You know, that's little brass coins that you can't spend nowhere, only at the company store

1. So the news from Patreon looks more garbage fire by the hour. Natalie Luhrs has further thoughts, Julie Dillon has further information, and the Outline has further statistics. I have informed my patrons of the upcoming changes and I have, unsurprisingly, already lost some. I am not upset with them. I am very upset with Patreon. "We have very clear, rigorous internal criteria for what we consider financially successful—there is a specific threshold that we've found to be 'life-changing' for our Creators." Well, I understand that it looked like nothing worth mentioning to the suits, but the money I made every month on Patreon was life-changing to me. It was income every month I could rely on. It was readership and community. I didn't know anyone who made a full-time living off it, but I knew many, many people for whom it was the mainstay of their artistic life. It was a central part of mine, insofar as film writing became an art. Did I do the things that might have farmed me a megafollowing? Of course not. I'm not sure I could have, even had I wanted to. But Patreon was a place my work could exist that helped. And apparently it was all a mistake. I was not the kind of artist they wanted to support after all. Not that top-tier, rags-to-riches, investor-rewarding success story. I am not pleased. I am not shutting down my Patreon, but if the company does not rapidly rethink its screw-the-little-people priorities, I am not sure what I'm going to do next. Write extra about films this month. Send out cat pictures. Try to write poetry. Very angrily grieve.

2. Courtesy of kore: Amazon's hunger games. Left as a comment on her post: "I am so angry that Boston—not to mention Somerville—has involved itself in this race to the bottom. I can't even use the usual contemptuous sexual metaphors to describe it because it's a dick-sucking competition only if the dick ejaculates hydrochloric acid and is also on fire."

3. Courtesy of spatch: the great state square-dancing conspiracy. Massachusetts is one of the states that appears to have fallen prey to the innocuous sound of American folk dance, despite the fact that modern square dancing is no such thing and has crazily, I mean Henry Ford was involved, racist roots. Personally, just to spite his memory, I would happily nominate just about any other form of dancing as a replacement state dance. Quadrille would be actually traditional to New England, but I suspect not multicultural enough to upset Henry "Jazz is a Jewish creation" Ford. Any suggestions?

4. In much better art news, please enjoy (and take recommendations from) Fiona Maeve Geist's "Transformative (Injectable) Lit," a photo-essay on books and transition.

5. And tomorrow evening, if we do not get wiped out by impending snowstorm, I will be reading at the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council in Providence. Come hear me!

Bury our hearts in the attic

Me: I'll just print out these poems in preparation for tomorrow night's weird fiction reading.

Printer: *prints all pages mirror-reversed except for the one whose title is in Yiddish*

Me: . . . so we have sheydim in the printer?

My mother: Why not?

(I showed her what had happened by holding the pages up in a mirror. She believes I should do my reading tomorrow from the reversed pages, using a mirror. I am, I think not unreasonably, a little concerned about what I might get if I do.)