Ugh

I need something to eat, but I'm too queasy to eat.

Also my stomach hurts too much.

Waah.

Local Artist Does Comic

My kid's roommate, an essential worker (she works at Dollar General for minimum wage), is creating a comic about life on the front lines of the pandemic.

You can support her here.

I'm posting a diary comic about working during the coronavirus exclusively on patreon for $2 and up! I'll be posting it as it's made. You can check out the first 3 pages on patreon right now! #comics #patreon https://t.co/x4ZEVk8SXM pic.twitter.com/ufQX6lMWx3

— 🏝️🐱 Clover from Poppy Isle 🍎✨ (@CloversComics) April 16, 2020

My Kid Takes a Video of our Tiny Waterfall

This was taken yesterday, when I felt better:

I took this video yesterday but -yearns- -longs- -longs- - yearns- pic.twitter.com/jn1AE0Grww

— datefriend time @ one of these days 💖💛💙 (@jasperlizard) April 16, 2020

Symptoms

I have terrible pains in my abdomen, plus I'm very achy in general.

No fever.

No cough.

No weakness or malaise.

Covid-19 or indigestion?

Heron in the Park

The kid and I went walking in the riverfront park just before sunset, and the kid spotted a great blue heron fishing the inlet.



Apparently they commonly fish the Arkansas river, but this was the first one I've seen.

Very cool.

Observation

Whenever someone starts yapping about "facts" and "biology," or how science has "proved" something, 97% of the time

• they don't know anything about how science works
• they have utterly no interest in what a fact is
• they slept through high school biology
• they're about to spew some bigoted nonsense

CHANGE MY MIND.

Pandemic Fiction

Among all the other books I've been reading over the past weeks, I've also been reading and re-reading heaps of pandemic novels. This appalls the kid -- why would I want to read about what I can watch happening in real time?

I can't say why, but I find it comforting.

In case you do as well, here are some titles featuring pandemics:

Naomi Kritzer, "So Much Cooking"

(Here's the essay Kritzer recently wrote, about seeing your story come true)

Connie Willis, The Doomsday Book

Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

Mike Conner, Archangel

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Cecelia Holland, The Lords of Vaumartin

Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders 

Laura Kasischke, In a Perfect World

Stephen King, The Stand

Sarah Pinsker, A Song for a New Day

Daniel DeFoe, Journal of the Plague Year

George Stewart, The Earth Abides

Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon (Not a pandemic, but hits the same buttons for me)

Frank Herbert, The White Plague

Virginia Bergin, Who Runs the World?

Joanna Russ, The Female Man (Plague occurred eight centuries earlier)

Also worth reading

Cat Pictures

Jasper fails to social distance correctly.

Covid-19 Update

More than half a million confirmed cases in the U.S.

More than twenty thousand dead.

Just over six weeks since Trump claimed the virus would just "disappear."

Vote not just Trump but every member of the GOP out in November.

What I'm Reading Now

I'm reading so much, y'all. Also we have recently starting putting our books in order (after the move, we just loaded them on shelves, haphazardly), so I'm finding books I haven't read in awhile, which leads to re-reading.

Here's the new ones:

Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

St. John Mandel wrote the justly famous Station Eleven. This one isn't much like that one, except that it too is a mosaic novel, and also wonderful. Several times the writing made me stop and go whoa. (Also, Station Eleven gets a few sly nods in this novel.)

The Glass Hotel concerns a group of people, all of whom have worked in or visited a hotel on a remote island in Canada (I think it's the same island wossname in Station Eleven was from, but I haven't checked that). Two of them are siblings; one is a Wall Street mogul running a Ponzi scheme; other characters have brief chapters. The novel moves back and forth through time, just as Station Eleven did; and it makes us care about the characters, just as Station Eleven did.

There are a number of plot threads, but the plot isn't the issue here. It seldom is, in mosaic novels. One of the characters in novel creates art by filming five minute segments of nothing in particular, and that's more or less what this novel does: gives us a world, in fragments.

Very much worth reading.

Lily King, Lovers and Writers

I twice put this one back on the shelf at the library (this was when we could still go into the library and browse) and then once I checked it out I kept putting off reading it. The title put me off. Lovers and writers, bleh, who wants to read about that?

But I read it anyway, and I am glad I did. Though it has the plot I like least in the world (will this person marry/sleep with this person or that person?), the execution is excellent. Also, that's only the B Plot. The A plot has to do with our main character, who is struggling, among other writers, to be a writer and to make a living. Lots of it is about being a waitress. Lots of the rest is about the struggle peculiar to straight women writers -- male writers are mostly who we meet and want to hang out with, but many (many, many) male writers are only interested or happy with women who are less successful than they are.

Good writing and fully realized characters. I liked this one a lot.

Mike Conner, Archangel

This is another pandemic book. You know how I love pandemic books.

Set in the 1930, this is an AU pandemic -- what if, right after the 1918 flu, another pandemic took place, one which was engineered by eugenicists and aimed at killing off every black person on earth? And what if the eugenicists made a mistake, so that instead of killing black people, it kills only white people?

What would happen to America then?

There's also a murder mystery here, which I kind of resented. I wanted more time with the pandemic world-building and less with the mad/racist scientist.  But the characters are good and it's both a pretty good pandemic story and a nice look at 1930 Minnesota.


Kaori Mori, Bride's Story (Vol. 11)

These are manga, and their title is a little misleading -- though not entirely so. They're the story of an extended family living near the Caspian Sea in the 19th century. The first few volumes do focus heavily on the bride in question, who has been married off at the advanced age of 20, to a 12 year old groom. (I know, I know, but the two of them do not consummate the wedding. They become very fond of each other, and I assume when he grows up this is going to be a sexual relationship, but right now they're just excellent friends.)

Even in the first two volumes, though, Amir and Karluk (the bride and groom) are only one plot-line. If this manga can really be said to have plots. It's mostly just daily life with this family and all its branches. Also there's an English anthropologist visiting.  They're nice to him, though they think he's weird, but he's totally marginalized (sometimes literally).



The art is wonderful, and the daily life is delightful.



A huge cast, and no real plot, but I love these books.



Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male

I'm reading this one for my SF novel class. It was hot a few years ago, as I recall, but I never got around to it at the time.

Set in the near future, this is a dystopian novel set in China, which examines what a repressive culture in which more male infants are born than female infants -- what happens to the "excess" males?

It also deals, however, with how a culture with rigid gender roles / gender essentialism deals with men who don't fit into those roles, or who don't have the traits "all" men have. (Not well, is the answer.)

It's a good novel for my class, since those are some of the main topics we're dealing. Also, I liked the characters. The three men at the heart of the story are quite well developed, and I really like what Shen King did with the possibly autistic character, XX.

I'm a little bemused by the absence of women characters (really just one woman character in the entire book, though another gets a walk-on). Maybe that's part of the point? Here's what the world would look like without women? Except that's half the SF novels ever written. Probably more. Women as minor / off-the-page characters is nothing new.

On the whole, a good book to read if you're into dystopian science fiction.

New Recipe

Here's my recipe for a Dutch Baby pancake.

The kid has made me make this for breakfast every day for the past week, so apparently it's good pandemic food.

Spring in the Fort

Spring is emerging, despite the pandemic. Our yard at the new house is filled with violets, not to mention some sort of flower that is kind of like an iris? Purple and very pretty.

Hold on, let me google that.

Spiderwort

It's spiderwort, according to this site, and an invasive species. Well, still very pretty. I have daffodils, but they did not bloom.

The tree I have not identified in my yard -- it has a small round dark red/brown fruit with a hard pit -- was briefly covered with tiny white flowers. Now it is leafing out in brilliant new green. All the other trees are likewise sprouting new leaves. The colors are all very Easter-appropriate.

Meanwhile I am feeling much better after my root canal. I can even eat again!

The town is dead quiet. We had to take a flat tire in to get mended, and we were the only one at the tire shop. A local shop, Darrell's. Plenty of automotive repair guys were around, so I'm guessing the boss is keeping them employed; but the lot and the bays were empty.

We had to get the tire fixed because I ran over an abutment coming back from my root canal yesterday. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been driving.

Everyone here is still well. How's everyone on your end?

Dental Emergency

So I've got an abscessed tooth, probably (diagnosed over the phone). All the dentists and endodontists are closed for the virus.

But my dentist gave me her cell phone number, and the endodontist is opening up especially for my emergency.

I won't even tell you what this is going to cost. :(

Cat Pictures

Junti in the Pandemic

Covid-19 Denialists

In case you haven't been on Twitter (wise choice), the new bullshit being pushed by MAGA Americans is that people aren't really dying from Covid-19.

See, they're dying from cancer.

Or from heart attacks.

And then the devious lying Democrats (all over the planet, apparently) are pretending that people died of the virus, because (obviously) they're all "deranged" and will do anything to keep Trump from being elected.

Can you imagine the ego of a man who thinks a global pandemic is being staged to take him down?

Can you imagine the massive willful ignorance of people who believe (pretend to believe, I suspect) this nonsense?

Can you believe that if a cancer patient gets shot they still call it a shooting death? Fair n balanced Brit cannot. https://t.co/Uw1ZTVQDaw

— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) April 8, 2020