Topics

I walked into the bar, and sat down. Before I could order, the guy next to me turned in shock. ,ÄúWhat... What,Äôs with your face?,Äù He looked drunk enough that he,Äôd forget me whenever he woke from the inevitable facedown, half-on-the-bed stupor, so I decided to let him know. I,Äôd feed the next guy some line about evil scrids, but I make it a point to tell the truth at least some of the time.

,ÄúI was stupid, buddy. Do never fight a crazy chaos mage. I,Äôll never know what spell he threw at me, probably something to do with reversing time, but I,Äôm just lucky it didn,Äôt kill me. Just made my face 20-something years younger. He wasn,Äôt that lucky though.,Äù

,ÄúWhat happened to him?,Äù the man asked, wide eyed and leaning towards me. His breath almost felt solid as it swept over my face. I would,Äôve complained, but I was busy felling glad I wasn,Äôt in the Open Bar, where he could,Äôve literally breathed fire. Or worse.

,ÄúYou don,Äôt wanna know,,Äù I assured him, shuddering at the memory. Why an army of Magickal Hosries attacked him out of nowhere, I,Äôll never know, but I gave up on studying chaos magic that day. I used to joke about horrible ways to die after sneezing during an invocation, but it just hasn,Äôt been funny anymore.

,ÄúWow, man,,Äù the drunk guy slurred, waking me from my memories. He was busy being dragged towards the door by a slightly more sober friend. ,ÄúI gotta get going. See you round.,Äù

I looked down at the absence of a drink in my hand and called the bartender over. ,ÄúGot any absinthe? I need to forget, but I,Äôd like to have a light show or something while I do.,Äù He was just pulling down the bottle when he was shot in the forehead.

,ÄúHomeland Security, nobody move,,Äù rang out from the doorway. ,ÄúWe,Äôve traced several suspected terrorists here. The bartender has been harboring them for some time. All you law-abiding citizens have nothing to worry about.,Äù

While I was wondering whether Government, Inc. thought I was important enough to be branded a terrorist, the cop fell over and was trampled by the enraged patrons. I just caught a glimpse of a pencil sticking out of his back, straight through his body armor. Something looked damned familiar about that pencil.

Lie to yourself.

Tell yourself the world is fundamentally a nice place to live, that humans are good at heart. Never mind that you,Äôre defining good and evil self-referentially, with almost no regards to intention, incidental effects, or any crap like that. No, simple lies are more believable. And easier to come up with.

What,Äôs that you say? You don,Äôt like to lie to yourself? You want to find the truth? How arrogant can you be! Believing that if you search for truth you will find it. How many of you remember how long you slept Friday last week? That,Äôs a pretty simple fact, right? And the world ain,Äôt simple, however much it pains you to hear it. I'm certain my family has a few dark secrets that I don,Äôt care to search for. Do you believe yours doesn,Äôt?

You believe you can unravel the real ultimate truth from news networks, websites, and your own minds? Better to just ignore all that and not worry about the people dying horrible deaths every day. You,Äôll be much happier. And if, while flipping through the channels from one modern replacement for the static that cable has forever banished to another, you see an unsettling news report, forget about it. Watch an escapist movie. Get Pizza Hut to deliver baked cardboard in a cardboard box for you. Maybe even get into deluded arguments with your deluded friends. Representing the truth, of course.

It,Äôs been said that the best fiction reveals some truth. Perhaps. But even moreso, it distracts us from it. Everything important is wrapped up at the end of a novel. Everything that,Äôs not is simply paving the way for a sequel. Which will answer all the questions that remain. So of course the real world will work out like that, in the end. Every evil will be avenged. The hero will triumph, and of course you,Äôre the hero.

There will be antagonists who get in your way, of course. It,Äôd make for a boring book otherwise. How interesting would the Bible be if shit didn,Äôt keep happening to the Jews?

God isn,Äôt benevolent, by the way. No author is. They never can resist the urge to play with their characters, push them just a little farther, see how tough they,Äôve made them. ,ÄúLet,Äôs see, how much will this guy take before he snaps and starts gibbering about THEM and the squirrel conspiracy?,Äù And if the characters are lacking in sanity, the author can always just turn the story into a dark trip through the human psyche. Which usually isn,Äôt too pleasant.

So lie to yourself. Pretend nothing matters. You have a right to happiness, why let other people,Äôs problems get you down? They,Äôre just infringing on your peaceful, ignorant bliss. They want to spread their misery around, because it,Äôs easier than solving their problems. Fuck them. You deserve better than them. Better than reality. Reality will just let you down. So don,Äôt let it. Make your unrealistic plans and never act on them, always thinking how great it,Äôll be when you finally go through with it.

Lie to yourself. But know that if you do it in Eris,Äô name you will be rudely awakened. Or lie to yourself about that. Just don,Äôt come crawling to me when the shit comes flying up out of the toilet.

Damn it, this rant better wrap itself up nicely. Because that would prove my point so fucking well, with a nice snarky ending line that would sum up my arguments nicely. Well, fuck that. I,Äôll just say I,Äôve finished it. That,Äôll work. And no one will ever catch on to my lies.

4/9/2005

http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/essay07.asp

The life and times of an Elder God

[A Blatant Ripoff of the Declaration of Independence]

A Blatant Ripoff of the Declaration of Independence

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to just say ,ÄúFuck You,Äù to the assholes who are completely screwing the world over, a decent respect to the opinions of those who actually think about what they read requires that the reasons should be explained, however disoranizedly.

We hold these truths to be self evident, but only to the slim minority of those voters who actually disagree with our Warmonger in Chief: that all men are not created equal, but they damn well ought to be treated fairly by whatever idiotic system of government they are subjected to; that the purpose of government is to keep the powerful from abusing their power; and that the people ought to prevent governmental abuse of power. If you think this is contradictory, that,Äôs damn good! Politics is an art, not a science, and those who have approached it too scientifically have wept at what their theories caused. They have been unable to analytically predict their downfall.

King George (Boy George?) has sown our lips shut with the wind, a foul wind, stinking of oil, pollution, and metric tons of shit from factory farms; and we shall reap him and his cronies with the whirlwind. His chaotic little head dreamed up a movie with him in the starring role, as the banisher of Terrorism. It might have worked better if Karl Rove wasn,Äôt the director. But he flew in to save the day as the mission was accomplished by using clich?©s and euphemisms like Enduring Freedom and Shock And Awe. He forces us to endure his twisted ideas of what freedom is. He calls what he has been doing ,ÄúCounter-Terrorism,,Äù ,ÄúTax Relief,,Äù and ,ÄúSupporting Small Businesses.,Äù When the sheep can,Äôt hear him, he laughs at their gullibility, and discounts those who see through him. He needs to be shown that he has misestimated us.

Randomly destroying all order will not improve anything. It will cause discord, but the right wing gun nuts will benefit the most. The most extreme have been preparing for a revolution for decades. We must work to bring discord to the right-wingers, so they,Äôll screw themselves over. The political order has been stagnant for far too long!  Shatter their coalition of religious fanatics, opportunists who spout anything that gives them power or money, and businessmen. Force the Democrats who stood watching as their party,Äôs ideals were sold to the highest bidder to grow some spine, or kick their asses out! A spilt in both of the major parties would be some serious fun.