Nice review of NVSQVAM from Treason and Treachery

As I maneuver desperately to get more than two or three hours per week to devote to the finale of LYFE—my long-belabored work of science fiction—the reviews for NVSQVAM, a tale of the present-day peasantry, continue to crawl in.

NVSQVAM was published in 2011, to the tune of crickets, but nearly everyone who can be bothered to read the thing seems to like it.

As neither I nor my publisher had much money to put behind its release—and where would you throw the money nowadays anyway?—and as I tend not to write for any pre-packaged audience faction, the word of mouth has been traveling slowly through the glut of our junk civilization. But sometime I almost dare to hope it's going surely. Not quite, though; to quote Tulip Sweet, a forgotten singer: "Hope is the meanest cheerleader."

https://treasonandtreachery.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/nvsqvam-nowhere-by-ann-sterzinger/

In which Robert Stark interviews me

Robert Stark has an interesting podcast show, featuring the likes of me. This was recorded back in the days when I was working 12-hour days as the sole proofreader/French translator/all-around bitch boy of an ad agency. Most money I've ever made, but as for the working conditions I had to keep repeating to myself: "At least I am warm and dry. At least I am warm and dry." Because I've had cold, wet jobs, but they have never lasted 60 hours a week. You can really hear the "fucking fed up" in my voice. I was telling myself I wasn't at the end of my rope, but boy, I was at the end of my rope.

http://www.starktruthradio.com/?p=972

Je suis Charlie hypocrisy: The nutshell version

It seems people have three basic ways of curtailing others' freedom of speech: government, violence, and hounding them out of jobs. If you support any of those three, you're a hypocrite if you piously moan about the other two.

(I suppose there's also social ostracism, but if it isn't keeping you from finding employment, a. Don't be such a wuss; and b. That can actually let you know when you're kind of being an asshole, or neurotic. Unless the person who's ostracizing you is an asshole, or neurotic. Maybe you're both jerks. Unfortunately Twitter doesn't leave much space for soul-searching.)

Lisa Falour has been sucked into that horrible maw...

For those who know her... just letting you know that Lisa Falour has died.

For those who don't... she was an amazing artist, raconteuse, and maniac, and I hope she's remembered by more people than just those of us who were lucky enough to know her crazy ass.

I don't know what else to say right now. I've lost friends before, but she was one in seven billion.

RIP, Lisa.


The tip of the iceberg.

A bit more.



I'll never see you again.

Hours and hours of merciless torture

I'll admit it: not being military personnel, I didn't get Guantanamo Bay. Why would you break some of the most fundamental laws of being a free American? Why would you torture prisoners like some 12th-century mad monk, without even reassuring yourself that your victims had received due process of the law? Why would you behave like barbarians?

Well, as a journalist and satirist, after the Charlie Hebdo attack, I get it now. I want those murderers waterboarded for MONTHS before they're slowly, slowly bled to death. Military people have been dying by the thousands at the hands of these cunts. When the enemy kills people of your own profession—those of your "bande," as even Liberation had the nerve to put it yesterday—they have given up the right to those rights we hold to be self-evident. Is this a slippery slope? NO. It is a deterrent to those who would destroy the entire hill. The terrorists don't mind death; they think they're going to heaven, and not only is killing us increasing their chances, it's speeding their reward. But torture? Hours and hours of horrible, soul-destroying torture? Even if they THINK that's what they want, let their last hours be filled with the realization of what assholes, what bad people, and what merely human people they are. Let them spend hours and hours begging their imaginary prophet to save them from the consequences of their own actions. Now that ten of my own have been killed, I wish the authorities would say "Fuck French law; these animals don't deserve it."

Wish I knew who drew this so I could credit them... the unprecedented circulation of images of the Prophet is a wonderful irony, but now we're all shitting all over each other's intellectual property in the feeding frenzy.


Because why should we extend those hard-fought Enlightenment liberties to those who want to destroy them? To those who would erase them from the earth in the name of their own extended ego, the privilege they reserve to be insulted and seek revenge in place of the prophet, their inhuman self-esteem and self-importance. They must be reminded before they die that they are nothing but humans, humans who seek to destroy other humans in the name of a Platonic hallucination—fuck you, Plato; you who have given philosophical credence to all of these fantasies—and must no longer be treated with kid gloves.

Unfortunately, judges are not journalists, nor are prison guards; there will be no revenge torture allowed, and good grief, the French penal system might even let these subhumans walk free in 20 years or so. But I apologize to all the military personnel I know: Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I'm sorry for complaining about Guantanamo Bay. Those assholes do not deserve the protection of our laws. Human rights are a fragile thing in history, and those who would destroy them entirely forfeit them personally. I know I must sound like a hypocrite to anyone who is neither military/police nor a satirist, but believe me, unless YOU'RE very skilled in keeping up doublethink in order to be a nice bien-pensant, when they come for your brothers, you'll be reaching for the thumbscrews.

NOTE: (Jan. 16) After a week of calming down somewhat, it occurs to me that I could probably never actually put screws on anybody's thumbs. Well, except for that one ex, for a while. But I DO better understand now why stuff like Guantanamo Bay happens, and won't be quite so quick to judge in the future as I was before my semblables were targeted. Not that I'm as important or famous as those guys, blah blah blah disclaimer.

YOU CAN'T KILL ALL OF US

To those whose little totems against their own mortality require others to die: FUCK YOU and your pedophile pirate god. And vive Charlie Hebdo.