There’s a new Kim du Toit book on sale.
Just be warned: it’s nothing like my usual fare.
The idea came to me shortly after Connie died, and I wrote most of it while staying at Free Market Towers.
I’m still working on Skeleton Coast; while it is completed (finally!), I have to reformat it the whole thing to make it work in both print and Kindle, which requires almost a line-by-line edit. It should all be done by the end of next week.
A few people have taken issue with the way I show my displeasure at officialdom and busybodies [some redundancy] by using this cartoon:
“It’s too crass, Kim!” and “You have more class than that, Kim!” are the common themes.
Far be it for me to upset my more conservative Readers, so in future I may be using this instead:
I trust that this change is to everyone’s satisfaction…
After my rather gloomy, sorry-for-myself post the other day, I must confess to feeling quite heartened at the several messages which I read both in Comments and via email from people like Reader Bruce M, who wrote in response to “Getting Tired” thus:
Me too, but there are a lot of us out that need people like you to stay focused on the world for us.
I would like you to do a bit about the politics of hate. It seems to me that there is an effort to get those of us that just want our freedom to do and think what we want, to hate each other.
The groups to hate:
Boomers, vaxxers, Jews, blacks, Hispanics, any religious group not of your exact sect or cult. The list keeps growing until no one is on our side.
Planned by the commies, maybe ?
A reader who values your thoughts.
It is indeed a topic worthy of discussion, nay even a rant. Expect one shortly.
And from Longtime Reader John dB who, after a reminder of my long-past writings, concluded with:
Can I persuade you to cast aside your fatigue and carry on with your political commentary? What you have to say features in what I want to do and besides, the quiet ones who follow you but hardly/never comment, need you.
I am deeply touched and flattered that my fevered rants about our body politic actually mean something in people’s lives. (He also reminded me of this essay.)
Consider the fatigue cast aside… just buckle in, because it may get kinda rough from here on.
I think it was Steve Kruiser who wrote a few weeks back that he was getting tired of writing about politics and social issues, and I can see his point completely because I feel exactly the same way.
The problem is that it’s all the same: more evil shit from the Socialists (immigration, masks/lockdowns, overspending, the 1/6 show trial, still more “othering” of conservatives — especially Trump supporters — gun control wailing, yet more fucking idiocy from “The Squad” of Commie bitches in the House, lies about the criminality of illegal voting in the 2020 elections, and so on and so on).
All the above bullshit happens every day, repeated ad nauseam and with ever-increasing rancor and viciousness — fuck me, it just never stops and after a while, I just can’t be bothered to comment on it because it’s all the same bullshit: more government, more social control, more flouting of the Constitution or U.S. law, all seemingly without fear of pushback or legal consequences, and all aided and abetted by the constant barrage of screaming idiocy from the mainstream media such as the Big Three networks, CNN/MSNBC, the New York Times and every other newspaper, and so on.
I can ridicule President Braindead, Vice-President Cocksucker, Squeaker Pelosi and all the other toads like Schumer, Swallwell and their ilk until I’m blue in the face, but damn it, I’m just getting tired of it all.
We all know how loathsome this bunch of Commies and government control freaks can be, and let me ask you this: was anyone surprised when that half-assed plot to kidnap MichGov “Irma Grese” Whitmer was revealed as basically a false flag operation by the fucking FBI? The same FBI who tried to help undermine an elected U.S. President, who’ve been warning in breathless tones about a supposed White supremacist movement that’s going to rebel violently against the government, when everyone in their right mind knows that there’s no such thing, and none of that crap is ever going to happen?
We all know that the real danger to democracy is not conservatives or Trump supporters but the people who want to subvert voting laws to allow non-citizens to vote, or for citizens to vote as many time as needed to get the socialists elected.
We all know that Critical Race Theory is not a laudable attempt to redress the wrongs of racism, but a baleful movement to push Whites aside, out of the education establishment, out of political thought or politics itself, and to poison White children against their parents, their race and their heritage.
We know all these things and so much more, and honestly, I don’t know whether my ranting about them does any good whatsoever because at the end of it all, this back porch of mine is largely filled with friends and fellow conservatives who in some cases are more conservative than I, who are still more angry about the current situation than I am; and with all that, what’s the point of me talking about this crap any more?
Thank goodness that I have other things to talk about: cars, guns, sports, beautiful women, good music, Righteous Shootings and all the other things that pique the interest of men like myself.
I welcome your thoughts on the matter, O My Readers, in Comments or by email.
I think I may have figured out what was happening with WordPoop (think “automatic update” and you won’t be far from the truth). To test this, please respond in comments if the entire passage below gets posted (it ends, “So Jules licks the symbol at the end of the first chapter…” )
Julia (“Jules”) Wakefield is a twenty-five year old secretary who works at a British government agency, in a department so boring and inconsequential that everybody who’s ever worked there leaves it off their resume.
That’s during the day. At night, however, she is a fantasy maven: a mistress of a popular Internet website which explores and plays in the world of fantasy, and she is constantly looking out for The Next Big Fantasy Thing for her many hundreds of online fans and followers.
So when she discovers that her little neighborhood bookstore has found an obscure fantasy series from the 1930s, she buys the books; but when she reads them, she’s puzzled. The writing isn’t much good, the characters nothing unusual for the fantasy world, and the scenarios, while filled with erotic adventure, are quite bland, even though they do feature the standard fare of goblins, trolls, fairies and elves.
She posts her opinion online, and is mortified at the response from her readers in the comments section: “Missed the point,” “How could you be unmoved by the experience?” and the most cutting, “I thought you were smarter than this” are but a few of the remarks. She’s about to close the comments, when the very last one appears: “Did you not lick the symbol?”
Jules has no idea what this means, so she emails the commenter for an explanation, and in the response, she discovers the secret of the books’ popularity.
At the end of each chapter there appears a large, strange symbol (a different one for each book). Her reader tells her that if Julie licks the symbol, she will instantly be transported into the book and story itself, and will appear as a participant in the story at the beginning of the chapter, as the storyteller. (All the books are written in the first person.) When the chapter ends, the reader explains, she will be returned to reality, none the worse for wear, with absolutely no time having elapsed since she licked the symbol, and the chapter will have been magically rewritten with herself as the new storyteller, and the symbol will have disappeared.
The only problem is that while in the story, if she changes any part of the storyline in any way, even by misquoting the dialogue, the entire story will change from that point on, and she will not be able to control what happens. Only the occurrence of the last sentence in the original chapter can bring her back to reality—e.g. “At that moment, the door to the room opened, and a strange figure entered the room.”
The kicker is that if the last sentence cannot occur—say, if the door has already been destroyed by a phantom attacker—then she will no longer be able to return to reality, and will be trapped inside the story until the end of the next chapter. Worse still, if she happens to be killed in the story, she will instantly be transported back to reality, and could suffer a fatal heart attack, or not.
So Jules licks the symbol at the end of the first chapter…
And yes, it’s the premise for a series of novels I had planned to write several years ago, but lost interest therein because “fantasy”.
Update: Okay, I think I’ve figured it out. Normal service will resume tomorrow.
I see with great regret that the peerless travel writer Bill Bryson is closing up his inkwell for good.
In an age when cheap airfares and package tours — not to mention online “visits” through media such as Gurgle maps and InstaGram — could have made travel writing about as relevant as toenail clippings, Bryson’s refreshing, no-nonsense style has defied the trend.
I first encountered the man through his Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America. I found in Bryson a kindred soul because at the time, Longtime Buddy Trevor Romain and I were doing very much the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale: once a year we would take a long weekend off work, pick a part of the U.S. that we’d never visited before, and fly in (he from Austin and I, at that time, from Chicago). Then we’d rent a car and set off, destination unknown and only the return flight’s departure time as a deadline. The Golden Rule: No Interstate Highways. Even major U.S. roads with only two digits (e.g. U.S. 30 or Route 66) were treated with suspicion, and we’d get off into the back country roads with alacrity.
We were often asked why we did this — and we did it for nearly a decade — and our reply was simple. We did it to remind ourselves why we had both left our country of birth and settled in this new, this wonderful and this dauntingly-large and diverse land.
To say that we met interesting people would rank among the great understatements of the century: in New Orleans, Queer Tom and Opera Kate (an out-of-work opera singer working as a barmaid); the lady in a little town outside Portland who collected frogs of all descriptions (stuffed, porcelain, wooden, whatever) and displayed them all in her restaurant; the huge guy in New Hampshire who, when we asked him if he’d ever played football lisped: “Nope. I got weak kneeth”; and the slightly-batty breakfast diner owner in Rhode Island who wore the most eccentric earrings we’d ever seen, a different pair every single day; these, and many, many others were encountered in our travels, and gave us both dinner-party conversation topics and “Remember when?” reminiscences that survive to this day.
And during every single trip, Trevor and I fell in love with America all over again.
So when reading Bill Bryson’s books, it was like reading about one of our own “Blue Highways” trips (the name taken from the title of William Least Heat Moon’s book of the same ilk). And when Bryson settled in Britishland, it gave rise to works like the astonishing The Road To Little Dribbling and Notes From A Small Island — books which, because I’d been to the U.K. often myself, made me nod my head because I too had been to Little Dribbling, only it was called Upton-Under-Wold, Thirsk or Lesser Foldem.
I cannot recommend his work highly enough, because he is an extraordinary writer who sees everything through a pair of clear-sighted lenses and not rose-tinted ones. Never one to suffer fools or stupid things, he still talks about them with affection covered by incredulity. If you’re looking for a reading project for the winter, you could do a lot worse than read everything Bill Bryson has ever written.
And Bill: good for you. While I am distraught at your retirement, I am forever grateful to you and your wonderful works.
As to why he’s getting out:
“I would quite like to spend the part that is left to me doing all the things I’ve not been able to do. Like enjoying my family, I have masses of grandchildren and I would love to spend more time with them just down on the floor.”
I can think of no better reason. Give them each a hug from me.