SugarFree

I have been reading plague novels, old standards like Earth Abides and The Long, Loud Silence, the inescapable The Stand by Stephen King, Plague by the entertainingly batshit Graham Masterton* and The Eyes of Darkness by Dean R. Koontz (which isn’t much a plague book, but the bioweapon used as a plot device was developed in Wuhan, China and named Wuhan-400, which is just a wild coincidence unless COVID-19 also gives you telekinetic powers.)

*Graham Masterton is also the author of one of my all-time kooky books, The Manitou, where an Indian medicine man who died 300 years ago seeks to be reborn into the modern world by manifesting as a tumor on a young woman’s back. And the best idea anyone has to save her is to hire a modern medicine man and let them fight it out after the deformed ancient medicine man claws his way out of her back womb. If this sounds familiar you might have seen the film adaptation starring Tony Curtis, directed by William Gridler, one of my favorite schlock filmmakers. His credits include 1974’s Abby (a blaxploitation rip-off of The Exorcist,) 1976’s Grizzly (a 1976 shot-by-shot rip-off of Jaws but with a bear) and 1977’s superb Day of the Animals which features cougar wrestling, a wise Native American mentoring a young boy about woodland survival and a deranged Leslie Neilson trying to rape a teenager after numerous megalomaniacal rants. Sadly, whatever delights Girdler’s future career had in store for our sore brains was cut short when he died in a helicopter accident while scouting movie locations in the Philippines at the age of 30.

 

Sloopy

I’m back on my The Neverending Story kick

Jesse.in.mb

Octavia Butler – Kindred. So I really enjoy reading Octavia Butler. I always mean to read more Octavia Butler. And then I read Octavia Butler and I recognize a rarefied form of a brokenness in her characters and their relationships that I see in myself, my family and others. And then it’s a couple of years before I read more Octavia Butler. Recommend.

Regulatory documents related to the current emergency status for both work and fun.

STEVE SMITH

STEVE SMITH READ NOVEL THE SPIRIT BY HOOMAN WRITER THOMAS PAGE PUBLISHED IN HOOMAN YEAR 1977. BOOK FULL OF LIES AND SLANDER ABOUT STEVE SMITH AND STEVE SMITH PEOPLE. STEVE SMITH EAT MEAT NOT APPLES. STEVE SMITH NOT THROW ROCKS AT PEOPLE. STEVE SMITH NEVER BURN DOWN SKI LODGE. AND BOOK HAVE NO SEX. NO SEX AT ALL. GRR. STEVE SMITH DISAPPOINTED AND BY DISAPPOINTED STEVE SMITH MEAN ANGRY!

JW

After action reports from the Bilderberg and Bill Gates funded Event 201. QAnnon has all the details if you can find them on the darkweb. Epstein knew what they were planning and was silenced by the Clintons.

mexican sharpshooter

Lately I’ve been reading The Decadent Society by Ross Douhat.  I know, I know, I am asking to get pelted by rotten lettuce.  I picked it ip after reading this review written by Peter Thiel.  Thus far it is interesting, but since nearly every column Douhat writes he researches and properly identifies the root cause but comes to a non-sensical conclusion, I assume the last chapter will be infuriating.

SP

I’m reading textbooks about healthcare reimbursement methodologies. I’ve learned some things.

1) Anyone who would willingly become an expert in this is insane.

2) Anyone who is an expert in this probably has job security FOREVER.

3) This is the perfect example of what happens when government gets involved in healthcare. Endlessly complex, difficult to understand or even wade through, fucks everyone on all sides (with the exception of the bureaucrats and legislators), and is often arbitrary despite having 900 million components, formulas, and regulations specifically touted as removing arbitrariness.

4) Not my jam.

 

OMWC

There are certain books that I read over and over. And for these times, that one is Mackay’s classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. We are living this. I hope Amazon is selling so many copies of this that their printers are wearing out, but I fear that this isn’t the case.

Riven

Reading… for pleasure? [laughs in continuing education] Who even has time for such a thing? All of my reading for the last year or so has been dedicated to adding professional letters after my name. First it was this. Now it’s this. But, hey, there’s good news! It should take me some three years or so to get the one I’m working on now, so you could say my five-year-reading-plan is nearly complete.

SEA SMITH

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters.  STILL NEED MOAR RAPE!

Brett L

I’ve been working you way through the Golden Age of Science Fiction anthologies. Thirties and forties writing really bothers me. I think a lot of it comes out of the by-the-word tension between writer and editor. Adjectives, adverbs, expository sentences, and the extraneous dialogue that makes people sound like actual humans appear have been the first on the cutting block. The Sturgeon Rule definitely applies, even to stories “good” enough to be anthologized. I’d like to ask if anyone has a “teach your child how to work like a medieval peasant” book they’d like to recommend.