Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 97

You, Get Off The Couch

For various reasons (one of them being the whole process described over in Mad Genius Club) I’ve been punting downstairs to the easy chair a lot. Which in turn made me feel all crotchety. (I have to put up the feet to type, or the laptop slides off. But this means I have to do weird things tot he back, and the whole position was just making me feel ick.)

I’ve also gained a lot of weight. Like 1/4 more weight than my already way too heavy weight in the last six months or so. Actually not ...

Running Away

Obviously, I’m not the person to tell you to bloom where you’re planted. In fact one of my biggest problems with Wreck it Ralph (the movie) is that that appears to be its moral.

Not only did I leave my country of origin but I’ve recently left my state-of-the-heart.

The country of origin was not left due to politics. Sure, politics annoyed the heck out of me, but frankly, I was used to treating it as a scrum, and it was not really a problem for me by the time I left. For one things had...

Coming Apart

No, the title does not refer to America. Though I excuse those who go full on doomer, running around with their heads on fire and screaming the sky is falling.

There is a feeling in the air, a sense that things are falling apart, that the center cannot hold, that in fact the world we knew, the world those of us around the mid-century mark of a little past grew up in is gone, and that nothing will bring it back.

That is because this is largely true. And it accelerated in the last three ...

Do It Yourself

When I was starting out in writing, the common advice was “you’re in charge of your career.”

I have no idea why that was the common advice, since as a beginning or pre-published writer you had almost no agency.

Note I didn’t say you have no agency. There were things you could do or refuse to do that could help or destroy your career.

Like, for instance, if you refused to learn, or refused to read how-to books, for some inexplicable reason, you’d be locked out of the language that th...

Hello, fellow humans!

Hello, fellow humans. I’m doing righteous battle with a shifter short story, in which the following phrase has just been typed “there are going to be a lot of babies in the morgue any minute now.” And this doesn’t mean the babies are dead.

Okay, it’s probably not a short story, since it’s at 10k words and not finished.

However, we’ve reached the point in “how dirty my house is” (you really don’t want to know. let’s just say certain people of fuzzitude have tracked litter everywhere and...

Roll To Disbelieve

I’m not going to say anything bad about Scott Adams. Most of these cultural figures make no sense at all to me, anyway, since I march to the tune of my own kettle of fish. I mean, Dilbert was funny… sometimes. Though maybe that had to do with the fact I was never cube-farmed.

I’m going to say up front and no mistake that he should not have been cancelled for saying what he did. Turn it around. If he were calling for “safe spaces” for black people, it would essentially be the same thing, a...

Incomprehensible Abundance

As all of you know I have vices. To be specific, when tired or overwhelmed I read stuff that while not itself bad (even the strange ones) is the equivalent of burning spare cycles.

This varies with the level of depression. If mildly depressed, but mostly tired and not feeling great, I read Jane Austen fanfic, back to back. Its great for those middle-of-the-night-can’t-sleep jags. And doesn’t give you nightmares after. If more depressed than that, I go to true crime. More depressed than th...

A Passion For Control

A friend’s company has sent out an order for people to declare his pronouns in his signature line….

So there was a discussion about this. And neither of us can understand it. Because you know, the only time you use someone’s pronouns is when the person is being talked about in the third person.

(And don’t get me started on they/them: I want you to refer to me in the most generic terms possible, and as though I had multiple personalities. It’s…. cute is a word for it. Mentally defectiv...

Liberte, Fraternite, Equity?

The problem with the DIE (Diversity inclusion, equity (WHY would I use their order to obscure what they are?)) proposals is that they’re the French revolution’s answer to problems no one in America really has or has ever had, and certainly problems no on in the US has had in living memory time.

So, to explain, the reason that the French tried to establish EQUALITY not before the law but of results is that they were overthrowing millennia of purposeful, legal discrimination.

In that, th...

Good Mor– Afternoon

I was going to write a blog post on how discriminating against a minority paradoxically weaponizes it.

I was also going to finish a story. But then my husband needed to have a long talk with me. And it was an important talk. (No, nothing bad. On the contrary, but still a long talk.)

And here we are. And I haven’t done any writing….

So I thought I’d lay low for a while and pretend nothing was late, but then again, I realized that I might as well face the music and tell you what...