Mister Scribbles

Out of the night that covers me,       Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be       For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance       I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance       My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears       Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years       Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate,       How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate,       I am the captain of my soul. William Ernest Henley, Invictus .  1920.

 I left the bird center where I have lived and worked since April 2023.  I have never had a job that I disliked more.  The owner is the most demanding person I have ever met, she must have everything  free and has no shame about constantly nagging someone to get what she wants.  She doesn't miss any meals, very obviously.  She wouldn't buy a lawnmower of any effectiveness, the one new one she got wore out in 4 months as it was designed for postage stamp sized suburban lawns.  When I took the job I needed a place to live as our house was going to be sold, when it became apparent that it wouldn't be sold for some time I had no motivation to stay at the center.  In December I was informed that I would not get my pittance of pay anymore, I quit.  My boss was angry that I left a week early although I worked for five weeks unpaid.  Very little I did met with gratitude, and I was insulted twice about my job performance.  I have never had s...

UNDER OLD EARTH by CORDWAINER SMITH Down into Old Earth the Lord hastened —to do one great last deed, and die! I need a temporary dog For a temporary fob On a temporary place     like Earth! —Song from The Merchant of Menace I There were the Douglas-Ouyang planets, which circled their sun in a single cluster, riding around and around the same orbit unlike any other planets known. There were the gentlemen-suicides back on Earth, who gambled their lives—even more horribly, gambled sometimes for things worse than their lives—against different kinds of geophysics which real men had never experienced. There were girls who fell in love with such men, however stark and dreadful their personal fates might be. There was the Instrumentality, with its unceasing labor to keep man man. And there were the citizens who walked in the boulevards before the Rediscovery of Man. The citizens were happy. They had to be happy. If ...