If you’ve liked my Short Stack features, you might enjoy the new book coming out in a couple of months. I hope to have it completed and for sale by the end of May.
Draft cover design to the right (click to enlarge). Note the word “draft.” I think the title is pretty much set, but I reserve the right to radically redesign the cover. I’m certainly open to input on that, by the way, so fire away if you have any criticism, suggestions or better ideas
BrainDrops will roll out on Amazon in trade paperback format, and I’ll do my best to get the digital versions online shortly after.
The book is a collection of quick-to-read shorts, mainly about atheism but also including a certain amount of the nonsense from the Short Stacks. The subtle side-point of the book, which I hope will be noticed by readers, is that one of the things accompanying atheism when it takes hold in your head is an enlarged sense of humor. Atheists are, in a word, fun.
I have some other important news in just a day or so, but you’ll have to wait for it.
Meanwhile:
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Are flamethrowers covered under the Second Amendment? Because I REALLY want one.
I just don’t know how I’m gonna be able to defend my loved ones without the ability to shoot fire 100 feet or so.
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Fledgling monks of ancient China, upon first entering the monastery, would encounter the religious retreat’s trained attack pig. Much of the later literature would mistranslate descriptions of the animal, but the Sow of Violence was nevertheless a real thing.
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Argh. Just came across the “I’d get bored!” theme on another Facebook page. Imagine that someone asked “Would you like to live, healthy and young, for 500 years or more?” or “Would you take advantage of a technique that would radically enhance your intelligence and speed of learning?”
And then imagine the sort of person who would say “Eww, no! I’d get bored!”
If you met that person in the flesh, and he/she said that out loud, the proper response would be to run screaming from the room. And then maybe notify the EPA of a toxic spill.
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Re: Boredom. I’ve gotten LESS bored the older and more experienced/knowledgeable I’ve gotten.
I suspect the foundation of any question of boredom is a misunderstanding about one’s relationship with the outside world. “Boredom” sort of presupposes that the “job” of life is to excite and interest you, continuously presenting you with challenges and newness, so that you react with interest. HOWEVER … interest and excitement can be generated internally and then applied to the outside world. Rather than REacting, you PREact, and then relate to the world with an already established mindset of fascination.
The more you learn, the more the world complexifies outward from you. It’s like this endless amusement park ride that gets more exciting, more interesting, more engrossing, the longer you ride it.
(Or heck, maybe it’s just that my aging brain and sluggish sensorium is going “Holy shit, why is everything moving so fast now!?”)
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Today I considered the possibility that in an irrational society truly rational people would be hated, feared, or ignored.
It’s an annoying idea. Still thinking about it.
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Unimaginable! At least it was a few years back:
I’m lying in bed, connected to the Internet (!) — the whole of humanity, basically — via a tiny handheld device.
Speaking as one who predates the Internet (and computers, for all practical purposes), this is very, very cool.
(All of you making Old Person jokes right now, just be glad you don’t have to milk an aurochs for something to put on your cereal. Like I did, I mean.)
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Every time I get into an argument with someone railing against “anti-GMO fanatics” I think I move a little bit closer to sympathizing with the people opposed to genetically modified food organisms.
The existence of the technology doesn’t bother me in any extreme way. But that technology in the hands of nice corporations like Monsanto, in an oversight environment that includes a very friendly, very compliant pro-business government … that spooks me more than a little.
Hell, we’re not even allowed to know what foods contain GMO products. And the pro-GMO people are almost always opposed to labeling. Sure, I know that’s to protect me from my absolute desire to panic and run screaming from the store, but then again, if someone could stop indulgently patting my flighty little head, I might feel a bit more trusting.
There’s also the fact that I KNOW that if you’re injured by a product cranked out by one of our too-big-to-fail companies, you will never be able to prove it, never in your lifetime be able to recover anything for the injury, and probably never be able to stop them from injuring others.
And that argument that “We need the technology to feed Earth’s billions” — I can’t help but think we could instead put, oh, about five minutes’ thought into how to reduce those billions, rather than using them as a trump card in the argument for messing about with human food.
I’m very much pro-science. But I’m not so broadminded that I think it’s a good idea to let corporations open up the control panel on life and tinker with it at will, with you and I and even our pets used as unknowing test subjects.
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If there was a real Heaven, it would include the vast Library of Out-of-Print Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels.
Stupid Bible doesn’t say a damned thing about that.
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Dear Groupon, Living Social and all the other online-discount companies: Apparently I’m one of the few men actually proud of being a mammal. All the fur on my front, back, sides, top and bottom, I have every intention of keeping. You can stop sending me the laser hair removal offers.
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Jurassic Park 3D? Hmm.
In the 2D version, I hated those two kids so much I was on the edge of my seat hoping they’d get torn apart by blood-thirsty dinosaurs before the end of the movie.
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The weird thing about Australians is that they look just like us. So they could be walking around among us RIGHT NOW and we wouldn’t even know.
But the accent gives them away. That’s why, when I’m out on the street and a stranger walks past, I fix him with a steely glare and shout “Say something, you sneaky bastard!”
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A week ago I got a piece of molten lasagna cheese stuck to the roof of my mouth. I clawed at it frantically but it burned the HELL out of me before I could get it out. The raw spot is finally healed enough today that I could drink coffee without an echo of the original burn.
So today was a good day.
Well, I also got a helluva lot done, and had a major life realization, so there’s that too.
(The major life realization: The mere statement of it won’t do justice to the internal significance, but here it is: “I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”)
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Elsewhere on FB, someone just commented: “It takes more faith to believe in atheism than it does in God.”
I swear, there’s a Big Book of Christian Dumbicisms that people get these parrot quotes from.
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Cat Thoughts: Hmm. If I go into Dr. Schrodinger’s box, there’s a 50 percent chance of coming out dead.
On the other hand, I’m a cat. And it IS a box.
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For much of my adult life, I have believed large numbers of my fellow humans are just … well, stupid.
Just recently realized that the real problem is not that they’re stupid, but that they are LIED TO. From birth to death, every day of our lives, we’re treated to lies, lies, lies. Advertisers, government, entertainment, churches and religions, even our parents and loved ones tell us lies constantly.
We treat it as if it was NORMAL. As if it was a RIGHT. As if there was nothing that could be done about it. And even, sometimes, that it’s cute or funny to get people (especially children) to believe us when we lie to them.
Too many of us have no practice in discovering or resisting the tidal wave of lies. How can you be a thoughtful, rational human being if there’s so little in your mind, in your experience, that’s real? How can people NOT be stupid if they have little or no untainted factual information in their heads?
Further: How can we build a reasoning society if lies are normal, expected, and provoke almost no outrage?
Believing people are stupid is the easy way out. It absolves you of doing anything, because nothing can be done. You can’t fix stupid. But if they are only victims of lies – corporate lies, government lies, religious lies, military lies – it obligates you to do something. And then what … ?
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Wanna see me not being funny? Here: 925 million people are hungry on Planet Earth. Most people will hear this and think “We’ve got to get food to those people!” I hear it and think “We’ve got to get condoms and contraceptives and sex education to those people!” Because the first solution is not a solution, it’s just kicking the problem down the road a very few more years, so there will be even more people alive and hungry and desperate when the real crash comes.
That crash will happen in the lifetime of most of you reading this, or so I think. It can’t NOT happen (in fact, it’s probably already happening). And the worst part isn’t even that billions of people will die, it’s that we’ll fuck up the Earth itself along the way (that is definitely already happening).
I wish I lived among beings sane enough to see it, and stop it from happening.
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Arguing online: Omar, trust me, my IQ is all over yours like a pit bull on a Christmas ham.
Yes, it was arrogant. But also fun.
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I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead about a dozen times each, and I mean that literally. I read and reread them over the years, first because I couldn’t understand the motivations of her characters, later because I wanted to know what she was really getting at. Her characters were so alien to anything I knew, but they were consistent within their story worlds, and I was intrigued by them.
MOST of the people weighing in on Ayn Rand, including the Tea Baggers who fawn over her, don’t really know what she was getting at. I’ve said many times that if she were alive today, she would vomit to know that she’s idolized by these people (including right-wing members of Congress) she would instantly despise. THEY think her message was simple selfishness and profit. But the foundation of the selfishness she wrote about was EXCELLENCE.
Her industrialist or artistic characters worked out in the open, with complete transparency. They charged high prices for their goods and services because they were better at what they did than anybody in the world. They were merciless and driven in their expectations of themselves, and they got to the top not because of political connections or pull, but because nobody alive could do what they did.
Overall, Rand got some things very wrong. I gather she thought environmentalists were insane, for instance. But she also got some things very right.
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I am often disgusted, occasionally proud, endlessly amused, and sometimes baffled by you humans.
Living among you is always interesting. Thank you.
(But also: I’m still waiting for you all to, you know, grow the fuck up and actually become sentient beings.)
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I’ve never bought a brownie with the right amount of walnuts. I have no idea why they’re so hard to find. The options seem to be 1) No walnuts, 2) A pathetic amount of walnuts, and 3) The all-out walnuttiest walnut brownie you can buy … which still contains only a slightly less pathetic amount of walnuts.
When I bake brownies myself, I put in the right amount of walnuts, which is A STAGGERINGLY LARGE, HUGE, MASSIVE AMOUNT OF WALNUTS.
I possess the only walnut brownie recipe that mentions a wheelbarrow and shovel.
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One of the recent Christian memes is that believing in Jesus Christ is not a religion. You know, since he’s real.
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What will happen at that tipping point where conservative-leaning people — you know, the ones with the most guns — suddenly realize the GOP has been fucking them for years?
IF it ever happens … well, we won’t lack for headlines for a while.
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How do I love thee, electric blanket? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the widths and depths and lengths my toes can reach.
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Chips Ahoy and Zinfandel. Hey, somebody had to try it.
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I was such an introvert that my parents weren’t even aware of me until I came out of my room when I was about 12 and said, “Mom, Dad, what’s my name? The other kids at school all have names.”
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St. Pat’s Day: To heck with Irish ancestry! Today I celebrate my forbears from Gondwanaland! I’m still wearing green, but it’s in memory of algae instead of shamrocks.
(Back in my youth, I took a year off from Gondwanaland University and me and a couple of friends HIKED across the entire landmass.)
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Interviews in Hell:
“But other than that, Mr. and Mrs. Hitler, how do you feel about little Adolph’s accomplishments?”
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I was in a restaurant today, eating lunch, and there was a large family sitting at a table nearby. Two of them were kids about 5 and 3. They were both quiet and well-behaved. Energetic, curious, but not rampaging little beasts, screaming and running everywhere.
As I was leaving, I folded up a dollar bill into a little “shirt” origami and gave it to the mother for the 5-year old. “I’d like to compliment you on how well-behaved your kids are. I usually don’t like sitting next to people with kids, but yours were great.” They were all flabbergasted, in a good way.
Thinking about how they were all dressed, I finally decided they might be Christians just in from church. Some of the conservative Christians I’ve known have pretty good parenting skills, at least as far as teaching their kids to respect the people around them in public places.
I’d like to think a consciously-created culture would include an emphasis on something like that. I’m in favor of giving kids large amounts of freedom to explore and think for themselves, but I’m also much in favor of adult-level peace and privacy in places like restaurants, libraries, etc.
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So if your great-great-grandfather had an affair with an Irish Setter, can you still claim Irish ancestry on St. Pat’s day?
No, not ME. I’m asking for a friend.
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Wondering if any Christians have realized that “zen” sounds pretty much like “sin.”
It would explain all those wild Buddhist sex parties.
(Quick Google check: Apparently I have once again pioneered an English phrase. In the future, when you refer to me, it should be “Hank Fox, originator of the phrase ‘wild Buddhist sex parties.’ “
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Walking home from the theater last night through the streets of Schenectady, I stopped to look up at a crescent moon shining through a thin layer of scudding clouds. Mesmerizing! I also felt … well, oddly centered. Something I haven’t felt all that often in my life. No worries, no tension, no lost feeling. The thought came to me: “This is who I am. This is what I am.”
So for those of you still wondering, growing up — to the point where all those youthful doubts and uncertainties go away — takes almost exactly 60 years.
And now I’m ready to do some really cool stuff.
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After 50 years and 23 movies of James Bond, in all of which he made love to beautiful women, there must by now be a James Bond Jr. Isn’t it time he had a movie of his own?
Just please God don’t let it star Shia LaBeouf.
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We now have a Pope and a spare. If one Pope is attacked and killed by zombies, the other can seamlessly assume control.
Also: The two popes will now assume opposite charges. If the Pope and anti-Pope come into physical contact, they will mutually annihilate, release massive amounts of spiritual energy, and open a portal directly into Heaven.
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I think one of the Life Rules should be “If you buy an article of clothing and you find you really like it, go get one or two more before they’re gone. Because if you wait, you will never, ever find that piece again.
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On one local church, I see a lightning rod on top of the cross, and I think “Well, somebody’s not completely convinced about his god business.”
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There has been only one album I ever owned (yes, I come from the album-owning era) that I liked EVERY song on it. It was Aretha Franklin’s “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”
I think that makes me an honorary black man. Or at least an honorary woman.
Oh well shit, OKAY! Everybody stop screaming! But I do claim to be old white guy who can sometimes recognize fantastic talent. Aretha, you still do it for me.
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Every government lottery depends on millions of people shelling out money, day after day, year after year, basically for nothing. For the illusion of great wealth which they will never, ever get. Lotteries are a predatory lie, sucking the life out of people who can least afford it.
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Googling again: I’ve just discovered I may be the originator of the phrase “flaming demon weenies.” In fact, it’s from the “Good Without Gods” chapter of my book, Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist: Simple Thoughts About Reason, Gods & Faith.
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If I was God, my sense of humor would demand that the song of the bird known as the swallow would be a gulping sound.
Also, I would give giraffes a break by making trees lower.
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Got a thing in the mail from State Farm, recommending I get insurance for my stuff. I said “State Farm, I can’t afford stuff, much less insurance for that stuff.”
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Superman’s other relatives:
Mor-El, a Kryptonian mushroom farmer
Mat-El, a toymaker
Muscat-El, a maker of cheap wines
Shond-El, a backup vocalist
Tinkerb-El, his gay cousin
The two black sheep of the family, Crimin-El and Reb-El
Gaz-El, legendary track and field athlete
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Tomorrow that massive ball of flaring, spitting, coronal-mass-ejecting, radiation-emitting, fusioning plasma will be visible in the sky here in Upstate New York.
And we’re all supposed to be okay with that. But how do we know it’s SAFE?
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It would be a MUCH more interesting world if at least one other hominid species had survived.
I mean, the comedy possibilities alone would be awesome. For instance: Watching Donald Trump get his arms ripped off after saying “You’re fired!” to a Neanderthal … too cool.
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Okay, self: Self, I sez, you do not need to look at a YouTube video of a cat and a ceiling fan. You do not need to read about a deadly new virus. You don’t really need to be on Facebook at all right now. You have actual work to do. Why not go do it?
To which I reply. Huh? Oh. Okay. Oh, wait, just this one more thing …
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If vocal cords had frets like a guitar, human speech would be a lot more interesting.
We’d all walk around with our fingers stuck down our throats, but hey, you do what you have to for your art.
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There’s Art, and then there’s what I call “Ott” (like ‘art,’ only with a Brooklyn accent).
Art is that stuff that you can look at, maybe literally for hours, and still enjoy it, still learn from it. Ott is the other stuff, those pieces that make a splashy initial impression (if any), but that you’re then done with.
It might be “Huh,” or “Oh,” or “Heh, funny!” — or even “WTF?” It goes for a single reaction, that one second of grab at your emotions or sense of humor or surprise, and then it’s done.
A few years back, I looked at a Winslow Homer painting for a good 15 minutes, from several distances. Even when I got up too close to see the overall scene, it was fascinating just to see the brush strokes, to know that each tiny splash of color had been deliberately applied, and that the guy holding the brush knew exactly what he was doing. I’d go back there and look at the painting again and again, if I could. That was Art.
A few years before that, I watched the roadside installation of some 12-foot-tall crumpled metal shafts, a random collection of vertical pieces locals immediately dubbed “the bacon strips,” in a little town I lived in out West. It was worth a look for, oh, maybe 5 minutes, and then never again. This was Ott. Forgettable. Mundane. Illustrative of some minimal level of skill but no detectable talent.
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The statistic you never see is how many people DON’T get hurt by bears. The mainstream response is always that they’re freaky-dangerous, but they’re just not.
No, you don’t want to crowd them, or scare them, or mess with the cubs, but the vast majority of the time, they’re safer than your neighbor’s dog. They’re not these slobbering man-killing, baby-eating monsters we always want to make them out to be.
They’re a lot more afraid of us, and vastly more endangered by us, than we are on the flip side. Let’s put an end to the lies about bears.
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In a discussion about accomplishment, one of my FB friends said “We’re all capable of greatness,” and I said “Oh fuck no, we’re not! Have you MET us??”
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Aliens representing galactic civilization visited Earth in the 1950s to consider us for membership. In their second week of research, they came across the word “flabbergasted” and laughed so hard they crashed their saucer.
Believing warlike Earthlings may have attacked and killed the research team, the Membership Council placed Earth on Permanently Restricted Status.
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Reading a news story, I come across this sentence: “The owner later told police he thought the gun was not loaded.”
I lean strongly toward firearm ownership, but damn. If you ever have to say “I didn’t think it was loaded,” you should never again be allowed to possess a firearm of any sort. It’s not hard to know if a gun is loaded or not. And you SHOULD know, at all times.
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In my mind, the often-heard phrase “If you’re not doing anything wrong, what have you got to be afraid of?” instantly becomes “If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you be treated like the shitbags who are?”
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What if some of the street mimes you see are mentally ill? What if that white-faced guy REALLY believes he’s trapped in an invisible box?
You’d laugh at him and walk on, but later they’d find him starved to death inside that invisible box. Everybody would say how horrible it was that all those people just walked past and ignored him.
You’d feel awful.
So the next time you see a street mime, stop and ask him “Are you okay? Are you sure you’re okay? You do know there’s not really a box there, right?”
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Worst Reasons to Support Gay Marriage #14:
If former GOP Veep nominee Paul Ryan gay-married Tea Party darling Rand Paul, he would become Paul Paul.
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I work with drug and alcohol abusers, and some large fraction of them have prison records. Yet they’re mostly just average people with this problem. The eye-opener to me has been just how ridiculous, how slanted, how deliberately evil drug laws and drug sentencing is.
I know most employers would probably want to hire someone with no criminal record, but I would really hope that decision would also take into account that SOME of our laws create “criminals” where no criminals exist.
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Went to the gym today and had a great workout!
But what is it about saggy old men that makes them think it’s okay to walk around naked in the locker room for extended periods of time? Eye Rape should be a recognized crime.
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“If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”
The best answer is that smart people can see the richness of the world itself, which means there are ten thousand OTHER satisfying things to do than just get rich. If you’re dumb enough to think the only worthwhile goal in life is to make lots of money … damn. I hope you get your wish, because there’s nothing else for you here.
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From now on, when someone asks me for money on the street (and when I have the money, of course), I’m going to say “I’ll give you this on one condition. You have to NOT say ‘God bless you’. Is it a deal?”
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Re: Shortages of critical materials for technology, pharmaceuticals, etc.
Every environmental and problematic issue boils down to human population. We’re trading quantity for quality, and there is nothing to stop it. You can’t even bring the subject up without a volley of insipid, formulaic, unthinking responses, one of the first of which will be “Why do you want to murder people, you monster?”
Given that every path to a survivable future involves some sort of conscious, deliberate action on population, like NOW, I don’t see any path that saves us.
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Hey, maybe werewolves are a metaphor for gay. They bite you, you become a werewolf.
But what about vampires? Ah, maybe vampires are a metaphor for Jehovah’s Witnesses. You know, they come to your door, but they can’t come in unless you invite them. Once they get inside, though, they suck the life out of you. And sometimes their victims turn into more marauding, soul-destroying Jehovah’s Witnesses.
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I’ll bet snakes have to slither into someplace dark in order to sleep. Stupid reptiles — the rest of us evolved eyelids.
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In any real superhero world, we high school nerds would admire and envy our super-powered classmates, but it would be someone like Edna Mode we’d sit with at lunch.
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Family planning clinic protester-bullies, Tea Party liars and idiots, Westboro Baptist Church … If it was the liberals who all owned guns, a lot of this shit would just stop.
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Just FYI, I’ve decided that everybody who uses “The boy was five-years-old” rather than “The boy was five years old” must be thrown into a pit of spiders and then trampled by sitatungas.
People must be shown that grammar has consequences.
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Just think: If a tight-assed professional editor became dictator of the world, all the illiterate shitheads on the Internet would become valiant freedom fighters.
lolol dont u jus no itt!!!
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Today I was in the library, with a lead pipe, and people were acting so weird you would have thought I was about to commit a murder. Clueless bastards.
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So … did Mary actually consent to God making her pregnant with his son? I’m a little fuzzy on the details.
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Note to all of you with parents still alive:
The satisfaction of the artist is not that the clay thanks you for making it into a magnificent sculpture, but in the work itself.
I think parenting must be the same sort of thing. But it must still be good to be thanked later, to be loved and treasured by the good, solid person you helped turn out.
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I just won a game of Solitaire at 4 am. Why is there no worldwide organization to recognize such triumphs??
Oh, right. It’s Solitaire.
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I have a friend whose last name is Hefner. But his first name isn’t the same as his more-famous father.
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I know how to open canned food with a pocket knife.
But I’m not telling YOU. Hey, if civilization falls, my can-opening skills could land me a chief’s position with the Wal-Mart Scavenger Tribe.
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DC Comics Legion of Superheroes character Bouncing Boy has a Wikipedia page. And you don’t.
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A might-have-been DC Universe superhero stolen by that bastard J.R.R. Tolkien: Lego Lass.
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Russia announces it will no longer be allowing westerners to adopt Russian orphans, and mere weeks later the EU announces that testing cosmetics on animals will no longer be allowed.
Surely I’m not the only one who sees what’s going on here.
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Heh. I’m in the library, transcribing my voice notes, which are mostly about my assertive atheism, and there are two people at nearby tables who appear to be reading — and even STUDYING — the Bible.
Dang it. Wish we were in a place where we could talk about this. I’ve always wondered how many Christians are Christians just because they don’t know there’s this other option.
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To show you what a complete optimist I am, when my fortune cookie fortune tonight said “Share your happiness with someone toady,” I immediately assumed that last word was meant to be “today “
Although, come to think of it, a toady person could probably use a little cheering up.
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Hey, has anyone ever tried this?
You see a homeless person approaching you and you know they’re going to ask for money, but before they do, you quickly say “Hey, have you got a couple of quarters you can loan me for the parking meter? I just need 50 cents.”
(And before you start, I gave money to a guy on the street just a few days ago.)
… But if they DID give it to me, I would definitely not say “God Bless You!”
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Talking to a handsome Puerto Rican kid in NYC today. At the age of 28, he has FIVE kids.
“You got kids?” he asks, and I say “Nope. All my love went to dogs.”
He’s shocked. “How can you not have any kids??”
I say, “Hey, YOU used up my share.”
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So … do you think the Happily Ever After really worked out in the Harry Potter universe? Because I’m picturing a three-pitcher-a-day butterbeer habit, and an unfortunate affair with a house elf. The middle-aged buying of faster and shinier brooms. Not saying which characters, but stuff like that DOES happen.
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Over the years, the “acceptable tip” amount has crept up until I hear figures as high as 25%. The reason given is the higher cost of living for the poor servers. I can never hear this without thinking the person speaking doesn’t understand percentage.
I’m usually fairly generous in everyday tipping but the rule in my head is still set at 15%. And I used to be a waiter.
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Dear future people : If I happen to become famous and my books sell millions after I die, could you possibly zap back some of the money to me HERE AND NOW? I swear I won’t tell.
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I have this idea for force-evolving raccoons into sentience. Hey, they already have hands, and I know people in my home state of Texas who are only very slightly brighter. Give them a few generations of Uplift and they could be praising Raccoon Jesus and voting against their own interests.
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The downside of being emphatically yourself is that you can never slip easily into a group. You will always feel just a little bit ill-at-ease, a little bit off-balance, no matter where you are or who you’re with. For me, that price has almost always been acceptable. Still, I think I can understand the great numbers of us who make the other choice.