Human beings are wired to fight each other

And that seems to be pretty much all of what most people are. Do you ever wonder why the closest surviving primates are so... far from us? Quit having babies.

The slaves will always be with us.

Quit having babies.

Sometimes I think I should be less grumpy

(Sigh) Yes, I know, the world isn't out to get me personally. It just doesn't give a fuck. About anyone. It's not capable of giving a fuck. But sometimes despite that you manage to get some people together and have a really good time.

I had a reading last night here in Chicago, at Bucket O' Blood Books and Records in Logan Square, the only place in town that wasn't too scccccchicken to let me read, and a cool-stuff emporium that makes me wish I had more disposable income and free time (never a likely combination). We had poetry from Marc Ruvolo, my reading from NVSQVAM, a bit from my as-yet-unpublished sci-fi book LYFE, and two good friends, Joanne Von Alroth and Benjamin Capps, who both turned out to have some absolutely amazing stories to read.

I don't just mean that in the disgusting 'my fwends are awwwwww geniuses!' way that some of my former overlings at the Chicago Reader would say it, I mean it in the, 'seriously, I had a fun fucking time listening to these guys, and I got all sorts of compliments on how I really know how to put together an evening's entertainment' way.

Attendance was low, as it is at these things; but it was high for these things. Ruvolo, the owner of Bucket O' Blood Books and Records and an excellent Gorey-esque poet--at my request he read his twisted, hilarious poem "The Lidded Box" to kick off the evening; check it out in THE GOTHIC BLUE BOOK, a local anthology of creepy-ass lit--says for a reading in a bookshop it was a smash hit.

So here I am, enjoying my day off from the angry shtick. I deeply appreciate everyone who did trek out to Logan Square, and also those who live in Logan Square and forewent or postponed the many other entertainment options available in that neighborhood, and also thank you to the friends who expressed their regret that they were unable to make it. Thank you for coming, TGGP, and thanks to my sister Liz and my old friend Brendan O'Mara for both bringing chums out to discover my sick little world! Ben needs to compile a collection of his off-the-wall Max stories. Joanne, already a noted journalist, needs to write more fiction. That's all. Good times. Good night.

No one wants my fucking book, OK, here's my political stance.

Yeah, thanks for buying my book, world. This really makes me want to be a more cooperative citizen. Go on, ignore the best I have to give at the current moment. I will surely participate more enthusiastically in your neoslave culture after this.

In other news... my friends are often confused as to whether I am a conservative or a liberal or, even worse, OTHER. Well. That has never been easy to explain, but let me try to clarify where I am now. Which, ironically, I was unable to do until the conservative mainstream fucking mutated into such a giant monster that Ronald Reagan's daughter felt the need to piss on them.

I am an Observer. I capitalize that because when I was an adolescent I realized this thing lived in my mind, slightly outside of myself, just watching and judging (but not being judgmental about, not savoring it--judging was just part of its job) everything I did and everything that went on around me. And at this point in history, ya know what my Observer says? (It's really only as smart as I am, remember, despite its fucking attimatude.) It says that true liberals and true conservatives really need each other, and society needs both of them. And unfortunately true conservatives are no longer involved in mainstream discourse. The difference between Taki webmag and Sarah Palin's fucking mangled idea of Paul Revere is a gap that I fear is almost too overwhelming to fill. What fucking CONSERVATIVE doesn't know her own country's history, good and bad? Michelle Bachman is an embarrassment too. Slavery was good for black families???? Jesus, even a fraught divorce is better than Dad getting sold up the river at economic random!

In an ideal world, liberals are in charge of coming up with wacky new ideas, some of which may be great and some of which may be godawful,and conservatives are in charge of keeping them from throwing out the baby with the bathwater. None of which has occurred during my lifetime. Equal rights: good idea. The cons let that through. Affirmative action: really bad idea, which in practice only helps minority kids who already have rich/connected parents, as far as my experience goes; congratulations, you helped one rich kid beat another. Where were the professional cons on that one? Oh yeah: being rich kids. Just like the professional liberals who came up with that horseshit (who are now occupied with eating Obama alive, with ketchup). But that's a 1990s complaint; what we're facing now is far worse than "already-set person makes 20 dollars an hour, I make nine."

The GOP now scares the living hell out of me. The Onion made a funny joke of it, but they are so preocccupied with destroying Obama (who CLEARLY hasn't done the wise thing and gone in a bathroom stall with these homosexual homophobes) that they don't care what they do to the rest of the population of the earth. I'm sorry, but when you start doing things like the recent debt-ceiling standoff (which unnescessarily destroyed the most powerful currency on earth; congratulations, you managed to fuck people everywhere just because your dick hurt) I not only don't want to listen to a word you have to say, I want you dead.

Then again, if Tipper Gore fell on my sword I would not be sad, so I still don't know what I am.

LATER: Oh, wait, no. I do know what I am, but not on your axis. I'm a person who just wants all the horseshit to end. Quit having babies, and we won't have any more stupid debates.

My friends write fun shit part 2: Nick Mamatas and SENSATION

Boy, I'm a slow piece of shit. My own book (NVSQUAM, aka NOWHERE, Nine Banded Books) is coming out tomorrow and I still have yet to get a review posted of Nick Mamatas' latest novel, SENSATION. I've been meaning to do this for weeks, but it's been one thing and then another... I think the problem with this here blobg is that I insist on writing these entries like they're articles that I'm getting paid for--insisting on forethought, coherency, etc--when maybe ten people read them. And why do ten people read them? Prrroollly because I don't post often enough to make this something one would check on a regular basis. Because I take too long to post. Because I keep having to wait till the time is ripe... OK, let's just shit this bugger out, shall we? It's not like I'm a sufficiently tight essayist at my best for anyone to tell the difference between me half-assing it and me completely ass-hatting it, so-oh... Everybody, meet Nick Mamatas and SENSATION

Full disclosure: I've never lived in the same city as Nick, but I've corresponded with him on and off for christ--ten years or so now? He wrote the blurb that appears on the cover of NVSQUAM. We've met a couple of times and he has kindly (probably too kindly) included my stories in a couple of horror anthology projects he's been involved with. And what project remotely related to modern sci-fi or horror hasn't he been involved with? I swear the guy must have a time machine, he does and writes that much stuff. I'd like to think that if I were less of a misanthropic introvert I could be a bit like him, but fttt. How someone extroverted enough to get all the stuff-he-does-that-involves-others done actually manages to write as much as he does is a total mystery to me.

Aaaaanyway. When my copy of Sensation arrived, it was just after I'd written the post below, regarding Andy Nowicki's The Columbine Pilgrim, and it got me thinking: wow. Whatever else there is in the world that pisses me off, at least I've survived till that period in my life (a period relatively few people ever get at all, so I count myself lucky in this regard) when people I actually know are putting out books I actually, genuinely want to read and take great pleasure in reading and would most likely read even if I didn't know these people, assuming I found out about their books somehow (which isn't that likely, since my chronically shitty income usually mandates that I find my reading material in the paperback section of the used book shop, if not the library). When you're younger, of course, if you're at all "creative" or if you associate with such animals, you will have all kinds of crap thrown at you by friends who, in their callow self-expression, are desperate for but so rarely deserving of praise. Always uncomfortable. So it's very nice when the field begins to thin, and reading your friends' shit stops being a chore and turns into a pleasure.

SENSATION is along the lines of YOU MIGHT SLEEP... , Mamatas' 2009 collection of wacky sci-fi short stories, which was honestly about the best short-story collection (certainly takes the prize for sci-fi collections... sorry, Vonnegut) I've ever read. The conceits that Mamatas comes up with are incredibly clever, and he nearly always carries them out with a perfect version of the sort of wry humor that seems to be the most consistent method these days for lifting sci-fi stories safely clear of the overly-serious kitsch pit.

In SENSATION, all of human history is revealed as a byproduct of a war between a species of arachnid and the parasitic wasps who rewire the spiders' brains to build them nests even as the wasps' eggs hatch inside the spiders' bodies. A human woman gets stung by a slightly radioactive wasp, and her ensuing hijinks set off a hipster revolution, an economic catastrophe, and some serious reality warps.

Since I'm just shitting this piece out, however, and because I'm tired as hell from my new job, instead of trying to boil down all the thoughts I had while reading SENSATION, I'm going to pick on what is at the forefront of my mind: the day my copy of the book arrived in the mail, Nick posted on Facebook about an ONION review of the novel. Big deal, hey!--most major publications only condescend to review one book a year anymore, so those slots are publicity most precious--but they kinda panned it. I refused to read the review before I read the book--not because I'm that horribly sensitive to peepwle picking on my fwends, but because I hate spoilers almost as much as I hate mosquitoes.

It was nagging me, however, as I read the book with great pleasure: oh damn, the mighty ONION AV Club (everyone knows that's the paper's weakest link, but power is power I suppose) knows why I shouldn't be enjoying this, but I don't. Oh no, I'm having fun in a pissed-in sandbox. I'm a philistine, boo hoo. I wonder why, exactly, though?

After finishing the book, however, when I let myself read the ONION article at last, I had to laugh with relief. One of their complaints was that a revelation halfway through the book sucked out the dramatic possibilities. Jesus shit, man, the first ten pages sucked out the dramatic possibilities! Mamatas isn't much of a "dramatic" writer, at least not when he's in sci-fi mode; he's more of a funny-thinky writer. When you read one of his stories you don't really care where he's going, even though he isn't predictable; you care how he gets there. It's like reading a Jane Austen novel, except you don't know the heroine is going to get married at the end--for all you know she could end up living inside a giant squid. But the squid isn't the bloody point, it's the squid jokes.

OK, so I didn't feel too stupid about that. A simple difference in expectations; it was a complaint I could at least make sense of; the reviewer apparently expects drama in every story regardless of the type or intent of the tale (which puts him right up there with people who demand sympathetic characters, but at least it's a coherent system of expectations).

The last sentence of the review is, however, kind of mind-blowing when you think about it, and I quote:

"Weirdly, SENSATION throws its most caustic satiric barbs at hipster poseurs, not the near-totalitarian aims of the spiders, which comes across as though Mamatas has switched allegiances this time, from Kerouac to Cthulhu." [Mamatas' previous novel heavily referenced Jack Kerouac.]

"Weirdly"? Really? Weirdly?! Weirdly, he satirized characters who were based on a type of people who actually exist instead of skewering those insidious, Nazi, hyper-intelligent spiders who control the world. Because, man, those fictional spider are totes the ones whose behavior needs critique and correction! Ho-lee-shitburgers. If you needed any evidence that the ONION's AV Club might be a bit divorced from the mission of their editorial department, you might want to glance over that review for a minute. I never thought I'd see the day when I would feel the urge to gently explain the point of satire to the fucking ONION. Then again, Sarah Palin thinks her hair can run the federal government, and people are still watching AMERICAN IDOL, so... I give up. Reality is just going to do whatever the hell it wants, I guess.

My Friends Write Fun Shit Part One: Andy Nowicki's novella "The Columbine Pilgrim

You know what I think powerful people love the most about life? It's the fact that karma is no more than another comforting fiction, and in all likelihood the shit they pull, unless it's flagrantly stupid, is never going to come back and bite them in the ass.

But perhaps the reason they're not quite happy -- why they need massages and facelifts, why they feel a little insecure, why they have to pile up yachts -- is that once in a while, it does. Once in a while, one of the serfs will take it upon himself to manufacture some karma. "The rabbit," as the Relaxed Muscle song goes, "is gonna teach the eagle a lesson. With his Smith and Wesson."

Tony Meander, the "hero" of Andy Nowicki's latest novella (full disclosure: I've reviewed a work of Andy's before, Considering Suicide, and that work was printed by the same outfit that's set to release my new novel NVSQVAM this June 15, Chip Smith's Nine-Banded Books), is one hell of an angry rabbit.

Thirty-three now, he's never gotten over the trauma of his high school existence as a weird, smart, hyper-bullied nerd. On the surface, his life seems OK now; he's on track for a PhD, even if he is alone, and the reader suspects he always has been alone; in fact, he's quite religiously anti-sex as an adult, claiming the loss of sperm will reduce his powers. His colleagues have no idea what "powers" he's talking about, though he occasionally makes jokes about himself becoming an ubermensch or god of some sort. When he's not talking weird crap, though, he seems like an uber-decent fellow.

But under the surface, the basic loathing he developed for human nature while his classmates tormented him continues to boil and bubble till it finally breaks his brilliant mind. He goes on a murder-suicide shooting rampage at his class reunion, blasting through the crowds till he gets to the pretty, bitchy cheerleader who made him hate sex so much, whose fake come-ons--she once deliberately crowded up to him to give him an erection, then berated and humiliated him for his body's involuntary response--ruined one of life's main comforts for him. He has a special surprise for her. And the way she reacts is even more surprising.

The plot is a simple revenge fantasy; but the book is interesting in other ways. Tony is, as the title suggests, a huge fan of the kids who carried out the infamous Columbine mass murder, wherein two bullied students took out their violent revenge while they were in high school. In fact, for most of the book, while he sits in his car near the site of the reunion, he is under the schizoid hallucinatory impression that he is actually on a pilgrimage to Columbine, and since the text is delivered in the first person, the reader is taken on his imaginary journey with him. I don't think this is a spoiler, since most of the events he describes are so dreamlike and unlikely; in fact, even Tony wonders whether anything he's experiencing is real.

But within the hallucination, Nowicki explores not just the themes of powerless, human group behavior, and revenge, but the utterly weird thing that is religion itself.

A lot of Nowicki's writing (he labels himself a "Catholic Reactionary," a self-labeling which may or may not be part satirical) deals with religion in a strange fashion; for example, Contemplating Suicide is a meditation in two halves, the first being a fictional (but suspiciously autobiography-tinged) narrative of a miserable nerd who, facing his fall from childhood's purity and the bleakness of the godless, boring, senseless grown-up world, can't decide whether to kill himself. The second half is a somewhat scholarly essay (but too angry to be properly scholarly) asserting that we must believe in god, because otherwise things are meaningless, and to say that things are meaningless is a meaningless statement.

The two pieces sound like they were written by two different people, and the net effect is the queasy feeling that even if God exists, there's something wrong with the way we envision Him; and if God doesn't exist, that's an even worse fact than it seems on the face of it. So perhaps to live decently we must force ourselves to believe in... in... um...

"The Columbine Pilgrim" presents religion in an entirely different light; Tony's self-aggodizement comes off as a grotesque parody of the Catholic canon, complete with whorish Virgin Mary. His new auto-worshipful religion, a splicing of Marx, Nietzche, and a dab of Hitler for good measure, could be read as a scathing satire of the anarchic tendencies of secular society; if man really is the closest thing to a god, what's to stop the rabbit from glorifying his gunplay--or the eagle from gloating over his talons, for that matter?

However, it could also be read as a satire of the religious impulse itself; the way Tony slowly begins to believe his mad ideas is a maddeningly near-logical fulfillment of his wishful thinking. It's as though he's sitting in a theater watching a 3-D movie, and the part of his brain that's dedicated to suspension of disbelief slowly creeps over the rest of his cerebral cortex, finally convincing him that the movie is the world. His wishful thinking becomes his reality, and in the new reality his religion tells him that it's his duty to shed blood in his own name.

All in all, a stimulating read, and a short one; good for the ADHD, but personally I'd like to see Andy write something longer once in a while. Not that this needed to be longer; it's the right length for Tony's swift descent into the abyss, even if that makes the character's name a touch ironic.

Oh, boy, more shitty fucking weather

I know, I know. The Earth is not a sentient being, and it is CRAYYYZEEEEE for me to think it in any way has it in for me. I'm trying not to take it personally that it's thirty FUCKING degrees out in what is now the second half of April, but the closest I can come is the slightly less paranoid delusion that the planet hates not me specifically, but all of us. You, me, squirrels, cows, cats, dogs... the planet fucking hates us all. Who knows? Maybe when we walk around, we tickle. Why else would EVERY FUCKING CLIMATE BE SHITTY?

I know, I know, mine is a temperament that is extremely averse to cold. I'm generally not warm enough until everyone else is sweating their ass off. Move to Florida, Ann, and you'll suddenly be a sunshiney sweetheart with a perfect personality. Oh yeah? How cheery do you suppose I'll be after my house gets mowed down by a hurricane and an alligator eats my ass off?

Well, if I don't like cold and I don't like hurricanes, I can always move to Africa... and die in a drought! Or catch some horrible disease from a mosquito, hurrah! The only good thing about cold climates is that the bugs' reproductive cycles are at least given some pause by the yearly freeze. Move to someplace that's comfortable year-round for me, and chances are it's equally comfy for disease-ridden bloodsuckers who will kill me just to get a snack.

Unless, of course, you're talking about a desert. Yeah, that's fun. I want to spend half my life worrying about water, yeah! There are parts of the Middle East where you can get hit with a sandstorm and a snowstorm on the same fucking day. How that region wound up with so many theocracies is a mystery I'm not even sure I want to solve.

Once again, the only way I can believe in a deity in a world like this is to believe in one with a shitty, nasty sense of humor. Oh, look, the little Chicago monkey is trapped in a cold dark apartment suffering SAD and cabin fever because every time she goes outside she can feel her bones freezing. Comedy gold! Oh, how funny, look at that African baby, his lips parched with thirst, while elsewhere people lose their homes in a flood. HILARIOUS! THE IRONY! OMFUG THIS SHIT IS SO HYSTERICAL IT'S WORTH ALL THE SUFFERING! BRING IT!

Fuck you, god, and fuck you, mother earth. What kind of mother gives you fucking frostbite and malaria? If Gaia were in a court of law she'd be up for billions upon billions of charges of child abuse, from a mild chill to beating Japan silly with a tsunami. I know, I'm lucky to have access to clean drinking water... but what I wouldn't give right now to be able to stroll down the street without feeling like the very planet is sticking knives into my skin. When the very air around you is attacking you without mercy, how can you seriously believe in any kind of benevolent deity?

Do Christians just not feel the cold, the way some people aren't ticklish? Or maybe they love the abuse. "Thank you God, thank you Gaia, for teaching me this valuable lesson in..." HORSESHIT! HORSESHIT HORSESHIT HORSESHIT! I'm going to huddle under the covers and cry some more now. God damn it, the wind is just screaming outside, but my heat isn't even on, because why would it still be on when this kind of weather in April is just a shitty unfunny joke?