My calligraphy is somewhat improving.  I'm still no master but its a lot better than when I started.  I find myself really enjoying it, a lot more than something as studious as this would normally elicit from me

The Last Dance

A story written at the behest of a certain Sharm (allegedly of Azeroth)

The smoke cleared somewhat as the wind blew enough for them to see each other once more. The violet-blue sparks of her readied magic cascaded gently around her, serenely unaffected by the smoke, wind or the battle that had just occurred.  Her golden tresses were possessed of no such discipline, and were chaotically tossed every which way.  Her green eyes narrowed as they met his steel grey ones.  Her mouth tightened in angry determination.

His face betrayed no emotion, as was appropriate for a blackguard of Moloch. Vile black-green tendrils of smoke-like vapors swirled about his armor clad form, seeming to caress the ornate armor, with its menacing skull motifs and ebony runes of dark power.  His skin had taken on an unnatural pallor, his hair a pale, sickly gray.  Nothing about him seemed alive.  Nothing like she remembered.  Not like they used to be, all those summer days of yesteryear.

Thinking of that time brought a tear to her eye before she could catch herself.  Her face briefly lapsed into a contraction of mourning.  It was in that flicker of time that his eyes lost a fraction of his icy composure, and his focus seemed to diminish, as if he were no longer observing the situation at hand, but staring down some corridor of time and memory.

It lasted but briefly before the swirling vapor around him slashed and writhed, and his eyes hardened once more.  Raising his sinister blade, crackling with dark negative power, he charged once more.  She, too, gathered herself and swung her staff in a wide arc, the powerful Ileth’ar gem at its tip glowing a brilliant white-blue. She was enveloped in a translucent blue sphere, while simultaneously a wave of raw kinetic force shot forward, further tearing apart the ground. The wave hit him, yet barely budged him, though it did siphon off some of the momentum of his charge. He brought his sword around and above his head, preparing an overhead slash

She had only a second to react, and used that second to focus all her attention on her shield, pouring all her power into fortifying the barrier as she braced for the oncoming blow.  His blade connected with her shield, grunting as he pressed forward, slowly pushing through. Icy fear began to grip her as she realized she had perhaps seconds until the raw power of his cured blade overcame her magical defenses.  Mind racing, she took a gamble and reached forward, placing her hand on his face, and from her fingertips discharged a blast of brilliant light into his eyes.

He let out a roar and staggered back, his vision dazzled briefly while his own perverse sorcery worked to dispel the shock to his vision. Through the searing blindness something else was fighting to get through as well: the memory of her hand on his face, her warm and alive skin on his corrupted, yet technically living, form.

The swirling vapors around him sputtered as he was assaulted by memory and longing. He recalled a time when she had caressed his face eagerly, rather in desperate defense of her life. He remembered her smell, her smile, her laugh.  His road had been so long and so utterly corrosive, that he had forgotten what a laugh was, what it was like to smile.  A wave of emotion rose up within him, weakening the darkness somewhat as the storm of emotion diluted the hatred and madness within.

For the first time in a very long time, he asked himself what he was doing. Like a man waking up, it was only dawning in increments where he was, and even who he was. She stood before him watching the conflict on his face play out. He stared at her, seeming to see her for the first time.  Hell’s prize was not to be denied, however, and the darkness asserted itself anew, reminding him how he came to this dark path in the first place. All the hurt, disappointment, bitterness and anger. His brow furrowed as the old wounds were opened up anew.

She saw all these warring emotions battling across his face, hope struggling up from some tightly locked closet deep inside her.  Then she saw the anger restore itself in him and that hope crumbled, and she too underwent the agony of the past once more. He raised his weapon again, and brought it swinging in a sideways arc. It was a strike of passion rather than calculation, though, and she was able to deflect it with her staff and magic. She knew she could not hold him for long. He had many slain mages under his belt, and he was in fact specially equipped and empowered for resisting the arcane.

He bellowed, part wail and part warcry, a thunderous sound filled with all his vast pain and regret. She saw that he was now sobbing, his face a contorted grimace of equal parts fury and bitter sorrow.  The raw anguish in that cry touched her heart, and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to embrace him and comfort him.

There was no chance of that, though, as he resumed his furious offensive. The blows rained on her one after another. She dodged and blocked as best she could but it was clearly a losing battle. In desperation she diverted all her power into transforming her staff into an offensive weapon forming a brilliant blue-white spear of pure magic, her last hopeless counter-strike. As he swung one final deathblow, his blade a jet black sabre of raw infernal entropy, she jabbed upward with the last ounce of her strength. Her thrust pierced his ebony breastplate, lancing through his chest and exiting his back. Their eyes met, his shock and agony staring into her grief and exhaustion. They remained locked as his sword, carried on by momentum, ripped into her side, cutting her nearly in half.

A red haze of pain filled her world as she collapsed onto her side, her vision already beginning to swim and fade. He too collapsed, sinking to his knees as the energy spear that had vanquished him reverted back into an inert Ileth’ar staff. The profane power bestowed upon him faded. He was now simply an expended asset, and the darkness abandoned him.

His clouding eyes were now a more natural blue, and he turned them toward her, rolling his head in order to look at her directly. For the last time they locked their gaze on each other. At last, it was settled and done with.  The greater conflict would continue of course, but their war, their struggle, was finally over.

With the last remnants of his once unstoppable strength, he reached a trembling, armored hand toward her. Somehow she dredged up the will to reach back slightly. Their hands fully clasped, and she even managed a smile. “I love you” he managed to mouth as their savage wounds overcame them, and their eyes glassed over.

Is business still in the private sphere?

Much has been spoken about a liberal reporter's rhetorical question to a pizzeria about catering to a gay wedding (the pizzeria doesn't cater anyway, gay or straight).  Supposing that a gay couple had in fact actually wanted them to cater to a wedding, and supposing that the pizzeria in question did in fact cater at all, the question remains: should it be legal to turn down business?

This is a fundamental question regarding business and individual rights.  The idea that a business is a public entity subject to public management (beyond the basics such as tax assessment, safety regulations, health codes, etc) is essentially a left wing one, a core component of socialism.  Socialism is the belief that business and all other activity are in fact subject to the state, and have a much wider (all encompassing, really) view of what constitutes harmful behavior that must be regulated and policed. Opposing this is the idea more prevalent in America (until somewhat recently) and other capitalist republics that the state's fundamental purpose is only to protect its citizens from basic fraud and violence, rather than proactively trying to direct all behavior.

Since most of the most savage attacks against Christian businesses involve hypothetical situations (like the tempest in a teapot over a pizzeria), let's imagine that all of them are fact and not fanciful rhetoric and hyperbole.  Should a pizzeria owner be able to reject catering to a gay wedding?  If you said no, then I would ask you if they (the owner) be allowed to reject catering to a Neo Nazi wedding.  After all, many Nazis would (and in fact, do) claim that they deserve to be free from "discrimination" as well.  What about if a strongly pro-homosexual business doesn't want to bake a cake with Bible quotes regarding homosexuality?

You can take it even further: suppose a grocery store doesn't want to sell food to Blacks (this in fact did occur in the Jim Crow south, among other things).  How about if an airline doesn't want to fly Arabs (or, more often, Indian Sikhs being confused with Muslim Arabs)?  How about a hospital that doesn't want to provide emergency care for a baby with Downs Syndrome?  Few would argue that those examples are just, moral, or reasonable.  So what's the difference?

The difference is of course necessity and service provided.  The extreme examples in the paragraph above reflect basic threats to survival.  Denial of emergency care is never legitimate to the overwhelming majority of political ideologies and religions (both of which are intimately related, as they are two sides of the same coin of "worldview").  What about denial of sale of food, though? How about flying?  Those are different in that neither represents an emergency.  While one might be tempted to say that food is a necessity and not an option (and this is quite true), the reality is that it is rare in the extreme that you will find a situation where one cannot even eat because of discrimination.
Remember Jim Crow? How did the Blacks survive then?  The answer is because there is always someone willing to take your money.  If there existed a town in which a group had literally nowhere to shop for food, I would immediately scrounge every penny I owned and all I could borrow to open a grocery store. I wouldn't have to even provide a superior product or service.  I would simply sit back and enjoy the guaranteed customer flow.  Still sounds like a harsh deal?  Well don't worry.  At some point someone will come along and realize that by providing a higher standard and/or at lower cost my guaranteed income will become theirs instead.  I would have to respond with raising quality or lowering costs.  Maybe both!  What then have I just described?  A product that was in demand was catered to with no significant government intervention.  Capitalism has just corrected a social injustice, and the cost was born entirely by private persons and entities.  It is certainly never that seamless or smooth in practice of course, but the overall principle (and outcome) remains roughly the same in application as in theory.

There are more historical examples of this than there is space in this essay, so I will limit myself to mentioning the bus industry in Montgomery, Alabama in the Civil Rights era.  The Blacks of that city boycotted the buses in retaliation for their anger over segregated seating.  The courts and legal system at this point had done nothing.  Yet the buses caved very quickly to the economic pressure and changed their policies.  Without spending a tax dollar they (the activists) had brought the racist policies of that industry to its knees and reversed.  Thus when there is legitimate discrimination in regards to business practice, the financial power of the people is still the more effective (and cheaper for the taxpayers) option.

However, under the liberal-socialist mindset, business is not a private thing but a public one, and government is seen as the club for views deemed harmful.  Instead of policy and product being the end result of interaction between market demand and business supply, in which the market punishes the inefficient or backward, it is seen as the governments responsibility to intervene and direct business.  This naturally results in a worse condition for minorities and unpopular groups, since the inefficiency inherent in government direction tends to create lower quality goods at higher prices and in quantities out of proportion to demand.  The quintessential example of this is the Soviet Union in the 80's, where central planners simply could not handle the vast Soviet economy and the inefficiency of the system finally accumulated a critical mass that helped precipitate the collapse of the entire economy and political order.

The mindset of business as public is troubling not only because of its inefficiency and damage, but also because of the power and control it asserts over the individual by the state.  If you, as the business owner, decide that your business will adhere to certain tenets and standards (providing they are not criminal in the form of being violent, fraudulent, dishonest, illegal etc), and that you prefer to refuse money than participate in certain private events, then that is illegal and wrong to the leftist.  If that mentality prevails, then why not force you to provide services to a group devoted to hatred of your ethnic/religious/political group?  If you are a homosexual black Jewish bakery owner, should you be forced to bake me a cake celebrating Adolf Hitler? Complete with slurs against said groups?

Once you have crossed that line, what exactly is preventing the PC police from setting their sights on forcing you to buy from what they deem underpriviliged business?  If you are a Christian do you have the right to refuse to buy from Apple?  What about a homosexual's right to refuse to buy Chik Fil-A?  To "progressives" this is no abstract question.  Apple donates heavily in money (and now even in editorial pieces) to Democratic causes, so surely they must be the more enlightened and progressive company?  Surely giving your money to others indicates that you're a backward bigot?  Do not suppose that I am merely attacking a strawman.  To the Left, change and revolution are a constant thing.  There is no truly set or well defined future or end point, just a crusade for sometimes wildly changing notions of a Nicer world that depends on endless purging of those Mean conservatives (defined as anyone who disagrees, and after they are gone, anyone who is merely lukewarm, and so on).

Thus the evidence seems overwhelming: if you support the notion of limited government and individual rights, the answer is no, business (aside from emergency rooms) should not be forced to provide business to those they feel they should decline.  If you tend to favor a more proactive and involved government (which is what liberals prefer to speak of rather than "big government"), I would still tell you to support that position on the basis of better economic efficiency for you and for minority groups (whom liberals claim to represent above all).  I would also point that that under the capitalist system your right to organize boycotts and put economic pressure (which are very much legal and legitimate in a free market system, the customer has the right to choose too) is far more effective in bringing about desired change.  If this is truly the land of the free, then let us all be free to buy and sell - and refuse to do so - from any we choose.

For Her

This one goes out by request to a very special friend, and contributor to my work

He sees her standing there alone,

Dark hair shining in the sun.

Gazing over cerulean sea

Oh, how her looks do stun!

How he yearns to speak up!

Towards her, he would race.

Would she turn excitedly?

Would a smile illuminate her face?

Her sun kissed form calls to him,

Seeming to beg for embrace.

How he would gaze into her brown eyes,
How sweet her lips would taste!

Yet beneath that raven hair,

Behind her beautiful face.

He sees the hurt she hides.

Of pain, more than a taste.

How can she not detect,

The beauty he sees within?
On her lips a hollow smile,

Her outlook - sadly dim.

If only he could comfort her,

To hold nothing in reserve.

And to feel his love returned,

To have what both deserve.

Yet he stays silent as a ghost,

He is chasing after the wind.

His dream is a flight of fancy,

On nothing, his hopes are pinned