Just in case any of you are in rhe Midwest and want to attend this Medieval Monsters conference, I'm giving the keynote on Oct 17! www.dom.edu/medieval-mon...

My OB-GYN friend posted this elsewhere, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

dudes rock

I made cornbread & my child thought it smelled like pizza cooking so he requested garlic tomato sauce as a dip. This is a good & comforting thing to make for dinner. Who doesn't need good & comforting right now? (The cornbread's Anna Thomas' New Vegetarian Epicure recipe, see pics)

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I wrote this a few years back, and it's about myths and love and selfareliance.

"This is the first myth: that your boyfriend from when you were fifteen will come and get you out of hell." We welcome you to revisit "The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods" by @mariadahvana.bsky.social from the Reactor short fiction archives. reactormag.com/a-girlfriend...

Force animates the word (har comes from heri, a Germanic word for troop, martial band), but so does refuge (berga, a built space of safety, a secure dwelling in a world imagined as inimical). Harbinger is danger and omen at once, refuge and seeker, force and announcement.

obsessed w the medieval origin of harbinger, it's an amazing word: traveled from Old Saxon through medieval French, conveys in origins harbor, a place of safety. A medieval harbinger was one who provides lodging, as well as one who travels ahead in search of safe dwelling, a herald and guarantor.

Oooh I'm excited about this!!'

A certain child in the best ever dragon shirt with zip-out flames. I got him this shirt, and he came rushing into the bedroom to show me this morning.

Go read this. It's wonderful.

Notes from university teaching, 2025 - if you need a little joy. I'm teaching at App State right now, a visiting writer spot, and it is...magical? They're all juniors and seniors, and I had them write a story made of the components of their first literary/media inspiration...

Odin said: Tell me a seventh thing, since they call you smart, and you, Vafthrudnir, know: how did that giant get a child when he had no joy of a giantess? Vafthrudnir said: They said that under that frost-giant's arm, at the same time a boy and a girl grew. - Poetic Edda. Parthenogenesis FTW!

trying to explain dental plan coverage and having to raise my voice higher and higher above their incredulous laughter

Every once in a while I tell people from other countries about how the health insurance system works in the US and they are aghast. Yesterday a guy straight up didn’t believe me when I said people can die because of not being able to afford medicine. He was sure I meant in the distant past.

Yup. It helps that they’re all in singularity cults, so yes, the delusion is in fact collective.

probably my favorite book, every single sentence is a perfect chiseled jewel you'd give your eyeteeth to have written

If we still went by job titles we held 30 years ago like "Mayor Guiliani" did in his bullshit press release I'd be "Assistant Manager at Mad Mike's Supervideo" for the rest of my life

The summer was so busy that i forgot it all. But one thing I know I did, because I just harvested them, is that I grew 8 tiny eggplants. Why didn't they get big? I don't know. Each one was the size of my thumb. But I guess, when it comes to 🍆, it ain't the size that matters.

Did my brain just click back on in full? I don't know, but it's been a rough few years stress-wise in every way, and it still is. Somehow, though, I feel a surge of Book Energy coursing through me. In dark times, writing? Yes.

No one here just caught herself trying to meditate, and watch alien earth for work reasons at the same damn time. The answer is no, it's not a thing.

I don't think school should start in August. There's a feeling of pure blergh in trying to get a 6-year-old into school clothes while it's still full summer outside, & a feeling of pure blergh in trying to get myself into professor clothes too. Although I'm the kind of professor who wears sequins.

You ‘run the gamut’ and ‘run the gauntlet.’ You don’t ‘run the gambit.’ gamut = entire range or series gauntlet = severe trial Gambit = Alpha-level mutant who can convert potential energy to kinetic energy

In case you need something glorious: the cocktail I just made of fat figs snatched from my neighbor's tree. I based it on this recipe lepetiteats.com/fig-cocktail/ but I swapped in gin, lemon juice, & vanilla simple syrup for the rum, lime, & fig leaf simple. I didn't strain it, bc fresh figs!

Hello you little mofo masquerading as a tomato leaf, sucking my tomato leaves dry, lurking, lurking, lurking. The green hornworm, folks, with his stabby little thorn and his beautiful tomato leaf stripes.

Haven't done university teaching since 2023, but next week I'm in it again, teaching myth/lore/writing/storymaking. I'm looking at my students from here, saying that if you do "creative" writing with a LLM, you miss the glory that is making things up & wrangling them. As in, the good part.

complain

Here's the problem... men want to simply show up and be prized... and partnered Having done nothing not knowing who they are... what they need... or how to relate to an intimate partner and simply....

now if you would like those things... consider facilitating emotional hygiene that produces you as a viable intimate partner ... Do the work that makes partnership possible

women do not "owe" men love... we are not owed partnership... we are not owed sex we are simply not "owed"

Straight men are not ... owed romantic love

My son Grimoire, who recently turned six, has started calling me "The Great Wolf Tiger" and asking me to grant wishes. The Great Wolf Tiger is apparently very nice but you can't ride her like a horse or she will nip your ears.

Alright folks in western NC, I am coming to App State to be a visiting writer for 8 weeks beginning in like, a week-ish, & this is me telling you I want to do the following: find me a campfire and someone who can make music! Just let me sing harmony! I can sing! And I miss it!

The Horny find a way

I loved doing this interview with @davidnaimon.bsky.social! Such a joy to talk about methods of translation and Le Guin.

Will sensory loop headphones or similar block out the dueling sounds of "I'm a gummy bear" and random plastic creatures banging together? Asking for a friend.

Cut my foot on a barnacle, but this was in service of helping to acquire 5 fat Dungeness crabs, and then today I got to break them all apart and teach five children how to pick crab and feast.

RFK Jr. backs down all the time when he gets push back, so if anyone wants to call, here's the HHS number 1-877-696-6775. I'd also call your senators/reps as well.

I believe one of the new mRNA vaccines was expected to treat colon cancer, and another had the potential to keep pancreatic cancer from recurring. That’s what they’re taking away.

This morning, my partner in crime was walking behind me, & suddenly became delighted by the various silver stripes in my mostly black hair. "Oooooh" he cried. "This is so beautiful! It's like a medieval tapestry with real silver threads!" I send this out to those feeling nervous about grey hair.

David Byrne came to my band’s show at a gay bar in Bed-Stuy and sang This Must Be The Place with us and I still haven’t processed it

This book is excellent—smart and touching and melancholic, and every time I explain that to someone I realize I sound like a crazy person and I have to go back and re-read it to remind myself that I am 100% correct. An absolutely luminous and beautiful book about a woman fucking a bear

This morning, showering without contact lenses, I used a new shower gel, which is dark green. Then I forgot. When I looked down, my limbs were striated dark green, as though someone had lurked me with Kryptonite. And reader: things in the world are so weird, that's what I concluded had happened.

LeGuin wrote about the desire for 'unassailable safety' as one of the deep roots of evil, and I think about that a lot.

Sitting in the Denver airport looking at a western sunset, & Florence & the Machine is blasting the song that goes "you make a fool of death with your beauty," & a guy gave Grimmy free icecream, & all this mostly makes up for the fact that a kid projectile vomited right beside us on the plane.

I'm keynoting this conference in Chicago in the fall, by the way! It's about medieval monsters! And i'm gonna be there in person, so if you're a medievalist/ a person who wants to meet me and talk about monsters, you should come: www.dom.edu/medieval-mon...

I just activated like a sleeper agent