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The Great Atheist Debate

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Here’s a rather fun dispute between people who have like-mindedly disavowed belief systems whether or not to be a dick about it. The comments section is more fun than the post that started it off.

So what’s a Seth to do in a world so divided among like minds? I’m already convinced there is nothing supernatural, that religion is at best entertainment and at worst the same kind of crap teams of nasty people are made of. Should I be nice about it or what?

Me? I take it on a case by case basis. The louder and more sensational an announcement the quicker I am to ridicule. Billboards, bumper stickers, and TV ads piss me off because they promote religion without a conversation, without human to human interaction. I have been a believer and I have friends of a diversity of types. Since most of the time religion isn’t the purpose of hanging out, in those cases, their beliefs become benign. Disputing evolution is idiotic, but if the peer is a computer scientist, then the opinion is irrelevant.

And besides, I’ve got my own favorite fish to fry. Let’s talk about sex, baby. Let’s talk about something that is typically fun for everyone that got turned into a morality choice, a vulnerability, a social statement and more. Some people think chastity is a virtue. Also, there is homophobia. Women have to worry about predators (we all do, but this is a common concern). Then there are diseases. Monogamy is the right relationship pattern especially for those of us who want votes. And all of this stuff gets in the way of our ability to take situations a case at a time and to mix our safety features with living in the moment. The best sex happens when we feel like it after all. And blah blah blah fucking.

So you have people preparing for the return of god. You have suicide bombers and some of the hottest women around dressed the most discretely (muslim ladies). I don’t have time to focus on religion and change the world because I’m on a perv mission. Quit trying to distract me.

K?
Thanks.

Posted in Fantasy, Opinion, Religion | No Comments »

The Three Swordsmen Parable

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Three boys are told at an early age they need to quest for the Sword of Indisputable Victory to rid the world of suffering at the hands of things other than the civilization’s own making. There were arguments over whether this would end natural disasters, death, and heart break. There was hope it would end rape, gender oppression and sexual orientation based hate crimes. It was nearly unanimously consented that the Monsters Who Ruled would be overthrown and humanity would at least have more options opened to it.

When asked how the Sword of Indisputable Victory worked, the boys were told vague answers. The sword would make its way known to each boy at the appropriate time, thought the priests. It’s a tough question admitted the optimistic existentialists. Are you the kind of boy who would investigate this opportunity or not, they would say. The cynics warned the boys they might want to learn how ordinary swords work and bring one of their own in case the Sword of Indisputable Victory was of questionable and unreliable quality.

The first boy went with faith to find the Sword. He swam for miles with a reed in his mouth. He distracted large beasts with raw flesh of antelope. He studied his holy book and dashed past the Monsters that guarded the Sword of Indisputable Victory. As they chased him, he ran up stone steps where the Sword sat blade down in a marble monumental scabbard. He wrenched the Sword from its bed and held it aloft for the power to work. Moments later he was cut down by arrows and axes and hammers. The Monsters cleaned the Sword and the Sword room and carefully put the Sword back in the pedestal.

The second boy went with curiosity to find the Sword. He questioned all manner of people on his journey. He documented his days and sent frequent letters by pigeon back so that his memory might be of value even if his life wasn’t. He made a submarine out of barrels and camouflaged it with leaves to get across the water. He snuck past the large beasts after hours of observing their characteristics. He stole into the Swordroom when the Monsters where on break and lifted the Sword from its pedestal. He held the Sword aloft to see what happened and nothing did. He swung it several ways to see if the powers were motion based. He chanted phrases in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish in case there was an incantation he had heard. When he slammed the sword against its stone, the Monsters became aware of his presence and cut him down before he could finish his experimentation. The Monsters cleaned the Sword and the Sword room and carefully put the Sword back in the pedestal.

The third boy went with a sense of futility prepared for the worst. He brought his own sword, bow and arrows. He had a master swordsman walk with him a ways as he learned the way of the sword and additionally the ways of the axe and the hammer. He did cardio for at least thirty minutes every day, ate minimal portions of food, and did plank position exercises as well to keep his body in alignment. Then he swung his sword for hours while walking, imagining he was cutting a Monster each time. He straight up swam the miles across the water. He flanked the beasts so that they were only in front of him and he cut them down. He threw urns and rocks in the halls of the Monsters and when they came to the sound he cut quickly and silently before the alarm could be sounded. He came to the Sword room and drew the sword as a team of Monsters followed quickly in after him. He hefted the Sword of Indisputable Victory once and then threw it at the first Monster. He drew his bow quickly on the next. The last of the Monsters he dispatched with his old reliable sword before retrieving the Sword of Indisputable Victory. Greatly outnumbered in the fortress of the Monsters he outran them all, jumped into the water and swam away.

The elders welcomed him with a hero’s welcome that day and spent years trying to figure out the sword. The Monsters slaughtered many villages in retaliation. In the chaos, evil men took evil liberties on good men and women and children. The boy grew to be a man and learned time after time that a sword without magic power solved very few problems and the Sword of Indisputable Victory was unusable. So he left on his own to find a new philosophy that might serve him better.

The end.

Tags: Parable
Posted in Fantasy | 1 Comment »

A Day in the Life of a Waterlord

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

He was the talk of the town, something of a celebrity storyteller. Packing into bars on humid nights, the audience may very well have charmed itself in advance. The way he spoke, his words sent shivers down spines. He directed his audience through emotion after emotion, love, hate, anguish, unrequited passion, dashed dreams and more. Every song was a tragedy for the effect on the more emotional members of the crowd.

Sweat glistened on every person, and tears streamed down most faces as the emotions released themselves without request down faces. Men who weren’t moved were moved to understand the connection between speaker and listener. A few women looked faint as the speaker glanced their way during his oration. He reached out and wiped away tear after tear of women in the audience making clumsy jokes that evoked wonderful smiles on each.

He drank their most watered down beer without complaint. He challenged the ruder drunks to entertaining spectacle duels in which he handily disarmed every opponent and offered his own silken kerchief to each in turn so that they could wipe of the dirt and sweat of their defeat. With an arm around former foe and random stranger, he moved through the night without a care.

The night ended as it always did. Though the village was in a permanent drought burdened desert, he always seemed to lead the rain. So each evening at the close of the bars, he would make a spectacle of summoning the waters from the heavens. The rain never fell right away. Sometime after his head landed on a pillow next to a radiantly dazed beauty, the drops would begin. The sky would open up and a flood would come straight down filling reservoirs and giving thirsty desert plants renewed hope.

Sometimes the women he bedded wouldn’t even notice when he left. Sometimes, he expressed his appreciation for their company one more time before heading on. Typically he left a poem, handwritten and original praising her beauty, encouraging her spirit, and thanking her charity, nailing the key emotions in each woman each time. With a smile on his face as he imagined her expression and the pleasant emotional tears running down her face, he pulled his barely serviceable hat down to block out the sun and made his way to the next town.

If the walk grew too hot, dark storm clouds would seem to follow him. If he grew too weary, he’d sleep in a fog. If he grew thirsty, he’d lift his travel cup and the most particularly sized downpour would fill it once more. It was a good life, the only one the Waterlord might have wished for.

Tags: firelord, waterlord
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Headache to Reality

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Oh man, Chad’s head was hurting again. The debilitating pain prevented him from doing anything but stumble toward the meds cabinet. When he opened the pill bottle he noticed with great anxiety that the pill bottle was empty. These things never went empty. He wasn’t even sure who filled the bottles but there had always been at least 20 pills left.

He stumbled back to his bed, unsure of how to handle a day without the meds. He typically took a pill once every 48 hours. When his girlfriend left him, he was up to 4 a day at one point. It didn’t take long for him to land on his feet emotionally and now he was back down to predictable levels.

He dozed off for awhile waking some time toward the evening, vomitted in the nearest wastebasket and lay in a self-imposed comatose state waiting for some sense of comfort to return. Chills racked his body and he involuntarily twitched endlessly. Eventually he fell back asleep.

In his dream, he was in a hospital ward but the staff was mysteriously absent. He began roaming the halls and came upon a rather great commotion where all the staff was working to calm a hysterical man. Security restrained the man who was then injected with something and carried off the premises.

A security guard noticed Chad’s presence and made a signal to a guard behind him. A guard Chad hadn’t even noticed. He felt the pinprick of a needle and he suddenly found himself back in his dormatory, down the hall from his room. He collapsed in his dream only to wake up back on his bed feeling somewhat better with a slight headache.

Chad got up, stumbled to the med cabinet and took a pill before going to work. But he did have the slight halo of weirdness due to a really strange feeling of the dream.

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Gaps are Boring

Friday, June 12th, 2009

One day a lightning bolt crashed to earth. Little Timmy asked “what was that?”. His mom answered “God.” And Timmy never asked again.

Tags: God of the Gaps
Posted in Fantasy, Goading the World | No Comments »

Evil of the East

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

I’ve got a week of evil at the beach planned. Like a sandstorm we’ll bring ourselves like pox upon the unsuspecting residents and temporary workers of the Outer Banks. Like locusts, we’ll swarm consuming alcoholic beverages leaving kegs empty as the local alcoholic Irish population dehydrates. Vikings will not loot this week either because the mead makers will be running low do to my high level of consumption.

A week with evil and evil’s relatives. Idle hands are my playground and I intend to make my rounds. That’s how the Beast of Cville gets down. Sins like sands make a beach we can all sojourn to. Hopes like raindrops give rise to the typical humidity of the area. Plans like aspirations can only get you to the top of a hill before you tumble down the otherside due to whatever momentum you’ve brought with you. But standing on the apex is something to understand by being there. That apex is the next week.

I’ll be there, in the presence of Evil and her relatives basking. And as the wells run dry, the crime increases, and the panic sets in, I will finally get my relaxation.

Tags: evil
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Cats 0 – Nightstands 1

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

You think cats are graceful as they navigate treacherous banisters and react with classical catlike reflexes? Well, I tell you they fly like ragdolls when they are trying to rub against you at 2:00am and you push them off the bed. They seem unaware of being annoying although they are more than happy to bite you when they are themselves annoyed. Cat’s are nice, in cages or pictures or with children.

Nightstands on the otherhand are good for being everything cats are not: stable, useful, rigid, and most importantly not annoying. Another thing a nightstand does well is stun the shit out of a cat flying by. I think nightstands might just have a mean streak that rivals mine although nightstands are more subtle about it. I guess you overlook the potential evil in a thing that holds lamps in just the right way to tie the room together.

Anyway, this news item has been a long time coming but the other day I pushed a cat named Marko off the bed and right into the nightstand (or as I like to imagine the nightstand moved to get a kick in). I hadn’t meant for the plush annoyance to be bodily hurled into furniture. I just wanted to get back to doing what I do rarely and that is sleeping. I felt bad for a minute before resuming my mission of rest. Ultimately it just makes me chuckle to think of the event now.

I don’t know if both nightstands are both so cruel, but the one on my girlfriend’s side of the bed shares my nasty streak and we’ve been good friends ever since.

Tags: cats and nightstands
Posted in Fantasy | 1 Comment »

Chuck’s Distraction

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Continuing from here. This storyline started here.

“So you won’t admit that your editorial of Dr. Golgecci was a little harsh?” Holly grilled Chuck.

“It’s an opinion. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion.”

“Really? Is it your opinion that Dr. Golgecci is a necrophiliac? What do you think of the odds of me being more interested in your lifeless corpse when it comes to sex? Do you have these opinions about everyone?”

Chuck hadn’t really expected the Spanish Inquisition. He typically wrote rather sensational and often wrong headed fairly opinionated diatribes which he thought were entertaining. He was very fond of Holly all things considered. Sure her temper was a little trying at times but it existed because she cared. And honestly, that was something Chuck hadn’t experienced often enough. Probably my own fault, he thought.

Holly was right that Golgecci brought them together. In a moment of optimism, Holly submitted a cheerful essay answer to what she wanted in a lover. Tinkering with his own view of the cosmos, Chuck had done the same. It was weird how they had read the same books and the book conversation happened kind of as more of a hunch than a moment where they had to talk about something. As a moment, it might well have been perfect.

But can the instincts powered by a similar taste in fiction really indicate the level of compatibility Chuck was looking for? He wasn’t the type to let an issue lie. Nor would he be satisfied if he found on his deathbed that somehow he had settled before finding his unique path through life. But then, you don’t meet a Holly everyday, she’s the kind of person you want to see again tomorrow too. Still, if a wrench were ever found in the plans of Holly and Chuck, the wrench would belong to Chuck, the tinkerer.

Holly was loyal to the people who had benefitted her, to a fault Chuck would say. Golgecci doesn’t become a saint just because he matched Holly and Chuck’s email addresses. Chuck was grateful but skeptical. Chuck was always skeptical. And by the way, he thought to himself, don’t forget to look into Crow, Sylvester Crow. Some loony nearly killed the modern day Christ that was Golgecci. Don’t martyr him before I figure him out, that’s all I ask.

He looked up at Holly’s furious flushed face, which was just a tightened version of her worried flushed face or her horny face, also flushed. She probably wouldn’t want him to make all those connections between her genuinely different emotional states.

“You’re right, Holly.” And then he moved his hands reassuringly with the intent to stir up the same distraction in Holly as he was feeling right then. Golgecci could wait.

Tags: Golgecci
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You Can’t Kill Dreams

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Continuing from here.

Sylvester Crow struggled against the arms of his captors, his gun falling uselessly from his numb hands. He was frothing at the mouth in fury. The charged electric gloves of the police reduced Sylvester’s experience of the outside world to a warm swollen lack of sensation, the sense of something going dreadfully wrong eliminated by a spring-loaded injection.

Dr. Dream as the press liked to nickname Golgecci was visibly shaken and pulled himself together quickly to resume his statesman-like affect. “It must be more upsetting to live with an unsound mind than to be assaulted by someone with that condition,” he soundly proclaimed, earning additional respect for his quickly regained composure and courageous statment.

“People like him used to be thrown into federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for attempted murder. Before that it was a capitol punishment of death to the criminal. The world has gone soft. Don’t you think, doctor?” suggested the sergeant on duty.

“Nonsense, sir. Although I very much appreciate you and your men’s interference on this matter, I’m very pleased we’ve moved passed such barbaric notions. Sure if a sensible man were to commit such a horrendous crime, then that man should be punished. But that relies heavily on the assertion that man has will enough to choose not to do so. No man in his right mind would make that choice. It follows immediately then, that this man needs help and upon being rebalanced, he might be reintroduced to society some day.”

Tags: Dreams Inc., Golgecci
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The Shadow

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

The firelord was a different creature after he had met his love. The days grew shorter in all other parts of the world. Where she lived, the temperature rose considerably. Tempers flared quickly among strangers. Water rose in value. And the countryside became more desert and less lush. Wars broke out among neighboring governments as resources became harder to maintain.

These times were difficult for me, and I avoided as best I could the sight of the firelord. He was something I could never be. He burned so bright and hot that I became the cool shadow. I would envelope his love so that she would not burn so quickly from his visits. I would cling to the walls so that my home did not burn.

The other elemental lords came to him, some worried for him, and some worried for the people of the world. “Haven’t you noticed the suffering you have caused this world by your obsession?” they said. “Even the one you love suffers for this.”

The waterlady approached, adopting the most sensuous form she had ever assumed, so beautiful that she could silently lure men and lesbians to their doom simply by asking them. Her voice dripped suggestion. “There are those among us who would welcome your advance, firelord. A little steam is no bad thing.”

Nature admonished him. “My plants and animals wither under your neglect”. The lord of politics complained that with no reason left among men, there was no place for him. The moon stood back from this dispute, aloof as ever, simply watching the exchange.

The firelord held his tongue until a small island country was blown asunder as a dormant volcano suddenly raged with unprecedented frustration. The small governments, the wildlife, and any lovers that may have existed there were suddenly erased as lava covered the land and dust covered the sky.

Upon seeing this outburst, the elemental lords decended upon their fire brother and shackled him. “Until you can calm yourself, brother, we will fix you in the sky a safe distance from Earth and we will rotate the universe, so that all sides of the Earth may benefit from your warmth.”

The firelord understood their reasons and the futility of his interest in a fragile human. But as he struggled to cool his temper and so earn his freedom, the years which meant so little to him added up and she died old and warm and missed by me, even though I know she looked every morning into the heavens for something I could never provide. When the firelord remembers her passing, a new volcano rages and sunspots interfere with life on Earth. And then the firelord remembers the reason why he is fixed in the sky and struggles to calm himself.

And I did not die either. For every photon emitted from the firelord, I darken one place. The firelord’s proxy: the shadow.

The firelord was first addressed here.

Tags: firelord, shadow
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Seth's World

Archive for the ‘Fantasy’ Category

The Great Atheist Debate

The Three Swordsmen Parable

A Day in the Life of a Waterlord

Headache to Reality

Gaps are Boring

Evil of the East

Cats 0 – Nightstands 1

Chuck’s Distraction

You Can’t Kill Dreams

The Shadow

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