I read Rice Boy over the holiday weekend and liked it a lot. The art work is surreal and I especially like the ever-changing, B&W movie face of one of the lead characters.

No, I will not now take recommendations for more online comic books, thanks. I don’t even like meatspace comic books. I found this one quite by accident and was happy to have the distraction at the time.

Comic books - they are most certainly not “graphic novels,” I don’t care how adult the subject matter - are lazy writing. Rather than use language to describe a scene or setting, one gets an artist to draw the action. That’s cheating, in my opinion.

Dailies or strips are different.

My mother drank while she was pregnant with me. She also drank - not much, but a few and once in awhile - when she was carrying each of my siblings.

It takes enormous amounts of alcohol to cause birth defects, otherwise every single American born before about 1980 would exhibit one. All our parents drank. Not usually to excess - there are exceptions, of course - but they’d knock back a few now and again.

Consider centuries past, when beer flowed in the taverns and wine in the castles; not that many flipper babies, right? Even in the heyday of the traveling carnival (1920s and 30s), there were bidding wars to get what they called the “lobster” boys and girls on board for their freak shows. They were a rarity and most probably caused by extreme alcoholism of the mother, not drinking in moderation.

There are no such physical problems in my family and there are probably none in yours, statistically-speaking. Though our respective mental capacities may be up for debate, none of us is overtly “challenged” in any way, right?

Do you happen to know when autism rates started to go up in this country?

Want to bet it was when women were told to absolutely, positively, they must stop drinking, that even the occasional glass of wine during pregnancy was detrimental to their unborn child?

Someone should really look into it.

My office is finally organized and cleaned.

Of course, it does not follow that I will keep it that way. I also do not believe for a moment this 4-hour task I’ve been putting off since we moved into the house last year will make me stop procrastinating.

Speaking of same, now that I’ve officially ignored my homework for another two days, perhaps I should hop right on it.

That is so not gonna happen.

Cern’s Large Hadron Collider starting doing its work today. That is, it smashes proton beams together to get at the particles which created our universe, among other things.

I’m no physics geek, but I have a feeling that the first collisions caused a black hole to open up in our universe. We are now inside this black hole, but we don’t know it, because black holes elongate time.

As of today, we are being stretched, infinitely through time, to our eventual realization we are doomed.

This isn’t so bad, really. What bothers me is that the physicists won’t be able to analyze the data and come to this conclusion before …… wait for it …… wait … for … it …

2012.

I should have been an evil scientist.

Remember cold fusion? Yeah, it’s like that.

The 10 Questions:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

The problem is not that I’m a skeptic, it’s that most people aren’t skeptical enough.

If you are trained not to doubt, you can more easily be manipulated.

In a piece by Tracy Clark-Flory over at Salon:

The Republican National Committee’s health insurance plan covers abortion. This news comes by way of Politico’s Meredith Shiner and Jonathan Allen, who appropriately point out the obvious conflict here: “The party’s own platform calls [abortion] ‘a fundamental assault on innocent human life.’” The RNC didn’t opt out of abortion coverage, though, even though that is allowed by Cigna, its insurer. Worse yet, though, is the fact that 176 House Republicans voted for the Stupak amendment, which restricts federal funds from going toward insurance plans that cover abortion. God forbid the government help you to get an insurance plan just like the one enjoyed by the RNC.

I wish I were surprised, I really do, but the conservative right has been so chock full of hypocrisy for so long that my first reaction to this story was, “Meh. That makes sense.”

Dearest GOP: If you’re going to insist on having the moral high ground, perhaps it would be a good idea to actually put your beliefs into practice … ?

Wait … asking people to practice what they preach is much too enormous a task. Meh. Carry on.

This is me, unsurprised.

You will pay for their lives and their souls … you’ll burn in hell for your sins.

Whoever said freedom was free?

My favorite Internet radio station just played the extended 12″ mix of my favorite song by The Cure.

We have tickets to Puscifer for tonight and tomorrow night. We’re headed out to Argonaut Liquors to pick up our weekly wine order and to maybe meet Dan Ackroyd, who is there signing bottles of Chrystal Head Vodka.

Life, as they say, is good.

Listen up.

I’ve come across some great stories and videos on the topic of religious fundamentalism, the latest being this article in The Independent which interviews former jihadis in Britain.

It is breathtaking to see how much Islamic and Christian fundamentalists have in common. They both believe that murder in God’s name will gain them glory in heaven, so one side blows themselves (and numerous innocent bystanders) up while the other guns down abortion doctors. They both seek to bring apocalypse, one to bring an Islamist world, the other to bring Jesus back. There is an excellent BBC documentary called The Power of Nightmares which compares and contrasts jihadis and neo-conservatives and it is rather frightening to learn just how similar they are. (You can view the documentary on YouTube in several parts or download the entire three parts here.)

At least the good Christian folk in our country only get berated by their brethren - or kicked out of the church - when they express a more moderate opinion on their shared religion (Rev. Carlton Peterson) or they screw up royally (Ted Haggard). The reformed Islamists in the above article may very well be killed for speaking out in public against the jihadis.

But how long will it be before fundamentalist Christians take to violence? When will an evangelical, filled with fear of change and challenged in their faith, hear enough rhetoric to kill President Obama?

The way the hate is being spread, it’s a wonder no one has made an attempt as yet. There’s the t-shirt which prays for Obama to die in office. People have started carrying guns to Presidential town halls. Someone threatened a newspaper with “another Fort Hood” for criticizing a tea party rally.

How long before Christians declare jihad?

At least the Islamists are up front and willing to train and take care of their adherents. They say, outright, that they will send a young man to war, train him to kill, and when if he martyrs himself in a suicide bombing, his family will be set for life.

Christian fundamentalists, however, hide behind freedom of speech and freedom of the press. If (when?) a murderous deed is done to our President, they will say that it’s not their fault some crazy person took Psalm 109 into their own hands; they should have waited for God to do His work. “It’s not our fault” will be the rallying cry and the killer(s) will be treated like all good Christians treat each other: Turning of backs in derision and contempt.

Be it on your head, indeed.

“I lost the battle, but I won the war” is a phrase I’ve heard much too often in reference to personal relationships. Battle and war in this context are usually euphemisms for a personal vendetta and I no longer take part in those.

This fact doesn’t stop other people from starting conflict, though, so when I encounter a situation that may ignite into something larger, I get to the bottom of it right away. I ask questions, discuss, assert my points, and try to understand how it happened and in what order. Discussions may be heated, but I remain diplomatic. I do not take sides and make all attempts to remain calm until it is resolved. If a friendship can be mended, why would I bother with name-calling and accusation? It doesn’t help resolve anything, which is the point after all.

Unfortunately (and often), I arrive at the full understanding I sought at the exact moment the other party starts carpet bombing. Put another way, I get very close to fixing the problem – one e-mail or meeting away – and the open door explodes and is buried in rock and shrapnel, never to be opened again.

I wish I could say this had only happened once or twice, but it is an ongoing theme. I don’t think it’s entirely me, but I am willing to accept some responsibility. I do ask hard questions and I do express what I see, even if I am mistaken. Being faced with a truth you don’t share – my truth may not match yours – can be painful and aggravating. There have been times I have come to the conclusion I was wrong just in time to be subverted by the people with whom I was trying to mend fences.

This, of course, causes a complete shut-down on my part. These are not relationships that can be mended. I can get to the point of bearing no grudge, but I will not suddenly develop Alzheimer’s. As my love puts it, “Some things can’t be unsaid.”

There are two realizations that bother the former friends with whom I’ve had these issues most. The first is that I found it so easy to drop them. If we were that close, they are worth fighting for, right? Wrong. If they are willing to stoop to screaming, yelling, gossiping, and accusations when we are trying to work things out, what will they do if we have another misunderstanding? Is it possible to get uglier? It’s safer, not to mention saner, to drop them. I’ve never had a problem making friends and, it sounds harsh to say it aloud, but anyone can be replaced. We are all archetypes; just ask those who have attended goth club nights in different cities. We have doppelgangers everywhere. You’re unique, just like everyone else.

The second realization that upsets people – and this is a doozie – is there is no battle nor any war. There never was. Any conflict which remains is self-made and any suffering is self-inflicted. Some people just can’t stop firing shots into the empty trenches; it’s a cry for attention to an enemy that never was.

You can imagine it is rare that anyone gets to the second discovery. I have only experienced three people in my life who were adult enough to have this epiphany and get back on speaking terms with me; only one is back in my good graces enough to be family. He grows slowly, but he grows, where most people don’t evolve past junior high school shenanigans.

Powerful and not-so-powerful people have attacked me in unimaginable ways. Some did it in court, some by going into direct competition with me, some by trying to subvert my authority, some by outright replacement, and some by just plain talking shit. I am still here; they are not. This is because I’ve learned one very important lesson, one it seems not everyone does:

I can’t win a war that doesn’t exist.

Du brannten die Brücke von Ihrer Seite.