Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Requiem for Throwback Thursday
Posted in Fiction, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged animals, blogging, Bluesky, cops, ethics, language, politicians, psychology, racism, Twitter on October 15, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Banned Books Week 2026
Posted in Current Events, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged artificial stupidity, Censor Chic, censorship, Censorship Ascendant, Crippling Thought, Enshittification, internet, libraries, Mad Libs, politicians, psychology, surveillance, Thought Control, Walled Garden, You Were Warned on October 5, 2026| 1 Comment »
The way people of later times view a dark age is…not at all the same as the way people living in such an age view it. – “Nightfall”
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to live in a dark age, wonder no more; you are in one now, at least the early part of one. As I wrote last year,
…a dark age is one lacking reliable records, so historians cannot be certain of what actually happened. Of course, censorship is typically part of that; if a government or religion burns books, anything recorded in those books is not available to future historians…20th century tyrants could never hope to find and destroy every copy of a banned book, film, recording, etc, but when physical media are no longer the norm, universal censorship of a work enters the realm of the possible. And now that it has become child’s play to flood the world with computer diarrhea presented as fact, even electronic records which somehow escape a purge will be lost in a vast fecal sea, making it difficult for even experts to know what is real. And if the techlords get their way, there will be a lot fewer experts in the future to attempt it or even care about it…
There is little point in my using the occasion of Banned Books Week to write about this any longer; besides the fact that I’ve written about it every year since 2011 and the old columns are all still there for your perusal should you desire, many news columns every month include items on various forms of censorship. So this year I’m simply going to call attention to the fact that the book-banners and book-burners are no longer satisfied with the pretense that they merely want to keep “obscene” (defined in whatever fanciful and impossibly-broad way suits them) books and other media from “children” (defined in such a fanciful and impossibly-broad way it includes all high school students and even many university students) everywhere in the civilized world; they are even now attempting to prevent people everyone agrees are adult from seeing any books or electronic media any government anywhere in the world has any objection to, via a combination of banning physical books, internet censorship, mass surveillance, flooding the world with garbage, and enticing the intellectually-lazy majority into never, ever thinking for themselves. And this combination has the potential to create an age so dark, it will make every previous dark age look like the Enlightenment in comparison.
Links #848
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, Words, tagged artificial stupidity, cops, language, Never Call the Cops, STEM, Stop faking!, Texas, video, Virginia on October 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »
“AI” allows you to get to a bad idea faster.
I had until recently completely forgotten about this song from The Electric Company, which I can remember my little brother singing around the house. The links above the video were provided by Shiv Ramdas, Jesse Walker, Tracy Quan, Asawin Suebsaeng, Glenn Kessler, and IncarcerNation, in that order.
- Much more of this, please.
- Did life on Earth begin twice?
- Why does Venus have no moon?
- No, your reason is not an exception.
- Another great moment in artificial stupidity.
- Crime: failure to appear. Penalty: summary execution of girlfriend.
From the Archives
- Politicians will pay for “self-care” for cops “traumatized” by raping whores.
- Do they think foot-dragging & stupid cop-talk makes him seem less guilty?
- If you’re a fan of “sex offender” registration, meet one of your bedfellows.
- Sleeping with a cop is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
- When will the mainstream media admit that pigs in schools are a menace?
- Amazon also eagerly hands data from internet-connected devices to cops.
- If “official” busybodies can spy on you via your car, so can unofficial ones.
- “Child porn” is here used as pretext for mass surveillance on a vast scale.
- The word “Orwellian” is overused, but in this case it is absolutely spot on.
- “Cop murders wife/girlfriend & claims it was suicide” is a common theme.
- Anyone whose brain isn’t rotted by prohibitionism could’ve predicted this.
- There is nothing “shocking” about a cop abusing a minor or anyone else.
- If prohibitionists want to “rescue” whores, why keep us from other jobs?
- Partisans don’t give a damn about sex workers, despite contrary claims.
- “Banned Books Week” used to be little more than an academic exercise.
- Politicians no longer care about whether their diktats are Constitutional.
- It’s rare to see a modern judge explicitly rule in favor of self-ownership.
- Texas’ ruling psychopaths want to kill women and ruin doctors’ careers.
- Picture what you’d think of as “sex trafficking”, then compare it to this.
- Idaho paper approves of sheriff appointing himself chief library censor.
- Still think realistic porn cartoons are the worst use for this technology?
- Euphemism for “Cop gets a teenage girl drunk so he could molest her”.
- Uthmeier doesn’t care if he has no legal grounds to harass companies.
- When sex work is marginalized, sex workers are targeted for violence.
- Making a hobby of accusing strangers of felonies might be dangerous.
- Cops will never stop these evil scams without facing criminal charges.
- Retrospective of my blogging from September 2013, 2014, and 2015.
- “Drugs” are a popular pretext for petty vindictiveness in US prisons.
- Cops, cheese, artificial stupidity, Kris Kristofferson, and much more.
- Why are people shocked when men paid to behave violently, do so?
- Your irregular reminder that this blog depends on you for support.
- This will never stop until it is treated as what it is: armed robbery.
- Note that cases of actual coercion don’t look much like the myths.
- This will continue until the evil US immigration policy is reformed.
- Cop and preacher is like the molester equivalent of a full house.
- All too often, evil arrives cloaked in the mantle of expediency.
- Cops, flying, Michael Gambon, Alice Cooper, and much more.
- Even the distancing “former” is the same as for rapist cops.
- The US has achieved banana republic levels of corruption.
- Literally making mincemeat out of small green tomatoes.
- Just another of those nonexistent false rape accusations.
- Cops, music, Viv Prince, Jane Goodall, and much more.
- Expect use of this term to continue expanding wildly.
- “Youth leader” = “youth pastor”, with all that entails.
- A selection from my novella, “Until the End of Days”.
- The stupider the belief, the harder it is to debunk.
- Oh look, Maggie is right again, what a surprise.
- Meet Hercules, the newest resident of Sunset.
- Prohibitionism is a dangerous mental illness.
- Prohibition inevitably leads to exploitation.
- The True Story of Throwback Thursday.
- Throwback Thursday vs. the Mummy.
- The first fire in my atrium stove.
- The Evil of Throwback Thursday.
- Trying to replace my old boots.
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!
Links #847
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged Canada, cops, drugs, Florida, Iraq, Pennsylvania, politicians, psychology, racism, Texas, video on September 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I had a few. – “Officer” Dustin Christina
This video, called to my attention by Mike Siegel, speaks for itself. The links above it were provided by Scott Greenfield, Kevin Wilson, Nun Ya, Jessica Pishko, IncarcerNation, Ryan Marino, and Mistress Matisse, in that order.
- R.I.P. Peter Max.
- Paging Dr. Dolittle.
- Some things never change.
- Cop murders student for getting lost.
- They keep demonstrating exactly what they are.
- Some studies just prove what everyone already knew.
- Everything I see makes me more determined never to fly again.
From the Archives
- The predictable result of giving aggressive men power over young women.
- What would you call a gang who conspired to rob a demented old woman?
- Sleeping with a cop is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
- How long will the US ignore the costs of its sick worship of state violence?
- This “monkey see, monkey do” parade is now parading around the world.
- This will continue as long as fools teach children obedience to “authority”.
- The less often I have to mooch like a public TV station, the happier I am.
- In the 21st century, censorship & surveillance are tightly bound together.
- Cops let one of their gang rape a baby for 2 years after he was reported.
- “Sexual misconduct targeting vulnerable women” is used to mean “rape”.
- Erosion of civil liberties starts with “undesirables”, but never stops there.
- Censorship is very popular in dark ages, which is why they’re dark ages.
- Cops excuse any right violation with magic words like “crime” or “gang”.
- The naive can’t grasp why so many women are reluctant to report rape.
- Tech cultists want to let a defective algorithm act as its own gatekeeper.
- It took prosecutors 13 years to get this from accusation to plea bargain.
- Stupid authoritarian diktats should always result in political humiliation.
- Who would waste good money to see a program parroting a dead man?
- Texas’ ice-pick self-lobotomization is becoming increasingly spasmodic.
- Predictable effects of prohibition appear; prohibitionists claim surprise.
- When “sex trafficking” is used to mean ordinary “Fly Me To You” deals.
- Politicians viewing kinky porn is less an issue than being psychopaths.
- “Sex trafficking” hysteria rests on pseudoscience, woo, and nonsense.
- Cops, metaphors, pumpkin people, David McCallum, and much more.
- What’s worse than chatbot “therapy”? Chatbot marriage “counseling”.
- Too bad cops don’t spend all their time fantasy role-playing together.
- Are amateurs really so sheltered that this sort of thing shocks them?
- Irish “gypsy whores” tales were quaint even before they were passé.
- Some politicians are starting to admit Shotspotter is a boondoggle.
- Women of childbearing age should avoid Alabama if at all possible.
- US institutions and norms used to curb politicians’ worst impulses.
- It’s impossible to know how many of these were actually murders.
- Cop and preacher is like the molester equivalent of a full house.
- Expect nothing but hypocrisy from any part of any government.
- A new censorship regime has been imposed on British subjects.
- If hope y’all realize these ads will be “personalized” by spying.
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- Cops, artificial stupidity, rubber chickens, and much more.
- A society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners.
- The entire Utah rescue industry appears to be collapsing.
- What happens when puritans are not ignored as lunatics.
- Read this if you wish, but pay attention to the slant.
- Cops, library bats, Maggie Smith, and much more.
- Hypocritical trash behaving like hypocritical trash.
- Welcome to the “safe” future you keep voting for.
- In which Louie really makes a pig out of himself.
- Your “leaders” refer to this as “correction”.
- My three previous columns for Mabon.
- The Revenge of Throwback Thursday.
- A rapist cop’s evil begets more evil.
- Oh look, another “youth pastor”.
- Dark Throwback Thursday.
- A good year for tomatoes.
- Throwback Thursday, MD.
- This is called pomace.
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!
Links #846
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged animals, artificial stupidity, BDSM, Believe Them, Canada, cops, Enshittification, fascism, Florida, Georgia, Google, Hollywood, I Saw My Brain, illegal aliens, Indiana, New York, politicians, racism, Robocops, Texas, video, Washington DC on September 20, 2026| Leave a Comment »
They’re letting police do just about anything. – Randall Kallinen
When Dolly Parton died a few weeks ago, I seemed to be the only one who remembered this 1976 guest appearance on Captain Kangaroo; the video was clearly taken from the edited reruns of old shows aired on PBS in the late ’80s. Of particular note: Dolly reading a children’s book aloud, almost 20 years before starting her Imagination Library charity. The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel; Radley Balko; Lucy Steigerwald; Mistress Matisse & Dan Savage; C.J. Ciaramella; IncarcerNation; and Radley Balko again, in that order.
- Fascism enables idiocracy.
- Polk County, Florida, again.
- Another taste of the new dark age.
- R.I.P. Jay Wiseman and Bob Mackie.
- They keep demonstrating exactly what they are.
- Man murdered for being security guard while black.
- Trump worshipers claim his name is a magical charm against entropy.
From the Archives
- Government thinks it even has the right to leer at the inside of your body.
- “Fentanyl” is now another porcine pretext for harassing & robbing people.
- Humans: a swarm of self-important flies panicking over a rotting cow pie.
- Australian cops bravely protect imaginary children from imaginary abuse.
- This will continue as long as fools teach children obedience to “authority”.
- This “monkey see, monkey do” parade is now parading around the world.
- This phrasing strongly implies strangling a woman while on duty is A-OK.
- Missouri politicians govern by edict, sans tiresome democratic processes.
- If something like “trafficking” propaganda happens, it’s usually a church.
- Keep plunging that ice pick in; the bad thoughts will go away eventually.
- Asstoon’s surveillance company will keep outing sex workers to the pigs.
- Why does society allow its medical system to be used for state violence?
- The wholly-predictable results of bad laws, happening just as predicted.
- Is a shiny new status symbol really worth being spied on and harassed?
- The real culprit: invasive surveillance & onerous infantilization of teens.
- The Japanese are the only people left who can tell fantasy from reality.
- Never forget that “filter” used thus is merely a euphemism for “censor”.
- Government often attacks with civil suits rather than criminal charges.
- Anyone who’s ever closely known a narcissist will see the truth of this.
- One of the people the government empowers to police your sexuality.
- The state enriches itself via unconstitutional warrantless surveillance.
- Curated selections of tweets from September 2023, 2024, and 2025.
- Sleeping with a cop is dangerous even if the woman is a cop herself.
- Don’t infantilize young victims of government brutality as “children”.
- As if rude assholes talking loudly on cell phones wasn’t bad enough.
- Politicians will never let go of prohibitionism until they’re forced to.
- All laws should sunset after 10 years unless intentionally renewed.
- Cops, immigrants, Tom Bombadil, Tito Jackson, and much more.
- “Pastor and sex offender” is a large and ever-expanding group.
- Arresting men for fictitious “crimes” against imaginary people.
- Surprising absolutely no one who understands McNeill’s Law.
- Because obviously prohibition doesn’t ruin enough lives yet.
- It’s a good thing I don’t get emotionally attached to poultry.
- All those who facilitate cops’ evil are enemies of humanity.
- Cops, artificial stupidity, Robert Redford, and much more.
- A society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners.
- I’m honestly unsure why this doesn’t happen more often.
- The “cops bearing gifts” PR scam is not limited to adults.
- Authoritarians, like leopards, cannot change their spots.
- Can a sex worker win an election in the puritanical US?
- Wannabe preachers are often as bad as the real thing.
- “Criminality” is a status defined entirely by the State.
- Cops, “records”, Roger Whittaker, and much more.
- The open internet is becoming a thing of the past.
- AHF has a history of financial shenanigans.
- My first and only guest column by a robot.
- Zuckerberg is completely out of his mind.
- What is wrong with doctors who do this?
- “Smart” devices aren’t, part umpteen.
- My recipe for fried green tomatoes.
- The Curse of Throwback Thursday.
- Modern Throwback Thursday.
- Thursday of Throwbacks.
- Goldilocks blackberries.
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!
Blue Moon
Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Music, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, Words, tagged activism, advertising, artificial stupidity, blogging, Bluesky, cops, crypto-moralism, Decentralization, Denmark, Enshittification, ethics, fantasy, games, Hollywood, illegal aliens, internet, language, masturbation, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, politicians, prisons, propaganda, psychology, racism, restaurants, robots, scams, surveillance, tabula rasa, teachers, Tennessee, Texas, Toys for Tots, vaccines, weaponry on September 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Ugh, this sounds like something he mutters to himself during masturbation.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-15T03:01:51.899Z
I always have mixed feelings about "investigations" or "studies" that "find" things which were always completely bloody obvious. On the one hand, I'm glad more people are admitting the problem. But on the other hand, HOLY SHIT WHY DID IT TAKE Y'ALL OVER 30 YEARS TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING SO OBVIOUS?
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-16T07:22:05.418Z
"School resource officer" is a cop euphemism for "sexually-predatory thug paid to lurk in schools so as to spy on, harass, and molest students, and burden them with criminal records for 'offenses' which in more enlightened times were punished with detention and writing lines on the chalkboard."
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-17T18:05:16.858Z
Long ago, I realized that thinking about the money bandits extort from you via threat of burning your farm as still somehow being "yours", and obsessing about what the warlords do with it, is the way to madness.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-20T03:30:11.795Z
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-21T03:38:05.129Z
This looks like a CGI image of a fake CGI sign. In other words, the sign *itself* is CGI, not just the image *on* the nonexistent sign.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-21T17:38:30.715Z
Yes, "health" obsessives truly are full of shit.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-22T17:07:46.039Z
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-23T07:24:33.815Z
Any decent car or motorcycle can do it in under 4 seconds once it gets moving.These figures mean less than nothing without context.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-25T03:16:33.048Z
Investors stupid and gullible enough to believe this deserve to lose their money when the bubble bursts.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-25T16:40:36.172Z
Modern policing began in most parts of the US in the 1870s. At that time, $1 had the buying power of $30 today.Imagine telling the people of that time that the "law enforcement" they were voting for would one day be used to persecute people for picking up A DOLLAR someone had dropped.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-26T17:25:54.126Z
N.B.: Cryptocurrency is not an "investment", and anyone who believes it is looks like this:
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-27T17:19:23.344Z
Americans have no "philosophy"; they have religion (including partisan politics and entertainment fandom). The number of exceptions in the whole country could comfortably attend a conference on my farm, with room left over for a convention of ethical cops.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-28T17:46:16.457Z
It's very rare that airports get named after people who gave something to the world rather than taking from it; I can only think of two other examples offhand, New Orleans and Oklahoma City.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-29T02:30:21.861Z
"Doctor" Carson thinks hot dogs grow out of the ground like corn.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-30T18:05:12.332Z
We live in a fallen world.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-31T17:24:10.226Z
Reporters: "controversial" should not be used as a euphemism for "evil", "unpopular", "tyrannical", "universally reviled", etc.Words mean things; please be more professional with your vocabulary choices.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-01T17:15:02.453Z
If I'd written a satire in which Goebbels Farms honored a Neo-Nazi, my editor would've said it was too obvious.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-03T03:19:20.912Z
Headline from 1989: "Has our oat bran obsession gone too far?"Same answer.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-03T18:04:13.456Z
"Return hub" is such a nice way to say "concentration camp".
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-04T17:05:19.288Z
I remember when we were at least ruled by adults.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-05T17:21:43.608Z
The idea that there could be such a thing as a "true-crime star" is like something out of a dystopian comic book universe.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-06T18:05:23.948Z
Your "leaders" want you to believe that you are a tabula rasa, a mere thing without free will to be acted upon (by media, websites, propaganda, the collective, etc) and shaped in a Skinnerian dystopia.Do not believe them. You can CHOOSE not to be warped in this way, BUT THE CHOICE MUST BE ACTIVE.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-08T17:30:09.952Z
The phrase "trusted ad partners", which appears on many adblocker-blocker popups, is really quite funny. Those "trusted partners" are picked by software in automated auctions; *y'all* may be greedy enough to trust these randos, but I'm not as gullible as you would like me to be.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-10T16:52:28.464Z
I'll just leave this here: archive.is/SGZcS
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-11T18:42:41.516Z
The only thing more infuriating than mansplaining is amateursplaining. Holy shit.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-12T07:47:56.110Z
Take THAT, "Woman of the Year"!
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-13T17:25:26.151Z
I blocked him so he won't have to be disappointed that I object to strangers driving by my house and throwing garbage on my lawn.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-14T17:44:05.619Z
It sounds like they're talking about a mad dog. Which, to be fair, isn't completely wrong.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-15T17:21:32.591Z
Dr. Altman of Dr. Altman's Medicine Show says people are right to fear snake oil, but should trust snake oil SALESMEN.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T19:24:36.788Z
Comparison for those of my age: just imagine if an official of Jimmy Carter's cabinet had been advocating for a no-fly zone over the "Bermuda Triangle", and other politicians were actually writing laws to ban such flights.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-09-17T19:19:44.712Z
Throwback Thursday Doll
Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged animals, blogging, cops, domestic violence, infidelity, New York, politicians, psychology, United Kingdom on September 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The Dragonflies of Memory
Posted in Biography, History, tagged animals, Louisiana, New Orleans on September 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »
In my south Louisiana childhood, dragonflies were so common they sometimes looked almost like a fog overhead, especially in the late afternoon; if you sat still for a few minutes they’d start landing on you. The most common colors were blue and green, but in the canefield behind my house there were yellowish-orange ones with stripes on the wings, and we’d occasionally see big purple ones or shiny bronze ones. At my granduncle’s farm in Ponchatoula, I once caught an absolutely enormous bright orange one. They weren’t all that hard to catch, and if one held them by the wings for a minute or two their wings would become too damp to fly, and they’d simply cling to one’s finger or hand like the one in this picture while their wings dried off, then they’d soon fly away again. I remember one day when I was probably about 11 or 12, I organized the neighborhood kids to catch as many as we could in about an hour and put them in an empty garbage can with an old sheet over it; I then theatrically whipped off the sheet and they flew out of the can like a cloud. On another occasion, a gigantic swarm of them passed overhead while we were playing tag; it took over a minute to pass, and there must have been tens of thousands of them at a minimum.
But by the Eighties I barely saw them any more, and I haven’t seen one in person in decades. I believe the reason they became rare in the New Orleans area was the spread of mosquito control; dragonflies are predators (we used to call them “mosquito hawks”), so fewer prey means fewer dragonflies. There was no mosquito control in my home town in the ’70s, but there was when I returned in 1988 from years of living in the city. And while mosquito control is a necessary evil, of all the things lost to progress, I think the loss of dragonflies is among the ones I feel most keenly. So much so, I’ve intentionally included them in my stories, in descriptions of New Orleans summers of the 1920s. Yes, all progress has a price. But I wish beauty didn’t always have to be part of that price.
Where Were You?
Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, tagged imaginative fiction, New Orleans, New York, psychology on September 11, 2026| 2 Comments »
I’ve never followed the maudlin practice of turning September 11th into an observance, but because today marks 25 years since the event, I decided it would not be inappropriate to do the “Where were you when…?” thing today. In the ’60s and ’70s, it was “Where were you when you heard Kennedy had been assassinated?”, and in the ’90s it was “Where were you when you heard about the Challenger disaster?”; I imagine in the ’50s people used to ask, “Where were you when you heard Japan surrendered?” But for quite some time now the event so referenced has been the September 11th terrorist attacks. I have told mine many times in person and I may have mentioned it on social media, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never brought it up on this blog, so here goes.
At the beginning of September, 2001, Grace and I were living in an apartment near New Orleans International Airport and operating our successful escort service; I had just recently become engaged to Matt, but he was in Los Angeles at the time. I typically took gigs from 2 pm to 2 am and then took over answering the phone until 4 am so Grace could sleep; after that I forwarded the phones to our day operator and went to bed, turning the phone ringers off so nobody could interrupt my well-earned rest. Our answering machine had a light which flashed once per message, so for example if there were three messages it would go Blink Blink Blink {pause} Blink Blink Blink {pause}, etc. We also had a caller ID unit. Typically, I woke up between 11 am and noon, and that day was no exception, but when I went to turn on the ringer I saw the little light flashing so rapidly I couldn’t count the number. I pressed the playback button while looking at the called ID unit, and what I heard on the tape was a long series of hang-ups except for a single message from Matt, saying, “Don’t worry; they closed LAX so I’m heading home.” That was mystifying, as was the fact that the caller ID showed all those hangups had come from our friend Doug, who owned another escort service I did calls for. But before I could call Doug to find out what the hell he was thinking, the phone rang and this time I answered. The conversation went like this:
Doug: Can you believe this shit?
Me: What shit?
Doug: They blew up the World Trade Center!
Me: What’d they use, a nuke?
Doug: No, they flew a plane into it!
Me: You’re shitting me! Wait, there are two towers; how could a plane hit both?
Doug: They used two planes!
Me: OK, you are definitely shitting me.
Doug: Turn on your damn TV!
Me: What channel?
Doug: Every damn channel!
Me (after complying): OK, you obviously aren’t shitting me.
If you’re wondering how I could possibly be so nonchalant, it was because A) I was only half-awake; and B) I had been expecting some major terrorist action for some time, though I was obviously surprised by the supervillainous method the terrorists employed.
There is one rather odd detail I remember from that day. I had not seen Babylon 5 when it first aired, but Grace watched it every day in reruns on the Sci-fi Channel and I had seen enough in passing to get interested, so when they started running it again from the beginning I watched it. The day before, September 10th, they’d played the episode named “Believers“, in which the central conflict are aliens who believe surgery is evil and refuse to let a doctor save their child. On September 11th, they played it again; I thought that was odd, but I assumed somebody in their programming department was too upset by the morning’s events to change the tape or however that’s done. But then the next day they played the same one again, then again on Thursday and Friday; they didn’t move on to a new episode until the following Monday. I don’t understand why they did it, except that part of the show’s backstory is that terrorists had at some point in the past nuked San Diego, and perhaps the channel’s management wanted to put off getting to an episode where that was mentioned to avoid upsetting viewers; continually repeating an episode focusing on the harm done by religious fanaticism hardly seems like an improvement, though.
Links #844
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged acting, artificial stupidity, Australia, California, Canada, China, Colorado, cops, drugs, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, Mad Libs, Rome, sex toys, Shame Shame, Spain, video, Washington DC on September 6, 2026| Leave a Comment »
You’re not the future anymore! – Mark Zuckerberg, sort of
Though Tim Curry died only the day after Dolly Parton, I wasn’t going to cheat him of a proper sendoff. The links above the video were provided by Ryan Marino; Radley Balko; Scott Greenfield and Dan Savage; The Onion; Ryan Marino again; Amy Alkon; and Nun Ya, in that order.
- Sic transit gloria mundi.
- I’m sure you feel safer now.
- R.I.P. Tim Curry and Gloria Steinem.
- Simultaneously funny and horrifying.
- More great moments in artificial stupidity.
- Everything I see makes me more determined never to fly again.
- Why did anybody think something called a “cloud” was permanent?
From the Archives
- Civil rights violations claimed as “solutions” to politician-created problems.
- How long will America ignore the cost of its sick worship of state violence?
- Americans’ sick lust for torture turns imprisonment into a death sentence.
- When will the mainstream media admit that pigs in schools are a menace?
- Sleeping with a cop is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
- Politicians don’t even try to make their new laws Constitutional any more.
- Don’t label your product “My X” unless you’re marketing it to 1st-graders.
- I’m not sorry for women who happily threw other women to the leopards.
- The way local media parrots clearly-foolish copaganda is utterly pathetic.
- It’s rare a court rules an action so stupid even a cop should know better.
- Seattle is notorious for cloaking its police-statery in bogus “liberal” cant.
- Two forced-birth states are moving to legally reduce women to serfdom.
- Governments are growing increasingly bold in their internet censorship.
- The Japanese are the only people who can still tell fantasy from reality.
- Red/blue fools pretend anti-sex authoritarians “do not agree on much”.
- Prohibition can never actually succeed in eradicating the banned thing.
- Unusually, they didn’t pitch this as the rapist doing his victims a favor.
- Don’t teach kids about sex; fill their heads with anti-sex propaganda.
- I’m really pleased with how well Durabak works on wooden surfaces.
- Some censors believe KOSA won’t destroy the internet fully enough.
- The resources flushed down the “culture war” toilet are incalculable.
- Government thugs continue their crusade against Christian charity.
- It’s far too late to cram this djinni back into its bottle, God help us.
- When a headline asks a question, the answer is nearly always “no”.
- Elon Musk’s “DOGE” didn’t “fail”; it worked exactly as he intended.
- It only starts with political pariahs like sex workers or gun owners.
- Note that cases of actual coercion don’t look much like the myths.
- Government internet censorship attempts grow increasingly bold.
- Ex-politicians’ changes of heart are cynical attempts to fool God.
- Cops, animals, artificial stupidity, Helen Fisher, and much more.
- “Pastor and sex offender” is a large and ever-expanding group.
- A powerful look at men playing D&D on Texas’ death row.
- Cops should not be allowed anywhere near legal minors.
- The worship of Santa Muerte has expanded worldwide.
- Cops, Roger Corman, Jimmy Buffett, and much more.
- Sleeping with a cop is dangerous even for other cops.
- PayPal is becoming a major threat to civil liberties.
- Chatbot usage actively harms brain functions.
- Cops, language, ice cream, and much more.
- This childish puritanism is so exhausting.
- Thoughts on the Bonnie Blue gang bang.
- Don’t let computers call them, either.
- Another “security” system that isn’t.
- Presentation isn’t my strong point.
- Laura Agustín on her new project.
- The Throwback Thursday Squad.
- Good riddance to bad rubbish.
- Zuckerberg is out of his mind.
- Cop is a cop is a cop is a cop.
- Sunset is a place for friends.
- Throwback Meets Thursday.
- It’s about goddamned time.
- Much more of this, please.
- Cicero loves apple season.
- Greenback Thursday.
- The Beat Goes On.
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