Monthly Archives: April 2023

April 21, 2023 · 4:31 pm

An unsuccessful experiment in time management, but first: thank you!

First, thank you to whoever checked out Atlas Shagged on Hoopla. I’m glad you took the time to try my stuff. Second, thanks to everyone who reads this blog regularly. It’s good to know there are people out there reading my words, whether it’s books or blog posts.

The unsuccessful experiment was trying to put all my tasks for a given day in the to-do list of my BusyCal app (which I switched to when Apple changed iCal to make it unusable for my style of scheduling). It’s a quicker read than when I plot out my whole schedule in Scrivener but it feels more awkward to use, particularly if I want to change and rearrange things (that happens). So probably back to some form of Scrivener page next week.

This week turned out well despite Trixie having combined diarrhea/vomiting late Monday, with some blood in the stool. Whatever it was, it went away after some doses of probiotics and a day of restricted meals, so phew! I hate it when my little angel is sick.For once it was TYG and not me who woke up because I’d knocked myself out with my ambien prescription and slept through it. I did take Trixie to the vet the next day which threw me off my game I spent Tuesday mostly doing blogging rather than the fiction I’d had scheduled.

I worked a little more on Impossible Takes a Little Longer. This rewrite is still going well. Let No Man Put Asunder less so. I’ve been feeling something about the last few chapters was off and so I spent a couple of hours early in the week trying to nail down the problem. Finally I got it: the interactions with the police have lessened the threat level as Paul and Mandy aren’t going it alone. Not only that, the story’s gotten too talky. So I went back to chapter five and started reworking the story. Chapter Six ends with one cop dead, Paul and Mandy on the run from the law, a ruined church and the threat level upped. However that means the following four chapters are now no good, except for helping show me what not to do.

A couple of my writers’ group friends sent me feedback on Oh the Places You’ll Go. It was really helpful, as I’ll detail in a blog post next week. I’d hoped to start rewriting it but Tuesday threw everything off. Still, overall it was a productive week, so yay.Over at Atomic Junkshop I channeled my past writing on political paranoia in Screen Enemies of the American Way into a general blog post on American political paranoia and one about the JFK assassination in the movies. At Con-Tinual’s YouTube channel I’m on a panel about Hammer horror.

I’ll leave with a couple of photos of Snowdrop when he let me pet him on the couch recently.#SFWApro.

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Filed under Impossible Takes a Little Longer, Short Stories, Story Problems, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as let no man put asunder, Oh the Places You'll Go

April 21, 2023 · 5:10 am

Trixie, queen of the dog park!

For last week’s date, TYG and I walked the dogs to the nearest dog park. The small-dog section was largely empty, but our pups enjoyed running around anyway. Our yard isn’t secure so they don’t get much chance to do it at home.

Here’s Trixie, standing proud and alone.And here’s one that captures how small she is.My little angel. We’ll be going back again though we’ll probably need to bring water next time as the weather starts heating up.

#SFWApro.

Republicans doing whatever it takes

Llano County, Texas’ county commission replaced its library board in 2021 and began removing books from the shelves (dealing with race and LGBTQ stuff, are you surprised?). They’ve been sued and the judge has issued a ruling the books go back on the shelf for now. The commission’s solution: shut down the library.

House Republicans have proposed a bill that would shield future presidents from state prosecutions, shifting them to the Republican dominated federal courts.

Missouri State Senator and Republican Mike Moon opposes gender-affirming care for trans minors, but he’s fine with 12-year-olds being able to marry.

Jared Woodfill is an anti-gay Texas Republican attorney … who not only knew and covered up that his law partner was a pedophile, he hired young men to work for his partner, some of whom claim they were assaulted.

A new bill in Florida would exempt travel records for state leaders from the state’s strong public records law, as well as hiding the names of visitors to the governor’s mansion. Hmm, could it be Ron DeStalinist has something to hide? Still, to give DeSantis his credit, he’s been very successful at crushing black political power in the state.

When Republicans approved mifepristone-banning judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, they knew he was a strong forced-birther. Now that right-to-life has proven a loser at the voting booth, they’re not celebrating the ban. Go figure.

Iowa will no longer provide free emergency contraception for rape victims.

If you’re wondering how bad, legally, Kacsmaryk’s ruling on mifepristone was, here’s a deep dive. Spoiler: it’s very bad.

So is Gov. Gregg Abbott’s argument that the guy who shot a BLM protester should be pardoned because he had fear for his life: “At Perry’s trial, a defense expert testified that Foster could have raised his rifle and shot Perry in well less than a second. This is irrelevant. Texas is an open carry state. Anyone openly carrying a rifle could, in theory, point, aim, and kill someone in a fraction of a second. If what Foster did justifies lethal self-defense, you could plausibly argue the same about anyone carrying a rifle in public, particularly at a protest, or at any tense situation where there’s the possibility of conflict.”

Speaking of Texas, a new bill that would allow the Texas Secretary of State to invalidate county election results is very precise in effect: “What makes this proposal so egregious is that the bill’s very own text says it only applies to counties with a population of 2.7 million or more. Why such an oddly specific number? Texas’ second-biggest county, Dallas, has a population of 2.6 million, according to the most recent Census Bureau estimates. The law would therefore cover Harris County and only Harris County.”

Abbott and Texas Republicans are also pushing for legislation that blocks local government from enacting labor, environmental, anti-discrimination and other rules that go beyond state regulations — like requiring water breaks for construction workers.

Looking for a state board gig in Arkansas? The application includes a 500-word essay requirement saying what you admire about Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (she subsequently dropped this).

While Republicans’ relentless hunt for election-related fraud has never produced any fraud, it’s driving honest election officials out.

Kansas Republicans narrowly failed to push through a bill that, among other things, would ban covid-vaccine requirements for schools and make it easier to claim a vaccine exemption for kids even without a religious reason.

Remember the guy who attacked Paul Pelosi while hunting for Rep. Nancy Pelosi? Sen. Ted Cruz shared tweets claiming the story of the attack was bogus — and he won’t apologize.

For Republican Jim Banks, opposing wokeness means opposing diversity in federal agencies.

Along with coming for our birth control, Republicans are coming for Social Security.

“I always knew they had drugs. They all had pot. If I needed a kid removed, I would just ask the question and 90 percent of the time, they’d say something stupid and that was enough to remove them from my classroom.” — from a profile of a particularly loathsome member of the right-wing Moms for Liberty. Her actions allegedly include using a dead woman’s online accounts to harass other people.

Equally charming, the officials in McCurtain County OK wax nostalgic on tape about the days when you could get away with lynching blacks.

Ron DeSantis remains a tinpot dictator.

I’ll wrap up by saying something I rarely get to say: good for the Republican National Committee for condemning anti-Semitism in a resolution. It won’t stop elected officials screaming about George Soros, the International Jewish Banker (nope, nothing anti-Semitic there!) but I’ll take every bit of decency I can find.

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Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches

Tagged as Ron DeSantis

April 19, 2023 · 5:15 am

The prediction finally came to pass. Most unfortunate

Netflix just announced that at the end of September, it will cease its DVD service. I’m not entirely surprised, but I am disappointed.

There were people predicting this back when streaming first started to take off: as more and more people streamed movies, the cost and effort involved in DVD delivery simply wouldn’t be worth it. And for a lot of people it won’t make a difference. I’m not one of them.An article I read years ago in TV Guide pointed out that many people don’t watch TV to see specific shows; TV watching is an end in itself so it’s a matter of turning on the set and clicking channels until they find something acceptable. The same applies in the streaming era: some people are happy to sit down, flip through whatever services they have subscriptions to, then watch whatever looks best.If I sit down to watch a movie (or a TV show) I’ve usually made a decision to watch something specific. Sometimes it’s a large project, like watching the Fast and Furious films or working through Alfred Hitchcock’s movies or Francois Truffaut‘s. Other times it’s picking one of my own DVDs I haven’t seen yet. While streaming makes it easy to access a movie instantly, assuming its available, sometimes it isn’t. The next film by Truffaut is The Bride Wore Black; Amazon says it’s not available streaming and I couldn’t find it anywhere else online. As it’s the one Truffaut movie Netflix doesn’t have, I wound up ordering the BluRay.

The rest I was simply going to Netflix on DVD. Now, depending on availability, maybe I’ll end up paying $3.99 a pop to stream. Or having to buy more hard copies. Same thing with Howard Hawks: there are lots of movies he made that I have no interest in owning, but are they available streaming? Time will tell (I could look it up now, but I don’t feel the need).

Another advantage of DVDs is that they’re accessible no matter who has the streaming rights. I don’t go out to the movies as much as I used to and I don’t have a Disney + subscription but I’ve been able to see all the Marvel movies by Netflixing the DVDs. A bunch of other stuff too. With the splintered streaming landscape, not having the DVD option will prove inconvenient, or expensive. Probably inconvenient: it’s simply not practical to subscribe to all the streaming services that have stuff I might want. And who knows what will be available as the streaming services become more like broadcast TV?

This is hardly catastrophic. There are more good movies out there than I have a chance of watching in my lifetime; there always have been. But I’m sure it’ll be annoying.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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April 18, 2023 · 5:21 am

WOW for women!

I really like this poster. It’s better than anything I could write for today (sooo tired).More in the same spirit at the Library of Congress website.

#SFWApro.

How does he know what scares me?

“You would certainly fear of just how excellent this goes to what it does!” was the standout comment from perusing my spam folder this morning.

And he’s right — I certainly do fear just how excellent this goes. It’s the greatest fear I have, no honestly! How could a random stranger on the internet possibly have known.

#SFWApro. Cover by Michael Whelan all rights remain with current holder.

The right-to-life movement lies a lot

Matt Walsh has been ranting about trans people on Twitter lately, shrieking about how their terrorists, monsters, Something Must Be Done — and declaring that the trans movement consists of the worst liars in America. That’s almost amusing coming from a misogynist forced-birther such as Welsh because (as I point out in Undead Sexist Cliches) misogyny is built on lies and false beliefs. As for political movements, the right-to-life movement — of which Walsh is part — lies a lot more.

For example, many forced-birthers say they don’t want to punish the mother who gets abortions and that she won’t be punished: women weren’t punished pre-Roe and won’t be now. I’ve seen lots of public statements and interviews to that effect. But in 2019, Georgia passed a bill that potentially allowed the state to prosecute women who get abortions; the right-to-life movement gave it thumbs up. Multiple states have considered laws to prosecute women since and some candidates have supported the idea.

I see lots of hand-wringing about it on the right but no actions — like, say, “If you push for punishing women, we’ll primary you hard.” Plus of course, women are already punished and the movement stays quiet. To say nothing of forcing women to bear dead babies or opposing even a mother’s life-exemption, something they rationalize by lying abortion is never necessary to save the mother’s life. As for rape, they claim pregnancy never happens if it’s a “legitimate” rape, and if it does happen, well, God wants her to be a mommy. Is she going to refuse God’s wonderful gift?

And despite the religious right’s long history of opposition to birth control, Walsh can still shriek about how no, of course they’re not opposed to birth control (I’m not linking to it though). Tell that to Colorado.

Then there’s the claim that the big issue with Roe was that abortion should be left to the states. That was supposedly the result of the Dobbs decision. Now, of course, Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has banned mifepristone nationwide; I don’t anticipate an outcry from the forced-birth movement. Nor if he gets the chance to declare fetal personhood (his opinion declares that “fetus” is less scientific a term than “unborn human.”). And his decision is, by the way, based on complete bullshit: “It was a simple assertion of dominance, a clear statement that the right will stop at absolutely nothing – including the outer bounds of American law – to force women into compliance.”

And let’s not forget the sunny assurances that with Roe overturned, Republicans will now care more for mothers and kids. Or that they believe just saying no to sex takes care of the problem. In a sense, many of them don’t even tell the truth when they say abortion is wrong: lots of right-to-life women get abortions, which says they do believe “My body, my choice” — they just lie to themselves that their abortion is unlike any of those other abortions.

I’ll leave you with Jessica Valenti’s thought that it’s not just the forced-birth actions that stick in her craw, “It’s the looks on the faces of the men who are ruining us. Donald Trump. Brett Kavanaugh. Matthew Kacsmaryk. Smug and assured, ignorant and shameless. Somehow we’ve ended up with the dregs of humanity robbing us of our own.

What makes this all so much worse is that men like these actually do think they know better than we do. In spite of their absolute mediocrity and near-unbelievable idiocy, these men truly believe they are the ones best suited to make decisions about our bodies and futures.”

Undead Sexist Cliches is available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.

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Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches

April 16, 2023 · 5:10 am

Sidesplitting Lovecraftian comedy and other books read

LOLCRAFT: A Compendium of Eldritch Humor comes from the same company that put out the Lovecraftian romance anthology Eldritch Embraces a few years ago. Once again, they’ve included one of my stories and once again the other stories are excellent (I’ve been in anthologies where that wasn’t true. Excellent is better). The Old Ones save Christmas, Bertie Wooster meets HP Lovecraft (“These American authors are all cowboys.”), the Old Ones confront corporate bureaucracy and Las Vegas and vacationers share their online reviews of couples weekend at the Arkham Witch House (“It was weird, the soap was lying on the floor of the bathtub but it seemed an infinite distance away.”). While one or two stories didn’t work for me, the vast majority were a hoot to read.I was much less entertained by Megan Lindholm’s WIZARD OF THE PIGEONS despite some glowing recommendations and Lindholm’s later success as Robin Hobb. In this 1986 urban fantasy, Wizard is a homeless Vietnam veteran wandering the streets of Seattle, dealing with his PTSD and the memories he’s trying to bury but also with the duties his magic imposes on him and the terrible threat of some amorphous evil force invading the city.

Lindholm writes beautifully but by the end of the first few chapters I could tell the ratio of pretty writing to story was way out of whack. At times the story slips uncomfortably close to movies such as Fisher King or They Might Be Giants where everything is in the protagonist’s head; I don’t think the magic is but I’m not sure about the evil force (I got to skimming a lot) and I hate All In Their Head stories. Plus the mentally disturbed Vietnam veteran was and is a bad stereotype (not that they didn’t exist but a lot more went home and resumed something approaching normal life). I’ve wanted to read this for years but now that I have it’s a disappointment.

LOVE EVERLASTING by Tom King and Elsa Charretier was more interesting, but didn’t work for me either. In the first chapter, protagonist Joan falls for her boss even though he’s dating her BFF; it all works out happily but then she wakes up as a young college student who falls for a counterculture type over her father’s objections but once again her life reboots. Eventually we learn a mysterious cowboy guns her down whenever she finds true love.

I’ve no idea where this is going and not in an “intrigued” sort of way. The stories aren’t really parodies as they could easily have appeared in Girl’s Love or similar titles (except the last one, set in the Great War, which doesn’t fit the pattern) and they’re not critiquing the stories or attitudes so was this just a way to make a modern love-comics anthology interesting? The murky discussion at the climax doesn’t explain enough to satisfy.

To end on a win, TYG and I caught the Durham Savoyards’ production of THE YEOMEN OF THE GUARD a couple of weekends ago. This Gilbert and Sullivan operetta takes place in the Elizabethan age at the Tower of London. The alchemist Fairfax has been sentenced to death for witchcraft so a relative can seize his estate; to spite him, he pays Elsie, a traveling entertainer, to marry him, thereby putting his estate off-limits. When Fairfax manages to escape his fate, however, both he and Elsie have to deal with a marriage neither fo them thought would last.

The standout part is Jock Paint, the jester in love with Elsie, his performing partner. Where Shakespeare’s jesters are wry philosophers, Jack has to work at being funny, often struggling; losing his love to Fairfax ends the show on a genuinely and uncharacteristically sad note for G&S. I’ve seen this played several ways — Elsie is heartless, the ending is tragic — but here she’s sympathetic and it’s simply downbeat. It’s odd, given that Jack doesn’t have any more claim to Elsie than Bunthorne had to Patience in Patience, but it works nonetheless. Though Fairfax/Elsie doesn’t, at least for me — unlike Algernon in Patience or most G&S romantic leads, he doesn’t seem in love with his leading lady. Regardless, the Savoyards pulled this off with their usual flair. “Tell a tale of cock-and-bull/Of convincing detail full/Tale portentious/Heaven defend us/What a tale of cock and bull!”

#SFWApro. Covers by Don England (top) and Charretier, all rights to images remain with current holder.

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Filed under Comics, Reading

Tagged as Theatre

April 15, 2023 · 5:15 am

Quantum Leap, Queen’s Gambit and a show that doesn’t begin with Q

I’m curious if making QUANTUM LEAP and the new Night Court sequels to the originals rather than reboots is a sign of a new trend or just a fluke. Either way, I enjoyed the first season.

Raymond Lee plays Ben Song, a scientist on the Quantum Leap project which has been revived after several decades. The project ramrod, Herbert “Magic” Williams (Ernie Hudson) has a reason: he’s one of Sam Beckett’s former swaps (from the S3 opening episode) who learned why he has a gap in his memory from one day in Vietnam; figuring he owes Sam (he saved Williams’ platoon) he’s determined to bring him home. The rest of the key team includes Ben’s ex-military fiancee Addison (Caitlin Bassett), nonbinary tech whiz Ian (Mason Alexander Park) and hacker-turned-security chief Jenn (Nanrisa Lee).

Everyone knows what happened to Sam Beckett so Addison is shocked when Ben, without telling her, leaps by himself: why would he do that, given the risks? Along with keeping Ben safe as his hologram guide, Addison and the crew have to figure out the reason Ben leapt, and the reason he kept it secret. And who is the “Leaper X” following him through time?

The show reworks the original’s premise: now the leaper’s mind occupies someone’s body in the past, rather than physically trading places. That makes more sense (even though it’s a retcon) but it makes the emphasis that Ben will be stuck permanently in that body if he fails not at all sensible: sure it jacks up the stakes but it punishes his host by taking away his life forever (and blocks any future good Ben could do). Despite which, I found the conspiracy arc worked better than expected, though having Ben travel to such now-historical periods as the 1980s and 1990s makes me feel old. “I was hurled across time and space, forgot who you were — yet our love survived.”

QUEEN’S GAMBIT was the 2020 Netflix adaptation of Walter Tevis’ novel about a young orphan in the 1950s who finds salvation from her bleak orphanage home in playing chess with the janitor. She’s good and we get to watch as Beth (Anya Taylor-Joy) begins winning at the amateur level, then turns pro, with her adoptive mother (Marielle Heller) finding prize money a way to support the family after Dad walks out. We watch as Beth’s life moves into the 1980s and she fixes her sights on the big prize, world championship.

Taylor-Joy gives a terrific performance (everyone in this show does) and the period detail is great (though as others have noted, the spinner rack in one early-1960s drugstore scene does not have the right comics in it). It also does a lot that I didn’t expect, such as the way Beth and her mom’s relationship develops. I’m glad I finally got around to watching this. “Let’s pretend you didn’t just compare yourself to Michelangelo.”

I’m much less impressed with GOTHAM KNIGHTS, the new CW series that is yet another Bat- TV show without Batman, as Warner Brothers saves him for the big screen. In the opening episode someone kills Batman and frames a gang of punks headed by Duela (Olivia Rose Keegan) — Harvey Dent’s daughter in comics, the Joker’s daughter here (something she claimed in the comics at one point) — for the crime. Worse, Batman’s true identity is out and that makes his adopted son Turner Hayes (Oscar Morgan) the perfect patsy (Bruce was allegedly changing his will to cut Turner out). Can Turner, Duela, her gang and Carrie Kelly (Navia Robinson) — the Robin from Dark Knight Returns — find the truth when they’re wanted by the cops and the Court of Owls has painted a target on their backs?

This didn’t work for me at all. It feels like the creators thought staying away from costumes and super-types would make it more real or fresh or something; even Carrie wears a dark burglar outfit than anything that looks too comic-book. A much bigger problem is that rather than an alt.Dick Grayson or Damien Wayne, they made up Turner. He’s not Robin (he didn’t even know his dad was Batman), he has no particular skills (the action falls to Duela and Carrie the first episode) and he comes across like a generic rich kid. He ain’t interesting. One final problem is that while I can buy Batman vanishing (the premise for Batwoman and the 2002 Birds of Prey) I don’t believe for a minute he’s really dead. In short, this isn’t something I’ll waste further time on. “How are you going to catch Bruce Wayne’s murder when Batman is dead?”

#SFWApro. Cover by Frank Miller, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under TV

April 14, 2023 · 4:29 pm

We have a rose. Also poison ivy

A few years back, TYG asked for a rose for one of our special-day gifts — I don’t remember if it was a birthday, Valentine’s Day or an anniversary. Trouble was, whenever rose-planting season rolled around, she was slammed with work and could neither go shopping nor work with me to plant it.

This year, however, she has the time. After I read up on roses, we decided we’d be better off with a professional and I contacted Witherspoon Rose Culture. They planted it earlier this month.It’s grown a couple more blooms since then.

Unfortunately the rose dude pointed out that we had poison ivy in the same bed. I’ve sent out bids to several contractors who specialize in dealing with it, though if need be it’s doable by myself. Very carefully of course.

Once again this week I planned to attend the in-person meeting of our writing group (it’s live/Zoom on alternating Tuesdays) but didn’t make it. Just too tired, so I sat around and watched TV instead. I didn’t second guess my decision which tells me I made the right call, but I will get back to it soon. The Zoom group is great but it’s nice to see people in person too.

I finished the 10,000 words I committed to writing on Impossible Takes a Little Longer. It slowed down this week as I got into relatively new material (as opposed to chapters that have survived at least two or three drafts) but everything worked. Hopefully I can keep that up. I may write more on the book assuming I stay current on my other goals. I didn’t feel ready to return to Let No Man Put Asunder this week so that one comes first.

I worked on various short stories, mostly doing research or kicking around ideas for stories that have stalled.

I put in a lot of time in correcting 19-Infinity (I’m debating whether to stick with that for a title rather than the infinity symbol. No firm opinion yet) and ordering a hard-copy proof from Amazon. That’ll help me make the final corrections and decide if the fix I put in for the formatting problems works.

Oh, and our taxes are off. TYG dug up the last forms we needed. That took some time — good thing we bought a new printer last year because it’s way smoother than doing it on the old, broken one.

While I didn’t get any Atomic Junk Shop posts up this week, my Con-Tinual panel dealing with mythological tropes is up on YouTube. You can read my most recent mythological contribution, Death is Like a Box of Chocolates, at Mythaxis. I’ll have more in 19-Infinity later this year.

I’m also almost ready to apply for a “doing business as” name for my new self-publishing house. I’ve narrowed it down to two but I’m going to sleep on it over the weekend.

At the end of a week like this I still feel frustrated with my progress. I didn’t sell any stories, didn’t finish anything, 19-Infinity is still several months from going live. I know that’s the nature of the game — writing’s not the sort of career where I get concrete, finished results every week — but it still bugs me. Such is the writer’s mind.

#SFWApro. Cover by Jack Kirby, all rights remain with current holder.

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Tagged as let no man put asunder