Went to Cleveland over the weekend for baseball (they lost, dammit) and got a nasty sunburn on my face. My face looks like a raspberry-iced doughnut.

The plus side is that I can’t frown, so my expression is pleasant. Red and puffy, but pleasant!

I was avoiding the internet generally for the sheer number of jerks who seemed to have nothing better to do than to spoil the last book.

I’m not going to spoil it.

I will say I’m sorry to say goodbye to the series, though. It’s quite an accomplishment. I don’t care if some people don’t like the books (personally, I love them), but you can’t take away from what JK Rowling has done. That’s some serious kicking ass and taking names in the bookselling department.

Steve and I went to the movies the other day and saw a trailer for the new “The Dark is Rising” movie.

My first reaction? Yuck.

My second reaction? Hey, it looks like they changed a lot of things.

My third reaction? It can’t be worse than the books.

I think the character of Will Stanton is one of the most annoying ever put on paper. How am I supposed to feel empathy for an immortal goody-two-shoes? Bah.

Interesting posts from Harry and Scavella about religion and the labels of “atheist” or “agnostic.”

For me, it’s been a revelation to consider myself an atheist. I wasn’t always. When I met Steve, it was an issue for me that he was an atheist and I was… not. It’s hard for me to say what religion I was since I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic university, but I could never really believe in the idea of a Messiah.

In any case, I believed in god, a singular entity who cared desperately about me and everyone else.

And now I don’t.

And, here’s the important part, I’m a better person for it. No longer do I have some vague notion of it all coming right in the end. No longer do I have any belief that the ends justify the means, that god will reward the righteous, that the bad guys will get what’s coming. I don’t believe in a plan. I don’t believe in an afterlife. I believe this is all we’ve got.

And I believe that it’s up to me to make it the best world I can.

Before, I thought I had some vague duty to be a good person, but I didn’t think it was all on me. Bad things that happened? Well, it was part of some grand scheme. I knew that evil things wouldn’t happen for no reason. I knew that god had to have it all worked out.

Oh, and the poor are always with us, of course. Isn’t it great that they will find their succor in heaven?

I’m an atheist. I could weasel out and say, “Oh, maybe. Maybe.” I could claim agnosticism. What would that serve? A handful of people might like me better, but my family would like me better if I were a republican, and I’m not willing to say that, either.

I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in any god. I’m not unsure if I believe; I don’t believe. My mind could be changed with a boatload of evidence, but that doesn’t make me agnostic. I don’t care to get up in anyone’s face about their beliefs, but that doesn’t make me agnostic.

Am I 100% certain? No. But I’m not 100% certain of anything. I’m not 100% certain I exist. I’m not 100% certain I want to.

Okay, I am 100% certain the Yankees are evil. So I’m not 100% certain of 99.99% of things that I claim as truth, as real, as proven.

If not being 100% certain makes me a non-atheist, then not being 100% certain made me a non-theist. Because I had doubts then, bigger ones than now. Then I could only ask “Why does this happen?” Now I can answer “Because you and I haven’t stopped it yet.”

Cleveland is rumored to have signed Travis Hafner to a long contract extension.

Even if you don’t know what in the hell I’m talking about, just shout a little wahoo for me.

Thanks!

Politics.

While I’m a follower of US politics, poetry politics bore the pants off me. I don’t care who’s who. I don’t care who champions what. My life is too damned short to keep track of it all.

I do care when people make absurd arguments, offensive ones even, and I find out about it after submitting work to their journals.

Currently, I have cause to regret that a poem of mine was accepted for publication. That’s a disheartening feeling.

The fact is, I can’t keep track and have no desire to try, but by publishing anything at all I end up on some side or the other of some stupid argument or the other. Even posting a poem on a poetry board becomes a political act.

All actions have consequences, and ignorant actions have more consequences than others. Not submitting means I’m not involved. It means that I don’t have to act as if I’m a free verser or a formalist, or any other label that someone would be so willing to attach. I don’t want to have to read editor biographies just to know if I’m going to end up with the philosophical equivalent of cooties.

Now Ichabod has hyperthyroid and Dickens has pneumonia.

If I could sell them to the cat circus, I would!

I was mentally mocking the new deodorant scents, wondering who would want their underarms to smell of chai or Fruity Pebbles.

Until I saw the cocoa butter one. I am a slave to the scent of coco butter.

My armpits smell like tropical paradise. Oh yes.

I just sat on my headphones.

I sat with a splat where my headphones were at.

Drat.

Oh, you all have even more reason to be jealous of me now.

Googlewhack–Your goal: find that elusive query (two words – no quote marks) with a single, solitary result!

I received an email this morning telling me of my newfound glory. Tim Fitzgerald of England discovered the googlewhack.

But I can’t tell you what it is because then it’ll have more than one result. Woe.