Swords Cut Both Ways, and Love is All Around

Plucking Around for the Week of August 8th

When you’re not doomscrolling on Twitter, you can read a lot, and I’ve read a lot of great stuff besides Gilgamesh lately. Here are some of the highlights.

Confirming my desire to live in a paleolithic fantasyland, two studies of ancient grave sites in Spain suggest that 16,500 years ago, ancient humans kept foxes as pets and possibly mousers, as they buried them in human graves, and fed them food they’d never eat on their own. And in this article, there’s an artist’s portrayal of a needlessly topless “paleolithic human” who happens to be a very white redhead, perhaps to match her foxy companion. Because humans who live in Spain usually aren’t gingers. But anyway, have a gander. Thanks to the Save a Fox Rescue Instagram for the links.

Philadelphia is haunted because they dug up a cemetery to build over it, and dumped the headstones into the Delaware River as rip-rap. You can still see the stones under the Betsy Ross bridge:

photo: Katrina Ohstrom

“If you take the crime out of what they say is Italian organized crime, the ethics are really very good.”

A great profile of mobster Joe Colombo’s son in the New Yorker. All the mob guys think they’re good guys, and not leeches on their fellow Italian-Americans. Part of what I’m doing with the Joey Cucuzza stories is making Joey confront himself for the evils he commits, with his nibling Nicky showing the way. Paid subscribers can read them in the Story Archive:

S.L.U.G.: a Joey Cucuzza Conundrum

If you like blueberries, they were cultivated in New Jersey by Elizabeth White Coleman, over a decade. There were pink giants and other kinds, but the highbush blueberry is the one you sprinkle into your yogurt. Also, highbush blueberry is my dancer name.

The brain behind the NJGov Twitter is moving to greener pastures, to work social media for the White House. And Biden definitely needs the help, with his approval ratings below spotted lanternflies. Really, just cancel student debt already, Joe. You said you would. Remember Bush and No New Taxes?

Speaking of Twitter, one of the reasons Twitter has become a hellsite is because of pile-on mobs, but the righteous will not be denied their Lottery-like sacrifice of whoever they deem deserving; when it was Ghostbusters weirdos attacking Leslie Jones, that was bad, right? But when Ana Mardoll sent people over whoever he decided was the latest enemy, many joined in. It feels good to burn a witch, I guess. So when they got their comeuppance, outed as a nepotism hire for 15 years as a software engineer at a defense contractor, all the while begging for cat food from their sucker followers and sending hate mobs against LGTBQ authors because of some transgression, the mobs went ballistic instead of thinking of what they’ve done to other people for years.

Lauren Hough explains it. I’ve been hate-mobbed by Sad Puppy SF writers like Rob Kroese for defending nonbinary authors, and I’ve also been mobbed by Mardoll’s group for daring to have a tweet go viral, fighting for equal health care for women. I haven’t used blockparty to shut down a mob yet, it didn’t exist when I was mobbed, but I would use it in a heartbeat. Be careful who you follow like a minion. Lauren is not a transphobe and neither am I, but if you can’t call an individual like Mardoll out for their behavior without being tarred as one, who does that serve?

Who is Ana Mardoll

How to swear in the 16th century. My favorite? “Turd in the teeth.” Just, ew.

A great interview by Joyce Carol Oates with Philip Roth, from the first issue of Ontario Review, the literary journal JCO published with her husband Ray for many years. Some things haven’t changed:

“A sense of unspeakable security is in me at this moment, because of your having understood the book.” Melville to Hawthorne, in a letter about Moby Dick. Just the sort of professional intimacy and trust that is signalled by this simple outpouring of gratitude from one isolated writer to another seems to me the best thing we have to give one another.

A Conversation with Philip Roth

Bruce Willis has aphasia, and it’s unclear if his “handlers” have been abusing him to keep the money flowing in, but this excellent article by Matt Zoller Seitz brings us back to the glorious beginning of his career with Moonlighting and Die Hard, and how choosing the Quiet Hero roles made it harder for us to notice his decline.

More on Melville and Hawthorne from my friend Kim Parkhurst: were they lovers? Melville certainly seemed to want it so.

That’s your reading for the week, and I hope you enjoy it. I’ll be on the beach, so you’ll hear from me when I get back.