Car Chases in the Zombie Apocalypse

Can I just take a moment to point out that dead.winter is an awesome comic? Seriously. I say this because I don't believe I've ever seen a car chase, with soundtrack done in a comic-book layout... until now.

From the Search Logs: Religion and the Meaning of Life

So there I was, looking over the analytics for this blog, when I ran across this:

how would atheists respond to religion as a way of finding meaning in their lives

Someone stumbled onto my blog using that as a search string. Since they probably didn't find the sort of answer they were looking for, and since I am by nature always trying to help, here's my answer.

First of all, I can't speak for all atheists - and I wouldn't if I could. It's like trying to speak for all Christians, or all Buddhists; the term encompasses a wide variety of views. But, okay, how would this particular atheist respond to religion as a way for someone to find meaning in their life?

I'd say, "Does it work for you? If so, wonderful."

See, here's the thing: people are different. What works for me, might not work for you - and vice-versa. As an irreligious person, what I mainly want from religious people is acceptance of the fact that I'm not religious - not because I'm angry, in rebellion, or too attached to my sinful ways, but because in a fundamental way, religious belief doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't work for me; I don't seem to be wired for it, if that makes any sense. And if I'm going to ask for that acceptance from religious folks, it only makes sense for me to accept that their religious beliefs work for them, that they make sense to them.

There are, of course, some limits and conditions on my willingness to be accepting. To the extent that your faith helps you personally, and encourages you to right action towards other people, I'm in favor of it. To the extent that your religion encourages you to do things that are harmful to yourself or others, I'm opposed to it. (In most cases, I can't see that it particularly does either one; it's just a part of who that person is.) So if someone is practicing a particularly toxic sort of religion, I'm perfectly willing to try to argue them out of it... but the goal isn't to argue them out of their religious beliefs; it's to argue them out of hurting people. And if you feel like you can't quit hurting people without giving up your religion, then I have to ask if what you have is religion worth keeping.

But as far as being a way of finding meaning in life? Go for it.

Reflections on Disorientation

This is... this is something I used to do, isn't it? Fingers on keyboard, keys to make letters, letters to make words, words to make sentences. Sentences to capture thoughts. Where did all the words go?

Weird. It's like part of me remembers how to do this, if I just... let it go, words come out.

Computer. That's a word. Hacking. I was hacking that guy's blog so I could say things I couldn't say. Like I'm doing now, but different. I knew who I was, but I couldn't tell anybody. Not 'til Claire. Now I'm... finding out who I was, by doing what I did then.

I wonder when Claire is?

Filler: Lego Zombie Attack

Since I'm feeling a bit like a zombie myself this morning, I thought I'd share this:

Writing Projects

Long, busy weekend. Plus, I got a bit of sunburn - not too bad, but enough to kind of throw me off. Also, this week should be the last stretch of cleanup from the Big Local Music Festival (and by extension, my busy season in general). So, naturally, this morning has been a steady stream of random interruptions. So was most of last week.

I'm tired. I'm cranky. I'm unfocused. If there's an ideal mindset for working on a writing project, this is about as far in the other direction as it's possible to get.

So, naturally, I have a whole new writing project that I'd like to be working on. Because apparently I haven't learned anything from the other nine projects that are sitting around, unfinished. Some of them, I'll probably come back to, someday, if I can ever find the time. Others, I'm pretty sure I missed the window and they'll never get written (or, in one case, re-written). Still, you never know...

So, yeah. Writing for the blog can be done in bits and pieces. Writing for a longer project requires - or at least seems to require, for me - regular writing time in large enough blocks that I can get "into the zone". At this point in my life, that's shockingly hard to come by. Which brings me back, once again, to trying to figure out if there's any way to arrange things - either physically, or in terms of scheduling - that would give me regular blocks of uninterrupted writing time, without dumping my household responsibilities onto the Beautiful Woman. And, honestly, since this is something that comes up every year or so, I'm pretty sure I already know the answer: no. Everything that can be done to create writing time and writing space in our current house and under our current schedule... has been done.

Which brings me back to self-care. I'm absolutely certain that I'd be feeling a lot less mopey and unworthy about my writing if I was fully rested and not fighting off a sinus headache. So that's pretty much the plan: Get Rest. And in the meantime, write as much as can, whenever I can. Who knows? Maybe it'll even work.

Into The Game 002

After dinner, the boys went and played in the back yard, and eventually Daniel went home. (He could have stayed over, but his family was attending a baptism in the morning.) Tom³ stayed up a bit later than usual, watching television with Bladefang -- the small tiger-statue balanced on the arm of the couch. I sat on the other side of the room, sketching an outline -- a flowchart, basically -- for my next coding project.

Finally, though, I called it. "Time for bed, me boyo. It's getting late."

Tom³ didn't argue; he just collected Bladefang and went up to his room. I listened until I heard the shower start, then went back to my project.

Later, I heard voices in his room. When I looked inside, it was just Tom³; apparently he'd been speaking for Bladefang, too. "You doing okay?" I asked him.

He nodded. "We're fine," he said, and didn't say anything else.

I took the hint and went away again. There was a time when he would have wanted me to stay in the room with him, but he was eleven years old, now: moving more and more into his own world, leaving his mother and me behind. I remembered the experience well enough that I wanted to give him room to do it.

Pimp My Art Friends 2: Meredith Viner

Visual art has been something of a theme in my life just recently. This isn't deliberate; it's just one of those funny little bits of synchronicity. But, since it has been prominent on my mental radar, I thought I'd take a moment and promote some of my artist friends. Some of these are people I've known in person for decades; others are Imaginary Friends (iFriends), people I only know through the Internet. All of them are awesome.

Today, I'd like to introduce you to Meredith Viner. Meredith is a visual artist Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She works primarily in acrylic paint, though like most artists she likes to experiment. In her own words:

Many of my paintings juxtapose two things that don't normally belong together, like a scoop of ice cream with teeth in it, a beautiful mermaid emitting a trail of fart-bubbles...or a self-portrait with birds flying out of my mouth. I like to challenge people's assumptions about art and about the world in general.

She also has a delightfully snarky sense of humor, which (if I recall correctly) is how we met. (Virtually, anyway - we've never met in person.) Her work ranges from charming and and quirky...

...to surreal and slightly disturbing:

So check out her site, and buy things if you're so inclined. Whimsical stuff can be found in the Artfire store; darker stuff resides in the gallery on her main site. There's a lot of cool stuff to see there, so take your time and enjoy!