This Saturday is Earth Hour , the time of year when humanity takes 60 minutes out of their heady, crazy lives to remember that we owe a small debt of thanks to the loving mother that birthed our entire race from cosmic sludge (in the interests of a balanced opinion for our religious readers, we must also posit the theory that a bearded all-knowing magic man instead crapped us out from scrap parts and eventually popped some wise ideas into the head of a magic carpenter who holds us all in contempt through an elaborate guilt complex).

I struggle with earth hour, not because of its intentions but because of the results.  Let's assume, for a moment, that I am not who I am, but am instead someone who callously disregards mother nature and the environment...a "straw man" if you will.  This persona will channel my reservations into a statement (but not a very logically sound argument).

For your consideration, alternate universe me:

"What in the hootenanny do I care if some dodo birds and gosh-darned tree huggin' birkenstock-wearing weirdos are having trouble breathing in the thick flying mulch we like to call city air?  Let 'em go wipe their butts with leaves and crap out some bad GEE-TAR poetry, seeee?  Sweet holy Sarah Palin, these folks are entitled."

All right, let's start this one off with a hugely controversial statement:

I really, really liked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.

GOOD GOD THE FANBOYS HAVE A BATTERING RAM-

Now hear this!  I hereby proclaim Fridays of Look Out It Is a Blog "Fiction Fridays", wherein tales of a madeup nature will be told.  If you don't personally know me, let it now be made common knowledge that I am a writer of fiction and plays, and to that end will be practicing online.  Tune in on Friday for a radical change of pace from the rest of the week of Look Out It Is a Blog.

(this first one's just a teeny tiny warmup, a little something I was thinking about today and thought I'd share with you all)

Dear Execrable Douchemongers,

What is your problem?  I can only assume you enjoy wasting your time and money, because there is no other logical explanation for the incessant chorus of chatter, snack-munching, coat wringing, and mime-whacking going on in the seating area.

Maybe you thought the show was crap.  Maybe you were confused, and needed a couple of minutes of lip-flapping to get your mighty brain up to speeds reaching or even exceeding three.  Or maybe you were even really excited and wanted everyone to know right then because why wait for the appointed time when people usually applaud when you can communicate your unbelievable joy in the middle of a performance.

Whatever the reason, here's my counterpoint.  My thesis, if you will.

SHUT.  UP.

Ye be fairly warned:  you who so enter these hallowed bloggy walls will find spoilers aplenty for several things:  Walking Dead, Serenity, Alien...other things.  Really though, the only one of these in recent memory is Walking Dead, so frankly if you cry spoiler on the other stuff than you just need to watch the shows when they come out :)

Okay?  I'm going to look at the wall for a little while.

I'll play a little music...

Hum te tum...


...

...

Okay, still here?

Right.  Today we're going to talk about killing people.

Time for the obligatory controversial post.

Men of the world, can I talk to you for a minute?

What the fuck is your (our) problem?

You piss on the toilet seat.  You smell bad, grow hair all over, commit literally 10 times as many violent crimes as women, and yet somehow you still run the whole frakking world.

What the hell, man (men)?  And I'm not going to beat around the bush and say "you used to be cool".  No, you were never cool.  Not a lot's changed.

But it seemed like maybe we were getting somewhere.  Curbing the worst of our excesses.  Really trying to genuinely make way for the better halves of the world, though only after they had to kick us in the nuts with people like Nellie McClung.

So why is it that I'm hearing men clamouring all over my country, dear, sweet, forward-thinking Canada, MEN...you ASSHOLES...bringing up abortion?

Every now and then, I remember that Star Trek hasn't been on TV for nearly seven years.

Yes, these are things I think about.

To be sure, there was a very successful "gritty reboot" of the original series in film form that featured a very good cast with a decent director (J.J. Abrams) at the helm, but Star Trek in bite-sized, one hour form hasn't seen the light of day for some time and probably won't for the foreseeable future.  The next feature length film isn't slated until 2013, although it is expected to end up as a trilogy.

I think there's a few reasons for this, not least of which is the abyssmal writing of the last series, "Enterprise."

I was talking the other day with a co-worker about the idea of "genre fiction", as it exists as a seperate entity from so-called "mainstream fiction."

We both agreed that there is a tendency to look down on works written "in a genre", and a tendency to compliment works by labelling them as "genre-defining."  It's a strange brand of literary snobbery that bleeds into the public subconscious.  The idea is that books that are written in a genre are somehow of lesser quality than their mainstream counterparts.  Case in point:  in Canada there are dedicated awards for fantasy, science fiction, etc. (the Sunburst, the Aurora) and then there are the "big awards", the Governor-General and the Giller Prize, and the tendency is for these heavy hitters to showcase "mainstream fiction."  I find this a little unfair.

I'm doing it again.

This marks probably the fourth time I've started a blog.  Why do I keep doing this?  I always struggle with updating on a regular basis, and ultimately drift off and end up doing other things.

Well, I suppose the key thing is to look at it as an exercise.  I'm now at a point where I genuinely want to be writing on a regular basis, and facebook notes, while awesome, just aren't cutting it any more.

I'll put whatever I feel like on here:  rants, news, maybe even some fiction or comics if I get going.

From here on out, who knows what'll happen.

Oh, and yes the title is a blatant rip-off of the title of this Penny Arcade strip, because for whatever reason that title has always been hilarious for me.

And one should always pay respect to the lords of webcomics.

Onwards then.  To content unknown.