Brief reflections on MLK Day from a younger me:
“Dr. Martin Luther King, the Eight Commandments, and Bending the Arc of History”
Remember: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice—provided that we get up every morning and put our weight towards bending that mutherfucker. It ain’t gonna bend on its own.
You may recall this brief news item from 2017, about “adolescent female monkeys in Japan engaging in sexual behaviors with adult deer”:
(Aside: Is anyone else weirded out that the deer always look at the camera? That doesn’t seem like happenstance. Like… is it… is it part of the kink for them? ’cause that makes me sorta feel… like, I don’t want to be made a part of this without my consent. That’s all I’m saying. I do not consent to this.)
What may have slipped past you was this parenthetical toss-off from the first—and least sensationalistic—mainstream coverage: “Scientists Say Japanese Monkeys Are Having ‘Sexual Interactions’ With Deer” (Thanks, NPR!)
Japanese macaques are known to ride deer like humans ride horses, for fun or transportation — behavior the deer seem to tolerate in exchange for grooming and discarded food.
So, just an FYI: Japanese monkeys are in the midst of domesticating deer—you know, for fun, or transportation, or (as we did before them) to increase their travel range and capacity to haul loads. Loads, like, I dunno, the lifeless bodies of the defenseless denizens of Tokyo, after marauding teen-nympho sex monkeys start raiding that once grand metropolis, charging in under cover of night astride their deer consorts, cutting us down, smashing our skulls, and feasting on the goo within!!! IT’S IN REVELATIONS, PEOPLE!!!
Anyway, point being there are are only two ways this story ends, and neither of them is good. Our future is either this:
or this:
(first posted back in Dec 2017; lightly revised since. no updates on macaque progress toward world domination)
I can’t swim, so the ocean is baseline scary for me, but man, there’s something about this lonely planet bouncing around out in the middle of a sunless sea that—and the very notion of an entire planet that’s less dense than water—the whole thing gives me the… 🥶💀 yikes! Creep City!
(And it doesn’t help that Saturn is watching us, and probably planning to devour us as well.)
🎄❄🎅🏿
Merry Xmas, gentiles!
May all your wishes come true, and may you stay awake to see them do so!
I’m a mixed Jew who’s lived in the American Midwest for his entire life. I think these songs, more than anything else I’ve ever written, are honest about that experience.
(Incidentally, given that this year is one of the few when Xmas and Xanukah overlap, all of these songs are especially appropriate.)
I first came across this image 20 (!!!) years ago in a Something Awful “Photoshop Phriday” thread (it’s evidently a riff on Who is Coming to Our House? by Joseph Slate and illustrator Ashley Wolff). It’s served as my shorthand for what it feels like being a Jew in America ever since.
(Brought to mind by this—which happened at my parent’s synagogue last week; that’s only about 40 minutes from where I live with my wife and kids today—but it really could have been basically anything from the last two weeks, right?)
More gratifying than you might expect: “Do You Like Horses?“
PseudoPod 433: “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism”
I absolutely guarantee the last couple twists are ones you ain’t gonna see coming, dummy.
[photo credit: “Photo booth portrait of two clowns and a ventriloquist dummy” by oakenroad is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ]
I’m a child of the 1980s, so most of my nostalgic holiday memories are TV-related. 🤷♀️
THANKSGIVING TURKEY GIVEAWAY! (WKRP in Cincinnati) from Tony DeSanto on Vimeo.
(Yeah, I repost this every year, because I love this gag, and because watching this on TV—and rehashing it with my mom and sisters each year—is one of my fondest holiday memories. But it is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag. That’s saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch. If you wanna read more of my thoughts on this specific gag and what it can teach writers, you can do so here.)
(I wrote this essay a few years back; every word is both true and factual—which is a harder trick than you’d think.)
You’ll be 15 minutes into that Lesser Family Feast in Michigan when your mother-in-law will turn to you and ask:
“What do Jews do on Thanksgiving?”
You should be prepared for this sort of thing in Michigan. But even though I’m warning you in advance, you still won’t be prepared.…
(excerpt from IN MICHIGAN: A PRIMER, A TRAVELOGUE)
I hope your day is good and sweet. Gobblegobble! 🦃💀
I have exactly one story published this year eligible for Nebulas, Stokers, and so on:
“This Place Is Best Shunned” on Tor.com
It’s a free read for all; if you should wanna nominate it for anything, it runs ~10,000 words, and thus falls into either the “novelette” or “long fiction” categories. Enjoy!
