Nobody has actually asked me that, but I have an answer prepared in case somebody does: “I dunno. Shit changes, man.”

In a generation or two, Latinos will be the largest American ethnic group. There’s really no way around that, unless we start building concentration camps or something, and I honestly don’t see that happening. That probably means a lot of Spanish-speaking people in your neighborhood. I don’t really think that’s a bad thing, like some people do.

I am reminded of my hate for conservative radio hosts. It really doesn’t take much to remind me of the Quinns, Hannitys and Limbaughs – it just sort of happens when I least expect it. I’ll be driving down 65 and see somebody with a rancid, pealing “W” bumper sticker and light a cigarette and say: “You fucking douchebag. He won, alright? Thanks for rubbing it in.”

107.9 here in Pittsburgh has a Limbaugh commercial wherein a woman, who has apparently called into the radio station to record an ad hoc commercial for them, describes an exchange she had with a friend of hers. The narrator has told this friend that she’s just not satisfied by television news coverage. “Well, if the bias on the news is bothering you,” this friend told her. “Have you given talk radio a try?”

Right, talk radio is the place to go for news. Talk radio hosts are liars. Ok, maybe not outright lying, “the sky is red” kind of lying, but they don’t tell the truth. A radio host’s job is to get you to react emotionally to the things he is saying and to call in or at least to keep listening. They make grandiose, inflammatory statements to their audience. I actually heard Bill O’Reilly admit that on his own radio show once, in almost those exact terms. I hate the man, personally, but his honesty was surprising since all talk radio hosts are liars. It’s in the nature of their black, evil hearts.

Jim Quinn is a major douche. I have a vague idea of what he looks like, but I still imagine him as a cross between Mr. Burns and Joe Don Baker. He has classic Conservative swagger, so utterly convinced of his righteousness that “moonbats” and “wackos,” frequent subjects of his ire, are sniveling, wormy pansies to his flag-wearin’, shit-kickin’, God-fearin’, ass-bustin’, gun-shootin’ rural American sensibility. He’s a DJ from New Jersey, people. That’s two strikes already, and he hasn’t even opened his mouth yet.

He blames communists for everything, and is convinced that everybody who doesn’t go to church on Sunday is one. It’s the spirit of Joe McCarthy, tickling his testicles and giving him fits of ecstacy when he can reach far enough across the table to connect that dot to that dot all the way over there and circle it with a red pen and say “See! Commie!”

He also hates liberals, which has somehow become a bad word, or at least something to be ashamed of (by some people – most liberals I know don’t mind the appelation). I don’t understand how that happened.

I’m trying to figure out how I fit into the political strata. Bear with me.

These are some of the devisive political issues these days that I think are used to define how we should vote in Novembers.

The War in Iraq. Conservatives think we’re doing a good job, that we’re helping the people of Iraq, that either 1) it doesn’t matter why we went there in the first place, so they’ll just kind of ignore that controversy 2) there are WMD in Iraq, just like the Prez said, but we either just haven’t found them yet or Saddam & Co. moved them somewhere else or 3) we went in to liberate people from an oppressive dictator. They also think that anybody who diagrees with the war, or who questions it in any way, has something personal against our “troops” and is probably committing some kind of treason (at worst), should shut the hell up before we ruin the morale of the soldiers and seem like a divided populace.

The liberal view is essentially the opposite of that. Some of them think that Iraq was a ploy by the oil men in the White House to secure the oil supplies and to put money in the pockets of big business. Some think that Bush is signed-a-pact-with-Satan evil, and wants to destroy the country, and that he doesn’t care about any of the soldiers and doesn’t care about what anybody thinks and is so wrapped up in Jesus that he believes that America is a crusader against the heathens of Islam.

Me. I don’t have any fucking idea how I feel about it. Penn Jillette wrapped up my opinion on the war: “Before the war in Iraq is over, I want to know how I felt about it.” I’m utterly torn in half by it. Here’s why I think we went in: Bush wanted to establish a friendly Islamic nation in the Middle East, and Iraq was a battle we could win. Nation building? You betcha. I also think that it was a kind of Roach Motel strategy: if we put an army in the middle of the Middle East, we’ll attract all sorts of unsavory elements that we can assemble in one area to kill them more effectively, also possibly diverting those unsavory elements away from launching terrorist attacks against domestic targets. I think that whole WMD thing was an excuse, and seemed like a good bet: Saddam had used those things against his enemies before, and was probably going to at least have some Sarin gas or something lying around somewhere. It’s not a big deal to me that he didn’t.

We’re there, now, and yes, we have to finish the job. Cut and run? I dunno. it seems like a bad idea. I do think we got in over our heads there – it’s a nice thought expressed by the administration a while before the invasion: we’ll be welcomed as liberators, spreading freedom that everybody wants and needs and they’ll all come together and see how much better a republic is than a dictatorship.

I don’t think Bush is evil. I cannot accept the idea that any man in Bush’s position wouldn’t want what he thought was best for the country. It just doesn’t jibe. It may be naive, but there are very few Presidents in American history (or none as far as I can think of) who acquired the office purely for personal gain and for the benefit of his rich cronies. I don’t think Bush is stupid, and I don’t think he’s a figurehead for some vast conspiracy of oil barons and weapons contractors. Is he an incompetent leader? Maybe. I think it takes a few generations to really know what kind of effect a President has.

I believe in dissent. That’s what makes tour country great: that we can vocally disagree with the actions of our leaders and not worry about reprisals. We can call for the peaceful overthrow of the man in charge and not be tossed in prison. Sure, the defenders of the man in charge might call you a traitor for doing so, but that’s free speech, too. They’re not going to hang you by your neck for saying it.

So to everybody who calls Cindy Sheehan a traitor: fuck you. She can say whatever the hell she wants to. The First Amendment isn’t there to protect popular speech.

Also, a lot of conservatives are very vocal about their hate for Islam – they wouldn’t call it hate, of course, but they sure act like that’s what it is. I have a generally low opinion of religion in general, so I’m not the best guy to ask. Sure, I don’t like Islam, but I don’t like Christianity either. I do have to say, for the record, that if I draw a cartoon that depicts Jesus in an unflattering light, I’m not going to die for it.

I think Islam is a fine religion, and that the followers of it have actually given a lot to the world. But come on, people – the institutional murder of homosexuals? That shit is wrong, no two ways about it. Forcing women to walk around in birkas? Also wrong.

I think the middle east is going through a dark age, much as christendom did a few centuries ago. All-encompassing reliigous doctrine with a very powerful religious movement? Check. A few very rich monarchs abusing and dominating the vast, poverty-stricken masses? Check. A near-total lack of forward intell
ectual movement and a stagnation of art, literacy and free-thinking? Check.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to get things over there moving again, in a cultural sense, but we can learn lessons from the European dark age. Islam needs a Renaissance of its own, and maybe some pissed off Martin Luther types. Things can change there, but the people have to want them to.

—

Yeah, this started out as something and ended as something else. I have to move furniture, so it’s going to stay that way for now.

I’ll be back later with more boring shit about politics.

I have unsettling nightmares that, despite everything, I may still end up like this guy.

Make sure you check out his first blog entry. I can hear his thought process: “nah, that text needs to be bigger and underlined or something, just so everybody knows how serious I am about finding out what’s up with them.” And I also enjoy the ham-fisted seduction, the subtle suggestion that they might be interested in adding another person to the bedroom antics, with such notable giveaways as spelling “come” as “cum.”

These people breed. No, there’s no way to stop it, so put down that shovel – to be more precise, they have bred.

And I’d really like to hear another person from the crowded regions above the Mason-Dixon line complain and/or mock the residents of my state.

I notice that the page hits and comment frequency were much higher when the Shitstorm was happening – I guess you folks can’t resist some real-life drama to keep you enraptured. There’s not much drama lately (I have sort of gone underground), so if that’s what you’re after: move along! Just rambling here.

—

I finished a story about Noah’s Ark today. I saw a piece of artwork at Lindsay’s a few weeks ago – it was a delightlfully demented illustration of a possible scene on the Ark – the first post-flood BBQ. I don’t recall the artist, but his/her work sparked a little flame of an idea, and I ran with it.

See, Neil Gaiman wrote a story called Snow, Glass, Apples, in which he reimagined the Snow White fairy tale. Not to spoil anything, but he took the raw materials of the classic story and fashioned something brilliant from it (Snow White is ghostly pale, has very red lips, rises from the dead and hangs out with mystical, mysterious creatures in the woods, and the Stepmother wants her heart cut out – do the math).

I don’t want to say that my story is going to be that awesomely awesome, but I did something similar with the Ark story – I began with the idea that there’s no way Noah and his four sons could have built that 300 cubit-long boat without some serious help. That help would naturally come from God’s own workforce, the angelic host of heaven – but angels aren’t much used to life on earth, and tend to be rather robotic. They need a manager who knows how to talk to angels effectively but who also has the guile and acrobatic wits necessary to acquiring the materials and to make sure the other locals don’t get too curious. There’s no angel left in heaven who fits that bill, so God has to dig a bit deeper to find the right guy.

In my story, the beloved Biblical character, Noah, kills a baby. It makes sense in context.

—

Having finished that story, I naturally moved on to a new one. A lot of anthologies seeem to be wanting stories of a genre called “Weird West.” Basically, you take the genre of the western and merge it with another genre. The movie (and series) Wild, Wild West did this with a Western/Steampunk combo. I want to write one, because I love the western genre (films, mostly), and I love mixing genres and tones. You never really know what’s going to come out the other end, and writing them can be so much fun.

Here’s what I wrote today:

The town was called Au, but only a few folks there knew why. It had something to do with gold, much like most everything else in California had to do with gold. Most folks in California had gold brains, gold fingers, gold thoughts, gold dreams.

It was one day in September, just as the nights began to crackle with cold, that the fish in the fishbowl in the bar in Au started to tap on the side of his bowl. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. The bartender noticed first, and brought the town to watch the little fish ram his nose over and over again. If any of the folks of Au had been watching for it, they would have seen a pattern in his tapping. If they had seen the pattern, they might have been able to work out a language. If they had learned a little more about the language, they would have been able to hear what the little fish was trying to tell them: “B-E-E-N-N-I-C-E-K-N-O-W-I-N-G-Y-O-U.”

I don’t know if it’s going anywhere, and I’m not entirely show what’s going to happen. It’s going to be goddamn fun to write, though.

I own a domain of my own: foremat.com See, the name is a clever play on my name, except with the subtle indication of computery things. I was doing a lot of web design at the time, back when one could do a rather professional-looking site with html alone, before the days when using Flash and javascript were required skills for the task. I called if Foremat Webworks, and I still rather like the name. The business (if one could call it that) lasted about as long as any of my projects last (which is to say: not very long). I kept the domain, though – it’s inexpensive and it’s nice to have a little home of my own.

Goddamn it, it’s late and I have to get to bed. But I’m going to finish this post if it kills me.

Because I own a domain, with attendant email accounts as part of the package, every single email sent to the foremat.com domain is routed into my inbox. That means I can tell somebody my email address without much concern that it’s not going to reach me. jhf@foremat.com? Done. jimbobaloui@foremat.com? It’ll work. FatAssSonOfaBitch@foremat.com? Check.

Some dear, delightful spammer recently started using my domain as a fake reply-to address, to bypass spam filters on the recipients’ email clients. Naturally, this means that I get 100 or so bounced emails into my inbox – the spammer tried to send spam to those now-defunct email addresses. When the email server of the recipients realized that those email addresses no longer existed on their servers, those servers fired a message back to the reply-to address of the spam (my inbox) with a note that the emails didn’t get through.

There’s also a website called foremart.com that apparently sells clothing to Koreans. One of those delightful fellows has a misspelling in their address book, so all of the emails that should go to SungK@foremart.com go to me instead. Very boring material.

I found this in my drafts folder tonight, apparently a reply to one of Mr. Sun’s friends, who was using the false address to send him videos of cats being washed in sinks by monkeys. I received seven forwards from her in the span of an hour, and I was apparently not having it. This was going to be my reply to her, but for unknown reasons I didn’t finish it:

I’m terribly sorry to break this to you, but I’m not the person you think these lovely and ubiquitous email forwards are going to, though I’m certain he’s none the sadder to not be receiving them.

God, I can be a dick sometimes. I’m glad I never finished the reprimand – I don’t think it was going to get any nicer.

I wrote a post about how lonely I am, a few days ago. I don’t mean to say that I was only lonely a few days ago, because I haven’t really stopped being lonely. But I don’t feel it as much now – I’m comforted by my family and friends and the people who are there for me, living their lives like they always do, and letting me have a place in them.

I’ve been on a few dates since the ShitStorm happened – but I’m not ready for them. Not the dates, not the women, not anything like that.

It’s an unfortunate thing to realize, in some ways too late. But I don’t feel stagnated or stuck, right now – I feel liberated. No offense to Becky, mind – I really enjoyed marriage, for the comfort and stability of it. I probably enjoyed that solidity at the expense of other emotional needs, but I did enjoy it. I’m not in a hurry. I need to be me for a while, and let myself not be defined by the person I’m with.

Sorry, ladies! This horse is staying in the corral for a while! Yee-haw! Whip-CRACK!

—

Becky posted something about writing, which i think all of you should read. I added my own thoughts, which I reproduce here – I think it has some decent advice.

I am reminded of an old episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I watched very few of those shows – what was promised as a rock-em-sock-em adventure show turned out to be more about historical figures that Indy shared a cup of hot chocolate with while they talked about their lives.

This episode was about Louis Armstrong and the jazz scene of the 1920s. I watched this episode because Harrison Ford himself was playing Indy again (for the first time since Last Crusade) – as the bookend scenes. Anyway, in that episode, Louis and pals are teaching young Indy how to play jazz, but Indy can’t get the hang of improvising. So, to make an example, Louis tells the piano player to play Saints Go Marching In. He plays it, completely straight, completely perfectly, utterly without flaw or improvisation. He then tells the piano player to play it like a jazz pianist plays it – and it morphs into the kind of virtuoso performance we expect.

I would add this lesson to Becky’s above list. Learn how to write correctly. Learn how the words are put after each other, how to use verbs correctly, how to avoid adverbs (as I haven’t here), how to avoid stacking adjectives, etc. There are lots of rules to writing anything, and you have to know those rules before you can play around with them. This is extremely important in genre fiction – if you’re going to astound your audience with far-flung ideas and situations, you have to be grounded in some kind of reality.

—

I got rejected by two different publishers last week. I’m taking it in stride. I submitted them again, to different publishers, moments after receiving the rejections. To continue the horse analogy – I got back on it.

—

I realized that I have a type. I have a kind. There’s a kind of woman I always flip to in the fantasy file. Nigella is of that type. So is Jennifer.

I think the artist, Coop, shares my type.

Note that this link is not in any possible way Safe For Work. Also, it’s not safe for anybody under the age of 18. I might even raise that to 21.

—

It’s late. I’m tired. Sleep now.

Dear Hot Chicks,

When I see you holding a bible, praying to the ceiling, or singing Jesus songs, you are no longer hot.

At all.

Thank you,
Jim

The story of Jesus is like a story told by somebody who can’t tell stories very well – they lose their confidence at the end of the telling and embellish it.

“I was driving to the store the other day and this woman totally honked at me for no reason! And…uh…I drove her off the road and strangled her baby.”

Jesus was a carpenter, born in a manger. He told a bunch of people, performed some miracles, gathered twelve followers and was nailed to a piece of wood by an evil Empire.

That’s fine by itself. It doesn’t need any more than that.

But no, they had to go and get all magical on it and have him rise from the dead and move a giant rock using Jesus Super Strength, and take his terrible revenge upon the people of Rome.

Ok, that last part I probably made up, but in my culture, people who rise from the dead are granted super powers by the ordeal, and then lay some old-fashioned American comeuppanceto the bastards who did it to him.

I like my version better.

But it’s not just the magic of the Jesus story that puts me off. I think Jesus was a fine man with some lovely lessons to teach. Sure, he supposedly healed the sick, raised the dead and made it with a hooker (all laudable achievements), but he also told people that he was the Messiah, the son of God, the King of Israel. You can’t do that shit and be surprised when the local law shows up at your supper with a Crucifixion Order. Even the rebellious martyr stuff scratches me behind the ears, so it’s not just that that turns me off.

Catholics believe that wine, when ingested as part of a ritual, becomes the actual, physical blood of the man they’re there to worship. Ditto for the bread becoming the skin of said Messiah. They call it “Holy Communion,” but I prefer to call it “Cannibalism.” As my mother noted recently, alcoholic priests drink grape juice instead of wine when they partake in the ritual. This means one of two things: the priest does not actually believe in transubstantiation or that the conversion of wine into blood does not actually take place. After all, it’s the booze he’s addicted to.
Naturally, if a priest is a reformed vampire, then perhaps it would make sense for him to avoid the whole ritual altogether. But then again, following the thoughts on it, he might also have a problem with all the goddamn crosses, too, thus making the idea of a vampire priest all the less likely. Though now that I think about it, if a vampire could drink the blood of an honest-to-God Messiah, it would probably grant him powers beyond comprehension, turning him into some kind of uber-vampire that a handful of spunky, ragtag vampire hunters from the Vatican would have to destroy. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself. I kind of like where I’m going with that, and it would be cool to actually think any of that crap is in any way true. So it’s not the weird beliefs that turn me off.

I’m not a Christian because I don’t have faith. That’s true. It’s also why I’m not Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim, so that’s not a very specific answer.

To quote the good Reverend Ivan Stang, “we don’t have a problem with Jesus, it’s his fan club.”

I’m not a Christian because I don’t like Christians. I don’t want to be one of those people.

Please note that I do not include Mormons in this summation – I’ve met a few of those in my life, and they’re the nicest people, as a group, that I’ve ever encountered. They have so much of their own wackiness, rivaling that of the Church of TomKat, that making fun of them here would be like the application of a truncheon to the corpse of a deceased equine.

I don’t think I have to explain why I don’t want to be associated with Christians. It’s bad enough that I have to share a country (80% of it!) with them, I couldn’t imagine joining them in their strange rituals and dark-age communions.

From rabid anti-abortion protesters to join-the-fold Jesus Brothers, there is not a single group of Christians that I would want to join. Some of them can be nice. Some can even be friendly. But I don’t want to join them. They can have their palm fronds and forehead smudges and cannibalistic rituals and dead guys on crosses. Just don’t get any of that stuff on me, ok?

That is why I’m not a Christian.

I’m an atheist, which means that my belief system is so diametrically opposed to theirs that my very existence is like an ice cube dropped down their shirts. Many Christians just can’t handle the idea not believing. They try to say that since I “believe” in evolution then I sort of have my own faith, too. Or they think that I have some kind of vendetta against God or Jesus, and that by denying the existence of them that I have somehow arrayed myself against them. I have spoken to more than one Christian who honestly categorize Satanists with atheists – they think that a lack of belief creates a lack of morality.

But it’s not true. I can’t believe in something that I know isn’t true. It’s not in my blood.

Having said that, I think Superman is about due for his own religion. After all, nobody can prove he never existed, right?

—

Because it’s Easter, I’ve embedded a little treat in the above – it’s a pun, my very favorite kind of treat. If you can find it, I’ll…do something nice. I don’t know what, yet. Give me some ideas.

We’ll call it the Easter Pun Hunt.

Rage. Rising.

People who are in a hurry and who are angry at everybody around them for not also being in a hurry – these people should be tossed into a meat grinder. Whether driving or walking or running, I desperately want to see their vehicles and/or heads explode.

That’s all I’m really angry about.

I started filling out a survey. I was going to write it honestly, unlike the last one I did. I really wanted to actually fill it out, to actually write about myself.

I was doing well, until I reached the fifth question, which was about a celebrity I wanted to boink.

That’s as far as I got. I had a few people in mind. Janeane. Jennifer Tilly. But I stopped at the obvious choice, the one I neglected on my first flip through the fantasy file.

Beauty, they name is Nigella:

She’s British. She’s busty. She’s funny.

That’s a goddamn trifecta, ladies and gentlemen.

You should see her chop cilantro. She does it all sloppy-like and then just throws the greens right into the bowl, scattering little leaves everywhere. No prim and proper, doily-infested Martha-ness.

I could go on, but I’m distracted by the multitude of pictures of her available online.

Look her up. It’s worth it.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.

This isn’t in reference to anything specific. My life has changed a lot in the past few months, and yet some days are startlingly familiar. Becky and I sat on the couch and played World of Warcraft. We ate fast food. We watched movies, like Spider-Man. This is exactly what would have happened on any Sunday night for the past 4 years. The main difference is what happens when we go to bed – I go to my room, and she goes to hers. It’s not an easy life, but it’s the one we’re stuck with right now.

—

The subject is in reference to the hour. I was up until 3AM last night, typing words of comfort to people I don’t even know. I don’t know if my words can give anybody comfort, but I know how much the words from many of my friends helped me in my difficult times. My life got a reboot, and I’m still watching the command line parameters scroll up the screen. I don’t know what it’s going to look like when it finishes booting up, but it’s definitely going to be different.

—

Spider-Man is a very strange super hero. I don’t know what kind of mental gymnastics it took for Mr. Lee and Mr. Kirby to develop him, but they had to be strenuous. He has super strength, agility and dexterity. He can cling to walls. He fires webs from his wrists. This all makes a certain amount of sense, if you only take the concept of a spider and merge it with the concept of a nerdy high school student.

But he doesn’t just squirt the webbing to make complex geometric shapes – he swings on them, unlike any actual spider. And he has a precognitive ability that warns him of incoming danger, also a property that most spiders don’t have – at least none of the hundreds that I’ve squashed. It’s those two little leaps of creativity that make Spider-Man interesting to me, on a professional level (as a writer, not as a fan).

Sure, there are other interesting qualities to the character. He lives constantly under the guilt of not capturing the criminal who eventually killed his Uncle. Batman never had it so tough – he was a little kid when his parents died, an innocent bystander. Superman was a baby when his parents died. Neither character has the kind of overpowering anguish that Spider-Man has. Spider-Man isn’t a hero because of some high-minded Boy Scout idealism – he does it because he feels guilty. It’s a very real human emotion, and an understandable motivation – every criminal he beats up is another criminal who won’t be around to destroy some other kid’s life. If he couldn’t save his own Uncle, maybe he can save somebody else’s.

—

I like video games. I have a theory about them that makes my enjoyment of them slightly less sad than it is, a theory cribbed directly from the X-Files.

Men spent most of the last few thousand generations fighting for survival. There are many layers and strata of instinct that are no longer needed for day-to-day life. When I play a video game, I am tapping those long-dormant instincts. My twitch relfexes are stimulated by first person shooters. My organizational coordination is tested and enhanced by a real time strategy game. I’m not out in the bush hunting lions anymore, but blowing away some Nazis in a simulated environment might just be scratching the same itch. I don’t know if that theory holds any water, but I’m sticking to it.

—

I think Beck’s Midnite Vultures might be the greatest album ever recorded. That’s another theory I’m working on.

Ok, it was more like a quarter rather than a half – but I still don’t feel good about it.

My parents bought a humungous High Definition plasma television. It probably weighs more than any other piece of furniture in the room. I’ve heard people talk about the picture on one of these things, and what they is right – the detail is incredible, and the clarity is better than anything I’ve seen. Unfortunately, there isn’t much content available. Discovery and PBS have the most astounding stuff, though, as one would imagine. I watched a gardening program because it was in HD – I actually said to my mother “Wow, the daisies just pop right out!”

Also, Grizzly is still depressed, a week after my sister Anne took Corey home to Morgantown. Corey was his playmate and arch rival. I tried to play with him in the back yard, but he was more interested in the birds. Newfies are the only dogs I’ve seen who bark at and chase birds, and both of the newfies I’ve known do it. Mind, this is not an exhaustive sample.

I watched an episode of Bullshit! with Penn & Teller – the topic was circumcision. They showed some footage of actual circumcisions being performed on defenseless infants. The position of the show was that circumcision is dumb and pointless and cruel (they even had a Rabbi say, without reservation, that even a Jew does not need to be circumcized in order to be Jewish). I can’t disagree – I don’t remember what it was like to have a foreskin (I only had one for a few days), and was definitely too young to use it for sexual purposes – I don’t know that sex would have been better with one, but it’s pretty awesome the way it is. I don’t miss it.

From my own research, the most common phrase spoken on cell phones: “Where you at?”

Tired. Bed. But an episode of Enterprise from the only non-shitty season is on! Ok, bed in a few minutes. After the next commercial. Then I’ll go to bed. Right.