Real Human Girls Feel Safe

I broke the chain of command and went straight to the Head Client who first recruited me to write for them all those eons ago (2022!) and asked, So when are you fuckers gonna pay me, huh shitheads??

Only I asked much nicer than that, of course.

I'm sorry about the delay, she replied immediately. The accountant is on it and it should be processed by today or tomorrow.

They just sent me a new assignment, too! Big enough to keep me busy for a month.

So, you know.

I have to assume I will get paid.

But it doesn't feel safe.

Nothing about my life right now feels safe.

I wonder if my life has ever felt safe?

I wonder if that's why I don't feel like a Real Human Girl?

Real Human Girls feel safe.

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Of course, the mindboggling speed with which a totalitarian dictatorship has taken hold in this country is specifically designed to make us all feel unsafe. So there is that.

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Meanwhile, in my neverending quest to learn everything there is to know about Elisabeth the Last Empress of Austria, I started watching Sisi, a 2009 Austrian-Italian-German biographical drama television miniseries, in some ways better & in some ways worse than the 2022 drama.

The horse scenes are better and the hair is more true to life: In real life, the Empress Elisabeth was a talented equestrian, and she never, ever cut her hair; in fact, on days she washed it—once a week—she canceled all court engagements because it took so long to dry.

Even on days when she didn't wash her hair, it took three hours for the chamber maids to brush it out. Elisabeth devoted those hours to learning Hungarian.



It was Elisabeth's son Crown Prince Rudolph, in 1889, who killed his mistress & himself with strychnine—a particularly unpleasant way to go—in a murder/suicide pact celebrated in balletic circles as The Mayerling Incident.

Heir Presumptive-hood then switched to Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose 1914 assassination catalyzed World War I.

But sixteen years before that, Elisabeth herself succombed to an assassin: She was out walking along the Lake Geneva promenade when an Italian anarchist—are there any other kind?—leaped from behind & stabbed her with sharpened needle file. She was corseted up so tightly that even though the weapon had penetrated lung and pericardium, it took her 45 full minutes to bleed out.



And will you look at that!

The app that manages the client's direct deposits informs me the client just paid me! Should reach my bank account later today.

Now, I can go to the gym with a happy heart.