(no subject)

This is my life!

1. I have an unstoppable craving for garlic. I couldn't figure out why I wanted pizza all the time lately, and then I realised what I really wanted was garlic. I'm sure this is some kind of mineral or vitamin deficiency but I'm torn between buying garlic pills or just eating a lot of homemade garlic bread. The latter is more gastronomically satisfying. This did result in me making a huge pot of spag bol last night which was immensely delicious.

2. I keep pausing during the day, especially in the evening, and thinking "What am I supposed to be doing? I'm supposed to be doing something." And then I realise no, the book is in print, there is nothing I'm supposed to be doing. Well, I mean, there are things, but not things so important I need to drop what I'm doing and do it.

3. I don't normally read QC, but I have to admit this strip and its sequel and trequel made me lol. Also, I run hot and cold with Penny Arcade but Gabe's reindeer magnet gave me a powerful moment of nostalgia.

3a. I seriously need a haircut. I can't think with this much hair on my head.

IN CLOSING:

Sam: Two more wasps this evening. I have hermetically sealed my bathroom with duct tape. WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM.
Junie: Have you investigated the possibility of a portal to a hell dimension?
Sam: It would nicely bookend my bedroom with the door to Narnia on the other side....
Junie: I can't believe the rent on an interdimensional crossroads is so reasonable.

(no subject)

I had a thing two for the last post that was not about how I am mentally deranged, but until now I couldn't remember it, which doesn't really do anything for my "not deranged" street cred. But the thing was this: I have tried my best to read The King In Yellow, and as creeptastic as it occasionally is, I can't get into it.

I like the idea (a play that doesn't exist and has driven people mad) more than I like the execution. Unreliable narrators, while very challenging to write and intricate when done properly, don't do it for me. Too often they're just pathetic, and I can't find anyone to empathise with because I don't like them and everyone they describe is viewed through their own distorted lens. Once in a while there's a great one, like in The Moon Stone or Pale Fire, but by and large they fail me or I fail them, one of the two. I think they work best as a comedy.

Plus it's written in a very 19th-century style, lots of big walls of text, and I have a short attention span. :D

(no subject)

This evening I've been doing RESEARCH!

This differs from "research" in that RESEARCH! is much more stimulating and generally done voluntarily.

Most of what I looked at tonight was branching off an article I was linked to called Myths Over Miami. It's about the legends that homeless kids write for themselves, and how the same legends seem to show up in a lot of different places. This isn't necessarily eerie -- it's a recognised trait among folklorists, called polygenesis. The article itself, however, is unsettling on a metaphysical level and a basic human one, as well as being tragic. Which is hard to avoid when the subject matter is little kids living on the street. According to homeless children, God is on permanent hiatus, La Llorona can find you anywhere if she's seen your face just once, and there's an angel in the ocean who will protect children from bullets, but only if they call her secret name.

One of the figures central to this mythology-of-children is Bloody Mary, who in this incarnation is a demon, a traitor to God, or a reasonless menace. In more general folklore she's a woman who appears in a mirror after being correctly summoned, and allows the summoner to converse with the dead or attacks them or drives them mad. I was struck by a statement in the article (written in 1997) that Bloody Mary, as a myth, seemed only to have existed for about twenty years. I did a little research and found that it was first recorded in 1978 in a book of urban legends called The Mexican Pet, but it's difficult to say how much longer it might have been around before then. There don't seem to be any direct hints to that particular version of mirror magic in earlier folklore, at least that I've encountered, but who knows.

Here's a thing you should not do after dark if you are of a nervous and imaginative disposition: read a shit-ton of web pages about Bloody Mary.

It may be relevant to note that while the legend is almost completely exclusive to young girls -- in some of the shelters, you could die if a boy overhears you telling it -- most of the scholarship done on Bloody Mary outside of the Myths Over Miami article has been written by men. I might not have noticed this except for a couple of factors, and here's the creepiest one:

There's a long article about Bloody Mary by Dan Norder entitled "The Face In The Mirror". I couldn't figure out why none of the images would load until I realised I was actually reading the article at the Wayback Machine. Norder claimed to have been writing a book expanding the legend, so I googled around to see if the book was out yet. It's not, so I googled Dan Norder. The man appears to have disappeared entirely; links to professional pages go nowhere, and there's not much trace of the book.

Brr.

(To be honest, I'm sure if I did a more thorough search I'd find him, but it's a better story this way. See also: Hal Sanatarium, which turned out to be a Google misprint, sadly.)

Other things I researched this evening: Egrets. Much more soothing.

Egrets? I've had a few -- but then again, too few to mention...