Who needs electricity?

It turns out that a two-hour power outage will do wonders to focus one's attention on the end of the world story that one is attempting to work on.

Fortunately, the laptop has more than enough battery to cope.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 13

Reflecting on the fight...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Parenthood: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good: Secondborn tried to put on my glasses. This was funny. They're about twice the size of his face. This was also basically harmless, as he managed it without breaking anything or even bending the frames.

The Bad: His idea of "put on Daddy's glasses" involves grabbing them by the lenses and wrestling them into place. So, y'know, fingerprints. Everywhere.

The Ugly: Secondborn had just finished eating a large meal of Honey-Seared Chicken. So there weren't just fingerprints on the lenses, there were great, slimy, sticky fingerprints on the lenses.

I have to applaud his effort, really. I mean, most kids are naturally messy, but this was a whole new level of "smeared beyond any possible use." Fortunately, I don't actually require my glasses in order to drive. And it wasn't terribly hard to clean, once I got to the cleaning supplies. And it was entirely too cute to be annoying.

Am I an adult yet?

Over at Forever in Hell, Personal Failure has asked if anyone out there feels like an adult, or if we're all pretty much faking it.

I'm... ambivalent.

I mean, I have a job, and I've managed to remain employed at the same place for ten years now, so in that sense I think I'm an adult. I'm married (arguably re-married), and we mostly don't get into fights over stupid stuff...

Well, okay, there was that one argument in Target, with "They're golden dreams" on her side, and "Red, Gold, and Green" on my side - she insisted that the lyrics made more sense in her version, but I stayed firm on the point that nevertheless those weren't the words that Boy George had actually written.

But, really, aside from that one incident, we don't fight much and we work together very well; that feels like being an adult.

And then there's being a parent. My parents didn't raise children, exactly. It was more like they raised future adults, and I'm trying to do the same thing with my kids. And that means taking their thoughts, questions, and concerns seriously; it means expecting them to act responsibly, and (within reason) trusting them to make their own decisions.

On the other hand, I'm thrilled to have kids because now I don't look so weird when I buy toys, or watch superhero movies, or play video games. I still write stories about unlikely heroes who discover powerful magic swords and go off to save the world. I was completely undone - like, reduced to helpless sobbing - by the ending of Astro Boy. I remain grievously disappointed that my mutant power still hasn't manifested (at age 38 - clearly I'm just a late bloomer).

So I don't know. I don't think being an adult means what I used to think it meant. It doesn't mean knowing what you're doing all the time. I don't think it means being serious and sober all the time. I don't think it even means being responsible, beyond whatever is strictly necessary. On the other hand, I think it does mean having a good, working idea of what is strictly necessary. I think it means understanding what's important, and worth fighting for/over; and learning to ignore or not worry too much about the things that aren't important or that you can't help/do/fix. I think it means learning that you aren't the only important person in the world.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 12

The monster in the mirror...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

National Novel Writing Month

Here's why I don't participate in NaNoWriMo. I just went back to work on one of my projects. It's a book-length idea. Probably the first in a series, actually. (I've talked about it before - it's the "other project" mentioned in this post.)

I have eight pages done. So, y'know, so far, so good. Especially since I started writing it towards the end of October...

...2009.

No, that's not depressing AT ALL.

But you know what? I'm not going to sit here and tell you why it takes absolutely bloody forever to get any writing projects done. Instead, I'm going to take the time I have now, and see if I can at least fill page nine.

So what about you? Working on anything for NaNoWriMo? Got any other projects - writing, artistic, crafty - that you'd like to talk about? Comments are open.

Another request from the search logs

I've noted before that people find this blog through a variety of improbable and surprising search terms. Often, I suspect, they're disappointed: for one reason or another, what's actually here isn't quite what they were looking for. And I'm very sure that was the case in our most recent example, who was searching for "spider bondage sexy art".

I say this because I have exactly one spider picture on this blog, and it isn't sexy. But, as Bigweld says, "See a need, fill a need." And here at Mock Ramblings, we are all about helping out our fellow spider fetishists, as well as anyone else who happens along. So, in the spirit of brotherhood and solidarity, I offer you Spider Bondage Sexy Art:

Thanksgiving schedule

I don't expect to be on the computer this weekend. At least, not very much.

I do have one story idea, but I doubt I'll be able to write it. If I manage it, it'll go up tomorrow (Thanksgiving) around mid-morning. Otherwise, it's going to be pretty quiet around here until at least Monday.

So... consider this an open thread. Possible topics include:

• Super heroes
• Monsters
• How you're preparing for the zombie apocalypse
• Whether or not anyone would even notice the zombie apocalypse if it happened during the Black Friday sales
• Whether Dr. Who could successfully prevent Gojira from destroying Tokyo
• Thanksgiving and/or what you're thankful for
• Were-turkeys vs. zombie elves: who wins?

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 11

The furry-ous showdown...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

I don't know where they get it, really

So Firstborn - who is five - threw one of his toys inside the house tonight. This is a direct violation of one of our long-standing rules, plus we'd just warned him not to. So we took it away.

He ran off to his room yelling, "Evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil-evil!"

I managed to get a pillow over my face before I burst out laughing. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have appreciated that.

A bit later he got into a sort of snit and essentially ran over his little brother (who's about nineteen months old - call it a year and a half). So Secondborn fell down, and I think got the wind knocked out of him. And we decided, at about seven o'clock in the evening, that it was clearly time for bed.

Secondborn got a shower first, then got put in his bed. He seems to be okay; he cried a bit and then went to sleep.

Firstborn got sent to his room, and put in his sleeping clothes, and then he had his teeth brushed. He told us he was feeling bad - which he probably is, he's almost never this careless unless he's sick or getting sick. After lying in bed in the dark for a while, he asked if he could have a story. I told him that it was bedtime, and that he was not getting a story tonight, and that this was because he was in trouble for running over his brother.

Now he's laying on his bed and moaning. "I am doomed. Doomed. I do not care, I am doomed." And just a moment ago: "I was right. I am doomed. Totally right: doomed."

He is so melodramatic. I don't know where he gets it from. It's all very mysterious, really.

Random thoughts on parenting

Firstborn is about five and half years old now. Secondborn is about nineteen months old - call it a year and a half. And even taking those ages into account, they're very different children.

The developmental stuff is pretty close. Firstborn is learning to read and do basic math, and doesn't seem to have any problems with either subject. Secondborn can say a handful of words, and just learned to hop in a way that gets both feet of the ground. He understands a startling amount of English, he just hasn't figured out how to produce the words himself. This is, I think, roughly where his older brother was at the same age.

But there are some noteworthy differences. Firstborn got his teeth relatively early; Secondborn's teeth are still coming in. Despite this, Secondborn has been eating grown-up food, exclusively, for months now. All the Stage 1 mush, the Stage 3 hot-dogs-in-slime that Firstborn was still eating at two-and-half years old? Secondborn won't touch them.

Secondborn is vastly more interested in vehicles than Firstborn ever was (or is now, for that matter). He rides the tricycles around at my parents' house, which Firstborn never did. And he's surprisingly adept at it: he can stop within two inches of my ankle, and he does. He plays with (and carries around) the Hotwheels cars - which were only mildly and briefly interesting to Firstborn.

In geek terms: Firstborn is the Transformers kid. He wants to be the giant robot that turns into other things. Secondborn is the Robotech kid: he wants to drive the giant robot that turns into other things.

Time Wasting Survey: Time Machine

It's pretty quiet, but I'm too tired to focus on writing anything actually useful. So I turn to you, gentle readers, for answers to the most important question of this century[1]:

What's the first thing you would do if you created a working time machine?

[1] Or any century, really.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 10

It's the psychology of the thing...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Reflections on Communication

Well, he's officially missing again. Not that the Watchers could be bother to tell little ol' me, of course. No, I got the word from our friend Billy, after my boyfriend failed to come home for three days in row. And I had to call them in order to find out.

In their defense, Billy and Crystal apparently assumed that I knew already. They were... "appalled" is a good word... that I hadn't been told. So the blame pretty much falls on the Watchers, or the Elders, and until I learn better, the woman who's supposed to be training my boyfriend: Kate.

This is Claire, of course, in case you hadn't picked that up already. You know, the Deranged Cultist's girlfriend. Or just the Deranged Girlfriend. The more I think about that, the more it seems to fit.

Anyway, apparently my boyfriend was watching this researcher - let's call him "Dr. Fine". Dr. Fine was trying to see if there was any sort of psychic connection to be found between his sleeping subjects: shared images, a collective unconscious, atavistic memories... stuff like that. Now, all those things exist - but most of the time, for most people, they're completely inaccessible. That's... a lot less true for a lot of my boyfriend's fellow cultists, apparently.

According to Billy, they decided to send my boyfriend in to take part of the research and find out more about what Dr. Fine was doing. They chose him because he doesn't have any of those dream connections. (That led me to wonder: the business with the Place Of Mists started as a series of dreams, so maybe they were wrong about that? I don't know. Maybe we'll find out. But that's something I can check, so I'll do that tonight.) Anyway, my boyfriend went to the sleep lab and joined the test subjects, and... something went wrong. About midway through the night, the bed was empty.

Crystal thinks that whatever Dr. Fine was doing interacted with the way that one of the Watchers was observing my boyfriend. She thinks so because while that Watcher is still around physically, he dropped into a deep coma at precisely the moment that my boyfriend disappeared.

Dr. Fine and his staff are panicking. They haven't actually reported that they lost one of their test subjects, but they've been working steadily to figure out what happened and how to fix it. I don't think much of their chances, but that's something at least. And the fact that they haven't told anyone else actually makes it easier for the Watchers, who also want to keep the whole thing secret.

I spoke to Kate, and she's pretty sure that my boyfriend is still alive. I get the impression that the Watchers might have been panicking some, too, because she said she should have called me in immediately - and she said it with that "I'm an idiot" tone in her voice. So I'm working with them, sort of, at a safe distance, and we're all trying to find out what happened.

I'll keep you posted.

Oh, right, I almost forgot: "Reflections of a Deranged Cultist" is a work of fiction. People don't really disappear just because they have the wrong sort of dreams. Promise.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 9

In which we return to the implications of vampirism...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Put another log on the fire...

Some of you, who don't recognize that title, probably think I'm about to talk about the weather. You can relax; I don't much care what the weather is doing. No, this is just a collection of songs that I'm playing at for my co-workers on this lovely this Friday morning. Enjoy!

How can that be a "choice"?

So a while back, Former Conservative found a bunch of "gotcha!" questions on the topic of homosexuality courtesy of an organization called CARM - which is all I know about them, and all I want to know about them. Former Conservative has a stronger stomach than I do: he waded through the entire list of questions and responded to all of them.

In the process, FC also made fun of them. This is an entirely understandable response - in fact, I think it's just about the only sensible response to a list like that. These are not questions in the traditional sense of "a request for more information." They're accusations that happen to be made in an interrogative format for rhetorical effect. Not only that, they're easy enough to pick apart if you can stand to expose yourself that much prolonged, concentrated idiocy: they're based on easily refuted (and in some cases mind-numbingly stupid) assumptions.

The fellow who originally posted the list of "questions", one Matt Slick, apparently noticed that someone had refuted him. So he wrote a response. And now Former Conservative has ripped apart his response as well.

All of which is a long (and possibly unnecessary) prologue for an observation that I'd like to make. Because one of the abjectly stupid ideas that Matt Slick is championing is that homosexuality is a "choice". Matt Slick isn't the only person who thinks so, of course; it's a common refrain in the anti-QUILTBAG rhetoric. And, well, I just don't see how sexual attraction can be described as a "choice" in any meaningful sense of the word.

Here's the thing: I'm a heterosexual male, and I can't even control what sort of women I find attractive. Either I find someone attractive, or I don't. It's a reaction, not a choice. I could no more choose to find men attractive than I could choose to be sexually aroused by abstract art. As far as I know, that's how attraction works for more or less everybody. So why in the hell would you think that people who happen to be attracted to members of their own sex have chosen to do so?

And even if that were possible, who would choose to have attractions that make you an automatic target for teasing, bullying, and possible persecution from every stray bigot who happens by? In what world would that possibly make sense?

So, yeah. Matt Slick and his view of homosexuality can bite me.

Edited to add: ...And then on Facebook, someone posted a link to this video detailing the top five reasons why you should choose to be gay. Warning: really, really not safe for work. Or small children. Or anyone with a particularly delicate constitution. Contains swearing and skimpy outfits.

The Doom That Came To Hippo

Being a hippopotamus is more perilous than you might think.

I was in English class. It must have been sixth grade, because I had Ms. Green for a teacher. Poor, poor Ms. Green. So, yeah, there I was, in sixth grade English class.

The thing is, I took sixth grade English in fifth grade. Then, for reasons that I’m not sure I ever completely understood, I took sixth grade English again in sixth grade. And I enjoyed it a lot more in fifth grade – not just because it was the first time I’d had it, but also because I’d liked that teacher much better than I liked Ms. Green.

Poor, poor Ms. Green.

So we came into the classroom, and we took our seats, and Ms. Green announced that we’d be doing some creative writing. And she handed out copies of a worksheet.

This was not a sixth-grade worksheet. It was, to my jaded sixth grade eyes, barely even a fourth grade worksheet. At the top was a fanciful drawing of a hippopotamus sitting in – and slightly overflowing – an old-fashioned bath tub. Beneath that was the writing assignment:

The hippo is stuck in the tub! How can we get him out?
And beneath that was a series a brief lines where we could write our answers. They’d even included a helpful writing prompt on the first line: Grease the hippo with Crisco! Just, y’know, to give you some idea of what kind of answers they were expecting.

To say I was insulted would be an understatement of epic proportions. I regarded this assignment with the profound and unshakable contempt of a twelve-year-old who has just been asked to do kid stuff. The sheer effrontery of it all left me speechless. This lèse-majesté I could not, would not forgive. And so I decided to express my... displeasure.

Poor, poor Ms. Green.

So I took a fresh sheet of paper from my desk. At the top, I copied over the assignment: “The hippo is stuck in the tub! How can we get him out?” I paused for a moment, to further consider this affront to my dignity.

And then I wrote the most violent, gory, horrific story that my twelve-year-old mind could produce. In the whole history of the world, no fictional hippopotamus has ever suffered as this hippo suffered – and all for the unforgivable crime of getting stuck in my bath tub. I enumerated the tools of his demise in loving detail: the vast array of martial arts weaponry, the gardening tools, the machine shop equipment. I described the feel of blades entering hippo flesh, the splut of impact, the gouts of blood and gobbets of flesh that littered the floor and splattered across the walls and ceiling. I explained the painstaking process of extracting the hippo from the tub, one organ at a time. It’s possible that I even included the hippo’s cries for mercy and last, desperate gasps for breath.

Poor, poor Ms. Green.

It was, quite simply, the most profoundly disturbing piece of writing that I was then capable of producing. It perfectly expressed my absolute contempt for the entire idea of that assignment. It sent - I thought - a very clear message that I expected never to be given such an abjectly stupid assignment ever again.

It might – just maybe possibly might - have gone a bit overboard.

Because the next thing I remember is my parents asking if I’d had trouble in English class. And then there were meetings. Meetings with Ms. Green. Meetings with the person in charge of fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Meetings with the school counselor.

Everyone was relieved to hear that I was not, in fact, contemplating any sort of actual, real-world violence. They were rather less concerned about whether I was planning some sort of anti-hippopotamus rampage, but I reassured them about that too. This was before school shootings became a regular news item, so we didn’t have any No Tolerance policies to deal with, so once everyone was clear that I was just expressing my disgust with the in-class writing assignment, it was pretty much over. They didn’t even move me to a different English class, so the next day I was right back in my desk with Ms. Green.

Poor, poor Ms. Green.

Poor, poor hippopotamus.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 8

It's a small world and Luther doesn't like that church.

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 7

The vampire next door...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Half a league onward!

So, the software for the new site got installed at four-thirty this morning, and we started the training-people-and-importing-content session at nine o'clock. We're off and running... at least for now. The contractor is still tweaking the software as we go, so there's always the possibility that our new site will eat itself, but for the moment it's up and we have about sixteen people importing content from the old site. The ideas is that once they're comfortable with the process - well, and once the logins are working[1] - they can go back to their departments and continue importing their pages.

My job, at this point, is basically to circulate and talk them through it. Mostly, this has not been too hard. However, owing to the abysmal quality of what we ironically refer to as "air" here in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, I am also coping with a lot of sinus drainage. At this rate, by mid-afternoon I'll have lost my voice completely.[2]

We're definitely doing things, though. Oh, yes. Things of great and profound importance. Things that might even manage - yes, yes, it's a very slim chance, but it's there - might even manage not to implode spectacularly at some undisclosed future time. Chin up, stiff upper lip, and all that.

Was there a man dismay'd? Maybe one or two. But don't tell anybody, it would spoil our image.

[1] We don't actually have those set up. They were supposed to be able to import from our network, but that's... not working yet. So we have a temporary workaround. Which, again, may decide to eat itself as soon as they do try to import the network logins.

[2] There are not enough cough drops in the world to prevent this, though they certainly do help. Note to self: buy stock in Halls.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 6

A brief digression on snacks...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Climbing the avalanche

I'd meant to put up another post today - maybe something on the topic of Lying With Facts, which I've been meaning to write for a while - but we've officially started installing the new website. For those coming in late (which is probably everyone, now that I think about it), we're undertaking a complete redesign of our primary website: moving it to a new server, moving to new Content Management software, moving to a completely new look and layout.

So far, it's going exactly as well as I expected. (I have that Dilbert strip posted on the wall of my cubicle. It's been there since it was published. It turns out that you actually can tell the future from comic strips, using a mystic art known as Graphispication, and this is my first successful prediction.)

On Monday we're scheduled to start moving content across from the old server to the new server. That, of course, presupposed that the installation of the software for the new site got finished yesterday (Thursday). It's now midmorning on Friday. We're still working out the bugs in the install. Even assuming it gets finished today, we will have no time to test it before Monday. You see where this is going, right? I feel compelled to point out that according to the original timeline for the project, the new site was supposed to go live back in February of this year.

So consider this an open thread. Suggested topics include computer problems, doomed and/or hellish projects at work, and whether or not it's moral to actively hope that zombies, plague, or soul-devouringly-horrible Lovecraftian beasties will intervene to make the whole project unnecessary.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 5

In which the captives try to define Christianity and go off to visit a church.

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Take two Ave Marias and call me in the morning

Father Martin Davis stood beside the hospital bed and watched as Dr. Price reset the boy's leg. The boy was maybe ten years old; apparently he'd fallen off his bike and caught the leg in a drain. As a priest, Father Davis didn't pay much attention to the medical portions of the procedure; he was busy composing his mind for prayer.

The bones were lined up and the cast was in place when Dr. Price caught his eye and nodded. Father Martin stepped forward, feeling the Ruach HaKodesh move through him as he prayed: "Holy Father, drive the demons from this boy's injury and keep them at bay while he heals. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

"Thank you, Father," said the boy's mother, who had been sitting on the far side of the bed.

Father Martin smiled and stepped back. There weren't any demons or evil influences here in the hospital, of course. The building was blessed far too regularly for that. The prayer was just to discourage them from settling in the wound and causing an infection after the boy went home.

He was halfway to the door when one of the nurses came rushing in. "Father Martin? Come quick. We've got a bad one."

The priest followed her down the hallway to another room. He hated working the Emergency Room, particularly at night, and especially during the dark of the moon, when the most chaotic and malign of spirits were ascendant. So, naturally, that was always when his ministry was scheduled. Father Martin wasn't sure if this was because the Bishop had it in for him, or whether it was intended as some sort of test or lesson. It didn't matter, really: it was his duty and he did it.

He could hear the trouble well before they reached the room. Shouted curses, in English and French, spilled out into the corridor. He could hear bangs and thumps from inside the room, and a shockingly loud clatter as something metal hit the floor. The nurse started, then went in.

Father Martin followed her, and the obscenities moved yet another language: Greek, he thought, but he couldn't be sure. The boy was strapped to one of the beds, but he was thrashing around with maniacal strength. The parents were huddled together in a corner of the room, away from the medical equipment. They looked panicked and exhausted, though their expressions lightened towards relief when they saw his clerical collar.

Ignoring the thrashing figure of the boy - teenager, really - Father Martin turned to the parents and lifted a hand. "Bless you," he said. He could feel no evil in them, no demonic influences hovering around them, but if they'd been in the presence of something like this... well, they could probably use a little extra protection.

He turned back to the boy, and was gratified to see that the body had gone still - though the mouth was still spitting curses. Whatever had gotten into this boy was strong. He made the sign of the Cross in the air in front of him, then stepped closer.

"Bless me, Father," he said softly, "as I work to save this child from the minions of Evil." He felt the Spirit settle over him once again, peaceful and powerful and strong.

This wasn't just a matter of a minor demon hanging around and exerting its influence, he saw immediately. Just bringing the child to the hospital would resolve that sort of problem, placing the child beyond its reach. All that would be left would be to drive out the last of its influence, a practice which filled a great many of Father Martin's working hours. But this... this was worse.

Either the young man wasn't a Christian, or he'd opened himself to sin so much that a beast of wrath had been able to enter his mind. This was a full-on possession, and the spirit that moved those limbs and spoke those words would not be willingly or easily displaced. Somewhere in there, the boy was watching this demon move him like a puppet, and being tempted ever further into despair. How had it come to this?

He started to ask the parents, then decided there was no time. Instead, he turned back and raised his hands over the bound form of their son. "Holy father, we ask that you take the burden from this boy. Release him from his bondage, and drive out this darkness inside him..."

The procedure went on for hours. In the unchanging light of the hospital room, it felt like days. The beast was strong, and it called on its Master to increase its strength. Father Martin prayed for its removal, and his faith in the One Who Could Do All Things never wavered. He had no doubt of the eventual outcome, and so he was not surprised when at last the boy's body gave a great, bone-deep cry. The sound was horrible, echoing, overflowing the room and spilling out into the halls. It went on impossibly long, unbroken, until at last a twisted shape of black smoke rose from the boy's mouth.

Father Martin put a hand out, feeling the Ruach HaKodesh move through him. He caught the smoke, held it while it struggled, and finally crushed it in his fingers. Before him, on the bed, the boy was weeping silently. His tormentor was gone.

With the demon vanquished, the Holy Spirit moved on as well. Its strength went with it, and Father Martin resisted the urge to sag - or to forgo dignity entirely and sit down on the floor. He had one thing left to do before he could rest, and it was vitally important.

There were cards in his pocket, pre-printed and blessed by the Bishop. A prayer was inscribed on each. He skipped the simple ones at the front, and went to the more potent invocations at the back.

As the parents moved towards the bed, he drew his prescription from the pile. "Here," he said, and handed the card to the father. "You can read this, yes?"

"Oui," the man answered. "Yes."

Father Martin put a hand on his shoulder. "You must say this twice a day - the three of you, together. You understand? Once in the morning, once at night, for the next seven days. Your son will seem better - he will be better. But you must not forget. Twice a day, for seven days. If you stop too soon, this thing - or something like it - might come back."

"I understand," said the father.

"The ones that come back, they're resistant to prayer." The family didn't need to know all this, but Father Martin had a regrettable tendency to lecture people when he was tired - and right now he was exhausted. "We have too much of that already, too many new prayer-resistant strains of demons. Pray together for the full seven days, to make sure the beast is entirely destroyed."

"We know," said the mother. "We will do it."

"Good," Father Martin replied. "God's blessing be upon you all."

"And upon you," said the mother. "Thank you."

By the clock on the wall, his shift had ended two hours ago. Father Martin gathered himself, wondering if he could make it home, or if he should find a place to sleep here. The idea of sleeping in the hospital didn't appeal to him, but driving didn't seem wise.

"This way, Father," said the nurse in the doorway. She was short and squat and dark, but right then she looked like an angel sent from Heaven. He wondered how long she'd been standing there. "Let's get you to a bed."

Tip of the hat to Former Conservative, for reminding me that there are people who think this is really how it works - except, of course, that in their view of the world a Catholic priest would be bringing the demons in rather than casting them out.

Welcome to Tourettes

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Gossip, Infidelity, and My Brain

My brain is weird.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time - or, well, at all, really - you probably already figured that out. That said, I'm still fascinated by the particular ways that my brain can be weird.

So yesterday I learned that one of my co-workers is, um, boinking someone that he shouldn't be. He shouldn't be boinking her because he's already married to someone else, and because she's already married to someone else.

Normally, I wouldn't know about this. I tend to be blissfully unaware of these things - partly out of disinterest, and partly because I don't always process social cues. Also, normally I wouldn't care. I have better things to do with my time and attention.

However, owing to the way I learned about it, I only found out who the guy was.

This, apparently, completely bypasses my customary indifference and triggers an intense curiosity instead. I think it's the incomplete nature of the information; if they'd just come in and said, "Oh, X and Y are sleeping with each other," I'd probably have just nodded and gone on with my day. But being told that "X is sleeping with, um, someone in another department," immediately made me want to know: "Really? Whom?"

Well, okay, not immediately. It immediately made me want to slap the shit out of him, because he really should know better. But right after that, it made me want to know whom he was boinking.

It took about half an hour to find out. Apparently I was one of maybe three people in our workplace who hadn't heard about it already. That half an hour was, frankly, way more attention than the issue deserved, and mostly involved finding a discreet source of information. But now that I know, I can set the information safely behind an S.E.P. Field and get on with my life.

Truth or Certainty?

I've noticed - and this isn't new, but several things have recently called it to mind - that there are an awful lot of people in the world who claim to want truth, when in fact what they really want is certainty.

Now, this is neither entirely true nor entirely fair. That's the nature of generalizations. But I think it's true enough to merit discussion.

Certainty is comforting. It's definite, it's solid, and it gives you something you can depend on.

Truth, on the other hand, is messy. It's uncertain, it's contextual, it's conditional. It requires us to acknowledge the limits of our understanding, to admit that we don't know things, to see that the things we do know are incomplete. It takes work.

I don't trust certainty, and I'm generally wary of people who seem driven to find it. The problem with certainty is that it's quite possible to be both certain and wrong. And if you're so certain of something that you never feel compelled examine, doubt, or question it - well, then you're far less likely to notice if it is wrong.

Left over from Halloween

I put this together for one of my iFriends. Feel free to steal it. And remember: Do Not Ring My Doorbell!

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 4

In which we consider the implications of author inserts...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Reflections on Science

You've all watched some sort of movie where the scientist learns something that Man Was Not Meant To Know, and releases some sort of unholy terror into the world, right? Either they're creating experimental portals to other dimensions, or they're doing experiments on human perceptions in deep-sleep and other altered states of mind, or they've realized that the obscure writings of some ancient civilization are weirdly relevant to a particularly esoteric branch of physics, or something along those lines.

That, um, that actually happens.

Oh, not very often. Usually, when something from Outside enters our world, it's a result of people like us, who actually know what we're doing. (And, in particular, who know how to put down the things we call up.) Occasionally, we run into something like the recent situation with the Corpsewalker, where someone has stumbled across the knowledge but lacks the necessary background or caution to use it. Very rarely, these kinds of threats come from scientific researchers, who have come to the knowledge on their own.

But, for the same reason that these occurrences are so rare, they're also extremely hard to predict. They tend to happen to people, and in places, that we aren't watching. By the time we find out that something has happened, the situation is already out of control and almost certain to end badly. (One such incident occurred in Chicago in 1871, another in Mexico City in 1985. That should give you some idea of just how badly these things can end.)

We're watching one of those situations now. It's more subtle than the two I just mentioned, but it could prove equally dangerous. The fellow involved is a dream-researcher, and right now we're still trying to figure out what he was trying to do, and what he's actually done.

I've mentioned before that a lot of my fellow worshipers have unusual sorts of dreams. Whatever this researcher did, no less than six of us dreamed about it . (I was not one of them; that particular sort of dreaming isn't one of my talents.) They, of course, passed the information to the Elders, and the Elders set some of the Watchers to find out who the guy is and what he's done. And that is where I come in.

Reflections of a Deranged Cultist is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual deranged cultists or overzealous scientific researchers is entirely coincidental.

Didn't see that nightmare coming...

The nightmare: There's a monster, probably an alien, that's been creeping around eating people. I am on a train trying to get away from it, or trying to get to help. There is some reason to suspect that it might be following us or on the train with us.

The creepy part: I am in some sort of dining car on the train and talking to my friend. I ask him if he's planning to eat all of the rather large steak on the plate in front of him. He says, "Yeah, that would be tragic, wouldn't it, if I ate my whole steak?" At this point the lights go out, for about the duration of his sentence - we've passed through a tunnel or something.

When the lights come back on, I am staring at his head and the head of another of our friends. Their bodies are gone. Their heads are mounted on the wall, looking down in my general direction. They are part of a large, fleshy mass that is suspended across the ceiling and hanging down partway onto the walls.

This freaks me out sufficiently that my brain insists on ducking down under the table, scooting it over to the door of the train, and jumping off the moving train - complete with tuck, roll, and hope-nothing-breaks landing sequence. I am actually picking myself up and checking myself for injuries in the grass beside the train tracks before my brain will let me wake up.

The REALLY creepy part: I wake up and realize that out here in the real world, something soft and gentle is touching my face. Apparently I am sleeping in Firstborn's bed, and he has rolled over and put a hand out.

Despite the fact that it's only 11:30 or so at night, and I have spent the entire day - and, as a matter of fact, most of this week - so completely exhausted that I could barely see straight... Despite that, I am now wide awake.

Yeah. Thanks, kid. I needed that.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 3

In which the werewolf first takes over narration...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Real Work Conversations: Not Enough Logins

Me: "So, wait. If you're you, and James is me, who am I???"

My Boss: "Muwahahaha!"

(For anyone who's confused: we're working on a particular piece of software that only came with a certain number of licenses, because we've been too cheap to upgrade to something sensible. So I have an account, and my boss has an account. Our minion James also uses my account. However, we can't be logged in on two different machines at the same time, so if James is using my login I have to log in as a my boss. This morning, they were both logged in, so I was feeling all left out.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 2

In which we introduce the monsters...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

Reflections on Difficult Questions Part 2

This is Claire... which I guess makes me the Deranged Girlfriend? Or maybe not. Anyway, since my boyfriend is still under the weather, I thought I’d kind of fill in. I mean, I don’t know too much about what he’s been doing at work, and here at home he’s mostly been resting, but there’s some other stuff I can tell you about.

Anne, for instance. She’s come by twice since her first visit. She wants to talk, and I guess she doesn’t have that many people she can talk to anymore. And she’s been asking a lot more questions, and I’ve been answering them as best I can... because they’re not questions about things she shouldn’t know.

She’s asking questions about being a Catholic. Which, you know, I can mostly answer. I’m not sure the Church would approve of everything I have to say, but that’s how it goes. And it’s interesting to look at something that I’ve done my whole life, and try to explain it to someone who’s completely new to it.

I haven't asked her many questions. I don't know if she's thinking about joining the church. I don't know if she's thinking about working with Father Peter, or if she's asked him about anything of the sort. I don't know why she's talking to me and not my boyfriend. Maybe - and whatever else she's considering, I think this is part of it - she just wants to talk to someone who knows about what happened and won't think she's crazy.

Father Peter is treating us with the same unfocused fondness that he always has. If he's learned anything new about us, it hasn't affected his opinions. Well, that or he's an insanely good actor. He's nice to us, but not any nicer or more... familiar? than before.

I know my boyfriend's watching someone in particular at work, but he hasn't said who (and I probably wouldn't know them anyway) or why. I suppose for another couple that might be a problem, but for us... no, I trust him. I think he's hoping that it doesn't turn into another situation like the one we just cleaned up.

And that's really all I have to add for the moment.

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 1

In which we get started...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. I'm also tempted to create a cast list, just to avoid confusion; we'll see if that's needed or not. Meanwhile, if you're ready and willing to proceed, join us below the cut:

True Parenting Conversations

This is what it's like to have me for a Dad. Before I explain, though, I have to offer some background, so:

Firstborn owns a pair of plastic statues of transformers. They don't move, and they don't transform. Originally, they were toppers on a birthday cake. Firstborn also owns a great number of Imaginext toys, including several from their Outer Space setting. The little Imaginext space-guys have helmets that fit down over their heads and shoulders. One of these wound up in the shower, somehow, with the Transformer statues. So, in a fit of whimsy, I stuck it on Bumblebee's head.

This led to the following conversation:

Firstborn: "Why does Bumblebee have a mask?"
Me: "So nobody will know that he's a ninja."
Firstborn: "Bumblebee isn't a ninja."
Me: "No?"
Firstborn: "He's a Transformer. He's not a ninja."
Me: "Then why does he have a mask?"
Firstborn. "I do not know."