Personal Interlude: “Holiday Reminders and Other Extravagances”

Concepts, Plans, and Calendar Listings

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

We’re now in the home stretch. 2025 Gregorian is less than three weeks away from ending forever, and good riddance to bad rubbish. It’s been rough here at Annals Headquarters, mostly due to Week Two of jury duty (I take it very seriously, to the point of where I have no intention of talking about it once the case is finished), so time for a quick update before returning to radio silence for the next few days. Hopefully, next week will be much better, the weather is definitely promising to be such, so there should be time to finish all sorts of things, including new St. Remedius installments that are funny instead of “I want to hurt everyone and everything” despairing.

In the interim, important news. Most important of these is that Kylo Boomhauer’s Ultimate Exonormal Gift Overload is still scheduled for December 12 here in Dallas, but if you can’t make it because you’re not in Dallas, please feel free to spread the word. If you can’t make it because your Fridays are booked, December is a great time for silent reading events, so head over to the Campus and Off-Campus Activities section for everything listed so far.

And speaking of sections, the updates and revamps of the main St. Remedius Web site continue. The St. Remedius Merchandise page continues to offer Redbubble weirdness (you really need a Mandatory Parker T-shirt, don’t you?), but it’s joined by the Research page, which contains links to many of the books both directly inspiring St. Remedius installments but that acted as inspirations on the author. Right now, the Bookshop.org page has a long way to go, but that’s being rectified by the day, and that collection will soon by joined with links to favorite university presses and smaller presses not in the Bookshop universe. Please note that the Bookstore.org selection is part of its affiliate program, so a percentage of sales help defray Annals of St. Remedius costs. If you’re already planning to stock up on books for colder weather in January, buying them through the St. Remedius page takes care of multiple situations at once.

Another new section to peruse is the Academics page. Creating this last summer’s run of new flyers has been a blast, but the biggest issue so far is the cost of reproduction. Costs for copymaking are going through the roof thanks to continuing Trump tariffs, so while stocking the current flyer racks is reasonably affordable, the additional costs of mailing out flyers, with postage rates going up this last summer and no guarantee that mailings outside the US will reach their destination, makes the regular mailings more and more impractical. Instead, flyers will go up on the Academics page for reading, sharing, and printing as they’re created, and the next few weeks (well, when jury duty ends) promise to inspire several new series. I’ll even offer full-color flyers as well as standard black-and-white ones: I miss precious little about the 1990s, but I desperately miss the wild inventiveness of band flyers back then and I’m trying to recreate that as much as possible.

Events at the end of 2025? That’s a really good question. Right now, let’s get through the rest of this week, because the year will take care of itself.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

Academics Campus and Off-Campus Activities Kylo Boomhauer Personal interlude Research