(Or "How to know when you're old.")

I'm a fan of music, generally, but I like stuff that really kicks the ass. I've recently discovered Linkin Park, a band I've avoided for years because they remind me of Korn, whom I loved, and we all know how that turned out. Anyway, long story short, I am working on a piece of art and I put on some Linkin Park. I started really gettin' into it and busted out my old-school Pantera Headbang of the First Magnitude. Three thrashes in and I hear a noise and I feel something. Calling it pain would be like calling George W. Bush a little out of touch. Something in my neck explodes with a sensation that I now have come to think of as "Son-of-the-Original-Bitch!" I try to continue my headbang. Phil would, and who am I to question Phil's committment to the thrash. That motherfucker did it until his back was no longer a viable, functioning human part. Unfortunately, my reflexes decide that, "This shit aint Pantera," "I aint Phil," and, "I aint the boss of my neck." I begin this little maneuver that was sort of a headbanging limp, listing off to one side like someone fell asleep at the tiller. Anyone present would have assumed I was having a seizure and run for something to put between my teeth to save my tongue. I gave up after four more attempts, despite the rocking nature of the tune. My neck made it clear to me that I should only headbang if I need my head to come off at an odd angle and kill something a few feet to the left of me on the floor.

Anyway, I get this kind of gritting sound when I move my neck through its full range of motion, and, when I nod too vigourously, I get warning throbs of burning sensation that shoots across my scalp and bites into the opposite ear from the pain.

I was aware that I was old. I didn't realize that, "decrepit," had come to the party and I can only wonder how long it'll be before, "ornery cuss," and, "coot," join the fray.



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There are a lot of ways I can go with this idea. I don't want to come off like a bigot or something, but this has been on my mind for a while.

Let's start off with this: I'm not Christian, nor am I a Muslim, Jew or Atheist. I have a problem with people trying to tell me how to think. People can try to teach me how to behave if they wish, but my thoughts are my own. That's a basic human right.

If you study western religions like I have, long enough, without bias or some sort of agenda, the idea will come to you again and again that the whole thing, the whole concept of organized religion is a crock, designed to control people in a way that is not normally available to the powers that be in the world, such as family, government, peer groups, etc... The idea is that, aside from the bizarre assertion that some people can be closer to the "truth" of the matters of life's origin and whether or not there is an afterlife, there are people who can so clearly interpret the will of their creator (god, deity, flying spaghetti monster, whatever) that they get to dictate to people how they should act in a given situation. Does this sound weird to anyone but me?

I take the assertions of religious doctrine as truth very seriously. I am the first to admit that I am wrong, a lot of the time, but that is my determination to make, isn't it? Isn't religion about opinions? Anyone citing a book as "truth" and telling me that I'm wrong because of their "truth" really needs to examine themselves a little closer and their faith closer still. In the pre-Christian era, people fought with the Jews a lot because the Jews had the unfortunate habit of jamming their religious doctrine down the throats of others, the Muslims, being a splinter faction of Judaism in their origin, are and have always been guilty of it as well. According to many different histories, Jesus wanted to change that concept. He wanted people to come willingly to his way of seeing things, not be forced there. His followers, however, upon his death reverted to the assertion that there is only one "truth" and that this is the will of god. This was not taken well by the Romans, who, while generally religiously tolerant, fed the fanatical lunatics, that were Christians of their era, to the lions for their religious intolerance and bigotry toward others. Most of the truly organized religion in the world is Abrahamic, (Abraham was arguably the first Jew and that makes Judaism the parent of Christianity, in all its varied forms and subcults, and Islam.) and that means they, all three greater classes and subclasses (let's face it, there's a lot of ways to be a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim) all see themselves as being right.

I was raised in a generally Catholic part of the world (South Side of Chicago) and was always religiously inquisitive. It has never been easy for me to simply accept, "Because I said so, " as a reason for something. This led to many problems between myself and my Catholic classmates/"friends." There was also an unfortunate period where I tried on Baptism and found it less than satisfactory and, quite often, more like being bullied into saying I believed things that I didn't. In short, I got picked on. A lot. This is, doubtless, why I have such a chip on my shoulder regarding Christianity in general.

Now we get to the meat of this, having given that overlong set up. I understand that many people have religious affiliations that they feel strongly about. I understand that everyone involved with an organized religion feels like they have been bestowed with some ultimate truth, or access to it. I don't understand in the age we are currently in, which is the age of reason, one would surmise, why people need to make religion their defining point. Why, if someone makes music and feels religious, do they need to broadcast their religion as part of their music? Why if someone does a comic and happens to be Christian, do they feel the need to inject their religious doctrine into what would otherwise be an enjoyable comic? Why must the religious message be a solvent for everything else that people are?

When I am enjoying some form of entertainment, the quickest way to make me turn that shit off and do something else is to hear a religious, (Christian, there, I said it) message at the opening. Christianity (and to lesser degrees, the other Abrahamic faiths) has always fought for the status quo, unless they didn't agree with it, or, more accurately, it wasn't favourable for them, as an organization. They wouldn't stand for, say, Buddhist temples advertising membership drives on TV, or the radio, or Mosques or Scientology or , god forbid, a pagan tradition. Why should I, a non-christian with no reason to go seeking a new religion, put up with their constant advertising or high pressure tactics to get me to convert?

I am religious, though not a member of any organized religion. I am offended by the trend for the vocal religious to tell people unlike themselves that they are wrong. I take great offense at people, who just parrot what has been told to them, accusing me of faulty thinking for employing my built in reason functions. So am I a bigot for being angry whenever I hear some Religious Nutjob telling me that I should be more like them? Am I a bigot for feeling anger that not even my leisurely pursuits can be free of the dogma that has brought the world to the brink of ruin time and again?

I am getting tired of hating. Maybe I'm just getting old, but, for fuck's sweet sake, people, isn't enough enough? Can't we finally just let people believe what they want to believe and stop fucking campaigning? This isn't a popularity contest and the god with the most followers doesn't win when mankind uses up all his resources and burns out like a candle in a wind tunnel.

Pyromancy folds up his soapbox and moves on.



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I am going to be relatively incommunicado for the next little while, starting around July 11. Why, you ask? I'm moving to Denmark for at least a year and a half. I will continue to do art but as things stand I don't have any definite internet access waiting for me and I won't even have most of my things for at least a month.

I hope back to posting things (sporadically, as usual) soon. See you all around.



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I haven't talked to many of you about this. I am a GIANT fan of the new Battlestar Galactica series which just aired its final episode last night.

I have watched it faithfully for years. I had some ideas going on for quite a while about where the series would end. Firstly, let me say I hated the original even when I was young and it was new. I was reticent to get into the new series when the miniseries aired but I was almost immediately hooked. The destruction of humanity is a pretty good setting to place a space saga in. The casting was great. The effects were great. I liked the music better in the actual series than in the mini, but it all went well together. For the last six years I've had an investment in this series. I don't watch a lot of TV but every week there was a new episode, you can bet I was tuning in.

The final episode should have been two final episodes. There was one (the first half) that was absolutely gut wrenching. It was full of action and truly visceral moments where the arms of the couch suffered many a violent clutching. The second half of the final episode turned into the end of the Return of the King. There was 40 minutes of denouement that put a lot of relationships to the end.

I had a feeling going in to the final ep that I would be so satisfied with the ending that I would never again feel the urge to look upon BSG or that I would be so disappointed with the final ep that I would never deign to waste my time looking at it again. I was right.

The producers and directors of the show have always stressed that the story was more about the people than it was about the world they moved through. They dangled so many plot points in our faces for so long that I was certain that they had to be resolved with this final installment. Largely they didn't.

WARNING: Here there be spoilers!!

Starbuck, a.k.a, Kara Thrace, was returned from the dead and they had it confirmed that she had actually died earlier in the fourth season. I was hoping she'd be explained. I had suspicions as to what had happened and why she was alive. There could've been actual explanation on that. Instead, they decided that they could dispense with explanations and throw a "God did it," explanation in to hold the place of good writing. It seems that this was the order of the day as it was used in a lot of things, like Baltar and Caprica Six's phantom counterparts were suddenly "angels."

I don't know why it took 40 minutes, after everyone landed and was ready to start over with civilization, to deal with four relationships. There were thousands of people who survived. They focused on those four groups as though they were the only ones of any importance in the series.

Kara Thrace as an angelic agent of whatever god or gods there are in the universe is a poor explanation and her disappearing into thin air is a ridiculous concept. There were no miraculous occurrences in the series to that point that couldn't have had been explained with a scientific explanation, even a stressed and belaboured one. Starbuck going "poof!" was a bad way to end her story.

Baltar and Caprica Six getting to go on happily with their lives after all they had done is bad. That's just the part of me seeking balance, I guess, but Baltar and Six were fuckers who were largely responsible for the end of humanity and they get to go off and have a life together because, "It's god's plan." Bullshit.

President Rosalyn had been dying since the first season of the show. Making as big a deal as they did about her final passing was pointless and made the show entirely about Bill Adama and not about anything else.

The final idea, "Let's not rebuild," just didn't work, either. They all went their own ways to live as stone age types, yes, but society, as we saw at the end, just rebuilt.

The fact that they had the names of Greek Gods, like Apollo, Athena, Helo (Helios, first god of the sun), Adama (Adam), Hera, etc... and landed 150,000 years before the modern era, when people were pre-verbal, doesn't make a lot of sense. Legends don't live that long. The names would've been forgotten. It's like writing a story about a billionaire playboy named Bruce Wayne, with a butler named Alfred and not writing it as a Batman story. Why use the names at all if you aren't going to tie them into the final ideas?

I am fully disgusted with the weak ending and I am never going to invest my time in another series of this magnitude again as it will surely be just another letdown with, ultimately, no point.



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For the last few days I've been working on a project. Backstory: My father has been writing a novel for a few years, now. He finally got it into a finished form and he wants to promote it. If he can get enough buzz generated about it and find enough people who are interested in seeing it published, then he can pitch it to a publisher with a little more "oomf," and it's a lot more likely to get published. To that end, he commissioned me to build him a website. Please, visit it, read what he's got posted and see if you can't help with the generation of some traffic. Anything you guys can do to bring more traffic there would help immensely.

Thanks for watching me and thanks, in advance, for any visits you make/traffic you bring there.



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