"Alabama" is a four-letter word.

Sorry about there being no entry yesterday. It was that sort of a day. I spent the better part of it reading comic books. Sometimes, it still weirds me out that a legitimate part of my work is reading comic books. Anyway, there was also another Hollywood nibble yesterday. I've quickly gotten sort of oh-yeah-whatever about the movie thing. Someday it will happen. Or it won't. We'll see. I don't break out the champagne anymore when a producer or studio calls my film agent.

Most of you probably know by now about the anti-gay legislation that has been proposed by Rep. Gerald Allen of (deep breath) the Great State of Alabama (exhale). Allen wants a ban imposed that would forbid all Alabama public libraries, schools, and state universities from using books which "foster" homosexuality; that is, all literature, film, plays, science textbooks, etc. which present gays and lesbians in something other than a negative light. According to the Birmingham News, "Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed." Okay. Don't think this one has any chance in heck of becoming law? You should remember, the average IQ in Alabama is only 90 (I'm not making that up), and a lot of people there are still pissed about that whole forced-integration thing (I'm not making that up, either). I, for one, would not be the least bit surprised were such a law to become reality. Having grown up in Alabama, having grown up queer in Alabama, and having, inexplicably, spent the better part of my life there, it seems all too possible to me. Even with a handicap like that double-digit IQ buisness dragging them down, there are a few things which most Alabamians do very well: hate, football, barbeque, football, deer hunting, football, and hate. In that order.

Of course, taking punches at Alabama is sort of like kicking a dead dog. The dog is beyond caring, and all that comes of it is you get your shoes dirty.

(pause for effect)

Dial-up frelling sucks. And I'm stuck with it until January 6th when the DSL fairy comes back. Everything I do online seems to be taking me at least three times as long as usual.

My thanks to bev_vincent, who said kind things in his blog about Murder of Angels, and my thanks to docbrite for pointing Bev's comments out to me. I'm especially pleased when people say that they've read MoA before Silk and not sensed that they were missing anything. I've worked very hard to write books that are interconnected and yet stand entirely on their own.

Speaking of Silk, it has been given an unexpected, two-month reprieve from the jaws of remaindering. I learned day before yesterday that Penguin won't be pulling the plug until February 1, 2005. Small victories.

As promised, we're beginning a new round of eBay auctions (hampered, of course, by dial-up). We're starting off with copies of The Five of Cups beginning at only $20. Use "Buy It Now" and get a free Nyarlathotep CD, Their Thoughts Make Spirals In Our World, and a monster doodle by yours truly. This time, though, monster doodles will be limited strictly, one per person. I don't have time to do more.

Is that all for today? I think so. Except that I did want to point out that my last entry, the one about Giordano Bruno and extraterrestrial life and no one human being special, about Homo sapiens not being anything special, that was most emphatically not intended as a nihilistic statement. I hate being taken for a nihilist. My claim is not that life is meaningless, but that the greater meaning lies in the whole rather than with the individual parts of this cosmos. Because a thing is transient, that doesn't mean it is without meaning. I'm saying look at the big picture, the bigger the better, and maybe the human race can at least delay the gravity of its own inevitable demise.

Retraction (of sorts)

Addendum: So, this morning I stated, in my comments on Gerald Allen's bigotry, that Alabama has an average IQ of 90. I drew this information from a diagram that was very widely circulated on the internet and even appeared in The Economist shortly after the election, a diagram which purported to show a correlation between higher IQs and states that went Democrat (and vice verse). I was at once informed by grandmofhelsing that the diagram had been shown to be a hoax, and that The Economist had duly printed a retraction. This is true, and it should be a lesson to me to do more than trust a claim that something is based on data from the "National Centre for Education Statistics" and the "Census Bureau." Discarding the hoaxed data, I can not claim to know the average IQ of Alabama. I do not, however, retract my opinion, based on all the years I've lived in Alabama, that it is an extremely inhospitable and intolerant place. But, then, one could say the same of most of America, so maybe I have no point after all.