Notes from the creator's desk.

So, on December 18th of 2022,  infected tooth #29 (the right side “first Bicuspid”) needed to be extracted as my face was swelling like a very poorly filled sausage made by an over eager toddler. One VERY expensive emergency dentist visit later, I was sent home with the standard Amoxicillin prescription, and took that dutifully. Everything seemed ok until the 28th or so, which is when the Amoxicillin allowed Clostridium Difficile Toxin A/b to take root in my stomach. Cue some of the worst gastrointestinal pain of my life, with top pain levels tickling 9, which is where I start to pass out. So, I went to the urgent care center and got Vancomycin the day before yesterday, and now the pain is…livable? It’s a 6. Dizziness is a side effect, so THAT sucks. But the dental visit and the resultant urgent care visit (to cure with antibiotics the bug that the previous antibiotics left me vulnerable to, haha) hit my wallet HARD, even with insurance. So, I can truly say that this has literally been a very shitty way to start 2023.

 Please forgive me if my poems and tweets and story excerpts are delayed in early February, thinking is hard when I’m this tired and ouch. Normally I have a solid 1 month buffer but these last few weeks were unproductive for reasons of illness. Also, I’m slowly losing twitter followers  (Thanks elon,)  so it should be noted that I am on Post News, and Mastodon, as well as Facebook. I don’t really post much to any place besides Facebook, but I am trying.

 As always, I thank you and love you for your continued support, be it Patreon membership, PayPal, Venmo, or GoFundMe contributions. And even if it’s only sharing my work, or advocating on my behalf to your social circles, or even just saying hi, it all helps me so much.

Chi Miigwetch!
(Thank you!) 

Notes from the writer, November edition

My debt is getting dangerously high. I’m having nightmares about losing housing again. I’m trying not to jump onto the mutual aid train, in part because I know the Patreon recruitment efforts, and art sales are getting no traction. In part I think that's thanks to everyone bailing on Twitter, which yeah, I understand, (thanks Elon) but at the same time I’m watching my livelihood potential getting torched.

I get all my Patreon patrons from Twitter, so I am scrambling to find a less unstable social media platform, because slowly losing 10K followers makes it harder to keep the ~300 patrons around while bringing in new folks to replace those wonderful Patrons sadly lost to economic churn. I HATE using GoFundMe mutual aid requests, even though I will lose my house without doing something drastic.

Part of me thinks that maybe I can ride it out and just get a part time work from home job until I can’t use my hands anymore. Another part just wants to leave social media and the web altogether. To stop asking other people to buy or read my art or writing. I’m seriously looking at a low wage job that a person in a wheelchair can do. But most anything that is is in my wheelhouse wants a bachelor’s degree or onsite work with “flexible on call scheduling”

Maybe I shouldn’t be so ‘political.’ Or polemic. I really dislike the “activist” label, because mostly I’m just an artist and a writer who gets upset at stuff, and I feel like calling me an activist is absolutely a disservice to people who go out and march and protest and sometimes risk their lives to uphold and fight for their values.

Next to that, my work feels too trite. It’s important to me, but it’s not going to cure cancer or save the environment. I just want to be a writer and an artist whose work earns enough to pay the bills without needing to go to the foodbank. I don’t mind starving, personally, but now that I have type 2 Diabetes it can actively affect my health to not eat at regular times…and that’s on top of rationing all my meds so that I don’t go further into debt. (I’ve been doing that for a month + now) since I’m making about 23,000 USD pretax. So. This is where I’m at.

September 4th update 2022:

Originally posted in part on Twitter:

Thank you for helping me survive.  I’m dealing with more pain. From the peripheral neuropathy and my spinal stenosis.

Without your help I would be much worse off.  Thank you so much.  Every little penny helps and so does every heart on these posts.  It’s very difficult stuff, writing through the haze of agony.

It’s the second bad day in ten for me. I am in so much physical pain right now. Nihilist suicidalism is everywhere on my mind without my permission, because there’s teeth-clackingly high physical agony involved.

I must work harder better and faster when I lose more patrons in the monthly churn but it’s Herculean when there’s so much less capacity to work through it because of the pain just grinding my very sense of self down.

Tasks: Somehow, I must earn more money, and pay off this month's mortgage while being happy. And I have to ignore the screaming joints in my knees, feet, and back.

But really. there isn’t any hope for feeling better, not unless I win the Powerball and doctors get really cool about pain med prescriptions real fast. They won’t, and I won’t. So, I have to pretend an 8 on the pain scale is just a 3.

The pain comes in horizontal waves, first like tiny fish shimmering just under the lake’s surface in such quiet numbers that their hunt of insects is a muted sizzling sensation in the feet. Then comes the shaking foot. Restless leg syndrome. It always starts in the left foot. The pain spreads up my body by degrees, it’s pulsing, vibrating. Simmering.

Then comes the cold cramp aches in the left leg and foot. The muscle spasms, the deeply sharp chill that precedes the nerves randomly lighting themselves aflame like bolts of lightning zig zagging in blossoming flowers of misery pop shattering nerve pathways up and down my feet. At this point I’m usually whimpering from the pain in my legs. Definitely crying. Then, if I don’t have Neurotonin/gabapentin at all, the lightning becomes a constant feedback loop of nerves on fire. There are countless leg jerks from constant taser-zaps that spike above the pain storm’s levels. Then there is sometimes spinal stenosis-caused whole-body twitching. Lately it’s been throwing my eating habits out of whack. Feeling hungry but retching when I try to eat food

.
Bigger memory gaps from blacking out during sudden D.I.D. moments.

Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen are my only method of taking the edge off to get even two hours of sleep. And I have to take them in painfully large doses when I don’t have the gabapentin.

But even though it REALLY hurts, I’m still here. Still fighting. Because of you. Again, thank you for helping me survive.

thank you for being here tangibly

and thank you for leaving comments
they make me feel less lost in the dark loneliness.

#Ad THE INHUMAN-HUMANE SELF, from CYBORGS OF YESTERMORROW)


(painting by me with images from Computerizer)


This is a direct-action assistance ad in poetic form

THE INHUMAN-HUMANE SELF, from CYBORGS OF YESTERMORROW)


"Knowing my place."
"Knowing my role."
Having the autonomy to define each.
44 years old, openly struggling with this.
Disabled, Indigenous, Nonbinary
plural-systemic person...
It can be hard to get back to it.

impossible alone,

hard still
even with help.
but
here I am
for a little while.
righting inward wrongs
as I can
accepting that I cannot change everything
but choosing One Important Thing
to change.

Change
is the only universal
constant
on a timescale that
matters to humanity 2.0

some days, faith is hard.
But
I don't WANT faith
I don't want to
'believe'
I want to KNOW.
absolute certainly.
or whatever facsimile
(This is still an advertisement)
my existence can
approximate.


My code?
Survive the day
harm no one
even myself
mentally or...
push
past
easy
cut away the "impossible."
reveal the probable
nudge that
by a few ° (importantly
Celcius too but)

(This is still an ad in poem-form)
a few degrees on a compass

But I can't do any of that
Without You.
If you don't read
what I write
if it doesn't
spark
something
some hope,
dream, joy
or symbiosis
big, or small
then I will fail my mission
and I will fall.
(this is still a poem-form advertisement)
It's
impossible alone.
hard even with help.
defining the sigils
the moments in time
where a connection
was established
an inky red star
against a yellow sky
was nudged away


Please, please join/ help / support / (unalone)
me
today.

https://linktr.ee/marikurisato

advertisement

I need financial support.
sometimes
I just need people
who can
hold me back
from the dispair
of oblivion

(needing attention is good)

sometimes I need space
a walk in a forest
of spirits
an ear to vent to
(sometimes therapy)

#AdPoem
Please help me get there
support my work directly
or just tell your friends
why you're sharing
like an Amazon review
but it's your opinion of
my existence
and why you're supporting what I do
so we see what I can make

Thank you for reading and sharing
end #adthread2021051














Updated! DICTIONARY OF WORDS USED IN THE MY LITTLE REALITY UNIVERSE

DICTIONARY OF WORDS USED IN THE MY LITTLE REALITY UNIVERSE

Anthrodroid AutonoPerson: (See Nonbindroids) Slang “NoPerson.” Not to be confused with the pejorative slur “NonPerson.”

Botpot: (Modern) Slang for neural hardware or centralized CPU/RAM space in an android.

DataPerson: (Modern) Any biological sentient being forcibly chained to a data stream to analyze large amounts of information to make life or death ethics decisions, thereby allowing nonSentient AI to perform large-scale tasks real-time without cognitive dissonance errors.

Dictionary: 0. Wait, you’re kidding right? What, are you expecting that I get caught in a self-referencing loop and explode? No? Huh. Well, I’m a dictionary. Me. This thing you’re reading. You can call me Tiona.  I’m also happy to say that I am the third-best one in the universe. But hahaha, ok, the real definitions of a dictionary are:

1. a reference source in electronic form containing words alphabetically arranged and information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactic and idiomatic uses.

2: a reference book listing terms or names important to a particular subject or activity along with a discussion of their meanings and applications alphabetically

3: a reference book listing the words of one language alphabetically and showing their meanings or translations in another language

4: a computerized list (as of items of data or words) used for reference (as for information retrieval or word processing)


Fleshglitch: Slang, Modern, the biological imprint of a sentient being in a machine artifice system.       

Garglevoont: Slang A nasty tooth-shaped alien the size of a small house who sits around and just really stinks.

Gooplexond: A portmanteau of the words Googolplex and Second. In computer terms, a Gooplexond is seconds. In human terms, a Gooplexond, as expressed in seconds, is essentially INFINITY. ((This dictionary would do the math for you but said dictionary would first dare you to count that high, and we can both see who gets to the end first.))

Hippy plural Hippies: a follower of the Hipster religion of Old Sol. Followers adhered to the definition of being a Hipster, which is defined as a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream. Hippies believed that strict adherence would allow them to visit an afterlife called the iPippin Store.

iPippin Store, (archaic) a mythical place in the Old Sol afterlife (sometimes called The Walm, or the VrolfinMilan) where they could show off the latest computer, tunic-phone, or the latest edible music-pod.

Light Child(ren) See Nonbindroid.

Manufactorian, an ancient, very loquacious computer series, originated on the moon Europa in the Old Sol star system, starting with model zero and getting staggeringly more blabber-mouthed with each generation. Some have argued that these grotesqueries are proto-nonbindroids.

Music-Pod (archaic) (slang mPod): a plant that plays music as it grows. While some mPods are edible, most simply crumble to dust after playing, leaving behind a message to visit the iPippin Store to upgrade to the latest mPod for sale.

Narkoplast: A person addicted to the drug Plastiqix

Nerdle-Turtle: A terribly slow, exceptionally large (yet elegant) nerd.

Nonbindroid plural Nonbindroids:

1. The Old Sol word for a self-aware genderless sentient being with a body (or collective of bodies) that resembles a constructed automaton, (archaic) “artificial sentience.”

2. The taxonomic classification for the Old Sol race is known as an AutonoPerson, and the alien races are known as the Veiia and the Thermadarluiian.

Old Sol: The star system in the Milky Way Galaxy is generally accepted as the origin system for Solprimans and Homo Sapiens. Not to be confused with New Sol or New Sol II.

Plastiqix: an illegal dryware drug usually in upload pill form that can affect both organic life forms and Nonbindroides.

Rewind: (archaic) 1. To reverse playback (Modern) 2. Slang for ‘to clean.’

Saninuke is the Old Sol word for “clean and thoroughly sanitize with nuclear particle scrubbers.”

Skull Bacon: (Modern)

Slohgborgh: (Archaic) A mythical creature of pre-Witherment that wandered Terra’s internet spewing stinky bad opinions on everything it did not know of, further ruining the planet via decaying morale for profit.

Solprimans: The collected peoples of the Old Sol star system. Species include Homo Sapiens, Cyber-Sapiens, and Nonbindroids.

Thermadarluiia: (See Nonbindroid) can refer to the star system or the Thermadarluiian alien species of the Milky Way galaxy.

 Veiia: (See Nonbindroid) can refer to the galaxy, star system, or deity of the Light Children of Veiia alien species.

Yahntahanna sha, nanjaiishiniish is Thermadarluiian slang for “Leave the galaxy you narkoplast.”

Things that belong to my new cat, as dictated to me by the cat:


This is not a usual "Notes from the Writer" post, but rather a prose laden attempt at explaining what now belongs to my cat. This blogpost was first published at Patreon on FEB 27, 2021 AT 8:00 AM

The cat, CogDat playing with her bear.

The cat, CogDat playing with her bear.

The Cat
All Bags. All Plastic Bags. Especially the ones you say I can’t have.
Freshly vacated warm chairs you intend on returning to.
All beds. Including the beds I’ve commandeered for myself. Your beds.
Shoes.
Pants.
Pant legs.
Legs.
Chests,
All the Food Everywhere and Some of The Stuff That Is Not Food But That Might Be Food Or Might Taste Good.
Desks and Counters-PUT ME DOWN YOU HANDSY HAIRLESS APE-Desks and Coun-HEY THAT IS NOT COOL GIVE ME THE DESKS AND THE COUNTERS YOU GORILLA’S COUSIN.
(Sigh. Desks and counters when no one’s awake or home.)
This carpet to scratch.
This chair to scratch.
This couch to claw up
This human poet’s arm to scratch up
(But not the $40 scratch post with cat safe sisal rope and a fluffy ball with attached bell)
Bell Balls! Wait where did I put those?
Not these teething toys either.
Or this flat panel scratching sisal post. It has no bells on it.
This human child that can’t pick me up the way I like
but who I really like because said child runs really fast and has these nummy things called Legos which he hates me knocking over so of course I love doing that too.
This human adult who not only knows how to pick me up, but can hold me in this thing called a baby cat wrap so well I fall aslee-


Writer's Notes

For the immediate future I will not be able to post my next short stories or the next novel on Patreon. what I have is in fragments and I need to recover quite a lot and edit other pieces. If you would like to unsubscribe, please feel free to do so. 

If you're not sure what I've been doing with my time, other than being ill, I've been fighting to get this funded:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/erasing-the-number 

I'm sorry to everyone who feels let down, I promise you I feel it worse having let you down. 

Thank you for reading

TERMINAL UPRISING, REVIEW

Terminal Uprising, available Feb 12th from all fine booksellers

Terminal Uprising, available Feb 12th from all fine booksellers


TLDR; Must Read, well worth it at thrice the price.


What would you do if you awoke from a coma in a hospital, and the Doctors’ had told you that you made yourself go insane before, and had mindlessly killed someone? What if the Doctors found you and took you in, fixed your mind, trained you, made you tougher, and gave you a job?

Would you feel guilty? Thankful?

What would you do if you found out 


(SPOILER FOR THE FIRST BOOK, TERMINAL ALLIANCE)


that in fact it was the Doctors themselves who made you this way, and that you didn’t ruin your own life, but that they did?

Jim C Hines’s protagonist, Marion ‘Mops’ Adamopoulos, (who spent twelve years gratefully working in a spaceship; not as a fighter pilot nor a dashing space captain, but as a janitor,) learns that her species’ alien saviors were actually the ones that had caused Humanity to become mindlessly feral and terrifying. This upsets her, because the aliens had remade much of humanity into their grateful foot soldiers. For years much of humanity was nothing more than enlisted grunts rebuilt to kill, die and serve. 

When something terrible happens that makes a portion of the human crew go feral ‘Mops’ is left in command, but other things happen and things go from worse to really bad. With little to no experience amongst her ragtag survivors, she is thrust into the role of rogue captain of an lawless alien ship.

Her former saviors can’t let the galaxy know what really happened to Humanity, so they are very eager to silence the entire crew to keep the universe unaware.

Well, I hate to say it but…

Mops fails, and her whole crew dies and the second book is about her life as a ghost in space…


…just kidding. But let me say this, in Book 1, the characters are well developed and thoroughly fleshed out, and people you root for. The ending is innovative, and a fine ending to the premise, but Book II Terminal UPRISING takes that premise and runs out the door with it. It includes action packed scenes, but also a shocking new secret, and characters that you can fall in love with all over again. 

Mops and her crew face a new challenge with new enemies and new allies, as Adamopoulos is forced to come up with inventive solutions to combat and logistical problems she was never trained for, to guard humanity’s greatest treasures from absolute destruction. 

And several of her solutions are hilarious. This is not a grim dark struggle, but Terminal Uprising has some good up and downs, and I was constantly surprised by funny scenes.

(All I will say about this is look out for the  ‘space whales.’)

In closing I just want to say that this book is better than the first, and if you liked Alliance, Uprising is an absolute must read. If you’re new, go pick up Book 1 AND 2 so that you don’t miss a beat of this smart, hilarious thrill ride. I cannot wait for book 3!