What about the literary translators? The selective outrage over AI

I occasionally check various online forums that are part of what is known as the “online writing community”. These mostly exist on social media platforms like Reddit and Facebook. I do this as little as possible.

Over the past few years, I have noticed a great deal of outrage in these venues over the use of artificial intelligence, more commonly known as “AI”.

By now, anyone with a dog in this fight is aware of the arguments. On one side there is the case for the inevitability of technological advancements, and putting those advancements to use in the marketplace. On the other side, there is the argument against replacing living, breathing human beings with soulless software. There is also the fact that those living, breathing human beings require paychecks to purchase food, rent, and health insurance.

Writers are kind of in the middle of all this. There are a handful of online hacks teaching both weary and aspiring writers how to generate something approximating a novel with software prompts. This is an entirely separate issue and not one that I will cover in depth here.

But writing a novel with software is essentially writers trying to replace themselves with AI. Most writers already have fixed views on this one. Those who actually enjoy writing laugh at the very idea. Others are burned out or frustrated, and would love nothing more than to hand off their creative work to a software package.

That’s a fool’s trap; because the results of AI writing are about what you would expect. (Note: The people teaching these AI writing shortcuts don’t like the results, either. They are making money by teaching their “secrets” to others, not by selling the AI novels they’re creating. But I digress.)

No, where the real conflict—and often the moral dilemma—arises for writers is in the realm of adjacent services. Some of these adjacent services are not cheap, after all.

Four hundred dollars for a book cover from a freelance artist? Three to four grand for an audiobook from a narrator? This is real money, even from the perspective of people who have real businesses. Why not just rely on AI for these services and save all that cash?

This is the point where the debate predictably gets nasty, often with freelance illustrators and voice actors jumping into the fray. I’m not going to weigh the different arguments here, nor condemn anyone for taking a strong, emotionally charged position. People’s livelihoods and bottom lines are on the line on both sides of these issues.

I have noticed something new, though—and more than a little ironic. One of the low-cost AI services to hit the market recently is AI translation. It used to cost thousands of dollars to get a translation of a manuscript from English into Spanish, French, or German, let alone into Japanese or Mandarin. Software now takes care of this at minimal cost…after a fashion. Amazon, in fact, has recently rolled out a beta version of AI translation for writers.

In online writing forums, I have seen a few debates about the accuracy of AI literary translations. Some writers wonder aloud (with good reason) if a whiz-bang AI translation program is trustworthy for a 90K-word book. (Hint: it almost certainly isn’t.) But I have seen none of the usual hand-wringing about replacing human translators with software. Not a peep. The outrage over AI, it turns out, is highly selective. What about the “art” of literary translation? What about the literary translators’ paychecks?

I’ve seen this cycle repeat many times over the years. An issue provokes outrage among a certain group of people…until it doesn’t. In the early 1980s, folks on the progressive left used to inveigh against nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. But for a variety of reasons, nuclear weapons are no longer the fashionable concern that they once were. Folks with a progressive mindset now see the plastic bags at their local grocery store as a far more pressing issue than warheads that could wipe out the entire world in a few hours.

I used to work as a translator myself (Japanese/English). I did corporate work, not literary work. For a three-year stretch during the 1990s, I made a very comfortable income doing nothing else. I was the in-house interpreter/translator at a Japanese automotive components manufacturer in Ohio.

I haven’t worked as a translator for well over 20 years. But if I did, I would no doubt have some strong feelings about the tendency toward replacing human translators with machines.

Another irony: I saw that shift coming in translation even in the 1990s. Sometime around 1995, I began reading articles about Japanese companies like NEC and Fujitsu experimenting with machine translation. End-to-end, seamless machine translation has long been a goal in the corporate sector.

Therefore, I’m not surprised to see software-based translations in the age of AI. I am, though, somewhat surprised that literary translators aren’t more vocal about being replaced. They are certainly a reticent bunch…at least when compared to the hyper-vocal illustrators and voice actors.

-ET

Cougars, Gen Z, and lessons from my Gen X salad days

The graphic below, along with the following blurb, appeared in my Facebook feed this morning:

“Gen Z men feel hated by Gen Z women so they are seeking less ‘toxic’ relationships’

Kara Kennedy argues that frustration in modern dating is pushing some Gen Z men towards older partners, in search of what they see as more stable relationships”

Source: The Graduate, The Independent, Facebook

The author of the article is one Kara Kennedy, of The Independent, a news site that is often grumpy in the typical British fashion.

Cougar fever seems to hit the mainstream media every ten years or so. Back in 2009, The Huffington Post loudly declared: Cougars And MILFs Rule! 40 Year-Old Women Are WAY Hotter Than 20 Year-Olds!

The above HuffPost article is 17 years old; but it could have been published yesterday.

There are a number of reasons behind this recurring, predictable media trend. The first is that women over the age of 35 tend to dominate the senior ranks of journalism. In other words, there is a great deal of wishful thinking involved here.

But there is also a certain degree of reality behind it. After all, this is a “meme” that goes all the way back to Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, and The Graduate in 1967 (the year before I was born).

Remember Rod Stewart’s song “Maggie May”, back in 1971? That was the same thing.

Beyond pop culture, I suspect it goes back much farther than that, although there was a time when it wasn’t widely discussed in polite company.

As my above revelation concerning my birth year concedes, I am no longer a “young” man. But I was one once. I remember that state of mind very, very well.

Here’s the way it works when you are a young male. You are desperately horny and emotionally hungry for the company of young women, twenty-four hours per day.

But everyone out there is seeking the company of young women: other young men, slightly younger and older men, and men old enough to be those young women’s fathers.

The result is that in any demographically unaltered sexual marketplace, young males are a dime a dozen, and young women are solid gold doubloons.

This is not a “manosphere” conspiracy theory. It’s just observable sexual economics. Nor does it last. (Things balance out between the ages of 35 and 40.) But for a few years, young women are in the catbird seat, and they hold most of the cards.

And if you are a young guy, you can’t help noticing: there are all these women out there who are five, ten, fifteen…or maybe even twenty years older than you. Some of them remind you of your mom’s friends. But some of them, actually…are not too bad.

Many of them also seem to be a lot less standoffish and more approachable than young women in your peer group. Some of them seem to be genuinely interested in you. So nature, which abhors a vacuum, takes its course.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the older partner is the second choice, the runner-up, the consolation prize. A young man goes for an older woman because he can’t get what he is looking for with the younger woman whom he would naturally prefer—or at least not enough of what he is looking for.

Young men, moreover, are so overflowing with desire that very few of them are able to get “enough” of what they want from younger women. This is why almost every man, regardless of his age or generation, has an “older woman” story to tell. (Yes…I have mine, too.)

In other words, the “cougar trend” is not a “trend” at all. It’s a recurring pattern.

But we need to be fair here. The same is also true of the “trend” of younger women dating older men. There is just as much repetition of familiar tropes, and just as much wishful thinking involved.

I remember something I read back in 1981. I was 13 at the time, and one of the neighbor boys raided his father’s stash of Playboy magazines. There was a group of us that day, stereotypical Gen X latchkey kids with not enough supervision. We spent one summer afternoon reading about a dozen issues of Playboy.

Playboy magazine, June 1981

Yes, I looked at the photos. But I also read at least one or two of the articles. I remember reading one article about the “trend” of college women dating more distinguished, more accomplished men in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. The author of the article claimed that college coeds were “sick of college guys who treat them like Kleenex”, and so they were looking for solace in the arms of older men.

Sound familiar? Keep in mind: I read this back in 1981. Forty-five years ago. Proof that there is really very little that is new under the sun.

But there is often a slightly new spin on these stories. Kara Kennedy’s piece claims that the most recent trend of young men going for older women is driven by the unique alienation between Gen Z males and Gen Z females. This alienation is the product of the Internet and the culture wars.

Is this a thing? Perhaps. But here in my neck of the woods, I meet a lot of ungainly, socially awkward Gen Z males who have somehow managed to stumble their way into romantic relationships with women their own age. I also meet many who are solitary. But it isn’t as if every young man had a girlfriend, without interruption, in 1990 or 1980.

Perhaps there is another explanation. There has always been a certain degree of tension between young men and young women. Both are learning to cope with new feelings, and both are navigating a supply-and-demand environment which (initially, at least) vastly favors young women.

The inherent tension between young men and young women leads to inevitable cases of resentment, misunderstanding, and alienation among the young. As a result, there will always be young individuals who are temporarily dissatisfied with what the youthful courtship marketplace provides for them, or seems to provide. And there will always be cougars (or randy older men) who are willing to step into the breach.

Those older men described in that 1981 Playboy article I read would now be in their 80s and 90s. The college coeds of 1981? They’re now in their 60s. None of this was invented by present generations.

I’ll conclude by circling back to Rod Stewart and his 1971 song “Maggie May.” Rod Stewart, who is now in his 80s, wrote “Maggie May” as a young man, based on his personal experience.

The lyrics of “Maggie May” describe a young man’s ambivalence at being involved with an older woman. From the very opening of the song, there is a sense that such a relationship is not the natural order of things, and that it comes with an expiration date.

This was the way it was for me. When I was in my early twenties I had a relationship with an “older woman.” The exact circumstances of how it came about are irrelevant here; but it adhered to many of the common tropes.

Long story short: I ended up parting ways with the older woman when I struck up a relationship with a woman who was a few years younger than me.

As Rod Stewart pointed out more than fifty years ago, that is the inevitable outcome. (And yes: many older men get dumped by their young sweethearts, too.) A cautionary note for older female readers who get too hopeful about the latest, Gen Z-specific iteration of the cougar trend. Nihil sub sole novum.

-ET

Kindle Unlimited, Kobo Plus, Taylor Swift tickets, and my books

“Why aren’t all your books in Kindle Unlimited? Why aren’t all your books available on Kobo/Google Play/Barnes & Noble/Apple Books? I only read on the (fill in the blank) platform, you know.”

That’s a composite of the emails I get nowadays.

The book market is rapidly changing. These changes are exacerbated by technological shifts and political turmoil.

There are Amazon readers who will only read books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. There are US readers who seek alternatives to Amazon (Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Kobo.)

There are Canadian readers who are mad at the current US administration, and only buy books from Kobo, a Canada-based company.

Where readers are concerned, there is no such thing as one-size-fits all anymore, if there ever was.

Which brings us to subscription programs like Kindle Unlimited. When you purchase a membership to a subscription plan, there is generally an expectation that everything you want will be included in that program. (I remember, some years ago, purchasing a subscription to Netflix. I was disappointed to discover that most of the movies I wanted to see, especially old movies from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were not available on Netflix.)

I have no basic qualms with enrolling my titles in Kindle Unlimited. But Kindle Unlimited comes with a rigid exclusivity clause. This means that if a title is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, it cannot be sold as an ebook on any other platform. Nor can it be offered anywhere on the Internet for free in electronic, text-based form. This effectively means that if a title is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, it is limited to Amazon in ebook form. (So much for that “unlimited” part of Kindle Unlimited.) The corollary: if a book is listed on Kobo, B&N, Apple, or Google Play, it can’t be in Kindle Unlimited.

Which brings us to Taylor Swift. The median ticket price for a concert ticket for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was $1,550, per online sources. Almost all of my ebooks are one third of one percent of that (about 0.32%), or about the same as a Caffè Latte at Starbucks.

Nevertheless, almost all of my books are available in either Kobo Plus, Kindle Unlimited, or via your public library through Overdrive.

Amazon is the big dog among book retailers. I’ll always have all my books for sale at Amazon. That said, I can’t promise to always have all my books in Kindle Unlimited.

There’s a downside to this, of course. If you don’t happen to have both a Kindle Unlimited and a Kobo Plus subscription, there is a chance that you might occasionally have to pay for one of my ebooks.

But this is only because we have so many book platforms nowadays. Not all of them play nice with the other ones. This, unfortunately, is beyond my control.

What would Taylor Swift say about this, though? Remember those aforementioned prices for her concert tickets. Taylor Swift wants four figures from you. All I’m asking for is the humble price of a latte at Starbucks.

-ET

Draft2Digital, AI slop, and the evil necessity of publishing fees

Draft2Digital is a company that provides indie authors and small publishers with a single interface for “wide” distribution of ebooks to a host of online retailers. The company has historically taken a small percentage of sales revenues in exchange for its services.

But in recent years, AI slop has invaded and overwhelmed the publishing world. There is now an entire online ecosystem of low-content and junk content churned out by AI writing tools. This “book spam” is clogging up online bookstores and retailers with content that no one is ever going to buy in any meaningful quantity. And with AI tools, the book spammers can do this at scale.

To make matters worse, there is also now an ecosystem of YouTube and TikTok hucksters, teaching others how to “make millions!” with these techniques. This is like the content farm problem of the 00s, but exponentially larger.

Draft2Digital has addressed the problem in a number of ways. Some time ago, the company announced that it will no longer handle nonfiction titles covering topics that are low-hanging fruit for spammers (exercise, cryptocurrency, diet, and various New Age subject matter).

D2D also announced that it will begin charging a $20 set-up fee for new accounts, along with a $12 per year account maintenance fee for any publishers who earn less than $100 per year.

In other words, less than $8.33 per month.

Needless to say, there are people kvetching about this on the Internet. As for me, I am 100% in favor of it.

This is not because I want to see more fees for their own sake. But rather because something needs to be done about the sheer volume of online garbage.

And when I use terms like “online garbage”, I’m not talking about stories and books that don’t suit my taste. Hey, if someone has labored over their billionaire, reverse-harem cowboy hockey player romance novel, and they want to publish that, let them go for it. (Although to be perfectly honest, I would prefer that they didn’t. The romance genres have become as trashy as Pornhub in recent years. But I digress.)

I’m talking, rather, about the low-content and extremely low-effort books produced, often with AI tools, for the sole purpose of manipulating bookstore algorithms and exploiting subscription services like Kindle Unlimited. No one benefits from the presence of that—including the authors of billionaire, reverse-harem cowboy hockey player romance novels.

A modest per-book monthly or annual nuisance fee would prune the sheer volume of junk that is accumulating on online bookstores. (Listen to Mal Cooper’s video below.)

I know the nature of the internet. There are people out there who believe that anything on the Internet should always be free, no matter what it is, and no matter what costs are associated with it, simply because it’s on the Internet. That’s an argument that goes back at least 25 years, to the original debates over file-sharing and NAPSTER.

But AI slop threatens to undermine, if not destroy, indie publishing. Online retailers and distributors will never have the manpower to meticulously vet every title. In lieu of that, per-title maintenance fees may be a necessary evil for combating AI slop.

-ET

A story for summer: “The Wasp”

It is not quite summer, if you want to get technical about it. Summer will not officially begin until Sunday, June 21, 2026.

We are still in April. The schools won’t let out for another six weeks. 

But the mercury here in southern Ohio will hit 85 degrees today. That’s close enough for me.

The above is one of my early short stories, “The Wasp”. I wrote it back in 2009, and it was first published in my short story collection, HAY MOON AND OTHER STORIES.

This is very much a summertime story. It’s also based my lifetime loathing of wasps. I can handle spiders, snakes, and other creepy-crawlers (to a point, anyway). I love honeybees.

But I absolutely despise wasps.

As the old German proverbs goes, “God made the bee, but the devil made the wasp.”

-ET

The New York Post fails Economics 101

As Mark Twain reportedly said, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

And then there is sloppy clickbait journalism.

In a recent article, Zachary Kussin of the New York Post presents the following statistics on recent trends in home ownership and home buying:

“Baby boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — comprised a 42% share of buyers, which remained unchanged from last year. These older Americans benefit from the equity gained from homes they previously sold — and likely lived in for some time as they raised families.

Both the Silent Generation, the eldest Americans born between 1925 and 1945, and Gen Z, who were born between 1999 and 2011, made up the smallest share at 4% each.

Younger millennials — those born between 1990 and 1998 — made up the largest share of first-time buyers over the past year, at 60%. That marks a loss in market share, as that figure is down from the 71% tallied the previous year.

Older millennials, meanwhile — born between 1980 and 1989 — are moving their way up in the world, and that’s manifesting in home purchases…they have the highest median household income of any generation at roughly $133,000, purchased the largest dwellings with a median 2,100 square feet and were less likely to be first-time buyers than younger millennials.”

I won’t argue with the statistics. They may very well be correct.

But somehow, Mr. Kussin managed to spin all that data into the following headline:

“First-time home buying plunges to record low as baby boomers prevent younger Americans from ever owning”

Before you ask: no, I’m not a Boomer. (I was born in 1968.) But “blame the Boomers for everything” has become as tedious (and intellectually lazy) as “all Gen Z are lazy and lack social skills” and “all Gen Xers are cynical loners at heart”.

(Ok–most Gen Xers are cynical loners at heart. But as a Gen Xer, I am entitled to make such an assessment.)

There have always been generational differences in equity in the real estate market. No one has equity when they buy their first home. And there have always been older homeowners with comparatively more equity. It’s called time.

This was the way it was when I purchased my first home in 2000, or when my parents purchased their first house in the early 1970s.

Time and equity are not Baby Boomer conspiracies to deprive younger home buyers. Any journalist who would publish the above headline needs to take a basic course in economics.

-ET

iOS 26 bugs and my old guy instincts

You all know me, or a version of me: I’m one of those stick-in-the-mud older/middle-age people who refuses to upgrade to the latest version of whatever operating system happens to be relevant.

I do this for the reason that most older people are skeptical/cautious: experience. In 2009, Microsoft destroyed my PC with an automated upgrade of the Windows XP operating system. Trust us, Microsoft said. Enable those automated updates. And I, like a fool, believed them.

I’ve since become a Mac user. Apple has yet to outright destroy any of my devices with an upgrade. But they’ve rendered several of them less usable, slower, or buggier.

I’ve therefore adopted a policy over the last five to ten years: one operating system per device. (This isn’t as radical as it sounds; I upgrade my devices at reasonable intervals.) My expectation to the tech companies is: Get it right the first time.

I purchased my iPhone 16 Plus last spring. The factory-installed iOS was 18.

I was planning to keep that. It worked. Then I read numerous online reports from the “techies” about how essential it was to upgrade. Iranian and Russian agents could exploit my current iOS, hack my phone, and steal all my data.

So I upgraded to iOS 26.4.1 last week. I’ve got a fancy new “liquid glass” display, and lots of new emojis that I’ll never use.

But CarPlay no longer works. (CarPlay worked perfectly, every time, on iOS 18.) YouTube videos freeze and error out. These are both documented flaws that have been discussed on Reddit and in other online venues.

Two observations from all this. First, this demonstrates yet again that our over- reliance on digital technology is a weakness as well as a convenience. I know young people who can’t read a map, write in cursive, or maintain their composure during a voice call, all because they’ve been hobbled by reliance on tech. But what happens when the machines glitch?

Secondly, I’m disappointed at Apple’s shoddiness. I’m an indie author, and I feel guilty if I release a $4.99 ebook with a handful of typos in it. But most of us paid close to a grand for our iPhones. Apple is a $350 billion company. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, earns $74 million per year in total compensation. Am I asking too much, when I humbly request that Apple not break CarPlay and destabilize YouTube when they release an update that I am told I must have?

I’m sure—or no, scratch that—I hope that Apple will eventually fix these bugs, along with the other ones I have yet to discover.

In the meantime, I wish I would have listened to my old guy instincts last week, and stayed on iOS 18.

-ET

Selective Service, then and now

In the late summer of 1986, I signed up for Selective Service, aka “the draft”. I had just turned 18, and this was the law.

In those pre-internet days, everything was paper-based. Most of us signed up at the nearest branch of the US Post Office.

I would like to claim that I was rip-roaringly gung-ho to kill commies (the default US enemy of choice in those days), but that would make me seem far more heroic than I actually was.

In those latter days of the Cold War, relations between the USSR and the West were thawing. A youthful reformer named Mikhail Gorbachev was in the Kremlin, and he seemed very eager to reach an accommodation with the West. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Despite Reagan’s earlier remarks about the USSR being an “evil empire”, Reagan wanted peace, too.

Then, as now, the Middle East flared up from time to time. In April 1986, Reagan bombed Libya in retaliation for that country’s part in the bombing of a West German disco, in which two US service personnel were killed. This action went down in history as Operation El Dorado Canyon.

But no one expected a protracted conflict in the Middle East, some five years before the 1990-1 Persian Gulf War.

The Vietnam War, moreover, was still in recent memory (though I could not remember it). Anyone over the age of 35 could recall how divisive that war (and its accompanying draft) had been.

In August 1986, my odds of being drafted were about the same as my odds of going on a date with Heather Locklear.

That was then, and this is now. The Trump administration has just announced plans to automatically register 18 to 25 year old men for the draft, starting in December.

On one hand, this represents no substantial change of the law. To the best of my knowledge, today’s 18-year-old men are subject to the same Selective Service obligation that I complied with back in 1986.

What about the war in Iran? Disastrous and ill-advised as that conflict is turning out to be, I don’t foresee a long commitment there. This is not the USA of 1964 or 1990. There is no appetite for an extended ground conflict in the Middle East. Even President Trump seems to realize that he’s made a major blunder. At some point, we will either negotiate a settlement, or declare victory and go home.

The new policy is, rather, typical of the automating craze of the twenty-first century, one that requires us to opt out, while Big Brother (in either corporate or governmental form) constantly opts us in.

From an administrative standpoint, if there is going to be a Selective Service system at all, this new policy probably makes sense. We aren’t in 1986 anymore, and that old system was burdensome and inefficient.

I noted this even then. The government already had my name, age, address, and Social Security number. Why did they need me to proactively sign up for Selective Service, when it wasn’t optional, anyway?

-ET

Buc-ee’s and the need for belonging

This past week the first Buc-ee’s opened here in Ohio. The event attracted Buc-ee’s fans from throughout the Midwest. Some reportedly camped out in front of the store. They saw sleeping on the pavement as a small price to pay, if it meant being among the first customers through the doors on the morning of the grand opening.

This is a gas station we’re talking about.

I can just imagine the reaction of some of the readers in Massachusetts or California. “Well, what do you expect of the unwashed masses in Ohio, that flyover state where most people vote Republican?”

But foolish mass events are not limited to Ohio or the Midwest. Consider the time, money, and emotional energy that people invest in Taylor Swift and spectator sports. Remember the Pokémon GO fever of a few years ago?

It would be easy—and facile—to dismiss all such followers of mass enthusiasms as dimwits or sheep. But there is something far more complex going on here. No one really cares that much about a gas station, even if every Buc-ee’s does have a vast, deluxe restroom.

And no, they aren’t all idiots.

I grew up during the 1970s and 1980s. I didn’t grow up in a small town, but I grew up in a close-knit suburban environment. I saw both parents every day, and my grandparents every week. I attended the same schools that my mother attended. Many of my classmates’ parents had been my mother’s classmates.

My growing-up environment felt almost like one big extended family. This doesn’t mean that everyone was always kind and supportive (though many people were). But there was a sense of: this is your home, your microcosm within the much larger, much more random and unknowable world.

I don’t feel that way about this twenty-first-century environment, and I know that many others share this sense of dislocation, or isolation. The situation is made even worse by the uncertainty of global events, and the bad behavior of our national leadership in recent years.

And yes, if you’re married (or otherwise romantically partnered) you might smugly say: “Well, I have my significant other.”

Perhaps you do…for now. Romantic partners are notorious for dying, moving on, and changing the locks on you. Most people, even if they’re romantically partnered, find that they need more than that.

I’m talking about a broader social support system. This is what used to be provided by communities of church, school, extended family, neighbors, and old friends. This was once the reality for many Americans—not in some distant, mythical past, but within my lifetime. I know, because I experienced it.

But we no longer attend church, we homeschool our kids, and most of our relatives live in another state. Old friendships and acquaintances are limited to Facebook.

It is therefore not entirely surprising that people seek group affiliation via Taylor Swift or Kansas City Chiefs fandom.

Or, perhaps, enthusiasm for the grand opening of the next Buc-ee’s.

So yes, I understand, on one level. But I can’t help reminding you: at the end of the day, it’s just a gas station.

-ET

Bryon Noem and a Japanese proverb

Whatever one’s political orientation, it seems impossible to ignore the Bryon Noem sex scandal. Here is a 56-year-old, married father of three, who—by all indications—has a cross-dressing fetish that he feels compelled to share with an online sex worker.

And speaking of Bryon Noem’s wife…Whatever you think of Kristi Noem’s politics, or her performance as DHS Secretary, she is very easy on the eyes, as women in their middle fifties go. Her detractors call her “ICE Barbie” partly because they don’t like her, but also because they grudgingly recognize that she’s hot.

And yet, we know two things about her husband: his online “bimbofication” fetish, and his [apparent] willingness to share his wife with Corey Lewandowski.

What gives?

As is so often the case, the Japanese have a term for this. Or rather, a proverb:

蓼食う虫も好き好き

Tade kuu mushi mo sukizuki

“Some bugs prefer nettles.”

A rough English equivalent of this proverb would be: “There is no accounting for taste.”

I’ve read the descriptions of Bryon Noem’s proclivities. There is nothing about any of that that strikes me as the least bit stimulating. (I have never understood why any man would be drawn to any form of cross-dressing.)

And yet—I know for a fact that some of the things that float my boat are boring, distasteful, and even laughable to others.

This applies not only in regard to sex—but other areas as well. To cite one simple and innocuous example: I would much rather read a book in my living room than attend a raucous public crowd event like a concert or a professional sports game.

But that’s me, and it’s highly likely that I’m wired up differently than you are. One person’s nettles are another’s delight.

-ET

Tigers, Devils, and Fools: A Guide to Japanese Proverbs, Second Edition

Available at :

Social interactions in the 1980s were a different game completely

In the 1980s, there was no social media and no dating apps. We didn’t even have email.

If you wanted to meet someone new, there was usually only one way to go about it.

You had to approach them in person, and strike up a conversation.

Below is a scene from NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988. In the scene below, the main character must jump through numerous hoops to meet an attractive young woman:

NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988

CHAPTER 43

Since my hand had previously been stamped, I had little trouble gaining reentry to the Casablanca Club. I walked by the doorman as if I owned the place, flashing him a glimpse of my left hand. He gave me no trouble this time.

Once inside, I got another break: there was no sign of Lance Corporal Evans or his fellow marines.

But where was Sergeant George Tuttle, fearless defender of the law in Cincinnati “for more than thirty  years?”

Maybe I would get lucky there. Maybe the cop had called it a night, or (more likely) been drawn away from the Casablanca Club by other police business.

I only had to walk around for a few minutes before I spotted her: the young woman from the Tangeman University Center. The pretty blonde who had caught my attention that day.

She was standing by herself at the edge of the nearest dance floor. Where were the other young women she had entered with, the ones I had assumed to be her friends? Was she meeting a guy here?

I didn’t know. And in that moment, I didn’t care. It was full speed ahead.

“Hi,” I said, when I got within speaking distance.

She turned toward me. I thought I detected a flash of recognition.

“You go to the University of Cincinnati, don’t you?” I asked.

Strictly speaking, this was a lame question with an obvious answer. The Casablanca Club was located a few blocks from the university, and we were both of university age. Probably half of the patrons here tonight were university students.

But few lines uttered by young men to young women in bars and nightclubs are brilliant. This wasn’t Toastmasters. Nor was I making an argument before Dr. Blevins. I was willing to improvise.

She smiled, but seemed at a loss for words.

“I think we may have spoken briefly in the Tangeman Center. That day you were looking at all the Armed Forces displays.

“More like I spoke briefly,” she said. “The proverbial cat seemed to have gotten your tongue.”

“There are no cats on my tongue now.”

This had to have been the most awkward line a man ever uttered to a woman in a bar. But it did the trick. She laughed.

“I’m Kim,” she said.

“I’m Paul.”

We talked for a few minutes more. I learned that she was a marketing major…common enough at the University of Cincinnati.

This was actually working, I suddenly realized. There was none of the awkwardness and fumbling that I’d felt when trying to talk to Tara and Courtney.

The difference, of course, was that the attraction with Kim was mutual, rather than one-sided. I therefore didn’t have to talk her into anything. All I had to do was go with the flow, be moderately assertive, and not say anything stupid.

But I was also conscious of Scott, who would right now be waiting for me in my car. I was also aware that in my very presence here, I was defying police orders, and breaking a promise I had made to a sergeant in the Cincinnati Police Department.

“I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Kim, but—”

“But now you have to go.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Call it intuition. Or maybe that you seem an awful lot like someone in a hurry.”

“I am in a hurry,” I confessed. “My friend is waiting for me at my car. Before I go, though: would you give me your phone number? I’d like to call you sometime.”

She smiled. “That’s usually what people have in mind when they ask for someone’s phone number. They want to call them sometime.”

A few minutes later, I was walking toward the main entrance/exit of The Casablanca Club with Kim’s phone number in my pocket.

She had written it on one of the club’s cocktail napkins, along with her last name. She was Kim Jones.

I was feeling on top of the world, more or less. Wait until Scott heard about this, I thought triumphantly.

I was outside in the parking lot of the Casablanca Club, almost home free, when everything unraveled.

“I thought you’d learned your lesson,” an older male voice declared. “But I guess I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”

NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988 is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play and Apple Books.

Civil War veterans in the 20th century, and other temporal oddities

Union and Confederate veterans shake hands at the Gettysburg reunion of 1913.

The last verified combat veteran of the American Revolutionary War was John Gray. He died in Noble County, Ohio, at the age of 104. Gray was present at the Siege of Yorktown, among other battles.

So here was a man who lived long enough to a.) fight in the American Revolution (1775-1783) and b.) see the conclusion of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Speaking of the Civil War: many Civil War veterans, both Union and Confederate, lived well into the first half of the twentieth century. I have seen newspaper clippings from the Cincinnati Enquirer, showing such men in Memorial Day parades as late as the early 1940s.

My paternal grandfather (born in 1909) once told me that he interacted with many Civil War veterans during his Indiana boyhood, though they were all very old men by this time.

The last verified veteran of the American Civil War, Albert Henry Woolson, died in Duluth, Minnesota in 1956. Woolson was 106 years old.

Wow. Nineteen fifty-six. That is not so long ago, in historical terms. My parents were both ten years old in 1956. I would be born a mere 12 years later. So fifteen years before I was born, the American Civil War was still technically part of “living memory”.

The last verified African American slave, Peter Mills, died in 1972 at the age of 110. (There were a few other claimants who died around the same time, but Mills was the oldest one whose story was verifiable.) That was well within my lifetime. (I was four.)

Facts like this fascinate me, because I am both a.) a history aficionado, and b.) a nostalgic. (I had a strong sense of nostalgia by the time I entered my teens.)

I can claim no meetings with Civil War veterans or former slaves, but I do have one connection to the nineteenth century. My great grandfather, who was born in 1895, lived until 1987, the year I turned nineteen. I can now claim to know, or have known, individuals born in three consecutive centuries.

-ET

1932: supernatural zombie horror in rural Ohio

My maternal grandfather, born in 1921, grew up in rural Adams County, Ohio. He told me so much about that time and place, that I sometimes feel as if I lived it all myself.

“Hay Moon” is a short story set in rural Ohio in the summer of 1932. My grandfather never told me a story like this, filled with supernatural forces and the undead. But his real-life accounts of his childhood years helped me add a realistic flavor to the tale, if I say so myself.

You can listen to the story here, or on my YouTube channel (where you’ll find lots of additional audio content).

You can purchase this story as part of my Hay Moon and Other Stories collection. If you like my approach to historical horror, consider The Rockland Horror historical horror series, which is also available in a five-volume boxset on Kindle.

-ET

“Cherry Bomb”: vintage Mellencamp with vintage footage

I really miss the music culture of the 1980s, especially MTV.

And John Mellencamp was one of my favorite solo artists. His commercial breakout album, American Fool, came out in 1982, just as I was entering high school.

Mellencamp was atypical in an era of polished arena rock and heavy synthesizers. Both his songs and his persona had a distinctly midwestern American vibe.

The singer hailed from Seymour, Indiana, less than two hours from my home in Cincinnati, Ohio. My dad grew up in the same general area of the Hoosier State. Perhaps for this reason, I found Mellencamp’s music relatable. (On the other hand, I could never relate to the worlds of David Bowie or Ratt.)

The attached video is for the single “Cherry Bomb”. It was released in 1987, and included on the album The Lonesome Jubilee. The music video features plenty of vintage footage from the 1960s and early 1970s. I don’t know if these video clips are from Indiana, but they sure look like Indiana, back in those days.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the interracial couple featured in the video. John Mellencamp has never been shy about his (progressive) politics; and we can be sure that this was a deliberate choice.

I remember 1987 like it was yesterday. (I was nineteen.) In 1987, a young interracial couple in a music video was not as shocking as it would have been twenty years earlier, and not as ho-hum as it would have been twenty years later. And certainly not the cliché that it would be now, almost 40 years after the music video for “Cherry Bomb” was made.

In 1987, this was something that people would notice, without being either outraged or inspired by it. Mellencamp was not being “brave” or ground-breaking by presenting this in 1987. But he was making a statement.

-ET

1980s college fiction: new cover reveal

NO SURE THING has a new cover. The setting is a modified image of the University of Cincinnati campus, which I attended in the late 1980s.

Who should read NO SURE THING? You’ll enjoy this book if you fondly remember teen and young adult movies of the 80s. The book is based on a number of ideas I’ve been kicking around for years, but it really crystalized when I rewatched Risky Business, the 1983 film that made Tom Cruise a household name.

NO SURE THING is available at Amazon, Google Play, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

-ET