Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 9/5/25
Cimmerian September 2025 edition
We are always delighted when old friends drive through North Texas on their way to less irradiated places, or in some cases, more irradiated places. Here’s a photo of myself and Jeff, an old friend from my college theater days, who drove through on their way to Amarillo. It was delightful catching up, and at no point did we sing any numbers from “Guys & Dolls.” We totally could have. We just didn’t.
Sadly, that was a brief moment of joy in what has become a protracted fight with Texas Insurance and all of the headaches you might imagine that would cause. The entire staff at the bunker has spent a cumulative total of approximately thirty hours on the phone (including hold time), trying to talk to the ACA Marketplace and the Insurance company Of Texas, trying to keep—unsuccessfully—from having to pay a lot of money for things. That clanging sound you keep hearing is my asshole slamming shut every time I get off the phone with these perfectly legitimate businessmen and their unwitting meat-shields in the call centers of Calcutta. If one more person in their mid-thirties starts scolding me again for not doing something correctly, I will snap.
I keep wanting to ask them, “Quick question: do you know when and why you’d use a semicolon in a sentence?” And when they say no, I’d reply, “See, I’m a professional writer. That’s what I do. I know how to use punctuation correctly and I do it every day. I know it because that’s my job, it’s in my wheelhouse. I’m not going to scold you for not knowing something that is, to me, basic and elementary. So please don’t try to make me feel bad because I don’t know the order in which to fill out and send in these forms that are somewhat hidden on your website.” Yeah, that’s what I WANT to say…
And all this? It could end up going away. How fun is that? I have no guarantees that I’ll be able to even GET insurance next year. Know what my premiums would be, in that case? For checks ups and generic blood pressure meds and generic Wellbutrin? $2,500. A month. There is nothing you can say that will convince me the system is not broken to the point of being scrap metal and we are being governed by corporations with no guardrails, guidelines, and certainly no humanity.
Update from the Agency of Health and Wellness
Our medical staff was surprised and pleased to learn that I’ve lost 22 pounds since January. It may not seem like much, but that number, added to the 12-16 pounds I’d previously lost, puts the net reduction somewhere in the vicinity of 30 pounds gone. It’s been a combination of rigorous portion control and watching what I shove into my piehole. Once the second knee is installed in Bunker Ops and working, we’re going to get back to walking together. Maybe as early as November, when the temperature will drop down in the high 80s. Ah, Fall in Texas!
A few years ago, a Book YouTuber named Michael K. Vaughn started “Cimmerian September,” dedicated to re-reading Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. Now we’re a few years down the line and it’s still growing strong, having expanded to any/all REH writing in addition to Conan or Conan-related media like the movies or the comics. We’re all tacitly avoiding the old de Camp/Carter-edited pastiches that muddied the waters for 50 years, but hey, you do you.
This year I participated in a round table discussion of EVERY SINGLE ONE OF ROBERT E. HOWARD’S CONAN STORIES with a few necessary diversions along the way. It’s a massive session, nearly five hours long, and part 1 of 2 is now available here: Cimmerian September Part 1 The Coming of Conan
It was a great conversation, full of witty observations. Part 2 will be released two weeks hence. And for those of you who are tired of all this jibber-jabber about that Robert E. Howard guy and are wondering what the fuss is, why don’t you check out one of the two Best of REH collections from Del Rey? Crimson Shadows and Grim Lands (my favorite of the two) are available here and elsewhere.
Swords and Larceny is Now Available
It’s been great to see folks posting picture of themselves with the book in their hands! And finally, one last warning: I will be at these fine establishments next week!
SEPT 10th WACO, TX
Bankston’s 4pm-6pm
w/ co-editor David Afsharirad
SEPT 11the AUSTIN, TX
Austin Books 5pm-7pm
w/ co-editor David Afsharirad and Tracy S. Morris
SEPT 12-14 AUSTIN, TX
ArmadilloCon
If you’re at the con, come find me and say hi!
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Thursday Murder Club (Netflix)
A senior citizen’s group at a posh British retirement home solve cold cases on Thursday. Then an active case drops in their laps, and shenanigans ensue.
A quick glance at the marketing materials will show you that the only enticement you might require is to see Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirran as plucky amateur sleuths and that should be enough. Oh, and David Tennant in his now-familiar turn as the scumbag villain. It’s loaded with British actors who were In That Thing you watched, always a fun game to play with your wife until she throws a pillow at you.
The palatial (literally) senior living facility is in danger of being knocked down and redeveloped into a resort. An untimely murder elevates the threat, and a second murder—no, you know what? This is a cozy mystery, with no blood, very little violence, and stakes that are sufficiently high but don’t feel so dire. It’s even something of a fair play mystery, with everything you need to figure it out yourself. But structurally, it’s got all of the familiar beats. What you’re here for, on top of the whodunnit, is the howdunnit—these veteran actors are having a ball with their wacky hi-jinks, and that’s what moves the story along. It’s not the mystery. It’s the characters you quickly come to care about.
There’s a minor message in the film—don’t count out the elderly. They still know stuff and can do stuff and deserve some respect. I always like seeing that in movies and TV shows. We place way too much value on youth culture. Again, this is a cozy, so there’s no real contentious fights or anything like that. There’s just a lot of people who don’t think the TMC can do anything, when in fact, they solve everything.
Probably my favorite thing about this is Helen Mirran, who has been playing a retired spy for the past twenty years in every movie or TV show she makes. I don’t think she’s capable of playing a character that didn’t work for MI-5 at some point. I can no longer tell if she’s actually acting or if this is just another assignment. Jonathan Pryce stars as her husband in the movie, but I’m sure he’s just part of her cover story.
As a movie with a familiar plot, The Thursday Murder Club brings the heat. I appreciate this being a film and not a TV series. That means no wasted scenes, padding, or fluff. If you’re a fan of Masterpiece Theater or British mysteries, this is the sweet spot. If you’ve never tried one of these before, The Thursday Murder Club is a great on-ramp.
K-Pop Demon Hunters (Netflix)
A group of young girls are a K-pop band, but that’s just a cover, because they are really...do we need a log line for this? You read the title, right?
Okay, let’s establish who I am in this instance. I’m a 55-year old white man, who grew up listening to a vast array of musical styles. I have very wide and pretty deep tastes. And while I do like pop music—some kinds of pop music, anyway—I have zero affinity or affection for K-Pop. I don’t care that it’s out there; this kind of bubble gum is nothing new. I didn’t like most of the pop music growing up, and I still don’t. I have even less in common with it now than I ever did.
Also, I’ve watched all of the anime I ever need to see in my life. I go back, way back, to the American-ized versions of Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets (I know it’s called Gatchaman), and Star Blazers. I was in the theatrical audience when Akira was released. I’ve spent time in Anime rooms at conventions (time I deeply regret and would like to have back—see The Transformation of Lawrence Croft for the thinly disguised true story). I’ve watched Studio Ghibli. I’ve seen 90’s edgelord stuff like Vampire Hunter D and Ninja Scroll. I even have friends who did the voice-over work on some of the more popular series like Dragonball Z.
So, I know what anime is, and more to the point, I know what it does, as an industry, and while I marvel at the incredibly wide and diverse and how freaking specific the different genres of anime are, I have seen all I need to see, because once you see one anime of a particular type, you’ve seen them all. And your favorite, the one you like best of all, is almost always the first one you came across that blew your mind. I don’t hate anime. But I am thoroughly bored with it.
Having said all of that, when enough adults in my life won’t shut the hell up about it, I figured it was worth a glance. I can always turn it off, right? Turns out the joke’s on me, because I thought it was cute, charming, even. I can’t take the music seriously, even if some of it is pretty catchy in that “It’s got a good beat, it’s easy to dance to” kind of way. But this movie make me chuckle and bob my head a few times.
The animation is stylistically drawn as anime, but practically delivered in that new Janky-looking herky-jerky style that Sony used for the two Spider-Verse movies. It worked well here; I’d go so far as to say that it was better because it was more kinetic and less static, like a lot of anime can be. (“But Mark, we watch it for the story, not the anima—” oh, shut up.)
It’s that fluidity between trying for a semblance of realism and those visual cultural clues that indicate when a character is crushing on someone, or angry, or hungry, that give the characters almost a Tex Avery vibe, and ladies and gents, that is fine with me. The shifts into and out of cartoonish exaggeration are really entertaining.
I’m not going to review the story, because it doesn’t matter, now that there’s a sing-along version on Netflix. That’s evidently what’s bringing all the nerds to the yard, those toe-tapping little ditties that everyone was belting out.
If you are an anime fan, I’m sure you’ve already checked it out. For those of you that find yourselves in a position of having to watch it (lost a bet, your daughter’s turn to pick the movie for family night, etc.), relax and sit back. It’s not bad. And if I feel that way about it, I’m sure the people who love this sort of thing are over the moon for K-Pop Demon Hunters. Which it seems they are.
"There is nothing you can say that will convince me the system is not broken to the point of being scrap metal and we are being governed by corporations with no guardrails, guidelines, and certainly no humanity." It's done, yes. In my former life I talked so often with surgeons and others about this. Commiserated, really. We're stuck with it. I have used up all my swear words, moans, growls, and outbursts. We are trapped in this so-called medical-care hell. Whenever I sign out for good, I fear it will be because this failed system will have finally failed *me* in some way. I have been lucky so far but, damn it anyhow.... But good on you, Mark, for losing all that weight. Go, go, go.
Congratulations on the weight loss: I know firsthand the trials and tribulations of that quest. (I've lost nearly 60 pounds since the end of 2021 and nearly 50 since the beginning of this year, partly from complications of my appendectomy two years ago, partly because I'm dealing with both clearing out a storage space from my move last spring and a kitchen restoration that involves lots of furniture-moving, and partly because of regular 40-mile bike trips. I'm down to my old weight back at the end of the Twentieth Century, I've had to buy lots of new clothes because my pant size is down by nearly six inches, and several people from the Bad Times that I wanted to avoid didn't even recognize me in public. If I cut off my nose hair, I'll probably lose another 30.)