Larger Lives

Take heart while you sit in the corner alone and wait for death. Your life has stretched larger than you see. In a place you've never seen some friend you knew in elementary school uses a line of yours that used to be your favorite. Twenty years after your time has passed your kid recites that limerick you shouldn't have mentioned. You were patient zero for that one meme that spread across the landscape of people you knew. That little thing you do with your lips, that catchphrase we all hated, that tune you used to hum, the panoply of malapropisms that showered from your dumb mouth, the ketchup on your eggs, it's all out there. Pieces of your personality occupy far more than your one body. It's a shred of immortality. Not the kind you wanted, but the kind you got. No one asked you.

That thing you do that you picked up from Dad, that thing he said his old man used to do, how far back does that go? Was there some ancestor of yours seven hundred years ago who made that jerking off motion with his head tilted and one eye closed? He had your nose, why not that? The genetics of expression. Did the Great Khan make that same farting noise with his lips that you do? Did some poor Egyptian bastard slap his belly while he was lost in thought like Uncle Al? And will there be someone on Mars two hundred years from now who does that dance you do when you smell your favorite foods and your mouth fills with thick warm water?

Spoil Yourself

I'm on the latest SF Signal podcast with a bunch of other awesome people and we're talking about spoilers. I'm dying to tell you what happens! Check it out!
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/06/the-sf-signal-podcast-episode-133-panel-discussion-book-spoilers-how-long-is-the-moratorium/

Me And My Caffeine

I was miserable a couple of weeks ago. I know what things I need to do to straighten myself out but I fail to do them. For instance, although some caffeine can sometimes pull me out of a mild depression, lots and lots of caffeine can send me into a severe depression because I don't sleep enough. The amount of sleep I get directly affects my mood.

So I decided to quit caffeine. Again. Normally when I do that I get a wicked headache a day or two after my last hit and once that goes away, I'm good to go. So I got the headache and I bravely rode it out. Then two days later I got another headache. I got another a day after that. Then I got nauseous while I was eating. And I LOVE eating! Two days after that, I got the headache, the nausea and then I started vomiting.

I said to myself, "You know what? I think I'll have a cup of coffee." All symptoms of caffeine withdrawal went away in about an hour.

Now if this had happened years ago I would have gone back to my 20 oz. coffee and 44 oz. Mountain Dew a day habit. I'm slightly wiser now. I'm drinking only one small cup of coffee a day and that in the morning. No symptoms and I'm still sleeping pretty well and feeling a hell of a lot better in general.

I'd say, "Happy Ending," but life's not over yet.

I hope.

No. Not over yet.

Guest Post: Bryan Thomas Schmidt

My pal Bryan Thomas Schmidt returns to The One-Thousand to give us some insight on a character from his latest novel, The Returning, as well as a little piece of the book for free! Find out more about Bryan at the end of this post and click through to his website to get hold of his books for yourself! http://bryanthomasschmidt.net/

The Returning

Character Sketch & Excerpt: Farien Noa

The antagonist’s childhood schoolmate and best pal Farien Noa has evolved into one of the more ccomplex characters in the Saga Of Davi Rhii. Farien is a Boralian Alliance military pilot and officer, like Davi, and he, Yao and Davi went to the military academy together. His father is a minor diplomat and businessman and Farien is, by far, the more blue collar in attitude of his three friends. He doesn’t always automatically side with what they think is right or even moral. He likes to consider other issues including how the decisions might affect his military career and family. This can bring conflict with his friends, despite their closeness, and does create some internal conflicts for Farien as well. He goes through the ringer in The Worker Prince, the first book, but in The Returning, book 2, he faces even more and has a much larger role to play throughout.

Of the three, Davi Rhii (protagonist), Yao Brahma (Tertullian-center in the cover pic), and himself, Farien is the more physical one. He’s quick to want to fight and to let his temper flare, and he’s also the one who struggled the most academically and to achieve success. As a result, he is very hesitant to jeopardize all he’s work for and often a bit jealous when his friends overshadow him. In the following scene, Farien is leading his friends in an investigation of assassins stalking Davi’s native people, the formerly enslave Vertullians. But recently, Davi and his friends have faced assassins coming after them as well. Here they visit a black market on Xanthis and Farien finds his personal morals and ideals challenged by some shady characters they meet.

      Farien pushed the joystick forward, racing to catch Davi. Hot air pounded his skin as the g-forces threatened to pull his hands free of the controls. Clearly the time spent training worker pilots in the forests of Vertullis was paying off, as Davi had taken the previous corner so sharply Farien couldn’t believe he’d stayed aboard his Skitter.

      As Farien slowed and pulled alongside, Davi glanced back at Yao who was trailing them. “Well, we haven’t lost him yet.”

      Farien grinned, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t be hard.” He keyed the comm. “Come on, Brahma, you fly like your grandmother!”

      “My grandmother’s survived this long for a reason—no one in our family’s insane.” Yao’s tone was one of patient calm. By now, his friends’ antics didn’t cause him any stress.

If Only We Had Taller Been

I get on these YouTube kicks. As you may know Ray Bradbury tributes are flying around furiously and fastly on the Internet this week. This is my favorite. A beautiful poem, If Only We Had Taller Been. (via Larry Santoro, Dvice, JPLnews and a lot of others whose names I don't know.) Incidentally, everyone hails Fahrenheit 451 as his greatest work. They're talking about the content, though. If you want great writing, pick up Something Wicked This Way Comes. Open the book to almost any page and you'll find sentences that punch you in the face and shake you.

Fresh Guacamole

From the folks who brought you Western Spaghetti. (via BoingBoing)

The Knife

I have a knife at home which in my mind is called The Knife. I have lots of other knives, but they are inferior things that don't get named and mostly only get used by The Boy. It's my go-to knife. When I want to cut, when I want to spread, it's my guy. It gets fished out of the sink between dish washings for its very own bath. The other dishes are so jealous! Before it came into my life, there was another The Knife and after it is gone there will be another The Knife. None of them look like one another. In that respect, they're more like Doctor Who than The Phantom.

All Flesh is Glass

Hey, Folks, go check out my latest story, All Flesh is Glass, at Grand Science Fiction. It's story 137 of The One-Thousand. And it's teeny tiny but I think it's swell.

MuchoMangoMayo 2012!

Oh, jeez. We're halfway through the month and only now am I mentioning the Mango event of the year on my blog. If you follow me anywhere else, you're already sick to death of me talking about it. So now I can make you sick here too. Go check out my podcast, Beware the Hairy Mango. You normally get two episodes a month, but this May as well as last May, you get a new episode every single day! Wow!

http://bewarethehairymango.com/

What Atheism Means To Me

It means you don't believe in God.

That's it.

I see piles of stuff online talking about atheism and what it truly means to be an atheist. For instance, an atheist is a critical thinker, a lover of science, more moral than the average theist on the street, finds wonder in nature, is smarter, is right, doesn't get taken in. Whatever.

A few years back, I heard a lot about atheist groups with entire agendas. They had banded together so that their voices might be heard. I don't care if my voice is heard.

I'm an atheist and I'm not part of a group and there is no atheist agenda. There are groups of atheists with agendas, but they don't speak for all atheists. An atheist does not necessarily hold a certain worldview. Atheists do not necessarily agree with each other. Most importantly for some readers, they're not going to take over the world. They don't have the numbers and they don't have the organization.

Atheists are assholes and they're decent people. They're scientists and they're mystics. You get the same mix as you do with all other groups. They're humans and about as uninteresting as other humans.

I have friends who believe a person comes to atheism through a series of logical and scientifically inspired conclusions. I can tell you from experience that there are also other ways.

My father became an atheist while he was fighting in the war in the Pacific theater. He believed that if there was a god, he would never allow such horrors to happen. My father didn't believe in God. He did believe in an afterlife, however. He believed my mother's spirit was still with us after her death. He believed that walking through Yankee graveyards was good luck. The system was in place, there was simply no one running the show.

I worked with a lady who became an atheist when her two year old son died of cancer. Same deal. God would not have allowed this to happen.

I became an atheist through a revelation, as unsound and unstable as any religious one. I had done the church and Sunday school thing, I had fought with people who questioned the most basic tenets of Christianity. The beginning of my freshman year in high school, my world civ class was reading a passage about how Neanderthals buried objects with their dead which suggested they believed in an afterlife. In a flash I realized that God didn't create man, man created God. And that was that. No science, no logic, no soul searching.

I'm not saying that I'm right about there being no god. I was raised in a family - and, I think, a laid back culture in New England - that said, "Believe whatever you want, just don't push it on anyone else." I believe agnostics are the only folks you can trust on the whole afterlife issue. They're the only ones who are honest enough to say, "I dunno." Scientifically speaking, it can't be proven there is a god or there isn't. We could all be in the Matrix. We could all be a dream someone is having. There could be thousands of gods. We could be a sudden spasm of spontaneous intelligence in someone's lab that only exists for a second, but has the certain memory of a preceding life and civilization that never actually existed. If we're just spitballing, anything I can imagine that can't be disproven is possible. But given all things, when the question of God comes up, I'm putting my money on probably not.

I'm fine with people believing whatever they want. I don't want to outlaw religion or even argue with anyone about it. Our media-driven society's need for controversy and "balance" has pushed the idea of "Live and let live" right out of our heads and that's a real shame.

There might be people that think that if I was a real atheist, I wouldn't be capitalizing the word "God" in all the places that I have. I must assure them that my choices in capitalization do not have any bearing on my beliefs. There might be people who, for any number of reasons, believe that I'm not really an atheist. I'm going to sleep as well either way.

There might be a lot of atheists who agree with me, but you never hear about it, because they don't care enough about it to mention it. I just fell out of that category.

Melinda Gates: Let's put birth control back on the agenda

There are a handful of core things that we could do to improve the world and the lives of people in it. This is one of those core things.

137

Finally! I haven't had a new story since September because of the novel. 137 was a shorty, but it counts, by gum!

Beware the Hairy Mango 100!

Celebrate Beware the Hairy Mango's 100th episode video style with Lobsterman! With special guest stars, my kids! http://bewarethehairymango.com/episode-100-lobsterman/

Or watch it right here:

Never Has Faith Been So Hot!