Cyber Monday

Today's Cyber Monday, the busiest shopping day of the year for online retailers in the US.  Traffic is heavy today.  Really, really heavy.  People are trying to take advantage of deals they couldn't get ahold of on Black Friday.  And the Machine Elves are screaming.

It's kind of hard to explain just what a Machine Elf is.  They're like a consciousness that exists inside machines.  I don't normally have much dealing with them, myself, so the best description can be found here on Wikipedia.  All this traffic must be like having an interstate highway coming through your bedroom.  And some of them are probably getting hit.  I wish I could do something for them.  The screams hurt to hear.

I just really hope there isn't too much damage when today's over.

Fairy Tales

I was going through some of my old storybooks this morning while packing up to head back to school.  I found lots of old stories with surprisingly harrowing events.  (My parents had good taste in picking books of legends and fairy tales.)  I know the Victorian Age and later Disney really sanitized the way we look at these things, but really they're incredibly dark.  And they taught us valuable lessons.  If you go looking for fear, it'll find you. (The Boy Who Found Fear At Last)  Don't trust strangers and don't get in bed with strange people. They'll eat you. (Little Red Riding Hood)   I suppose that darkness makes sense, though.  These stories were meant to protect us.  And not just in mundane ways as I said in an earlier rant.

I don't want a fairytale wedding.

Black Friday

Went out with my mom today to take advantage of some of the Black Friday deals.  We managed to get out at about 6 AM and really didn't have too deal badly with crowds.  We actually found most of the stuff on her list.  (I'm ultrabroke, so my list is moot.)  Still, I had a bit of fun with the other shoppers.  Sprinkle discrete lines of salt at the edges of aisles.  Hide little bits of iron under objects.  It's really amusing to see supernatural beings (who are passing for humans) and metanormal people suddenly unable to go further or compelled out of nowhere to go another direction.  I really had the urge to set up a rube goldberg of people, though I never had the time at any one place.

Thanksgiving and Gremlins

Just once, can't I have a normal holiday?

I went home yesterday to spend Thanksgiving with my family.  My own car is still in the shop after catastrophic failure of the transmission, so my Dad came and picked me up.  The resultant conversation on the way home quickly reminded me of why I love coming home.  But that's neither here nor there.

This year, we spent Thanksgiving at my aunt's.  There aren't many of us since one of my brothers spent it with his in-laws and the extended relatives don't seem to know who we are anymore.  Besides, my aunt's husband is a wonderful cook!

Anywhat, we were milling about their kitchen when I noticed two things that happened almost at the same time.  First, the refrigerator shudders and stops humming.  Then, the the oven's (which still contains the turkey) digital temperature display skyrockets to 750 degrees and stays there for a few minutes before shooting down to 200 degrees and finally settles back on 350.  As soon as that's over, the fridge lurches back to life and nobody seems to have noticed a thing.  About half an hour later, as we're setting out the food for a buffet, I hear scratching from the oven, followed by almost inaudible laughter (and none of that sanitized Victorian "tinkling of bells" crap).  Again nobody noticed.  Finally, we decide to serve dessert.  I open the refrigerator to get my mom's eclair cake (which is surprisingly good for sugar-free) and catch a glimpse of a brown foot dodging behind the milk.  I nonchalantly turn to put the dessert on the counter and immediately turn back to see the little foot dodging for the milk again.  Reaching back behind the jug, I meet scratches and bite on a very tiny scale.  I close my hand on it and pull it out.

Gremlin.  A kind of fae creature dating from World War II.  They lived to torment servicemen, pilots in particular, by sabotaging aircraft and other machines.  They hit everyone without regard for side or affiliation so nobody ever thought to discourage them.  After that war, there was less air combat and therefore less opportunities for their fun.  So, they moved onto other targets when the pilots arrived home.

So I pull this little annoyance out and all the while he's spouting quiet profanities from his tiny mouth.  I close the door and back up and step back.  My dad is standing there with an amused smile on his face.  Here I am with an offensive little person in my hand and he's not acting the least bit surprised.

"Looks like you found the third one," he chuckles, gesturing at a mason jar in his left hand.  It contains two others, "I found these buggers in the oven.  Gremlins.  Pain in the butt, huh?"

He takes the last critter from me and put it in the jar.  All the while I'm thinking Wait, when did my dad start noticing these things?  And almost like he's reading my mind he replies, "What?  You thought you were the only one who saw things?  I'm gonna go hide this with our coats."  And then he left, leaving me in a dumbfounded silence.

Some days I love being part of my family.

Gremlins.  Not this cute, twice this destructive.

On the Nature of Santa Claus

Thanksgiving's coming up this week and I'm heading home tomorrow to spend it with my family.  On campus, though, I'm already seeing trees and lights and other trappings of that second most wonderful of holidays that is Christmas.  It seems a lovely time to share a bit of exposition on the nature of the Jolly Old Elf himself, Santa Claus.

I had the pleasure of meeting the (currently not so) Big Guy two years ago shortly after I found myself where I hang my hat today.  It was the standard "You're asleep and dreaming.  Ignore me and go back to bed." situation at first.  Unfortunately for him, I had already learned the first two rules of life such as it is for me: 1) Rarely is anything as it seems.  and 2) SALT, SALT, SALT!.)  What can I say?   By the age of 18, most of us have been fed the grand truth (read: DAMN LIE! (Thank you, Mr. Twain)) that there is no such thing as Santa Claus.  To me, he just looked like an opportunistic burglar.

Several impossibly large packages and a circle of salt later, we reached an impasse.  I had thought he was mundane until I saw the bag work and then I guess my paranoia kicked in.  Blah blah blah, "State your name and business."  To his credit, he was very polite and patient with me.

Santa told me that he had been born Nicolas López Fernández in a small town in Cuba and was currently 32 years old.  Contrary to the commonly told stories, he actually lived in the southern Florida Keys most of the year.  "You see," he told me, "The mantle of the one you call 'Santa Claus' is actually passed down every two hundred years or so.  I haven't been on the job for more than a few years."

The story begins long after the death of the historical St. Nicholas, instead with the life of an unknown Frenchman, Jacques de Sène in the 1200s.  While he was rather poor, he actively spent what little free time performing what services he could for others without being asked or asking recompense.  By the tradition of those holding the mantle, he was apparently visited by a manifestation of the original St. Nicholas who gifted with the ability to do good for others in all places.  Jacques was a meek man in spite of his desire to help all peoples.  He didn't want the attention.  Therefore it was chosen that the night of Christmas would be his night to perform this service as it would be welcomed among the festivities held by many cultures around the Solstice.  He would take on a new persona to indulge his meekness.  The persona that would eventually become whom we understand to be Santa Claus.


After some time, the mantle was passed on to a well-to-do slavic gentleman who built the legend of Grandfather Frost (known in the US simply as Father Frost), who did his work with his grandaughter, Snow Maiden.  Apparently, he had adopted the image of an old slavic god (the existence of which is as of yet unknown) and reverse the image from a cruel, child-stealing sorcerer to that of a kind gift-giver.  After some time, he passed the mantle to a rarely benevolent east Russian vampire dream-eater (a strange variation of the vampiric curse that enables the creature to subsist on the dreams of children, much like the semitic breath-drinkers).  He started the tradition of using enchanted reindeer perpetuated by Western storytellers.  After a time, he passed it to a British gentleman who wasn't particularly good at doing the unseen do-gooder thing.  His various sightings led to the common Western image of Santa Claus and provided the inspiration for the poem commonly referred to as "The Night Before Christmas".  When his time was up in the early 1900's, he bestowed the title on an Alaskan dogsledder.  He delivered gifts in the form of ice carvings which became the real thing, sparking more than one story.  He eventually fell in love with a girl whom he had watched grow up and was granted release from his duties by passing them on to the current one.

The one whom I currently had trapped in a circle of salt in my family's living room and delayed for several hours telling me the tale of his order.

Crap.

After profuse apology on my part, he simply smiled and laughed the deep, jolly laugh so commonly attributed to his namesake and told me it was okay.  Apparently the one thing all the logical arguments "disproving" the existence of Santa Claus were forgetting was the fact that the man is MAGIC.  In all of this, no time had passed.  In fact, it never does while he doesn't mean for it to.  He laid his index finger against the side of his nose and I found myself standing next to him on the roof of my family's house.  Attached to his large blue and green sledge were 12 particularly tiny key deer.  (I really have to question the ethical concerns of enchanting and using for this purpose 12 of a threatened species...)  With a chuckle he mounted the sleigh and took the reins, calling, "On Sunshine!  On Rain!  On Love!  On Joy!  On Pink!  On Green!  On Cindy and Bobby and Jan and Peter and Marcia and Greg!  Now haul some ass!"  And with that, they took a running start and took off from my roof for their next destination.

It didn't occur to me until after his departure that I had forgotten to ask about the elves.

A Faceless Woman

Some nights, I'm walking back to campus from wherever I was and I'll be passing this taco place across from the school.  Normally, it's just as empty and dead as everything else in this small town at midnight.  Sometimes, though, I'll see a woman.  She's normal looking enough. Except for the fact that she doesn't have a face.

I've seen her a total of five times, the latest being last night when I was walking home after dropping off a friend's movie in the Red Box by McDonald's.  She was sitting there under the taco joint's sign, smoking a cigarette.  That she has no face could easily be dismissed as a trick of the shadow, but she also has one other stranger characteristic about her.  She's always smoking when I see her but the cigarettes' flames are always blue or green.  No combustible plant material that I know of (that wouldn't kill the smoker) burns those colors.  Something otherworldly is afoot.  (Like that's never happened to me before...)

Honestly, my money's on noppera-bo or mujina, traditional faceless spirits from Japanese and Hawaiian myth respectively.  That or some kind of fae being.  They have, like, a million forms and even more numerous illusions of such.  I really should go talk to her next time I see her.

Note to self: find a four-leaf clover between now and then.

Drunk People are Fun, Shapeshifters Aren't

I went to a friend's birthday party last night.  Pajama theme.  A lot of fun.  Most of the guests were over 21 so there was quite a bit of drinking.  Nothing wrong with that, but it's a lot of fun to be a prude in the middle of a bunch of drunk people.  The party progresses.  We dance.  People get drunker and drunker.  Clothing is shucked.  It's really kind of funny to just sit back and watch it all.

Come 3 AM.  The DJ is winding down, those who drank are entering incoherence, and I'm about to be asked to be some drunk person's last resort.  Time to go.  Lo and behold, two attractive young ladies stroll in.  They're dressed in gauzy little numbers and for a few minutes I seriously consider staying.  Then a large white pair of wings unfurls from one of their backs and I change my mind.  Damn it.

Swan Maidens.  You hear a lot of legends about them.  In spite of the stories, they really enjoy "dalliances" with normal men.  They don't ever do anything with lasting consequences, so I usually leave them alone when they show up.  The non-predator therianthropes aren't usually a problem.  The partygoers were too inebriated to remember them, anyway.  (And the ones who weren't won't believe their own memories.  Nobody ever does.)

On the bright side, I managed to swipe a canister of salt from the kitchen on the way out.  (Stealing is wrong, but I'm too paranoid to care right now.)  So at least my room wards are back up.

Incidentally, here is a common representation of a swan maiden.  They're impressive, but not this impressive.

Caer Ibormeith The Swan Maiden by ~Quicksilverfury on deviantART

Alternate Warding

It's not easy to sleep when the room keeps telling you to get out.  My wards held for the night, but they as well have not for all the sleep I got.  Maybe I'm just paranoid.  Or maybe something's out to get me.  And thus I do what all of my generation do when presented with such a problem.  I turn to the internet.  If I'm lucky, I might find another technique that won't keep me out too. Hopefully.

Salt

I was renewing the wards today.  Everything seemed to be in order.  Then I realized I had run out of salt.  (It must have been from performing an abjuration on a cursed book last week.)  No worry, I'll just walk to the store, I thought. 

Except they were out.

In fact, I went to the three grocery stores within walking distance only to find that they were all out of salt.  All the while, my dorm room whas completely unguarded.  There's more than a few things out there that would absolutely love to pay me a visit while I sleep.  And while it's more than possible the proximity of Thanksgiving is causing a lot a compulsive cookers to buy up a lot of salt, I can't help but feel like this was planned.

I've made do with a few iron crosses, but they repel me almost as much as everything else I mean to keep out so they're not a long-term solution.  Such a pain in the butt, too, 'cause I'm going to have to clean the space again.  I know I'm being paranoid, but I should probably prepare for some kind of attack.  I think something's up to something.

Stephanie Meyer just made my list.

If I have to save one more fourteen-year-old girl from a four hundred-year-old vampire I think I'm going to have to do something terrible to the woman. I mean, it's always been bad. Ever since Interview With a Vampire, this cultural image of vampires as sex gods has become worse and worse.

People used to be afraid of the bloodsucking freaks. Then they thought, "Well, they're monsters, but they're less scary when they're channeling their inner beast into being sensual and passionate." (Damn you Anne Rice!) That was something that could be dealt with. People still knew they were monsters. Now the popular image is something along the lines of a "sparkly twenty-something cute vegetarian boy with pale skin". Oh yeah, and statutory rape laws don't apply to them.

Our old legends and stories existed to protect the people who had never met one face-to-face. Now they're just saying "It's okay to play with fire. It can't burn you; it just wants to sexually pleasure you!"

And people believe it.