The Frenzy of Morgan

Mental Flotsam of the Day

2009-02-20T19:32:37Z

If you sewed a bunch of black tea leaves together into a ball (like they do to make the "flower tea" that unwinds into a flower shape when you put it in hot water), would that be an Assam Blossom?

Affirmation of the Day

2009-01-10T02:14:05Z

I must repeat as necessary:

"People who piss me off are just challenging me to be a better person. I will become that better person. And then I will crush them like the tiny insects they are."

I knew it!

2008-11-17T15:05:39Z

Grandma

2008-09-05T14:56:40Z

My grandmother died yesterday.

Of all of my grandparents, I was closest to her, both physically and emotionally. She and my grandfather lived next door when I was growing up, so I was over at their house pretty often. I remember that she always had Archer oatmeal cookies for me to eat, and sometimes I’d stay for dinner and we’d have ice cream with sprinkles on top. (Except she called them “jimmies,” and insisted that they were named after my grandfather.)

She was a grade-school teacher before she retired, although that must have been before I was born or shortly afterwards, because I don’t remember a time when she was still going to school. She used to tell me stories about the classroom, and the things she did with her students, and the travels she took on her summer breaks. One time when I was little she gave me one of her old cameras, and it still had film in it from a trip she took to South America – all kinds of pyramids, jungles, and rivers.

She loved to travel when she was younger, although she didn’t do a lot of it that I remember. She did have a little gift shop on her property that she operated for a number of years, and when I was little I used to love going through it and seeing all the treasures she had there. She used to go to Switzerland once in a while on buying trips, although I think that was more because she wanted to go to Switzerland than because she needed to buy things. (Her parents were from there, but I don’t know if they ever took her back.)

She was always trying to instill me with good manners, which was quite the challenge.  She was the one who told me that I should always thank someone for cooking for me, even if it’s my mom and she cook for me every night; she always encouraged me to write thank-you notes and take hostess gifts when I went visiting.

She was the one who encouraged me to go to college when my parents didn’t want me to go, and she and grandfather did their best to help me financially. And I’ll always remember when I was in the army, doing my basic training, she and grandfather drove all the way down to South Carolina to attend my graduation ceremony instead of staying at home to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Of all of my relatives, she was the one I was most like. (Even physically – we’re the only two people in our immediate family who have blonde hair.) We both like the adventure of travel, but tend to be homebodies; we both like cats better than dogs and teddy bears better than dolls; we’re both independent, and hate not being able to do things for ourselves. For her, that came into play later in life, after she was diagnosed with Alzheimers. She knew what was happening, in her lucid moments, and she hated it. When she got to the point where she couldn’t walk without falling down, she kept trying to get out of her wheelchair. When she finally had to go to a nursing home, she would tell me that she was only there temporarily, that she would go to a better place soon.

I haven’t even told you half of it, but maybe enough to understand that when she died, it was like a little light went out in the world.

I love you, grandma.

I done writed a story

2008-05-10T04:35:03Z

If you're on my friends list, then you've probably been reading my journal for long enough to know that I like to scribble out stories once in a while. My actual ambition is to one day get some of my fiction published, although it's been a while since I had time to write anything, which tends to put a damper on the process.

Anyhow, about a month ago I stumbled across a notice about an anthology that's looking for submissions of stories that combine the supernatural and technology. So I figured, what the heck, I'll give it a whirl. And I wrote a story. I have no idea if it's any good, however, which is where you come in.

If anyone out there would be willing to read the story and give me feedback on what kind of help it needs and where, I'd be very grateful. It's pretty short, about 3,200 words, so it shouldn't take up too much time. I can't post it on LJ because that would technically make it a published piece, but if you're interested, please drop me a line, either in e-mail or by replying to this post. If you're so inclined, I'd be very grateful.

Big Trouble on Little Campus

2007-08-27T19:23:09Z

Last week I went to check on the tea house at La Salle and found it had been partially demolished.

Definitely not my best week ever.

Last Tuesday evening, I got an e-mail from the head of the foreign language department saying that the university was planning to move the tea room to another location.

Now mind you, they'd been talking about this for a while. It comes up every couple of years, and then the university backs off or changes their mind and moves on. The last time they brought this up was in May, and it was the usual sorts of questions -- who uses the room, how often, etc. etc. We answered the questions, and that was the last we heard about it. We figured we were safe.

Then I got the e-mail. It had no details about timeline or plans for a transition, just a basic statement that the tea room would be moved. So I immediately fired off e-mails to everyone concerned asking for specifics (especially time) and practically begging them to coordinate with us on moving the tea utensils. (Tea ceremony equipment is very expensive, even the lower-quality "practice" utensils that we use. The total value was probably in excess of $10,000, and most of that was the personal property of the teachers, not the university's.)

On Wednesday morning, I followed up with phone calls. No one returned either the e-mails or the calls.

Wednesday evening, I went to the tea house to check on things. I found the tea room had been torn apart, as had the kitchen area, and that more than half of our equipment -- including the rarest and most expensive items -- were missing. In a panic, I called some fellow students, and we rescued the rest of the tea things, taking them home for safekeeping.

The next few days we spent trying to sort things out. Apparently, the decision was made at the highest levels of the university, and they're trying to claim that (a) they told us this was going to happen back in May, and (b) that they weren't aware that anyone was using the tea house. Both of which are total crap, and we have the documentation to prove it. The dean, at least, knew exactly what was there and who was using the tea house, and I'd be interested to see what they'll do if we ask them for proof we were notified.

Just a bit of context for those patient souls who have read this far: the tea room we had was built in authentic Japanese style by a team of Japanese carpenters flown in especially for that purpose. There are literally dozens of little details and special rules about the architectural features of a tea room, what goes where, and the techniques used that have to be followed. Add to that the fact that most of the materials were also imported from Japan, some of them custom-made for this specific room. And then there's the kitchen area, which likewise was built in authentic Japanese style. To reproduce or rebuild something like that would cost around $100,000.

And they tore it down. to build. a F$$%&*% TOOL SHED.

Yes indeedy, the reason they needed that space in such a hurry that they decided to kick us out with no notice? Storage for maintenance equipment. World's most expensive tool shed.

The proposed new site for the tea room is a joke. It's a little outbuilding from the farm that was donated to create the campus, and it's about 350 years old. It's two stories tall, consisting of exactly two rooms. Each room is about 10 by 12 feet, which means that if you throw a few tatami mats down on the floor (this, by the way, was precisely what they were planning to do), there's just enough room to edge around them if you turn sideways. The only running water of any kind is in a bathroom upstairs that is so tiny that there is literally only room for one person to stand in it. Not move around, just stand there. There is no kitchen, no place to wash dishes. There is no storage. There is no way to protect the tatami mats from the insects and rodents who have very obviously taken up residence there, probably because it hasn't been cleaned in at least a decade.

Since the news got out, there's been an uproar from Japanese community associations, former students, and tea people. The university, suddenly deluged with complaints, is trying to backpedal and say that they were really planning to put us in a much nicer facility on the other side of campus. It remains to be seen whether they really will do that, or whether they're just trying to placate people until the fuss dies down and then quietly screw us over.

To be honest, I'd be perfectly happy to walk away from La Salle and never set foot on campus again, but for the moment, we don't have any alternatives. If that changes... well, we'll see what happens.

That was my week. How was yours?

Random thought I had last night

2007-04-06T14:28:01Z

Faith is like the mail. If you're in a place where you have it, it just comes every day without thinking about it. Sometimes it brings good things, sometimes bad things, but most days you just take it for granted -- until the day when something disrupts it, and then it's a huge crisis.

My belated meme

2007-04-06T14:24:19Z

I was tagged!

Post 6 very random facts about yourself then you tag 6 people on your friend list to do the same.

1. I own seventeen kimonos.

2. When I was in high school, the one resolution that I made (and kept) every year was that I would not eat tofu, just on general principle.

3. Another one from my early days: When I was little, I had short hair for years. I decided to grow it long in a conscious imitation of Jessica Rabbit from the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

4. I've visited more countries internationally than I have U.S. states.

5. A family trait that I share with both my father and his aunt (my great-aunt): We're not necessarily great cooks, but we have fun playing with food and putting different things together to see how it turns out.

6. I've always wished I could sing well -- or at the very least, in a way that doesn't send the people around me fleeing in horror.

Not going to tag anyone, but do it if you like...

300

2007-03-12T17:07:59Z

Saw 300 this weekend. I have to say that it was visually gorgeous, and I'm not just talking about the men with washboard abs who ran around in nothing but leather boy-shorts. ;-) The whole thing was colored with a slightly sepia shading that made it look as if it was drawn rather than filmed, and that was reinforced by the way it was shot.

The rest of it, well... let's just say I wish they'd paid as much attention to the story as they did to the visuals. The plot was thin, the characters were two-dimensional, and there was very little that I didn't see coming a mile off.

I was so reminded of the movie "Troy" that I decided to do my own version of "Troy in 30 Seconds"...

(Warning: Massive spoilers under the cut.)

300 In 300 Seconds

Opening: The Spartans kill the weak at birth and raise their boys to be warriors from age 7, and other reasons why they are 1,000 times badder than you could ever hope to be…

Young Leonidas: Fights huge, glowy-eyed wolf in mountains. Lures it into a narrow crevice in the rock, where it gets stuck, and he kills it.

Audience: “I’m sure this is in no way foreshadowing.”

*** Years Later ***

Random Spartans: “King Leonidas! The Persians sent an emissary!”

Leonidas to Emissary: “What do you want?”

Emissary: “Surrender to Xerxes or die.”

Leonidas: “Let me think about that. Um, no.”

:: Kicks Emissary into Big Pit in the Middle of Town With No Other Apparent Purpose ::

Theron: “Are you nuts? The Persians are going to kill us!”

Leonidas: “Shut up, Theron.”

*** At the temple of the degenerate priests ***

Leonidas: “Look, I know it’s the holy festival time, but the Persians are going to kill us all and take our land if we don’t send the army to stop them.”

Priests: “Let’s see what the oracle says.”

Oracle: “No.”

Priests: “No.”

Leonidas: “Bugger.” :: Leaves ::

Priests: :: Cackle in glee over Persian bribe gold ::

*** Later that night ***

Leonidas to Queen Gorgo: “The Persians are going to kill us all unless we stop them, but if I defy the priests, the Senate is arrest me for breaking the law.”

Gorgo: “What would a free man do?”

Leonidas: “Oh, right.”

*** Next day ***

Leonidas: “Only 300 against all those Persians?”

Captain: “Yep.”

Leonidas: “Me likee those odds.”

Senators: “Wait! The priests said you couldn’t go to war during the festival time.”

Leonidas: “Us? We’re just going for a stroll.”

300 Spartans: :: whistle innocently ::

Senate: “Bugger.”

Leonidas: “Come on, guys, it’s a suicide mission!”

300 Spartans: “Whee!”

*** On the road ***

Arcadian leader: “Wait, when we decided to come help you fight, we thought there would be more than 300 of you.”

Leonidas: “Yeah, but your guys are all wimps. You, what do you do for a living?”

Random Greek soldier: “A sculptor.”

Leonidas: “See what I mean? Come on, wussy-boys.”

*** Back in Sparta ***

Gorgo: “We need to get Leonidas some reinforcements.”

Senator: “I’ve arranged for you to go in front of the Senate in two days to try to convince them to go to war. But listen, you know how you and Leonidas hate Theron and have never agreed with him on anything and have never been even remotely nice to him? Well, you’re going to have to get him on your side somehow if you want to succeed.”

Gorgo: “Hmmmm…”

*** At Thermopylae ***

300 Spartans: “Wow, that’s a lot of Persians.”

Leonidas: “Don’t worry. In this narrow pass, their numbers mean nothing.”

Audience: “Called it!”

Persian emissary: “Surrender now or we’ll kill you all!”

Spartans: “Um, no.” :: Kill emissary ::

Persians: :: Send army to get Spartans ::

Spartans: “Whee!” :: Kill everybody ::

Persians: :: Send soldiers on horseback ::

Spartans: :: Kill everybody ::

*** That night **

Leonidas: “Not bad for the first day.”

Hunchback: “But Leonidas, what about the secret back way through the hills?”

Leonidas: “Who are you?”

Hunchback: “My parents left Sparta so I wouldn’t be killed because I’m so deformed, but I have my father’s armor, and I want to fight!”

Leonidas: “Raise your shield.”

Hunchback: :: Lifts shield two inches off ground. ::

Leonidas: “Dude, if you can’t get your shield any higher than that, you’re dead and so is everyone around you. No. Carry water to the wounded if you want to help.”

Hunchback: “Damn you!”

*** Next day ***

Persians: :: Send more soldiers ::

Spartans: :: Shove them off a cliff ::

Persians: :: Send Cyclops-looking giant ::

Spartans: :: Kill everybody ::

Persians: :: Send killer rhino ::

Spartans: :: Kill it with a single shot ::

Persians: “Oh, yeah? Well see what you think of our eleph… wait, are you kidding me?”

Spartans: “Whee!”

*** That night ***

Persians: :: Send Xerxes’ private guard ::

Spartans: :: Kill everybody ::

Xerxes: “Okay, that was annoying.”

*** Next day ***

Xerxes: “Look, Leonidas, we’re reasonable people. How about if you surrender and I’ll make you warlord over all Greece?”

Leonidas: “Dude, did you not get the message from all those emissaries I killed? No. Just no. And you know what else? I’m not going to kill you now, because that would end the movie too quickly, but I’m going to make you bleed symbolically before all this is over.”

Xerxes: “Whatever.”

Persians: :: Send more troops ::

Spartans: :: Kill everybody ::

*** That night ***

Xerxes: “Hunchback, if you bow to me I will get you laid.”

Hunchback: “Sweet!” :: bows ::

*** Meanwhile back in Sparta ***

Gorgo: “Look Theron, I know that we’re mortal enemies, and we’ve never agreed on anything, and Leonidas and I have never been even remotely nice to you, but I want you to help me.”

Theron: “Why should I do that?”

Gorgo: “Because freedom is cool, and we all want to be free people.”

Theron. “Riiiiight. Tell you what, get naked and I’ll think about it while I’m banging you.”

Gorgo: :: Valley girl head tilt :: “Okay!”

*** At the Spartan camp ***

Arcadian leader: “Leonidas! The Persians somehow found out about the secret back way through the hills that only the hunchback knew about!”

Leonidas: “Bugger. Okay, folks, this is it. We’re all going to die.”

Spartans: “Whee!”

Arcadian leader: “You guys are cracked. We’re leaving.”

Leonidas: “Fine. Go. Pussies.”

One-Eyed Spartan: “But Leonidas, I can still fight!”

Leonidas: “I know. But I don’t trust those Acadians to get home in one piece, and someone’s got to get back to Sparta to lay a guilt trip on the Senate about us all dying like this.”

One-Eyed Spartan: “Oh, right.”

*** Next day, in Sparta ***

Gorgo: “Senators! Even though I’m just a woman, I’m here on behalf of all women in Sparta to tell you that we don’t want to die. You have to go and fight! For freedom! And puppies! And… stuff!”

Senators: “…”

Theron: “Listen, folks, I know that was very eloquent, but you shouldn’t listen to her because she’s just a woman and I totally banged her last night.”

Gorgo: “You bastard! You’re my mortal enemy! How could you betray me like… oh, right.”

Audience: “Well, DUUUUH!”

Senate: “Well, clearly we can’t listen to her now. Get her out of here!”

Gorgo: :: Grabs a sword from a guard and kills Theron ::

Theron: :: Drops a bunch of Persian gold that he conveniently had in a pouch around his belt ::

Senators: “Wait, he was a traitor? We never saw that coming!”

*** Meanwhile, back in Thermopylae ***

Persians: :: Surround the Spartans ::

Spartans: :: Put their spears and shield into a dome-shaped formation that looks not unlike a grumpy hedgehog ::

Xerxes: “Okay, Leonidas, this is it. Bow to me or die.”

Leonidas: :: Takes off helmet and drops shield and spear, then goes to knees ::

Xerxes: “Yay!”

Leonidas: “Spartans, attack!”

Xerxes: “Bugger.”

Spartans: “Whee!”

Leonidas: :: Throws spear and symbolically wounds Xerxes ::

Persians: :: Kill everybody ::

*** In Sparta ***

One-Eyed Spartan to Senators: “They’re dead now, and it’s all your fault!”

*** Segue to one year later ***

One-Eyed Spartan: “Okay, now we’ve got 10,000 Spartans and 30,000 Greeks, so get ready to eat it, Persians!”

Spartans: “Whee!”

*** The End ***

Valentine's Day Postscript

2007-02-15T17:51:18Z

File this one under "you know you're being too disgustingly sweet when..."

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I decided to stay in for Valentine's Day due to all the snow and ice. So we're in the kitchen, and we wish each other a happy day, and we kiss. From the other room, we hear a gagging noise. It was one of our cats vomiting on the carpet.*

(*This is 63% funnier if you've ever met the cat, whose name is Shiro. She's a tiny little thing with a big attitude.)

Children of Men

2007-01-11T17:00:36Z

Saw Children of Men last weekend. I don’t think it’s doing well at the box office, so I wanted to encourage people to go see it before it disappears from the theaters, because it’s the best movie I’ve seen in a long time.

Children of Men is set in the near-ish future (about 20 years from now), when the human race as a whole has stopped having children. The reason for the sudden mass infertility is not given – researchers never figured it out, and while the movie does talk about it, it doesn’t dwell on the reason or more than hint at a possible explanation. Nor does it attempt to explain how, after nearly 20 years, a young woman suddenly becomes pregnant.

In this future, humanity has given up the search for a cure and has more or less accepted its fate, descending into violence and chaos. Life goes on, sort of, but the streets of this futuristic London look more like the streets of modern-day Baghdad, complete with the occasional bombing. The film is set in Britain, one of the more stable places left in the world, which is beseiged with refugees from countries that have completely collapsed, like Germany. The political propaganda put out by the government will look familiar, as will the concentration camp-like conditions with which the “fugees” (foreigners, there no longer being any such thing as a legal immigrant) are held to be deported. But again, the film doesn’t dwell on the situation, focusing on the characters.

Clive Owen (Theo) plays a disgruntled office worker; Julianne Moore plays his ex-wife, who’s now fairly high-up in an extremist organization dedicated to helping foreigners and trying to restore some of their rights. Michael Caine has an unexpected but brilliant role as Theo’s friend Jasper, who makes a living by growing weed. I’m not sure of the name of the woman who played Kee (the pregnant girl), but she did a wonderful job.

One of the things I loved most about the movie is the underlying gritty realism – the people speak and act like real people, and the line between the good guys and the bad guys is rarely black and white. The extremists, when their cell meets, don’t look like a group of thugs, they look like a group of people who might show up to a town meeting. Along the way, the people they meet are as likely to unexpectedly help as to unexpectedly turn on them, and everyone has complex motivations.

There’s action sometimes sudden and graphic, but it doesn’t dominate the movie. And while this is by no means a happy movie, there are some wonderful little touches. In one scene, Clive Owen hears a suspicious voice outside, and unthinkingly walks out into the mud in his stocking feet. When he learns he and Kee are in danger, he makes a break for it immediately – still sans shoes. The hunt for footwear is a recurring theme, my favorite being the flip-flops. There’s also one of the funniest car chases I’ve ever seen.

If you’re into the technical side of filmmaking, there’s about 7 or 8 minutes of film time that were filmed as one continuous shot – a cameraman following Theo & co. with a hand-held camera through a street that’s become a battlefield. It’s really an amazing piece of cinema, even aside from the drama of what they were filming.

Anyhow, to sum up, since I’ve gone on too long already – go see it. You won’t be sorry.

Trouble with words, again

2006-12-21T04:55:01Z

Several times over the past few days, conversations have come up which made me think about the word Druid, and whether or not it applies to me. After one conversation where I was trying, completely incoherently*, to explain why I don’t like to call myself a Druid, I figured I’d take another run at it here in my LJ.

*(even more incoherent than usual, and if you’ve ever tried to talk to me in person, I’m sure you can imagine)

Some quick background for any non-Pagans on my flist who may have decided to read this: Under the general category of Paganism, there’s a spectrum of Celtic spirituality. At one extreme are eclectic Pagans who might use the same ritual to call Celtic deities as they use to call Greek or Hindu ones; they often don’t see a difference between deities with similar functions in different cultures, and so don’t make distinctions between them in ritual. At the other extreme are the people who have studied so much of Celtic culture that they have the equivalent of a degree in Celtic studies, who may speak a Celtic language, and whose rituals are based on the little that’s known about historical Celtic religion. The middle ground is occupied by modern Druids.

The first extreme I’m not going to discuss in this post. The other extreme is what’s usually called Celtic Reconstructionism (CR), though it goes by other terms. Not all CRs are *that* obsessive about academics, but being historically accurate is a core part of the practice.

The line between Druidry and CR can be hazy. I know people who describe themselves as Druids who are just as knowledgable and experienced as any CR, and I know CRs who are involved in Druid ritual groups (groves) even if they wouldn’t necessarily describe themselves as Druids.

The defining difference, for me, is the importance each group places on history. A Druid, no matter how much they’ve read, at the end of the day will say that Druidry is a modern practice, and what we do today is more important than what the Celts did centuries or millennia ago. A CR, no matter what they do in ritual groups, will strive to learn more about what the historial Celts did and try to learn from it and build on it to create their spiritual practice, even if that practice becomes very different from conventional Pagan ritual.

That’s a subtle distinction, though, and for someone who’s not close to either community, it may seem silly to make such a big deal out of such a small difference. To be honest, a lot of times I’ll just describe myself as a Druid to avoid a long and confusing explanation like the one I’m writing here. But using the word makes me uncomfortable, and here’s why.

There’s two ways you can define the word “druid.” In the historical sense, a druid was a member of the priestly class of Celtic society (which also encompassed functions like legal administration, keeping of histories, advising rulers, marking the passage of time, doing magic, and so on). In modern times, many of the historical functions of druids are already performed by a variety of professions. In a CR sense, you could argue that a modern druid would be a priest to a group of people, or a learned master of the lore who teaches people. Neither of those applies to me, and I’m not sure I would want them to.

The other definition of druid, and this time I’m going to say Druid, is the modern sense. The modern Druid movement has been around for nearly 300 years, so I guess it’s earned its own entry in the dictionary by now. It started in Britain with the Druid Revivalists, and eventually developed in the United States.

Both of those are very modern practices. British Druidry draws heavily from Freemasonry; American Druidry draws heavily from Wicca. Yes, they’ve changed and developed into their own, distinct paths. Yes, both forms of Druidry are flexible enough to incorporate pretty much anything the practitioner wants to do.

In a way, that’s part of my problem with Druidry -- and yes, it’s my problem, not a problem with the traditions themselves. Both of those Druidic traditions are based on an Anglo interpretation of Celtic spirituality; they’re taking a word and a concept that had a very specific meaning to the Celts, and grafting it onto a spiritual practice that has no resemblance to what they did.

(But, you may argue, we don’t have records of what kinds of rituals the ancient Celts did. What CRs are doing is just as much of an educated guess as what modern Druids are doing, and it’s also an Anglo interpretation of Celtic spirituality. All that is true. It’s the term that nags at me, not the practice.)

(And since I’m making long parenthetic comments, now might be a good time to add that I don’t mean any offense to anyone who does use the term Druid. I understand the reasoning for it, and I’m not trying to tell them they can’t do it. I mean all of the above to apply to me only, not as a criticism of others.)

(Really, I’m just blathering at this point, and don’t think I don’t admire the fortitude of anyone who’s made it this far.)

The reason this is an immediate concern in my life is that I’ve recently had to come to terms with something I’ve been in denial about ... I’m actually a member of a Druid grove. I didn’t mean to be. All I wanted to do was go to a few rituals and see what they were up to. But they’re cool people, and it was nice to be part of group ritual again after so many years as a solitary, and before I knew it, I was showing up to every ritual. At this point, I’ve been coming more regularly, and for longer, than almost anybody except for the grove founder and a couple of others. But I’ve been reluctant to actually identify myself as a member of the grove, partly because I didn’t want to be partisan (I’m also on the board of a local Pagan networking group), and partly because if I identify myself as a grove member, I can no longer be in denial.

It’s not that being part of the grove is a bad thing. But Druid grove member = Druid, and, well, see above.

(That’s not really the main issue. The main issue is that I don’t really resonate with the rituals they’re doing. I have a very specific approach to spirituality that doesn’t lend itself well to group work, and I know that only one or two of the dozen or so people involved in the grove would resonate with what I really want to do. I accept it, and it’s fine. But it feels dishonest somehow to go to rituals when I feel that way.)

(So there you go, the entire post in a nutshell -- I want to be all about truth in labeling, but reality gets messy.)

Evil Dead: The Musical

2006-12-15T16:43:57Z

A couple of weeks ago I went to NYC with wildcat_714 and laughing_fox to see Evil Dead: The Musical.

No, that’s not a typo. Yes, it’s based on the Evil Dead movies starring Bruce Campbell. Yes, it’s a musical.

I was going to post about it then, but ran out of time, and I knew the show was closing soon, so I didn’t want to tease anyone. I just found out that the show was extended through the end of February, and I have only one thing to say: Go. See. Now.

I think the best way to start is by listing some of the song titles:

“Look Who’s Evil Now”
“What the F*** Was That?”
“Bit-Part Demon”
“All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons”
“Ode to An Accidental Stabbing”
“Do the Necromonicon”
“You Blew That B**** Away”

The play was strong from beginning to end – consistently funny, consistently well-paced. You don’t need to have seen the Evil Dead movies to get the jokes (although it probably would have helped) – in a way, the play was a parody of the entire horror genre.

The show had a very Buffy-esque feeling to it, probably helped by the fact that the co-director and choreographer (Hinton Battle) actually worked on Buffy the TV series. The makeup and effects reminded me of Buffy too, particularly the demon faces – which held up surprising well even at close range (we were in the second row).

Ah yes – the splatter zone. During the last half of the show, particularly the end of the last half, there are some scenes were pretty much everyone in the first three rows get splattered with fake gore. The actors actually go out of their way to make sure they get as many people as possible. Some of the audience members held up their playbills to get them splattered, and a couple came wearing those cheesy “I Love New York” shirts and purposely declined the complimentary ponchos so they could get the shirts covered in gore. (Didn’t work as well as they’d hoped; the fake blood was designed to wash out easily, and it spread out to big pink blotches after a few minutes.)

Ryan Ward, the actor who played Ash (the main character) looked a bit like Bruce Campbell, and used the same speech patterns. Some of the actresses looked very familiar, although looking at their credits I didn’t see anything that I might have seen them in before. Anyhow, all of the actors did a spot-on performance, both in terms of the singing and the acting. Honestly, I wish Hollywood would put half the talent and energy into their multi-million-dollar blockbusters as the creators of this musical did into this off-Broadway show; there wasn’t a single thing about it that I didn’t love.

Now that I’ve created impossibly high expectations in your mind ;-) I’ll close with some random memories from the show:

The singing moose head

“My mother told me just what to do when you’re alone in a cabin and strange things are happening in the woods: Don’t wake any of the others, and go investigate alone!”

“Have any of the other demons been making bad puns?”
“No, just this one.”
“Then why is she the only one you kept alive?”

The disco ball

The bit-part demon having to move into the spotlight because he’s not important enough to have it shone on him

Linda’s excitement at Ash’s present for her (you just have to see it)

The ritual to manifest the evil of the Necronomicon

There’s no way to properly describe it. Just go buy tickets now.

Another reason why I love The Economist

2006-11-29T21:50:07Z

My personal nominee for Headline of the Year:

"Ram-a-lamb-a-ding-dong"

(subtitled) "The search for long-lived sheep sperm"

The article is about efforts by Britain's agriculture ministry to artifically inseminate ewes with the sperm of rams that are resistant to foot-and-mouth disease, and the problems posed by how short-lived the rams' sperm is.

The final paragraph deserves a special mention:

"So far, the two researchers have identified a promising mixture of proteins, with the unwieldy name of sAPM, which can prolong the active life of ram sperm by several hours, and they hope to tweak this mix to improve its performance. The details remain under wraps, though, as their commercial backers are not keen on too much leaking out."

I spam you with me memeage!

2006-11-20T17:20:51Z

You Are Indigo

Of all the shades of blue, you are the most funky, unique, and independent.
Expressing yourself and taking a leap of faith has always been easy for you.

What Color Blue Are You?

Because all the cool kids are doing it...

2006-11-20T17:10:33Z

You are The Lovers

Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse.

The Lovers represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made.

Originally, this card was called just LOVE. And that's actually more apt than "Lovers." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that the you have or will come across a person, career, challenge or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

A Tale of Too Many Cats

2006-11-16T19:35:06Z

When wildcat_714 and I decided to move in together, I wasn’t too worried about how it would go. We spend enough time together that I had a pretty clear picture of the good and the bad, the former vastly outweighing the latter. ;-) But there was one cause for concern, something that our beloved friends did not fail to mock us about . . . he has three cats, and I have two. Yes, five. Yes, in one apartment.

Saturday was move-in day, and we decided to bring them both into the new place at the same time, so it wouldn’t be a case of one set of cats coming into a territory that was already inhabited by the others.

I’ll just give you a moment to cue up the Brady Bunch music…

I brought my two over first and put them in the upstairs bathroom. Finn, the Maine Coon, immediately jumped out, sniffed everything, and demanded to be let out so he could go exploring. Llew, the black cat who’s pretty much afraid of everything (including his own fur), was surprisingly brave; it didn’t take him long to come out and look around. Finn spent the rest of the day meowing at the top of his lungs every time someone walked by the door, wanting to be set free.

Then came wildcat_714 with his crew. Max is a Italian gray tabby – that’s not a breed, he’s literally from Italy. He’s also the explorer of his bunch. Shiro, the only female, is the vocal attention hog. Razael (Razzie) is another black cat, and his personality is a lot like Llew’s – very skittish, very sensitive, prone to hiding in the face of new situations. We put them in their own room together and let them just hang out while we unloaded the trucks. Then, once everything was in the house, we opened the doors.

Nobody knew what to expect, but we had quite the crowd gathered around the doors as we opened them up. Finn came bounding out first, as expected, and got sidetracked into a different room. WC’s three stayed in their own room at first, but gradually came to the door. Cats met. There was an explosion of hissing and a scattering of furry bodies to various rooms. It had begun.

The first couple of days the apartment was mostly a confusion of boxes. Every once in a while a cat would come out, and we would pet him/her, and they’d disappear into the box jungle again. Other times, we’d just hear a burst of growling and hissing from among the boxes as two cats met.

Then came the staredowns. The favorite place for this was the stairs; a cat from one group would occupy the high ground, basically daring the others to try to get by him, and the other(s) would sit a few steps away, unable to penetrate the force of the Angry Glare of Doom. This never led to an actual fight; it was all about sheer force of personality. One or the other would back down and go somewhere else until the first cat left.

I have to say, embarrassingly, that my two were the real problem children. Max, Shiro, and Razzie adapted pretty quickly, and inevitably in any encounter it was either Finn or Llew who was making the ugly noises… although Razzie, once he finally emerged from hiding, became especially fond of the Stairdown.

Finn decided early on (unilaterally, I might add) that he was the dominant one, and proceeded to exercise his space-occupying powers wherever he went.

You’d have to know Finn to understand this. He doesn’t just sit on things. He occupies them. If he sits on a chair with a person, he ends up pushing them off the chair. If he sits on the couch, he takes up the whole couch. If he lies on the bed, he calculates the precise geometric center of it and lies there, so that everyone else has to be in his periphery.

So a couple of days ago I go upstairs to put away from laundry, and I notice that both Max and Shiro are lying on the guest bed (which used to be mine). I’m thinking how weird this is, since they usually lie on the big bed (which used to be WC’s). I go into the bedroom, and there’s Finn. Yes, my 12-pound cat has mastered the ability to occupy an entire king-size bed. I should have known it was only a matter of time.

The cats are all getting used to each other, although feeding time is a little hairy. Furry. You know what I mean. They’ve mostly stopped hissing at each other, although the cats from different households won’t spend much time in the same room.

Llew, whose sole comfort in this world is having a nice closet to hide in, now has a suitably dark and secluded kitty bed in my closet, and that’s done him a lot of good. He’s still the last holdout, though – he still growls when he sees any of the others, even Finn. I think he’s just decided that there’s too many cats, and he’s just going to stay in the closet until things get better. Heck, if I didn’t have things to do, I might be in there with him.

Election

2006-11-09T03:56:59Z

Santorum kicked out of the Senate and Rumsfeld resigns all in 24 hours? It's like Christmas in November!

But here's the interesting thing...

Back in January, one of the Druid lists I was on asked people to make predictions for the coming year. I did an ogham divination, and this is what I came up with...

**I did a general reading -- about the state of the land (the U.S., since that's where I live) in the coming year, and the portents were actually pretty positive. They said that there was a growing anger among the people, and a desire to put things back in their right order, and that would lead to a seeking of wisdom by making amends with former opponents and a healing of old wounds. The resulting movement would initially be chaotic and perhaps painful for some, but the final outcome would be very positive.**

That's exactly what I posted, unedited. Not too shabby, eh? Next stop, storefront on South Street with a flashing neon sign...
;-)

Dark Cloud XII

2006-10-25T18:28:47Z

At long last, Morgan finishes the story! For everyone who's read this far, thanks so much for sticking with it. Hope you enjoyed it.

The previous part is here, or you can read straight through from the beginning here.

Part XII: The Nothingness Beyond

Sarah took a deep breath, steeling herself.

I lept toward her, heedless of what damage I might do to the circle, desperate to stop her. Thoughts jumbled through my mind in a rush of fear. Let them come. Let them all come and do what they will. I don’t care. She can’t do this.

Time slowed down as I moved. Sarah slid the knife into her belly up to the hilt. Her face screwed up in pain, and then she gurgled as she tried to breathe. She fell to her knees.

I reached her side and grabbed the hilt of the knife. Some small, rational voice in my brain warned me not to pull it out, that it would only make things worse. Some other voice in my brain was babbling on and on, promising to take her to a doctor, telling her that the spell didn’t matter, that I would save her.

I realized the second voice was my own, that I was saying those things out loud. I choked on the words and had to stop, knowing it was too late as I clung to her.

“Finish,” Sarah gasped, and gurgled as she tried to breathe. My little voice whispered that she must have punctured a lung.

“If I finish, you die,” I told her, still holding her close. “If I take you out of here, I can call an ambulance.”

“Finish,” she insisted. “Or I . . .” She went into a coughing fit.

She would die no matter what I did. There was no time. Forcing myself into coherency, I drew my blood-covered hand away from the hilt of the knife and gently lay her down inside the circle. “Hang on,” I told her softly. “Just hang on.”

With the blood on my hands, I began to draw the last round of symbols inside the circle. I felt power begin to thrum through my old joints as I got closer to the end, propelling me faster and faster. By the end my hands were flying, swift, sure. I was on top of the world. I could do anything.

Was that how Albert had felt?

I turned again, on my knees, to face Sarah. I felt as if the fabric of the universe itself was bending around me, as if I could change the world with the flick of a wrist. But I couldn’t save her. An ocean of power around me, but none of it could heal.

She met my eyes, and managed a little smile, marred by the blood dripping out of the sides of her mouth. “Not afraid,” she whispered, forcing each word out in a harsh whisper. “Finish.”

I looked down, unable to say goodbye to her yet. “I love you,” I told her. How long had it been since I’d said those words out loud?

“Love . . .” she faded, then pulled herself together with her last bit of strength. “Always . . . with . . .”

And then she was gone, sunk into the black pits of death.

I swallowed the emotion churning up in my throat, unable to let it out. The rawness in my voice lent the perfect accent to the chant, so carefully phoenetically inscribed in Albert’s journal. I got louder and louder as I went on, until I was screaming the last syllable to the heavens.

The power flowed out from me, and out of every symbol we’d painted in the room, and then it was gone. I slumped, drained and empty.

Had it worked? I had no way to tell.

But above me, I heard footsteps.

They crossed the floor in a slow, deliberate rhythm, unhurried. It wasn’t one of the creatures -- the feet were unquestionably wearing shoes. Who could it be? I had a sudden mental image of some curious postal worker on his rounds, worried at the apparent mayhem in the house, and had to clamp my mouth shut to avoid laughing.

The footsteps went straight to the secret panel and opened it, not hesitating. The mysterious visitor descended the stairs in that same steady pace, pausing just out of sight to dislodge the folding ladder that was blocking the way. The ladder flew and skidded away from the steps, stopping just outside the circle.

I held my ground. There was nowhere to go, and for some inexplicable reason, I felt safe inside the circle.

As the visitor rounded the last corner, it took me a moment for my eyes to truly register what I was seeing.

It was Charlie, and yet it wasn’t, in the same way that Gngluah’s voice was a twisted, perverted form of human speech. Charlie’s clothes were gray and frayed, as if they’d been soaking in water for many days. His skin was deathly pale, like a corpse. The only thing living about him were his eyes, burning fiercely in the dim light.

He took in the scene -- the circles, me, Sarah. His eyes lingered over her. “A pity. I was looking forward to showing her the glory of our god.”

The voice was human, but it wasn’t Charlie’s. There was someone else inside there, or something else. Something sick and twisted that enjoyed others’ pain. I understood now what Sarah had meant when she said Charlie wasn’t himself. I wondered if, seeing the same thing, I would have turned away from this riduculous quest sooner.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Lloyd,” he said without a hint of remorse. “It must have been so hard for you, running that knife through her and gutting her like a pig. If you’d asked me first, I would have told you it was useless. You see . . .” he lowered his voice confidentially. “I’m not one of them, not yet. I can pass between the waves with no problem, and walk in daylight if I need. So you see, even now I can easily undo your spell and release my brothers.”

Defiance rose in me. “Then do it, if you can.”

He laughed, low and grotesque. He strode across the circle I’d drawn, shredding my faint hope that it would protect me. Holding my jaw in his hand with a grip like a vise, he leaned in so close I could smell his nauseating, fishy breath. “You old fool. Stupid old fool. You should be grateful that I’m giving you a chance to do one bit of good with your useless existence.”

I tried to ask, but his hand slipped to my throat and tightened, and I fell into darkness.

Dreams plagued me, horrible visions of creatures that crawled and slithered in pure darkness, wrapping around me and pulling me deeper. For hours, days, years I wandered, screaming, clawing, trying desperately to escape, to find some exit.

I woke to the rain on my face. I was staring up at a sky roiling with unnatural colors, bruise-like blues, purples, and greens mixed with flashes of something that might have been red if it were of this world. Winds howled and tore at me. Somewhere nearby, a creature was chanting in its gutteral language, harsh and fast, with others adding an occasional counterpoint. There must have been dozens. Maybe more than a hundred.

Pain in the back of my head. Something like a clawed hand holding my head immobile, forcing me to watch the sky. “Yes,” Charlie hissed in my ear from somewhere close behind me. “See the coming of the glory of our god! Know it was you that allowed it to happen!”

I wanted to protest, but the mesmerizing colors forced all thoughts from my brain.

The chanting stopped. Gngluah stood above me, another unreadable look on its face. Before I could speak, it raised its jagged stone knife and brought it down on my chest, shouting a few final words that were hauntingly similar to the ones I’d spoken.

I heard a sound, a monstrous sound that ripped through the air and deafened the wind and lightning, like all the souls of the damned screaming at once. It drove my soul, wild with terror, into the nothingness beyond.

The End

. . . what, you were expected him to be saved? Have you *read* Lovecraft? ;-)

Dark Cloud, Part XI

2006-10-20T17:38:10Z

This was going to be the end, but it went too long, so I'm going to break it into two parts...

To read the previous entry, click here, or you can start from the beginning here.

Part XI: Finished

At first light we packed our bags, including everything we needed. There weren’t any mystical items required, fortunately for us, since anything that Albert might have owned had been sold long ago in his estate sale. The ritual circle Albert described in his journal was an elaborate composition of circles and symbols that extended in three dimensions, radiating outward from a central space. It would take hours to draw. Even with the two of us, we would be cutting it close to sunset.

Neither of us mentioned the key ingredient needed to make it work -- the human sacrifice. We both knew, without discussion, that there would be no luring of innocent bystanders to their doom. There’d been enough pain in that house already. God willing, Sarah would survive long enough to burn the vile place to the ground so that no one would ever come to disturb these creatures again.

When Sarah wasn’t looking, I hid an old cutting knife -- the biggest, sharpest one in the kitchen -- in the lining of the bag. If only I knew where it was, only I could use it.

As before, there was no sign of our nocturnal visitors on the lawn or around the house. The front door to the house was unlocked. There, the disturbance was obvious -- furniture in disarray, dirt and grass on the floor, and an odd, fishy smell lingering. The cans of paint were still sitting in the drawing room, exactly as I’d left them. It felt like years since I’d been there last.

The secret door in the study was opened a crack. Had Charlie left it that way, or was its location known to the creatures? I struggled to remember how it had looked the last time I was inside.

On the stairs, the electric lights were working, but we had brought flashlights just in case. I unconsciously held my breath as we rounded the corner and got a full view of the room, but it was exactly as I’d seen it last, with its bare, white walls. The fishy smell, which had been plaguing my nose since we arrived, was blessedly gone.

We went to work.

Albert had used a special pigment to draw the symbols, one he’d acquired from some exotic source. After debating the relative merits of certain kinds of coloring, we decided on an oil-based paint, so it wouldn’t be easily removed by water.

It was slow work, copying those tiny symbols from his journal, being careful to get every detail right. More than once I had to quickly wipe away what I’d done to correct it before it dried.

Hours passed, and my muscles ached. My knees hurt from kneeling on the floor for the inner circle; my back from standing to paint certain parts on the wall. I took a break from the walls to tackle the ceiling, only to realize that I had to twist my body away from the ladder to complete the design on the ceiling without moving the ladder and smudging the one on the floor.

Sarah must have hurt as much as I did, but she never complained. Nor did she speak at all. She just kept working, grim-faced, pushing herself onward and onward. She didn’t even stop for lunch, simply handed me the sandwich she’d prepared and kept going, painting with one hand and eating with the other.

In the endless artificial light, time played tricks on us, passing slowly at first, then quickly. Every time I checked my watch I was surprised, and as the day grew later, I was afraid. There was so much left to do. I hurried and made mistakes, letting out curses even as I corrected them.

No time. No time.

Finally, I completed the last stroke on the ceiling and let out a sigh of relief, stretching. Sarah was below, watching me carefully. She managed a wan smile as our eyes met.

“Is everything all right?” I asked her, concerned. She hadn’t stopped working all day.

“It’s finished,” she said simply.

I looked around. While I’d been on the ladder, concentrating on not falling off, she’d completed the sides, and the central series of circles in the middle had long since dried. We’d done it. “Finally!” I told her with a smile.

My relief was immediately overwhelmed by the realization of what had yet to be done. I climbed slowly down the ladder and carefully lifted it away from the circle. Sarah helped me fold it and put it in on the stairwell, out of the way.

That done, we faced each other like sparring partners. “So,” she said, matter of factly.

I took a deep breath. “Sarah,” I began. I couldn’t imagine how to finish. “I’ll get the last thing. Will you wait for me in the center?”

She nodded, and went, careful as I was not to disturb the circle and she passed through to the inside. The blood had to be shed there.

I reached into the liner of our bag, blocking Sarah’s view, looking for the knife.

It was gone.

I scrabbled around inside the lining, one side and then the other, and then threw caution to the wind and emptied all the contents out of the bag. Finally, I turned to Sarah.

She was standing in the middle of the circle with the blade naked in her hand, gleaming in the light. Even in old clothes, hair disheveled with a smudge of red paint on her cheek, she looked fierce.

“No.” I held my hand out as if I could pluck the knife from her hand.

“Yes,” she told me, jaw set firmly. “I told you I couldn’t watch you die, Lloyd, and I meant it. Now,” she positioned the knife carefully against her gut, “Don’t forget to do what you need to do. This can’t all have been in vain.”

continues here

Dark Cloud, X

2006-10-13T19:19:18Z

In which Lloyd ponders the wisdom of telling the unspeakable creatures from beneath the sea that he's the only one who knows they're here . . .

Previous part is here, or you can start from the beginning here.

Part X: Let Him Go

Of all the things it could have said, that was the last I expected. My fear was almost forgotten in my confusion. “What?” I said. On reflection, it was perhaps not the most intelligent beginning to an encounter with an ancient abomination from beneath the sea, but once again, it left me no time to continue.

“You betrayed us.”

What on earth could it be referring to? What had I done to these creatures? Certainly they would be unhappy with what I was planning, but they couldn’t know that. Could they? “I don’t understand,” I told Gngluah cautiously.

“Trusted you. Told you secrets. You used them to lock us beneath the sky.”

And then I understood. “No, no. You think I’m Albert, don’t you? But I’m not. I’m his neighbor.” I stopped. Don’t babble, I told myself sternly. You need to make this creature understand.

It paused, and then leaned forward. I forced myself not to back away as it came to the very limits of the gate, pushing with its hands as if it were being repulsed by some invisible force.

It was trying to see my face more closely, to see if what I was saying was true. Intellectually, I understood. But my stomach churned with nausea as the thing cocked its head, almost amphibian, and the dim light glistened off its webbed fingers. I couldn’t make myself move forward.

“Not Albert,” it said finally. If it were human, I might have been able to read its tone, but it seemed I was having the same difficulty it was.

Time to push my advantage, such as it was. “I’m looking for Charlie,” I told it. When it didn’t respond, I pointed at the house next door. “The young man,” I said. “The one who came after Albert left, the one who was living there when you were released. Do you understand?”

Gngluah turned its torso to look back up the lane, which was as much of the house as it could see from there. “Him,” it said finally. “Released us.”

I closed my eyes. Was it the lingering nausea or the guilt that turned my stomach this time? “Yes, him. Where is he?”

“He is with us.” The creature had let its hands fall and stepped back from the gate, but only a bit. Its expression changed, but I couldn’t have said how, or what it meant.

“Is he . . . alive?”

“Alive. Yes.” A pause between the words, as if it had to think about what “alive” meant.

I feared the worst.

But before I could ask further, it had a question of its own. “Where is Albert?”

“Dead. Not alive,” I added, wondering if that would help clarify matters.

Its expression changed again. If I had to guess, I would have said thoughtful. “Who are you?” it asked finally.

A fair question, but I wasn’t sure how to answer. “I live here,” I told it finally. “There are people all around.” I gestured in all directions with my hands. At the end of the driveway, a car drove past. “Nobody knows anything about your people. They don’t want to hurt you. We all just want to live in peace.”

“They don’t know.” The change in expression again. “But you know.”

A chill ran down my spine and lodged itself deep in my gut. I swallowed, and wished fervently that I’d never done this, any of it. Damn you, Albert. Damn you to hell, if you aren’t there already.

“What do you want from us?” it asked.

“I just want Charlie back,” I told it, sounding a bit desperate even to my own ears. “He never meant to cause you any trouble. He’s just a boy, an innocent boy. Please let him go.”

Silence, then, “I will let him go.”

I hadn’t expected it to be so easy. Could it be a trap? “You will?”

“Tomorrow he will return to you.”

The creature’s expression was unreadable, but every instinct in my body was crying out a warning. Something was wrong here, very, very wrong. I thought of Gngluah up on the roof of the house, chanting. The creatures returning to this house, night after night, sitting, waiting. Waiting for what?

I was an old fool.

“Thank you,” I told the creature. “I’ll wait for him.”

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. I turned and walked back to the house, slowly, in case it had something else to say. But only silence followed me back. Silence and those unnatural golden eyes.

Sarah was sitting at the kitchen table, pale. I knew she’d seen everything. “What did it say?” she demanded as soon as I closed the door.

“It’s too late,” I told her. “Charlie’s gone.”

Her face fell, and she buried her head in her hands. I sat down next to her, took her hand, and told her everything that had happened.

“Why did you say it was too late?” she asked. Drying tears streaked her face as she struggled to stay calm.

“Think about it, Sarah. The only human they ever trusted cast a spell to bind them beneath the sea so they couldn’t summon their god. Maybe they took Charlie because he knew too much, or maybe because they need a sacrifice of their own. If they’re saying that they’ll let Charlie go tomorrow, that must be when they’re planning to do their summoning ritual.”

She sniffled, but nodded quickly. “We have to stop them.”

“Tomorrow. During the day, when they can’t come out.”

“And then this will all be over.”

“Yes.” I squeezed her hand and gave her the most reassuring smile that I could. “Then it’ll be over.”

continues here

Dark Cloud IX

2006-10-04T19:31:59Z

In which Lloyd finds out how to get the attention of the denizens of the deep...

The most recent part is here, or you can start from the beginning here.

Part IX: Why

“I have to.”

“You do not,” Sarah retorted, lips white from the strain of pursing them together, trying to hold in her anger.

“There’s no reason why you need to be there,” I told her, almost pleading. “One can speak to them as easily as two. And if something happens...”

“I won’t be able to do anything about it. Not a damn thing. Look at me, Lloyd.” She turned and spread her arms out. I saw, as if for the first time, the faded denim work shirt, the old khakis, the hands worn from years of chores, the face -- that beautiful face, wrinkled and somehow delicate despite the fierce fire in her dark eyes. “I’m an old woman. I’m not even sure if I could carry you home if you were hurt or unconscious. And if something did happen, what could I tell people? Who would believe me?”

I averted my gaze, looking out the window at the beautiful golden light of the afternoon sun. It would be dark in a few hours, and by that time, I fully intended to be in the Mandretti House, waiting for those mysterious nocturnal visitors. Alone.

When I didn’t answer immediately, Sarah shook her head and went back to peeling the potatoes. For dinner, she had informed me. When we got back from talking to the monsters.

“If I don’t come back,” I said finally, “You have to warn people. You have to find someone who will listen, someone who can stop this. I don’t think they’re going to go away peacefully, Sarah.”

“So what are you saying?” She hacked at the potato with unnecessary force.

“Someone has to do the binding again, Sarah. We have to find a way to make it permanent this time.”

She stopped and stared at me. “You can’t be serious, Lloyd. You can’t mean you’re going to . . .” She stopped, swallowed, and made herself continue. “The binding calls for a human sacrifice.”

“I know.” And I still remembered the shock and horror as I read Albert’s description of the spell in his journal. He didn’t go into detail about what he had done. I couldn’t help wondering where he had gotten his victim, or what had become of him afterwards. Had he thought about me, or Sarah? At least he had enough humanity to pick a stranger. After some of the things I read, I realized I didn’t know anything about my former neighbor anymore. And to think I’d visited him, right up until the end, and never suspected!

But I faced the same inescapable conclusion. “And if we don’t do this, how many will die?” I asked Sarah, wondering if she could find some solution I couldn’t. “Will we be able to save ourselves then?”

She folded her arms and closed her eyes. “I can’t,” she managed finally.

“I’m not asking you to.” I stood up and put my hands on her arms. “In fact, I’d ask you to go far away and leave all this to me, if I thought you would listen.”

She managed a wan smile. “Well, at least you’ve learned that much after all these years. But that’s not what I meant. I meant that I can’t let you do this alone. I can’t let you go over there to die.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “What will I do without you, Lloyd?”

I pulled her into my arms and held her, fighting back tears of my own. “I’ve had a good life,” I told her. “If I can make a difference here, then that’s more than I could have expected. As long as you’re all right, I can rest easy.”

“Then you won’t rest easy.” Her voice was muffled in my shoulder, and she shifted her head so she could speak more easily. “Because I won’t be all right knowing those things took you, Lloyd. Not ever.”

I opened my mouth, but she pushed away, cutting me off. “Promise me. Promise that whatever we do here, we’ll do it together.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring her into danger.

“Why do you even have to go over there?” she asked. “Why not just talk to them through the gate?”

“What?”

“The back gate.” She waved at it through the kitchen window. “Where the symbol in the rock is. As long as we stay on this side, we can talk to them and be safe.”

For a moment, I couldn’t process what she had said. It was so blindingly simple that I never would have thought of it in a hundred years. “But how will we get them to the gate?”

She shrugged. “Just call. They seemed curious enough before.”

I racked my brain for any reason why it couldn’t work, and came up blank. “Well, I suppose it’s worth a try,” I said in a tone intended to conceal how foolish I felt for not thinking of it myself.

She saw right through me, of course.

Even knowing the spell was in place, though, I had to force myself to approach the gate that night. Sarah was watching from the kitchen window, lights out, waiting apprehensively. As long as I wasn’t in danger, she consented to stay behind.

We had seen the dark figures in the yard of the Mandretti House from the window of our guest bedroom. It was dark, without even the moon to illuminate the scene, but the sky was clear. They made a circle around the house, waiting. I couldn’t tell if Gngluah was among them; they all looked the same in the shadows.

Walking across the yard, grass swishing under my feet, I wished I could see over the high wall between my yard and the Mandretti House. The gate was a splash of paler gray in the field of darkness, a reverse rabbit hole to the madness outside. I crept up slowly, fearing what I might see, but as I got to the gate there was nothing on the other side.

What now? I wondered. I leaned out as far over the top of the gate as I dared, but caught only a glimpse of the creatures sitting outside the house, and they didn’t appear to see me. Throw gravel? Starting an assault didn’t seem like a good plan. “Um, excuse me.”

I shook my head and mentally chided myself. What kind of summoning was that? But just as I drew breath to try again, I saw them moving toward me.

Awkward on land, they moved slowly, swaying from foot to foot with their uncertain balance. A couple moved forward, while others headed out of my field of vision. A babble of gutteral voices raised somewhere beyond the wall.

The two came toward me purposefully, moving a bit faster as they hit their stride. Silhouetted against the lighter gray gravel drive, they were dark, misshapen figures. Dim starlight glinted off their skin here and there, revealing ridges down the arms and on top of their heads, running down their backs. Their hands and feet were webbed, of course. It was difficult to say what color their skins were, but it might have been a dark gray or green. Their eyes picked up the slightest light, reflecting it back out with a bright gold color.

They came within reaching distance of the gate and stopped, unwilling to move closer. Some small part of my gut unclenched in relief. That much, at least, was going according to plan.

“Can you understand me?”

The same gargling speech went back and forth between them. I strained to catch the words, but it was clear they weren’t trying to speak English.

I tried again. “Ggnluah.” It was as close as I could come to what Albert had written. The name produced no reaction.

Or so I thought. A few agonizingly long minutes later, a larger figure made its slow way down the lane. It had to be him. I struggled to contain my patience as he walked, faster than the others but still painfully slow for my taste, down the lane toward me.

He drew closer than the others to the gate and then stopped just on the other side, close enough to touch me if he wished. I stepped back, unwilling to be within arm’s length, sigil or no sigil. He was a full head taller than me, and much wider. Though the muscles were placed differently, I had no doubt he was stronger than me. I hoped it would not come to a contest.

Before I could speak, he opened his mouth. Albert’s journal had braced me for the sound of their speech, but even so, the cold, inhuman hiss of it stole my courage.

“Why?”

continues here

Equal Rights

2006-10-03T14:34:54Z

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" - Ernest Gaines

Like nwhepcat I wasn't comfortable with the tone of the meme that went with this (which, if you haven't seen it on your flist, basically says "if you support gay rights, post this in your journal, and if you don't post it you're against gays"), but I think it's important for everybody to stand up for equal rights in this country, especially with Congress eliminating our freedoms one by one.

Anyhow, a quote for your consideration. Pass it on if you like.

Dark Cloud VIII

2006-09-29T20:00:48Z

As I keep plugging away in my attempt to actually finish the story...

The most recent entry is here or you can start from the beginning here.

Part VIII: What He Might Do

A storm hit that night, violent and lashing, with thunder that sounded as if it hit the very ground next to our house. At one point, the power went out.

I kept reading by candlelight.

“They’re a funny sort of creature,” Albert wrote in his journals. “The more I learn of their language, the more I realize how frightfully intelligent they are. More so than most of my students, certainly. But I haven’t yet been able to ascertain what they want.

“There’s one in particular, their leader . . . the closest I can come to transcribing his name is Gngluah. He’s bigger than the others, and smarter. He’s picked up a few words of English, including my name. But to be honest, I’d rather speak their language than hear him speaking mine.

“Yes, I’ll admit it, they do scare me. There’s just something about the way they look at me, about the way G. pages through my books on machines and mathematics, almost as if he truly understands. Perhaps he does. But what might he do with that knowledge, down in the depths?

“But it’s the voices that get to me. They’re so close to our own, yet so wrong. Slippery, sibilant, soft, and yet harsh, transformed by all those years under the water. It truly is the things that are almost familiar and yet warped that are worse than the completely alien, isn’t it?”

What followed was a documentation of a long process as Albert learned more of these visitors. Their language was so different that it was hard going, and I soon abandoned any hope that I would be able to learn it soon enough to help Charlie.

It seemed that wouldn’t be necessary. Gngluah picked up on English quickly, and despite Albert’s aversion, they were eventually able to hold conversations. He did not know what drew his race back to the surface. He had assumed that Albert summoned them, but finding that was not the case, he was baffled. “He says the dark god D. is a capricious one, but if he calls, the people have no choice but to obey,” Albert wrote.

They spoke of many things, and it became obvious to Albert that the An’hlrugh -- as the “webbers” called themselves -- knew many occult secrets that the world above had forgotten. He wrote them all down hungrily, rites I dare not repeat here. And Gngluah, for his part, seemed to gain much that helped him in his own dark realm. He came without summoning now, much as I might drop by for tea, and indeed, Albert wrote of having to coordinate his schedule very carefully to avoid having his two worlds meet.

Then the conversations took a dark turn. Albert noticed that Gngluah was very interested in his occult texts, and in particular, rites of summoning. He questioned Gngluah, and discovered that his “strange friend” was planning to open a gateway for the return of D. “Such was the way in the old days, G. told me, and so they must do the same now. If they were to return permanently to the surface world, they would need guidance.

“I tried to hide my horror, and fortunately for me, G. is not yet skilled at interpreting facial expressions. But once he left, I had to make the hardest decision of my life.

“I truly believe that the A.’s mean us no harm. But everything I have read of this dark god tells me that his return will not be pleasant for humanity. Nor will the return of the tens of thousands of G.’s people who still live beneath the waves, waiting for his signal to emerge. After so many millennia they are happy down there, G. tells me, but they will do as D. bids.

“For the good of humanity, I cannot allow them to succeed.”

There was a way to bind them, to prevent them from coming on land. The symbol that I carved into the stone inside my gate protected my house, but to bind the An’hlrugh beneath the sea required a much darker magick. The symbols we saw carved on the walls in Albert’s hidden basement were part of the binding, but not the most important part.
A cry from above distracted me. I was at the door faster than I would have thought possible on my rickety old knees, and climbed the stairs as well as I could. We’re safe, I repeated to myself as I went. Albert knew what he was doing. They can’t get in here.

Sarah was standing in the guest bedroom, staring out the window. Rain pounded at the window, and with the electricity still out, the only illumination came from the occasional flashes of lighting. She was alone, as far as I could see, staring out the window with her hand over her mouth.

Lightning slashed across the heavens, and for the briefest second, I saw a large creature standing on the roof of the Mandretti House. Its lumpy, misshapen arms reached high to the heavens, and in my mind I could almost hear that harsh, gutteral language rolling through the violently whipping air.

Gngluah. It had to be. Had he succeeded already? A vision of Charlie tied to a sacrificial altar flashed before my eyes, blotting out the dark room.

“What is it doing?” Sarah whispered fearfully.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t. I had only fears myself. I half-expected to see the sky rend from end to end as a horror from beyond space responded to the call.

We waited, the storm surged, but nothing happened. A few minutes later, lightning lit up the sky again, and we saw that the creature was gone.

Neither of us wanted to speak. It was Sarah who broke the silence “What did the journals say?” I’d been seeing that deadly calm too often lately.

“There’s a way to bind them,” I told her reluctantly. “To keep them from returning.”

She guessed from my tone and my expression how little she would like it. “What about Charlie?”

“We can try to summon them. We may not even have to do that much. Clearly they have free reign over the house next door. And Albert wrote that one of them speaks English.”

“Do you think there’s any hope?” she asked quietly.

“We can’t give up. We owe Charlie that much.”

She nodded in full agreement. “Shall we try tonight?”

“I think we should wait for the rain to stop. Besides, I should finish the journals, in case there’s more we should know.”

She snorted at that, a stillborn chuckle. “We already know more than we should. And damn Albert and his curiosity for making us find out.”

“I think we’ve damned ourselves.” I was thinking ahead already to our task. “But with luck, there’s still time to set things right.”

continues here

Dark Cloud VII

2006-09-13T18:42:01Z

Picking up again after another long break... sorry guys, I promise I will try to update more regularly.

The most recent entry is here, or you can start from the beginning here.

Part VII: Unnatural Visitors

The next morning, after a brief argument, Sarah won and accompanied me to the Mandretti House.

The lawn bore no signs of the nocturnal visitors from the night before. If one of them hadn’t set off the motion detector, I would have doubted that we’d seen anything at all.

“What do you think it means?” Sara asked when I pointed out the lack of footprints.

“That the visitors aren’t natural,” I replied simply. “But I suppose we knew that already, didn’t we?”

We made our way, side by side, to the front door. It was locked, as before, but opened easily with the key.

The foyer was empty, and in truth looked no different from the way it had at my last visit. The paint cans and brushes stood untouched in the drawing room; the food in the kitchen was likewise undisturbed. “But he must be eating something,” Sarah objected. “Perhaps he had a stash up in his room.”

Part of me doubted that very much, but I couldn’t think of another logical explanations. The illogical ones were looking more likely, but I couldn’t bring myself to voice that kind of wild speculation.

Upstairs, Charlie’s bedroom looked as if a tornado had hit it, but I couldn’t have said if it was any different from the last time I was there. Papers and books were strewn everywhere, mostly covered with Charlie’s increasingly-incoherent scribbles. He, too, had been trying to decipher the inscriptions on the statues, which he had copied by making a rubbing with pencil and paper. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t succeeded. There were random notes about “the creatures” and their possible origin, but he had made little progress on that score, either. I wondered if, given time, he would have ended up like Albert. And if he had, would it have made things better, or worse?

We searched the house, room by room, with no sign of Charlie. Finally, we were left with only one other possibility.

It took me several tries to open the secret passageway leading down beneath the study. I had been there only once, with Albert, who had been showing it off as a curiousity of the old place.

The room was perhaps twelve feet by seventeen. Originally part of a network of underground storage rooms, at some point in the indeterminate past it had been solidly blocked off from the others to create a self-contained space. There was a recent coat of thick white paint covering all four walls, and no signs of the occult activity that Charlie had described. There was, however, a paint scraper in one corner of the room, where someone had evidently been trying to remove the layer of white paint.

“Of course,” Sarah breathed. Seeing I didn’t understand, she continued, “Those symbols that Charlie talked about were protection. Albert must have used them to keep the creatures away from the house. But when Charlie painted them over, the creatures came back.”

“And I told him to do it.” Guilt chewed at my gut. How could I have been so careless, knowing even the little bit that I knew? Poor Charlie was missing, maybe dead or worse, because of his damn fool of a neighbor.

“Stop it.” Sarah put her hand on my shoulder. “Lloyd, you stop it right now. Blaming ourselves won’t help anything. We need to figure out what happened.”

“They took him.” I couldn’t have explained why I was so certain, but part of me knew. “There’s only two ways out of here, Sarah -- the lane, and the sea. And we know he didn’t leave by the lane.”

She pressed her lips together, clearly wanting to argue and not able to. “Then it’s too late,” she said.

“Maybe not.” She wasn’t going to like my idea, but it was too late to worry about that. “Albert had a spell he could use to summon them.”

Her mouth gaped open. “And -- what? You want to ask them to bring him back?”

“It’s the least we can do.”

“But . . .” for a moment, she could only sputter. “We don’t even know how to talk to them!”

“Albert knew. He documented everything he did, including the spell. The creatures’ language might be in there, too.”

There was a long silence as our eyes met, exchanging all the hopes, fears, and worries that would take to long to say out loud. “Back to the books, then,” she said finally, dangerously calm.

“Back to the books.”

continues here