Quickie Challenge: Horror Poetry

I decided to challenge myself and see if I could write anything decently scary, or at least vaguely suggestive of the right atmosphere in ten minutes or less. Below, you will see the fruits of my labor. It ought not be too challenging, given the atmosphere of the times.

I cannot see
I cannot speak
I cannot breathe
I cannot blink

But I can hear, so very well.
So I am here, and this is hell.

The doctor's sad, full of remorse
I'm in a coma, there's no recourse
I hear her sob, I hear her dread
And she insists, I'll stay in bed.

So here I lie, for all my days
Trapped inside as my hair grays.
They do not hear my mental cry
Or my hopes that I might die.


What do you think? Have I done any justice to the subject? I tried to imagine what a coma might be like, as locked-in syndrome is about the most terrifying thing that I can imagine happening to anyone. I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy, I think.


Unrelated, but if you're in Russia, greetings! Can anyone tell me why my blog is so popular in your country? I'm dying to know.

A Day in the Cold

How many hours have I been out here? Has it been days? Weeks, even? It's all a blur in this bright, white chaos. I pull my collar to my cheeks, the meager cloth of my garment doing little to stave off my continuing descent into hypothermia.

It stopped being cold some time ago, roughly the time that I had given up any prospect of trudging another damnable inch from where I am now huddled. Presently, I am all too aware that I may never leave this tundra. The warmth is just too overbearing. I remember hearing that warmth is a sign that you're in the final stages. That's good. Nobody ever told me how tedious dying in a blizzard could be.

But still, there's something calming about all of this. The forceful gale around me has a certain beauty as it catches each tiny whisp of snow in its unseen tendrils, tossing them all around me, dusting my beard and hair with the chilled ivory powder.

Never had I dreamt that something so beautiful could presage something so hideous.

The One I Was Too Angry To Properly Title

As those of you who know me or read my blog or are even slightly aware of my motivations and desires may know, as a child, I desired nothing more than to join the military. I knew, though, that with my disability, I'd never be able to enlist as a foot soldier - despite my heartfelt desire to do so. Therefore, at a very young age I dedicated the majority of my talents and intellect to the pursuit of martial knowledge in the hope that I could get some kind of officer position, or, perhaps, a teaching post at West Point. Sun Tzi was my idol, growing up. Hannibal Barca was my mentor. To this day, even, my direct ancestor Ulysses S Grant is a tremendous inspiration behind everything that I throw my efforts into.

I forsook the study of more practical matters in favor of military esoterica. And why shouldn't I have? It interested me and I honestly believed it would pay off later in my career. I achieved - and maintain - a near savant level of knowledge in military history, ranking structure of various international armies and navies, foreign and domestic small arms and political motivations for damn near every armed group in existence today and in the past. However, this was not enough for the United States military. After years of trying, I've mostly resigned myself to the fact that I will never be a soldier.

Even if the discriminatory hiring practices of the US Armed Forces were to end, my political beliefs and disdain for the civilian apparatchik of government would likely earn me few friends in the higher ranks, and I would thus be relegated to the low level bureaucratic grunt work that is rapidly being replaced by civilian contractors. I am mostly fine with this, though I still nurture a simmering grudge against the powers that be for denying me my greatest ambition in life.

Can anything be done about my fate? Likely not. I've lobbied every congressman I've ever had - even when new ones are elected - since the time I was 14. I wrote lengthy missives to my government at every level of representation, their inaction at every turn further fueling my desire to see the useless fucks thrown out on the street. It has never amounted to anything, and were this not something I wanted so much, I'd be content with it.

However, my simmering fury at the matter was brought back to the fore today. You see, one of my favorite places on the internet is /k/: 4chan's board of weapons aficionados and fanboys. I didn't link to it, as their level of decorum is, well, perhaps not for everyone to put it in the lightest terms possible. Anyway, while browsing /k/ today, I noticed a thread devoted to making gun nuts angry. Fancying a good chuckle, I decided to give it a look. That's where I found this:

That's right. You see, despite my immense level of knowledge and expertise with all matters military, I was never able to enlist. However, the United States Marine Corps decided to debase itself by allowing Private Butterball here into their ranks. Take a look at her collar. It's hard to see from this image, but those are at least Private's chevrons. She actually passed basic. Let me repeat that: she actually completed basic training but somehow is still in the military despite being the size of a grounded zeppelin.

Mere words cannot quantify my fury and rage at this. I can never in a thousand times express my undying and unyielding hatred for the fact that this person is somehow good enough to serve my beloved armed forces while I am left out. What makes her so much better than me? What, practically, can she do that I cannot? If anything, I'm more capable. Whereas she probably can't walk to her car without getting winded, I rolled my ass two miles in my wheelchair this morning and will do so tomorrow as part of my daily exercise regimen.

I could allow myself not being in the military when they told me that every active duty serviceman had to at least be a capable rifleman. However, it is evident from this fucking picture that this is merely lip service. I am infuriated and incensed. Worse than that, I am livid. But the very worst thing about this is that there isn't a damned thing I can do to overturn this discriminatory hiring practice that I haven't already done and am not, on some level, already doing. Does anyone have any idea what I should do about this? Because I'm at wit's end.

Thanks for reading my very angry post. It's just pretty infuriating to have something that you've desired for your entire life denied to you only to see it made a mockery of by those who probably don't even appreciate what they've got? I mean, how could she even appreciate that she's fit enough to serve? Look at the state she's let herself get in. All of my rage. All of it. Ever.

In non rage related news, I'm bandying about the idea of restarting Red States since my latest job ended up letting me go before I even got to start. Apparently - after assuring me a million times to the contrary - they had nothing available for handicapped security officers to do. Just fucking great. Oh, hey, that wasn't non ragey at all. Oh well.

Thanks again for letting me vent, all.

[Political Content Post]

It has been some time since I've written a political post, so I figure that there's no time like the present to rectify this grievous wrong. If you don't like these posts, feel free to skip it and wait a few weeks for me to post some humorous apocrypha from my daily misadventures or some small tidbit of fiction that I happen to be tinkering with. If you're a subscriber here, I'm sure that that will prove to be more to your liking.

Anyway, I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the state of the world. It's positively abysmal, in the very kindest of terms. Criminals are more powerful than ever, governments the world over are encroaching ever more on their denizens' freedoms and rights and both groups have unprecedented - and growing - power to destroy your very safety and serenity no matter where you might be. Aiding, abetting, and comprising both groups are the ever present and all powerful megacorporations which in effect rule the world. These foul organizations are the embodiment of all that is wrong with the world. They're too big to fail. They're too vast to be accountable to anyone. They're too impersonal to be reigned in by morals. Their only allegiance is to the almighty dollar - or Euro, or Yen, or Yuan. Pick your poison, it's all the same. These multinational corporations possess such capital that they can get whatever they want from governments with great benefit to their bottom line and great peril to our liberties.

It didn't have to be like this, however. Throughout the development of the modern world, we've had several opportunities to avert this horrible present in which we live from coming to fruition. We could have sided with Unions and workers against their bourgeoisie masters in the Depression. We could have rejected Reagan's absurd corporate tax rates. We could have worked with the Soviets to ensure that the Cold War didn't spend them to death. We could have rejected interference in Southeast Asia or kept our noses out of the Middle East. We could have preserved a world wherein there were many poles of power independent of the world of capital. Where if the United States refused to control her corporations, why, the USSR or the British Empire could step in and knock them down a peg.

Multipolarity is the best way of dealing with the world, in my opinion. It ensures that no one is powerful enough to be oppressive but no one is so weak that they cannot protect themselves. Instead, we live as we do now: where the illusion of peace is preserved for the sake of the oligarchy's bottom line.

I close by saying for the umpteenth time that I wish fervently that we had not won the Cold War. I wish we still had Communism as a world power. Marxist-Leninism wasn't perfect, sure, but can the world really be any worse than it is under the Capitalists? Of course not. In any case, the coming resource shortages of the 21st century will invariably prove that Capitalism is the worst way to run humanity. It is insustainable in the long term and immoral for us as a whole.

But who am I kidding? We'll survive. Or, at least, the rich and enough of the poor to serve their needs will live on and the gulf between them will widen. Hell, we'll just rob Africa some more and start exploiting space. "Civilization" will live on.

The Hospital Kind of Sucks

Pardon me, readers, as I beg your indulgence for a bit of a rant.

You ever have a PICC line? It's a delightful piece of work. Here's a Wikipedia article about it if you're curious.They cut open your vein just under your subclaveaen artery on your upper arm and loop this glorified IV through your chest and just sort of poke it to the point where it just rests barely outside of the entrance to your heart.

See, I have one of those now, and for a paraplegic, it's kind of a bitch. Anyway, I had this delightful thing installed due to the fact that I had a small bone infection that had been plaguing me since mid last year. So, with that removed my doctor prescribed an extended course of antibiotics to be administered intravenously. This is an incredibly good idea as it's basically the best way of killing off whatever lingering creepy-crawlies might lurk in the area.

HOWEVER

I have the wonderful distinction of having had most of my veins destroyed early in my life due to the extensive surgeries required by my spinal defect. Kinda shitty, but whatever. Anyway, this means that I can't really be getting new IV ports stuck in every 3-5 days for a month as my antibiotic course would require. Hence, the PICC.

I just got home from the hospital. My arm is as sore as a whole heap of motherfuckers and a rant seemed warranted. So thanks for reading. Now you know where I was and just *what* I was up to. I feel a nap coming on.

A Trip to the Fabric Store II: Trip Harder

Earlier this month, I related to you all my descent into the very heart of darkness and despair as my girlfriend and I defied all common sense and journied to Jo-Ann Fabrics in order to acquire various materials for our assorted projects. As anyone who has read the aforementioned article, has been to Jo-Ann, or has read the not so subtext of this introduction can attest; this was an enormous mistake. This, however, is not about why I awake screaming every night. No, this is about our trip to Micheal's.

You see, a couple of weeks ago, we decided to give Jo-Ann's main competition a chance and the nearest location that hadn't been converted to a meth lab was in Buford. We piled into our car and traveled south along 85, Googling the directions to the store and putting them into my GPS because my phone is crappy I refuse to enable location services. We arrived at Exit 4 and, as anyone who knows the area can confirm, we knew our search had begun in earnest since everything worthwhile in Buford is just off the exit. It was only once we got closer to the end of the GPS's trail that we realized that something was terribly wrong.

It turns out that Micheal's, according to my GPS unit, was in the middle of the Mall of Georgia's parking lot. This is not only a terrible place to try to sell anything but suspect oranges and counterfeit consumer goods, but it's also precisely where Micheal's wasn't. Upon confirming that we had, in fact, gotten the address correct and retrying it in the GPS, we decided to simply burn a few hours in the mall because our time is quite abundant.

It was as we were leaving that we saw it, directly across from our favorite exit to the mall. In giant letters on an obnoxiously plain sign, the plainly written word Micheal's. Rolling our eyes (in perfect unison, as is our custom) we drove into the parking lot and entered.

Now, let me tell you that Micheal's is a completely different world from Jo-Ann's. Literally the only thing they didn't have was fabric. Jo-Ann's Fabrics understandably has an advantage there, but we still refuse to ever visit again. Instead, we got X-acto knives, a model AH-64 Apache, a few art pencils and a few other supplies. We were, overall, quite pleased. The only oddity in this store was that for some reason an eighth of the women there were pregnant. So, really, we knew that we'd found our store because at least the patrons of Micheal's can get laid.

Submitted for your approval.

Musings: Space

This will prove inordinately difficult to believe, but I like to consider myself an optimist - at least when it comes to certain things. One of those things being humanity's needs and eventual prospects in space. Ultimately, I believe that we'll end up assuming a more settled place in the cosmos; spreading our seedy tendrils from rock to rock and star to star. If we don't annihilate ourselves or exhaust our planet before our technology reaches a suitable point and we aren't too shortsighted to see the need for it, it is utterly inevitable.

However, something that people don't consider is how completely terrifying space actually is. I mean, it can't be just me who thinks this, right? Consider: known space is nearly completely and totally empty. The distance between Earth (or, more precisely, the outermost edge of Earth's space junk debris cloud) and our sole moon - infinitesimal in astronomic terms - is so devoid of matter and content that it completely surpasses any void you have probably ever encountered in your life in terms of its utter desolation. That's just a cosmic stones throw. Consider the distance, now, from us to our nearest star: a distance greater than the sum of all distance ever traveled in human history. The distance from our galaxy to Andromeda, the distance to the next galactic cluster, and so forth are all exponentially more vast. It's all so empty.

Now consider what dwells in the other percent of a percent of a percent of space. The rocks. Most of those are, as well, desolate and devoid of life. Many of those aren't just desolate, but they are in fact hostile to life as we know it. They're bathed in radiation and clouded in toxins. It's just a completely and utterly awful place for us as a species.

At last, consider what *isn't* empty or deserted or desolate. Consider the rocks that have life. Consider the one-in-a-septrillion rock that has thinking, breathing life upon it. Life that can form and exist in ways that we can hardly conceive of with our brains that have spent billions of years condensing out of Sol's stardust. Think of how we treat each other and think of what these strange and inconceivable creatures might do when faced with this.

Just my two cents.

We

Well, first some news. Red States is on hold for the foreseeable future. It is very much a collaborative work and collaboration is the sort of thing I prefer to do in person whenever possible. As my co-author has moved to California, I doubt this will be possible for quite some time. However, it would be unwise to assume that my muse has left me. Indeed, I have begun a new project called We. It's an interconnected series of short stories taking me back to my most beloved of genres: horror. It's the tale of a small town in the Southeast as it grapples with visitors from beyond the stars who harbor a horrifying secret that will challenge everything they know about the world and themselves.

I actually based this on some day dreams I had as a child. You see, I've always been fascinated by aliens and UFO sightings, and despite my skepticism and rational beliefs, I truly do want to believe in them. While I harbor an extremely idealistic hope for whatever aliens might be out there, anyone who tells you they have no *fear* of what might lie beyond our world is either a liar or else they aren't quite cognizant of the implications of what they're pondering.

Anyway, as a child I was in the third row seat of my dad's Plymouth minivan as we returned home from the local Winn-Dixie. As an adult looking back on the event, I'm sure what I saw was the bright lights that the grocery store used to illuminate the store-front parking lot reflecting against the tinting of the window next to me. However, at that young age I truly did believe it to be an alien craft. How could I not? After all, my good friend Levi, with whom I am still in contact, and I frequently discussed aliens and UFOs. It was a subject that was frequently on my mind in those dreamy, youthful days. Unhindered by my cynical adult skepticism, my subconscious was free to spin many a dream and nightmare about what those lights might portend.

Though it's no longer a cornerstone of my life and fascinations, I still hold a deep interest in aliens. It's always been something that I've wondered about and wanted to write about, but until recently I just didn't know how to approach it. I hope you're all please with the direction in which I'm taking this story, as it's long been a dream of mine to write some truly great alien abduction horror.

I invite you, now, to read the first part of this new horror opus: Mike's Story.


I'm awake now. I am terrified and I am awake and I am far more terribly and horrifyingly sane and lucid than I have ever been at any moment in my life. I know so much now. I know so much more than I ever wanted to know about our place in the universe. I mean all of us. You and me. 

I used to sit awake at night and dream of all the things that might be out there. I used to wonder all about the stars and the many rocks spinning around them and all the stories that might at that very moment in time be unfolding on all those tiny little spinning specks of dust around all those twinkling dots of light in that great light speckled above. 
And then I met Carol. 

She was a woman of reason and grace. She set my dreaming ways aside and showed me a world of the rational and the real. She was a doctor and a skeptic. She used to sit with me and watch the TV and we'd laugh at all of the phony psychics and the televangelist scam artists. We'd poke fun at the Bigfoot "researchers" and the die-hard ghost documentary crowd. We just found it all so tremendously funny; these feeble minded hicks who were taken in by the unknown and spinning it all into delusional fantasies. I guess we had a pretty twisted sense of humor. 

Oh, and her dogs. She loved her dogs. She had two of them. Two of the sweetest labs you'd ever seen. There was Gemma and Hadrian. They loved to run and jump and fetch and play and if you rubbed Hadrian's belly just right, he'd keep twitching his leg for an hour. 

But, I digress. When the local rednecks began talking about lights in the sky, we... Well, we approached it with our usual humor. We scoffed at the yokels, amusing ourselves with the notion that they might not actually even know what an airplane was. We kept laughing even after the first night.

Even at the time, something didn't feel right about those lights we saw when we spent the evening hours together on our dock. They didn't seem to sit right in the sky. Something about the way they moved and the way they *didn't* move was not too distant from the spots you get when you stare at a halogen bulb for too long. I fancied that it was a trick of the eyes. Perhaps from some unexplained prominence of the moon's light... But it was cloudy. It was cloudy and Carol... She said she saw it too. We gathered Gemma and Hadrian, our ever present companions, and went back to our home. 

The next morning, the dogs were nowhere to be found. We looked and looked all over our property, but we couldn't find the slightest sign of them. Well, nothing of them physically. We found their collars down by the creek bed which fed the pond. They looked... singed. I hadn't seen the likes of those burns in my life, though. There was a strange quality about them. The collars were polyester. The fibers should have melted and globbed, but they seemed frayed. It was as if they'd burned from the inside out, it seemed. But that couldn't have been possible. I pocketed the collars and spent the better part of the rest of the day looking for Gemma and Hadrian, to no avail.

Taking the collars back to the house, I studied them in greater detail. My efforts to determine what had happened to the dogs that would leave the collars like this were fruitless. It was Carol who nervously suggested that some of the local hicks might have shot the poor things. I called Sheriff Woods down in town to let him know to look for them. I guess that's what we came out to the sticks for, anyway. You know, the sense of community. A place where the cops will care about your dogs and stuff. With nothing further to do and a long day of prowling the woods for our wayward dogs behind us, Carol and I returned to bed. 

I awoke with a start. The house was bathed in a radiant white light. Next to me, the bed was empty. I shouted for my girlfriend but was answered only with silence. God, that light. It was blinding. I normally hate guns, but in my fear, I kept a level head and went to the closet across the room to retrieve Carol's grandfather's old service pistol from World War II. I'd seen her shoot the old .45 a number of times and she'd even managed to rope me into it once or twice. I checked the clip and the holes in the side indicated that all seven rounds were in place. Racking the slide as I'd seen my girlfriend do so many times, I left our room. 

Despite being windowless, the hallway from our room to the staircase was bathed in the same blinding light as our bedroom. I raised my right hand to my eyes, parting the fingers so as to shield myself from most of the light, tightly clenching the aged gun in my off hand. It was so quiet. It was so damnably quiet. As I turned to mount the staircase, I saw them in the hallway, heading to the door. 

There was Carol. She was just... She was following them. I... They looked like people but their proportions were all wrong. They were so tall, but they were impossibly thin. I don't even know how they held themselves up or supported their large, bulbous heads. And she was... She was going with them. And I don't know how they heard me. I don't know why. I just know that Carol turned. She turned right at me and looked up and smiled. "Come with us." She said. She smiled and beckoned me to come with them. 

Then, her horrible minders turned to me and stared to me with black, dead eyes. My god, their eyes! They were so big and they were so unblinking and they were so cold! They looked at me! I don't know how I know what they were looking at but I know it was *me!* 
I squeezed the trigger of Carol's grandfather's gun and I closed my fingers over my eyes and I screamed I screamed and shot again I fell in the corner and cried as I heard the most horrible of sounds. I can't even describe them! My God in heaven, those sounds!

I awoke hours later, crumpled under a table at the top of the stairs. The front door was off of its hinges and nowhere in sight. I looked all around the house for Carol but she's not here. I looked all around the woods, despite my knowing that she wouldn't be there. I tried to call the Sheriff but my cell phone won't get signal and the landline is dead. Town's too far to walk, my car won't start, and I have the most horrible  suspicion that I wouldn't make it anyway. When I came back in, the entryway to my house reeked of gunpowder and another, more subtle burning smell. I returned to the table where I passed out and saw the gun I had used last night at the top of the stairs. I checked the clip and saw five rounds within. I know they're coming back. I know what I have to do. I just hope I have the courage. 

I don't want to be here when they come back for me.



Anyway, there it is. I hope you all enjoy it, and I encourage you all to let me know what you think. Honest critique is appreciated, as usual. This is only a draft, mind you, and a rather rough one at that.

A Trip to the Fabric Store

Despite being a literary cliche, it was indeed a cold and stormy night when my girlfriend and I found ourselves at Jo-Ann fabrics in Gainesville. We had come to avail ourselves of their wares for our various projects: the construction of Mandalorian armor, the manufacture of pouches for my wheelchair, and so forth. We thought nothing of the terrifying weather around us, only paying the requisite attention one need pay when a risk of sleet and ice is present.

We wrapped ourselves in our coats and crossed the parking lot with all due haste, not caring to linger in the downpour around us. Upon entering the store, we were bathed in the customary fluorescent light characteristic of low-end, big box retail establishments. Knowing what we wanted, we set to work, not yet entirely aware of the dour mood that pervaded the store.

Our first hint of the misery within came when I observed the pained expression common to the customers of the store. It spoke to me at length of great longing and sadness, of tragic and wasted lives spent amongst half formed constructs of felt and cheap yarn; where budget priced white box wine pushed regret down - temporarily - into a nice, forgettable corner of the subconscious. The expression did not seem entirely unusual to me, as this is the sort of person one tends to find out and about at the hour we had made our expedition, and so we paid these tortured souls no heed.

We pressed on amidst these shambling husks of people into the aisle which contained the raw materials we needed for one of our projects. Turning to grab what I required, I spotted an employee whose back seemed to be hunched by the weight of all the world's sorrows. Our eyes locked and I knew then what it was to glimpse into the very heart of misery. I turned away with haste to gaze once more upon my lover's warm continence, lest this wretched creature claim my very soul. I heard, or at least I believe that I heard, the pitiful being amble towards a customer in the next aisle where a muttered conversation was only half audibly perceived by me.

At length, the employee issued forth an anguished cry. "What do you wanna go to Micheal's for?" she asked in a nasally, high pitched drawl. She was answered only by the back of the customer, who I saw exit the aisle and leave the store, a cashier reaching longingly for her as if to pull her back down into the pit of depression in which this store resided. I knew that we were no longer safe here. If we did not make good on a hasty retreat, I feared for our ability to ever feel joy again for the rest of our natural lives.

We gathered our goods and made a diligent path towards the sole cashier on duty that dreary night as the previously encountered employee's cries issued forth from a back room to which she had presumably retreated. Before we even reached the counter, the cashier shrieked at us an offer to join their value club - ensuring that they would forever have us in their sullen grasp. My girlfriend, wise beyond her years, immediately replied as she laid our purchases upon the counter. "I'm sorry sir" she said, presenting a far braver facade than I believe I had at the time "but we're moving." The cashier was unfazed. "Well when are ya movin'?" he replied. "If it's not too soon..." Here he was cut off by my beloved as she pushed her debit card forward to buy her items. We paid with no further conversation and made good on our exit.

Arriving home, we slowly absorbed the pain and desperation of the atmosphere we had narrowly escaped. As a final insult, it seemed they had overcharged us on a sheet of foam presentation board, which would have been far cheaper than what we believed it had originally been anyway had we gone anywhere else. We had been cheated, in the end. We had been cheated by that damnable pit of sorrow and misery. And darkness and decay and Jo-Ann's Fabrics held illimitable dominion over all.

UPDATE: My good friend Elisabeth tells me that this is not at all unusual for fabric stores, so just fuck the whole damned enterprise.

The Last Horror

I've decided to write a short story to re-energize my creative juices. It's an idea I've been kicking around for the better part of a day, so I thought I might as well go ahead and write it out. It's flash fiction, done up in the better part of an hour, so don't go expecting fancy things like a deep, enriching universe or perfect exercise of the finer points of punctuation. So, without further ado, here's a sci-fi horror flash fiction short story I call The Last Horror.



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It's been about three galactic standard months since we set out from the shipyards at Nova Simbirsk. We were under the command of Rear Admiral Arnold Giesling, perhaps the last great military mind the League of Colonies had left. Under him were Lieutenant General Martin Hanover, Colonel-General Thomas Downes and General Vasili Kuroglev. We loaded into the Seventh Order Fleet, the pride and joy of humanity, the core of our remaining military strength; consisting of eight Marathon-class battleships, twenty-seven Agamemnon-class heavy cruisers, two Odyssey-class heavy carriers (each with an expanded twelve wings of fighters, plus or minus scores of stragglers) and a whole plethora of supply vessels, civilian support barges and outdated, patched up hulks. Anything we could bring to bear on the Hive, we gathered at Nova Simbirsk.

I was aboard the Euphrates, a refitted Perseus-class destroyer and a relic of the Harvest Crises about fifty standard years back. I don't suppose that it matters now, but I was a lieutenant-commander under Vice Captain Miles Kiljoy. I remember asking him when we were a few hours out from our objective if he thought we had any chance in hell of pulling this off - if we could finish our mission and force a peace. He grimly chewed the mouthpiece of his pipe silently before returning to duty. I think that was the prevailing mood throughout the fleet.

About five standard years into a great galactic peace, several colonies out on the Rim reported a strange prominence in background radiation out into the intergalactic abyss. No one really thought much of it until their extranet links went down, cutting the colonies out of galactic civilization. To deal with the issue, the League dispatched Marshall Kim Su-Jeoul and his Eighth Expeditionary Marines from the Songnam System with a force of about 1200 marines on two top of the line Caesar-class cruisers. A week later, a single Beluga dropship jumped into the Harvest System, the hub of commerce and trade for the outer rim, screaming distress calls across all channels and venting its drive plasma like a bloody streak across the stark black of the system.

My ship, the Euphrates was there to retrieve the small vessel, fishing out the lone survivor of our first contact with the Hive. The poor Ensign aboard told us of the abominations that had come to our galaxy, surfing on a wave of radiation that had come from the consumption of the dwarf galaxy they'd called home in some great cataclysm unknown to our science. They had given him a message: that humanity was viewed as their competition. That the Milky Way, in all of its bounty, hadn't enough resources for they and us. Hell, it barely had enough to support the League of Colonies and her client states. Nobody really blamed the Ensign when he put a round through his head the second he was left on his own.

The response was remarkably swift, given humanity's track record. The military, formerly relegated mostly to police roles and the odd insurrection here and there was substantially bolstered with new ships and reactivated hulks, manned by throngs of conscripts and patriotic volunteers. "Remember the Rim!" was the old recruitment drive, I think.

Regardless of our best efforts, though, the war went poorly for us. The Hive were expert warriors and their distinctive ebony ships, looking carved from some sort of reflective coral, rained down on the skies of a thousand doomed worlds. So effective were they at waging war that few lived to see their ships and no picture of a Hive warrior existed for they were so adept at slaying our ground troops and civilians.

Eventually, the ground war was all but abandoned with the special military government declaring that any world set upon by the Hive was to be forfeited and their terraforming engines set to overload, effectively ionizing the atmosphere and sterilizing the planet. The Suicide Order was seen as pragmatic, the ultimate convergence of scorched Earth warfare and mercy for those who would elsewise face a long and futile war of resistance.

Finally, last year, the Hive claimed Earth. Lord Gerard Montgomery of Albion Colony enacted the Minerva Protocol, recalling all League vessels to his system to put together a plan of final resistance. A grand fleet - as described earlier - was to form in the neighboring Russkaya system and all remnants of the League's navy were to comprise it. The few stragglers would remain to defend the Albion system and the last vestiges of our species which had, less than a decade ago, held so much promise.

Fleet Intelligence had estimated the Hive's home colony to be set up around Sigma Octanis XVI, about twelve parsecs out past our farthest colony. We were to jump in system and kidnap what FI led to believe must be their leadership structure. Though we had no idea what they looked like, we knew that each fleet we had seen was protecting the same ship - a four kilometer long red coral shard that formed the heart of each attack. We were to deposit the entirety of our Marine component into that ship and capture it. What we knew of Hive tactics at the time indicated that this would force a peace with the species and we could begin negotiations. Nobody had any hope for this mission, but no one knew just how badly it would go.

The battle itself was a complete and total wash. We did manage to take out one of their vessels, but the second that blazing shard slammed into their planet, the whole of their fleet came at us, their weapons bursting through our ships hulls like they'd been built out of wax. I seized the helm of the Euphrates from our helmsman, a dazed young conscript who, years ago, would have been barely qualified as a freshman in one of our academies. I plotted a blind jump with the only preset on our navcomp that the jump take us to a system with a habitable planet.

The screaming hulk of the Euphrates burned into the upper edges of a barely habitable iceball on the outskirts of a dying star system near the core, where even the nights were lit with oppressive, cold light from the millions of densely packed stars in the sector. Though our new home was cold, it was also bathed in intense radiation as a result of the tight density of stellar formation in the sector. Those who didn't die in the battle or the crash began to fade to suicide, radiation poisoning, or starvation. The ship's rations were dwindling. Of an initial 15000 crewmen, a scant 452 of us were still alive as of last week's head count. It's probably 75% of that now. It would be lower if it weren't for what happened two days ago.

You see, since we landed, we had seen increasing numbers of Hive vessels in the eternal brightness of the hellishly bright skies above us. Eventually, crewmen and women began to beg for the vessels to just end us. I'd be lying if I didn't want that a bit, myself. Well, about 48 standard hours ago, we heard a loud bang to the south of the ship's hulk where we'd encamped ourselves. Even though I'm the highest ranking survivor here, I decided to investigate it singularly, leaving the second highest ranking survivor, Gefreiter Melissa Legato in charge as I went out to see what had happened.

As it turned out, a red coral shell had landed, dropped by a Hive ship that shrank rapidly in the distance. Descending into the crater, I investigated the shell. I didn't really care if it killed me or not. Gods, I'd not eaten in days. Anything but this, I thought to myself. Anything but going on another day like this. That's when the shell opened up and... my gods, it was horrible. I still tremble, all these hours later as I recount it. It was food. The fuckers... They're... They're studying us!

The Best Star Wars Order There Ever Was

V, IV, III, I, VI, II

Ladies and gentlemen, this is, as far as can be discerned by the wisest Star Wars scholars of our age; and I believe that if you take the time to listen to my arguments on the matter, you might just find yourself in agreement.

Let's go ahead and get the easy part out of the way. Namely, the status of V and II. I don't think anyone out there is willing to dispute that II was the incontestable low point of the saga. I mean, in all honesty if it weren't for Ian McDiarmid's scenes in the film, I'd rather watch Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. I'd... I'd rather watch the original 1979 Battlestar Galactica if not for him! Yes, it's just that bad, folks.

Now, while there is considerable debate on the matter, I believe I'm with the majority here when I say that V is the best film. It had the best story, an amazing twist (spoilers, Vader is Luke's second cousin twice removed!), memorable new characters in Yoda, Lando and Boba Fett, an excellent soundtrack which introduced one of the most memorable marches in modern music - the Imperial March, and so many other perfect little details that I honestly can't see how there's any debate that this is the best Star Wars film. 

Motherfucking pimp, right here.

Now, for second place we have Episode IV. As the progenitor of the series, it's impossible to imagine Star Wars without it, namely because it wouldn't have happened. For this alone, we owe it a debt of gratitude. Still, it's held back to an extent despite some sterling acting by Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing (who, incidentally, played one of my favorite characters of the series, Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin), there are a few less than convincing performances in the film, and some of the finer aspects of the film don't wear their age well. Not that it's a bad film - it's one of the finest ever made, in fact. It's just that it falls ever so short of it's successor, Empire.



Here's where things get controversial. Episode III is indeed in third place. No, you've not developed cataracts and I'm almost completely sober as I write this. You see, if you can put aside the suffering of having to watch Hayden Christenson "act" out his love scenes with Natalie Portman, you'll find some of the finest battle sequences modern science fiction has ever seen, some chilling political and emotional manipulation from the High Chancellor, the rising Emperor Palpatine, and what I dare say is the most satisfying last few minutes in the entire series. Add to that another brilliant score by John Williams - in my opinion, the one that stands best on its own - and you have a winner of a film. It would actually be my favorite if they'd just shot Hayden Christenson after Episode II and brought in a more competent actor. 

Episode I is where many believe it belongs here on the bottom half of the list, but honestly it isn't as bad as people say it is. Sure, it had some really stupid lightsaber choreography, that irritating little tumor Jake Lloyd, Jar Jar Binks - who I still have a rather large, nostalgic, Gungan shaped hole in my heart for - and the plot had a number of gaping holes in it, but this is primarily just due to George Lucas working without his filter. Don't concentrate so much on these flaws. Instead, bear witness to the absolutely sterling work of Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, some more excellent cinematography, and the best score John Williams wrote since the Empire Strikes Back. If that's not enough, try watching it after packing a couple of bowls or downing a few shots of your favorite libations and you'll see what I'm getting at. If not, take a hit/shot each time someone says 'bombad.'

Finally we have the second to last film in my order, Episode VI, Return of the Jedi. It's placement so low is sure to garner some controversy, scorn and death threats, but I ask that you hear me out on this. You see, it's not that Episode VI is bad or anything. I mean, it has Ewoks and you can see Lucas's filter begin to peel away as people began to fear telling the guy that some of his ideas were bordering on retarded, but the thing is that it's just such an average film. It has none of the wow factor of Empire. None of the originality of IV. None of the uniqueness of I and not a hint of the sense of dread and conclusion that made III shine. It was just such an average sci-fi action flick that only rises to exception for the Emperor, Jabba the Hutt, Yoda and Boba Fett's scenes. Well, that and Luke and Vader's final duel. Beyond that, though? Pretty samey. Not bad or anything. Just... Meh.

So there it is, my ranking of the Star Wars films. It will probably be amended once the new trilogy and Zack Snyder's spinoff film have been unleashed and run their course, but for now, there they are. 

Also, no, I didn't include the Holiday Special, the Clone Wars, Caravan of Courage or that other Ewok film in here. This is because they're terrible and I'd rather watch an abortion or, worse, Alien Resurrection. Oh, wait. Same thing. 

Back to the grind.

Hi, all! I'm quite sorry I haven't been posting much. Yes, Red States is still a thing, and yes it's still happening. I have, however, been very preoccupied with matters of a personal nature including a rather irritating health matter and the most joyous occasion of my entire life: the relocation of my darling lover from California to my home state of Georgia.

So, I am still alive. No, I won't describe my health issue and as much as I'd love to talk about my girlfriend moving in, she and I are both rather private individuals and really quite boring even if we weren't, so I shan't go into much detail there, either. What I can do for all of you lovely people is tell you about a new project I have in the works.

You see, if you know anything at all about me, it's probably that I am very much a firearms aficionado. My M1911 is showered with the love and devotion I'd show my children if I ever had any inclination to have any. To wit, I am in the process of buying the tools and practicing the expertise needed to make M1911 grips. As it is the only pistol I own which can really take custom grips, that's what I'll be limited to for the near future - with eventual prospects towards making AK furniture.

Now, here's where it becomes a project. As alluded to earlier, I have some health issues at the moment. Nothing pressing or life threatening, mind you, but it does demand that I stay at home. However, I would rather like to have some kind of income and have always been quite skilled with my hands. Here, now, is the meat of the matter. At a price to be set later, once I have the tools I need, I will be making custom M1911 grip panels on commission! Whatever you want carved, within reason, for a modest sum! You too can add a personal touch to your Browning .45 and be the envy of all of your range friends. Stay tuned for more.

Incidentally, if anyone has any writing gigs, do let me know. I'm well aware that this form of solicitation is in rather poor form, but I'm in need of paid work and I've not quite got a vast network of contacts to prod for this at the moment.