Back when I was famous —before the accident forced me into retirement and obscurity, living out my days in a rundown villa on Mauritius, where my nightmares are eternally haunted by flocks of skeletal dodos that are only kept from stalking into my waking life through liberal application of the vile local rum— I was often invited to lend my face and words to endorse products for a nominal fee. I thought you might enjoy these examples from my scrap book. Perhaps they'll remind you of a simpler time, when men shaved only their faces and women wore tennis shoes only if forced to at gunpoint.
Bon Ami Cleanser: It redefines harsh. Don't let the fluffy little chick on the label fool you: Bon Ami is serious business. I've used it to polish the very flesh off any man who slights me, not stopping until his bones are glowing white under the noonday sun. It works great on Formica as well.
Goodyear Tires: The culmination of the industrial spirit. No tire is more finely made. No round object is rounder. I don't need an automobile to drive: I just need four of these and my iron will.
Lucky Strike Cigarettes: People often ask me (their voices trembling) to what I credit my enormous strength and Herculean endurance. My answer is always the same: every morning I start the day with a bowl of crushed Lucky Strikes, swimming in warm buttermilk. They provide me with the essential nicotine and tar I need to stride through the day, crushing my enemies and grinding their legacies to powder while their widows look on, gasping with fear and arousal.
Tootsie Rolls: A single Tootsie Roll held firmly under the tongue has seen me through treks across the full length of the Gobi desert on several occasions. To bring any other sustenance would be an act of pure effeminacy.
Hanes Underpants: Putting a pair on is like being ravished by a depraved Danish courtesan made of the finest combed cotton.
The Zondervan Publishing House Edition of Today's New International Version of the Bible: A manly and robust translation that has often been of great solace to me. I only regret their decision to print the words of Christ in red, as they tend to disappear in the bloody haze so often before my eyes.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
A Memo From Mountford
To: Humanity
In re yours of 27 April 20--, a Hymn to the sun and a rising feeling of the spirit, like a child's balloon going up up up from the surface of the earth...
Well, I hardly know where to begin. There's certainly an expansiveness that you all desire...that we all desire, I should say. Far be it from me to set myself apart from humanity. Some of my fondest desires are human. At least I think they're human. You tell me: when they're obscenely biological; when they drip with blood and spit and semen; when they crack bones and burst organs; when they set the nerves to shrieking and the skin to peeling; when they pith infants and liquefy the elderly; when they're sick and shameful: those are human desires, aren't they?
Surely we're not talking about something merely animal?
But where was I? Oh yes: a hymn to the sun. I still hardly know where to begin. The surface of the earth is yours. Nearly two million miles to desire. Yes yes yes two thirds of that is under water, but really, you've got submarines and Dutchmen. It's only a matter of time before the whole thing is available to you somehow. I have full confidence in your industry. I only wish you felt the same way. When I get a whiff of this horrific sun worship, this retrograde Egyptian perversion, this simple ingratitude to millenia of sophisticated and supplanting theologies —spiritual and material— I weep for you. I also feel whithering contempt for you, but that's hardly what you need to hear right now, is it?
Pardon, I meant: ours, we've, us, our, us. Of course I did. Because I'm one of you.
Your notes on that morning caused a special pain which I hope never to feel again. Such sickening notes, the sound of centuries of enlightenment stripping away from your consciousness, and sung out with such unanimity. You were like pigs, grunt grunt grunting for your slops, your beady little eyes all pointing in the same direction, your drippy hairy snouts inhaling and exhaling as one. My eardrums bled, I assure you, as I heard your piggy little chorus greet the sun. I'm amazed you didn't roll over and offer up your porky bellies, the only kind of future you seem to have any sophistication about.
Excuse me, one of us. Us.
You should know: I wasn't the only one offended that day. Do you know who else found your hymn disgusting? Who else found it an aesthetic crime beyond compare? Who else shuddered and felt sickened? Who else considered winking out of existence, rather than be racked by one more torturous second of your wetbrained crooning? No?
I'll give you a hint: you're orbiting it right now.
No, sorry, that's probably still too hard, so I'll just tell you it was the sun itself, shall I? Yes that's probably for the best.
I wouldn't say your hymn fell on deaf ears exactly, though they were nearly deafened by the time you finished. But honestly, the sun is billions of years old. There's nothing acceptable you can do for the sun. Avert your eyes, cover your skin, and stay inside as much as you can. That's what you can do for the sun. Don't assault it with off-key caterwauling. Don't blast it with orisons trite and pathetic. The sun is worthy of worship, but worship from you is a dishonor, that in some small measure diminishes the holiness of any thing it falls upon. Your worship causes solar flares and sunspots. Your worship is a blasphemy of the thing it worships. Your worship is a desecration. Your worship is an ugly thing smearing itself across the sun's beauty. Melanoma and the greenhouse effect are just punishments for your kind of worship.
In short, the sun hates you. As do I. But you need to understand the difference: the sun's hate for you is pure. My hate is a kind of love. While you wounded both of us that day, I still believe in your ultimate redemption. The sun would like nothing better than to burn you off the surface of the earth, but don't worry, I've had a word with it. You're safe for now. There's no need to thank me; indeed, I'd much rather you didn't. Just remember to avert your eyes when I pass, bow your heads, and stay out of my way. If it helps, think of me as a little piece of the sun that walks among you.
Yours in service,
Mountford
[For immediate distribution. Translate as necessary, but I want a copy in every set of filthy paws by the end of the week, whether they can read it or not. Tell them it's a magick talisman or their new passport or a lottery ticket, I don't care. If they just hold the words, maybe some of them will rub off.]
In re yours of 27 April 20--, a Hymn to the sun and a rising feeling of the spirit, like a child's balloon going up up up from the surface of the earth...
Well, I hardly know where to begin. There's certainly an expansiveness that you all desire...that we all desire, I should say. Far be it from me to set myself apart from humanity. Some of my fondest desires are human. At least I think they're human. You tell me: when they're obscenely biological; when they drip with blood and spit and semen; when they crack bones and burst organs; when they set the nerves to shrieking and the skin to peeling; when they pith infants and liquefy the elderly; when they're sick and shameful: those are human desires, aren't they?
Surely we're not talking about something merely animal?
But where was I? Oh yes: a hymn to the sun. I still hardly know where to begin. The surface of the earth is yours. Nearly two million miles to desire. Yes yes yes two thirds of that is under water, but really, you've got submarines and Dutchmen. It's only a matter of time before the whole thing is available to you somehow. I have full confidence in your industry. I only wish you felt the same way. When I get a whiff of this horrific sun worship, this retrograde Egyptian perversion, this simple ingratitude to millenia of sophisticated and supplanting theologies —spiritual and material— I weep for you. I also feel whithering contempt for you, but that's hardly what you need to hear right now, is it?
Pardon, I meant: ours, we've, us, our, us. Of course I did. Because I'm one of you.
Your notes on that morning caused a special pain which I hope never to feel again. Such sickening notes, the sound of centuries of enlightenment stripping away from your consciousness, and sung out with such unanimity. You were like pigs, grunt grunt grunting for your slops, your beady little eyes all pointing in the same direction, your drippy hairy snouts inhaling and exhaling as one. My eardrums bled, I assure you, as I heard your piggy little chorus greet the sun. I'm amazed you didn't roll over and offer up your porky bellies, the only kind of future you seem to have any sophistication about.
Excuse me, one of us. Us.
You should know: I wasn't the only one offended that day. Do you know who else found your hymn disgusting? Who else found it an aesthetic crime beyond compare? Who else shuddered and felt sickened? Who else considered winking out of existence, rather than be racked by one more torturous second of your wetbrained crooning? No?
I'll give you a hint: you're orbiting it right now.
No, sorry, that's probably still too hard, so I'll just tell you it was the sun itself, shall I? Yes that's probably for the best.
I wouldn't say your hymn fell on deaf ears exactly, though they were nearly deafened by the time you finished. But honestly, the sun is billions of years old. There's nothing acceptable you can do for the sun. Avert your eyes, cover your skin, and stay inside as much as you can. That's what you can do for the sun. Don't assault it with off-key caterwauling. Don't blast it with orisons trite and pathetic. The sun is worthy of worship, but worship from you is a dishonor, that in some small measure diminishes the holiness of any thing it falls upon. Your worship causes solar flares and sunspots. Your worship is a blasphemy of the thing it worships. Your worship is a desecration. Your worship is an ugly thing smearing itself across the sun's beauty. Melanoma and the greenhouse effect are just punishments for your kind of worship.
In short, the sun hates you. As do I. But you need to understand the difference: the sun's hate for you is pure. My hate is a kind of love. While you wounded both of us that day, I still believe in your ultimate redemption. The sun would like nothing better than to burn you off the surface of the earth, but don't worry, I've had a word with it. You're safe for now. There's no need to thank me; indeed, I'd much rather you didn't. Just remember to avert your eyes when I pass, bow your heads, and stay out of my way. If it helps, think of me as a little piece of the sun that walks among you.
Yours in service,
Mountford
[For immediate distribution. Translate as necessary, but I want a copy in every set of filthy paws by the end of the week, whether they can read it or not. Tell them it's a magick talisman or their new passport or a lottery ticket, I don't care. If they just hold the words, maybe some of them will rub off.]
Monday, July 7, 2008
More Books I Have Not Bought (Yet)
Secret Kneeshakes of the Amputee Masons!
Faking Leukemia for Fun and Sympathy
101 Haiku About Canning and Pickling
Blind Bulgarian Minefield Tap Dancers and Other Horrors of War
Plant a Seed and Watch It Die: A Memoir of Teaching the Hopeless
The Sweaty Man's Guide to Home Wiring
Why I am Still a Zoroastrian
A Timed History of Briefs
How To Kiss A Clown (No Tongues Edition)
What It Might Have Been Like to be Friends With Ian Curtis: a novel
The Collectors' Guide to Damaged Goods
I Before E Except After the Reichstag Fire: A History of the Real Grammar Nazis
Faking Leukemia for Fun and Sympathy
101 Haiku About Canning and Pickling
Blind Bulgarian Minefield Tap Dancers and Other Horrors of War
Plant a Seed and Watch It Die: A Memoir of Teaching the Hopeless
The Sweaty Man's Guide to Home Wiring
Why I am Still a Zoroastrian
A Timed History of Briefs
How To Kiss A Clown (No Tongues Edition)
What It Might Have Been Like to be Friends With Ian Curtis: a novel
The Collectors' Guide to Damaged Goods
I Before E Except After the Reichstag Fire: A History of the Real Grammar Nazis
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Life on Earth With The Madonna of Conflagration
The phone call was brief.
"I need you to come down here, like right now. Five minutes ago even."
"Where's down here?"
"The roof of the Bentley Building. Just hurry. I promise you're going to totally shit yourself."
You can usually trust The Madonna of Conflagration when she makes this kind of call. We originally met when she ran into the bar I was having a nervous breakdown in and asked if anybody wanted to see a duck being rescued from a barrel of molasses. I was the only person to follow her, and to this day I don't know if it's because I was worried about the duck, thought the whole thing sounded hilarious, or was intrigued at the prospect of seeing a real live barrel marked MOLASSES.
Another time I was at work. She walked in, wearing a trench coat and shades, sidled up to my desk and leaned over, whispering:
"You have got to get out of this morgue and follow me down to the park, because you will totally, totally not believe this shit that I have found."
Then she tried to glide out like the femme fatale in a spy movie, but it was basically her usual full on forward charge, just on tiptoe this time. Still, the whole thing was intriguing, so I cleared the decks as quickly as possible and went downtown. I found her by one of the huge half-dead trees that dot the city park.
"This hole in the trunk here? Stick your head in it, and look down. No, do not give me 'Dubious Look Number 7', do not ask me any questions, just do it."
So I did, and it was indeed totally worth it. The hole was about three feet up the trunk of the tree. Said trunk was completely filled with macadamia nuts up to the level of the hole. They were in the shell, which I had never seen so I had to ask her what they were.
"Do you have any idea how these got here?" I asked.
"No, but I have a theory."
She looked around.
"Hawaiian squirrels. Gotta be Hawaiian squirrels. Like,they've come back to the mainland, right? Probably floated back over in discarded SPAM cans. And they've brought their possessions with them."
I e-mailed her an article later that day that said there are no squirrels in Hawaii. She didn't talk to me for a month. Even after things defrosted, I got the impression that I was not to bring up the tree and its strange cargo ever again.
So while it was six in the morning on a Sunday, I figured the odds were pretty good that she had something worth seeing. I threw on some clothes, staggered out into the street, somehow found the subway and headed downtown. I arrived at the Bentley Building ten minutes later. She was standing outside, doing everything she could to keep from jumping up and down and failing miserably. When she saw me she grabbed my hand and started dragging me through the revolving doors to the lobby.
"Come on come on come on come on come come on GOD you are sooo slow..."
She hurled me into the nearest upward bound elevator, jumped in after me, and literally punched the button for the top floor.
"This better be good."
"This is better than good," she said, while shaking her smarting hand. "It's like, better than better than good. I don't know if you can even call this 'the best thing ever.' That would insult it."
"That's pretty good."
"Dude, are you even listening to me? Shit, I think I messed up my hand. Anyway, you will remember this morning for the rest of your life, and if you don't get excited, like, immediately, there's something wrong with you. Okay?"
So I spent the rest of the elevator ride trying to get myself excited, while she nursed her hand and watched the number lights climb, counting off the floors under her breath. We were both fairly ramped up by the time we reached the top floor. When the doors opened she shot out and galloped towards the stairs for the roof garden. I followed, and we emerged into a misty morning, in a little patch of pastoral heaven thirty floors above the city. She pulled me down a raked path, her head swinging from left to right. She stopped abruptly when she found what she was looking for and pointed down at a patch of petunias.
"There there there look look look!"
I squatted down, trying to figure out what the hell I was looking for. It took a minute before my eyes found about a dozen snails, mingling with the stems. They were in a heap but paired off within it, each couple wrapping their necks around each other while strange tendrils flowed from snail to snail.
"No way."
I looked up at the Madonna of Conflagration. She had a radiant grin on her face.
"Yup." She leaned down to whisper in my ear.
"They're fucking."
Bonus- Here is a short video of snails fucking.
"I need you to come down here, like right now. Five minutes ago even."
"Where's down here?"
"The roof of the Bentley Building. Just hurry. I promise you're going to totally shit yourself."
You can usually trust The Madonna of Conflagration when she makes this kind of call. We originally met when she ran into the bar I was having a nervous breakdown in and asked if anybody wanted to see a duck being rescued from a barrel of molasses. I was the only person to follow her, and to this day I don't know if it's because I was worried about the duck, thought the whole thing sounded hilarious, or was intrigued at the prospect of seeing a real live barrel marked MOLASSES.
Another time I was at work. She walked in, wearing a trench coat and shades, sidled up to my desk and leaned over, whispering:
"You have got to get out of this morgue and follow me down to the park, because you will totally, totally not believe this shit that I have found."
Then she tried to glide out like the femme fatale in a spy movie, but it was basically her usual full on forward charge, just on tiptoe this time. Still, the whole thing was intriguing, so I cleared the decks as quickly as possible and went downtown. I found her by one of the huge half-dead trees that dot the city park.
"This hole in the trunk here? Stick your head in it, and look down. No, do not give me 'Dubious Look Number 7', do not ask me any questions, just do it."
So I did, and it was indeed totally worth it. The hole was about three feet up the trunk of the tree. Said trunk was completely filled with macadamia nuts up to the level of the hole. They were in the shell, which I had never seen so I had to ask her what they were.
"Do you have any idea how these got here?" I asked.
"No, but I have a theory."
She looked around.
"Hawaiian squirrels. Gotta be Hawaiian squirrels. Like,they've come back to the mainland, right? Probably floated back over in discarded SPAM cans. And they've brought their possessions with them."
I e-mailed her an article later that day that said there are no squirrels in Hawaii. She didn't talk to me for a month. Even after things defrosted, I got the impression that I was not to bring up the tree and its strange cargo ever again.
So while it was six in the morning on a Sunday, I figured the odds were pretty good that she had something worth seeing. I threw on some clothes, staggered out into the street, somehow found the subway and headed downtown. I arrived at the Bentley Building ten minutes later. She was standing outside, doing everything she could to keep from jumping up and down and failing miserably. When she saw me she grabbed my hand and started dragging me through the revolving doors to the lobby.
"Come on come on come on come on come come on GOD you are sooo slow..."
She hurled me into the nearest upward bound elevator, jumped in after me, and literally punched the button for the top floor.
"This better be good."
"This is better than good," she said, while shaking her smarting hand. "It's like, better than better than good. I don't know if you can even call this 'the best thing ever.' That would insult it."
"That's pretty good."
"Dude, are you even listening to me? Shit, I think I messed up my hand. Anyway, you will remember this morning for the rest of your life, and if you don't get excited, like, immediately, there's something wrong with you. Okay?"
So I spent the rest of the elevator ride trying to get myself excited, while she nursed her hand and watched the number lights climb, counting off the floors under her breath. We were both fairly ramped up by the time we reached the top floor. When the doors opened she shot out and galloped towards the stairs for the roof garden. I followed, and we emerged into a misty morning, in a little patch of pastoral heaven thirty floors above the city. She pulled me down a raked path, her head swinging from left to right. She stopped abruptly when she found what she was looking for and pointed down at a patch of petunias.
"There there there look look look!"
I squatted down, trying to figure out what the hell I was looking for. It took a minute before my eyes found about a dozen snails, mingling with the stems. They were in a heap but paired off within it, each couple wrapping their necks around each other while strange tendrils flowed from snail to snail.
"No way."
I looked up at the Madonna of Conflagration. She had a radiant grin on her face.
"Yup." She leaned down to whisper in my ear.
"They're fucking."
Bonus- Here is a short video of snails fucking.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Pocket Diary of a Gentleman
I'm a sucker for estate sales, but I usually can't afford much: a loose volume from a worm-eaten edition of Ruskin's works, a brass shoe horn, maybe a warped andiron if the stars are right. Most recently, I scored a damp cedar chest full of amusingly stained linen. Imagine my surprise when I found a gentleman's pocket diary wrapped in a completely ruined antimacassar that rather failed in the "anti-" department. It appears to be from the early to mid 19th century, and to have belonged to a man of means and taste. A sample page follows:
6AM: Awoken from terrifying dream of Irish Catholics setting up camp in the west garden. The beasts had used the topiary as support posts for their laundry lines.
7AM: Stomach issues continue, but managed to choke down a small portion of live elver in milk as prescribed. I find myself troubled by the morality of it all.
8:30AM: Perused my backlog of Sir Jasper's Journal of Effete Concerns. Horrified to discover that the diameter of the pearl in my stick pin was 1/128th of an inch out of step with fashion.
11AM: Sodomy and badminton. Weather continues fine.
1PM: Enervated. Only able to suck the dampness from an oyster shell for luncheon.
2PM: Assignation with Hungarian prostitute. At least her procuress claims that provenance: I fear I detect a distinct note of Kentucky around her vowels. Nevertheless, the coupling was excellent, formidable and restorative.
3PM: Interminable musical salon at Wenderton manor. Why they think their walleyed daughter's mastery of the tuba is something to celebrate remains a mystery.
5PM: Free time: tied ascot, practiced harpsichord, studied pornographic French lithographs, flagellated self
7PM: Finally feeling hale, so planned to dine on medallions of fawn in a black currant sauce. Just as I was being served, a doe and her (remaining?) fawns contrived to spoil things by wandering across the lawn. Blasted things. Had the curtains drawn, but proper dinner could no longer be faced. More elver instead.
8PM: Went to Turkish baths for steam treatment and personal irrigation, only to be informed the boiler had exploded that afternoon and all the clinical tubing was out being "vulcanized" or some such thing. Infuriating.
8:30PM: Returned home. Required four snifters of brandy to soothe irritation.
10PM: Updated diary, retired.
2AM: Disturbed by nightmare of being tied to a stake and pelted with handfuls of elver by the "Hungarian" prostitute riding on the back of a fawn. Interesting that her accent was pure Magyar as she screamed the most obscene insults at me. Apparently honesty only exists in our dreams. Awoke aroused.
6AM: Awoken from terrifying dream of Irish Catholics setting up camp in the west garden. The beasts had used the topiary as support posts for their laundry lines.
7AM: Stomach issues continue, but managed to choke down a small portion of live elver in milk as prescribed. I find myself troubled by the morality of it all.
8:30AM: Perused my backlog of Sir Jasper's Journal of Effete Concerns. Horrified to discover that the diameter of the pearl in my stick pin was 1/128th of an inch out of step with fashion.
11AM: Sodomy and badminton. Weather continues fine.
1PM: Enervated. Only able to suck the dampness from an oyster shell for luncheon.
2PM: Assignation with Hungarian prostitute. At least her procuress claims that provenance: I fear I detect a distinct note of Kentucky around her vowels. Nevertheless, the coupling was excellent, formidable and restorative.
3PM: Interminable musical salon at Wenderton manor. Why they think their walleyed daughter's mastery of the tuba is something to celebrate remains a mystery.
5PM: Free time: tied ascot, practiced harpsichord, studied pornographic French lithographs, flagellated self
7PM: Finally feeling hale, so planned to dine on medallions of fawn in a black currant sauce. Just as I was being served, a doe and her (remaining?) fawns contrived to spoil things by wandering across the lawn. Blasted things. Had the curtains drawn, but proper dinner could no longer be faced. More elver instead.
8PM: Went to Turkish baths for steam treatment and personal irrigation, only to be informed the boiler had exploded that afternoon and all the clinical tubing was out being "vulcanized" or some such thing. Infuriating.
8:30PM: Returned home. Required four snifters of brandy to soothe irritation.
10PM: Updated diary, retired.
2AM: Disturbed by nightmare of being tied to a stake and pelted with handfuls of elver by the "Hungarian" prostitute riding on the back of a fawn. Interesting that her accent was pure Magyar as she screamed the most obscene insults at me. Apparently honesty only exists in our dreams. Awoke aroused.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Portraits of Statisticians: Sir George Biddell Airy
In the secret chamber under the Royal Observatory Sir George Biddell Airy sits in the lotus position and draws the world's energy into his body. He's been there for three days now, desperately trying to summon the angel. His joints ache, his mind is screaming, his soul is cracking from the strain, and he has nothing to show for it. Where is the blasted angel, the one bigger than the earth, the one with the holy flaming sword, the one that will settle this wretched problem of the meridian?
The year is 1884 and US President Chester A. Arthur has threatened the very fabric of time and space by requesting the International Meridian Conference: a meeting to establish once and for all where the Prime Meridian would lie for all the nations of the globe. Scientists of the Brotherhood of Deep and Ancient Knowledge were horrified. Arthur, the fool, thought that an official designation was simply a practical matter. His tiny politician's brain thought the plethora of national primes was a problem. He simply couldn't comprehend that these "arbitrary" lines kept the laws of the universe bound to the earth. He couldn't know that switching out these distributed bindings for a single line was no small matter. If the process wasn't handled correctly the earth would fly off its axis, either inwards towards the sun and burning or outwards to the stars and freezing. Why couldn't he leave well enough alone? Small-minded men like President Arthur were always meddling in things they didn't understand, and who had to clean up the mess? The Brothers, that's who.
Not for the first time the members of BDAK found themselves regretting that they took the secret part of "secret society" more seriously than others. Clowns like the Masons, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati: how secret were they? Everyone had heard of them and could name a couple of famous members. BDAK, on the other hand, was totally obscure, and in consequence had never successfully recruited the rich or famous or powerful. The occasional great man was approached, but invariably found joining some backwater secret society hardly worth his time, even when they promised to reveal the real secrets of the universe. Dr. Johnson had flatly refused the invitation, saying "Bee-dack? Bee-dack be damned, sir; I have better things to do with my time and good name than throw them on some bonfire of obscure iniquity and watch their ashes mount to the sky."
It still stung.
At any rate, there was a distinct lack of political pull in the organization, so infiltrating the conference and bending it to their will was pretty much out. It was then that Sir George Airy's name came up. The statistician had retired from the position of Astronomer Royal a few years before, but he still had a certain amount of critical access. Sir George had never made much of a splash as a Brother. He had never been much of a help at the rituals and was famous for nodding off during the longer incantations.
True, he had a sure hand when it came to drawing a circle of blood around an ancient stone altar, and he certainly knew a thing or two about the true nature of planets, having picked up some techniques for orbital weirding from the unearthly John Couch Adams, techniques that were previously (and strangely) unknown to the Brotherhood. Still, he wouldn't be anyone's first choice for a working as great as the establishment of a single binding meridian that could serve the same function as the many it would replace. But even in retirement he could come and go from the Greenwich Observatory whenever he pleased. This was useful, as President Arthur's wretched little conference had settled on Greenwich as the site of the new prime from all the other arbitrary possibilities, and the working would be most effective and easiest to perform from that location.
Airy's passion for the Greenwich meridian would also be of benefit. As the maps changed, and as world belief in the primacy of Greenwich grew, it would take a conduit who believed in the value of the meridian to focus that belief into the tower of thought energy that would reach out into the heavens and draw the attention of the angel. Summoned correctly, the angel would descend to the human realm and inscribe the new meridian on the sphere of the earth, using the point of his flaming sword to write out all the names of God around the ring, raising the power of the binding by orders upon orders of magnitude and keeping reality in place.
It seemed like a heavy load to place on the 83 year old shoulders of a man they regarded as competent at best. What they didn't know was that Sir George had been preparing for this moment for over thirty years. He had marked out the Greenwich meridian himself in 1851, supposedly as a way of showing the scientific establishment he was the Royal Astronomer and he meant business, but really as a way of increasing his standing in BDAK. He'd even gone the extra mile and done a couple of crude bindings to give the Greenwich line a little extra shine. The Brothers had nodded and said "yes, that's nice George," which in turn rankled, as it was never "Sir George". But over the next few decades, he clung to his belief in the meridian and nurtured it, noting that year by year more maps and charts were marking Greenwich as degree zero. When Arthur's pathetic little showboating conference had been called, Airy had already known the likely conclusion.
When the Brothers came calling cap in hand, tugging their forelocks and using his title, he was more amused than disgusted. He made a great show of his age and infirmity, doubted he still had the acuity needed to do the simplest of charms, let alone a complex working. Oh, but he would try, and he simply hoped that for all their sakes the world plunged into the sun when he failed, as burning would be the quicker death. The Brothers went away with ashen faces while Sir George chuckled to himself.
Later, as his efforts spilled over into a fourth day, he wondered if he hadn't bitten off more than he could chew after all. He was starving down here in this dank chamber. By his estimates the work should have taken no more than two days. Had he merely miscalculated, or was something worse happening? Perhaps his belief wasn't strong enough after all. Perhaps his stewardship of the meridian over the years hadn't been enough, or had been of the wrong quality, or some other factor had escaped his notice. Perhaps the Brothers had been right about him after all...
And then suddenly something clicked over and a segment of his beloved Greenwich Meridian stood before him. It was an obsidian band arcing through the ceiling and the floor of the chamber. Everything else he had ever seen in his life looked unreal compared to it. Sir George reached out to touch the line and found it to be warm like flesh. A mad urge to throw his arms around it seized him. When he did, the line almost immediately began to move. As they passed through the ceiling, Sir George knew he was sharing in the undeniable quality of the meridian, that the earth was the mere geographical abstraction, the line and its creator the physical reality.
He rode his line through the next four timeless days. Eventually his consciousness merged with the meridian, and the motion stopped or at least appeared to, as he was present at every point along the prime. It was beautiful, but it was too much for one man to merge with for long. When it came time to disengage from the meridian and return to his earthly body he felt not sadness, but the deepest satisfaction of his long career. It was a satisfaction both wise and smug. Smug because as he had moved around the world he was sure of one thing: he had seen no angel. The work was his and his alone.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Aldred Overreacts
It started as a desperate bid for a bit of novelty, and now Aldred is afraid things have rather snowballed. He's got nothing to blame but his own tendency to overreact to tedium. It's a character flaw that has laid him low before, even almost gotten him killed on occasion. More than once he's woken up in the hospital, a disapproving nurse looming over him like some hideously misshapen medical monument, waiting only for the merest flutter of his eyelid to launch into a speech that inevitably began with "Well! I don't know what you thought you were doing, but you're very lucky to be alive..." He would nod, sigh, and if at all possible fall back into a coma for a few days (an imperfect ability that when it worked proved to be invaluable, and was really the only worthwhile thing he learned during a wasted couple of months in Tibet).
Aldred has a nasty feeling that he's on that track again. He had been stuck out in one of the more uninteresting middles of nowhere for weeks now. He had thought he needed a bit of solitude to clear his head and soul. On reflection, he should have gone in the opposite direction. He should have found the noisiest, foulest smelling, most garish urban center going, crammed his brain and guts with the strongest stimulants he could lay hands on, and just had a complete sensory blow out. Even if it was like that time in Macao when he ended up blind for three days and deaf for four, it would have been better than this, this...this place. That's all it was. You couldn't even call it a "dull place" or a "featureless place". One couldn't attach a descriptor to its surface: they simply didn't stick. It was a place, and nothing but a place.
The place was killing him. It was flattening him, sucking the third dimension out of him using some kind of vampiric geometry. The place was trying to kill him with blandness. It wanted to leach the pigment out of him not just until he went white, but until he went transparent. It wanted to suppress his personality, apparently by pasting over it with some sort of cosmic layer of blah. The place was out to blank him. The place was out to erase him. The place wanted to rub him out.
It was also making him a touch paranoid, but that was incidental.
He stood against this attack for a few weeks (trying to prove something, he was no longer sure what), until one morning he simply cracked. Anyone standing outside of his rented (and boring) cottage that dawn would have seen the door fly open, and a determined Aldred launch himself through the opening, wearing nothing but a determined look and a kimono embroidered with dragons. He marched to the highest point for miles, a shriveled mound that dreamt of one day being mistaken for a hillock. He jumped up and down on this for the better part of an hour, all the while chanting "I deny you, I deny you, I deny you, I deny you", until his ankles began to hurt. He then proceeded into the town, shooting the evilest of evil looks at anyone he happened to pass. At a used car lot he selected the least reliable looking salesman, pulled three thousand dollars from inside the kimono, and said "Give me something that will break down inside of five hundred miles, but will last long enough to get me out of this damned place."
Four hundred and sixty miles later, he finds himself eating an ice cream cone and standing next to the smoking ruin of a 1994 Geo Metro, in the square of what appears to be a very nice little town. The kimono is making him stick out a bit, but that was a matter easily fixed. The important thing was that he was finally getting a bit of stimulation. The ice cream was the sort of bland chocolate favored by children and was perfect. The square was a vortex of civic pride, centered on an equestrian statue of someone who had probably committed unspeakable atrocities and was therefore terribly patriotic. Aldred wasn't quite sure he liked what all of this meant, but he was relieved that it meant something.
He strolls as nonchalantly as a big man in a small kimono can, ducking into the first menswear shop he can find. He emerges soon after, clad in a blue seersucker suit and yes, a genuine straw boater. He's delighted to be in a place where such outlandish gear allows a body to blend in. Apparently he's wound up in 1890 somehow, the wrecked Metro the only thing that gives it all the lie. It's a perfect place to be before the Fourth of July, so utterly false. He'll stay for what he's certain will be excellent municipal fireworks. Why not? He's earned it.
Aldred has a nasty feeling that he's on that track again. He had been stuck out in one of the more uninteresting middles of nowhere for weeks now. He had thought he needed a bit of solitude to clear his head and soul. On reflection, he should have gone in the opposite direction. He should have found the noisiest, foulest smelling, most garish urban center going, crammed his brain and guts with the strongest stimulants he could lay hands on, and just had a complete sensory blow out. Even if it was like that time in Macao when he ended up blind for three days and deaf for four, it would have been better than this, this...this place. That's all it was. You couldn't even call it a "dull place" or a "featureless place". One couldn't attach a descriptor to its surface: they simply didn't stick. It was a place, and nothing but a place.
The place was killing him. It was flattening him, sucking the third dimension out of him using some kind of vampiric geometry. The place was trying to kill him with blandness. It wanted to leach the pigment out of him not just until he went white, but until he went transparent. It wanted to suppress his personality, apparently by pasting over it with some sort of cosmic layer of blah. The place was out to blank him. The place was out to erase him. The place wanted to rub him out.
It was also making him a touch paranoid, but that was incidental.
He stood against this attack for a few weeks (trying to prove something, he was no longer sure what), until one morning he simply cracked. Anyone standing outside of his rented (and boring) cottage that dawn would have seen the door fly open, and a determined Aldred launch himself through the opening, wearing nothing but a determined look and a kimono embroidered with dragons. He marched to the highest point for miles, a shriveled mound that dreamt of one day being mistaken for a hillock. He jumped up and down on this for the better part of an hour, all the while chanting "I deny you, I deny you, I deny you, I deny you", until his ankles began to hurt. He then proceeded into the town, shooting the evilest of evil looks at anyone he happened to pass. At a used car lot he selected the least reliable looking salesman, pulled three thousand dollars from inside the kimono, and said "Give me something that will break down inside of five hundred miles, but will last long enough to get me out of this damned place."
Four hundred and sixty miles later, he finds himself eating an ice cream cone and standing next to the smoking ruin of a 1994 Geo Metro, in the square of what appears to be a very nice little town. The kimono is making him stick out a bit, but that was a matter easily fixed. The important thing was that he was finally getting a bit of stimulation. The ice cream was the sort of bland chocolate favored by children and was perfect. The square was a vortex of civic pride, centered on an equestrian statue of someone who had probably committed unspeakable atrocities and was therefore terribly patriotic. Aldred wasn't quite sure he liked what all of this meant, but he was relieved that it meant something.
He strolls as nonchalantly as a big man in a small kimono can, ducking into the first menswear shop he can find. He emerges soon after, clad in a blue seersucker suit and yes, a genuine straw boater. He's delighted to be in a place where such outlandish gear allows a body to blend in. Apparently he's wound up in 1890 somehow, the wrecked Metro the only thing that gives it all the lie. It's a perfect place to be before the Fourth of July, so utterly false. He'll stay for what he's certain will be excellent municipal fireworks. Why not? He's earned it.
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