The fun began to coalesce around the time my sister decided it would be a good idea to molest one of our neighbors in the downstairs bathroom. Although, due to the great natural inertia of joy, the fun did not actually begin until my uncle Ben ran in after her to save the unfortunate man from further violation. For an adult male, being molested by a woman is always embarrassing.

When my uncle managed to pry the bewildered neighbor out of the bathroom, and Rachel stumbled out after him drunk as a skunk, that was when the fun really picked up and started to fly. From my quiet place in the corner of the back room reading a book, I sighed. This is why I hate family reunions.

I arrived just in time to put Rachel in a full Nelson before she could punch my uncle Ben in the face. “Fush you, BShee!” Rachel screamed, trying clumsily to get hold of my hair. From the way she was fighting me you would have thought I was a holy man who had laid on hands on a demon.

I looked to either side of me to make sure no one was looking. Being the only sober person in the entire house, and therefore the only person capable of processing information at a normal speed, I very subtly slammed her head against a wall, quick enough that no one noticed. The thud was like holy music. She stopped trying to grab my hair immediately.

“Everyone leave me alone!” Rachel sobbed, trying to kick my nearby uncle. “I have a headache!” I smiled, wishing I had hurt her a little bit more. She wouldn’t be able to remember a thing come morning and she had a lot to answer for. Imagine the dumbest, ugliest, cruelest, most ignorant cunt you have ever met. Then think of the kind of human being that that person would look upon with disdain. That horrible creature, beyond the scope of any decent imagination, is my sister. That she exists is all the proof I have ever needed that God does not.

“For Christ’s sake Rachel, calm down!” my uncle yelled, drunk and pleading. Uncle Ben is a nice quiet drunk who will only ever get bold enough to hug you and tell you how “much I’ve always respected you, ya know.” Rachel and alcohol combine to form a portal to every level of the underworld.

“You’re out of control!” Uncle Ben shouted, as he watched my sister cuss and twitch like a Jerry Springer guest in an electric chair. I rolled my eyes. Technically, you have to have had some control before you can run out of it.

My sister then began shrieking at the top of her lungs such vile insults at my uncle and the world in general, that even I, with my minimal moral standards, will not write them down. Suffice it to say that my pacifistic Aunt Debbie found these bad enough that she sought fit to run up and slap Rachel full across the mouth. While I could have stopped this, I let it slide. I only make an effort to defend innocent people. My sister is most certainly not innocent. In fact, I would rather say that the bitch had it coming.

“Okay.” I announced to no one. “Time for bed.” I brought Rachel’s hands down behind her pelvis and twisted them until her back arched. Then I drove my knee into the small of her back to prod her forward. Rachel is like one of the crazy people in prison lock down that can never be trusted with any sort of human freedom. Give her an inch, she’ll take your fucking life. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“Fuck you, BShee! I should have killed you back when you were shtill a baby! You fucking virgin losher!” I pinched her in the place between her forefinger and her knuckle just a little bit, but enough to let her know I meant business. If you haven’t had the pleasure of being sober around super drunk people who are severely in need of a beating, I suggest you try it some time. It’s almost exactly like being Neo in the Matrix. Except it’s real!

For those of you who are undoubtedly appalled at my lack of restraint, I would like to state that I was probably exerting more restraint than you have ever been made to summon in the course of your entire life. I have wanted that cunt dead since the first time I realized that it was possible to make someone go so far away that they could never come back. Given this I was doing more than admirably. Let’s put it this way: she collects Nazi memorabilia because she admires Hitler’s evil. Those are her own sincere words. Plus, she tried to murder me pretty consistently for the first five or so years of my life. How much more clear cut do you really want this? Because I can go there.

We were at the foot of the stairs when my father, running ape-like, charged me from behind. He grabbed me around the waist and threw me to the side before I had time to shake him loose. When I turned to face him, Rachel took the opportunity to sit down on the stairs and kick me in the spine. A tingling flame ran up my back and I fell to the ground temporarily immobile. Awesome, I thought, groaning in pain. Just fan-fucking-tastic.

In the time it took me to get back up, my father pounced on my sister, pinned her against the stairs, and was screaming at her to “show him how tough she really was” by letting her punch him in the face over and over again. I rolled my eyes like a man who can’t believe that his wife made peas for dinner again. I’ve been to this particular show a number of times.

I grabbed my father’s hand when it lifted to strike Rachel in the throat, not to save Rachel, but because my father really didn’t deserve to go to prison for the rest of his life just because Rachel needed killing. Then, because I’m as practiced at this as a rodeo clown saving cowboys, I threw my father off my sister, pinned him with my forearm against the nearest wall and told him off-handedly to “cool it.” Then there was the problem with Rachel.

Being as she was on an incline with her feet facing me I first had to grab hold of her ankles before I could grab onto any other part of her. She took this as an opportunity to do one of the few sit ups of her life and only a quick motion backwards on my part stopped her from biting off my nose. I immediately crossed one of her legs over the other and applied pressure till she was flipped over onto her stomach. It’s during times like these that I’m glad my grandfather insisted on getting me Karate lessons. I twisted both of her arms again, held them in place with my first two fingers, then picked her up by the belt using the other three of each hand, and dragged her up the stairs like a sack of flour. If I let her wobble a little too far over the bannister, well… bitch has it coming.

Kicking open the door to her room as she continued to fight me, I backed into Cunthulu’s smelly lair. Ah yes, the sweet aroma of old microwavable food and ass. I threw her down on her bed like a rag doll. She seemed too confused to get back up. “Don’t you fucking test me!” I shouted at her. She tried to do a push up but fell back down. I’d taken most of the fight out of her getting back up the stairs. Knowing she lacked even the most basic of coordination skills I moved several of her larger pieces of furniture in front of the door, in hopes that she’d get up, trip, and break her neck somehow. Then I slammed the door and went back downstairs.

The house was deserted. Everyone had gone over to my uncle Ben’s house. I resumed sitting in my recliner, and picked my book back up. My dad’s friend Steve was hiding in a corner sipping a beer.

“Can you believe they left all this beer here?” Steve asked, holding up a bottle like treasure.

“Yeah, Steve. Yeah I can.” Then I read. Between you and me, I think Steve may be an alcoholic.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Another one of these? Jesus H. Christ, BC! Are you really that nuts?” In answer to this question, I shall refer you to this story as well as ask you to look up the page a bit. There should be a picture of my face superimposed over Shrek’s body next to the words “socially awkward.” That should be enough information to draw an acceptable conclusion.

Before continuing, you should know that before writing this piece, I considered the following list of authors to review before settling on Mr. Pratchett:

Orson Scott Card

In which Orson Scott Card was to be a blend between Indiana Jones and Russell T. Simmons.

For those of you who have not read “Ender’s Game” please do so now, because it is perhaps the greatest work of science fiction ever written… next to several other books upon which I would probably bestow the same honor.

Neil Gaiman

In which Neil Gaiman was to be a sort of Rock Star/Bacchus figure who eventually decides to take off all his clothes and fight with me Beowulf vs. Grendel style while intoxicated on mead.

For those of you daring enough to wonder exactly how my chaotic mind works, I had this series of thoughts in a period of about five minutes after seeing Neil Gaiman’s author picture on the back of one of his books. For a guy whose name is the phonetic equivalent of “Kneel Gay Man” Neil Gaiman sure seems like the kind of dude who could pull down an unbelievable amount of ass.

Yes, I am aware he does not, and that he is happily married… but still.

Terry Goodkind

In which the imaginary interview was to take place entirely in the sprawling multi-level bomb shelter underneath Terry Goodkind’s house, where Mr. Goodkind and I wage a battle against giant alien chickens using pump action sawed off shot guns, the help of a 13 year old swami named Naga, and yogurt.

Yes, I know it is perhaps stereotypical to assume that just because an author dedicates one of his books to the CIA that he has a sprawling mutli-level bomb shelter underneath his house, but I have never known this stereotype to be wrong (or correct.) Also, a new television series is being released in November based on Mr. Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth Series” for which I am “totally stoked.”

George RR Martin

Did you know the 18 inch tall version of George RR Martin is perhaps the most territorial creature known to mankind? This reason above all, is why the 18 inch tall version of George RR Martin must be kept on a choke chain at all times. Also, the 18 inch tall version of George RR Martin even more closely resembles an old sea captain than the actual sized version of George RR Martin.

Terry Pratchett

I chose Terry Pratchett, for two very important reasons. He was the end result of a number of coin tosses I made dividing the above authors into smaller and smaller groups until he was all by himself. The second being he is way too famous for any of you to ever send this to him and have it get through. Ha! Take that people who like to embarrass me in front of important people!

Aside from having the indecency to be funnier than I am, Terry Pratchett also makes his jokes more relevant than mine, which is also quite unforgivable and leads me to no end of jealousy. Then there’s the bit where he’s more clever than I am, leading me to set his books down on my leg at intervals and sigh deeply before falling into an existential depression about my failings not only as a writer but as a human being in general. Only the occasional swear word or crude joke keeps me going.

Now, for the sake of making you nod and say “you know what? Terry Pratchett could have done a much better job of this” I give you:

5 Short, Bizarre, Fictional, and

Completely Irrelevant Reasons

You Should Buy Books by Terry Pratchett

Reason #1

Meet Terry Pratchett

I do not know why I perform actual research when I write these pieces. It seems both irrelevant and a waste of time… but… ugh… Terry Pratchett was born April 28, 1948… published his first book in 1971… then a whole bunch of Discworld books later on… they sold over 55 million copies world wide… yada yada yada… and well never mind.

For now, all you need to know is that he has a sweet ass cane, a garden filled with carnivorous plants, and a twin brother named Perry who was eaten by a shag carpet when they were children.*

*One of the above facts is actually not true.

Reason #2

Terry Pratchett’s Secret War

Against Shag Carpeting

You don’t need to ask Terry Pratchett to know that there is no real reason anyone would ever buy a shag carpet. A simple beginner’s course in any of the social sciences would be enough to reveal this as an axiom. Who in their right mind would want a dense patch of inch long fibers waiting on the floor to capture anything at all that is spilled on them? All you buy when you get a shag carpet is an opportunity to have a great big smelly (possibly sticky) mess all over your house. No one Earth would ever buy one. No one on Earth… indeed.

Oh, we all know what the government would have us believe. It’s another in a long line of brilliantly executed cover ups. We’ve all heard the name Felix M. Shag, captain of the carpet industry, and we’ve heard all about his mad experiments with carpet design… but we all know the truth.

Consider the name. Felix M. Shag? What a ridiculous name. It’s the sort of name that makes old scientists scoff and shout “preposterous!” Felix M. Shag is obviously a made up name, to hide this evil man’s true identity: Fofnog Ars Nakarune, captain of the alien starship Brogofile from the Planet Rafnal. Don’t believe me? Think about it for a while. Once you’ve decided to firmly believe in it, it becomes abundantly clear.

However, you may be one of those people who has refused to open their eyes to the truth. Let’s examine the facts.

Fact: In 1947 an unexplained, unidentified object crashes to the Earth in Roswell, New Mexico.

Fact: The incubation period of a Rofnallian Death Beast is approximately 23 Earth years.

Observation: Shag carpeting just happened to become popular in the 1970’s?

And this is all supposed to strike us as a coincidence? Yeah right. Tell that to Perry Pratchett, God rest his soul.

Due to a distant relation to the bard Taliesin, Terry and Perry Pratchett were only 12 year sold in the year 1970.  Yes, that’s right. A man who was born in 1948 was only 12 in 1970. Taliesin aged backwards, and because the Pratchetts are distantly related this effect is more or less random over the course of their lives. For example, when Terry and Perry Pratchett were three years old they were actually eighty-six. Stop getting stuck on these kinds of details and please just go along with the narrative.

So, ahem, back to 1970. Terry and Perry Pratchett were playing innocently in their living room when the fibers of the shag carpet suddenly rose to stand straight in the air. Terry, always the quicker thinker, immediately jumped onto the couch while his brother remained immobile. After those first few seconds it was too late. The shag carpet had already begun to eat Perry Pratchett’s feet.

“Terry!” Cried Perry as the shag carpet began to devour him from the toes up, a skeletal outline of the boy’s legs visible under the carpet like the remains of a large animal through the skin of an anaconda. The fibers continued to devour Perry, crawling like an inch worm up his body, taking his flesh bit by tiny bit. “Terry! Help me!”

For a moment, Terry Pratchett could only stare at his brother in horror. Shaking off his terror, Terry Pratchett jumped onto the ceiling fan, holding on with one hand and reaching toward his twin brother with the other. “Take my hand, Perry! Take it!”

For a moment, their finger tips brushed and Terry Pratchett moaned, trying his best to reach down far enough to grab hold of his beloved twin brother. They almost made it. Almost.

Instead, Terry Pratchett, suspended from the ceiling, watched as his screaming brother was swallowed whole by the shag carpet… until a skeletal shape underneath was all that remained. After a moment, that too disappeared, sliding underneath the carpet by the force of the fibers until the remains were deposited in the wall.

“Who are you!” Terry Pratchett screamed at the shag carpeting. “Why did you kill my brother?”

Then the fibers of the carpet shook like flowers in the breeze. “We are the Death Beasts of Rafnal IX. We will invade all homes on this planet and then devour the children of your world one by one.”

Hanging from the ceiling fan in his living room, a twelve year old Terry Pratchett made a promise. “Never!” He shouted. Then ripping a blade off of the fan, Terry Pratchett began to beat at the carpet as though trying to put out a fire for the next several hours, until all that remained were bits of lint.

Then, kneeling among the fuzz, Terrry Pratchett made a vow. “I will avenge you, Perry! If it takes me the rest of my life, I will destroy every shag carpet on the face of the planet!” And that’s just what he did.

Reason #3

His Amazing Skill with Cane Swords

A cane has many uses to a refined English gentleman, not the least of which is using it to move an orphan’s face from side to side to “get a better look at the lad.” Then of course there are the less obvious uses for canes such as prying open stubborn doors, using it at the end of a rope to make an improvised grappling hook, and even assisting the elderly to walk. Imagine, then how much more useful a cane becomes when it has a sword inside of it. Then imagine how even more useful it would be if it were magical. Terry Pratchett imagined the same thing.

The day after losing his brother to the shag carpet, a 28 year old Terry Pratchett began a search for the most mystically powerful weapon known to mankind to help him wage his secret war. While many laymen erroneously believe that the most powerful possible mystical weapon is some kind of crystal enchanted by seven or more magic-users, and while still others assume it must be a unicorn’s horn that has been fashioned into a dagger, the most powerful possible magic weapon is a cane sword. Why? Because it can simultaneously have all the kind of magical enchantments commonly put on canes, as well as all of those commonly put on swords. While either set of enchantments separately can be defeated, together they become unstoppable.*

Coming to this conclusion after weeks of study, a 16 year old Terry Pratchett embarked on a mission to China, given that old Chinese men are uncommonly wise and magical, as well as that they are old and therefore much more disposed to having canes. Also, given the prevalence of Samurai, much more likely to have combined canes and swords into a single magical weapon.

After spending several months at a Tibetan Monastery, Terry Pratchett was finally allowed to climb a not-insignificant number of steps to see the head monk and receive that weapon which he had desired since his brother had been eaten by shag carpeting. The most powerful kind of cane sword: A cane sword with an animal’s face on its hilt.

“And if you use this weapon for vengeance, Mr. Pratchett, will you find the peace you seek?” asked the wise old monk.

“I believe so, your holiness,” said Terry Pratchett, bowing his eighty year old liver-spotted head.

“Very well,” said the head monk. “Then all I have is a word of advice.” The old monk leaned forward to whisper. “Always trust your eyes. Occasionally they will deceive you, but only very occasionally, and the portion of society that can use optical illusions as anything other than party tricks is sufficiently small enough to be ignored. From a purely statistical stand point, it always pays to trust your eyes.”

Terry Pratchett bowed, and from that day on, spent the next nine years murdering every shag carpet he could find using the magic of his cane sword… but even that wasn’t enough.

*Enchanting all the attachments of a Swiss Army Knife or multi-tool to enhance this effect is extremely dangerous and often leads to nuclear explosions several times Hiroshima.

Reason #4

The Battle of Carpet Town USA

The year was 1979, and the shag rug had never been so popular. One man, even a man as skilled as Terry Pratchett could not have hoped to kill every single one even if he had spent the rest of his life stabbing one carpet after another. He needed help and he knew it.

“Lee!” Terry Pratchett shouted to the ghost that powered his haunted rickshaw. “Hold the rickshaw! I will return.” Getting off the seemingly unpowered rickshaw, Terry Pratchett and his intelligent mice entered the plant shop. Over the years, the battle against the shag carpets had taken its toll. Lee and the mice were his only friends.  Lee who could never be hurt, being for the most part a haunted rickshaw, and the mice who could nibble at any fiber long enough to destroy it.

“Do you think she’s the one?” Raphael squeeked into Terry’s ear as he headed toward the counter.

“Of course she is the one! The prophecies have all but confirmed it!” Piped Donatello.

“Quiet you two!” Hissed Terry Pratchett. As intelligent as the mice were they seemed hell bent on getting found out and dissected in a laboratory. “Remember what happened in Calcutta?” That shut them up. They still remembered being on the chopping block. Only Terry’s quick thinking had saved them before the blade fell.

“May I help you?” Asked the dangerously beautiful woman who entered through the back of the shop. If Terry had been a younger man, as he probably would be in several hours, he no doubt would have seduced her and found out what he needed to know for free. Instead, he extracted a stack of bills from his jacket pocket and slammed them down on the table.

“You have carnivorous plants. I require them. All you have and all you can get.” The woman stared down at the bills suspiciously.

“What do you intend to use them for?” She asked.

“That is my business and none of yours.” Responded Terry Pratchett grimly. He could still see Perry’s screaming face if he closed his eyes long enough.

“Then I cannot in good conscience give them to you.” The sword in the cane was at her throat before she could turn away. She eyed it almost dismissively. “So it is you. I have heard of you, Mr. Pratchett. I know death follows in your footsteps.”

“Who told you that?”

“It is not hard to find out, Mr. Pratchett. In your world Death speaks in capital letters.” Terry Pratchett sheathed the sword back into the cane.

“Then you must know of my quest, and why I have such a terrible need for carnivorous plants.” An appeal to honor was the final recourse. He could not kill an innocent woman.

“Yes! Take them! Take them all… and do not darken my doorstep again!” The woman left through the back again, crying softly.

“What was that all about?” Donatello whispered.

“I don’t know.” Said Terry. “God must have a funny imagination.”

“That’s an understatement,” squeaked Raphael.

“Sometimes I think God must be pretty fucking crazy,” muttered Terry Pratchett as he exited the shop and hopped back on top of his haunted rickshaw with a crate full of carnivorous plants.

*****

It was later that night that Terry Pratchett finally infiltrated the Carpet Town USA manufacturing plant. On his shoulder, Donatello and Raphael stood watch. In his hand… a fistful of steel murder shined like… something deadly, I suppose. It wasn’t long before he found Felix M. Shag in full Rafnalian form by the end of the product line.

“So we meet at last, Mr. Pratchett.” Felix M. Shag boomed, his body suspended up and above the floor by thousands of fibers of carpet. All the worsts colors of shag carpet spun around him in hues of orange, gold, green, and brown. Bits of gum could be seen to be stuck in it at odd places.

“Indeed we do, Mr. Shag. Nine years ago you killed my brother. I have come to collect on that debt… with interest.” On cue the mice dropped from his shoulders and scattered into the darkness.

“Our ship crashed here many years ago, Mr. Pratchett and we do not have the means to produce another. All that is left for us is to colonize your world. Surely a man such as you can see this! Consider what we can offer you, Mr. Pratchett! A world of shag carpets that will do your bidding! Think of the possibilities! Join us! My carpets your cane sword! Nothing will be able to stop us!” Felix sent fibers our to dance flame-like around the taciturn and 23 year old Pratchett.

“A world with bits of animal hair that can never be properly vacuumed out? A world where bits of gristle and plastic will always be underfoot? A world where if someone smokes in your house a single time it will always smell like a smoker’s den! Never!” Shouted Pratchett, swinging his sword around in an arc, causing all the fibers around him to drop to the floor writhing.

“Insolent mortal! Then you will die!” Shrieked Felix Shag. A wave of fibers rushed toward Terry Pratchett like an tsunami.

“Now!” Shouted Donatello and Raphael in unison from the shadows. Double doors at the back of the factory swung open as Lee, the haunted rickshaw, rolled at break-axle pace toward the oncoming tidal wave in his carriage… a crate full of carnivorous plants.

Felix M. Shag gagged in horror. “No my shag carpeting! Come back! Come back!” But it was too late. Too much momentum had been expended. The shag fibers fell on the rickshaw and tore open the crate. The carnivorous plants began to feed in a frenzy. For the one thing in all the galaxy that can cause carnivorous plants to move at interesting speeds is the fiber of a Rafnallian Death Beast. The plants, moving with blinding speed began to consume the fiber, leaving only lint covered bits of gum.

“Did you think I would try to face you all on my own? Did you think me so foolish, Shag! I found the weakness of your Death Beasts!” The solution had been obvious once he had realized that he could never defeat Shag’s forces unaided.

“What have you done!” Shag shrieked, pointing at the dying carpet. “She was the queen mother! We will be able to breed no more! You have made shag carpets extinct!” Then Terry Pratchett’s cane sword separated Shag’s head from his body, and the factory was silent except for the death murmurs of the Rafnallian Queen Mother.

“It is done.” Terry Pratchett sheathed his cane sword, and stood silently over the broken body of the haunted rickshaw who had given him so much. “May you find peace at last, Lee.” Terry whispered. Donatello and Raphael climbed up his pant legs back to his shoulders. Together, the three of them cried. It was time to start a new life.

When he was young… foolish though it was… he had always wanted to be a writer.

Reason #5

All the Stories are true… kind of

Look very closely at the Copyright page of any of Terry Pratchett’s books. You’ll see the following passage.

“This book is a book of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.”

Now, if you’ll look very closely with your imagination, it reads:

“These books are completely factual accounts. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from historical records of the Discworld and reconstructed so that one day our two peoples can become as one. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead in the Sol system is entirely due to quantum properties of octarine.”

Go here to buy. Start anywhere you’d like.

Author’s Note: This one took fourteen hours. And people wonder why I’ve never had a girlfriend.

Author’s Note: This is short and fictional because I am currently writing a piece about Terry Pratchett waging a secret war with shag carpets and am pressed for time. Also, while I did in fact have a drawing up in my apartment that I jokingly referred to as my imaginary wife, I never went this crazy with it.

One time in college when I was living with my imaginary wife, who was a picture of a woman I drew and put up on the wall, she started talking about how hot she found Marshall Mathers. That pretty much stopped me dead cold while I was taking a crap. I couldn’t even choke off the turd I was so mad.

I was like “You fucking bitch, you get off that picture and say that to me!” And she just sat there and gave me the most insolent smile I’ve ever seen so I slapped her. Bitch didn’t even flinch.

So you know what she said then? She said “I’m imaginary! I can’t even have thoughts of my own! I’m just an external outlet for your own voice! You think Marshall Mathers is attractive!” I started screaming and launched myself off the toilet at her. No way I was taking that shit from an anthropomorphized drawing.

So then we started wrestling all over the ground, me with my shitty ass, and her with that stupid smile. And I started screaming “Bitch! I’ll show you gay I am!” Then I just shoved my dick right through the paper, and emulated her screaming.

Man do I have problems with jealousy.

The piece where I compared Alien Vs. Predator to the two party system has been re-posted at The Wild Wild Left. Thanks to Diane G for letting me post there.

Also, I decided that this week’s chapter of Gray Bolt was much too short so I’m fixing it right now to include action that I didn’t include until the next chapter. Apologies and it will be up in about four hours from this post. I’m busting my ass right now to finish it.

Now as an apology for sucking so hard, feel free to blatantly insult me in the comments. The more creative the better. Also, here is an excellent Indian Music Video that makes me smile every time I see it.

I was planning on doing these advice columns weekly… then, because I was being asked questions I felt I had to answer honestly, I switched it to bi-weekly… and now it’s been a couple of months since the last one. So yeah, the more ridiculous the question I’m asked, the better. For some reason I can’t leave the science/writing questions alone… leading me to procrastinate before answering them.

Howdy-

I have been considering setting up a blog for some time, because while science is my skill, writing is my passion.  My hard drive is packed with old stories and articles sent to my friends and family, many of them garnering good attention. With a little prodding from Greta Christina’s blog, I finally decided to make one of my own. I was wondering if you had any tips about creating a readership, keeping it, and growing as a blogger.

Currently I only have a history type piece on there, but I am fairly sure the only person other than me that read it is…well…me.

Also, is there any etiquette for linking to other bloggers that I should know, so I don’t piss anybody off?

~Joe

The first key to getting an audience is knowing how to write well, and there’s only one good way to do that. You have to put the work in. While a lot of people seem to think there’s a great secret to writing, like wearing only one shoe, eating a mango, and wearing a tin foil hat in the shape of a swan that will cause you to produce excellent content, this is sadly not true.

Read a lot, write a lot, and throw away the crap. Be prepared to write a lot of crap. You’re going to go through whole sewage plants before you start finding the gold. I wrote over a million words before I was eighteen. Where are they now? They’re in a dump somewhere, where they belong.

Writing is like working out. When you first start, and you’re benching a hundred pounds, does anyone come by and say “Wow! That’s amazing!” Of course not. Any time you’re beginning at anything, with rare exception, you suck. That’s how life works. You have to work out every day, pop some steroids (editing in this case), and pretty soon you’ll be the kind of hulking monstrosity that people can’t help but notice. You know, like Carrot Top. If you do this long enough, you’ll notice three things happen to you as a writer.

1. You develop a voice. If you write with flavor, people will figure out that they like the taste of your work, and get hooked. There’s no trick to doing this other than putting in the work.

2. Your tastes become refined enough that you can look at your own work with a critical eye. You don’t look at it anymore and say “good” or “bad” you see how all the parts fit together mechanically, and work on those accordingly.

3. People don’t cringe anymore when you ask them to read a story you wrote.

When you do all of that, people will find you. It’s exactly like the Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. Except it’s nothing at all like that. So you should probably learn to use analogy too. Then there’s the one big final step, because being good isn’t enough. After you do all that, you need to write on a consistent basis to keep your audience amused. That’s the only way to keep them. Now for the rest of your e-mail.

The only question you should ask yourself when you link to someone is: do you have an honest good-opinion not only of them, but of their work?

The sites you choose to link to are more about your relationship with your audience than they are about your relationship with another blogger. If you’re discerning about what you link to, people will take note, and be more apt to click on your links. If you link to anybody regardless of the quality of their work, even if you like them, pretty soon everyone figures out “hey, I like this blog, but the links are shit” and they stop clicking.

The only thing you do when you put someone in your blogroll that’s not entertaining is send a message that “Hey, this blogroll now has no value to you as a consumer of media.” Your blogroll should be about work that you think both you and your audience would enjoy, not a networking tool. If the work is not there it gives no benefit to the person you were trying to help, and if anything decreases the traffic you can send to the really good stuff.

Not to say that you’ll never see any benefit from your blogroll. I met Violent Acres because I linked to her. I think John Scalzi found the piece I wrote about him in his stats, and that in turn got me a couple of hundred viewers. But I don’t send traffic to artists that I don’t like or that my audience won’t like. If you do that, all you do is get your audience to stop trusting you.

If Boing Boing linked to uninteresting shit every day do you think people would still go there? Of course not. Your power in linking is as an editor. Don’t be afraid to say no to someone who wants a link (like my friend Sara from tallbladeofgrass, will the meta jokes ever get old? I don’t think so), and don’t be timid about linking to someone who is much more popular than you simply because you like what they do.

“I’d like to see your thoughts on faster-than-light travel. The plausibility of a wormhole supported by exotic matter, moving through a wormhole connecting a black and white hole, alcuiberre drive, etc.”

~Mandrake the Magician

First, let’s review a little bit of Einstein.

General Relativity leads us to an inescapable conclusion: if you have mass, you cannot travel faster than light. Period. If you have mass even a Planck unit above zero, you cannot be given enough energy to travel as fast or faster than light. Unless there’s some cheat way of giving an object infinite energy that we don’t know about yet.

If you have zero mass (like a photon), you travel at the speed of light. If you have an imaginary mass (your mass is a multiple of i as in the case of a tachyon) it is theoretically possible to go faster than light, although this also leads inevitably to time travel.

I’m not a particle physicist, so the only real “proof” I’ve ever seen in support of a tachyon even existing is someone saying “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I did this to the mass of a particle so it could go faster than light?” It may also be predicted by symmetry in the Standard Model, but I don’t know enough about that to comment. I’m sure there’s some greater driving impetus than the one I know, so I’ll leave it at that.

Now for the fun ideas. The Alcubierre Drive is more or less what they use in Star Trek. You make space shorter, move a little bit, and then let space get longer again. Ta da! You travelled an incredible distance without violating relativity. My confusion over this is of course: how does one bend space?

The only way I know of to bend space is to create a massive gravitational distortion (i.e. have a really big fucking chunk of stuff in as dense a body as possible.) Are we getting a super massive black hole and riding behind it like a charioteer? Does that even work? How are we moving this gravitational distortion along with us? Shouldn’t it kill us? How do you stop the tidal forces of the spacial distortion from killing everyone inside your vessel?

Apparently there are theoretically possible ways of doing this with exotic matter, but I won’t even pretend I know enough about that to comment. Hopefully someone finds a loophole in the laws of physics, because I really want a faster than light space-ship. I’ll pray that they make some amazing discoveries from the Large Hadron Collider, because that’s the only contribution I can make.

As for your black hole question… in theory every time a black hole is created a white hole is created somewhere else. The only problem is that no one has ever observed a white hole in our universe. Some physicists have hypothesized that this is how the universe reproduces. Every white hole becomes the seed of a new universe (the problem with this of course being is that there’s not enough mass being sucked into the black hole to become a new universe… but fuck, it’s a black hole, who really knows what it’s doing?)

As for the worm-hole questions… I get confused about it all to be honest. So we use them to rip a hole/create a bridge though space. Okay. Now… is there still an event horizon at each end? Because if that’s the case I’m not going to be able to get out of the one on the other end no matter how fast I go through the one at my end.  Do the blackholes just disappear and leave me with this weird space corridor? What stops the corridor from disappearing? The whole idea confuses me on about ten thousand different levels. When people start saying “Hey! What if we bombarded the black hole with exotic particles?” I just start to cry, and stop following their argument.

I would really prefer to just climb on board a ship and have someone say “BAM! We’re here.”

“I’d like to see a comparison of the mass of Death Star I (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ultimate_Weapon) to that of the uncompleted Death Star II (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star_II)”

 ~Andrew”

Do the exact same thing I did in the last entry I posted on this, except with a new value for the radius. Then when you’re done, make a guess to how far along the new Death Star is to completion in terms of the amount of material that needs to be brought on board. I’d say 3/4 would be a good estimate. Multiply the mass  you find of a complete giant Death Star by 3/4. That’s the mass of the unfinished Death Star.

If you’re feeling ambitious, figure out how many moles of steel (which would be our guess metal) are used in the construction of the Death Star, then multiply that by the heat of vaporization of steel to find the total energy released when the Death Star blows up. Figure out the distance from Endor, and then decide how powerful the shock wave from the exploding Death Star is once it hits the planet, and compare that to an event like Hiroshima.