Two John clones, Boss Me and Slave Boy, materialize in a great and spacious waiting room in John’s subconscious. Boss Me: Front and center, Slave Boy, it’s time for our monthly review of your 2008 goals. Slave Boy: “Slave Boy?” Really, who comes up with these names? Do I have an outfit that goes with [...]

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10. We eat babies. No, but we think about it sometimes. Mmmmm, baby… 9. Without God, we’re a miserable, weepy lot. Look at all the happy atheists: They’re thinking about the deliciousness of babies. Yum! (Richard Dawkins, Ellen Johnson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali) 8. Without God, we lead gluttonous, hedonistic lives, throwing orgies all the time. [...]

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John Edwards will announce his exit from the presidential campaign, according to millions of news sources. I was expecting this. He’s quitting just days before the Super Mega Totally Awesome Giga Power Tuesday of Destiny, in which almost half of the states will hold Democratic primaries or caucuses. The race between Clinton and Obama is [...]

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Apologies for all the SF book reviews–in my mad sprint to the end of the month finish line, I’m trying to cram in as many books as I can in an attempt to get close to my New Year’s Resolution. This end of the month clump of reviews is partly the result of my inability [...]

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Carl Marsalis is a Variant Thirteen–the result of a near future project to genetically engineered abnormally strong and quick and hyper-aggressive soldiers. His kind are feared as humanoid monsters, and most are kept in camps or exiled to colonies on Mars. Marsalis has been hired to help track down a virtually untrackable renegade thirteen who [...]

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Detail from the Scroll of Hungry Ghosts showing ghosts devouring corpses in a graveyard. Click to see the full image. A few years back, I took a graduate course called “Japanese Ghosts.” It was a fascinating blend of cultural, folklore, literary, feminist, political and religious studies. One article argued against the common assumption among academics [...]

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When I was a kid, I thought about God about as often as I thought about my prostate. In my early adolescent, agnostic days, God was a “cover all bases” option when I was puking my guts out and certain that I was going to die. He was sort of a distant on-call doctor. At [...]

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According to the Wikipedia article, which references a Deseret News article I can’t seem to load, President Gordon B. Hinckley, president and prophet of the LDS Church, died of “causes incident to age” at 7pm Mountain Standard Time.  He was 97 years old. Note: This was announced on Wikipedia (about five minutes after his death) [...]

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Sound the trumpets folks! It’s book #2 of the 100 I’m supposed to read for this year. I’ll be the first to admit I’m a little slow coming out of the starting gates. My calculations tell me that I should have completed 7.2 texts thus far. I’ll catch up, I promise. The Tourmaline may be [...]

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Some students at the Vancouver Film School put together this beautiful film project that presents creationism in modern science/business language and the birth of our solar system and the evolution of life in archaic, religious language and imagery.  I could say it’s provocative and thought-inducing, but I won’t.  It’s just plain fun, dammit.  Here we [...]

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