Morning, Chopped

We made appointments, answered questions, filled out all the paperwork online, got out the door Tuesday morning…and an officious Walgreens “pharmacy tech” refused our entire family the Covid vaccine we qualify for (since we haven’t been boosted since 2022). Which was upsetting in the extreme–I could not sleep the night after, heartsick and vexed. I’m hearing anecdotally that this is happening to a lot of eligible people, being refused lifesaving and disability-fighting vaccines by pharmacists using “religion” as an excuse or who seem genuinely unaware of CDC guidelines and best practices. It’s fucking maddening. Perhaps the reason vaccine uptake is “low” is because our public health infrastructure has completely failed, mostly due to business interests gutting it because they want the serf class–no matter how sick or disabled–back at the mill for exploiting.

Anyway, I’ve filed complaints and we’re making arrangements to go elsewhere. Plus, I’ll never step in another Walgreens again so long as I live. And that’s all I’ve to say about that, because most of what I’d add is unrepeatable blue words.


I don’t know how long it will last, but it looks like the Gallow & Ragged trilogy is discounted in ebook. (I wish I were alerted to these things more consistently.) The first volume, Trailer Park Fae, is $2.99 for Kindle–again, I don’t know for how long, but I thought I’d mention it.


I finished Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad and it was marvelous. She makes the Greek sing through the English and her notes are a delight. Next up is her Odyssey translation. I am smacking my lips in anticipation–after a moment spent with Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, which I first read in a Junji Ito adaptation.

I was in bed this morning with the Dazai as Boxnoggin got his cuddles, and happened across a particular passage where the protagonist talks about how, when people say, “Society won’t stand for it…” what they really mean is “I won’t stand for it.” If someone says, “Society will ostracize you,” what they really mean is, “I will ostracize you.” The force of the passage, addressing a “you” since the book’s in first person, was like a thunderclap. I had to set the book down and think about things for a bit–which Boxnoggin adored since it meant chest-skritches, always a favorite after a long night spent snoring in comfort.

Of course the protagonist is a bit tiresome, but the feeling Dazai describes of being an imposter in one’s own life, of clowning to hold back the despair, of utter alienation beginning in childhood, is extremely familiar. I sought out the book after Ito’s adaptation because of that definite, echoing familiarity–nausea in the Sartre sense, I’d call it. I’ve the urge to watch Breathless afterward, just to see if the existentialist throughlines I’m seeing hold.

It’s good to have some bandwidth for reading again; not-reading is almost as uncomfortable as not-writing. For a short awful while I was so emotionally and physically exhausted by the struggle around a certain series I couldn’t manage more than a paragraph before passing out at night; thankfully, the commitment to protecting the work (and myself) in this Year of the Real is paying off by granting me a little breathing room. Funny how that works out, ennit–when one starts enforcing one’s boundaries, one finds out rather quickly who was taking one’s kindness for weakness, and one acquires far more energy to spend on one’s own affairs.


It’s been a chopped-up sort of morning, as you can see by the separators. I’m about to begin another push to get the Sekrit Projekt past the point of no return, where its own momentum will take it over the finish line…but it’s rough, and various other considerations might intrude. The month of April’s going to hit like a freight train, since I’m rather behind, what with so much time eaten up by health concerns and struggling to get That Particular Series born. At least the stress nausea (I’m detecting a theme, and a rather unpleasant one at that) is receding bit by bit.

It’s not the end of the battle, but I can see it from here. And that is a welcome development indeed, my friends. The relief is damn near depthless.

Lonely Wall

They paved paradise, and put up a retaining wall…

There used to be a huge bank of blackberry bushes here, home to birds, rabbits, and other small critters–probably the occasional daytime-resting coyote, too. But apparently someone decided the highway needed more room. I’m not against progress, yet this was completely unnecessary.

I take some comfort in the fact that the planet will survive just fine. Humanity may not–I swing back and forth on whether it will, sometimes hourly–but Gaia, uh, will find a way. (It will probably be crabs, since they’ve evolved how many separate times now?)

Anyway, sometimes Boxnoggin and I pass the work site during walkies, and I’ve taken to saying hello to this dry stick that was once a tree. The dog would desperately like to make its acquaintance despite the sound of traffic, but I restrain him. It’s simply not safe; heaven alone knows what’s lurking in the straw and his paws don’t need to find something awful there.

The first week of the new year is closing out in a holding pattern. I’m a little awry from good news. Perhaps the trend will continue.

See you Monday.

Another Castle

Itsa me!

Boxnoggin and I made this fellow’s acquaintance lately during walkies; he lingered at the base of a tree for about a week. The recent rains may have washed him away…or his princess might be in another castle. Either way, I wish him well.

I’ve got a weekend full of work in front of me, but I might manage to take a half-day off somewhere in there. (We can hope.) At least it’s raining, and next week I can run again.

See you Monday.

Harrison’s Biggest Fan

I have had occasion this morning to think about the creative writing “teacher” (my community college days were few but wild, y’all) who hated everything I attempted because–and he literally said this in class as well as wrote variations on returned assignments–he believed Jim Harrison was the perfect writer, that everyone should write just like Jim Harrison, and anyone who didn’t write like Jim Harrison was wrong, evil, and deserved endless mockery so that they never wrote again.

Lest this sound like hyperbole, rest assured I am actually underplaying the bizarre nature of this man’s…beliefs? I suppose is the word?

Harrison was no doubt a reasonable human being and a serious writer; I am certain he was completely unaware he had such a stan. This was relatively pre-internet–AOL chatrooms were just getting started, and I don’t think this particular “teacher” was on IRC either. (At least, gods have mercy, I hope he wasn’t.) I am fairly certain Mr Creative Writing “Teacher” wrote snail-mail love letters to Harrison though, and with the clarity of time have come to realize he was probably banging his very young (she and I were both in Running Start, albeit from different high schools) quasi-TA and star student as well.

All in all, that man probably damaged hundreds of nascent and emerging writers. A real prize.

In those days I was more concerned about the evangelical nutcase in the political science class whose entire raison d’être was trying to shout down the poor professor, who had escaped Communist Bulgaria in a literal potato truck and was clearly doing his best to keep a shiny vision of America as the land of opportunity while dealing with a loud mustachio’d Limbaugh-dittohead bigot. As I’ve gone onward in my life, though, sometimes I think about Jim Harrison’s Biggest Fan, teaching a 101 Creative Writing course and being That Fucking Guy before the internet arrived to give that variety of dickbag an even bigger platform.

Fun times, fun times. No wonder I’m an autodidact.

I rented Legends of the Fall at Blockbuster (and that piece of information dates me, yes indeed) that quarter because everyone was gaga over Brad Pitt but I was a diehard Aidan Quinn fan, and also because I was curious about who this goddamn Jim Harrison actually was. I ended up checking the book out at the library as well, along with Dalva, and neither made much an impression. I thought Larry McMurtry and Leslie Marmon Silko did everything better, and even somewhat enjoyed suggesting that Mr Writing “Teacher” perhaps read Ceremony, which I’d done a few papers on in high school.

I already had one foot out the door by that point, and was practicing a brand of “helpful” shitposting (as well as my own variety of malicious compliance) long before the internet. My very last act in that class was to write a satire of Tristan and Susannah from Legends boning desperately in a barn, based on a piece of anthology erotica I’d read a short while before, which involved Casablanca, cold cream, and Rick doing some very ungentlemanly but no doubt fulfilling things to Ilsa while searchlights pierced the sky.

Now, I cannot tell you with certainty what the “teacher” thought of my swan song, because I never went back to pick up the graded hardcopy. But I like to think that he realized what I was lampooning.

Got an F on that course, but the satisfaction lingers. And every once in a while I think about that “teacher”, and how he would just simply hate that by pure spite and endurance I have a career actually being published, which he never managed. (Yes, I checked a few years ago. Because sometimes I am that petty.) Of course he’d sniff that I’m just a hack doing filthy genre things, not a Big Literary Writer like his holy Saint Harrison. But the money has fed my kids as well as no few dogs and cats, and also paid the bills for a while now.

I’m sure that “teacher” never thought of me at all afterward, while I still have no desire to ever pick up another Harrison book. (It’s not the author’s fault.) And my view of writing classes/courses as well as critique groups never recovered from that early experience.

I do hope that political science teacher made it, though.

Fever and Rain

Well, it had to happen. Since we mask pretty religiously around here, we haven’t had much in the way of respiratory illness since March of 2020, when the Princess brought back what might have been the very first strain of plague just before the airlines shut down. She and her bestie had spent years saving up for that vacation, and managed to get home right before lockdown. At the time we thought it was just travel crud…but now I wonder.1

Anyway, the weather has shifted. We went from dry 90F days to mid-60s and rainy, and at first I thought the Prince and I were simply adjusting to the change. Then came the fever, the coughing, and the need to go looking in the medicine cabinet for a box of Mucinex2. We’re still not sure if it’s Covid, RSV, flu, or just an opportunistic virus taking advantage of stress and weather change.

Yesterday was the worst, and it aligned with pushing to finish the copyedits on Sons of Ymre 2. Thankfully this copyeditor is one of my very favorites, since she does not attempt to rewrite my book(s) in her own voice as some have. Don’t get me wrong–CEs are unsung heroes 98% of the time! It’s just that the remaining 2% can be…rather a doozy, and sooner or later statistics bite everyone. So it wasn’t that bad, but I had other things planned for the day as well and had to put them off in order to get the most critical stuff out the door.

There’s also rather good news about the Ymre books I can’t share yet, though I can say that the first two Ghost Squad ones are about to go live in audiobook. (All four Roadtrip Z seasons are available in audiobook too!) And of course The Dead God’s Heart is in audio form as well, if that’s your jam.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about John Scalzi‘s excellent point that “the failure mode of funny is asshole”, especially on social media.3 Yesterday saw someone I quasi-respected go full-on defending the theft of author/artist labor for so-called AI, and since they solicited my opinion on the point I gave it though I was pretty sure the request was disingenuous in the extreme. I was right, and remarked upon it on social media…and of course, along came a troll.

A few years ago I might have granted some grace, or simply muted. Now? Blockity-block-block, motherfuckers. Blocking is self-care, and if you’re trying to be “funny” but the vibe hits me the wrong way, out the airlock you go. I had a moment of, “is this person just trying to be amusing, and failing dreadfully?” Then I realized I didn’t care, between my current physical misery and the need to ruthlessly curate my life and space.

Life is too short to do emotional labor for jackass randos.

At least there’s rain. Someone in the neighborhood has a wood stove going, too, which would be pleasant if I wasn’t hacking up a lung. Boxnoggin isn’t going to like a short ramble rather than a long one today, though perhaps the damp will change his mind. Each year when the rains roll in he is dead convinced I have changed the weather just to spite him personally, and gives me long-suffering looks while lifting his paws as high and delicately as possible. Poor fellow, to him we are incomprehensible gods, dispensers of good things but also torments.

I’ll give him a bit of yesterday’s bacon when we get home. That should salve the sting.

The world looks rather underwater-funny, since I’m still rocking a mild fever. But so much has to get done today, and I can’t put much of it off. Being where the buck stops means one can arrange things to suit oneself, certainly–but also means that there is no last resort or backup. I’m just enduring until I can return to the relative comfort of horizontal, whether it be on couch or bed. Vertical rather sucks right now, and even coffee isn’t helping.

Time to get Thursday cleaned up and ready for the merry-go-round.

  1. And the utter failure of public health in the US means we literally can’t tell if we’ve had plague or…something else. ↩︎
  2. Guaifenesin is WONDERFUL, especially if one’s lungs feel a bit congested. ↩︎
  3. Scalzi’s comment policy was also a model for my own, when I allowed such things. ↩︎

Free Shenanigans

Imagine the possibilities…

Me: “You want this? I’ll drag it home if you do.”
Daughter: “What on earth would we do with it?”
Me: “Train grapevines over? Or the hop vine? Hang the bones of our enemies inside? Teach Boxnoggin to climb?”
Daughter: “OMG imagine if he learned to climb. The shenanigans.”
Me: “He’s all shenanigan anyway.”
Daughter: “I think we can let this one pass.”
Me: “Just as well. I’d have to carry it like a hat, Box can’t drag it.”
Daughter: “…walk away, Mum. Just walk away.”

I love how she doesn’t quibble at hanging the bones of our enemies inside, Blair Witch windchime style, but teaching the dog to climb is a Step Too Far. Of course, if it’s still there this morning I may have to nab it anyway, because that will be a sign it’s meant to come home with me, right? RIGHT?

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

Ivy Berries

I wish my phone would focus properly, dammit.

Ivy’s both blessing and bane in these parts. On the one hand, it’s a good quick ground cover and can help with erosion; on the other, it chokes one’s trees and turns the soil rather sterile. There’s a huge bank of it on one of our walking routes, and it’s generally alive with bees once the weather warms enough–so put that in the plus column, too. And it’s full of these berry-things. I’m no botanist, so they could be something else taking advantage of the ivy and I wouldn’t know it.

Anyway, watching them through the end of winter has been fascinating. Boxnoggin, on the other hand, knows only that the ivy is good for peeing on. His needs are simple, his observations few and direct. Such is the nature of Dog, just as mine is to mentally chew every circumstance for eternity.

Between us, we’ve got the whole range covered.

Tonight’s another Friday Night Writes. I may be finished with the zero draft of Rook’s Rose (the second and final season of Hell’s Acre) by then. One thing’s for sure, this book is gonna die. But I suppose I’d best get to it if I want any sliver of the weekend to use for recuperation.

See you next week!