I’m currently working on a variety of projects, both for my business and for self-publishing, and sites for selling my story ideas or offering coaching (when those sites are ready I’ll promote them). I do have a few little enjoyable websites out there, like my Give Yourself a Gold Star project (if you are an artist and believe in it- look at the first post there- then please upload some art and let me know, so I can add it!), the first and only edition of PLUMBO! E-zine, and a little portfolio I made for myself (here!). I plan on maintaining and updating all these as time permits.

As for my publishing efforts, I’ve got two major book projects on the go, both my autobiography Onion Girl, which I’ve posted draft chapters of here, and a book of science notes and explanations of them called Notes from a Mad Scientist. My prior cover art person used what appears to be AI to make the cover of one of these, so I’m looking into finding a new artist, or, possibly, cobbling together something on my own (I can’t draw worth beans but perhaps I can make a collage?).

While all that is going on, I thought, what can I do that is fast and quick and doesn’t require hours of effort, and which may make people laugh (which seems to be needed nowadays)?

I’ve thought about a podcast and reading alound spicy scenes from old romance books for while now, and always was daunted mostly because the audio files would be difficult to work with, for me (I imagine anyone can learn anything but I don’t really want to learn this skill). So then, recently, I thought: what about TERRIBLE audio readings of spicy scenes from old romance books, and I can even provide commentary, kind of like in MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE: 3000, where a panel of sarcastic robots dissects old movies as they play?

I bought 10 old romance books from a used bookstore (total cost: $4) and I’m going to flip through them until I find spicy passages, then make a few audio clips (reading plus commentary) and offer them here. The quality of the audio will be terrible and there will be no editing. If people think it’s funny and react or tell me so, then maybe I’ll make time to make more, and if they don’t react, I’ll just continue to post things as I feel like. I don’t really make money from this blog and I’m realizing it’s fine, maybe it’s for the best, as due to bipolar disorder and a variety of stressors which I do talk about here, my energy for creative output is varible to say the least.

I’ve recorded my voice before and I know I am able to make it sound sexy, or soothing, so perhaps there is that aspect as well.

I hope to post an excerpt from Notes From a Mad Scientist next week to Thoughts on Science and Tech, probably one of the physics bits, most likely a piece I shared with someone who kindly read it, politely told me it was problematic, and would not engage further. It’s fine but I’d love to just toss it to the world because why not? If anything, it might be fodder for public learning or discussion.

A photo of 10 book covers, mostly bodice-rippers or midcentury romances of one kind or another. I’m hoping to find passages that are more funny than problematic, although some may be so problematic they are kind of awe-inspiring in how awful they are. I guess I have to read and see! If you have a suggestion for a book I may read aloud and comment on, let me know.

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I know I’ve posted a lot this week, but I just wanted to say something that has been coalescing in my mind for a few months now.

Remember this gem? Written, from what I can find, by A.R. Moxon.

Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.

You take one step toward him.

He takes one step back.

Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.

It’s so e…

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My social media is full of angry writers being told their work is, because of em dashes or some other foolery, “written by AI”. So I decided to fight back and make a little app (ironically, using an AI “vibe coding” site) that lets writers who are added to it start up to three projects, add co-writers, add notes, images, audio, URLs, and …

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I could SWEAR he came to my door in… well, maybe 2005? I had just started to dye my hair black. He was on my doorstep and asked me a bunch of questions and I had no idea who he was or what he wanted, and basically, it was a strange conversation but I made a joke about having a “harem of men” (it was a lie, I am demisexual and do not have a harem of any kind). I’ve had so many nightmares since that people who realized the conversation had taken place may have followed up by impersonating me to him and bombarding him, or his friends or relatives, with shitty messages, or intercepting his messages to me and finding ways to profit from them while making me look like an asshole. There is literally nothing I can do about that, though, so hopefully if something like that did happen, I get to clear the air at some point. Basically: I have never had Stephen Colbert’s direct contact information, and while I have tried mailing letters, to him or his manager, none have ever been returned. It’s OK, he’s busy and I’m not anyone he has a reason to remember, but it pisses me off to think that what could have been a promising beginning to a new career (I love to write) may have been pinched off before it could start by horrible people.

Anyway. I am working on an autobiography full of my imaginings, some where I worry about an organized effort to discredit and impoverish me, as well as people trying to cover up indiscretions and crimes. I have some real doozies of recollections of things a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who often insists on wearing white or orange has said to me, or done in front of me- she’s completely awful and I really pity her husband because she brags about cheating on him with men she finds more attractive, and said she stays with him for the money. She’s also attempted to sleep with ME, by the way, and I find her entirely unappealing. She’s like a cheap, flimsy cardboard copy of the seductress I had to create to protect myself, Mrs. White, who has completely misunderstood Mrs. White or what she actually represents and does. I’ll tell you more about Mrs. White and her sisters both in my autobiography, and maybe in a teaser post for that, soon.

Anyway. I wrote this the first year my blog was active, in 2023. I think 10 people saw it, and I had no responses. Here it is:

[From 2023:]

I wrote this in 2019, one year after I had discovered the Tek Jansen website and read the graphic novel. It’s silly and I didn’t like one of the things that happened in the graphic novel, so I wrote this to patch that up. Tek Jansen and his universe was created by Stephen Colbert, and if you enjoy this story I hope you look up his work.

Encounter on Califzona: A Tek Jansen Adventure

It was a sunny morning on the planet Califzona, and Clarisse Diamond angled her telephoto lens toward the hotel that the galaxy’s greatest hero, Tek Jansen, was currently asleep in. She aimed the lens toward the window of the penthouse suite. Her contact was in the window, a willowy green creature with leafy hair, photosynthesizing. She was not holding a cup of fertilizer. This was the signal- if Tek Jansen was with her, she would appear alone in the window, nothing in her hands.

Clarisse packed her equipment back in her tactical backpack and made her way down the rough scree of the slope she had been perched on. Only one thing to do. She had to use Tek Jansen’s notorious libido against him, gain his trust, and ferret out the secrets she needed to save her doomed home world from destruction. Tek’s government had set up robotic fracking sites on 90% of the small moon Ontington’s surface, sucking up its mineral wealth but destroying Ontington’s ecosystems and fragile tectonic crusts in the process. The only way to stop the machines was to gain access to codes that only Tek knew.

Could she rely on Tek’s better nature? Clarisse considered this as she made her way down to the doors of the Hotel Elegante, where Tek Jansen was staying. She didn’t know. She couldn’t take the chance.

The Hotel Elegante was hosting a pet show. Clarisse would find him and seduce him there, perhaps. This entire mission had to be improvised.

She actually didn’t know the name of the contact, but pulled out a credit chip wallet and discreetly handed it off to her in the lobby of the hotel as the contact brushed against her, ever so gently, leaving the hotel. Clarisse found a note pressed into her hand.

Suite 1001.

Clarisse booked herself into a room one floor below Tek’s suite, and carried her tactical backpack with its quantum-dimensional interior pockets, one of which carried a selection of evening gowns, up to her room. The backpack was pretty heavy as a result, even though it only appeared to be a cubic foot in size. She placed it on the bed and the bed sagged somewhat.

Clarisse was about to take a shower when there was a knock on the door. She eyeballed the door with suspicion. Her contact had left. Who could this be? A maid? Clarisse had been traveling under the guise of being an enthusiastic desert hiker. Surely that would raise no suspicion on this arid planet.

Clarisse belted her hotel robe around her more tightly and answered the door.

“It’s this one, just go right in,” grated a gravelly voice. Clarisse blinked. At her door was a tall, muscular figure, fully dressed in a tight Spandex uniform complete with cape and epaulets, his dark hair curling down slightly over his forehead. Tek Jansen held up a glass container in which an ugly dark substance swirled.

“It’s right here,” said the substance.

“Meangar, I don’t think this is the spa,” replied Tek.

“It’s not,” said Clarisse, slightly breathlessly. Tek, in person, was almost overwhelming.

Get the codes, girl, she told herself, sternly. She had a mission, the entire population of her native moon was depending on her.

“Sorry to have bothered you,” said Tek, and was about to turn away when Clarisse touched his arm.

“No, it’s fine. Is this your pet?” She gestured toward the swirling blackness in the glass jar.

“You’re an ugly loser and you’ll die alone,” grated the blackness.

“Isn’t it cute? This is Meangar,” replied Tek, patting the jar fondly.

“It is something,” replied Clarisse.

“Say, haven’t we met before?” Tek squinted at her.

Clarisse blinked. Had they met before?

Remember the mission, she thought, looking at Tek’s kind dark eyes.

“Can I buy you a drink?” she blurted, all her seduction lessons, which she had uploaded during the trip to Califzona via neural hyperlink forgotten.

Meangar said an expletive. Tek chuckled and tucked it under one arm.

“Where are you from?” asked Tek.

“I’m from… all over,” Clarisse replied. She started to play with her shoulder-length black hair. He really was quite handsome.

“I’m Tek,” he said, and Clarisse smiled at him. He held out his hand and Clarisse took it to shake it, and he brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

“I’m Clarisse,” she replied. She was acutely aware of having just finished a hike outside in the hot sun with a heavy pack on her back.

“I’ll buy you that drink,” Tek said.

“I’ll kill you first,” Meangar snarled.

Clarisse looked at Meangar, then at Tek.

“You get used to it,” Tek said, patting the jar.

“I’ll meet you down in the lobby at seven?” Clarisse replied. Her heart was pounding. Normally she was a lot more composed about her assignments, but this was… this was Tek Jansen.

She found herself grinning stupidly.

“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves,” she said.

Tek frowned.

“Jabberwocky?” he said.

“Jabberwocky,” she replied. “There are Jabberwocks on my home world.” A stray curl of hair escaped from his forehead and she smoothed it back.

He smiled.

“You both smell like Limburger!” yelled Meangar.

“I’ll enter it in the pet contest before we meet,” said Tek, patting the jar, and Clarisse smiled, suddenly shy.

“Seven, in the lobby,” she replied, and Tek smiled down at her. She blushed.

“I’ll see you then,” he said, and turned away, walking down the hotel hall corridor as Meangar started screaming about kidneys and piñatas.

That evening, Clarisse patted her carefully coiffed hair, in which a number of recording devices and weapons were placed, and wriggled her toes in her specialty pumps, which had a vial of sleeping potion located in the left heel, and, when activated, could eject four-inch spikes from the toes. She had let the charms of the dashing Tek Jansen get to her head before, but now she would be all business. It was time for her to get those codes.

She made her way, slinking as seductively as she could, to the bar in the hotel lobby, and looked around for Tek.

He hadn’t arrived yet. In the distance, she heard Meangar screaming something about its eternal revenge and how much it hoped to kill everyone in earshot someday. Ah, apparently it was being entered into the pet contest.

She walked up to the bar and seated herself at one end. Behind the bar, a glowing green metallic chimp shook a cocktail shaker.

“Hi,” it said. “What can I get for you?”

“Hi,” replied Clarisse. “I’m waiting for a friend.”

“It wouldn’t happen to be Tek Jansen, would it?”

Clarisse started. Was she that transparent?

Behind the bar, the robotic chimp took out a cloth and started polishing the counter.

“Well… well, yes, I was hoping to talk to Mr. Jansen.”

The chimp straightened his little black bow tie.

“I know him,” he said. “Before I got this job, I worked with him on his spacecraft. I was loyal. He was not.”

Clarisse hesitated. “Oh?” she replied.

“He left me in a space void, circling a black hole,” said the robotic chimp. “I’m C.A.S.E.Y.”

Clarisse switched on a discreet recording device in her purse. Maybe she could use this story to blackmail Tek into giving her the codes to stop the machinery on her home world.

For the next fifteen minutes, C.A.S.E.Y. told her a story of sadness- of a robotic chimp unappreciated and abandoned, and Clarisse felt her heart hardening against the charming and handsome Tek Jansen. How could he abandon his loyal robotic friend? How many scrapes had they been in together, how many times has C.A.S.E.Y. helped Tek, only to be left in a cold void in space, awaiting rescue, with came quite a long time after Tek had left, promising to be back soon?

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” said C.A.S.E.Y. “I plan on confronting him once and for all, here in this bar.”

Clarisse patted the robotic chimp’s arm.

“I had no idea he was so cruel,” she said. “This puts him in a whole new light for me.”

C.A.S.E.Y. looked over at her, dispassionately.

“Everyone loves him,” he said. “You will too, no doubt, once he’s here.”

“Clarisse?” said a familiar baritone. Clarisse turned and saw Tek.

He had changed into his dress uniform and looked even more handsome than he had earlier. His brown eyes shone behind his glasses as he smiled at her. She swallowed.

“Hello,” she said, and remembered C.A.S.E.Y. Her expression hardened.

“Remember this robot?” she asked, gesturing at the chimp.

Tek looked and an expression of delighted surprise swept across his chiseled features.

“C.A.S.E.Y.! I thought I had lost you forever in that space void. Meangar told me you had gotten a ride with the rest of Alpha Squad Seven, and it wasn’t until I had gotten it drunk on chlorofugue gas fumes that it confessed to me that it had lied. Are you okay?”

Clarisse and C.A.S.E.Y. both froze for a second, then the chimp broke down, sobbing.

“I thought you had abandoned me!”

“Abandon you? You are one of my most loyal followers! What would I do without you? I have missed you since I lost you,” said Tek. He reached across the bar and patted C.A.S.E.Y.’s glowing green shoulder.

Clarisse bit her lip. She couldn’t really blackmail Tek for something that had been the fault of his obnoxious little pet.

She waited until the robot stopped crying and then cleared her throat. Her seduction lessons were coming back.

“So,” she said, putting a hand on Tek’s arm, “tell me about yourself, Tek.”

She led him over to a small, secluded table. Over the next few hours, she practiced dumping space champagne in the mouth of a Califzonian pitcher plant instead of drinking it, while Tek drank most of two bottles, supplied by a grateful C.A.S.E.Y. on the house. She had to start taking sips once the plant started to hiccup.

He was an entertaining speaker and even when somewhat inebriated, he was charming and graceful. One sip of the heady space champagne after another, and Clarisse found herself telling him about her childhood on Ontington, and the Jabberwocks, and finally, the widespread scourge of the fracking machines.

“If only there were some way to stop them,” she said, tearfully, touching his muscular arm.

Tek leaned in toward her.

“Stick with me, baby doll,” he said. “If it would stop you from crying, I’d shut each one down myself.”

Clarisse looked over at him. Her large dark eyes were shining.

“Really? You’d help me? But- but your government-”

Tek flashed a huge and perfect grin.

“They don’t tell me what to do,” he said. “C’mon. Let’s grab C.A.S.E.Y. and get into my NinjaBlaster 9000 scout ship, and save those Jabberwocks.”

Clarisse knew there would be complications. It couldn’t quite be this simple, could it?

“If you gave me the codes to shut down the equipment, I could relay them to the Ontingtonian secret service and we could just stay here,” she said.

Tek reached up and smoothed a lock of black hair behind her ear.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked, and kissed her.

This is the cover of the Tek Jansen graphic novel I bought in 2018 that describes C.A.S.E.Y. and is the main source of my knowledge of this universe and the characters. There had been a website with a few chapters of a novel that seemed unfinished and was puzzling since, in tone, it varied a lot from lighthearted /poignant at first to impersonal and horrific in one of the later chapters on that site. I just assumed someone with the soul of Meangar had sabotaged his novel project. I’d have written stuff like the above story.

I really wish that I had known about this work at the time, but it could have been during the period of my life where I didn’t watch television at all. In any case, I can see definite room for a resurgence of Tek Jansen on the small screen. If you want more of my thoughts on this or any other matter, just contact me.

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I’ve been a fan of Stephen Colbert and his shows since I discovered them in about 2012 or so. I even made a joke site for the writers of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which is here: Plumbo! EZine.

I’ve been mulling over a lot of information lately, and the result has been a couple of really amazing story concepts set in or dealing with Middle Earth. I describe these a little in the clip. I won’t say more but they are just amazing and I really hope that this time (long story) I get to actually work on the things I concieve of.

Not every story idea I have has “legs’, but these two Middle Earth ones do, and I sincerely hope someone connects me to Mr. Colbert, a self-proclaimed fan of all things Middle Earth, because both stories should interest him, and the second described in particular is PERFECT for him.

Contact me here: Porftolio Contact

Do you want to know more? I can’t disclose my ideas yet but they are killer and I hope to make them, at the very least, into terrific little novels. That is, as long as I have the free time and resources to do so.

Don’t know anyone famous who may know Mr. Colbert, but maybe someone you know does? Pass this along.

Thank you, and have a great day,

Liz

Painting by Hendrik Jacobus Scholten. I hope to spend more time on my writing than I was able to before, in coming years.

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I am in a difficult place emotionally now and find it hard to write much, though I am being productive and organizing a few thoughts. This will all lead to some great fiction and nonfiction works, but for now, I am in a chrysalis.

I posted this to the little blog on my Give Yourself a Gold Star Project site, one I made with AI help to prom…

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I’m going to try to keep this short. I have many things I would prefer to do right now, but I just… I needed to get this off my chest, and maybe you will find yourself, at the end of all of this, agreeing with me. Maybe. If you do not and wish to tell me how wrong I am, please feel free to grab a subscription and tell me off.

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Many thanks to Ch…

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I hope you enjoy this little story and, as always, feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think, of this or any other story.

Enjoy!

Lactose Intolerance

It was all going smoothly, incredibly well, in fact- the Visashi were agreeable to all our demands and were willing to cede territory. We were all due to travel back to Earth to inform the governments there of the developments, and then Will farted.

I have to backtrack a lot to explain. The Visashi are plant-based alien lifeforms- their planet is covered in what we would call greenery, which is a gestalt organism created from numerous individual Visashi connected together by roots and mycelial hyphae (or what look like Earth-type fungal connections between root systems). They have one huge interconnected nervous system that operates by serial pulses of electrolytes, a lot like how our nervous system works but on a larger, slower scale. They “speak” with chemicals secreted from their upper bodies from structures that look a lot like leaves, and the airborne assortments of scents are collected by us in a gas chromatograph, periodically, as their secretions are decoded into language we can decipher, and our language translated back into scents we puff back at them from the blowing device constructed precisely for this purpose. If we hadn’t had an AI translator, and if the attendant insect-like organisms that are symbiotes of the Visashi hadn’t seemed sentient at first, we might have accidentally farmed all the Visashi for lumber. As it is, we made terrible inroads on their population at first, causing swarms of their symbiotes to attack us in turn. We had to leave the planet, but our xenobiologists kept studying the life on the planet, and discovered the electrical waves traversing the Visashi’s bodies, and the different scents they would produce, and figured it out. With the help of an AI translator, we figured out their language and have been negotiating a truce.

The planet is covered mostly with Visashi, who are immobile, so we can’t really displace them. However, we have access to the aquatic areas of the planet (it doesn’t really have a name, the Visashi call it Planet and we call it RSH911), and we’ve been given permission to create floating islands that we are allowed to live and operate from. We can farm the oceans and mine the sediments for minerals, which is what brought us to RSH911 in the first place.

The peace treaty was pretty much agreed upon, with our negotiators patiently waiting for Visashi scent-language to be translated and back again, a process which for each statement would take upwards of 12 hours. We waited in the shuttle landing pod. We had found a bare piece of rock to land on, and stayed in the pod, terrified of setting foot on the planet due to the abundant, and apparently sentient, vegetation that we may inadvertently offend with each footfall. Negotiations were important- the Visashi could kill us with their insect symbionts, which could become more or less venomous depending on the chemicals secreted in Visashi flower nectars. It might take a while for the whole planet to get the message, but if they wanted us gone, or dead, they could very easily kill us- and we couldn’t really kill them, since so much of the Visashi body lay below the surface of the ground, possibly going down an incredibly long way. Our xenobotanists hypothesized that the brain-equivalents the Visashi may have were in their root systems.

So all was going according to plan. The Visashi didn’t care about the ocean, they were happy to let us use the space, and interested in our culture and language and biology.

Will was new to our group- it was his first time on RSH911 and he was kind of our “intern”, despite having multiple degrees from prestigious universities. He was prone to anxiety, and in the confines of the shuttle pod, his gastrointestinal tract would make noises that were fairly foreboding.

Will, Rebecca and I were out on the shuttle landing bay, facing the Visashi directly and breathing in the Earthlike, clean, sort of pine-scented air. We had removed all scented hygiene products and made sure to wash in soap that would be inoffensive to the Visashi. We had been sure to use similarly scented toothpastes, and all of us had been flossing and brushing four times a day, and taking chlorophyll supplements so we would have no body odor. We all thought there was no chance of an accidental, unwarranted scent getting through to the Visashi and potentially destroying all the slow, gradual progress we had made in creating a truce.

I typed into the AI English-to-Visashi scent generator: WE THANK YOU FOR A PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATION. WE WILL RETURN TO EARTH AND ABIDE BY THE TRUCE WE HAVE NEGOTIATED. MANY PROFOUND THANKS.

As the scent generator whirred into gear, mixing and synthesizing scented compounds that the Visashi could understand, I saw Will’s face.

He was grimacing.

“What is it?” I whispered. Visashi could pick up vibration as well and we didn’t know how that would be interpreted, so we didn’t want to speak too loudly.

“I gotta go inside,” said Will.

“Why?”

“I gotta-” Will said, and then let loose with a very loud, very pungent fart.

Rebecca looked aghast; I am certain I looked the same way. All three of us swivelled and looked at the lumpy, misshapen bulk of the Visashi in front of us, our de facto gateway to the planetwide consciousness that was the Visashi community, and the many sensitive, scent-imbibing leaflike structures, shaded a greenish teal colour, that shook in the slight breeze.

“Inside,” I hissed and all three of us went into the pod.

“Will, what happened?”

Will looked abashed.

“I had a cookie,” he said, and Rebecca and I looked at each other.

“The white chocolate chip ones?” she asked. “That were made with milk you have an allergy to?”

“It’s not an allergy exactly, more like an intolerance,” said Will.

“It doesn’t matter! We don’t know what you just said to them!”

“Do it again,” I said, “only this time in front of the Visashi-to-English translator.”

Will cringed some more.

“I can’t fart on command,” he said.

“Why did you eat cookies with milk in them if you knew it would disagree with you?”

Will looked a little mulish.

“I was anxious and cookies help me relax.”

“Well,” I said, “What’s done is done. Help me put on a suit and relay the Visashi-to-English monitoring system to the pod computer, so we can track it inside, here. Might not be safe in a few hours to be outside."

Rebecca, looking disgusted, started putting on a space suit.

Will reached for his and I stayed his hands.

“You’ve done enough for one day,” I said. Will looked abashed, and retreated.

Rebecca and I made the necessary adjustments to our equipment, and waited tensely in the main cabin of our shuttle pod. Will, still farting occasionally, stayed in his sleeping pod, but since that was only separated from the main cabin with a thin fabric curtain, it was fairly awkward still. Rebecca and I played cards, and I tried to get Will to join us after a while, but the tension remained.

Finally, the system pinged, flagging the first part of the Visashi’s slow reply.

LAUGHTER YOU ARE VERY FUNNY WE APPRECIATE YOUR HUMOR

Rebecca and I looked at each other.

“Will, you might want to see this,” I said.

“What happened, did I doom the mission?”

“Not exactly.”

In about 30 minutes, another response:

PLEASE TELL US MORE OF YOUR JOKES

Rebecca and I looked at Will.

“We’re all out of cookies, but maybe we can find some beans in the stores,” I said.

For the rest of that week, Will kept eating milk- or fiber-containing foods and going outside to fart, and the Visashi loved it. We had to leave by the end of the week to make our launch window back to Earth, but for the majority of the time, Will was outside, trying to make himself fart.

“Who would have thought our first unscripted communication would be a comedy act,” I murmured, watching through the pod bay doors as Will, bent over and straining, let loose with yet another fart.

It took three weeks to get back home, and lucky for Rebecca and I, no one farted once on the journey back. By the time we arrived, news of the Visashi’s penchant for literal fart jokes had preceded us, and Will was an instant celebrity. In fact, he was invited to the White House to talk to the President about Visashi culture. There was talk that he would get a Congressional Medal of Honor.

Rebecca and I, sitting together in a cafeteria at NASA, watched this on the news and I sighed. Both of us were busy with the scientific end of unpacking Visashi communications, and helping to design and test seaworthy shuttle pods that could tolerate an aquatic landing and stay afloat. We knew there was weather on RSH911 but not how extreme it would get. There would be many, many years of tests and studies before we could go back with a larger contingent of humans.

In the meantime, the last message the Visashi had given to us remained vividly in my head:

WE ARE PLEASED YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO SHARE SUCH AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR CULTURE WITH US. THE ENTITY ‘WILL’ SHALL BE REMEMBERED ON PLANET FOR MANY GENERATIONS. MAY YOU STAY INTACT AND REMAIN SUNLIT.

I recited the message to Rebecca.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “He didn’t follow protocol and screwed up, and now he’s a cultural hero to the Visashi.”

“If only all of us could be as lactose intolerant,” I said, and then bit into my grilled cheese sandwich.

Sunlit beech leaves from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Would humans recognize sentient aliens, and are we recognizing all the sentient creatures currently on Earth?

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I have a few other post ideas in mind, including one about finding your path after a long period of inactivity or, possibly, lack of opportunity. Sometimes an opportunity is invisible just because you can’t see it yet, and sometimes that’s your mindset, and sometimes that’s the mindsets of others who influence you.

For now: enjoy!

The Ice Box version 2

They bound my hands behind me, unhooded me, and I saw them- three fairly well-fed members of the United States military in full uniform, medals glinting at me, names displayed, all three of them very confident in their postures that I was the subordinate and they were in control.

“Tell us what you know.”

I said nothing. I did not move.

“Tell us how you did it.”

I said nothing. I did not move.

One of them picked up a device. I wasn’t sure what it was, I was too busy watching their faces, their limbs, to pay attention to some object that wasn’t going to hurt me.

“This will shoot 20,000 volts into your spine, if I place it there,” said the man holding it. His name was Jones.

I said nothing. I did not move.

“I can place it on your throat,” he said. “You will never speak or swallow again.”

I said nothing. I did not move.

“Ok, ok,” said another one. Blond. Name of McKenzie.

“How would you like to be unbound? How would you like something to eat? Maybe a place to rest that is comfortable, dark?”

They had been keeping me in a brightly lit room where I had to sleep on the concrete floor.

I said nothing, but I did focus on him.

He was nervous.

They all were nervous.

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I will be writing some new pieces soon, including ones focused on the CIA. Stay tuned! These are based on a few pretty paranoid and odd ideas I had recently, including the idea that someone put a tracking/listening device in my arm!

I also have a new story set in Middle Earth- that one I will keep to myself for now but I may share a snippet, and I have some cool ideas about atomic clocks that I feel I should keep to myself, as well, but then again, I can write around the ideas to write about someone like me, unassuming, largely discounted, ignored, mentally ill- who has an idea that saves the world.

So those things are coming; in my science and tech blog (here), I hope to do a bit of discussion of some interesting archaeological findings, as well as provide a few sample segments of my nonfiction book in progress, Notes from a Mad Scientist.

Now for the third telling of “Baba Yaga”.

I wrote this story last year, at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I do admit there is some wishful thinking here. Every day the war goes on, innocents suffer and the world slides closer to madness. May Ukraine be victorious.

I walked up to the young man in olive fatigues and helmet. He was holding his rifle, looked at me with hostility.

“You’re in my house,” I said.

He looked around. The square we were in was deserted save for a few trees, birds. It was night, he was alone. A cloud passed over the winter moon.

“Go away, old woman,” he said. “Or you’ll be arrested.”

I had a basket slung over one arm. I reached in, took out a small tin. It looked like a tin for chewing tobacco.

"Are you hungry?” I asked. “Visitors to my house get soup.”

The young man looked at me askance.

“You’re crazy, old woman. Go away, baba.”

I walked up to him. He didn’t flinch, I’ll grant him that.

“You smell Russian,” I said, opening the tin, and I threw the contents into his face, blowing them toward him. He froze.

Gently, I reached up to his panicked face and closed his eyes.

“Tell me where to find your commander,” I said.

He gave me an address.

The rest of his unit was returning, so I crooked my gnarled fingers, with my razor-sharp nails, and slit his jugular. Blood fountained out, and I licked my finger.

Shouts, in the distance.

“Goodbye, Russian,” I said, and disappeared.

A short while later, I did the same thing someplace else. This time I needed to be a little more clever, he was surrounded by people. So I confronted him when he was alone on the toilet, pants around his ankles.

“Who- wha-”

A puff of poisoned powder.

“You smell Russian. Tell me where to find your commander.”

His eyes rolled. A challenge, this would be fun.

I ran a finger across his wrist. Blood spurted.

“Tell me,” I said, and shimmered, and appeared for just a few moments to be his beloved mother, or maybe his beloved wife, maybe a long-lost love.

“Tell me, brave Russian,” I said.

His eyes glazed. He was losing a lot of blood.

Pausing only to snatch a fistful, I held him until he told me. Then I wrung his neck.

“Goodbye, Russian,” I said, and disappeared.

These tactics suited me well until I reached the bunker. This would be the challenge, and I was ready for it.

I spun around three times, stamping my foot at the end, and lo, I appeared to be the last person I had last killed, complete with uniform, although my eyes were unglazed and I was unhurt. I tucked my poison powder into my uniform’s pocket, where it would be easy to reach.

I had to wait two hours for him to finally be alone. This time it was everyone else who needed a break, they left him alone, only for five minutes, but it was long enough for me to strike. He was sitting down, resting against a pillow, ready to take out a blanket.

I walked up to him, inhaled. I pulled out the tin of powder.

“You smell Russian,” I said, and he looked at me, startled. He reached for his pistol, always holstered and by his side.

I blew powder into his face, and he froze.

“Tell me, Russian,” I said. “Why are you in my house?”

He looked at me, mute, confused.

“Never mind,” I said. “You sent your soldiers to attack my house, you bombed my house, you ripped the people in my house away from where they were sleeping- now I’ll take you to your house, where you belong.”

“Moscow?” He looked amused.

“No,” I said.

“The coffin. The one you built in my house when you poisoned it years ago.”

I took him by the shoulder. I knew the others would return in moments, we had to go now. The door handle behind us was turning.

He opened his mouth, trying to yell.

We disappeared.

We reappeared, a short while later, in the sky over a silent forest, a concrete half dome, other concrete and steel structures in the distance. I had misjudged the distance: forests tended to call to me. We floated over toward the half dome. The small insects of this forest had all been killed years ago, and the forest litter had piled up over the years, undecayed, a testament to the pervasive legacy of poison that Russians had brought to my home. We were floating in midair. I did not want to stay here longer than I had to, this place reeked of unnatural death. I had nothing against death- but the natural order, it had to follow the natural order.

“Tell me, Russian,” I said, conversationally, as he registered the concrete and steel below us, “Why did you invade my house?”

“Ukraine belongs to Russia, it is our ancestral lands.”

I slapped him in the mouth. He balled his fists, but could not otherwise move.

“You’re a strong one,” I said. “You might live days down there. Perhaps I should give you some food and water, to let you live longer.”

He looked confused, then panicked.

I ran a finger along his neck.

“Yes,” I said. “I will feed on your soldiers. But you- you and your cell phone belong here, in the coffin you built.”

I said words, words of power, and the concrete half below cracked open. Old, rusting equipment covered in radiation-resistant mold appeared, the surface level of the old reactor core at Chernobyl.

I turned my face away. It stank, just like this Russian.

“Make sure to record,” I said. He didn’t move. I picked his phone out of his pocket, turned it on, set it to record. I kept it turned away from me. I put it in one of his hands, willed him to hold it, angled it down. I took out a piece of red thread from one pocket- always carry thread- and wound it around the phone, his hand, so it would not drop.

“Goodbye, Russian,” I said, and he dropped. I said a few more words of power and the deepest part of the reactor core opened up. I gave him a soft landing. I wanted him to live a while.

I moved my arms, knitted up the holes I had created, sealed off the core of the defunct reactor, the dome, and moved myself as quickly as possible after all of that. It would not do to be caught on cameras or seen by passing planes, although my visage was as malleable and changeable as a cloud in the sky.

Let the world try to figure out how that Russian leader had wound up sealed in the Chernobyl reactor core- assuming there even was enough cell coverage under all that concrete to allow him to broadcast his location. Maybe in 3000 years when they exhumed the reactor they’d find his corpse and puzzle over it. I didn’t care.

“Back to the bunker,” I said to myself. I was out of the powders I mixed with my mortar and pestle, back where I slept, in the middle of my home- but I didn’t need them any more.

I was hungry.

“Dinnertime,” I said, licking my tongue across my very sharp teeth, and disappeared.

An image of Baba Yaga, snagged from Wikipedia. She’s an interesting folk figure, and I feel a lot like she represents a lot of the rage older women especially feel at seeing children and families ripped apart to appease the egos of men.

I may write about her again, though it may be in the context of helping Ukraine win the war in a different way.

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