Dear Sweet Filthy World

Sunny again today, but still with some clouds. Our high was, and presently is (so our high so far), 87˚F, with the heat index at 92˚F.

I woke at six this morning, which was earlier than I'd intended. But what the fuck, I'd gotten to sleep by midnight, so I figured I'd get up, have some breakfast, then get to work. And, instead, I fell the fuck back to sleep and woke at 8 a.m. Because I am a creature of excruciating habit, or excruciatingly a creature of habit, this threw the whole day into a less than productive tailspin. I finally gave up and played Guild Wars 2 and tried not the think about the words I did not get written today.

What am I writing? Fuck it, I'll tell you. The novel is called The Night Watchers, and it is essentially a new and more supernatural incarnation of the novel that would have been Interstate Love Song (based on the short-story of the same title). I really like it, all of it that's in my head, and that's a lot of it. If I can quit fucking around, it could be done by the end of the summer. The print and ebook versions will be published by Subterranean Press, and hopefully there will be an audiobook. Likely there will. It's set mostly in and around north-central Alabama, but spans many, many decades. The title is borrowed from Peter Straub's Ghost Story, one of my favorite books of all time, ever.

But you knew that about me and Ghost Story. I mean, if you are one of those Constant Readers.

But I gotta admit, balancing the fiction, no matter how much I like the novel at hand, with the sudden and marvelous paleontology opportunities is a challenge. But. Fiction keeps the rent paid and the lights on and food on the table. Paleontology just, you know, makes me feel like I'm doing what I was put on earth to do. And it's all sort of ironic. For me - as frustrating as I might find it, as much as I would usually rather be doing something else - writing is easy as pie. On the other hand, paleontology is fucking hard work – and I'm not talking about physically demanding fieldwork and fossil preparation. I'm talking about the intellectual rigor, discipline, and plain ol' smarts involved. So, I'm going to be busting my butt to do the fairly easy thing that pays the bills to earn the luxury of busting my butt to do the very hard thing that pays not one red cent. Irony. But, that said, I am just grateful for both opportunities, at this point in my life and at this point in history.

By the way, SubPress has announced Vile Affections (and the accompanying chapbook Cambrian Tales), and you may see the cover. In fact, you can now place preorders! Right here. Note: Only those who bought the signed numbered edition of Comes a Pale Rider may preorder the signed numbered edition of Vile Affections at this time. Anyone may preorder the trade hardcover.

And here's some crap I posted today to Twitter and Facebook:

I'm just waiting for one of these anti-COVID vaccine yahoos to realize that, in effect, every time they use any medication they are – in the eyes of pharmaceutical companies and medical science – essentially guinea pigs or lab rats or Rhesus monkeys, FDA approval or no.

~ and ~

Fact: When you are so afraid that you can only win an election when fewer people vote, so you try to make it harder and harder for folks to vote, especially those whom you suspect won't vote for you, you've failed democracy.

~ and this, which someone else said and which I retweeted ~

Let's perfectly clear...Democrats do not want to de-fund the police. Dems want to demilitarize and de-brutalize the police.

I leave you with my level 80 holosmith (an elite engineering specialization), Mandy J. Wolowitz (née Hansen), at Timberline Falls. Yes, she has a lightsaber.

Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast




3:50 p.m.

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Overcast, but at least the trees are green now. Currently, it's 61˚F.

Yesterday, more frustration, as I tried to finish Chapter 4 of The Tindalos Asset, but made precious little progress. A few hundred words and more rewriting. I have to set it aside again and go back to work on "The Eldritch Alphabētos" for Sirenia Digest 148. But even that has to wait until Sunday, as Kathryn and I need to get away from the house for a couple of days. I feel like I've been shut up in here since last summer, despite the (short) trip back in February.

Today, I have to be at the Hay at 2 p.m. to retrieve materials I loaned the library for the exhibits back in the summer and autumn and also to delivers another batch of my papers, possibly the last before the move.

---

I sincerely hope that reports that far-left politics are taking control of the Democratic Party are mistaken, as I have no more use for a far-left Democratic Party than I have for a far-right Republican Party. I have no need of extremists on either side, and I cannot stand beside the Democrats if that's what happening. I have been faithful to the DNC since 1984, but will heretofore be seeking centrist candidates, wherever they may be.

---

Last night, Kathryn and I watched Harold S. Bucquet's Without Love (1945), the only Tracy-Hepburn film I'd never seen. And one with Lucille Ball, at that.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast




3:25 p.m.

Sunny today. The temperature is sitting right at freezing, 32˚F, but the windchill's at 24˚F. It occurs to me that I have not left the House since January 11th. There's still a little snow on the ground, and nothing I see from the windows makes me want to venture Outside. But tomorrow we're going down to Saunderstown to visit with Spooky parents, so I'll be forced out then.

Yesterday, I proofread "Excerpts from An Eschatology Quadrille," "Ballad of a Catamite Revolver," "Untitled Psychiatrist No. 3," "The Dinosaur Tourist (Murder Ballad No. 11)," and "Objects in the Mirror." Which brings me to the end of the ms for The Dinosaur Tourist. But now I need to set it aside and get back to Sirenia Digest. But proofreading, it was heartening to see that I managed to write some genuinely good fiction in 2017, even if none of it was of the novel length that everyone clamor for and for which I am paid considerably more than I am paid for short fiction. But we do what we can do. Hopefully, I can get back to The Dinosaur Tourist in only a couple of weeks.

Yesterday, I had email from Andy Rindsberg, a paleontologist acquaintance of many years, from the University of West Alabama in Livingston and also from Mary Prondzinski, collections manager at the Natural History Museum of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

I've decided to read Michael McDowell's Blackwater series again. I've not read it since 1983, when the books were new.

Last night, Spooky made a delicious baked chicken in a spicy, hot tomato sauce, with mushrooms and bell pepper, and we had it with Brussels sprouts and potatoes.

We're trying to get into The Gilmore Girls, because we liked The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel so much. But, so far, I'm not enjoying it much at all, and the things that work about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are nowhere to be seen. I'm concluding that I'm not the target audience, whatever that may have been.

A couple of posts from Facebook, from day before yesterday:

These Democrat special election wins are showing us that it will be the DNC that restores balance and normalcy and brings an end to the nightmare, not the pipe dreams of third, fourth, and fifth parties that helped get us into the mess.

~ and ~

I do not believe that the ends justify the means, that justice can follow from denial of due process, or in the efficacy of inquisitions and blacklists. I do not believe in guilt by accusation or that basic human rights can be secured by denying anyone their basic human rights. If the path to justice that you've chosen requires you to become the very thing you profess to oppose (or something worse), then your success will merely mean that an old evil has been replaced with a new and equally toxic evil.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast




10:12 p.m.

Very late getting around today's entry, which has become tonight's entry. Currently, it's 57˚F here in Providence. We made it into the high seventies yesterday, but today was cooler, with thunderstorms. For that matter, it was stormy yesterday, too. We'll have a little summer someday.

Yesterday, I had a very excellent writing day. I managed 2,017 words and found THE END of "Untitled Psychiatrist No. 3." Tomorrow, I'll proofread the story, make line edits, and pull together Sirenia Digest No. 136.

Today, though, Spooky and I went to Providence Place for the 12:50 p.m. matinée of Patty Jenkins' brilliant adaptation of Wonder Woman. As I said on Facebook, this marks the first time I have ever cried at a superhero movie. The film is pretty damn close to perfect, top to bottom, stem to stern, and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. Also, it's interesting to note that, like Rogue One, it echoes such films as The Dirty Dozen, The Guns of Navarrone, and dozens of other war films (Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is essentially an homage to the misfits-on-a-suicide-mission subgenre). And I was very pleased that the director went with WWI instead of the simpler, more familiar milieu of WWII. Wonder Woman is most certainly one of the best superhero films ever made, and it could not have come to us at a time when we needed more, especially not a time when the young women (and children) need it more.

From Facebook, from yesterday:

~ I never thought I'd find myself praying the America would be gripped by another Red Scare. But I now find myself doing exactly that.

~ You can bitch and moan all you want about "dead white men" and the inherently patriarchal nature of the Western canon, but the truth of it is that great writers remain great writers, and we who work today and we who in 2017 struggle with our art do so standing on the shoulders of giants. The unjust circumstances of our history do not diminish the brilliance of those voices, nor does the need for a more diverse literature, as we move forward, diminish their accomplishments.

~ I feel, more and more, like I'm someone upon whom extremists on both sides of the American political divide look and see an enemy. The far right sees me as a "libtard" moonbat, while many progressives and far left folks, increasingly, seem to see me as much too conservative, some even going so far as to accuse me of sexism, racism, classism, etc. seeing me as a sort of traitor to the cause. And I suppose this is the high price, in 2017, of being a centrist (even a centrist liberal). I believe that it is very probably true that America is now more divided than at any time since the Civil War, and it is a very difficult time in which to find oneself a moderate. This is on my mind constantly, to the point that I spend a great deal of time doubting myself.

~ In trying to comprehend the dilemma in which centrist liberals finds themselves, simply consider that the Bernie or Busters and the Jill Stein supporters considered Hillary Clinton to be "exactly the same" as the Trump and the Tea Party Republicans, while the Tea Party Republicans considered her the be an arch demon of the Far Left. The truth, of course, is that she was neither of those things. But anyone who stands in the middle, or anywhere near the middle, is assumed by both sides to be the enemy. To be an extremist is to lose the ability to see the world except through the lens of your own fanaticism.

~ American democracy has survived the past 241 years due to our capacity to compromise. The truth is that compromise is the backbone of our republic.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast



3:38 p.m. (June 1st)

Rainy day, and it's only 52˚F. But at least all that fucking snow is gone. As long as we don't get walloped again this weekend, we might be free and clear.

I only slept four hours last night. Since March 15th, I've only left the house twice.

I can't keep this up.

Yesterday, I read over what I'd written on Tuesday, and I wrote a few new sentences.

I watched Facebook "friends" "unfriend" me because I've finally had enough of not saying what I think about Sanders and his cult of personality for fear of...well...pretty much what's happening because I've finally started saying what I think about Sanders and his cult of personality.

No, he can't win the nomination. This is not a question of opinion. It's pretty much a mathematical certainty. At this point, he poses almost no genuine threat to the party he's high-jacked. But it galls me all the same. No, I'm not a far-left liberal. I'm not interested in a revolution. I'm a slightly left of center liberal interested in fixing the system we have and preserving and expanding upon the progress we've made, not casting it all aside for the pipe dreams of socialists and democratic socialists. I've lived under five Republican presidents, and I know what we stand to lose if we to fail to send a candidate to the election who has a chance of beating the Republicans.

I do not back the lesser of two evils. I did not back Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992 (and 1996) and Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 (and 2012) because I vote the lesser of two evils. I supported those candidates because I believe in the Democratic Party and the principles and values it represents and recognize and cherish the advances it has fostered. And it makes me ill watching Sanders' disingenuous, opportunistic attempt to use it as a stepping stone to the presidency. Sanders and his supporters are cynically employing the Democratic Party the way that a cuckoo employs the nests of other species of birds, the same way that Trump is using the Republican Party. This is the Year of the American Cuckoo.

And I'm tired of watching and being silent.

If you want to stop following me, fine. If you want to get rid of all my books because I'm not "feelin' the Bern," then that's what you have to do. But please do not attempt to use the comments section of this journal (or my Facebook) to convince me how wrong I am. You make your mistakes, and I'll make mine.

Yeah, I could have kept my mouth shut and saved myself the bother. But I've been doing that too long.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast