What shall I write about now? I ask myself the question, and then I start typing.

(Hiya! This is an Mostly Unplanned Post. Settle in for a stream of consciousness more like the ride experienced by a shiny silver ball inside a pinball machine.)

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Dropping a disclaimer in here now that I’m done:: the pinball machine got political and ranty and really has no point. I cannot recommend that anyone read it. But I’m not sorry I wrote it.

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I am toying with joining Bluesky cuz I love my Fediverse community, but it is smol and not interactive except for writing support, and I love my Discord buddies, but only a few folks ever hang out ion my little corner of the Discordverse, and my brain just sits down and refuses to make words in spaces that aren’t mine.

It’s hard enough thinking in words in my own space. As soon as I’m Elsewhere, I have to deal with multiple additional facets of what-if and is-this-phrased-right, and it stops being expression and starts being

Speaking of self-censorship…I remain fulminating and fuming and fizzing with an al-consuming disgusted fury at all the damned Nice White Ladies who voted for Trump because reasons. I’m just waiting for one of the people who thinks we’re friends to open their mouth and start talking Inflation and Small Businesses and Government Overreach, when people are dying and

The racist fascists made speeches about all the horrible things they wanted to do, and people decided their grocery bills and property taxes were more important than preventing WW3? Are they living in the Land Of Denial, where they just can’t believe Trump is as bad as he keeps saying over and over he is? I mean, he said shit about what he wants to do to people IN HIS OWN RALLIES TO HIS OWN FANBASE.

I am out of spoons and all I have left are forks for stabbing these people with serious questions like, are you a christofascist in progressive costume, or were you that callous about anyone but you, or do you think they’ll make your rich like them if you just suck up enough, or…what?

The thing is, I don’t know if anyone will step into it with me. People don’t—or don’t often—open up their mouths about conservative politics in m earshot. (Except in situations like work where the only thing I can do is turn the convo firmly back to their immediate library-related need.)

But anyway, iit’s hard to start ferocious interrogations…I mean conversations…when no one wants to let me ask them anything. So right now I’m still just doing a lot of “I see your flag, I see your truck, I saw your yard signs, I am not going to forget, and no, I will not forgive.”

I will be willing to put it behind, if they express a change of heart and a realization of the error of their ways — I mean, I’m in the generation that saw apartheid end, thank you Nelson Mandela….

but trust once broken is broken forever.

The multigenerational “your body my choice” movement is a whole ‘nother box of rotten cooked fish. I don’t understand why everyone is so shocked and going “What’s wrong with our young men?!” like it came out of nowhere.

The thing that toasts my cheese is how old and tired the whole “movement” is.. It’s the same old abusive, manipulative shit that’s been part of American heteropatriarchial relationships for decades. Forever? I dunno. Tradwife bullshit is just Moral Majority (80’s) with a different paint job.

And what the fuck did people think would happen once pick-up artists went mainstream and were held up as role models? Especially once Gamergate legitimized a whole bunch of loudmouths who megaphoned their beliefs that veryone who wasn’t a white straight dude should shut up forever.

Sure, there are plenty of non-awful role models for young men, too, but are they cool? (or have rizz, or whatever the current slang is)

Do they promise sexual social, and economic power? Do they provide juicy targets for all the seething frustration and tension of being young and relatively powerless? Yeah, no. And guys who do “get it” have historically done a shit job calling out PUAs and building up women’s rights to other men.

So I’d’ve been more shocked if the Lost Dude Generation had voted for Harris. They were never going to vote for any woman, and until their fathers, bosses, friends, and brothers teach them better, they never will.

Anyway, I’m not sure that was going anywhere but venting. and as disgusted as I am at the Dude Voters, I’m still angrier at all the white women of childbearing age who chose to hand over control of their very bodies to people whose stated goal is to strip away rights one by one until Half the population belongs to the other.

Well, That post went angry places, didn’t it? It also went a lot longer than a single cup of tea.

It was a big cuppa, too. No regrets.

Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.

Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:

• Title: Relics From A Traveling Show

• Author: K. M. Herkes

• ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)

  Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.

If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.

I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.

All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.

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