A Collection of Thoughts I've Not Had Time to Write Out Completely

1) I finished the first draft of my next novel. I’ve tried an alternate title, for a day, and then went back to what I originally had: The Palace of Winds.
It is planned as the first book in a trilogy.

2) I’ve started work on the second book.

3) I believe that being “tolerant” does not mean I have to give up the right to be angry at intolerant people, and tell them to go fuck themselves, or stop their intolerance from effecting other people. There have been a number of times where I have stumbled into discussions with some anti-whatever schmuck who finally trotted out some completely obnoxious gem that was designed to be a “nuclear option” to the argument (designed to cow me into submission by its shear ludicrousness and offensiveness), and I cut them off. At that moment, the schmuck trotted out the nugget “Oh, I see how it is. What happened to your liberal tolerance, huh?” To the schmuck, that was checkmate. At that point I would, in the schmuck’s view, have to surrender the validity of my argument for tolerance because I got angry and showed intolerance towards the schmuck’s vile assertion and put a limit upon the level of intolerant bile I was willing tolerate. If I were as “tolerant” as the schmuck seemed to want me to be, then, as a liberal, I would have to “tolerate” things like the extermination of the Jews, or the lynching of black people, or the execution of gay people, because to be intolerant of those actions would make me no better than those people displaying their intolerance of Jews, blacks, or homosexuals.

4) The persecuted hegemon: the link goes to an illustration of the term, but heres’ the capsule definition from the same post: “those who claim the privilege that in their view pertains to being a dominant ethnic or sectarian majority while simultaneously posturing as a persecuted and put-upon minority.”

5) The documentary “Lord Save Us From Your Followers” is worth a watch. If you have Netflix, it’s available as an instant play. The documentarian is a Christian by the way, so it does come across as generous to Christianity (Rick Santorum is taken seriously), but it also is extremely critical of the public face evangelicalism has put on and the thoughtlessness it promotes. The mock “Family Feud” segment where the producer hosts a game show between teams of “agnostics” and “Christians” is highly entertaining and incredibly shocking.

That’s all I have time for this morning.