Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 310

I’m Not Sure What to Write

For the first time in a week, I slept through the night.  The last echoes of the flu seem to be a massive auto-immune attack that left me coughing and having asthma issues at night.  So, yes, you’ve been listening to the ramblings of a woman with almost no sleep.

This weekend I need to finish the collaboration with Kevin Anderson — well, my parts of it — so I don’t kill his schedule.  It’s going to be tough, and my mind is already on it and not on this blog.

I haven’t had any promo posts, and...

The thought police strike again – Amanda S. Green

The thought police strike again – Amanda S. Green

Recently, a story hit the media in the DFW area about a local high school student being disciplined by his high school for “racially insensitive” comments made in a group tweet. The comments are alluded to but the context in which they were made remains a mystery. (At least I have been unable to determine what they might be.) I have seen nothing describing who might have been taking part in this group text, whether the student in question sent...

Let’s Talk About Money

Yes, I do know nice people don’t talk about money, and also that it makes the world go round, though I don’t remember anyone quantifying the amount of money necessary for 365 days and nights of Earth-rotation.

If you’re looking at that paragraph and wondering if I’ve lost my mind, I assure you, it’s still here, in the little jar by the bedside table where I keep it.  And that none of those statements are nearly as crazy as the idea people seem to have about money nowadays.

What idea?  Well, i...

The Real Resistance – by Orvan Ox

The Real Resistance – by Orvan Ox

Racist! Fascist! Nazi! Misogynist! Xenophobe! Homophobe! Thank you!

 

Recently $HOUSEMATE and I were dining out and our server had the curious habit of saying “Thank you” during every interaction, whether it made any sense or not.  This is likely not a quirk of the server, but of a current trend in customer service. A local store suddenly has a “Thank you” policy for every customer interaction as well. Evidently they got severely dinged on a secret shopping r...

Dance To The Music

The last day I’ve been going “Argh” as I realize the barriers that have been put to thinking and expression thereof, as well as the continuous blast of “this you must think, this you must celebrate” (more onerous than even “this you must not think” and “this you must not do” that Heinlein cautioned us about) just in the last ten years or so.

The first occasion of ARGH was my going over page proofs for my mystery, Dipped, Stripped and Dead (under pen name Elise Hyatt.)

It was supposed to be ou...

SOME Like It Hot

My family has a complex relationship with food.  Judging by my waist line, so do I.

When I got married I didn’t know how to cook, as in, at all.  This came about for two reasons, the first being that no one in my family expected me to ever marry (“I pity the man who’ll take you” was mom’s favorite exclamation) and if I didn’t marry, culturally, I probably would never have moved out of my parents’ house, where mom cooked.

Except by the time I was fourteen or so, they were starting to suspect t...

Not an obituary and Miscellaneous by Sarah/Sunday Vignettes by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli

I woke up late and with a sinus headache.  We’re apparently having a major change in weather sometime today, so that explains it, but even ibuprofen failed to dent it, which accounts for my being so late today, I guess.

The other part of this is that I don’t want to write an obituary.  I’m in that uncomfortable position of losing mentors and older relatives, that leaves me with the expectation that I’m next in line for the doleful harvest, as well as missing the people who depart and being le...

A Wee Snippet

I MEANT TO BLOG.  I was looking at a post Orvan sent me, intending to put it up.  And then family stuff came up, and then I got involved in unpacking and ironing from the trip to Portugal.  (What? It’s only eight months, and it got stuck in the middle of unopened household boxes) and I just realized what time it is.

So, I delivered Darkship Revenge and it will be out in May.  Will a wee Snippet amuse you?

This is not the beginning of the book, but it is strongly related to its theme, and part...

The Problem of Minimum Wage

No, I’m not going to rehash the problem that raising minimum wage means fewer entry jobs, which over time make for fewer people who even have the (timeliness, work) habits to hold a job, which, over time, impoverishes a society and leads to more welfare.  This is a classic “kindness can be cruel” paradox, impenetrable to do gooders who operate on feels.

Being the world’s worst-ever person (but I have to share the trophy with Kate) I’m not even going to rehash the whole “but people can’t live...

And Marry Our Fortunes Together

As most of you know, my culture of origin is an emigrant culture. For centuries now Portuguese have emigrated for all sorts of reasons: because of high birth rate (not extant now), because of lack of opportunity, because the country is barely big enough to swing a cat without getting a passport, because the North is hilly and rocky, because the south is flat, semi-arid and cultivated for centuries on the system of huge farms and absentee landlords, because like most Latin nations Portugal def...