Jeff Mach's Blog, page 29

The Library of Blunder-Wonder Tales

and so we have come to unite all of the stories,
some of the stories,
the ones in our hands,
the ones in our years,

guarded with fettle
and metal so dreadful:
“This story one that none
want in their ears!”

“This it the tale of a heretic-born,
And these are the tales of survivors;

what Librarian mad
would feed us these sad
impossible fragments of stories?

Of things full undone,
dragged forth and won
from never-Atlantis,
and Hoth the Most Hoary.

We’ll curate any tale
and wiselike, withhold bail,
from any who match non our precepts,

And all of it pains;
my expenses and stains
are in part the cost
of making them me-cepts.

And who did I hire, my librums to dust?
Who but the Faeries, coiling with rust,
which turns not to Gilt and the twist of a bust,
And following them, the dread Fanfare.

The post The Library of Blunder-Wonder Tales appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

and so we have come to unite all of the stories,some of t...

and so we have come to unite all of the stories,
some of the stories,
the ones in our hands,
the ones in our years,

guarded with fettle
and metal so dreadful:
“This story one that none
want in their ears!”

“This it the tale of a heretic-born,
And these are the tales of survivors;

what Librarian mad
would feed us these sad
impossible fragments of stories?

Of things full undone,
dragged forth and won
from never-Atlantis,
and Hoth the Most Hoary.

We’ll curate any tale
and wiselike, withhold bail,
from any who match non our precepts,

And all of it pains;
my expenses and stains
are in part the cost
of making them me-cepts.

And who did I hire, my librums to dust?
Who but the Faeries, coiling with rust,
which turns not to Gilt and the twist of a bust,
And following them, the dread Fanfare.

The post appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Corm had not had the sort of apprenticeship where his Mas...

Corm had not had the sort of apprenticeship where his Master would’ve walked into the room and said, “Here, now: if you get good enough, one of these days, some murder of crows wearing outmoded overcoats and giving ’emselves ridiculous names will ask you to do something to change the basic nature of the Universe, and you should turns ’em down, because even if they’re nutters, even if they’re well-paying nutters, they’ll probably kill you at the end, and I didn’t waste all this educationality on creating a highly-trained corpse.”

Corm’s apprenticeship had consisted, much more specifically, on sparse explanations of various technical points—”Ye can’t pin a piece of Something to another piece of Something if you don’t grab ahold of the right places, you don’t use the right materials, and you don’t drive hard enough. Do any of those things, and you’ll just end up with something torn, broken, or failed, and there’s a good bit o’ chance it’ll be you, and you’ll deserve it, too.”

It was more the sort of, “‘ere’s a clout on the ‘ead to focus your attention, ‘ere’s a clout on the ‘ead to make you forget about the first one, and ‘ere’s a third clout purely for good luck, because I likes ya.”

It was all properly horrifying and probably terrible, and the fact that Corm grew up well-adjusted, focused, and very, very good at his chosen profession was probably in spite of the brutality of his training.

Corm wouldn’t have put it that way. Were he given to long flights of rhetorical fancy (which, at this time in his life, he was not), he would have pointed out that peg-hammering is neither an easy nor a safe profession. He might have suggested, if he were mindful of history or saw a need to back up what he did through academic theory (Corm had a healthy respect for academia; if you know a little about good metal, you know it happens neither by accident, nor by sheer physical skill; the wisest, brawniest smith in the world can’t turn bronze into iron by hitting it harder or more precisely. But Corm hit things correctly, to join and unjoin pieces of things intended to be used by hundreds or thousands of people; it’s not that he saw book-learning as without value, it’s that he measured every hour of book-learning against another hour considering the right angle at which to swing. And books seldom came out ahead, in that equation.)

It would be helpful to take from this a serious understanding of Corm, and thence, of the Forces (forgive us; they insist on being capitalized, and either English or an unreliable narrator insists we capitalize them as if they were Gods/Angels/far better than Gods) – that he resists/assists/doesn’t flippin’ bother with.

But this is Corm’s little piece of Zen (not, dear friends, to be mistaken with his Bushido:

If the Peg need be struck, strike the peg.

If you read metaphor in that, you’re right, but still damned. If you read it as a simple statement above, you share the same fate, but you have a moment more to smirk before being thrown into the hypothetical Pit.

These are the Tent-Pegs. Did you think you could fuck with them without consequence? You’ve lived too long behind screens, friend; you’ve not realized that a real screen, a technomagical screen, outmoded and outclassed and forgotten by all thinking peoples’, can reach straight through silicon and grab you by the throat.

And that’s where we’ll leave you. Breath, would you? Unless you’ve already bought the tome, in which case, it really matters a lot less to us, to be honest.

There’s more..if you really must read more. But recon you oughtn’t. I hear there’s good stuff about Muggle Wizards out there; what more do  you need?

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A Short Letter To A Hater

One of my resolutions, now that I’m both (weirdly enough) a bestselling author and a bestselling promoter, is to stop replying to haters. I still have a general policy of seldom blocking people, and I still have a general policy of not backing down or away from physical confrontation. So I’m subjected to both more psychological pushing and shoving, and more actual, physical pushing and shoving. Both remind me that I need fear neither one.

(I’ve only been in three actual fights in the past three years; all three fights were extremely decisive. I avoid fighting at all costs and whenever possible; but I have no fear of it, and my feelings are based on my actual experiences.)

I’ve mentioned that how, if you leave out all of one side of a story, you automatically make the deleted side into the monster. Suddenly, someone has no motivation for their actions, no justification, no reason; that person does horrible things because that person’s horrible, and it’s that simple.

(It gets even simpler, of course: there’s not necessarily any reason to believe the person even TOOK any of those actions; all we have is the word of the narrator, and we already know what the narrator wants us to believe.)

But I feel comfortable offering this letter, which is quite one-sided, because I have no intention of naming the person or business involved. I’ll just note that I’m responding to a very witty email they sent me, which consisted of two words:

“Bet. STFU.”

[For those not acquainted with modern linguistic advances, “Bet” is sometimes an abbreviation for ‘you can bet on THAT’. In this case, as this person and I are both Pagan-adjacent, I had mentioned that everything we do comes back to us three times; i.e., that our actions have consequences. This person, using the charming brevity of the rude, confirmed our mutual belief whilst implying that, obviously, I would suffer negative consequences because I am, as everyone knows, Pure Evil.

But then she said “STFU”, which, for those who do not know the term, means ‘Shut The F’ck Up’.

This was my response. I didn’t write it to her, and I doubt she knows about this journal; I don’t care if she reads it or not, as I didn’t write it for her benefit. It’s a general statement about where I am in life:

*sigh*I was quite ready to end this on a simple note, but you were kind enough to bring up one of the points that matters to you.This is the real world; this is real life.I’m not saying that the karma we accrue is unreal; I’m just saying that we’ll be dealing with it individually and metaphysically.But no. I will never “stfu”, thank you.In real life, actions have consequences. (For example, you’re going to be in my next book. This doesn’t matter to you; but I needed inspiration for a particular character; thank you for providing it.)You judged me before you knew me. You were so certain I would steal your money that you helped shut down part of an event, hurting other vendors, hurting other people, damaging lots of others, just to get at me.What did you get?If you truly want to believe you somehow stopped me from stealing from you and from others, congratulations! Since there was no theft, the event will continue. I’ll be back in April. I’ll be back next October. I’ll be back a few more times in the next year, and you helped make it happen.Ultimately, the consequences of persecuting the innocent vary quite a lot. I’ll obviously never convince you of any kind of innocence on my part (I’ve met minds of solid rock, which have neither desire nor ability to change). I’m just saying:I will never shut up.I will never go away.And you helped make it possible.

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Corm and the Tent-Peg

It was not, in this moment, the tent-peg which held up the World.

But that mattered not very much at all to Corm. He hammered, steady, slow, but not too slow, pounding with his breathing instead of against it, when he could. This tent-pole, he treated as every other ten-pole, which is to say, like what is obviously the most important thing in the world.

Perhaps that’s the secret: to hammer every tent-pole carefully, but hard, hard, hard; to hit it steadily, but not break it. Every tent-pole must be treated as if it is one of the poles which holds up the World, or the Universe, or (if we are very lucky) one of the truly great supports which holds up the very Sky, or even the Big Top.

And perhaps THAT’S the secret: to treat all the great things and the lesser things alike, to do them well because the best hope we have for any kind of sensible Universe is that the parts, both simple and complex, are installed properly, or at least, that we make of it the best job we can.

From this, adjacent to it, perhaps, we can recognize the teaching: treat the small things as if they were the great ones, for perhaps they are.

Then again, perhaps the secret of hammering the proper tent-pole is to spend a short summer doing it, then go about doing it where it doesn’t belong, and preferably for large amounts of money. For example, you could be the bass player of a nouveau punk band called “The Roustabouts”, and while the keyboardist (keyboardists were officially declared punk in 1983 while no-one was looking)- whilst the keyboardist is pounding out the bass part, and whichever particular idiot has the guitar tonight is (hopefully) remembering that the only way to murder a stringed instrument while also causing sounds some people will recognize as music is to throttle some part of the head containing strings, while smacking or plucking or otherwise committing some form of assault over the bits of string which, in turn, have the misfortune to live over the hole which takes in, re-resonates, and amplifies the sonic manifestations of your auditory misfunction—

while all that’s going on, you could, with great ceremony and to loud applause and with what will turn out to be a brief but blissful misunderstanding of how venue insurance works, pound the damn spike into the stage.

Honestly, possibly the best lesson is that if you take off your very fashionable clothes (alone; otherwise, it’s a whole different act)—and then put on the attire of a day-laborer, and walk into the sort of high-ended art establishment where people buy the sorts of bits of colored paper about they wish to brag, generally for their provenance (because, most of the time, the actual color ain’t much to write home about, assuming anyone) wrote anymore—and pull out your spike and your carefully-scuffed hammer, and pound the former with the latter, almost straight down, right into the floor. Do it quick enough that your wouldn’t-get-chosen-as-pipecleaners-even-if-we-were-invaded-by-giants-with-a-sudden-need-for-craft-material arms don’t get tired, but not quite so rapid that people don’t have time to snap a few pictures, and make sure the thing leans at enough of an angle that it’s easy to hang a price tag off of it, and perhaps THAT’S the secret.

Corm simply pounds the tent peg because it’s a tent-peg and needs to be pounded. That’s not to say it’s his only thought on the subject, but if we all waited for a profound and meaningful moment before hitting things, no tents would ever get erected, and no Circuses would ever come to town.

And that would be bloody damn horrible.

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The Honey Tree

The Honey Tree

There is absolutely nothing supernatural at all about The Honey Tree.

That sounds just like it should be the start of something horrible, doesn’t it?

But it isn’t.

Sure, if you were to sit yourself down with some Celtic mythology, you, like most of the rest of us, would never, if you could help it, think the word “faerie” again. You’ve heard the Fae can be distracted by throwing a few shiny coins into a field; it’s true, albeit the distraction is really along the lines of, “Is that idiot really going to try to avoid getting Irish-jigged to death by a hundred tiny feet through hurling a couple of dimes out into the field?” ‘

The Honey-Tree may be a local tradition, or it may have been passed down (or perhaps sideways, with a bit of an accidental lilt in one’s walk) from parts unknown. It’s too easy to say that things which make Faeries happy are part of the so-called “primitive” lore of so-called “simpler” times; but that’s nothing but the kind of optimistic hindsight which would make history a muddle if we didn’t have resourceful people out there to correct it. Like yours truly, of course – humble semi-biographer that I am, demi-historian, and your must devoted guide to the wonders of this marvelously green land.

It’s just a tree with a hollow in it, the sort in which you might find honey or, in a more terrifying Universe, a pocket Black Hole. In this case, what you’ll find is whiskey, which manages to be somewhere between the two.

The good things about the whiskey are (a) it’s not a trap, and (b) it’s whiskey. You just reach into the hollow and pull out the bottle and have yourself a celebratory drink or two. Simple as that.

Simpler, really. If you’re like me, you don’t care if it IS a trap. If you dig a pit, cover it cunningly with grass and twigs, then hang a bottle of strong Irish alcohol over it, I will leap right into the damn thing, as long as I’m at least 80% sure I can grab the bottle on my way down.

I have priorities, after all.

 

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Bacon Cups, Because That’s What I’ve Been Reduced To

The people of the 19th century had basically the same basic priorities as the people of today:

⦁ Fight Morlocks.
⦁ Eat snacks.

Obviously, the two were deeply interconnected; one can hardly have the energy to battle endless hordes of ravening humanoids without sufficient amounts of protein and sugar in one’s system. This recipe draws on the smoky, sugary-savory taste of pecans, kicks it up with some heat, and adds the natural amino acids inherent in nuts. Together, they’ll give you the strength to defend yourself from monsters, and/or to help you stay awake as you binge-watch the media of your choice.

Yield: 4 servings
Skill Level: 1

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 ½ cups pecan pieces

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325°F. Spray baking sheet with nonstick spray.

Combine corn syrup and next 4 ingredients in large bowl. Stir to blend. Add pecans; stir gently to coat. Transfer to baking sheet.

Bake pecans 5 minutes. Using fork, stir pecans to coat with melted spice mixture. Continue baking until pecans are golden and coating bubbles, about 10 minutes.

Place large piece of foil on work surface and transfer baked nuts to foil. Working quickly, separate nuts with fork. Cool.

Can be made 3 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.

 

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The Wishing Mistranslation

People continue to be angry, even resentful, that they’ve been misspelling ‘wishful’ all this time. It ought to have been ‘vengeful’.

Sure, the Kali Yuga has to be wished into existence.

Sure, it was a wish that caused the waves to swallow Atlantis

Sure, dead Cthulhu waits in his house at R’lyeh, dreaming and wishing.

But those are just symptoms. They’re not why wishes are horrifying.

Wishes are clearly intelligent; and wishes clearly hate us.

Sometimes they hold back. Sometimes they channel themselves through Djinn, who are known to hate humankind. (And anyone who quips that they’ve hated us since Solomon first imprisoned them has never slept, as Solomon did, in tents, in the pre-technological desert, for hundreds of days, hearing the whispering-that-was-almost-but-not-truly-wind, the eerie, nature-mimicking hatred that is the speech of Djinnkind.)

 

 

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A Monkey’s Paw – First Imbroglio

Once upon a nearly-endless time, somewhere in the late 19th century, there was a mummified monkeys’ paw. It might ruin the tale to tell you that it was one of those machines of the Universe which grants “wishes”. (Too bad, if so.)

If you know enough wishing stories (ah, but we don’t read many of those anymore; I wonder who wished for that) – then you realize that a “wish” is, clearly, an expression of the malevolence of Existence.

Now, philosophers argue whether this is a symptom of the Universe itself being, in essence, malevolent, or if this is the Universe attempting to pour malevolence into particular places and spaces, so as not to make it omnipresent.

(If you’re wondering which one it is: do you think philosophers exist because the Universe LIKES us?)

A Wish, in order to be anything less than essentially sheer existential monstrosity, needs generosity, a generosity which surely requires sentience.

(Every Wish, and every Wish-Granter, requires sentience. Or so we must hope. Would wishes be parsed so horribly if they were the actions of some kind of cosmic coder, and if so, is there a way to have that coder removed and safely put on duty doing something less dangerous, like controlling the eletrical fences and security defenses around a park containing angry, resurrected dinosaurs?)

There’s much more to say, but someone just used the Other Monkey’s Paw.

And I really, REALLY wish they hadn’t.

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A Red, A Rose, A Love, A Briefly-Coherent Multiverse

My love is like a red, red rose;
not just any red, red, rose,
else why take the trouble to write about it?

My love is like a rose so red that it cannot
(and should not) be described in any accurate way;

like a Black Hole, we speak of it by saying what it can done,
what can be done in its presence.

My love is kike a rose, darker than sin
(surely you know that sin has a colour, and it is a most unplesant,
albeit bold, shade of ochre) which swallows up colors and,
not content with sucking in pigment like light,

or the special effects of a golden-age cinematographer,
my love is like a rose
whose very brilliance of blood-wine splashes
crushes all other colors;

destroys our ability to see them,
shatters their spirits
and their left knees,

until there is no colour left
(and precious little sound;
sonics are not fools,
and they figure, if it can happen to pigment,
it can happen to bits of auditory displacement travelling through air.

My love is like the reddest rose:

fear her.
flee her.
encounter her not,
or be destroyed,
stripped bare of anything
but shadows,
left a husk.

She would walk in beauty,
but beauty sometimes makes other colors look good,
and that’s just too damn dangerous,
so she walks in a cold fury,
unaccompanied,
alone,
utterly destructive,
flawless,

to dangerous for the human gaze.

That’s love, fellows;
o, that’s love.

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