Remembering when I read all the Pynchon I could, except Mason & Dixon, because I was told it was written in an impenetrable dialect. Happy now to find the prose a pure delight—the 1760s filtered through 1960s underground comix, history and seriousness through a cloud of weed-smoke and laughter

Good use of a bad weather day

And by "real" I don't mean the abhorrent beliefs he held...that's for critics to (rightfully) bring up. His supposed friends and colleagues, though, just piling the superlatives higher & higher...that's just building a cudgel to wield against their foes, not marking the passing of an actual person.

This weird "he could walk on water and heal the sick" over-the-top eulogizing is just as demeaning and dehumanizing to the actual person who had lived as they say quoting the man's actual words supposedly can be. They're trying to hide the bad about him, sure, but they're also hiding anything real.

remembering that time a kitchen cupboard fell off the wall.

Anyway do people who paint those tiny Warhammer miniatures make Polly Pocket houses for them or do the minis just kind of hang out in the regular-sized house as if they're regular-sized people

Car crash right in front of PFB Main heading S on Main Street. No casualties, but traffic slowing down for blocks.

@greatdismal.bsky.social note the tweed jackets

"Excited to wear this fall," after @dieworkwear.bsky.social. Indestructible Spier & Mackay canvas field jacket; Ralph midweight flannel; Rustic Dime 13 oz slim straight Japanese selvedge, "rustic brown" Blunnies with a hard-wearing Vibram sole.

Someone observes no women on that last list, so let me add Maureen F. McHugh & her MISSION CHILD (1999) in particular, whose depiction of an indigenous survivor of planetary colonialism, kept alive by colonialist tech, is one of the coldest, most gripping SF novels I know, & ever so relevant now.

Also recommending Conor Kerr's BEAVER HILLS FOREVER. A free verse novella about four young Metis people falling out of relationship with community & others, & then maybe (ambiguously) back again. I read it straight through in an hour & a half at my favorite coffee shop & was v deeply moved.

this novel is off the hook!

One of the regulars wanted to read "a serious novelist who never really got his due." I did that plug-pulled-&-rebooting thing I often do on the desk & coughed up Joseph McElroy, though I might just as accurately said David Markson, or Ishmael Reed, or William Gay.

Re last RT: we are living through what happens when billionaires dedicate themselves to avenging their personal pain (real or imagined) against the world.

Trump criticizes Pam Bondi for not charging his adversaries quickly enough, in a Truth Social post that looks a lot like a DM. truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT...

My sweetheart's in the Pit of Downtown: "Broadcast lesson on history of Palestine, someone with a drum circling VAG, someone playing the clarinet and the Jehovah's Witnesses. A block away a amped Oasis cover and another block away an amped lecture on Jesus. Downtown is just More than I remember."

Niche, but essential, Selvedge Content from our pal Bill

"That the Trump administration and the MAGA movement are less interested in deliberation and governance than they are in domination and obedience should shape and structure our sense of this political moment." It's all designed to make you bend the knee. Don't bend. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

This is the way

Just heard something like a train in the sky, faded away now. Utterly bizarre.

New demographic is really, really REALLY not into receiving change, acts like you spat in their hand, drops silver on the counter like bouncing liquid mercury. -What am I supposed to do with that? -Put it in a parking meter? Tip your barista, or a busker? -Ugh NO. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Langley lately giving Kamloops & Harrison Hot Springs a run for their money

BREAKING: A federal judge just sumamrily struck Trump's complaint against the New York Times, essentially calling it, essentially, garbage. Must be rewritten within 28 days. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

"I have work to do. Somehow, my grief and loss are to enrich the world." (Richard Adams)

I also really like his novel Deepdrive, which is a mid-future story about a bunch of fuckup crooks and lowlifes scrambling around the solar system, trying to get their hands on an advanced alien FTL drive. Elmore Leonard + Bruce Sterling in his Mechanist/Shaper mode.

And in addition, we never lived up to our idealized goals, so the lack of follow though on democratic norms for all citizens in general does not surprise me. But that so much of our political leadership and half the electorate is willing to destroy the whole economy & political system surprises me

Respectfully disagree: 1) in fact it is unusual for a democracy w/ this level of GDP to turn authoritarian & so quickly; 2) the weakness of both institutions (congress & courts) and individuals (Schumer etc) is shocking. Would take less than 10 people in congress or 2 SC justices to stop all this.

Jimmy Kimmel is Hamas?

last week has proven one thing: we are all getting banned for the things we post when Donald trump eventually dies

Final installment of this summer's big SF/fantasy mass market paperback collection arriving this morning, 35-40 boxes of really clean pocket books from the late 50s through the early 90s. We'll aim to have them cleaned, priced & available for browsing by end of day Friday.

The architect with the render engine's Field of View slider:

[Taps sign] "Violent far-right extremist[s] have been responsible for 94 of the 108 terrorism fatalities (87 percent) in the United States in the past five years. This included 2022, when 18 of the 19 fatalities occurred during far-right terrorist attacks." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/o...

“Does that place worry you, Joe?” my father asked me once. I nodded solemnly and whispered, “’Salem’s Yacht is there.”

Democratic Party "moratorium on the goddamn word 'bipartisan' for 25 years" challenge.

"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has told analysts that people without smart glasses may one day be at a 'significant cognitive disadvantage' compared to those who do use the tech."

Share fave covers for a timeline cleanse Pretty sure Donald Fagen's Dukes of September version owes something to RLJ's exemplary pacing & phrasing here here

Evening's soundtrack

Literally just trying to sign up for my kid's school lunch website

I remember reading K W Jeter’s Star Trek novels in high school. The quality control on those was decent and the range was very wide. Fun contrast between straight fanfic or high-concept stuff shoehorned into ‘another day on the Enterprise’ depending on the author!

re: that last RT: I haven't read K.W. Jeter's Blade Runner & Boba Fett novels & don't plan to, but I'm glad the author of THE GLASS HAMMER, FAREWELL HORIZONTAL, DR ADDER etc got a paycheque in lieu of those extremely weird & interesting non-corporate novels selling enough to pay a living wage.

Discussions of comparative SFF economics need to keep these side markets of the past in mind.

Plenty of 60s and 70s SFF authors had a lucrative side business writing porn for the pulps. Silverberg and Offutt immediately spring to mind.

I mean, I have no time at all for Giant Corporate Property Universe novels no matter the corporate property but at the same time I'm glad that said corporate properties actually employ writers and provide a fallback for when times get tough. Heck, Jack Vance wrote Ellery Queen mysteries.

Seconding this recommendation. McHugh's MISSION CHILD (1998) is an astonishing account of utopian colonialism and its aftermath, & is definitely more relevant today than upon publication.

"He was a solitary child who tended toward melancholy. 'I’m not happy,' he recalls saying, over and over, to his 10-year-old self in the mirror....Later he would come to think that an unhappy childhood was 'not necessarily a bad thing for a children’s writer.'"

Sock Game the scariest thing SK's recently come up with, but THE LONG WALK is his pal Richard Bachman's best book & a personal favorite, & I have high hopes for its bleak & pitiless film adaptation.

"Once again that evening, the sun set without opening for us the door to another world." (Rene Daumal, MOUNT ANALOGUE)

turn in your gun and badge, diogenes

That's some "Kafka on the Shore" callback right there

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