Dusting off

 So, my diabetes numbers are doing just great, thanks, I have now experienced the joys of colonoscopy, and oh yeah, Twitter has been bought by the worst billionaire. So I'm dusting off old places, and finding new ones (or at least new to me), because the guy is a complete waste of skin, and his fans are even worse. So this place is possibly going to see some posting action, I'm spinning up a Tumblr under my usual handle, and I'm shitposting to my weird little soul's content because Twitter isn't going to survive in a pre-buyout form.

An update

 So, it has been a While. Life has been tricky, between terror at four years under a government which openly desired my death for multiple reasons, getting a kid through the early stages of a school system I don't fully understand, and the whole pandemic thing. We're finally starting to come out of that, though, and then when I finally managed to get my blood tests done (and there were plenty; it felt like they took a full unit, split up among the various vials) I got a thoroughly unwelcome surprise: I am now diabetic. I don't know the full details yet, they haven't had me in for the initial inspection and "welcome to diabetes" appointment (and won't for another couple of weeks, which is both annoying and comforting, as it says I'm not in danger of imminent death), but the figures are plenty stark; my fasting blood glucose is far higher than it ought to be, my A1C is in the range of concern, and honestly, this explains how bad the skin on my feet has been lately and why I've been constantly peeing, so I'm not going to claim they must have misinterpreted. No, I will be going in with a checklist, a notebook, and a refusal to leave until I've received referrals to a dietitian, a pain management specialist, and until I'm satisfied that I understand what's going on.

In the meantime, I have given up sugared soda (which is somewhat annoying, as I still had most of a case of genuine Irn-Bru in the fridge and that stuff is sugary as hell), I have reevaluated my carbohydrate intake, and I'm working on walking more. Ultimately, this is most definitely an Embuggerance, but it is an Embuggerance I can live with. I shall be working on slowly decreasing my weight (crash dieting is almost certainly a Bad Idea) and learning what I can and can't do.

I do wish I had my little miniature panther to help me through this, but alas, time has had its way with her and she is no longer with us. We may want to consider taking on a dog instead, as a means of forcing me to go out and walk around.

We don't blame the guns.

We don’t blame the guns. We blame the shitty culture that equates gun ownership with masculinity and virtue; which tells boys that real men express their emotions through violence; which casts asking for help as unmanly; and which casts fear as equivalent to respect. We blame the shitty laws which make guns easier to buy than decongestant medication; the industry lobbyists who spend millions of dollars to dissuade those elected to represent us from enacting our overwhelmingly popular desire for better regulation of the availability of guns; the advertising which makes guns into fashion items; the fiction which portrays use of guns as a trivial matter, rather than a decision to kill another human. We blame the disingenuous assertion that our desire for better regulation is equivalent to a desire for confiscation; the unremitting calls to wait after every single massacre as the drumbeat of death becomes background noise; the constant focus on finding excuses for the person who made a decision to kill other people; the transparently wrong-headed propaganda claiming that we can do nothing but buy our own guns.

We don’t blame the guns. We blame the attitude that someone bent on murder will find a way to murder, so it’s pointless to put any obstacles between them and the tools for maximally efficient murder.

My life with pain

Pain is a very interesting subject to write about. People are often confused by it and the terminology surrounding it, so let's open with some definitions.

Pain threshold is when someone starts to feel pain. Some people will fail to notice an injury that would immediately incapacitate someone else. As a chronic pain sufferer, people assume I have a high pain threshold, but that's not the case. If anything, it's low.

Pain tolerance is how much pain someone can tolerate. This is where I have an extraordinarily high stat; I can ignore a LOT of pain. Mainly because I've had to, since to the best of my recollection I last had a full day without pain... sometime in 1995. More than half my life ago. And even then, days like that were rare exceptions.

It's the economy, stupid.

We've all encountered the person who says climate change can't be happening, the planet isn't getting warmer, because it's cold right now. I'm pretty sure we all know that that's a result of an overly simplistic understanding of what climate is, how it works, and we know that they're thoroughly wrong.

 Now, President Obama is handing over the strongest economy in ages - but Trump's voters are convinced the economy's wrecked, and Trump can fix it. Why is that?

The Prison Problem

In the news today, the US Department of Justice has announced that it intends to end its use of privately-run, for-profit prisons. There has been much rejoicing, but though this does represent a great step forward, offsetting the great retrograde step of using the damn things in the first place, it does not solve the underlying structural problem with the USA's system of incarceration.

The country I left is gone.

In voting to exit the European Union, the British electorate have killed my homeland. A manifestly imperfect homeland, but a land which strove to be welcoming, to learn from the new people it met. A land which acknowledged its bloody past as Not What We Ought To Have Done. The hope I knew has been swept away in a stream of fear, and of exploitation of that fear for personal gain. The recriminations have begun; Scotland now demands another plebiscite, so that they at least may escape the folly of the English. People who voted to leave now profess remorse, claiming that they did not expect to actually win. The pound, once an exemplar of a strong currency, wilts in the heat of uncertainty. London's financial engines falter, and Calais demands an end to the cooperative arrangement which made popping over to France a trivial matter for those within a few hours of the Channel Tunnel. The Troubles are about to re-emerge, worse than they ever were because everybody thought we had things sorted out; Northern Ireland wishes to remain within the EU, within the group which acts as guarantor of its first run of peace in a century.

The United Kingdom is united no longer, and the land I grew up in, with all its flaws, is dead, killed by ignorance, xenophobia, and lies. Oh ye who now tread the soil of the British Isles, walk softly; for you walk upon the grave of my first home.

Economics Sundays 1: TANSTAAFM

The title acronym is shamelessly stolen from Robert A. Heinlein; his aphorism was that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, but it's just as true that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Market. All markets are unfree, and what we have to decide is how regulated they ought to be.

State of the Silas

Today, I had possibly the best reason to go to Harbor Freight, which is a seller of crap-but-cheap tools, hand, electrical, and even air-powered. I got my impact wrench there, after scoring a compressor for free when the people across the street decided they could get by with a smaller one. Today, I needed more of those blue rubber gloves (I use them when preparing chicken, since it makes cleaning my hands much easier and less water-intensive) and a leather punch, because the belt I've been wearing recently (a replacement for my much-abused Swedish army belt, which lasted me twenty years!) had become too loose. I needed an extra hole, and we didn't own a punch. Now we do.

What makes this even better is the fact that one of my brain pills has a side effect of weight gain. It's harder than ever for me to keep my weight down (my mother can attest to my struggles; I simply enjoy food, and tend to thicken at the waist) but I'm managing it. That's cause for celebration.

Appropriation

I try not to be an asshole. Unfortunately, many culturally problematic things never really sink in until you're on the receiving end. Today, I learned what it's like to be on the receiving end of appropriation.

Everyone assumes that using the language of other cultures is respectful, whether it's spoken language or nonverbal language. It can be - but sometimes it isn't.

"It's only a joke!"

Today is April 1st, which is otherwise known as the worst day on the internet. Everyone thinks it's funny to tell plausible lies, and everyone thinks it's my fault I'm upset because I should have known better than to believe them.

Fuck that noise, I say. Do not wilfully damage people's trust in you. Put on a silly hat, or make your lies so utterly outrageous that they cannot possibly be mistaken for real. The onus is on you, as the perpetrator, to ensure that your pranks are not harmful. You do NOT blame the victim. Ever. In any situation.

Overthinking a computer game

I play computer games with friends. We tend to go for co-operative experiences, and they're usually shooters. Currently, my friends' main game is Payday 2, which is morally reprehensible in that the players are acting as criminals, cavalierly murdering armies of police, security guards, and occasionally people who just happened to get in the way. However, we have a hypothesis, thanks to my friends Chad and Chuck, as to why it's all OK: clones. Cloning explains everything.

Hugo eligibility? Really?

It turns out that Winter Bride is in fact eligible for a Hugo Award nomination, in the category of Best Short Story. I don't expect to even be nominated, let alone win, but I'm happy enough to simply be eligible.

Release Party this Saturday!

The authors behind Sojourn volume 2 have decided to host a release party on Facebook. The way this works is that each author drops in with a post, a Q&A session, maybe a giveaway, at a scheduled time. The festivities run all day, but I'm not guaranteed to be there throughout. I will, however, be present; I plan to start my timeslot with a post explaining where my story, Winter Bride, came from, and thereafter I will be taking questions. You can also ask me questions in advance; this makes it more likely that I'll be able to give you a coherent answer!

We have released!

The anthology containing my first published story is now available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and any bookstore which can handle ordering by ISBN: 978-0991487738

The cover reveal

I have now been provided with the cover art for the anthology containing my first published writing. The current plan for release, assuming all goes well, is early December for Amazon, with other stores to follow as soon as possible.

Here's the cover:

State of the Silas: 2013-14

It's been an eventful year. I became a father, I became a published author, and I discovered just how badly my brain had been screwing me over for about a decade. Anxiety disorders are really tricky to talk about; you're dealing with something that most people have no real referent for.

That said, there are some notable improvements in my mental stability resulting from being properly medicated for anxiety. I've lost my irrational fears of heights and of spiders. I've also, with the help of my therapist, been able to finally move past the panic reaction I used to have when someone touched my neck. That dates back to my schooldays, and the incident which prompted a rapid exit from one school: on the train home, one of the other pupils began strangling me. Naturally, such an event leaves an impression, but I've made good progress in getting away from the panic. I can lie down with my daughter crawling all over me, have her put an arm across my neck and her full weight on that arm, and I no longer panic.

Speaking of my daughter, she's now more than a year old and insists on walking as much as she can. She picks up something, be it a burp cloth, a tennis ball, or the Mog stuffed toy her grandmother sent as a first birthday present, and toddles around carrying it. Her current favourite toys are Mog, her stacking rings, and as of this Sunday, an empty tissue box. Her growth is frankly astounding; at her last checkup, she was over 22lb, or a bit more than four times her birth weight. She's also above average for height, and for head size, although that's now a little more normal; she had been high on the curve for head size compared to her other stats, she's now at roughly the same point for each.

Matters authorial are feeling wonderful. My short story for the anthology is now locked in; I have approved the final page proofs. I have also started a longer project; I've been plugging away on a fantasy novel for the last four days or so, at a nice sustainable pace. I know exactly what I'm stealing from in terms of influences, but it's still feeling fresh to me. I'm taking feel rather than content. As the setting I'm writing in richens, I'm looking forward to revisiting it.

Unfortunately, all these projects rather take away from my blog-writing time. I don't mean to neglect it, it just happens because there are other things I want to write more, or because I'm busy taking a little girl out to the park for some time watching the ducks and saying hello to friendly dogs.

I've been busy.

Now that I'm properly dealing with my brain's chemical imbalances, I've managed to get things moving in my life. Among the things I've gotten moving has been my education and job skills; I have finally learned to touch-type, after twenty years of bad habits, and a couple of months of retraining. I have also begun to learn financial accounting, on the grounds that no matter what, there will always be a need for those who can count beans and make sure the business which employs them remains worth a hill of said beans.

Meanwhile, I have also made steps towards an income stream not dependent on a day job. The size of this income is currently indeterminate, since it consists of royalty payments, and I did not get an advance. One of the online communities I participate in published an anthology of short stories last year, and I bought a copy. When submissions opened for the second volume of the intended ongoing series, I came up with an idea, pitched it, and wrote the story. It then went through a few editing passes (and while I do have the original first draft, I won't be releasing it to the public; the story that emerged from editing is much more the story I wanted to tell) and was officially accepted, at which point it was time to sign contracts. I do know that authors in the first volume have made enough from sales to reach the publisher's minimum remittance, so I can reasonably expect some money from this, but I'm much more excited simply to be becoming a published author. Strictly speaking, that happened when I signed the contract, but I won't get a t-shirt printed until I have an actual copy of the book. Rest assured that when it does emerge from the process (submissions closed today, and proofing is the next stage in which I have any involvement) I will be shouting from the rooftops.

Meanwhile, the LA and I are grappling with an ever-expanding baby (over 17lb now, and into size 3 diapers!) and muddling through, as we do. The weather's been hot, and we've been busy.

Normativity, or why everyone should be open.

Recently, causes I care about have been in the news. Sometimes for good reasons; the NFL now has its first active openly gay player (while numerous former players have been gay, none of them have been out while active; Michael Sam is out and has been drafted) and sometimes for bad reasons; the Supreme Court has expanded the scope of allowable ceremonial prayer, despite its previous acknowledgement that prayer endorsed by a government agency is unconstitutional. Both of these matter because of the concept of normativity. My friend Justin has written about heteronormativity over on Ninja Blues, with a particular focus on a controversy regarding a video game, but normativity extends beyond sexual orientation.

Bluntly, normativity is the assumption that everyone is exactly like you, except in the ways they differ from you. Everyone makes this assumption; I assume all the people I deal with daily are human, that they want to get things done, and that they're generally nice people. I also assume, with no rational basis, that they're probably heterosexual; that's heteronormativity at work. I try to avoid the assumptions with no basis, but I'm not perfect. Nor is anyone else, which is why the Supreme Court's decision matters so much.

There is a very strong assumption of Christianity in American culture. The language is soaked in religious references, and the default assumption of almost everyone is that any given person is a Christian. This leads to problems with trust; people distrust atheists, because they don't know who might be an atheist. We're invisible. That makes public prayer an issue, because now we must either fake a belief we simply don't have (and most atheists strongly dislike dishonesty) or expose ourselves and be vilified. That doesn't even touch the problems caused by religious people who aren't Christian being coerced into Christian prayer.

This is why atheists should be out of the closet. Silence in the face of encroachment is tacit permission. We need to speak up, to say "Actually, we do not believe as you do", and to be visible. Acceptance can only come when people know there is something to accept.

Things you don't get used to.

I've been living in the USA for six and a half years now, and I'm used to much of it. I'd have trouble driving on the left, for instance. There are some things that still get to me, though. Here are some of them.