My short story “The Circus” has been sitting on my hard drive longer than anything else I’ve written. It’s undergone two major rewrites, been rejected by horror mags as too light and fantasy mags as too dark. Last fall, it was accepted by a magazine that went belly up before it could publish the story.

So, after more than a year of shopping around “The Circus,” I’m happy to report Necrotic Tissue will feature the story in its January 2010 issue. It will be my second publication in Necrotic Tissue, and the editors have always been a pleasure to deal with. They respond in a timely manner, they’re friendly and in addition to paying you for your work, they give ya a free t-shirt. I’ll wear it with pride.

I was so ready to let Bill Maher hit a pop fly with this one. I mean, I certainly can’t disagree with his thesis that the world is simply too small and overarmed to have religious nuts making all our decisions.

Maher’s funny at times, certainly a quick wit, but by the time the hour mark of the film rolled around I was ready to stop being lectured. He comes across as self-centered (I learned way more about his religious upbringing than I ever wanted to know), hectoring and certainly one who knows how to pick on easy targets and let the folks with the editing gear make them look even goofier.

Indeed, almost all his interview subjects seem to be complete boobs. There’s the pimped-out African American evangelical minister, the guy who plays Jesus at a religious theme park and the inarticulate radical Muslim rapper. Seldom does he sit down with respected theologians or, say, someone who works for a religion-based relief organization and puts his/her faith to good work. Also disturbing is that almost all his vitriol is directed against Christians and Muslims while Jews (with the exception of a completely bonkers Holocaust-denying Rabbi), Hindus and myriad other religions apparently get a clean bill of health when it comes to matters of religious extremism.

It’s easy for a smart guy like Maher to run intellectual circles around fundie nutcases. It would have shown infinitely more balls if he’d actually risked having an argument with a believer that’s his intellectual equal. Or if he’d have used a less-heavy narrative hand and let audiences make up their own minds. Those probably would have delivered far fewer cheap laughs but delivered a worthwhile documentary.

I just got word that Fiction at Work is going to feature my story/prose poem “Unlike a Horror Movie” in its Aug. 5 issue. The editor got back to me the same day I sent out the piece, actually. Didn’t expect to find a home for it so quickly. Lately, it seems like I’ve gotten quicker responses from lit mags than genre mags. Wonder why that is?

Here’s a quick one from the Weird Science Department.

A dog’s glass water bowl focused sunlight enough to act like a magnifying glass and ignite a house in Bellevue, Wash., according to this AP report. The blaze started on the house’s wooden deck and apparently spread to do $215,000 in damage. Authorities say they found no faulty wiring or any other explanation for the fire.

Tip of the ol’ propeller hat to Rene Guzman’s Geek Speak blog. Two reasons:

First, Geek Speak has fast become the place to go for San Antonio-centric SF and comic news. Rene’s got some great content no one else can deliver — his coverage of S.A. homeboy Jackie Earle Haley’s recent Watchmen event at Atomic Comics, for example — and he’s done a great job of keeping the blog fresh. I’m also happy to see he wants to expand beyond movies, TV and comics to include more literary and art news.

Second, Rene mentioned that I have two stories and an essay coming out in Sonar 4’s soon-to-be-released “From the Mouth” flash fiction anthology. I guess that keeps with his promise to include more lit news in Geek Speak. Yay!

As much as I expected the new Star Trek movie to be a Bruckheimeresque dog turd, it seems like everyone from Miss Flick Chick to the New York Times has given it high marks. So have most of my Trekkie friends, for that matter. That’s a pleasant surprise, given Hollywood’s penchant for finding new and creative ways to make films that are bigger, louder and — invariably dumber and emptier — than their original source material.

Suppose I’d better see it this week. But not Thursday night, since that’s when I’ll be seeing Worlds Collide’s big-screen showing of the Harlan Ellison-penned Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever.”

Airlock Alpha has a great piece on Ray Bradbury’s classic “Fahrenheit 451.” The author wonders whether changing technology — not fire-happy totalitarians — ultimately will spell the death of the printed word.

I tend to agree with him that the evolution away from print media has both its good and bad sides. As a former reporter, I’m sickened to see newspaper after newspaper biting the dust. I’m also disturbed that so much of the generation raised on text messages and videogames is indifferent to books.

But, at the same time, I’m not sure I want to go back to the days before the Internet gave us instant access to a whole universe of information.

The Net can be a great democratizing and educational force. Let’s just hope human beings can figure out how to use it without casting aside other equally important forms of communication.