The climate here at Sunset is not unlike that of England; rainy and on the chilly side, and rarely extremely hot or extremely cold. Because the utility room containing the well and the water tank are inside the atrium, I don’t need to take any precautions if the overnight low is going to be warmer than -3o C, which is usually the case for >80 days of the winter. And if it isn’t going to be lower than about -5o C, all I need to do is turn on a heater in the utility room and let one faucet run at a trickle. But once in a while it gets colder than that for a night or two, so I need to take a few extra precautions, like running the hot water tap for a few minutes whenever I get up to use the bathroom (since the propane heater is outside). It was like that Friday and Saturday nights; if the daytime temperatures are reasonable I don’t need to make any special arrangements for the big animals, because they just huddle together in the stable and emerge to sun themselves after dawn. But our cats are not used to these kind of temperatures, so I bring the outside cats inside on nights like that. Rocky got the atrium bathroom and Lilith the old one; I need to keep the door closed so she and Speck won’t fight (and Axel adds another complication). But Sunday night was back to normal, with a low of only -2o C, so I was able to suspend the freeze protocols. And unless we get some stray cold front later in February, that’s probably it for this winter.
Archive for the ‘Biography’ Category
Diary #813
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, Washington (state) on January 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
A Year Gone
Posted in Diary, Music, Philosophy, tagged disease, Grace, imaginative fiction, Lost Angels, psychology, video on January 25, 2026| 1 Comment »
One year ago today, at about 2 AM, I lost my best friend to what appears to have been an acute ischemic stroke, brought on by cancer, chemotherapy, and long-standing circulatory issues. We had known for years that her end was approaching, and had I not refused to see them, there were clear signs that it would be sooner rather than later. But human beings are very good at failing to see what we do not want to see, and I’m certainly no exception; I’m sure part of the reason was that I wanted to maintain a positive outlook to help her do the same, but most of it was just that I’ve already had so much pain and loss in my life I did not want to consciously face what even our idioms recognize as among the worst misfortunes that can befall a person.
Whenever a friend suffers a loss, we are moved to try to say something, anything, to assuage their pain; some of those things are helpful and some are not. But of the things my friends said to me, two stand out, and I still think of them often. One of them is philosophical: Grief is the price we pay for love. Indeed, people who have suffered emotionally sometimes become afraid of love because they fear the pain that must come when we must part from the loved one, and the greater the love, the greater the pain. The other helpful thing was more practical: The waves of grief never stop coming, but they do grow further apart. For the first few weeks after her passing I thought of little else, then for most of last year the waves came at least daily; in more recent months they’ve come two or three times a week. They have not yet become less intense, though I’m sure that, too, will happen in the fullness of time.
As I knew I would through long experience, I have tried to cope with the grief by retreating a bit from the world and burying myself in my work; the most important product of that work is a new series of pulp-style adventure stories featuring characters based upon Grace and myself, in which the narratives are suffused with my thoughts on friendship in general and our friendship in particular. They’re the longest and most complex individual works I’ve ever written, and the next project in the series will be my first novel. And the many hours it takes to create them not only feel like a way for me to share Grace with the world, but also a means by which I can squeeze just a little more time with her out of a world which took her from me much too soon.
Diary #812
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, Sunset, video on January 20, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Axel is definitely settling into life at Sunset. As I’ve written before, I’ve been reducing his medication by 50mg/day every week, and now we’re down to 100mg/day. Last week I tried to give that to him in one bedtime dose rather than splitting it into two 50 mg doses at bedtime & midday, but that left him a bit too exuberant in the afternoon and evening, and he tried to chase Speck a couple of times. He immediately stops when I say “Leave it!” but I want to get him to the point where he doesn’t chase her at all, so for right now I’m going to hold him at 50mg twice daily until the end of January, then I’ll try to nudge it down by 25 daily mg a month until we can get him off of it completely. On at least 5 or 6 occasions in the past week Speck has trotted through the living room right in front of him with no reaction beyond his perking up a bit, even without my saying anything, so I think we’re on the right track. I think it helps that Trip, whom he seems to look to for guidance, does not have any issue with cats, but we’ll see; unfortunately, Trip has this weird habit of occasionally running up to Jonathan and barking at him for no apparent reason, and as of Sunday Axel seems to have picked up that habit from him. I’m not too worried because Jonathan just stands there and looks at him like, “What the hell are you on about, dog?” and he’s much too big for the dogs to hurt. So one thing at a time: “Don’t chase things smaller than you” is much more important than “Don’t irritate things big enough to stomp on you”, because the latter tends to be self-reinforcing.
Links #811
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged artificial stupidity, cops, France, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Never Call the Cops, politicians, video on January 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »
We’re now employing people who are not equipped to tie their own shoelaces.
I can’t think of a more appropriate sendoff for Bob Weir than this one. The links above it were provided by Popehat; Brooke Magnanti and Jesse Walker; The Onion; Phoenix Calida; IncarcerNation; and Walter Olson, in that order.
- Last week in artificial stupidity.
- R.I.P. Bob Weir and Erich von Däniken.
- The best satire cleaves close to the truth.
- “A complete disaster from beginning to end.“
- Another success for the police suicide assistance service.
- “An educated fool is more foolish than an uneducated one.“
From the Archives
- Beijing’s campaign to police Chinese people in the US must be shut down.
- When will the mainstream media admit that pigs in schools are a menace?
- Prohibition turns bodies into “crime scenes” which cops can violate at will.
- Government should have too little power for the rulers’ identity to matter.
- Here come automakers’ excuses for nonconsensual surveillance of marks.
- It’s never called “trafficking” when government or corporate cronies do it.
- Driving a modern car feels like being a passenger in an amusement ride.
- It’s time courts stopped letting cops get away with literal armed robbery.
- Hey, female cops; how’s that collaboration with the police state working?
- Ballard’s partners are trying to salvage as much of the scam as possible.
- Keep plunging that ice pick in; the bad thoughts will go away eventually.
- Cops should spend all of their time fantasy role-playing with each other.
- Why bother with license plate readers when fools will pay to be tracked?
- Politicians are terrified of losing ways to destroy peaceful citizens’ lives.
- Cops really don’t care how many false positives these systems shit out.
- SCOTUS says it’s OK for prohibitionist laws to specifically target Blacks.
- “Progressives” want everyone forced to work for bosses and managers.
- Some believe they can live forever by eliminating all pleasure from life.
- How many women died due to inaction by this murderer’s cop buddies?
- Beijing ramps up its campaign to silence Chinese people outside China.
- Cops & “church leaders” differ in that the latter aren’t typically armed.
- The UK’s long internet censorship campaign turns mindlessly carceral.
- SCOTUS says it’s OK for prohibitionists to intentionally let women die.
- The real humanitarians fight against racist “anti-trafficking” schemes.
- Cops, artificial stupidity, Peter Yarrow, Anita Bryant, and much more.
- This will continue while fools teach children obedience to “authority”.
- Trust is not something that can merely be given; it must be earned.
- If these fanatics focused on cops & preachers, they’d actually help.
- Cops, Jeff Beck, Walter Cunningham, Fay Weldon, and much more.
- Your irregular reminder that this blog depends on reader support.
- The sick American mind at work again, seeing sex where it isn’t.
- The legacy of To Catch a Predator just keeps on hurting people.
- Universal criminality provides many avenues for State violence.
- The war on trans people has expanded to include drag queens.
- A sadly typical outcome when a high-ranking cop is the rapist.
- Mississippi demonstrates exactly what it thinks of its subjects.
- Maybe politicians shouldn’t put words in bureaucrats’ mouths.
- Cops, magnets, short videos, Cindy Morgan, and much more.
- How dare adult men want consensual sex with adult women!
- “Children’s minister” blames porn and Satan for his crimes.
- Privacy as we once knew it will soon be a thing of the past.
- I’m surprised Florida took so long to join the nitwit parade.
- Cops should not be allowed anywhere near legal minors.
- Why every company wants you to download its “app”.
- “Criminality” is a status defined entirely by the State.
- Behold the fruit of the “human trafficking” narrative.
- Perhaps Alabama’s state bird should be the ostrich.
- Apparently, magic insta-fentanyl only affects cops.
- Probably not the outcome prosecutors expected.
- The word “ghoulish” leaps immediately to mind.
- Tim Ballard’s downfall is increasingly satisfying.
- Even roses need a little time off to recharge.
- Sleeping with cops isn’t safe for men, either.
- Just another rapist cop following his bliss.
- Anti-sexworker bigotry harms all women.
- A new tag specifically for rapist screws.
- I’m sure Mr. Rodriguez feels safer now.
- Throwback Thursday Created Woman.
- Another curated selection of tweets.
- Burble burble RED AND BLUE drool.
- Much, much more of this, please.
- The ceiling of my new bathroom.
- Zuckerberg is out of his mind.
- It was just a big “whoopsie”.
- Hotel Throwback Thursday.
- This was a water filter.
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
Diary #811
Posted in Diary, tagged carnival, holidays, psychology, Sunset on January 13, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Unless there is some compelling reason to do otherwise, I always take down my Christmas tree on King Day, January 6th. This year was not an exception, but it was raining so hard I had no desire to drag the tree across the muddy paddock to the fence line, especially because I don’t actually get dressed in the wintertime except on days when I need to go somewhere. So I put it outside, but it has been a week and I just haven’t felt like moving it yet. Though there’s no real danger of my becoming a recluse, I’m beginning to understand the mindset of elderly ladies in Gothic novels; I have a routine that I am comfortable with and prefer to maintain, so I tend to grumble when I have to break it to go to Aberdeen for some reason like groceries, and I really grumble when I need to drive to Seattle, especially in rainy weather. And if I were wealthy, I probably would have a handyman nearly as old as I am who does those chores for me. I wonder how much it would cost to have a manicurist come to me instead of vice-versa? Alas, too much. But it’s nice to think about, at least in monsoon season.
Links #810
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged activism, animals, California, censorship, cops, lawheads, Oregon, politicians, Spain, surveillance, video on January 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »
There’s a bear under my house, and there’s nothing I can do about it! – Ken Johnson
I think my old friend Terry would’ve loved this video, provided by Mike Masnick; he also provided the first link above it, and those after that were provided by Jason Kuznicki, Nun Ya, Jesse Walker, The Onion, and Popehat, in that order.
- Lèse-majesté.
- Pro-social surveillance.
- She suffered for her art.
- They drew with crayons.
- The best satire cleaves close to the truth.
- I want to see the sheriff try to serve him a summons.
From the Archives
- The 1st Amendment has been so eroded it needs state law to give it teeth.
- The 100% predictable results of bad laws are happening just as predicted.
- It’s easy to “disprove” anything if you’re allowed to change the conditions.
- If “official” busybodies can spy on you via your car, so can unofficial ones.
- The press ignores a censorship law’s dangerous enforcement mechanism.
- Apple “unintentionally” pisses on customers’ legs & tells them it’s raining.
- Is having a shiny new status symbol really worth being spied on like this?
- The toll will continue to rise until policing as we know it now is abolished.
- This will continue as long as fools teach children obedience to “authority”.
- Some psychopaths use moral panics to get attention at others’ expense.
- Cop treats disagreement as he normally does, and the press is shocked.
- Telling cops to “think about what they did wrong” is criminal negligence.
- Another attempt to extend legal minority to 25 based in pseudoscience.
- Politicians are terrified of losing ways to destroy peaceful citizens’ lives.
- I hope these opportunists get the same treatment as the Nirvana baby.
- Pure political theater, given that judges have struck down similar bans.
- Cops, cats, Shecky Greene, Glynis Johns, David Soul, and much more.
- Another cop murders his family; another “news” outfit buries the lede.
- An important step toward ending this front in the ruinous culture war.
- Bureaucrats make long-overdue effort to control the rescue industry.
- “Child protection” abuses are finally getting the attention they need.
- Government thugs continue their crusade against Christian charity.
- This monster may turn out to be the best witness against himself.
- It’s unusual to see a male university-level teacher targeted thus.
- It’s kinda nauseating to read this monster’s prattle about Jesus.
- The legacy of To Catch a Predator just keeps on hurting people.
- Seems like a significant fraction of child porn is spread by cops.
- Cops, witches, Anita Pointer, Adolfo Kaminsky, and much more.
- This will continue until there are federal criminal charges for it.
- Conmen now claim 1.25% of the world population are “slaves”.
- “AI” is a fantasy of techies, journalists, and hack sci-fi writers.
- 37 years after the rape/murder and 81/2 after he was caught.
- If you didn’t foresee this, you haven’t been paying attention.
- Cops, censorship, Linda Lavin, Sam Moore, and much more.
- This “good intentions” shit is nothing but an excuse for evil.
- Politicians no longer care if their laws are unconstitutional.
- Your “leaders” call this “correction”, but you don’t have to.
- You’ll have to forgive me for finding this terribly amusing.
- Pornhub has repeatedly refused to facilitate state spying.
- Cop and preacher is like a huge, wildly-waving red flag.
- Pornhub has repeatedly chosen not to spy on its users.
- Rapist cops often specifically target vulnerable women.
- Liz Brown on the insidious spread of the Swedish rot.
- “Journalists” call this senseless violence “correction”.
- Most rapist New Orleans cops don’t do it by proxy.
- Your “leaders” refer to this atrocity as “correction”.
- Another example of real activism for the West.
- De-Yuling the house is always just a little sad.
- I’ll believe this when and if it’s ever proven.
- I’m still using the TV with the shadow on it.
- “Smart” devices aren’t, part umpty-eleven.
- “Free speech for me, but not for thee”.
- Your “leaders” call this “correction”.
- This is a brick of compressed peat.
- Party Like Throwback Thursday.
- Zuckerberg is out of his mind.
- Friday, January 13th, 2023.
- Throwback Thursday Jr.
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
Love At First Sight
Posted in Biography, Philosophy, tagged Grace, New Orleans, psychology on January 9, 2026| 2 Comments »
I have often written about the fallacy that romantic love is superior to other forms of love:
I honestly feel sorry for those who truly believe that the best way to “connect” with other people is by boinking them, and the notion that people must boink to feel “connected” is a tragedy. Sexual relationships are held up as the pinnacle of human interaction, but they’re not even close; they’re in fact nearer the bottom because they’re extremely conditional.
I have always felt very strongly about this, ever since I first started really thinking about the matter before I was out of my teens. Part of the fallacy holds that romantic love is somehow intrinsically different from other kinds of love, but I don’t think that’s true either. Take “love at first sight”, for example; we only ever hear the term applied to romantic love, even though the idea that it represents something other than plain animal lust in that context is highly dubious. And yet there are certainly cases in which another kind of love manifests itself at first meeting. The very first time I really thought of that was in a fictional context: in the movie The Emerald Forest, a tribal chief in the Amazon abducts the son of an engineer surveying for a dam project, and years later he explains to the father that he had fallen in paternal love with the boy at first sight, and could not bear to see him go back to “The Dead World” of concrete and steel which the natives feared and hated.
Over the next several decades I saw other examples in both fiction and real life, culminating in one I experienced myself. In November of 1997 I met Grace at a party and she gave me a ride home; we hit it off immediately, and within weeks I’d received an actual paper letter from her in the mail. After a few more letters were exchanged, she told me she wanted to move down to New Orleans from her father’s place in Monroe, Louisiana, where she currently lived; I invited her to move in with me, and she never moved out. From that very first meeting she was as devoted to me as any sister; there was never any sexual chemistry, and in any case Grace was only sexually interested in men. But looking back to those times, I have no better term for the rapid bonding she experienced and demonstrated than “love at first sight”. And it would be wrong to pretend otherwise merely because it was not romantic love.
Throwback Thursday 2012
Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged blogging, dirty, holidays, hysteria, propaganda, psychology, racism, Thanatopsis, The Implosion Begins, yellow journalism on January 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »
If you think I’m going to let the people who aided and abetted the most violent and widespread campaign of persecution against sex workers in American history get away with pretending they were on the side of truth all along, you must not have read very much of my work.
– “New Year’s Eve 2021”
People would be a lot happier if they could truly learn the difference between “I want” and “I reasonably expect to get in the actual world that exists”. – “Life As It Is”
In the big picture, any order we manage to impose on the universe is as ephemeral as a sand castle, and will soon be obliterated by time and tide. – “The Big Picture”
The moral panic is over, but its rotten fruit have burst, spewing xenophobic, anti-sex, authoritarian poison all over American society. – “New Year’s Eve 2024“
Diary #810
Posted in Diary, tagged internet, Sunset on January 5, 2026| 3 Comments »
Normally, my internet works just fine. Whenever we have a power outage the internet usually goes off in tandem and returns in tandem, because the local substation draws power from the same local power grid Sunset does. But last December an internet outage lasted a full three weeks, during which time I was stuck using my phone’s hotspot. I had hoped that was a fluke which wouldn’t be repeated, but a few weeks ago we had a 3-day outage, and since the 29th it has been going on and off unpredictably. The light on the repeater is much easier to see from my table than the tiny little globe symbol on the router, and it generally turns red when there’s no internet. But this time even that’s undependable; as I type this (on Saturday afternoon) the light is red, but I was able to save this column with no problem, and at other times I’ll have no connection despite the light being blue. They tell me it’s a problem with the lines near my house, which will be fixed on the 15th; however, that’s what they said last December when the problem was eventually fixed remotely with nary a technician in sight (or on-site), so I’m not exactly disposed to believing them even though this looks like a local problem (in my limited understanding of their network) to me as well. And I’ve already got a promise to get a billing credit for weeks of undependable service, but as you can probably guess I don’t believe that, either.
Links #809
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged acting, artificial stupidity, Canada, China, cops, drugs, ethics, imaginative fiction, language, Papua New Guinea, Tennessee, video, yellow journalism on January 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The heads came off and…the bodies kept marching in place.
It’s rare to see a new, original, Gothic horror video online, with nary a jump-scare in sight! And I found it just in time to sneak it in before the end of Christmas. The links above it were provided by Franklin Harris, Jesse Walker, Lucy Steigerwald, Nun Ya, and IncarcerNation (x2), in that order.
- R.I.P. Brigitte Bardot.
- I want some of these.
- I hate it when this happens.
- It’s like RAY-AY-AIIIIIN on your wedding day…
- Crime: petty theft. Penalty: summary execution.
- Yellow press claims pedestrian runs into pigmobile & dies.
From the Archives
- Cops will keep taking more & more power as long as people allow them to.
- It’s never called “trafficking” when government & crony corporations do it.
- Texas is completely uninterested in controlling its psychopathic politicians.
- What medical skill does it take to repeatedly yell “Stop faking!” at people?
- Judges have ruled cops can forcibly hold your head to unlock your phone.
- In case you thought screws restricted their petty sadism to the prisoners.
- Cops, writing, Pelé, Barbara Walters, Pope Benedict XVI, and much more.
- Previous columns for New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, & Little Christmas.
- In the US, the government would’ve “helped” by prosecuting the victims.
- Criminalizing women for pragmatic thoughts is equally unconstitutional.
- If “authorized” busybodies can spy on you, so can “unauthorized” ones.
- Cops are sexual predators who specifically target traumatized women.
- When will the federal government finally read the writing on the wall?
- Without your unflagging support, my blog would’ve folded years ago.
- Why doesn’t the headline read “Brutal murder linked to basketball”?
- Why are people shocked when men paid to behave violently do so?
- As a cop and screw, he treated strangers in exactly this same way.
- An earlier report identified only 245, until somebody dug deeper.
- Cops, dark ages, egg fried rice, Essra Mohawk, and much more.
- It’s deeply satisfying to see cops preying upon each other.
- The government calls this “correction”; you don’t have to.
- Perhaps we’re nearing the end of this nasty, twisted saga.
- This fascist evil needs to be eradicated, root and branch.
- Technically, several decades is indeed “over a year”.
- Cops, hippopotami, Olivia Hussey, and much more.
- If this isn’t happiness, I’m not sure what would be.
- Where “alleged” is used to mean “endemic”.
- “Youth pastors” of a feather flock together.
- On the 40th anniversary of my whoredom.
- Your “leaders” refer to this as “correction”.
- Literal baby-raping cop of the week.
- As I’ve been telling you since 2012.
- Being lazy (by Maggie standards).
- Louie adjusts to life at Sunset.
- This is only the beginning.
- Rapist cops of the week.
- Grace’s last Christmas.
- Son of Fridaystein.
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
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