"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."

"The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."

"The only good ideas are the ones I can take credit for."

Sheltered under beckoning spires  Prismatic windows spin fire Onto cold stone Taking a pew, he sits alone.  Votives burn and flicker   Incense ghosts’ bicker A monstrance gleams  Nothing is what it seems.  Sacerdotalism misplaced  Prayers gone to waste  Hearing sermons unwritten Gospel footfalls unbidden.  Indelible markings,   Infinity’s shores harkening,  Gathered not in twos and threes […]

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Chores done Time for a beer I should cut back Maybe next year. Tires crunching gravel Engage parking brake Will tired feet to travel I have thirst to slake. Bright outside, inside dim Eyes adjust Disinhibited shouts, the usual din Here and there, a smattering of lust. Bartender, sleeves rolled up Looking at me and […]

The post Sunday At The Bar appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Angels pornographic God’s eros unbound Beauty frozen in mouths agape And limbs interwound.  Beckoning above the Racing Forum But below Guns & Ammo Sultry eyes suggest  Two or three gathered in His name   Might make a spicy quorum.  Airbrushed, turgid, gynecological.  Just like icing on a cake Sweet at first, then like paste,   Love cannot […]

The post Dirty Magazine appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Live long enough It’s a good bet  You’re gonna accumulate regret.  With me, youthful mistakes Manifest in the shower Bursting unmasked, clarity’s power.  How was I so stupid?  Yelping with chagrin Aged missteps alive again.  Despite water and suds I cannot wash them away Dunce cap moments here to stay.  Chattering whispers Turns right instead […]

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Fall, my favorite season Fires chlorophyllous, riotous, Swirling as kids rustle about Hiding in leaves.  Familial conscripts raking   Chafing against Sisyphean task Hedges color snared  Trees haltingly immodest.  Trick or Treat  The hobgoblins innocent plaint Mercantile pumpkin spice, cloying sweet Radiators pinging in the night.  Attic exchange Swapping old clothes  For the cold new time’s […]

The post So Goeth Before the Fall appeared first on Waiter Rant.

There will be wars  And rumors of wars The rapacious mogul knows Plying his long division in television shows. Fractional punditry Unhinged jaws, Hell’s colliers  Cast the masses sundry Into worlds polar.  Reynard’s sly Vixens too, aggrieved privilege fuming  Pushing lies The common outrage consuming. Facts elided Talking points lockstep spun No report, we’ve decided.  […]

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Young, trim and cute Setting all reason on mute Forever twenty-one I thought she was the one. Yet lost in trauma Oh Mama! Slipped away Through my fingers one day.  Day she was lost My friend crucified on cancer’s cross Wheeled out on gurney entire Consigned to death and fire.  The keening widow Grief bubbling […]

The post The One That Got Away  appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Every tear wiped away, But not in Isreal Not in Gaza. Where’s your Messiah now?  Ukraine’s sunflowers weep, Unable to follow the sun Attrited by Third Rome’s janissaries, Iconostases rubbled By eyes in the sky weeping ruin.  Iron beasts, slain Litter desert, forest,  By isotopic arrows despoiled, Cancerous, ravenous, patient.  Empty hearths.   Children’s questions.  Abba? […]

The post Jerusalem Can Wait  appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Things you have to do  To your body stay true. Diet, exercise, apothecary Doctors, tests, insurance mandatory.  Youth ground away  A little more each day But forget counsel’s irredentist I still have to go to the dentist.  Ever since battles malignant Naked, poked – most indignant Chattering angst free floats  Whenever I spy a lab […]

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Billowing menace, acrid scents  Old growth, saplings charring together  While out of sight, fawns distressed race And the owl’s perch succumbs.  Golden hordes breaching firebreaks  Rapine alight windswept, rapacious, desiccation stoked   Consuming canopies, no quarter given While rooted tributaries blazing course underfoot.  Slight deluges, drawn from placid lakes Lofted by fraught metaled battalions Plunge pityingly […]

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I just got a very nice compliment on Twitter for my origin stories. Compliments are nice, of course. To semi-quote Twain, we do like compliments. All of us do. Novelists, burglars, congressmen, all of us in the trade. But it also got me thinking about why most origin stories are so terrible, and what to … Continue reading Origin Stories

“Being determines consciousness.” — Marx The upper petit-bourgeois is a strange character indeed, his consciousness made up of a thousand pieces that are all at war with one another, producing a marvelous opportunity for study. All of modern society, one might say, is collected in this species, in various proportions, and various strengths, with different … Continue reading The Anatomy of Mr. Middle

A chance comment suddenly helped crystalize my thoughts on something I’ve been looking for a way to talk about for at least thirty years. It has to do with the way a book is analyzed after the fact, versus how it is constructed. The comment was on my novel, Dzur, and it discussed how the … Continue reading The Critic and the Writer

To the members of UAW Local 2069: I don’t think you can realize how much of an inspiration you are to how many people. The battle you’re fighting goes far beyond the immediate issues. We’re living in a world where you can’t open your eyes without seeing a cause for despair: the pandemic, first of … Continue reading An Open Letter to Volvo Truck Workers in Dublin, Virginia

In the most general terms, my approach to writing is to write the book I want to read, and hope other people want to read it too. I take the same approach when I’m in charge of programming at a convention—that is, I try to put together panels built around writing topics that I’m struggling … Continue reading Convention Programming

The question of competition versus cooperation among humans has come up on my Twitter timeline again. It emerges every now and then, when someone desperate to find a defense for capitalism falls back on, “You socialists want to eliminate competition, but competition is a part of nature, so eliminating it is impossible.” Okay, let’s talk … Continue reading Competition and Cooperation

All science is social science, because the development of knowledge of the laws of nature take place within society, are subject to the limitations of resources produced by society, and in turn have an effect on society. As capitalism was clawing it’s bloody way toward world dominance, it brought with it a remarkable boom in … Continue reading All Science is Social Science

Among the most engaging passages in Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution are those dealing with the weeks and days leading up to the October insurrection,  when the Petrograd Soviet, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, began pushing.  That is, they gradually took for the Soviet more and more power from the Provisional Government, waiting at … Continue reading Creeping Fascism

Let’s talk about art and commerce. To get the obvious stuff out of the way, first, I am using here a very broad definition of art, so we can simply skip the arguments about what is and isn’t art. Second, those of you who want to make Garfunkle jokes, or any of the other oh-so-original … Continue reading On Art and Commerce and Pseudo-Activism

A place to discuss Tsalmoth for those who have read it. [Note: WordPress seems to have been randomly marking things as Spam.  If your comment didn’t appear, that’s why.  I think I’ve now recovered them all, and they should be up. Sorry I didn’t get to it sooner.]

(I’ll be adding this to my socialism FAQ, but for now I think it deserves it’s own post.) The logic here is what fascinates—the mechanical formality, starting with rigid definitions and proceeding step by careful step to absurdity. The old scholastics of the middle ages would certainly have approved, but if we don’t want to … Continue reading “We live in a democracy, therefore the government represents us.”

Prologue       Chapter 1      Chapter 2      Chapter 3       Chapter 4 Chapter 5       Chapter 6      Chapter 7      Chapter 8       Chapter 9 Chapter 10    Chapter 11     Chapter 12     Chapter 13    Chapter 14 Chapter 15     Chapter 16     Chapter 17     … Continue reading Lyorn Discussion–Major Spoilers

Someone on Twitter said she was stuck on her current project and asked for suggestions for getting unstuck. I started to reply, then realized it would turn into a huge thread.  So, here I am.  Note: as I understand it, stuck on current project is not the same phenomenon as “writer’s block.”   The former … Continue reading When writers get stuck

It’s the day of international working class solidarity, so a few quick answers to some things I’ve been hearing. 1) No serious revolutionist has ever wanted to make things worse in order to incite revolution. Utter rubbish.  Especially now; things are quite bad enough. What’s missing is consciousness that there is a way forward, a … Continue reading May Day Post

Once upon a time a man named Barry Goldwater appeared on the political scene. And the radical cried, “Danger! A fascist!” And the people came running, but they saw that, actually, he was just a right-wing authoritarian, and he was making no effort to build a mass movement based on violence and terror in order … Continue reading A Totally Original Parable Not Derived From Anything Else Really

If you strip away the rhetorical flourishes, here is what we are told every day: 1) If you aren’t Jewish, you may not disagree when I say something is antisemitic. 2) Any objection to the genocide being carried out against Palestinians is antisemitic. If you disagree, see 1). 3) Therefore, you must either admit to … Continue reading Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Political Action

In the late 60s and early 70s there was an epidemic of “everything I hate is fascism.”  We seem to be back to that again.  But there are differences, and they are important. We warned then, and it is worth repeating now, that we use a narrow and precise definition of fascism because it is … Continue reading On Fascism–Things Are Different Now

The 1872 presidential election (Ulysses Grant vs Horace Greeley) represented the last time progressive change was  brought about through a national election. Since then, progressive change has either been forced by mass action (Women’s suffrage, Welfare, Social Security, Unemployment insurance, Civil Rights, Gay rights, &c) or been a small part of a bill the bulk … Continue reading A Brief Note on the Power and Limits of Propaganda

This is a term I’ve heard often, as one of the goals of art, without really understanding it. I think I’ve figured out at least some of it now. Stay with me. I think I was 22 or so when my daughter, Carolyn, became seriously ill (and thank you Dr. Edlavitch!). My wife and I … Continue reading Generalized Human Experience

Well, after 15 years of using this new fangled "Twitter" thing for microblogging, that's enough of that. Back to normal ranting. (For the record, this is not a rant about twitter, it's about me and the internet over the last thirty... years... oh geeze, it's been that long?) When Twitter was just a new thing, i kinda liked the idea of using it for quick micro blogging (since i was such a slacker about writing rants) so i added two new twitter acc...

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Ok, if you look at comic above [1604] you might notice that it has changed from what i posted back in July (you might need to refresh your browser (ctrl-F5 or ctrl-R) to see it). Why? Because i goofed up. [TL;dr: small retcon for this comic: have to transition into earlier in the next scene so Mugi and Yaku can talk *before* Miho wakes up. Now I can insert the three pages in progress of Mugi and Yaku talking about what happened last chapter.] In...

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One thing ive found myself doing lately now that im sorta 'well fuck that twitter shit' is i am rambling on a LOT more when i type stuff. This can be viewed as a good or bad thing. Maybe for me it's not a bad thing. It's a bit like working in a 4 panel comic format. You can do a lot with a four panel setup, almost the first entire chapter of MT is all 4 panel. It has its own kinda pacing, setup, delivery, variables, etc. But there are things i can...

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(note: this was actually a twitter thread that i wrote this morning... rather than copy paste and chunk this thing out to the other services... duh, post it as a rant and link it :) I've been hesitant to post anything like this, so i'll keep it vague. Lets face it, the last YEAR has been awful. About a year ago, Sarah started to feel sick and it wasn't long before we knew her cancer was back. It was a hard year, but she beat it and we got thru it....

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Chapter 13: "Redemption" comic 1609
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One Shot Episode comic 1610
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Chapter 13: "Redemption" comic 1611
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Chapter 13: "Redemption" comic 1612
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Chapter 13: "Redemption" comic 1613
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I remember the days when a week could go by and you wouldn’t even register the fact that we had a president, much less be aware of some stupid thing that he had said or done.  Unfortunately the past four years that hasn’t happened.  It seems not a week has gone by where Trump hasn’t found a

Continue Reading "FREAK OUT FRIDAY – September 25, 2020" →

7:51: Right wingers are already saying that Biden 1) already knows all the questions and 2) is taking drugs. There are, to my knowledge, no performance enhancing drugs for mental awareness, and *I* know what the questions will be. 7:52: I’m still convinced that Trump will ignore the social distancing rule and immediately come over

Continue Reading "Live Blogging the first Presidential debate" →

We will not laugh. This is serious business. We are * heh * we are adults here and we will not laugh at the situation.  There are * heh heh * there are lives on the line and we will not chuckle, guffaw or otherwise spread any sense of amusement over the… …the… BWWAAAAAHAAHAHAHAAHAAHAHHHHHHAAAAA Ha. Okay.  Okay,

Continue Reading "FREAK OUT FRIDAY – OCTOBER 2, 2020" →

It’s astounding how election day seems to both be speeding toward us and simultaneously taking its own freaking sweet time.  As fast as it’s moving, it’s also taking forever.  We are becoming that desperate to get Trump out of office that every day he’s still there seems like ten. It’s also been ten days since Trump came

Continue Reading "FREAK OUT FRIDAY – October 8, 2020" →

I did as I said I would:  I watched “Supernatural,” and don’t regret it for a moment.  I then tuned in to watch the last half hour of Biden:  he seemed natural, relaxed, and sane. Then, in order to write this column, I sat down and watched the Trump town hall on Youtube.    I am producing this commentary

Continue Reading "FREAK OUT FRIDAY – October 16, 2020" →

8;18: Currently watching “Supernatural.” Feeling very relaxed. That’s gonna change. 8:59; Please don’t let Biden screw up. 9:03: So I wonder how long it will be before Trump tries shouting over Biden’s mic. 9:05: Oh yeah. I’m sure Trump will let Biden speak. 9:05: And literally the first sentence out of his mouth is a

Continue Reading "Final Presidential debate" →

We have neighbors down the street with whom we had developed a sort of tradition.  Every year we’d go over to their house on New Year’s Eve.  We’d celebrate the end of the old year, watch the ball drop in Times Square.  I’d sing “Edelweiss” for some reason because the wife loved the way I did that song.  It

Continue Reading "FREAK OUT FRIDAY – October 30, 2020" →

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