All You Need Is Memes

The State of The Writer

No, I’m not doing a location reveal.

This is more under the guise of explaining what’s been going for almost two weeks and really the last couple of years.

For the record I don’t look like the picture above and never did (I wish I did, okay.) And I’m highly amused by the name of the typewriter which is apparently HerVeyns As Hons. Parallel universe brand, no doubt. I’m also amused by the fact that the pages near the typewriter are handwritten, there’s no paper in the machine, and the machine might perhaps have an internal light. Never mind. Now I’m done dissecting the picture so you don’t have to, moving right along.

For the last almost two weeks, I’ve been sicker than I’ve been since Jan. 2020. As in, not dying level of sick, but extreme tiredness and JUST not functioning. And being unable to fully kick it. Festivities started as in 2020 with some kind of stomach symptom, then moved to a double ear infection (which always makes me daft) and then settled into a sort of general malaise. This is the first time in two weeks my head is semi-clear and typing a few sentences doesn’t make me want to take a nap.

I feel terrible because I’ve not been posting Witch’s Daughter on substack and have made no progress at fixing Winter Prince. And though I’m writing No Man’s Land, because it won’t let me NOT write it, I also haven’t posted that. Other things I haven’t done include cleaning the litterbox, which I’ll be dealing with as soon as this is done.

More generally I feel horrible about fulfilling pledges from my fundraiser in 22, partly because it’s hard to tuckerize someone when your writing has been stop and go but mostly stop.

In my defense, I grossly overestimated the rate of improvement once I came to lower altitude. I am improving, mind you. Various symptoms and medications have been cut back to an almost miraculous amount. But one of the triggers of my auto-immune is stress and between the national situation and … moving. Not to mention various family events (good ones, but still stressful) my autoimmune keeps throwing me back health wise.

All I can do is promise I’ll get to mailing out books and tuckerizations that are grossly overdue, as well as the USAian Anthology being assembled, and beg your pardon. My body is as usual on a journey to kill me, and all I can do is work around the edges of that. I have hope it will get better so I can finish books before I die.

What I have almost finished is the next Rhodes and two of Dyce which I hope to have out before the end of summer, and the three being serialized in Chapter House. It would help if No Man’s Land weren’t eating my brain, if it weren’t now 125k words and just starting to unravel the mystery towards solution (even though it’s not a mystery. You know what I mean) and if it let me go long enough to do other stuff.

Anyway, the last two weeks have been bizarre, and possibly prolonged by my trying to ignore being sick. (Naaaah!) The only reason I know it’s not auto immune is that Dan caught it too, and this week got bad enough he took two sick days, which hasn’t happened except for doctor’s appointments in…. years, I think.

And that’s where we are and where I am right now. Once I post this, I’m going to eat something then clean litter boxes, put stuff in the washer, and see if I can get the next couple of chapters of WD up to going up on chapter house substack. (I have them written but they read blah, and I don’t know if that’s because I was ill while going over them, or they are actually blah.)

Quick notes: With the check donations in 23 I got a small pack of coffee, and someone asked me not to have it until I had emailed him. I did, but got no response. And now I’ve lost both sample and email. (Well, I AM ADD. I lose everything including my mind, often.) If that person is reading this, please ping me. I will endeavor to find the coffee.

Also to the person who left me a comment detailing the connection for him between eczema and aspartame. I can’t remember if I posted this before, but the same link seems to exist for me, and being aware of the possibility stopped a massive outbreak cold. (Though there’s still a very minor one going on.)

Oh, and before you yell at me, I promise not to overexert in cleaning. I’m just going to do a “lick and a promise” so I can settle to write then take it easy for two or three days, so I can recover. Pinky swear.

Until Monday.

Homework Assignment

By Holly Frost

Oh hey! Assistant here, and look, I have the keys!

More seriously, Sarah has been having a week of colds and weather and various other unfun and games, and asked last night if I’d throw something up for her.

She suggested how to tell if you are an aardvark, but I figure all the Shifters here already know if they’re aardvarks, and another friend mentioned having Spring Fever, and a music student’s mom said something about Spring Planting, and for a change it is NOT snowing here, which means we’re probably at the annual shift from Blizzard to Wildfire season, and do y’all mind maybe not having so many multiple states spanning tornado producing storms over there in the Midwest? It’s a bit concerning, even though I know you’re used to it.

So I’m going to give you a bit of homework, in honor of the changing seasons and the normally crazy weather. Go check your Get Home Bag and your Bug Out Bag. Whatever you call them at your house. Did the wipes in the car bag dry out? Did the kids outgrow the sweatsuit again? Are the meds in your carry bag out of date? That sort of stuff.

For those new to the concept, are there any? If there are, the Get Home Bag is the stuff you carry with you on a daily basis in case the mandatory evacuation notice or the shelter in place or whatever hits while you’re out on your daily activities. It may be what you take to the Red Cross Shelter (why?) or your friend’s house, or curl up in your car by the river with. The stuff you have to have overnight, until you can Get Home. If you have prescriptions, a couple days worth, clearly labeled, with expiration dates, don’t leave these in your car because temperature will ruin them, your purse or backpack is a good location. Probably a multi-tool or similar fix-it all. Some baby-wipes or similar product. Change of socks. People who wear impractical shoes: change of shoes. (These are good for all, but if you wear three inch heels at work, these are more necessary.) A change of clothes is nice. The right size of diapers if you have diapered kids. Water and a snack are important. Ziploc bag everything: you can never have too many ziplocs and they’re pretty water proof.

The Bug Out Bag is the opposite, it’s the bag you grab when reverse 911 or the sheriff deputy pulls up and says “Get out now!”, when the three story wall of fire is a quarter mile away . . . you probably aren’t coming back and you don’t have time to pack, and if you did, you’d spend it getting further away anyway. It has pretty much the same kinds of things in it, and space to toss the important documents box in, because if you happen to have the Social Security cards and the Birth Certificates and the titles, you’re in better shape than everyone else who got hit.

If you have special circumstances and need to dump ice packs and meds in a small cooler or the like, you know what they are, please go make sure everything’s prepositioned properly for grab, dump, go. Someone probably moved the cooler, or the ice packs froze to the shelf, or . . . you know the drill.

These are not exhaustive lists. There is in fact a fairly exhaustive list on this site somewhere, copied from a dead site via the Way Back Machine, and I think put up as a guest post by Doug.

Okay, time to go enjoy the sun, and . . . how did the lawn grow that tall when it was snowing daily, anyway? Yikes!

We Ain’t Dead yet

When I was growing up, it was taken for granted that eventually the USSR would win the cold war.

Look, we knew what was happening abroad. The US had feckless leaders, and it was too soft. The USSR took and took and took, and the USA just kept folding before it as whole countries were swallowed. Eventually the USSR would get tired and swat the US. And that would be the end. We’d be living under tyranny. A boot stamping on the human face, forever.

That was fifty years ago, and we’ve all passed a lot of water since then. We know now that the USSR was a hollow shell. They took what they could, but they really couldn’t do more than they did. They simply couldn’t. They didn’t have the ability. They didn’t have parity with us, let alone superiority. They were — as the Chinese said — a paper tiger.

And then … Japan was going to eat our lunch economically. Somehow that also didn’t happen.

Oh, yeah, and France was going to beat us to the internet, because the government was funding their entire effort, and they already had so much. It didn’t happen.

Then there was China. They were so organized, so stronk– we know that they are in the process of falling apart. They are, as Dave Freer told me, 20 years ago, like a beautiful lacquered vase, full of cracks underneath the finish. We might be in trouble, but they… oh, boy.

As for corruption…. well, there’s always been that. My friend Charlie was talking about (local) stolen elections back in I’d hazard the 70s. And the late great Lou Antonelli talked about cleaning up the elections in TX.

We’re two hundred and fifty years old, and we’ve already had a civil war. And yeah, government here as everywhere is full of crooks and cheats. And sometimes the cheats win.

Thing is we’re not alone in our trouble. Right now, all over the world, there’s this huge fight going on, because technology has turned from mass and centralized, and politics and society hasn’t adapted, because cultures turn kind of slow. And have a heck of a turning circle. Kind of like my old Suburban with a front end shoved in and the bumper missing. (I bought it that way.)

But like that old Suburban (gee, I wish I had a picture of it!) we take a beating and just keep on ticking.

In every adventure group, there’s the wild card. We’re the wild card of nations.

Our end has been predicted over and over, but you know what? We’re still alive. And we’re going to stay that way.

And through disaster and horror, and hopefully NOT another ACW, we’re going to get this show back on the road. We’re going to dust off the constitution and we’re going to survive.

I have seen so many science fiction anthologies claiming the US will be gone by its three hundred anniversary.

But we’re not going to be. As countries crumble around us, and as turmoil engulfs us, we’re going to survive.

We were born in chaos, birthed in confusion, and survived in improbability.

This country was made for our times.

Sure, things are going to get kind of rough. But we’re going to survive. Even the current bunch of Kakistocrats. We’re going to survive worse too, if it’s waiting for us ahead.

And we’re going to the stars.

Be not afraid.

ReRuns

Yesterday talking to a friend, he said that it seems like we’re living through a shoddy version of the seventies.

But that’s not QUITE it. It’s more complicated. It’s more like we’re living through a performative version of the seventies.

It’s like all the recasting and re-doing of classic movies and series, at this point even those that weren’t particularly successful: it feels like Hollywood is just redoing these things out of some sort of dinosaur brain memory that they were successful. However, the people in charge no longer have any idea why these things were successful or why they resonated or achieved the results they did.

So the re-casts/re-dos sound hollow and strange, and would even if they didn’t use them to push their weird personal current obsessions. (All heroes must be women and black and increasingly of some odd sexual identity! Only villains can be white!) Because the car is there, but the engine is gone metaphorically speaking.

All these redos and recastings and all are just shells of what the original was. And imbuing them with current wokeness doesn’t make them massively popular, because it doesn’t have that kind of purchase amid the public.

The left and current “Cultural gatekeeping elite” doesn’t seem to be aware of this, or aware of why they fail. In fact, each failure baffles them.

I could be snide, here, and say that it’s because this entire administration, and in fact, the entire upper-crust/controlling layer of our institutions are profoundly untalented theater kiddies, who have no creativity but love the style, and so are trying to do performance of what they think should be there, in the hopes it will work. And are forever baffled it doesn’t.

The truth is not quite that mean, but it rhymes. They are people of a certain frame of mind. In most places and most times, this would make them profoundly “conservative.” Frankly they are, because 100 years into the “progressive” project, those who support it are conservatives. But it’s a weird sort of “conservatism” because what they’re conserving is the cult that tells them if they tear Western civ apart paradise ensues. The whole just-so cult of Marx as filtered through their parents, grandparents and great grandparents.

Part of the whole Marxian philosophy is that it’s a self-contained system, congruent within itself, and with no basis in reality. This makes a certain type of mind susceptible to it. In other centuries they’d be religious fanatics, missionaries to the heathens and zeal-burned puritans.

That type of mind tends to think of things in terms of pre-ordained and fixed narrative, not wildly creative and innovative. That THEY think of themselves as creatives is the insanity of the current system and the Marxian corruption of institutions. They are not actually capable of creativity, only of passing on the received word.

And so we get to the other side of the rerun of the seventies: These kids, by and large, grew up with everything from schools, to TV to even their parents (for the children and grandchildren of boomers) being sold a version of the sixties and seventies in which protesting on the street, behaving badly and destroying property was being passionate and fighting for the voiceless and by itself meant IMPROVING SOCIETY and MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.

So the most gullible of this generation are rebels without a clue. They must perform the hit the streets and protest, but they lack the immediacy of the draft to make it personal, and they lack anything like civil rights to make it righteous.

Instead they attach to any stupid cause they can find or which is handed to them by manipulative SOBs. So, you know, it might be saving the endangered Prebles Jumping Mouse, or perhaps saving old buildings, or even well… Lately Occupy Wall Street, BLM, antifidiots and of course pro-Hamass.

Sure, some of these people are paid. I still feel I owe massive apologies to the young lady 10 years ago who told me it was all for money, because her generation was desperate for money. I didn’t believe her, but to a great extent she was right.

But those not being paid? They’re there because they were told they have to protest something to be good people. They have to stand up to the man and take to the streets. This has been drunk with mother’s milk and held up to them as the greatest good. Therefore they must do it.

They don’t understand the issues. They don’t get any of it. In their minds, though the very fact they’re protesting and sometimes clashing with the police means they’re changing the world (No one ever asks if changing is for the better) and being stunning brave and “activists” and therefore good people.

Only this explains bizarre things like Queer (or Feminists) for Palestine. Which is the logical equivalent of Chickens for KFC.

This is also why they become hysterical and unable to cope if challenged. They just have to do this performative thing and paradise will happen. Why are you stopping them, you bad person, you?

The thing is, as with their attempt to recreate WWII emergency state with the covidiocy, that it’s like the reruns. It’s hollow.

Even BLM didn’t “take” amid the people, and that was arguably, as presented, a more compelling cause, because it was at least over here, and it was wrapped around a case presented as wrongful death at the hands of a state agent. (It wasn’t that.) Which resonates with a lot of people.

But this? Most people who are aware of politics know about 10/7 and these theatrics for the aggressors aren’t even at the level of being tolerated. And even those who don’t know politics are aware Islamic terrorism is a thing. The only people approving are terrorist supporters, many of them recent immigrants.

This rerun, like all the others, is headed for the crapper. And the woke will be baffled as to why the people didn’t “rise up” to support them.

Mostly because all they know are the gestures to repeat, not what they mean or what was behind them.

Honestly? It would have been kinder to make them Bible-obsessed puritans going off to convinced people in tropical climes to wear pants.

At least, even if they got eaten like uncle Bosey (snarf) it would have given their lives purpose, without messing up other people’s lives.

Unfortunately they’ve been taught to act the savages instead. And getting them out of this rut is going to hurt. Them, us, and all of civilization.

Briefly.

Comparative Advantage- by Ian Bruene

A couple weeks ago Our Hostess posted about Economics being real and not some random studies degree or other nonsense. In the comments someone decided to deny the existence of Comparative Advantage, or rather, he didn’t strictly speaking deny it, he merely implied that it held the same status as employment statistics or money supply numbers; something artificial which could be “tweaked” at the government’s whim.

This is not true. This is not even close to true. And the failure to understand why it isn’t true belies a failure to understand not just this detail of economics, but what economics is about in the first place. Now admittedly these are common errors, so there is relatively little guilt in that ignorance. So common in fact are the errors that most of the people who call themselves “economists” still make what should be a five year old’s mistake.

So let us see what it is all about, using a seemingly unrelated story, which in the end will teach far more than just the concept of comparative advantage.

I currently work at Walmart, these days mostly in the back room sorting stuff. In the mid to late part of my shift this turns into sorting apparel into hanging / non-hanging, and between the different departments. For this story what matters is the hanging apparel, which is stored on wheeled racks so it can be moved around the back room and out to the floor as needed. These racks have 4-8 adjustable bars to hang apparel from, so the rack can be customized for what is needed. For a simple example; the intimates department has both bras, which take up less than a foot of vertical space, and also pajama sets, which can easily take up four feet or more of vertical space.

So, we are in the back. We have lots of boxes of clothing to sort through, and we need to efficiently use the racks we have because we don’t have an infinite number. Ignore for a moment the different departments and non-hanging clothing. All that matters is using the rack well.

The rack has 4 bars, set up for one tiny space, two medium size spaces (one on top of the other), and one giant space.

I pick up a pair of shorts. Where do I put them?

Well the rack is empty, so it doesn’t matter. I toss the shorts onto the nearest spot which happens to be the giant space which has plenty of room to fit them and move on. In fact after a little thought I realize that I should be using that largest space: it is objectively the best one, because it can hold any size garment, while the other, smaller, spaces have limitations and cannot hold larger garments.

I continue working, more clothing is put on the rack, eventually the giant space fills up. Oh well, that was bound to happen right? The rack is not infinitely sized. So I start putting clothing on the medium size sections. They might not be as good as the large one was, but at least they aren’t as small as the tiny space. Unfortunately dealing with longer dresses and pants is now a hassle, because the bottom bar is too low and they drag on the ground, so I have to put them on the top bar overlapping the stuff below and causing the whole rack to bulge out. It is annoying and frustrating, but can’t be helped after all.

Or could it?

I’m sure everyone caught the mistake – I certainly dropped enough anvils about it – but it bears articulating anyway. It is true that the giant section can hold any size garment. But thinking of it as “this can hold anything!” is backwards; the correct attitude is “this can hold things no other section can!”. That flexibility means every time I put a pair of shorts or a bra on it, I am sacrificing the ability to put a long pair of pants or a dress on the section which is the only one that can hold them. In doing so I reduce the total quantity of apparel which will fit on the rack.

Instead I should put the shorts and shirts on the medium size sections. I should put the bras on the tiny section. Only if something doesn’t fit on any of the other sections do I put it on the giant one. At least while there is room on those other sections: eventually they will fill up, and then I move to the next-smallest section which will hold the garment.

This is Comparative Advantage. This is not an analogy for it. Nor is it a hypothetical situation – I deal with it nearly every day of the week. This is the concept itself, stripped of the distractions and opportunities for excuses which are used to cloud the matter. And it is interlinked with many economic concepts which people do not understand but are fairly simple to explain.

First of all, there is no money involved. Because Economics is not about money. In fact the fastest way to tell someone doesn’t have the faintest iota of a clue about the subject – short of wearing a sickle and hammer – is that they think economics is about money and finance.

The technical definition of Economics is that it is the study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. All of those parts matter: Scarcity, because I do not have infinite racks, and a given rack cannot hold an infinite quantity of apparel. Alternative Uses, because I could use a spot for this garment, or that garment, or a garment I pick up ten minutes from now. And Allocation, because I have to choose how I am going to divide the garments between the sections.

Second is Cost: a cost or price is not a dollar value. It is all of the options you sacrifice to choose this option. If I place a small garment in a spot where a larger one could go I am sacrificing the ability to put a larger garment there in the future. Or in monetary terms, If I go to Scheels and buy a box of 6.5 Grendel today, I am sacrificing the ability to use that money to go to the local Mongolian BBQ, as well as the ability to have that money in the bank to cover a bill, as well as an infinite number of potential other options I could have chosen.

Third is Value. In the same way that Cost is not Money, Value is not Cost. Value is a subjective thing to decide which costs you are willing to pay. If you pay a cost to get something then by your actions you prove that at the time of decision you value that something more than any of the alternatives you sacrificed to get it. Importantly Value must be subjective, because every attempt to define an objective value theory slams into fundamental problems, such as the classic “what is the value of a glass of water?”. Objective / Inherent Value Theories can only pretend to sort of badly fit reality by bolting on epicycles until they contain an ad hoc, badly-specified, incoherent, poorly-predictive implementation of half of Subjective Value Theory.

But in the end, why does any of this matter? That’s all a nice theory and has some cool quirks, and maybe it is more efficient and GDP number go up, but that isn’t what’s really important right? Who cares if you have 5% fewer luxuries; that doesn’t matter, and they are probably making you soft and weak anyway.

I’ll leave that last one for now. Beating that particular pinata might be fun but isn’t the subject at hand. The problem is that economic efficiency is not about trivial luxuries, or GDP number go up, or scummy businessmen benefiting themselves, or scummy politicians benefiting themselves. Instead economic efficiency is everything. And the only reason it can seem trivial and unimportant is because everyone reading this has lived in such unimaginable wealth for so many generations that the choice “do I starve today, or do my kids starve today?” because there isn’t enough food getting produced is not even in living memory any longer. Those “trivial luxuries”, are the reward of a culture not being moronic being less moronic about economic matters than is typical throughout human history.

Going back to my story: if I declare that using the rack efficiently doesn’t matter, I make my job harder. There is a very good chance I make my job impossible and have to leave boxes of clothing for the poor sod who sorts on the next day. Which will very likely be me.

To borrow a term from The Enemy: when you dismiss economics, you speak from a position of unimaginable privilege. If you aren’t simply ignorant of history, then you probably are one of those scummy politicians or scummy businessmen and think that economics is something which happens to other people.

*THIS IS SARAH: Ian Bruene, besides his make-ends-meet-job between-jobs is also a budding entrepreneur. If you buy gaming figurines, you could do worse than do it from Murphic industries.*

Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

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 SEAN FENIAN: United Fleet (The Stardock Trilogy Book 2)

Four months ago, the Crickets — the Chhrt’ktk’t, in their own language — had abandoned a mobile shipyard with a burned-out hyperdrive core in Sol system, as a decoy. They hadn’t told humanity about the decoy part. Then they had picked Alex Holder to operate it, simply because he happened by chance to be the first human they found who could — because that would make it a better decoy.

In perhaps as little as five years, the Khreetan would be coming. The Crickets hadn’t intended for humanity to know that, either.

Alex had those five years to build a defensive fleet from the spines out, recruit crews for his ships, and find enough humans who could reach full rapport with Cricket tech to command and control them — and get all of them trained to work together despite their national differences. All this, while at the same time he tried to share the Crickets’ scientific knowledge, distribute their technology where it was most desperately needed, and somehow still keep the peace.

But would it be enough?

Fortunately, he had help, and he was beginning to find more people who could fully link with Chhrt’ktk’t technology.

FROM JERRY BOYD: Friends With Boomafits (Bob and Nikki Book 46)

BSR thought that things were going well on Zarathrustra. They should know better by now, don’t you think? One thing leads to another, as Bob and the crew do their best to straighten things out. Ride along, with the ships of BSR as they try to keep their world safe.

FROM JAMES TOTTEN: Battle Fatigue and Speed Bumps: Breaching Ain’t Easy

Volume I Battle Fatigue

It’s hell on Earth in the explosive battlefields of the former North Korea. Two Corps, Chinese and Korean/American, are slugging it out to decide the fate of the Korean Peninsula as World War Three rages on. SSG Denise Ware is in the thick of the battle with her four ground combat drones, screening the Corps from attack from a Chinese Armored Regiment. The action comes quickly to the drone drivers as they fight to keep the massed Chinese armor from attacking the flank of IV Corps. Will the drones win or lose, or will the Chinese overrun IV Corps and destroy Korea’s industrial capacity that is supplying NATO with the tanks and vehicles needed to hold the line in former Ukraine? It’s armored combat at its worst as the drones, or “American Murder Hornets,” try to save the day.

Book II Speedbumps

Learn how “Slowball” earned his handle and goes to war after retiring. Follow his exploits as his “tiny tanks” blunt a Soviet attack in the “no quarter asked or given” NATO war in Europe rages all around his tiny tanks. The drivers have the guts and the drones are doing the dying as the battle in the former Ukraine chews through men and materiel. When the drones get decimated, who will come to save the day? Find out in this action packed short story forged on the future battlefields of WW III.

FROM SCOTT MCCREA: Twenty Chests of Gold

Introducing a new series of adventure novels by storyteller Scott McCrea!

Jeff Galleon, California surfer and beach bum, is a “person of interest” to the police when old friends are murdered. Galleon soon discovers he is at the center of a conspiracy involving rogue American agents, a beautiful assassin and missing pirate gold. He traces the treasure from California to New York to Paris to the Dominican Republic, but can he find it before the killers find him?

Twenty Chests of Gold is the first in an exciting new series of adventure stories featuring Jeff Galleon by Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist, author Scott McCrea.

And this one has a book trailer, apparently!

FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot42-Book2:Through The Texas Gate (Snapshot-42 Book 2)

Snapshot42: Through the Texas Gate is an alternate history novel. In early November 1942, with World War II hanging in the balance, an invisible wall cuts Europe, along with parts of the Middle East and North Africa, off from the rest of the world. With the Allies running out of vital raw materials from the rest of the world, they look for ways through the wall. They find two gates to other realities. One leads to a still-independent Republic of Texas that still uses black powder weapons and is barely holding off fierce nomad raiders, while another leads to a strange land without people but overrun by still-living dinosaurs.

Jim Bridger and Colonel Tillman need to buy oil and food to keep the allies in the war, but first they have to survive fierce new enemies in these new-found realities.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Enchantments And Dragons

A wizard must produce justice enough to satisfy a dragon. A young man tries to rob a tiger’s lair. An enchantress tries to keep a court safe while they ignore the perils of misusing her magic. A lady finds that court intrigues can spread even to the countryside. And more tales. Includes “Over the Sea To Me,” “Dragonfire and Time”, “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn”, “The White Menagerie”, “The Dragon’s Cottage,” “Jewel of the Tiger,” and “The Sword Breaks.”

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Other Side of Midnight

Life has been a nightmare for Mitya ever since he was arrested on trumped-up charges and exiled to Siberia. But this labor camp in the far north of Magadan Oblast hides a secret far more terrible than the merely human evils of the Great Terror. For the universe we know is not the only one, and there are places where it interpenetrates with universes where the laws of nature as we know them do not operate, where humanity has no place. Worlds inhabited by beings ancient and terrible, to whom humanity are slaves, playthings, food.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Gods and Monsters

Here there be dragons…again, damn it.

Deshayna has her sanity back, and forces older than the gods have granted her a new purpose. Chronos, his freedom restored, fights for his sanity, and with it, a purpose in helping Deshayna—now called Shay—with hers. The gods are starting to pull together more…and it’s about time.

Millennia after the last dragons to threaten human existence have been hunted down, they’ve started to reappear, hinting to the surviving gods that something more sinister appeared first: Tiamat.

Instead of a confrontation, though, the gods—major, minor, and genus loci—are drawn into a frustrating hunt for a predator that flees rather than attempting to strike.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Second Sight: A Science Fiction Short Story

BORROWING SOMEONE ELSE’S PERCEPTIONS FOR A POPULAR DEVICE CAN ONLY MEAN COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. RIGHT?

Samar Dix, the inventor of the popular DixOcular replacement eyes with their numerous enhancements, has run out of ideas and needs another hit. Engaging a visionary painter to create the first in a series of Artist models promises to yield an entirely new way of looking at his world.

But looking through another’s eyes isn’t quite as simple as he thinks, and no amount of tweaking will yield entirely predictable, or safe, results.

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: Heavenly

One Life To Meme

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.

Lay Down Your Burden

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.