Monday, June 1st

The Daily Report

I have to tell you, there is something in me that just rejoices at the perfection of a month beginning on Monday. I love it when things line up like that. I’m not 100% over being sick, but good enough to make the effort of going to work, especially since I would be kicking myself if I had the chance to start a work week cleanly on Monday and have it be the first of the month.

At the same time, I’m a little aghast that it’s June already. Where does the time go? I was sick twice in May, on top of the con. April seems to have disappeared without a trace this year. I spent much of the spring mired in a depressive fog, really.

Part of missing much of May means that I did not do nearly as much to promote Angels of the Meanwhile as I meant to do. Well, with a time-limited offer, it was probably inevitable that a certain amount of its impact would come down to the wire. I’m going for broke today, contacting people with larger profiles and asking them to help boost it.

In happier news: I now have my fourth published poem of the year. I will be making a separate blog post about that in a bit.

State of the Me

Well, I have a sore throat from all the nasal stuff that’s been dripping down it, and my nose is still slightly runny on one side. I am much better, though. Gone is the full body soreness and deep-bone fatigue that signals to me that I’m in a real fight. This is just clean up.

Plans For Today

Today is definitely a “get back into the swing of things” day. Or maybe “get into the swing of things”. I’m kind of working on establishing a new normal here, armed with fresh insight garnered from the con.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

POEM: The Night Wind’s Ballad

My new poem “The Night Wind’s Ballad” is available as part of Niteblade #32. Niteblade uses a sort of hybrid sales/free model. You can buy the issue here, but once they have reached a total of $50 for the issue they will unlock the web-based version on their website (which currently only shows incomplete teasers).

“The Night Wind’s Ballad” is a piece I wrote on the plane while flying to Florida for Christmas last year. The title changed a few times before I submitted it. It was originally “A Night Song In Common Meter” and then “The Night Wind’s Lullaby”.

I think I like the lullaby title best, but I wasn’t sure it worked, given the actual theme of the words. It is in common meter, which makes it a “pick a tune and sing along” song, though for best creepy effect, I recommend reading it with “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in your head.

Niteblade has announced they are closing after their next issue. I am very pleased to have been able to make the cut before they vanish into the night.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

Sad Puppies Review Books: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY

Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)

There are some days when it seems like fighting the causes of puppy-related sadness. When the whole world is arrayed against us due to the vile calumnies of a tiny insignificant clique, when hit piece after hit piece is slipped into liberal rags such as The Atlantic and Popular Science, when no one who attempts to refute us bothers to keep track from day to day what our motivation is, I start to wonder, “John, what is even the point of it all?”

Then I read a book like this, and I remember. I remember why we fight.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is the tale of a young man persecuted past the point of all reason. Only in the sick world of so-called Social Justice would he be held up as a comic figure rather a tragic one to be rescued or, failing that, avenged.

Our story begins when the main character wakes up with gum in his hair. Yet when he went to sleep, it was safely and responsibly in his mouth, where gum belongs. I am sure the SJWs would say that it is his fault for chewing gum in the first place, that he was somehow “asking for it”. They hate victim blaming until the victim is a white straight “CIS-MALE” and then suddenly everything is the victim’s fault. I ask you, is this morality where a person is always wrong 100% based on the gender and race?

If you say it is Alexander’s fault that the gum wound up in his hair, then you are saying he shouldn’t have had it in his mouth. If you are saying that he shouldn’t have had it in his mouth, you are saying he shouldn’t be allowed to chew gum. Who are you to say that he shouldn’t chew gum just because he is a straight white male, or as normal people who don’t notice sex or race would say, a normal person?

The rest of the book chronicles the world’s attempts to punish a young normal person for being normal. His brothers—doubtless good little sheeple who baa along to the SJW line—are given toys in their cereal while he has none. He is cruelly and arbitrarily denied a window seat. He is blamed for doing things that he clearly intended no negative consequences to come from.

When he loses his marbles down the bathtub drain, what is the lesson supposed to be? That it’s his fault? That he shouldn’t have taken his marbles into the bathtub? What man could live like that? What man would want to?

Even his beta cuck of a father—a man who has so little self-respect he allows his wife to drive him to and from work so she can have the car to gallivant around town from children’s shoe store to pediatric dentist office to wherever her little heart desires while he’s out earning a living to support her carefree lifestyle—chides Alexander for what is essentially his own failure to impose discipline.

The part that really struck home with me is the moment when his teacher chooses to praise—or “award” we might say—another student’s piece of artwork over his, just because the picture of a sailboat conforms more to her narrow-minded ideas about what art should be than his picture of an invisible castle.

Why should one person be put in charge of judging what is and isn’t art? Why should one person have to submit to a socialist public school teacher’s decision about whose art is allowed to go up on the board? This is exactly the attitude we of the Sad Puppies campaign took a stand against when we decided to nominate the books chosen by Brad Torgersen in order to make sure that science fiction stays exactly the one way we think it should be forever.

If at times during the book it seems that the victimization of the young white male protagonist is so blatant that it almost reads as a subversion of the Alinksy-approved SJW narrative, the end erases all doubt. They’re simply that open in their racist misandry these days. The book ends with the character’s mother writing off his troubles, minimizing them. So much for “listen and believe”!

She tells him that some days are just “like that”, as if it was all just a coincidence, as if she and the teacher and the carpool driver (all women!) hadn’t conspired together to make it happen.

But then, this is the same crew that wants us to believe that it’s somehow not a massive conspiracy when multiple news outlets cover the same story within a day of each other, isn’t it?

They must think we were born yesterday.

Two stars.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

This JUST In

There is a game children play—or more often, try to play at—when they are caught doing something they know they shouldn’t. It’s called “I WAS JUST”.

Running around the pool deck? “I WAS JUST walking quickly.” No rule against that, right? The sign says not to run, not to walk slowly.

Teasing the new kid? “I WAS JUST talking to them.” Geez, don’t you want them to feel welcome?

Those of us who have dealt with bullying or harassment know how pernicious the logic of the JUST can be. JUST talking, JUST joking, JUST being friendly, JUST happen to be going the same way…

And while I think most parents don’t fall for the amazingly elaborate web of lies where a child claims they were JUST checking on the cookies to make sure no one else was stealing them, teachers and other part-time responsibility figures don’t feel comfortable moving against the worst, most entitled and self-justified troublemakers without a clear-cut rule and a red-handed violation of it. Challenging the lie doesn’t seem worth the headache. So the kids who make life hell for others while sleeping the sleep of the JUST grow up with the understanding that this is a winning move.

This brings us up to the Sad Puppies campaign, a mean-spirited and divisive campaign whose founders and leaders have never been shy about what they are doing and why… until people start calling them on it, at which point they pretend that no one said anything about poking a stick in anyone’s eye, no one on their side accused anyone of nominating the wrong works for the wrong reasons, no one ever alleged a clique was controlling the Hugos, no, no, nothing like that!

Oh, no. If any of that happened, we are supposed to ignore it because from start to finish, the Sad Puppies campaign has JUST been about raising awareness about the Hugo nomination process, so people know they have the ability to nominate whatever work or writer they think has been overlooked.

And who could object to a campaign that is JUST doing that? That would be like opposing a group that is JUST standing up for ethics in video game journalism. It would be like blaming children for breaking an expensive vase playing football indoors when they were JUST trying to get more exercise like you always said they should. Sheesh, what do you have against kids getting exercise?

To be real for a moment: I can buy the idea that some of the people involved in the Puppy campaigns have bought into this line. I think that even a lot of the children who proclaim that they were JUST have convinced themselves of the truth of what they’re saying.

So if you are a Puppy reading this, here’s how you convince the rest of the world that you mean all those high-minded ideals more than the snipping and sniping:

Next year, try actually spreading awareness of the open nature of nominations. Don’t buy into the slate. Don’t take your recommendations and hand them off to someone who may ignore them while assembling a slate of their own picks. Instead do what countless other people have done for years: post your own recommendations directly, as recommendations.

Add an explanation that anyone who buys a supporting membership to Worldcon can nominate their own picks, and bam… you will have just raised awareness of the nomination process.

What does participating in a slate do that furthers that mission? What does making vague, unfounded accusations that past nominees/winners benefited from some shadowy affirmative action program do to advance the cause? What does all the noise and mess and deliberate provocation and stirring up controversy have to do with anything? What does it add?

If you really JUST want to make sure everyone knows how the nomination and voting process works so more people can get involved, great! Focus on doing that. Some people might grouse about the outcome, but nothing in this world pleases everyone.

But no matter who is pleased or displeased with the final ballot or the perceived demographics of Hugo voters after such an influx, at least you’d be able to enter your house justified instead of JUST-ified.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.