A Former Student Gets a Book Deal!

One of my former students (graduated 2012) sent me an email with some great news this morning.

A.T. was a poet when she was in my writing workshops; but she was really good at prose, and I encouraged her to think about writing fiction. Which she did! And now she has an agent and a contract for a duology. It's Romantasy, and those of you who like it should definitely pre-order.

It's called The Art of Living Forever, published under the name A. T. Rainach.

I can't tell you how happy this has made me!

From her bio:

A.T. has been telling stories since she could write. She holds a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and is both a fiction author and a published poet with a love for lyrical language and dark, fantastical worlds. Off the page, she’s a lifelong barrel racer, horse trainer, and full-time wrangler of three feral children. In rare quiet moments, she’s probably reading, adding to her tattoo collection, listening to music, or playing guitar (she admits her enthusiasm exceeds her skill).

Paper Shells Update!

New update on Paper Shells, my kid's new comic.

This is the plotline I helped with -- how to be an English professor in the year 2000.

Dental Work

Several months ago, I had two abscessed teeth pulled and "cadaver bone" put into the empty sockets. Then last Thursday, I had posts screwed into the cadaver bone. In about four more months, I'll have caps put on the screws. 

Presto, new teeth.

But ugh, do you know how much it hurts to have screws put into your bones? 0/10, extremely unpleasant.

Buying Books

Probably my favorite thing about having enough money is I can buy all the books I want now.

To be honest, I pretty much did this already. There were some edge cases, where I wasn't sure I wanted to read the book: I didn't buy those books. But yeah, otherwise...

I still get most of my books from the library, especially since the library here will buy whatever book I ask for. (These days those are usually academic books, or cookbooks, since I love to read cookbooks but I don't want to buy that many of them.) It would be hard to buy as many books as I read, and also this way I can take chances on books -- check out ones that are edge cases, that is.

But yeah, it's nice to see a book I want and start doing the calculus to see if I should buy it and then just say, oh! I can buy books now!

(Brought to you by the collected copies of SAGA which I never read because they were just too expensive, but which I have bought now.)

Parents Who 'Do Their Own Research'

Parents doing their own research -- by which they mean watching YouTube and Instagram videos -- are killing their children.

We know about the refusal to get the measles vaccine, which led to three deaths last year and thousands of cases of sick kids. See also chicken pox, whooping cough, and mumps, among others. Now parents are refusing Vitamin K shots for their newborns, which has led to a least a dozen preventable deaths, and probably many more.

Why are parents refusing the Vitamin K shot? They 'did their own research.'

The parents explained that they had declined the shot for a number of reasons: a concern, based on long-debunked claims, that the shot could cause leukemia; a belief that the shot wasn’t necessary; and a desire to reduce their baby’s exposure to “toxins.”

Also, of course, there's the "natural" fallacy. Why, for thousands and thousands of years, babies did without Vitamin K shots, or vaccines, so obviously.... 

What about the fifty percent child mortality rate we used to have? (That's fifty percent of all infant dying before age five.) Malnutrition, these parents claim. Bad hygiene. Their children play outside and eat right, so obviously....

Much of it is due to Trump and the way he and the GOP party in general handled COVID. It couldn't be that Trump mishandled the epidemic (due to a very real ignorance and lack of experience on his part), so it must be that the CDC and physicians and experts in general are lying to everyone. Why? Well, vaccines are how they make the big bucks, clearly. Also all that profit on Vitamin K shots.

Look, I'm all for kids playing outside and eating well. But to believe that MAGA and Trump are telling you the truth, and everyone in the medical system worldwide is lying to you -- to make a profit -- is just ridiculous. 

To let your infants and children die from things that could be prevented with inexpensive (indeed, sometimes free at the point of service) vaccines and vitamin shots is worse than ridiculous. It's child sacrifice. 

RFK Junior was asked to make a statement saying Vitamin K shots were safe and necessary, by the way. He refused.

“I’ve never said, literally never said, anything about it,” Kennedy said.

“That’s exactly the point,” responded Schrier, who [made the request and] is a doctor. “You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.”

New Comic From the Kid

It's called Paper Shells, and I helped with the university stuff!

To quote his husband: 

It's about domestic abuse, transphobia in the early 2000s, an english professor getting tenure, and TWO (2) whole werewolves called Paper Shells. Make sure to check out the trigger warning but go give it a look!

Go here to read it!

AI and University Teaching

People I know at universities are going back to paper tests written by hand, and what they are finding is the students are doing markedly worse under that system. Previous "good" grades were actually students using AI to write their exams and papers. Without AI, those students are helpless.

It's probably partly that these are COVID students, who got passed during the pandemic even if they did no work at all -- so they did no work. (One of my students told me they took a job during school hours, and just left Zoom open on their laptop.) And when students can pass without doing the work in classes they don't care about (for many, many students, that is every single class) then they don't do the work.

Why would that be? They're paying for these classes, why would they not make at least some effort to learn what's being taught? 

Possibly it's because these students come from Red States, where for the past two decades their parents and their governments have been saying that teachers are mindless liberals, that everything they're teaching is woke propaganda, and that education is worthless. 

Education is a meaningless credential, their parents and their pastors and their governments say. Education is hoops to jump through so that you can get a job. Education is a scam, a Ponzi scheme. That so many of these students then treat university classes like something they can cheat their way through is no real surprise. 

This is despite, or I guess maybe because of, their massive ignorance. (I could tell you stories....)

I'm glad I'm retired for two reasons: having to fail most of my students would be too depressing; and going back to paper exams and writing essays in class means I would have to read their appalling handwriting. 

Ugh. No thanks.

Insomnia

My insomnia is back, ugh. 

For awhile there I was sleeping fairly well, seven or eight hours every night. (The dog wakes me at dawn to go to the dog park, by yapping until I give in and get up.) But the last few nights, I keep falling asleep and then waking up and falling asleep and waking up and so on, all night long.

Also, I have anxiety dreams like you wouldn't believe. Probably that's what's waking me up. There's absolutely nothing to be anxious about -- except the political situation, I suppose -- so I don't know what's up with that.

Side note on that point: gas is $3.89/gallon at the cheap place as of yesterday. It's about that in Fort Smith, which is where I'm seeing all the complaining. Whose fault are these high prices, according to people in Fort Smith on FB? Why, Joe Biden!

What's happening is people are posting about how much it costs to fill up their giant pickups and SUVs and other people are saying, well, back in 2022, when Biden was president....

It's true gas price were high in 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Gas prices are high now because of Trump's ridiculous illegal war against Iran. Somehow one is Biden's fault and the other is Biden's fault as well. 

Don't ask me how they're managing these mental gymnastics.

What I'm Listening to Now

The Small Change Trilogy, Jo Walton, read by John Keating and Heather O'Neil

These are three books -- Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown -- set in an AU where Britain made peace with Hitler in 1941. FDR was assassinated in his second term, so that Lindberg becomes president just before WWII kicks off. I guess it isn't a WW, since no one except Britain is fighting Hitler; and then they make peace.

In any case, these books are about fascism increasing world-wide, and especially in Britain, so they're apropos for today's events. There's a great and awful bit in the second book, from the POV of an actress, saying all politicians are alike, Churchill and Atlee wouldn't have done anything different from the Farthing group (the fascists that take over Parliament), and the death camps in Germany are just work camps, and anyway none of Britain's business. In the third book, there's some harrowing scenes of fascists marching in London and Jews being stoned.

These are mystery books, in that each book turns around a mystery; but they aren't traditional mysteries. Mysteries are generally conservative works, in that they start with a Utopian space, which is disrupted by crime; and then the space becomes disordered and terrible; and then the police or a private detective or Miss Marple solve the crime, right the wrong, and the world returns to its former Utopian space. However, here, the space being disrupted is far from Utopian, and while the crimes get solved, nothing is made better by the solving of the crime. Indeed, everything gets worse, until the last book, which has, frankly, an unbelievable ending.

These are excellent books, wonderfully narrated. Well worth listening to. Available via Audiobooks.

The Keeper, Tana French, read by Roger Clark

This is the third in the Cal Hooper trilogy, about a Chicago homicide detective who retires to sheep country in Ireland and accidentally adopts/mentors a 13 year old (Trey is 15 in this novel). The setting, a small rural town, is as much a character as anyone else. The cast of characters includes sheep farmers, shopkeepers, ne'er-do-wells, high school students, and Cal himself. Also some great dogs.

Each of the novels contains a mystery, including this one, but honestly I don't read French so much for the mystery as her ability to create characters and place. When you listen to them, also, there are wonderful Irish accents. 

Available via Audiobooks.

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, read by Tony Walker

I may not make it all the way through this one. Jackson writes creepy better than anyone. It's strange, because she also wrote these charming, slightly funny stories about her children (in Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons) which are just orthogonal to the horror fiction. Those are also worth listening to, by the way.

Anyway, I'm enjoying this one so far, but man is it creepy. The set up is a professor of haunted houses (or something like that) rents Hill House for a couple of months and goes to live there with these people he hired because they (the people) all of some sort of paranormal events in their background. Like one was living in a house where stones rained down for three days, and another is apparently telepathic, or at least can identify cards without looking at their faces.

There's also a very New England peasant couple. And, of course, Jackson's wonderful voice. I like what I've listened to so far (the first half hour or so) but it's starting to get creepy. This one is available for free on YouTube.

Performing Gender

I have been idly wondering for some time why so many MAGA women have that face -- fat cheeks, small plump eyes, narrow nose, giant lips -- and the long flowing overly styled hair. If you've seen Charlie Kirk's wife out monetizing her dead husband, you've seen the face. It goes with the tiny body and tight clothing.

Kristi Noem has it, too, as do most Fox News anchors. Our governor, Sarah Huckster Sanders, tries for it, but she just doesn't have the body or the bone structure. She also may not have the money.

Turns out that face, also known as Mar-a-Lago face, is a deliberate choice. The hyperwealthy in the GOP camp are buying plastic surgery that makes them look like the MAGA notion of a desirable woman. (The men are also getting plastic surgery -- to make them look like "real men," with a specific jawline, eyes, forehead, and lips; but this isn't about that trend.) Here's an interesting video essay about the phenomenon.

And here's Erika Kirk, before and after:

According to the video essay, this is a thing fascist governments do with their women. It separates them from progressive/non-fascist women by highlighting the "correct" way to look, which is hyperfeminine in a specific sort of way. (That look differs from culture to culture, obviously.) It's a uniform, which women must wear to prove that they are one of the group.

As such, it's also a form of control. I'm thinking also about the way women in the Christian Quiverfull movement were compelled to look -- with that long, over-permed hair and dowdy dresses; with that tiny high "girl" voice, and constant smile. Quiverfull women were not allowed to express any emotion except enraptured devotion. "Keeping sweet," they called it.

Trump women have to look and act a certain way also. It's a rigid gender performance, and it's there to ensure MAGA men that women exist to perform for them.

Here are more MAGA women. It's a little disturbing, and very creepy.

In a Desperate Bid to Boost his Approval Ratings

I don't think the guy with the guns at the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner was staged, but I do think Trump's party is going to play it for all its worth. Hey, it got his approval ratings up last time, yeah?

That's not what I wanted to write about here.

Here, I want to talk about a different attempt to boost his ratings: an attempt to keep birth control out of the hands of Americans.

This is never going to happen, I was promised by endless people when Roe v Wade was overturned. Birth control is too popular! Yeah, well, so is abortion. Most people want it to be available; one in three women have had an abortion. I had one after my miscarriage, though when I say that people start shrieking that that is not "really" an abortion.

Yes, it fucking is. I needed it, too, because otherwise the fetal remains might have stayed in my uterus, causing sepsis, and damaging my future fertility.

How did the "conservatives" convince people abortion was evil?

(Except for their abortions, which like mine are not "really" abortions. I know people who are absolutely opposed to abortion until their sixteen year old needs one, and then it's "different," or until someone they know needs an abortion for medical reasons, and then that's not "really" an abortion.)

They pushed propaganda in their "conservative" Christian schools and their churches and their publications. They did this for 40 years. Even then, most people still want abortions to be legal.

Over the past two decades, these Christians have been spreading the lie that birth control is an abortifacient, that it "kills babies," and that a fertilized zygote is a baby. Facebook and TikTok and Instagram are filled with "health" advocates explaining how birth control damages women's health. 

Now Trump wants "to curb contraception."

His DHHS has released new guidelines, "prioritizing childbirth over contraception," and trying to convince people to use "natural family planning," instead of contraception. ('Natural family planning' is how we spell parenthood, by the way.)

Why? You know why.

The unwieldy political coalition that sent Trump back to the White House in 2024 is clamoring for action. For different reasons, an alliance of MAHA adherents, social conservatives and pronatalists are eager to go after birth control. With Trump sinking in the polls and his coalition fracturing, he may want to deliver for his core supporters. 

I'd say this was a terrible idea, but the past decade has proved to me that today's Trump supporters will literally do anything their ugly tin god tells them to do, and believe anything he tells them to believe. If it contradicts the reality, well, why should they believe in reality? That's what liberals do.

 

Bam!

I had the dog at the dog park this morning. There were two Australian shepherds there, about six months old, and he ran and ran with them. He was having a great time. Then he swerved to run past me, except he didn't run past, he clotheslined me and I slammed to the ground.

Let me tell you, falling when you're 66 is very different from falling when you're 26.

(I'm fine, except my ankle hurts a little.)

All three dogs came running back to make sure I was okay, sticking their noses in my ears and face. I said I was okay and they ran off again.

The culprit, all worn out

Weather Report

Weather page says it's going to rain for a week and then after that we'll get another short winter (lows in the 40s, highs in the 50s). My favorite weather!

Which is good, because next week is a nightmare. Nonstop medical appointments. FML.

My Kid Does Art

This is a picture of me driving around mourning my beloved 1989 Fayetteville:

New Recipe up on Cooking with delagar

I've been making this stew this winter. It's about to be too hot to cook, so I made it last night as a kind of farewell tour.

This is even better as leftovers, which is what we're having tonight.