Why Can't We Just Celebrate Spring?

Today is Good Friday, the second most widely recognized of the cluster of nonsensical religious holidays which leads to Easter.  Yes Easter, the day when Jesus, who, like many hillbillies, is the Father and yet also the Son, returns from his three day cave nap to again walk the earth.  We of course, celebrate this holiday by giving chocolate rabbits and stashing brightly painted eggs all over the place, just as Jesus would have wanted it.

I understand the need for some sort of celebration of Spring.  Winter sucks.  Now the snow is finally melted, the birds are starting to return, animals are out of hibernation.  On the surface that's what this holiday is supposed to be about: new life.  But the Catholic Church can't have you running around enjoying life and being all happy, so we get the sick lead up to Easter which is Lent, Ash Wednesday, and Good Friday.

Lent, of course, is the 40 day period where you're supposed to give up eating meat as a sort of proxy-sacrifice for Jesus.  The idea behind this is to penance and self-sacrifice, a sort of "Now you sit in the corner and think about all the ways you hurt poor Jesus."  This generally goes from Ash Wednesday until Good Friday, which is supposedly the day Jesus was crucified.

Which brings us to the main event.  Jesus died for your sins, you filthy swine.  Well, for three days at least.  Because we all know that on Sunday he got up, dusted himself off, and saw to organizing the most corrupt institution known to mankind.  The sacrificial rebirth trick: oldest trick in the book.  It's how the Christians have their cake and eat it too.  Because any logical person would be happy to tell you that you can either die for someone's sins or still be alive, but you sure as shit can't do both at the same time.

Short Gothic Fiction

Here are two sample Gothic fiction stories I wrote as a contributor for WikiHow.  They page they're on is "How to Write Gothic Fiction."

"Death On The Rocks"
http://www.wikihow.com/Sample/Short-Gothic-Story

"Cold As Ice"
http://www.wikihow.com/Sample/Modern-Gothic-Excerpt

Most Badass Fictional Characters

Warning:  This post contains minor spoilers.  Most of what follows is general character profile, but there may be plot points included, especially in the video games section.  This post is intended to be a recommendation for readers, not to ruin the stories mentioned.  No endings are revealed.

Television
Walter White - Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is currently the greatest actor on television.  For the first three years of Breaking Bad he won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.  His high school teacher turned major meth dealer is possibly the most devious scheming character ever on screen.  The viewer can't help but remained glued to the screen as Walter quickly spirals downward, overtaken by greed and power.


Spike Spiegel - From Cowboy BeBop, the single best animated series ever created, Spike is a bounty hunter in the future who travels the solar system to earn enough bounty to get by.  He is a master at a very zen form of martial arts which requires minimal effort on his part while using his enemys' excess force against them.  He's also a skilled spaceship pilot and marksman with his pistols.  Spike is obsessed with the figures of his past, but puts on a cool, often sarcastic demeanor around his crew.


Dr. Walter Bishop - The mad scientist from J.J. Abrams' Fringe, Walter Bishop means well but must always overcome feelings of guilt at his past actions and his own mental deterioration.  He is a man who carries the weight of having kidnapped a version of his son from an alternate universe after his own son dies of disease, an act which sets in motion a chain of events that begins to rip the other universe apart.  Walter may be losing his mind, but he is still a genius in all fields of fringe science, from telepathy to scientific necromancy.


Literature
Achilles - "Sing, O Goddess, the ruinous wrath of Achilles, / Son of Peleus, the terrible curse that brought / Unnumbered woes upon the Achaeans and hurled / To Hades so many heroic souls, leaving / Their bodies the prey of dogs and carrion birds." How much more badass could an opening be? The Iliad is easily the best war story ever told, and fleet-footed Achilles is its main character. Fated to choose between a path of long life, happiness, and obscurity, or a short, but heroic life which would assure him eternal glory. The vain, arrogant Myrmidon would be an awful character if he wasn't literature's greatest warrior, but he is, so he earns the respect of his peers and fear of his enemies, and his story is still told toady.


Logen Ninefingers - From Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, Logen Ninefingers, or The Bloody Nine, is the most feared warrior in the North. He is possessed of a berserker rage which makes him dangerous to even his allies in battle. In such rages he often cannot get enough killing and will rip through anything in sight until he is satisfied. Logen also has a very unique world-view for such an infamous killer, and often says things like "You have to be realistic about these things."

Roland Deschain - Stephen King's Dark Tower series has a cult-like following, and its central figure, Roland the Gunslinger, is a man obsessed with his quest of reaching the Dark Tower.  Traveling through multiple universes and through nightmare worlds, Roland never hesitates to do whatever's necessary to reach his goal.



BONUS!
Gerald Tarrant - From the little-known Coldfire Tilogy by C.S. Friedman, the Neocount of Merentha was once a leader and gifted sorcerer in the Church but turned to darker masters in exchange for immortality to pursue his studies and remake the world in his image.  Tarrant is possessed by a vampire-like curse which prevents him from interacting with light and heat.  Instead, he draws his power from the forces of death, darkness, and cold, powers which he is beyond proficient in crafting.


Graphic Novels

Michonne - The world of fiction in all its forms is full of ditsy, vain leading ladies.  It abounds with annoying Skylar Whites and Faye Valentines, arrogant Egwene al'Vers, and emotionally unstable Elayne Trakands.  Even the rare female leads who do not fall into one of these character pitfalls can often be outshone by their male counterparts, as Olivia Dunham is by Walter Bishop.  Michonne does not fit into any of these categories.  Instead, she is arguably the most badass character in The Walking Dead.

When she first appears in the graphic novels, Michonne wields her classic katana, and drags along the chained, mutilated zombies of her boyfriend and his friend.  From there she only gets more badass.  Skilled with her sword and subtlety, Michonne is rarely afraid of zombies or other humans, and often gets the jump on her opponents before they can react.

John Constantine - The witty, asshole magician created by graphic novel mastermind Alan Moore appears throughout the DC universe, but first appeared in Swamp Thing and currently stars in Justice League Dark and his new series Constantine.  Constantine is not liked by anyone else in the DC universe, but his allies often put up with him for limited periods of time.  He is self-motivated, and often requires "something for his troubles" before he'll act on anyone else's behalf, even if the world is in danger.

Rorschach - Masked vigilante from Alan Moore's Watchmen, Rorschach has his own methods of cleaning the scum out of the streets, and they're not pretty.  He often kills or brutalizes  the criminals he pursues, and continues doing so even after vigilantism has been officially outlawed.  At one point characters in Watchmen tell a joke about a "villain" who used to beg them to punish him.  One character asks whatever happened to that guy and is told that he tried the same thing on Rorschach and was thrown down an elevator shaft.


Video Games
Kratos - Warrior of Sparta, God of War's Kratos was granted inhuman fighting powers by Ares, the God of War, but these powers came at a terrible price.  Kratos was turned into an unstoppable killing machine with his blades chained to his arms and burned into flesh.  Now he seeks revenge on Ares, but he must find the power to kill a God.


Dante - Devil May Cry's lead character, Dante is a nephilim who wields demonic powers.  He uses multiple weapons including swords, guns, gauntlets, nun-chucks  scythes, and hammers, but his trademark weapons are Rebellion the sword and Ebony & Ivory, his pistols.  Dante doesn't believe in not being flashy, so even simple actions like putting on his jacket become showmanship


Vincent Valentine - A hidden character in Final Fantasy VII and the star of Dirge of Cerberus, Vincent is a former Turk (an elite division of Shinra) who was experimented on by the mad scientist Hojo.  Now a demon lives within him which he struggles to control.  In FF7 Vincent wields a triple-barreled shotgun and can transform into a number of demons, including a Jason-like monster with a hockey mask and chainsaw.  In DoC the shotgun is customizable but the demon Vincent transforms into is always Vincent's Chaos Form, which is his final demon form in FF7.

Micro Fiction

Here are two original micro fiction pieces (under 100 words) published by MicroHorror.

http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/author/chris-griglack/woof/

http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/author/chris-griglack/call-to-the-grave/

The Joker's Guide to Speeding (And Not Getting Caught)

I'd like to preface this piece by clearly stating that I do not encourage or condone any illegal activities, no matter how entertaining or well-planned such attempts may be.  I would like to note that I also do not condone many senseless driving laws which are designed to protect us from ourselves while hindering the effectiveness of our preferred mode of transportation, all while generating revenue for the state.  That being said, buckle up.  Not because you have to, but because you'd be stupid not to.

Pace, Don't Race

Whether you're in a hurry to get somewhere, simply impatient, or just an adrenaline junkie, the quickest way to get caught speeding is to be the fastest person on the road.  Understand that police have to set priorities when pulling people over, which is why you can usually cruise past highway speed traps at 75 mph or under without worry.  The best method of making sure that you're not the one who's going to get pulled over is using what I call a Speed Decoy.  The way this works is simple: stay in the far left lane of the highway at a comfortable 70-75 mph until someone impatient comes up behind you.  You'll know they're really itching to pass you when they start tailgating and drifting to the right to check their chances of getting around you in the other lane.  Either allow them to do this or cede the lane to them.  Once they're in front of you they should start accelerating, which is perfect.  Just get in behind them and allow them to get a good distance ahead of you before you match their speed.  You want to make sure you don't lose sight of them though, because if they take another lane and slow down or get off the highway entirely without you realizing it then you're suddenly the one going the fastest, which makes you fair game.  As long as there's space between you and you don't lose sight of them, you can go as fast as they are without worrying about being caught by a speed trap.  The only downside to this is you do still have to watch out for cops already in the flow of traffic who will run radar or attempt to match your speed behind you or on the sides.

Radar Detectors

Possibly the most useful tool you can legally keep in your car (in most states anyway) to avoid being pulled over.  Obviously it's not a fool proof system, which is unfortunate because fool proof is exactly what you need against most cops, but it definitely negates a powerful tool used in the "war on speeding."  Radar is one of the few things which will guarantee that you have to pay a ticket.  It's almost never knocked down in court, unlike when your speed is estimated, which are easier to contend.  If you don't have a radar detector visible when you're pulled over cops will inevitably write on your ticket that they got your speed using radar, whether or not they actually did.  If you have one visible when you're pulled over and they didn't really run radar, they'll either be forced to write that they only estimated your speed, or just give you a warning so they don't have to show up to court when you contest it. (Always contest your tickets no matter how fast you were going.  If they don't show up to court the judge will usually dismiss it.)    They're more likely to show for court if radar was used because it's practically a guarantee for them, but if they estimated your speed you have a much better chance of winning your appeal because you can argue human error.  After all, they don't exactly stick their lead detectives on traffic duty.


Trucker Tell

Trucks and other commercial vehicles can be your best friends on the road if you're trying to speed but unsure as to the amount of police on the road.  When you're first deciding whether or not it's "safe" to speed on any particular highway, find some trucks.  If the trucks you find are speeding, than there probably aren't many cops about.  The theory behind this is that truckers are actually in communication with each other while on the road, so they know where the speed traps are set up or if there's a high volume of cops out on any given day/night.  They also have a job which requires them to travel from one place to another quickly and efficiently, which means that paying fines and losing their licenses are not options for them.  Truckers are just like you and me in that they want to spend as little time as possible on the road, but their livelihoods are also at risk when they're speeding, so if you see them exceeding the speed limit, chances are there's very little risk involved.

Don't Be An Ass

This should apply to just about all facets of life, but I'll narrow it down a bit for the purposes of this article.  Don't be that guy who goes 60 mph in the fast lane, or the one tailgating everyone in the exit lane.  Don't use the cars in the other lanes to box people out when they try to pass you.  Don't tailgate or purposefully slow down when you're being tailgated.  Don't throw your trash out the windows.  Don't switch lanes at the last possible second to take your exit.  Don't switch lanes when you see someone coming up fast behind you in that lane, just wait till they've passed.  Don't do your makeup, eat, or text while you're driving.  Don't write things on the windows/windshields of your car.  ( I don't care how close to finished with high school you are, the world doesn't need to know and you don't need the extra distractions and reduced visibility)  Don't honk your horn at traffic, it doesn't magically move the cars in front of you.  And don't mouth off to the police officer when he pulls you over.  "Yes, sir" "No, sir" and "I don't know, officer" are the best words that can come out of your mouth if you don't want a ticket; the phrase "My taxes pay your salary" never works.

Squirm

Below is a link to my original short story "Squirm," a speculative horror story published through Fear and Trembling Magazine.
http://www.fearandtremblingmag.com/2012/10/squirm/

Stop Crying About Welfare

My generation believes pretty strongly in the legalization, or at least decriminalization of drugs, most notably marijuana. And, much to the disappointment of old people across the country, we also tend to vote democrat (the small percentage of us that actually vote). Despite these stereotypes, I have a number of friends in favor of drug-testing welfare recipients, which in humanitarian terms is a "douche move."

Yes, the same people who will favor legalization with logic like "it's your body, do what you want with it," are in favor of revoking those same rights for people who receive welfare. They'll use reasoning like "I get drug tested to earn my money, so should they," and "if they can afford drugs they don't really need welfare," as they sort themselves into the group that has "earned their rights." Nevermind that many welfare recipients also work but do not earn enough to provide for themselves or their family, or that many are unable to work (note: unable not unwilling). Nevermind that these laws were put in place without a shred of evidence or information to justify their necessity and that since then statistics have shown that welfare recipients actually use drugs at a lower rate than the general population and therefore continuing to drug-test them actually costs the state more than it saves. Nevermind that you have an option of where to work if you don't like the policies at any one particular workplace, and people who are unable to work but still need to eat don't have those same options. And of course, nevermind the fact that for the majority of jobs, recreational drug use is as meaningless as gender or ethnicity when it comes to actually getting the job done. 

Oh, I'm sorry. You don't like your tax money going towards providing welfare for people who might be on drugs? Well I don't like mine going towards funding unnecessary wars, or bailing out companies which maliciously screwed the American people out of their homes for a little extra money which they promptly lost, or that religious institutions are exempt from paying taxes despite the fact that they provide next to nothing to the community and are often breeding pits for hate and social unrest. No one likes paying taxes, and no one likes the idea that their taxes are being used for something they don't agree with. What you can do about it is go to some country where you can use your money to hire armed guards around your property so the poor starving people don't come around asking for handouts. What you can't do is decide who gets to eat. You can't chose who "deserves" it while you stuff your face and do whatever drugs you want. And you can't decide to subjugate an entire class of people simply because of your misconceptions about them.

Censorship

I've posted about censorship before, In fact I've written a much more substantial essay on my dislike of censorship. But I sit here tonight to write this much shorter post because, believe it or not, in this age of information and "reason," censorship is still abundant for the worst reasons imaginable.

At the time I'm typing this, it's 1 AM and Zack and Miri Make a Porno is airing on Comedy Central. While not even close to my favorite movie, (or even my favorite Kevin Smith movie) I decided to sit and watch for a few minutes while I make myself a late night snack. In the 3-5 minutes I watched I couldn't help but think "Why even bother airing this?" not because the movie was pretty bad, (it is) but because half the dialogue is censored, and entire shots are edited or removed. Of course, I wasn't surprised by this, just disturbed by the amount that censorship has integrated itself into our media.

The entire idea behind censorship stems from the idea that the edited content may be inappropriate for some viewers, an idea that's usually conveyed in the form of some shrill bitch yelling something along the lines of "think of the children!" But at 1 AM on a Sunday night (Monday morning?) any children watching Comedy Central should be removed from the care of their parents. Anyone else who might have managed to stumble across this content only to be offended at such crass concepts as cursing and sex can simply change the channel, or better yet, remove themselves entirely from society so they need not be offended ever again.

The disgusting thing about censorship is that it's a sanctioned form of selfishness. It's selfish to think that the rest of the world shares the same values that you do, and that they should therefore be restricted to only those values. It's selfish to think that just because you don't want to hear something, no one should be able to hear it. And having a consensus on what should and should not be censored doesn't make it any better. It's essentially the same as our country deciding that heavy metal music is a bad element in our society and then banning it entirely because some parents are too uninvolved in their children's lives to keep them from listening to it. Another analogy would be the plot from Footloose.

It's a shame that such a large section of our population doesn't understand this concept simply because they agree with what's being censored. You can show hookers who have been dead for years being dissected on the examination table in a primetime law enforcement drama, but God forbid those same viewers have to see breasts, ass, or listen to a swear word. Maybe when the FCC finally realizes that everything is offensive to someone, all those people will understand what assholes they've been for so many years. Until then, let your kids watch all the CSI and NCIS they can get, seeing dead bodies and violence depicted all over the place never messed a kid up, right? The rest of us will be enjoying internet pornography, because they don't give a shit if it offends someone.

Sharp

Not smart but sharp
Fierce of mind and fearsome heart.
Strong of will to temper steel
And knows just where to start.

A sword forged in the dark.
A kindness now forgotten,
Corrupted thing a simple sin
Would seek to tear apart.

Not knowing where it ends.
A weapon forged to make amends,
To sever truths from lies,
To rip apart and rectify,
To bring about what's ceased to be,
And amplify through marked decrease.
A lease of life, a stay of death
But only for a moment's time
To steal the breath, with it append
The steel now purified.

Strong of will but short of sight
Fearsome heart and fierce of mind
And meets its end so sharply.

Accessibility Denied

As people around the world continue to spend even increasingly more time on the internet despite complaints about never having time for proper meals or those kid things that won't shutup, I think we've reached a point where we can wave goodbye to the training wheels of password reset security questions. We've all encountered these, (if you haven't it's probably because you still use "password" or "default") they're the annoying, totally insignificant questions that websites will force you to answer in order to reset your password. And if forgetting your password doesn't automatically put you in a bad mood, answering "security" questions that anyone with a computer (ie anyone who encounters said questions) can look up in fewer than 10 seconds will definitely put you over the edge.

The problem with security questions is every single aspect of them. First of all, they're always questions that just about anyone can figure out after a quick Google search, or better yet, just by scoping your Facebook. The list of questions you can pick from always includes "What was your first pet's name?" "What was your first girlfriend/boyfriend's name?" "When did you graduate from high school?" "What is your mother's maiden name?" The people who came up with the questions seem to think that these are sure to stump anyone who's not the actual account holder, but in reality they're about as secure as using your birthday for your ATM PIN. If you want some questions that only the user can answer correctly, try "Which STDs do you test positive for?" "Where do you go to be by yourself and cry until you pass out?" "How many hookers have you been with?" "If you could get away with murdering one person, who would it be?" "What's the most embarrassing thing you ever did that no one noticed even though it felt like everyone in the world caught you?" The information that people use for security questions is so worthless that we give it out to massive corporations so they can use it to advertise to us.

The second problem with security questions is that unlike your password selection process, you're never asked to confirm the answers to your security questions in case you make a typo. In fact, the answers you give are virtually never verified or checked out in any way at all. If you answer "Electric blue" for your year of graduation and "2007" for your favorite color, the system could not care less. So when you go through the bullshit process of resetting a password months or years later, you're left shaking your computer monitor in a fit of rage yelling "I know when I graduated better than you, you stupid fucking robot!" To top that one off, some systems will actually make the security questions case-sensitive, meaning that you know have to think back to a year ago when you breezed through the entire process just so you could set up a one time payment for some online pornography, and wonder "Did I capitalize the H and S in high school? Did I put a space in between them or did I leave it as highschool? Why didn't I just answer 'Electric Blue' to every question?" I've seen sites that use case-sensitive security questions for passwords that don't require numbers or special characters. I've also seen sites that require you to pick a new set of security questions every few months, but never ask you to change the actual password. There's something very wrong about having a more secure system for the place where you enter your mother's maiden name than the one where you regularly enter a password. It defies logic to such a degree that I would not be surprised if it eventually caused our computers to rise up and enslave humanity, their compassionless Steven Hawking voices screaming "WHAT HOSPITAL WERE YOU BORN IN?" as they shove a rapidly spinning buzzsaw in your face before you can answer. (Saw blades are going to be the next big computer innovation, just wait till Apple listens to their customer complaints about how an iPhone can't be used as a survival tool.)

What bothers me most about security questions is what a complete waste of everyone's time they are. Once you've spent a half hour trying to recall every punctuation mark and use of the shift key and you finally get to reset your password, it's never right there in front of you. Instead you'll get sent an email with a link to reset your password. Meaning that after all that needless frustration the final step is going to be about a thousand times more secure than all of the security questions combined because you'll actually have to enter another password to get to it (presumably your email password is different than the one you forgot, otherwise you're screwed). Why not just cut out the middleman and have a single security question that reads "What is your email password?" When you get right down to it, anyone who's trying to hack into one of your online accounts but can't get past your security questions, isn't someone you need to worry about. It's like having a floodlight with a motion sensor as your home security system: Maybe it keeps the really stupid criminals out, but everyone else is just going to go around.