Depending on how many markets you’re watching, a once in a century incident should happen every year or two.
AO3
So if I click on something, it takes several minutes, as much as an hour, for the hit count to update. It’s probably operating on a tick system.
The Autopian
Is having a meet-up in a Walmart parking lot.
Again.
Earlier this week, someone posted something about buying a dumpster-fire of a car, and I legit could not guess who wrote it until I checked the byline.
They most definitely have a brand.
Mobile Games
4=10 is pretty good.
Spam
People send me spam all the time. I’m going to send some back.
Ladies, men like potatoes. Why don’t you have a man? Because you have no potatoes! You need potatoes! You get potatoes, you get man, other women think you’re beautiful.
Potatoes!
Send me your bank information.
Turtles
I like turtles.
Mara
Mara ebook is on sale at Amazon. I’m trying to avoid getting discouraged as the next project hits a slow period. Work is rough, but at least my model converged for the new hardware.
Stress really kills my creativity. I keep thinking to myself I’ll power through, but it’s a slog. The last two years have been pretty stressful. I wonder how much of that is only correlation, though. When I’m stressed, I really put my head down to work, but that means I don’t read as much, don’t do relaxing things as much, and don’t sleep as much. Any of that could be far more important than just the stress. I haven’t put pencil to paper and just drawn for weeks.
Good luck, everyone. I’m rooting for you.
Evil
If evil exists, it either is or its primary symptom is a cancerous development of the self. A calcification of the difference between the me and everyone and everything else.
This is likely why sports, art, and joy are so powerful. In the moment a sports team wins, we lose the self in joy. In appreciating a book or song, we lose the self. Joy is a feeling utterly separate from being a self.
That’s why fiction and creative fantasy is inherently a good thing. When something doesn’t exist and the reader enjoys it, the reader becomes that selfless, open entity for just a moment, and erodes natural walls. The calcification of the self dissolves. Joy returns.
The Crime
My husband came home and caught me in the act. I hadn’t had time to clean up. The accouterments of my crime lay everywhere.
Staring at me, having caught me red-handed, he made a cold, critical, and judgmental face. His voice was worse.
“Honey, we’re going to put you in a program. It’s only got two steps. Step one: you have too much yarn. Step two: stop buying yarn!”
I needed a distraction. “Coffee?”
He looked intrigued. “When did you brew this?”
“While I was unpacking the yarn.”
“That could be anytime!”
“I don’t see what your problem is. I’m doing it for us. You need a sweater.”
“No, I don’t! It’s summer!”
“But you’d look so cute,” I said. I batted my eyelashes at him.
Did that ever actually work? It didn’t now. He took the coffee and scowled at me.
“Hector, come here,” called the hubs.
Hector came running in, and he looked adorable. He had four sweaters on, and they were so fuzzy. I could see the cream yarn under the outermost emerald knit. The only problem was that Hector stood like a tree.
“Mom! I can’t put my arms down!”
“You’ll be fine,” I said. Kids were tough. He’d be okay.
“Honey, look at what you’re doing to the children!” said the hubs. He waved at Hector. He sipped his coffee. “Your knitting fixation is tearing this family apart!”
“You know, I could fix that.” I beamed at him. “With the yarn. I could definitely knit the family back together.”
The hubs closed his eyes, unsmirked, and opened his eyes again. He immediately started laughing. With a supreme act of will, I could see the veins bulge in his neck, he unsmirked again and sipped his coffee.
“Hector, can you put your arms down?” he asked our child.
“I can’t!” yelled Hector. “I fell over, and I bounced!”
The hubs closed his eyes again.
See? Kids were tough. Hector would be fine if we could just survive this out-of-season cold wave.
“Jen,” said the hubs. “Stop. Buying. Yarn.”
I was sitting on the family room couch, surrounded by my loot. The criminal enterprise had gone well. I’d hit two fabric stores, acquired a plethora of colors and textures, and neat, well wrapped bundles tumbled off the couch. They were so tidy, even in macroscopic disorder. Each bundle was a single, delicately wrapped thread, gathered with a cardboard wrapper, and consumed with intricate but predictable patterns. The bundles themselves lay in chaotic heaps.
“You’re going to give the boy heatstroke,” said the fool I’d married, the fool who didn’t know how good he had it. He beckoned Hector, put the coffee down, and started unpacking the boy from his sweaters.
It was freezing cold outside. Hector would be a popsicle in moments if he went out unprepared.
“Jen, I’m taking the kids to the pool. When I return, you need to clean up this.”
I didn’t much appreciate his patronizing attitude, to be honest.
“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.”
“Organize it in the den.”
Ooh, that did sound good. I could put it with the other yarn.
“Don’t freeze,” I warned him.
The hubs nodded, took Hector upstairs, and started rounding up kids, pulling them out of closets, bedrooms, and boxes like like a magician. The noise they made was tremendous, but soon I was alone, in quiet and peace, with my yarn.
I just needed a little more. Maybe one bundle. In red. But first, I could start another sweater.
Wishfulfillment Self Insertion
And one day, a guy named Matt actually got all his grading done in a timely manner. When he finished his own classes, no more sprang out of the shadows. He made real, meaningful progress on his dissertation.
He got enough sleep.
How?
Magic! *Jazz hands*