Wednesday, April 10, 2024

(Needs Image) Quickshots: Cimarron #19- On a Texas Manhunt

 

I read this one on a camping trip to West Texas, and read it mostly in the afternoons after a long day of hiking the Guadalupe mountains, pounding down Powerade as I sat in the rare shade of my campsite in the flats hoping the temperature would drop below 100 soon. 

Does that explain why I don’t remember much of the plot?  Rapine, kidnapping, revenge, ego, chase, gunfights, fatherly advice, sudden death, and maybe some fucking with a smidge of “the wilderness is the best” thrown in. This is the kind of book that fits great for me out in the woods.  I don’t need lofty literature, I just need to roam and ramble and let me mind do the same.  On a Texas Manhunt was an ideal campfire book.

The fact that I finished it, but have never been able to finish a Longarm book, should speak volumes. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Attracted to Opposites

See this lady?  Badass.  I should love her.  Tough, fit, redhead, with an interest in outdoorsy fun.

I also interacted with her on her social media, and it turns out she's a total 2A or Die, Qanon, they stole the election, anti-vax... well, I have thoughts.


Guns, rural life, fitness, cowboy asethetic- things that draw me to the genre also draw people that are the polar opposite of me in so many ways.  

BTW, if these picture are you and you want them down, just let me know and I'll delete the post.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Quickshots: The Second Glass of Absinthe

 


I usually like short novels, but this one could have used a few hundred more pages.  In this self-described “A Mystery of the Victorian West“ we get, in no particular order:

·       Murder mystery

·       Helena Blavatsky

·       Spiritualism

·       Tarot

·       Bisexuality

·       Incest

·       Labor unrest

·       Violent union strikes

·       Class warfare

·       Mining politics

·       Drug-induced hallucinations

Oh, and one of the main characters is a white woman who lived with the Cheyenne for years in a prior book and is readapting to white society with her new husband.  The book is good, well researched, well written, but it’s a lot to absorb in a little over 300 pages.

Fun fact- the title comes from the eminently quotable Oscar Wilde: "After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not.”

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Soaring Sarcasm of Soiled Doves (Twitter Edition)



I started my first draft of this post when there was still a thing called Twitter, before a lunatic went into monstrous debt to the Saudis on a whim and made a farce of a company called X.  One of the few reasons I was ever on Twitter was to follow escorts.  The profiles of escorts there are great.  They are universally funny, erudite, sarcastic, and often post beautiful and scantily clad photos.  I never really got the appeal of the Soiled Dove in fiction; if they were anything like the escorts of X, then they were a marvel.

(P.S.- this is Savannah Hart)

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Sweet Li'l Candy Barr



Just who is "Candy Barr"?  Apparently a burlesque performer from the more puritanical days when people were decent to each other in the United States and no one walked around in inappropriate clothing or smoked reefer.  Except this very popular lady who had a popular career in nearly naked performance, was "close" to politicians and gangsters, and ended up getting sentenced to 15 years in the hoosgow for marijuana posession.  

Ah, hypocrasy.

Enjoy.  Don't forget to vote.