hug a young ‘un today and tell them they’re worth it.

Okay, my first question is: What were they thinking? No, seriously, what were they thinking?

Yes, I know why they named it The Brain Coffee, and it ties to one of their epic tales, as usual, but obviously this should have been 4 season coffee.

Why? Well, let me explain. King Harv’s sent me a testing package of Brain Coffee. This was useful, as at the moment for some reason, my body decided I don’t need to sleep anymore, and between insomnia and nightmares, I have considered in fact drilling a hole in my head and pouring the coffee in.

Anyway, the more I tried it out the more I was amazed at how misnamed it is.

I started with unadulterated coffee. It’s got a lot of body, and the body is immediately present. It starts out at a high volume, right at the start of the sip, presenting initially as dark, earthy, and with a smoky bitterness most reminiscent of wood smoke. Then there is a blueberry note, arriving mid-taste. It sits in the background but doesn’t resolve in clarity till later. Even more present in the background is cinnamon and a kind of sweet cinnamon flavor, like a cinnamon pastry. That is even present mid. A cinnamon forward baked good.

The feeling was of camping in the woods, early spring, with the big sky above and morning breaking all pink and orange in the East and you’re sitting by your wood fire, eating a lovely blueberry pastry for breakfast. At the end there is a sort of savory taste, very light, kind of like you just got some beef broth hotting up to sip before your hike, and you’re smelling that.

Sweetening with sugar reins in that big earthy bitterness of the front end, but leaves the hardwood flavor intact. Actually it makes it easier to pick out, because it’s not buried in the smokey forward.

It also changes how the blueberry presents. Sugar brings out the tartness and makes that background blueberry really pop and have almost like a luscious sort of sensation.. You know how when you’re eating really fresh berries and you get the tartness at the back of the tongue that makes them kind of more-ish? You can even still taste that cinnamon pastry note, but I don’t feel the sugar brings it out. In fact on the back end it buries it a little because that juicy blueberry note really takes over.

Sugar also all but kills the beef broth note. It’s there on the back end, and actually plays well with the blueberry weirdly, though I understand leaving that off the package, because it seems incongruous, but it’s actually very pleasant.

You’re now in the woods in fall, and you have gotten some nice fresh blueberries to eat with your pastry.

Now milk and sugar, which is how I usually take my coffee, with a light hand with the milk, puts the cinnamon pastry note front and center. Like, it’s impossible to miss. The coffee literally tastes like I added cinnamon to it. The hardwood flavor is there still, but it’s now supporting flavor for the cinnamon. Kind of rounding it out and adding dimension, but still presenting as fundamentally a cinnamon flavor with benefits. Almost like a rare and expensive variety of cinnamon you can’t have every day, but still recognizably cinnamon.

And I can confirm you actually get that effect to some degree, even with just milk, though not as strongly. And yes, the beef broth note comes through with milk only as well, and if anything is more detectable, if you know you’re looking for it than it is straight coffee.

So, you’re now in a log cabin in the New England woods, in winter, and you have your soup on the hob, but you’re enjoying a lovely cinnamon pastry, and looking out at the falling snow making the outside like a postcard.

I never drink my coffee with cream (or very rarely) but I’m honor bound to try it because a lot of people do. It’s fine. Like the milk, it really brings out the cinnamon note and makes me think whatever contributes to the cinnamon is something that’s forced to the surface when you add fat, like adding a single drop of water to the whiskey actually intensifies the flavor by forcing the oils to aggregate in a single layer.

Okay, so something that isn’t always appreciated is that coffee and lemon actually play pretty well together sometimes, but you have to have the right coffee.

Turns out this is the right coffee. Even just a squirt of lemon, no sugar, is shockingly good right off the bat. It changes everything about how the coffee presents.

The wood and cinnamon notes in the front end, with the added acidity now present as a complex, refreshing herbal note.

And that note dominates the front end and continues into the back end and melds with the blueberry.

Oh, man, and then if you add just a leettle sugar, it does loose some of that complexity but damn it is a refreshing flavor. Very herbacious and fruity.

This coffee likes to be paired with lemon juice much better than the average coffee and while the flavor can be pieced back and described, the gestalt is a refreshing late spring/early summer drink, not quite like anything you’ve had before.

Drinking it immediately evokes for me the desire to set out an evening meal on the veranda of my seaside villa (look, it’s my ideation. I can totally dream up a seaside villa) and plan a loose, relaxed dinner party with some friends. Maybe more early afternoon given that it’s coffee. But the image is the same. A relaxed dinner on the balcony with the sound of the sea in the background. Leaving the cares of the world behind.

So you see, I think the branding is slightly off, and now you know why.

This is a coffee for all seasons. A solid coffee that can be done in multiple ways with very little effort, for use as anything from a daily driver to special occasions.

It reminds me a little of a grand touring car, something designed to be comfortable to use on an everyday basis, but that has a lot more going on under the hood than it appears at first glance and can be far more exciting and interesting at a moment’s notice, when you’re feeling sporty.

And that’s it. King Harv’s The Brain Coffee, now on sale for $19.95. A coffee for all seasons.