Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 39

What Have You Done For me Lately?

When I was in Europe, whether visiting in Portugal or in brief airport sojourns in Madrid and Amsterdam I kept running into weird things coming off the TV. No, seriously.

“The government must provide more affordable housing.” “We demand the government create more pre-school slots.” “Government must provide more transportation.” “Government needs to create more child care.”

Look, it was so pervasive that I heard it twice at least per airport, though I only stayed there a couple of hours...

La Vie En Memes!

...

Gone and Done

While I’m sick — yeah, still kind of stewing. Better, but not well. I suppose it’s that whole “when you’re older you heal slower” but I’m kind of impatient — I’ve been preventing myself from doing what patently needs to be done around the house by watching endless youtube videos.

And somehow I settled into the channel of this guy who does “Faces of the Forgotten” (I first discovered him while looking up a curious sculpture in a cemetery in Iowa city.) Okay, full disclosure, my ADD spastic...

The Poisoned Stream

Yesterday in one of my hangouts someone brought up the Tartaria conspiracy. This is one of my favorite internet insanity conspiracies, second only to “The dinosaurs are circling the Earth in a spaceship habitat, waiting for the right time to come back.” And I’m not sure it’s second to that, since on the insanity scale the dinosaur one is at least slightly more plausible.

For those who haven’t stumbled on this:

In recent years, a new alternative world history claim has arisen from th...

Listening For The Bells

There is a persistent legend — yes, from Portugal, too, but I’ve heard it echoed from Italy and other places — of villages swallowed by earthquake and tsunami where the submerged church bells ring with sea storms.

Here, before I get into the post proper, I must make two things absolutely clear:

The first is that if I ever had any right to complain about how Portuguese run their own affairs, it was while I was one of them, before the age of 27 or so. I have absolutely no right to compla...

A Glimpse In Passing

First, let me reassure you I am indeed MUCH better. My ears are still utterly stopped, so everything seems to be very far away, but that will either fix itself or I’ll get used to being deaf. I can now go several hours without cough syrup, and my wakeness periods are up to half an hour or more.

Now the big danger is my pushing too hard, as the things undone are bothering me. But for today I’m limiting myself to “washing clothes from trip” which might seem mild but isn’t, because while th...

MOstly alive

Slept 13 hours last night and I’m better. Meaning my brain is mostly working, but my body is still shutting down on the regular. Have vegged in front of a lot of stupid utube videos.

I do have posts to write. And books. But …. not yet up to it.

Don’t break anything. Don’t set fire to any large bodies of water. Do not invade any third world countries. If you take your guns on a water journey, remember to give them life vests. (Americans are lousy boaters.) Turn off the TV before so call...

Sarah’s In A State

Good news: I’m home.

Bad news: I managed somehow to contract the WORST cold I’ve had in…. oh, a decade or so. Let’s put it this way: I slept twelve hours, showered and had breakfast and I feel like I did a hard WEEK’s work.

It was probably a normal sized cold when I left — we got soaked a couple of times while out and looking at things, and everyone in Portugal was sniffling. — but traveling 28 hours, dragging bags, etc did it a whole lot of no good.

For the record, if any of you f...

Meme and promo delayed

By Holly the Assistant

So when I woke up this morning, I had a message sent at three am my time letting me know that as Sarah is in transit and certain EU airports provide insufficient working conditions to access the blog, please to let you all know that the meme and promo posts will be delayed by a day.

You are all now informed, and I hope your plans for autumn are going well!

When Death Comes Below The Cross

Some utter savage painted the rays on the cross blue, on a cross that is very very old. How old I don’t know, these things aren’t precisely documented.

This cross stood once, before highways crisscrossed the entire village and refashioned it into something utterly alien, at the crossroads that led to the village.

As it’s normal, all sorts of superstitions accrued to it. My dad had this thing going that truly annoyed him. If it was even slightly overcast, when he passed the cross, it wo...