I got a call from my mother, asking me to phone my three-year-old niece because she wanted to talk to me.

When April handed her the phone, Laura said "I miss you, Uncle Bubba."

I felt a little ferklempt when she said that.

"Are you coming to my pool party, Uncle Bubba? You'd better."

"When is it?" I asked, even though I know when her birthday is.

She asked April when it was and told me "In May. You better be there."

"Honey, I'll be there a few times before then."

It turns out Laura saw my picture on the shelf and told April she wished I was there instead of just my picture. She almost never speaks to me on the phone, so it was nice to hear her voice.

In other news, I received my weekly news roundup from The Advocate. It turns out Paul Winfield, the actor who died earlier in the week, was gay and had been mourning the death of his longtime companion for the past year or so.

It seems godless Americans have their own group. I found the story linked from Pat Buchanan's latest column and had to smile.

"Now, atheists, freethinkers, secular humanists and other nonbelievers have another alternative in giving voice to our concerns, and letting candidates for public office know that they must now start recognizing us as a potential force in American politics." -- Godless Amercians Political Action Committee executive director Ellen Johnson

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Think God is gunning for gays? Check out God Hates Shrimp and organize a protest of Long John Silvers today!

In other news, I was almost thrilled by an audiobook discovery. While surfing the catalog at Audible, trying to pick this month's selections, I found Chuck Palahniuk reading Choke. I almost got it, until I saw the word "abridged" on it. Terry don't do abridged novels, baby. He got his fill of Readers Digest Condensed (just add water!) back in the old days.

I'll eventually buy it, though. I'd like to hear the author read his own work, and I can at least pretend he approved the abridgement. But it's at the bottom of my list -- right after I finish buying the Discworld series.

James Carroll discusses "The Risks of Waging 'Culture War'" as it relates to the Bush push for an amendment banning gay marriage.

The phrase "culture war" comes from "Kulturkampf." That word was coined in the 1870s when Germany's George W. Bush, Otto von Bismarck, launched a "values" campaign as a way of shoring up his political power. Distracting from issues of war and economic stress, the "Kulturkampf" ran from 1871 to about 1887. Bismarck's strategy was to unite his base by inciting hatred of those who were not part of it.

I was looking over my shelf Sunday and saw my copy of Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort. It's one of the best modern horror novels I've ever read. I remember reading an interview with Harlan Ellison where he mentioned the book and how great it was; the interviewer had never heard of it, and Ellison said that wasn't a big surprise.

I wanted to read it but could never find it. One of my friends at Glenville, Heather Eberly, let me borrow hers and ended up giving it to me when I enjoyed it so much. Books are good gifts, and I've always been grateful for this one.

The best part is that I haven't read it in five or six years and can't remember how it went. It's all fresh and new again. Thanks, Heather.

Actor Paul Winfield died Sunday. That sucks, because I always liked him whenever he was on the screen. He worked all over the map, but I mostly know him from genre appearances like Star Trek and Babylon 5. Nobody took a self-inflicted post-parastic-infection phaser blast like Winfield. Cheers.

It turns out one of my favorite celebrities, Margaret Cho, has her own blog. I love Cho because she's a lot like my sister: bold, brassy, and full of advice for anyone who ever thought it was a god-given duty to offer blowjobs to support the troops. God bless America. Learn to swallow or the terrorists win.

GameSpot has a pretty decent article, "When Two Tribes Go to War: A History of Video Game Controversy", detailing the twists and turns of my favorite hobby. They even have a photo of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, whom I've distrusted ever since he and his cronies described the Sega-CD game Night Trap as "an effort to trap and kill women" even though the goal was to save them.

Speaking of disturbing games, I've started playing Silent Hill 3 again in an effort to unlock the flamethrower. For this second run-through, I'm playing on Easy and using a machine gun with unlimited ammunition... but it's not helping me a bit. I'm still getting freaked out and have to stop after thirty or forty minutes.

In other news, Lesbians seek marriage license from W.Va. Supreme Court.

There's a Simpsons episode where Homer and family are swallowed by a giant carnivorous plant. After a few seconds of struggle, Homer pushes his way out. Bart, awestruck, asks "How did you do that?" and Homer says "It's a plant."

That's sort of how I felt, flipping the channels and seeing something called Marabunta on The Sci Fi Channel. It's a movie about ants going on a rampage in Alaska, and I was amazed at the lengths to which the characters were going to fight them. The guy with a flamethrower had a good idea. The lady pumping shotgun rounds into a teeny-tiny column of ants should've put the barrel in her mouth and saved us the two hours' of craptacular non-spectacle.

Admittedly, I only watched about ten minutes of the entire thing. I'm not sure, but I think the family was driving like mad in their truck and then had to worry because the ants caught up a few minutes later. That only works when the writers are lazy or the little fuckers are hitching a lift on a cheetah.

Sci Fi should change its name to WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK! because that seems to be the only kind of movies they show anymore. If it weren't for Tripping the Rift and the Battlestar Galactica remake they're doing, I'd write that station off.