What a weird week this last has been. Too many distractions on this end to focus, but also, a lot of rough news cycles in the background. Almost all my news services wanted to talk RNC play-by-plays & post-assassination spin, for instance, but... why, exactly? My pro-democratic US friends already know the mission. How's this horse race nonsense going to help?

---

Anyway--

Everyone still here?

Most of your fingers & toes?

Good.

Have a great Sunday.

May this next week be saner for us all. 🤞🏻

🎵 - "How's it hanging? A little to the left, thanks for asking!"

Okay, getting a little ickier now...

🍷 The blood of my enemies.
🍺 The urine of my enemies.
🍻 Hey, you brought the urine of your enemies, too!
🥃 ...I'm not going to ask why that's brown.

#RandomQuestions

Major party in the square below. I can't concentrate enough for writing, but I can work on other tasks until they go to bed.

Proposed game of the night:

Pick an emoji, and describe its meaning wrong.

For example:

😬 - "Is there something in my teeth?"
💪 - "Can you check this lump?"
🙏 - "I epoxied myself again."

Your turn!

(But remember your fellow CoSonauts when picking an emoji, eh? No need to crap on someone's ID. Keep it dirty where it's fun, but clean where it counts!)

I received the following note on my writing this week, and it's food for thought.

This person feels that there's a "plainness" to my writing from lack of "witticisms, allusions, bon mots, and deviations".

And they're welcome to that belief! It's just interesting, because I'd never thought that building stories of the present through history & lit analogy might be considered plain.

If the baseline is "not willing to sacrifice accuracy for a witty aside", though... then yep! I'm a plain writer!

Admin tasks just go down smoother when they're joined with a nice walk on a beautiful afternoon, eh?

I *think* I avoided burning up "like a shrimp", but we shall see.

On to the evening tasks.

Hope everyone had a decent Saturday. If not... maybe go back in time and try again?

Or teleport something else instead?

(Forward - forward - back - HIGH PUNCH! 🤞🤞)

🤔 Quick! What am I getting y'all on the way back? (Yes, you have to share with your sister/brother, don't make me turn this party chiva around.) #Colombia

Well @daniel, I was really hoping that on my walk this afternoon I'd find a great big celebration for Colombia's Independence Day, to tease you with sign of a whole country celebrating your birthday with you, but evidently the country's mood hasn't recovered from last Sunday. 🙃

I did, however, find a boxing match in the street *right* by a mass in process, so I don't know how you get more Latin American than that. 😅

May your birthday be as full of pleasant sights and company as you would like!

#Spanish #Colombia

New words today:

Vitrinear - From the same root as "vidrio", for glass, this is "window-shopping" / "just looking".

But there's another level to eyeing temptations when you're in a country that loves going out to enjoy the towns on weekends, so you also get...

Puebliar - To skip out to the village / villages, to sample their delights.

This is why Antioquia's pride and joy is Feria de las flores, every August: because the people here are *proud* of their rural treasures. 💛

A staff member I report to announced that they're leaving the position, so I have some admin tasks to take care of this afternoon before I can finish Draft 2 of this week's last newsletter.

Then I'll read for tomorrow's BookTube, and ideally send out 8 agent pitches for the novel. (And if BookTube works out well tomorrow morn, fiction in the afternoon! 🤞)

But for now, it's time to walk and see what the papers say. Today's edition has a cooking column, always a treat. Happy Saturday, you louts!

Chapters 7 & 8 are now up, with 28 minutes of 100% elephant-free audio, for Patrons following A FERTILE SOURCE OF RUIN, my wartime space opera inspired by Thucydides.

Each post not only includes a quick summary of where we left off, but also reflections on history, political science concepts, and key historiography, as they relate to our world and/or elements in my tale of dodging war and nationalism (in space!).

Enjoy! 🚫🐘

#SFF #AFSR #Reading #Novel #WritingCommunity
https://www.patreon.com/posts/fertile-source-7-108492006

😂 Editing that raw audio I didn't get to last week, and now I remember why I'd been putting it off: it was recorded later in the morning than the previous two chapters, and it has *everything* in the way of background noise.

I'm talking cars, motorcycles, emergency vehicles, dogs, parrots, hammering, children, a helicopter... at this rate the bray of an elephant wouldn't surprise me. Over an hour of raw data, which'll probably be around 35 min when ready.

Oh my dear sweet highway-side home...

This Patreon post is free-to-read.

I chat in it about the importance of perspective; it's mostly framed around that street encounter I mentioned earlier this week.

Off to the first of two classes now. TTFN. 💛

https://www.patreon.com/posts/quick-note-from-108457997

Misplaced, squinting, and dangling modifiers for my two classes tonight. Who's got a funny example of how English can go horribly, horrible wrong?

Our @LiberalLibrarian has stepped our for solid sanity reasons amid the US election (which is no laughing matter for some demographics already, and will *absolutely* hit some faster than others if the worst comes to pass in November).

But... it's also his birthday! 🥳

He wrote a thoughtful piece on his blog today. If you want to brave the comments there to wish him a happy day, or simply make sure there are messages awaiting him on his eventual return here, please do!

https://establishmentbar.blogspot.com/2024/07/urbi-et-orbi.html

All right. Tedious admin tasks finished.

On to the good stuff before evening classes.

TTFN, you beautiful rotters!

😅 I woke up to the world still choosing grinding mediocrity. So that's nice.

I think everyone should get a pass today for one very silly, small screw-up with major consequences. Go out there and live your best lives, folks!