Friday Quick Notes

Amazon Prime members and other die-hards, rejoice (or not): The Nickronomicon can now be pre-ordered in its paperback form on that site. Knock yourself out.


If you don't like Amazon, there's a better place to e-order my UK-only novel The Last Weekend: Cemetery Dance has copies! Go buy 'em.

Kameron Hurley has a good post on trolls and trolling, and nails one thing I've always found perplexing:

And to be blisteringly honest, standing up and telling a troll how much their behavior destroyed you – when most trolls are actually sadists, people who take joy in the misery and harm of another – is REALLY giving them what they want. “This abuse destroyed me!” is like a rallying cry on some dudebro message boards to redouble their efforts. “Fuck yeah mission accomplished!” I can practically hear them every time I see some online confessional about another pro leaving the internet because of harassment.


I liked this Earth First! piece about an intervention at a Portland, Oregon Death in June show, and the rise of hipster-fascism. My two favorite bits:

The crowd responded to my sermon on the subject rather lethargically, until one intelligent-looking fellow blurted out “Situationism!” One method that DIJ’s apologists use to shirk accountability for advocating a “left-wing Nazism” is to present platitudes about artistic freedom and the free-floating games of signifiers deployed by Situationists and denizens of punk rock’s more obscure archives.

And this one here:

One lady of color dressed in Goth attire shouted at the crowd of antifascists, “Why are you protesting here when you don’t do anything about immigration?” I responded that I have personally marched alongside immigrants and Indigenous people against corrupt law enforcement, white supremacists, and immigration policies. In fact, I’ve been pepper sprayed by police on two of those occasions.

An awkward silence ensued, as we searched each other’s eyes for a way to rise above that which obstructed us from being friends, and then she began to dance, ecstatic on the sidewalk under the lights of the marquee. When she filed into the theater, somewhat more subdued, her heavily mascaraed eye fixed on me through the poster bills and fliers taped to the window-doors, and an inconsolable, abject space of both distance and connection stirred in me.

The Pacific Northwest is full of this sort of stuff. A somewhat stifling middle-class moralism will always lead to some kind of antinomian response, and in a left-wing milieu the response zooms to the right. I like Cameron Pierce a lot, and love many of the books by his mustache-joke publisher but hate the name. As far as my CV is concerned, I sold a short story to LF Review, not "Lazy Fascist" Review. (Note, I am not saying that Cameron or LF authors are "hipster fascists"; it's just very easy to make a profound semiological mistake in a politically confused environment.)

If this all sounds over the top, it's worth noting that even MSNBC had a semi-cozy interview with a KKK leader this week, giving him air to express his views and make his points without only marginal barking back at him. For the frogs in the pot, the water is beginning to warm.


I am now totally into cod liver oil. I drink a capful each morning when I come in to work.