Looking through reports about USian poverty, which is becoming one of my more frequent pursuits, my dreams disappear and any hope of a better life just flickers and dies away. The business mentioned above is inspired by something I'd never heard of, part of the New Deal created to support writersI know this sounds crazy, but it makes me sympathize ( Read more... )

I didn't realise this haunting assessment of the future was published about a year ago. It's a blunt, searing picture of what the future of the US - of the world - actually looks like. The rebellions in the Arab world were only the start of a long series of violent revolutions to come in my lifetime. I don't doubt it at all.

Impoverished children ( Read more... )

This article about cuts to food stamps in the name of farmers and companies is pretty revealing in the different facets of who's behind it and what's going on. First off, it shears down food stamps by $4.5 billion, throwing out $90 worth to people already living on the edge, almost a whole third of their current amount ( Read more... )

I found the bizarre incident that happened on February 28th when I lived in Lyndale Garden. I forgot to look it up until now (months later!) because I had so many things pressing my attention. As it is, the police report summarized the incident as "disorderly conduct", and I am awestruck by the understatement of that assessment ( Read more... )

Anyone who knows me knows I have a pretty keen fascination with solitary confinement. In a more metaphorical sense, I've lived under it (and am convinced I always will). That doesn't hold a candle to the kinds of things confined prisoners live through and become: cutting themselves, eating their own flesh, staring at a blue wall for years, hearing ( Read more... )

For weeks at a stretch this journal goes cold and blank. I'd always like to write on it but a bit more but I know it'll never happen. For all of the weird things that happen to me, I live a pretty boring life, and it's the fiction that keeps fueling me. In the last few months, though, watching so many parts of the globe disintegrate, I've been ( Read more... )

It isn't just Egyptian libraries that have been demolished in this dark age. No, this time, it's Canadian joining the "kill anything that makes us think" worldwide project. They're in the process of demolishing and selling off their national archives. I'm finding it harder every day to be angry. It's so much easier just to feel bitter and sad about ( Read more... )

Bill 78 outlaws the tens of thousands of Quebecois protesters and is said by a law professor to be "worse than the War Measures Act" of 1970. It's led to more arrests, being 497 to 518. I'm being reminded vividly and lividly of Madison, Wisconsin just last year, and the level of rage is about the same ( Read more... )

I've now published Instability on the Nook and Smashwords, with Amazon saying "Live" but not yet available. I'm not sure why and I'll update it when it is. It's the second of my full-length books that I waffled on for several months before finally biting the bullet and publishing the thing myself. On the other side of it, I can't imagine why I ( Read more... )

"This is a sad land full of sad, scared people." - Brian Wood, Northlanders Volume 1.

Yeah, that's the US. He gets my feelings toward it, too.

"And I long to be rid of it."