Horoscopes for July -- it is July, right?

Aries:
The mists gather, softening the world, muffling sounds and hiding objects. They thicken, limiting your vision, until all that remains is you. The world might still be there when the mists depart, but I wouldn't count on it.

Taurus:
The waters rise, carving away the coastal cities, driven by strange tides and once-impossible currents. They sweep onto the land, a steady success of invasions and retreats, eroding farmlands and industrial centers alike, driving the survivors to ever-higher ground.

Gemini:
The melting of the ice caps released them from their imprisonment in Lake Vostok. We do not speak of them; we can barely see them. Their influence is measured by the ever-expanding zone of mysterious disappearances and strange transformations.

Cancer:
The storms roll through, driven by the rising heat of the atmosphere: floods and droughts, side by side, lightning storms that melt buildings, winds that flatten cities. There is no stopping it; it is too late for that, and the underground cities are only a stopgap. They were never meant to be permanent homes for what remains of humanity.

Leo:
The world is empty. We wander through the cities, meeting and parting, trapped in the broken reflections of what was once our world. We cannot form families, alliances, societies; we are gone from each other almost as soon as we meet, will we or not. 

Virgo:
It was a magnificent effort: a massive artificial intelligence, self-educating but able to access the whole of the world's knowledge. It was supposed to save us, to show us how to turn back from the edge. Instead, it shut itself down in disgust. 

Libra:
It started innocently enough: we were all so tired. It was only natural to lie down and sleep. A few extra hours here or there, to make up for what we'd miss. Maybe an extra day. Maybe two. Maybe a week, or more. Now the last remnants of the wakeful wander through a world of blissful dreamers.

Scorpio:
We had no idea they were among us. It seems very possible they didn't know themselves. Then the signal came, and there they were: marching in the streets in their matching uniforms, rounding up the ones who opposed them: nameless, faceless, all driven by the same will. Perhaps we could oppose them, if we only knew the source...

Sagittarius:
The end of the world came without drama, just a slow grinding down of everything as we used up the last of our resources and all the great achievements of our technology and civilization fell to pieces. Even the great die-off was a slow, gradual thing. Our lives are not bad lives, those that are left, but we live them knowing that we will never again be what our people once were.

Capricorn:
It was that research into psychic phenomena, back into the seventies. Fifty-some-odd years trying to isolate the ability, verify it, tie it to something genetic or trainable. Then they created the children, thinking that children would be well-behaved and biddable. They were so, so very surprised.

Aquarius:
They say it was something at the supercollider that set of the rippling patterns of instabilities, swapping bits of our world for others, turning loose new plants and animals and ecosystems, changing everything. We may yet survive, if we're fast enough to adapt, but we can lose anything at any time.

Pisces:
The stars aligned and that horrible, maddening city rose. The things it loosed -- monstrosities, madness, murder -- made a mockery of our mortal concerns. We live now in a world where that city has always been risen, those things have always been here, and everything has always been this horrible.

Electricity

 Well... we still have power, which is not true of everyone in Texas or even everyone in our suburb. We're currently checking in with people to make sure they have electricity and offer a spot in our house if they don't. So far, all but one family does, and they're going to try camping-in-place and see how it goes. 

This is looking pretty bad -- I mean, how dangerous does it have to get before the Governor of Texas actually advises you to stay home? -- so I hope everybody has a place to shelter and a backup plan.

Year 2020 ADHD

At this point in my life, I'm pretty sure that Beautiful Wife and I both have undiagnosed (now adult) ADHD. And in reading about the various less-recognized versions and symptoms of ADHD, I'm noticing a particular theme: one way that people with ADHD hack their brains into getting things done is to stress themselves out enough to switch over from distraction to hyperfocus. And for a lot of people who use that trick, the generally high stress level of 2020 is making that harder, if not impossible. 

I read that, and I just thought: Ooof. 

I am here to tell you all that I am absolutely freaked out. Election day is in two days, the Republican Party has spent the entire election doing their best to suppress voting, throw out legitimate votes, and rig absolutely everything they can -- all the while screaming about how the Democrats are trying to steal the election. They're also busily trying rat-fuck the opposition; it's worth noting that the push that Giuliani and others are making about the Oh So Scandalous contents of Hunter Biden's laptop is actually in regards to the second of these supposed laptops to mysteriously turn up. (And at this point I feel compelled add: at least the second. I would not be surprised to learn that there were more.) The first one appeared right around the time that the impeachment hearings were starting, in the hands of a former Fox News contributor. Meanwhile the right wing is predicting all the horrible, terroristic things the Democrats are going to do if they win, while their own people are already doing them.

It also seems quite clear that Donald Trump has no intention of conceding the presidency, no matter what the voting results look like on election night. The entire Republican Party is, I expect, going to back his play; they have so far, and I can't imagine why they'd stop now. Plus, they've managed to stack the Supreme Court in such a way that if the question ever gets that far, the results are going to make Bush vs. Gore look like a well-reasoned legal decision. 

Oh, and there's a pandemic. As of last night, we've over a million deaths globally and nearly 231,000 deaths here in the United States -- a set of numbers that I strongly suspect is being undercounted, at least here in the U.S. And looking at the death toll alone is understating the cost regardless, since we already have plenty of evidence of ongoing health effects in over a third of people infected by it.

The medical impact isn't all of it, either: there's also the economic impact. I don't think it's really showing up in the news, and I'm not sure that there's any sort of widespread understanding of the full effects of it, but: a lot of people are out of work. A lot of people are facing eviction. (A lot of people have been evicted.) A lot of people are facing medical bankruptcies. Hotels and restaurants are not going to be operating at full capacity any time in the forseeable future. (I saw an ad the other day for a hotel chain... it wasn't this one, but it gave off a similar feeling of "Please come stay with us, you can social distance just by being the only person in our hotel!") Tourism has pretty much bottomed out. I strongly suspect -- though I don't have a citation for this one, or really any good evidence -- that the only reason "The Economy" hasn't crashed is that "The Economy" is measured in ways that are being artificially propped up until after the election. (Stock Market, I'm looking at you.) I'm expecting (and Dark Gods, but I'd love to be wrong about this) that by January we'll be in freefall regardless of who wins. I'm also expecting that this will be the subject of much shock and surprise on the part of politicians, pundits, and reporters... while the Disaster Capitalists who set it all up rake in the money, and the folks who still haven't recovered from the last recession or two wind up even worse off.

I'm also expecting a rise in hate crimes following the election. If you're a member of a vulnerable group (or even you're not) please have a post-election safety plan. I hope you do already. It's going to get crazier out there.

So... yeah. What was I talking about? Oh, right, stress. Life is just a teeeeeeensy bit stressful right now. And if that's interfering with your ability to operate, you aren't alone. Everybody I know is freaked the fuck out right now. The only ones who aren't seem to be the ones who are looking forward to the violence, or even pushing for some kind of new civil war. Being utterly discombobulated by all this is perfectly natural (in fact, a lot of what's getting passed around as news and rumors right now seems purpose-built to create that effect). Needing way more sleep than usual is also nothing unusual. This is not normal, and there's nothing wrong with you for noticing and reacting to that.

Me? Well, I'm planning to stay off of social media until the election is past; maybe through the end of the week and into next weekend. I may or may not be putting things up here on the Blog o' Doom; if I do, they'll likely be pieces that have nothing to do with the real world. Aside from heavy drinking (which I really can't do right now, owing to some medications I'm taking) and writing all this out (which I've just done) I can't think of any other good way to cope. You can only take so many hot baths.

Take care of yourselves; take care of each other. If you know me and you need help with something, let me know; I'll do what I can. 

If there's any hope to be found in all this, it'll be found in supporting each other. 

And for fuck's sake, VOTE. If you already voted, awesome! But also be aware that it may take more than that to get us through this. Figure out what you can do, what you're willing to do, and be ready to do it. People are -- and have been -- organizing; if you're in a position where you can be part of that, your presence is needed. 

And now that I've written all that out, maybe I can finally go to sleep.

Weekdays, Revised

My sense of time is only sort of barely hanging on, and it's only managing that because of electronic calendars. (I'd read about people losing track of what year it was during major historical disasters and I always wondered how that was possible; I'm pretty sure I get it now.) So forget days of the week. I'm not using them anymore.

Instead, well, I'm using these:

Stunday
Frazzleday
Droopday
Ugh
Flubday
Sighday
Shatterday

Our new weekdays are subject to revision at any time and in any order, so if you find yourself having a Swishday when you were expecting a Droopday, well, that's just how it goes.

Two Kinds of... wait, what?

There are 2 kinds of people on Earth: Those who will be affected by climate change, and actually that was a trick everyone will be affected.

— SarcasticRover (@SarcasticRover) September 6, 2017

Tweets from the Eclipse

A horror story in thirty-four tweets:

The darkness is coming. I can hear the first faint whispers already. And those strange, distant, dissonant bells.

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) August 21, 2017

Continued below:

Rough Night Of Considering Entropy

Despite being completely exhausted and (for once) sensibly going to bed as soon as the boys were down (around 9:00), I only slept for about five hours. Part of that was the cat - he tends to get annoyed when people are sleeping in the loft bed, and frequently starts meowing plaintively in the middle of the night - but I told him to shut up and he actually did, and I really should have been able to go right back to sleep after that. I think I've been doing that thing where I'm really not getting enough sleep, so I'm exhausted, so I push harder to get things done, so I get even less sleep. Though come to think of it, I also took some Theraflu before I went to bed, and slept pretty deeply - this could easily be a combination of sleeping (and breathing) better than usual, and my body being on a schedule where it thinks it's supposed to wake up after five or so hours.

...Which is fine, insofar as I do feel rested. Unfortunately, I feel rested at 1:30 in the morning, which is probably not going to help me at work tomorrow. And I woke up both depressed and adrenalized. There are several things that are probably contributing to that, too. we're in the middle of a season of big transitions at work, which is both frustrating (as it has a lot of things on hold) and slightly terrifying (as I think some of our systems are going to break down in ways that our current staff won't be able to fix). Our elected officials seem to be making a concerted effort to tear down the government that employs them - I'd single out Trump and Bannon, but I can make a decent case that tearing down the government has been part of the overall Republican platform for a couple of decades now. (I think that a lot of the people who voted for these clowns specifically to tear down government programs - repeal Obamacare, get rid of "entitlements", rid of governmental oversight and the "nanny state" - are going to be unpleasantly surprised when things actually start to fall apart as a result of all that tear-it-down policy, but somehow that isn't making me feel any better about it.) On top of all that, a friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago. I can't say he was a close friend, and we were friends mostly online (but not exclusively so - when he came to Texas a few years back, I organized a sort of "welcome to hell" party for him, and he dragged me out to a couple of concerts while he lived here in town, with some really excellent music that I wouldn't have known about otherwise). So, yeah: we weren't incredibly close friends, but he was one of those bright, erudite, funny people who, even if they never accomplish anything super dramatic, make a big difference to the world in countless small ways. I miss him. The world is a darker place without him.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. I almost never used to feel that way, but by God I'm feeling it now. I can totally see how God -- if He's out there -- could look at the world and think that human beings weren't such a good idea after all. Admittedly, I'd still try to sway Him with the old "What if you only find one righteous man?" argument. The world we have may not be perfect, but I still think it's worth preserving.

But I'm honestly not worried about any sort of divine judgement or retribution, not even if our country is guilty of the sin of Sodom (the one described by Ezekiel 16:49, mind you, not the one everybody thinks of as sodomy). That's one of the advantages of being an atheist. No, if everything falls apart it will all be on us.

And I suppose that's what really worries me: I'm coming to grips with the deep, visceral realization that human beings can look at all the advantages we have, all the programs we've put in place to make our collective lives better, or at least less miserable -- from support for the arts, public libraries, and school lunches right on up to public schools, political compacts designed to keep Europe from erupting into world-engulfing wars every 20-50 years, vaccines, drinkable water and breathable air -- that people can look at all those things and conclude, "Eh, we're better off without 'em." I'm pretty sure there was a time when I thought that wasn't possible.

Now I'm pretty sure it's happening.

Cleanse it with fire

Okay, it's late. I don't care.

I'm in a mood to burn shit down.

It's a damned good thing that there are so many people I want to spare.

...Or not.

I was going to try to do some kind of writing last night.

Apparently it was vitally important that we hang doors, instead. Apparently it was critical that we do this now, and -- and I confess I'm baffled by this -- it was equally important to do it ourselves because we're just too exhausted to get professionals in to do it right.

I don't even... You know what? I don't care. It's done. The evening is gone. The doors are hung. Whatever.

I swear, though, the way April is going? We're going to finally get the garage cleaned back out and everything back in place inside the house...

...and it will be just in fucking time for the Zombie Apocalypse to arrive, and force us to evacuate the city entirely.

With my luck, they'll show up right in the middle of Secondborn's birthday party, so we'll end up having to escape with a bunch of traumatized kindergarteners who are screaming for their parents, in a van that's low on gas, with nothing but Batman cake and Capri-suns for supplies.

You just watch. When it happens, I won't even look surprised.

Endings

Some say the world will end in fire,
Others in flood or ice,
Or Civ'lization will collapse,
In violence and vice.

There's famine, plague, or asteroid,
To bring about our ends,
Or aliens come harvesting
Our families and friends.

Or World War III, or World War Z,
With zombies in the streets,
Or scientists and GMOs
polluting what we eats.

Perhaps a wolf consumes the sun
or God will come to judge.
Perhaps we die of poisoning
from our own toxic sludge.

The latest smartest robots might
Decide to wipe us out,
And if the flooding misses us
We still could die of drought.

So many things could cause the end--
far more than just this list--
It's hard to say what might be best
Or which seems likeliest.

I doubt 'twill be disaster or
Act of Divinity;
What brings us down, I most suspect
is our stupidity.

© 2016

Beware the Lake of Fire!

...for that is where so much Jim Beam was tragically lost!

How much rain are we getting in Texas?

The ants on our window just spelled out "WHERE IS EMBASSY?" followed by "WE NEED ASYLUM".

Kevin Costner just put his gills back on and bought a new boat.

The signs that say, "Do Not Cross If Water Is Above This Marker" are underwater.

So are most of our highways.

The elephants in the zoo are practicing snorkling with their trunks, and the monkeys are trying a to cut a deal to ride on the giraffes.

One of my friends just got a new boat. It was an F150.

Carnival is now offering cruises to downtown Houston.

There are fish on the biking trails... and caught in the chain-link fence.

"It's a golf course!"
"It's a marina!"
"It's a golf course *and* a marina!"

The ducks are finally preparing to implement their plan for world conquest.

There's an old guy in College Station wandering the streets with a hammer and nails and demanding to know how long a cubit is.

"How long can you tread water?"

There's been a lot of flooding around the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex (and elsewhere in Texas). Here's a picture of Breckinridge Park in Richardson (a suburb of Dallas):

To really understand the scale, you have to realize that that's one of those waist-high trash cans off to the left of the gazebo in the "before" picture. It's the sort of structure that gets rented out for birthday parties and suchlike.

There are some impressive (and/or scary) videos floating around on YouTube as well.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

That time... that horrible time, foretold in the prophecy... it has come. It falls upon us like an avalanche, a flood, a typhoon; encircles us like a brushfire; smashes us flat like a giant radioactive monster; eats our brains like a plague of zombies. It scatters our plans and reveals all our attempts at preparation for the vain and foolish things they are. There is nothing but this -- this devouring, consuming horror -- and no way to escape it, no way out but forward. We will strive, and some of us -- a fraction of a fraction -- may endure. We carry forward the hopes of a dying world, an abandoned family, a forgotten loft bed. We fall helplessly into...

...The Busy Season!

So, how's your apocalypse?

I have a writing project[1] that I tend to come back to around this time of year. It has a pretty good opening scene, but I've never made it much past that; I don't know how to tie the rest of it together. But since I don't have anything else this morning, and since that's hovering around the back of my mind, I'm just going to toss it out here as a question: What are you doing as the world ends? Answer as much or as little as you'd like. Fill in whatever details you need - what kind of apocalypse? Who are you? What's happening? Make it as autobiographical or as completely fictional as you'd like.

[1] That's a technical term for "a novel I will never finish".

The Centre Cannot Hold (Water)

Is it just me, or does this graphic look like a harbinger for some sort of prequel to Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room (which was the basis for the movie Soylent Green)?

I can't tell if it really is a sign that global warming and human over-population are gearing up for our impending doom as a species, or if that's just the sleep deprivation talking. Help?

Has the world ended yet?

I'm just wondering. Big project at work, trying to get enough sleep at home, hoping to find time to write in here somewhere.

So, any prophecies been fulfilled lately? Giant wolves swallowing the sun and moon? The dead rising up to devour the living? Giant locust-monsters spreading across the land? Rain of frogs? Anything?

No?

...It's probably just me, then.

Another Sort Of Ark

"Okay, I see the pattern - someone is stealing animals, rare and common alike, from farms and zoos all over the world." Alaric touched his forehead, where a pair of small, upturned horns betrayed his half-demonic heritage. His horns were pulsing - never a good sign - but he pushed on: "And we're investigating this why, exactly?"

Old Man Stevens shook his head. He was a tiny, wizened figure, completely dwarfed by his office chair and the massive mahogany desk in front of him. "We're not investigating. We already know what's going on. The man responsible is a preacher named Charles DuLange. Has a small but loyal congregation in West Virginia; preaches a lot fire and brimstone, insists that the end of the world is coming soon."

"...And only the worthy will be saved," finished Alaric, reflexively cynical. "So where do the animals come in?"

"Anna took a stroll through his dreams last night. She thinks he's expecting a massive flood, and plans to use the animals - and his followers - to repopulate the world once the waters recede. Normally, I'd want more confirmation--"

Alaric nodded. Dreams were a notoriously unreliable way to gather information, but the sorts of sensitives who could pry into someone's thoughts directly all had to operate at very close range.

"--but two hours ago, a group of DuLange's followers hijacked a cruise ship. They put most of the passengers overboard in the lifeboats, but kept about thirty as hostages... or eventual sacrifices. Meanwhile, Dulange and the rest of his congregation have packed up and formed a convoy; they're on their way to the coast to meet the ship. Our best guess is that they plan to move the animals onboard with them, seal the boat up, and hold their final worship service."

"Is that a problem?" asked Alaric. "Our kind of problem, I mean? It smells more like Jonestown than an actual incursion." His horns pulsed again, insistently.

"Anna says that DuLange has been in touch with... something. She says his dreams were tainted. She's not the only one who thinks so. Something is coming, and whatever it is, it's about as bad as it gets."

"So you're sending me."

Old Man Stephens nodded. "Get onto that boat, or intercept the caravan - whatever you have to do to stop DuLange. Whatever it is that's using him, it's powerful enough that if it ever does manage an incursion, it might very well be able to raise the waters and end the world. Don't let that happen."

Alaric nodded. "May I sink the boat?"

"Whatever it takes." Old Man Stephens' voice was flat. It was hard to read expressions on that mummy-like face, but Alaric realized suddenly that the little old man was scared.

"I'm on it," he said, and turned to go.

Sarah Kane vs. Cannibal Corpse

Because I think the end of the world and the utter destruction of all living things really needs more cheerful, catchy anthems:

Scenes from a Zombie Apocalypse

Derrick zipped the duffel bag closed and lifted it onto the center of the stretcher. The gas station didn't have a lot of food in it, but it was more than he'd expected. Especially after they'd found the grocery store looted completely.

"You ready?" Trent asked softly.

"Hell yes," said Derrick. "Let's get this shit back to the truck."

They squatted, one at each end of the stretcher, and lifted it up. Moving quickly and quietly, they went out the front door.

Jimmy was standing by the gas pumps, watching the street. He glanced back at them, but only briefly.

"How's it look?" asked Derrick, when he was close enough to speak quietly.

Jimmy nodded up the street, towards the center of town. "Just shamblers, so far."

Derrick looked at the slowly milling crowd. He recognized the slow, shuffling movements and the occasional lurching stagger. "Oh, no. Shamblers. Run for you life."

Behind him, Trent said: "Or just stroll. Stroll for your life."

"Mosey," corrected Derrick. "Mosey for your life."

"Can't," said Trent. "I'm not from Texas. I'll have to saunter and hope for the best."

Jimmy looked back at them, but didn't object to the banter. "Couple of the outliers are starting to drift this way," he said softly. "Let's get moving."

"Ambling," corrected Derrick automatically. "Let's get ambling."

"Or traipsing," suggested Trent. "Can I traipse?"

"As long as it takes us away from the zombies," said Jimmy, "I don't care what you're doing."

"So, no dawdling?" Derrick shifted his grip on the stretcher and started forward. At that moment he heard footsteps behind them: louder, faster, coming closer.

Jimmy heard them too. He looked back: "Shit. Hunters! Run!"

Derrick risked a glance back as he started to run. The hunters were unmistakable; six of them had broken away from the horde, and were loping towards them. He turned his attention back to running: this would be a bad, bad time to trip. The stretcher tugged at his arms, but Trent was matching his pace smoothly enough.

He hated running. He hated the way his lungs burned. He hated the way his heart pounded and his muscles dragged. He hated the stitch in his side. But most of all, he hated that he didn't have enough breath to suggest sprint, flee, or abscond.