Jeff Mach's Blog, page 38

On Ruling the Universe Via Intra-Office Memoranda

A  Brief Memorandum On Ruling The Known Universe Through The Use Of Memoranda

 

Whenever we are asked why we, as a semi-organized entity, spend so much of our collective time and energy on writing interoffice and intraorganizational missives, we, of course, lie like sentient rugs stolen unwillingly from the homes of eminent sorcerers whose collection of forbidden tomes and “Tom Swift” novels has not yet been plundered to our fullest satisfaction. If we break with tradition and speak a few truths to you, it is with the certainty that relatively few of this read this to the extent and with sufficient attention to gain from it any significant advantage, o thou bumbling fools!

(That is: We wish only to serve your interests, O Wise and Knowledgeable Patrons.)

Few things are more maligned than the inter-office memo. This is partly because, obviously, such things are, in and of themselves, terribly malignant; they spring forth from seemingly-healthy bodies and multiply until the sheer volume of trivial information becomes an enormous weight—to say nothing at all of the actual contents of that information.

And, indeed, it is the content of that information which is the brief-but-poignant subject of our current discourse. Because, as is quite commonly perceived, it is largely impossible to both create the actually intended works of an organization, and also produce a vast amount of snipingly trivial notes designed, hypothetically, to fine-tune said organization, but more likely to hinder it in a manner one might reasonably consider unspeakably annoying; certainly, that’s our own opinion, and given that this is our strategy, we ought to know.

Yet consider: not every battle goes to the fleet of foot or the agile of wrist; not every test is conquered by those who possess mere skill or knowledge; not every understanding is attached to a solemn study of famed sources and texts. Sometimes, the truly winning strategies lie nested within some set of semi-arbitrary rules, proclamations, declarations, and suggestions, such as this humble piece you read now.

We would never suggest that you ought replace The Necronomicon with an enormous and bewildering set of internal communications, trivial in and of themselves, but containing within certain wisdom, rules, and requirements which, it turns out, matter most in moments of greatest stress and challenge.

For example, we assure you that there are no hidden messages herein, nor will any part of this note matter to you in any way going forward. And it assuredly will have no impact upon certain potentially-fatal encounters soon to find their way into your possibly-rather-shortened lifespan.

After all—would an inter-office memo lie to you?

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Dragons Are Delicious

Dragons are delicious, and it’s a problem.

The Kingdom had already been gripped by a thousand problems involving the consumption of Princesses of the Blood Royal by Great Wyrms. Sure, Lizards can eat mammals, but their stomachs are rarely so…rarified. It doesn’t happen often, but, should it take their fancy, they do have a tendency to explode.

Quite a number of philosophers had attacked the problem. Those who lived within ivory towers found, to their chagrin, that ivory towers are the new toothpicks of status among megalithic cold-blooded semi-magickal creatures. Others attacked the problem via books, only to find that, in Dragon magic, books attack back.

And meanwhile…

…let us not speak of the theory-of-mind of Dragons, and let us not overmuch stretch ourselves to figure out their motives. Let us say simply that complying with the whole “random a Kingdom, eat a fertile and (Feudally) mal-used heir seemed, at least, most amusing. Until swords grew sharper, Dragons grew less wary, Dragonscale armour was noted to have certain deficiencies, and Heroes had more leisure time to prong at peasants and practice their aim.

Oh, a Dragon can still take a castle, but even an idiot Dragon, of which, like idiot Humans, there are far too many, will ask that the Princess be staked out on some very large and difficult-to-defend rock. Which is fine, as far as it goes; but it did mean a disturbing likelihood of success among Tyrant Lizards, and a superabundance of screams.

And when this Princess, oh, this PARTICULAR Princess realized that Wyverns scarcely chew the insignificant, and that she could wreak havoc from inside the (haggis-to-be) mighty stomachs, ah, what intellectual indigestion emerged.

There is a Land where Dragons took over, and insisted on sensible diets, and lost weight, and flamed better, and flew higher, and eventually conquered the world, because they simply did not want to deal with this woman.

There is a Land where Dragons worked out an accord with Princesses, and what they serve at their Beds and Breakfasts, I would not ask, were I you.

And as for THIS land…

…have YOU seen a Dragon lately?

Oh, they’re extinct from indigestion, and thus do great wonders pass from Reality among unpleasant gastric distress.

Don’t we live in the Best of all Possible Worlds?

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An Opening Unmaking

They told us everything was a story, and who were we to disbelieve? Stories make sense. Stories make patterns—better patterns, for many of us, than any cave painting; can you really tell the difference between a stylized herd animal and some kind of mobile, angry pork line? I cannot.

There is a word for a story which rebuilds reality without touching it, and that word is magic. There is a word for a story which doesn’t touch reality but commands is, and that word is curse.

We were ready for the mass-production of time in the form of endless wristwatches and more advanced chronometers; we were ready for the mass-production of sound and, for a while, reveled in the symphonic power which is a slivery fraction of all the songs ever made.

We were not ready, of all things, for the mass-production of the simple word.

As if our oral communication wasn’t already mutual consent to a shared world.

As if being gobsmacked in place by atrocity wasn’t worse than being turned to stone.

As if the difference between a liar and a fool lay in whether you believed a wrong reality, or a slightly nobler and more idiotic wrong reality.

Do what you want to fellow humans, if you must. Pave over grass and call it progress; make the world smaller with metal wings and think yourselves clever; reduce your brains to the most minor response to digital stimulation and call it happiness.

But screw not with Titania’s Green, with Oberon’s Dominion, with Puck’s Playground.

This is the beginning of the spell of Unmaking. I am here to tell you that no stories are true, that no stories have power, and that no cell lacks a keyhole and no soul a key.

Let’s break out, you and I. Hammer against the words, howl the vowels, consume the consonants.

Words can’t hold us too long; not if they’re bitter in our throats, and we refuse to digest them.

The Unmaking comes. And you are invited; with a scattering of Gilt, and a Fanfare for which even the stars pause in their thoughtless dances.

Let’s become Liars, you and I, and unmake all the stories, and find all the joys.

I abjure you, I implore you, I love you. Let’s begone.

(….and there was a puff of invisible smoke, and off we went…)

 

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A Vaguely Menacing Steampunk Alphabet – A to E

A –

Airships are bright and gilt,
Their brass never corroding
And I always like Airships best
When they are exploding.

B –

Bowler hats are dapper;
What chapeau is jauntier?
And if you’re murdered horribly
They make you just a little hauntier.

C –

Cthulhu oft I’ll try to summon
Iä! Iä! Iä!
Been too long since I’ve felt your pseudopods,
O eldritch cara mia.

D –

Detectives are dogged and determined
And they find all the sharpest clues
I annoy ’em with ceiling footprints
From my anti-gravity shoes.

E –

E is for Eldritch; isn’t it always?
For stumbling through murky rooms
and navigating hidden hallways.

Yes, E is for Eldritch, and it’s a bit early
If I drive you mad ‘fore I finish the alphabet,
It’ll make my publisher surly.

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A Vaguely Menacing Steampunk Alphabet – F To K

I bet you’re thinking, “If the Dark Lord is doing a strange Steampunk alphabet in honor of Gilt and Fanfare, it should probably start with “A-E”.

Or at least, I, for one, am thinking that. But I can’t find those pages right now. So this is what you get.

F –

Behold the Forest,
the home of Nymphs and Dryads
And their strange and genteel marriages,
And multifarious triads.

G –

Now Greed is not limited
To misers Neo-Victorian
But without them, how would we get the treasure vaults
To cast half of our stories in?

H –

H is for Heroes, and
The challenges which flummox ’em
Heroes? You can keep ’em all.
‘Cause none of us ever stomachs ’em.

I –

I is a puzzle; who am I?
A simple story-winder.

Chase me not, for long you’d regret
Being the story-finder.

J –

For Pirates, “J” is for Jolly-Boat
A name slightly mis-tuned
For it’s the boat they put you in
When you’re being marooned.

K –

K is for Knowledge,
Which you’re about to have lacked
Because what ever ending once was here
With a my writerly blade, I’ve fiercely hacked.

Good luck!

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A Potion Vignette

(In this standalone little precursor to our protagonist’s analysis of the assorted benefits of sorcery, he ponders a few of his favorite things. All right, none of his favorite things, actually.)

He’d once felt, for potions and their ilk, that utter contempt which is the particular province of those who seek truth through the faraway visions of telescopes, never considering that there might be something simple and worthwhile in the everyday life they led. He’d assumed they were part of the magical structure he knew best and found most meaningful, and only began to change that when his colleagues were turned into hands, fleas, rocks, fleas infesting rocks, and giant smears of mud and blood. Something in the back of his head whispered, gently, “WRONG, YOU IDIOT!”

This is when he began to pay attention.

An alienist or other brain-chirurge would have asked why he was so obsessed with the deep imperfections of his own metaphysics, but ffbelieved them fundamentally sound, while he hated the mysticisms of most others, would have led him shout “BECAUSE I’M BASICALLY HUMAN, YOU NINCOMPOOP!”—an answer which would have likely annoyed them both.

This is when he began to pay attention.

It takes a true wise man to know that he is a fool, a true fool that he is wise, and a nitwit to believe that he is likely to make an accurate self-assessment of either quality. But spotting generally terrible belief systems is not incredibly difficult, so long as you don’t start off with the inherently terrible belief system that you’re right.

One of the leading points of poor predictive models is magical thinking about things which do not involve magic. That is, one’s belief in faerie tales ought to be modified, at least somewhat, by whether or not one has a room in the basement dedicated to the carefully-taxidermified remains of malevolent elves. Otherwise, magical thinking is mainly a way of digging yourself a narrow grave with your own words and hopes.

In this wide Multiverse, Magic obeys precisely one being conclusively, appreciatively, to the letter, and without consequences resulting from irony or a complete lack of caring. And if you ever figure out who that being is, RUN!

It’s a long and difficult road, but in the end, almost nobody finds it rewarding. Because Magic may be suspicious and capricious, but it definitely finds your soul Magically Delicious.

Be warned.

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For in an inappropriately long amount of time, he truly b...

For in an inappropriately long amount of time, he truly believed that Magic was, in essence, primarily the merger, joining, and collision of two factors: Word, and Name.

It was not forgivable—not in the eyes that mattered, his own—that he’d viewed things so naively. When someone relies on some depth of knowledge, and you have not dug deeply enough, then you end up with a lot of dirt, a hole that’s too small, and a lack, not simply of rubies and precious metals, but even with a coherent idea of what the hole was actually supposed to contain in the conveyance of this concept; let’s just bury the whole thing and start over, okay?

Wishful thinking is, in the long run, fatal, and while fatality is common to most sentience, wishful thinking is particularly likely to shorten lifespan in ways which is pleasant only to other sentients who are watching from a safe and considerable distance, and primarily for amusement purposes. Improper use of Magic is the kiss—not of death, since “death” is oftentimes quite forgiving, relatively speaking.. It’s more like the kiss of a leprechaun: spritely, warm, summoned by merry thoughts, and guaranteeing that your almost-cold corpse will be robbed by nightfall.

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Some words of wisdom from Xarbinoth, Barbarian Lords of S...

Some words of wisdom from Xarbinoth, Barbarian Lords of Shadow.

-Never send a box of chocolates when you have access to a box of live hand grenades,

-We all hurt the ones we love. Shoudln’t you be properly armed?

-If it bleeds, it can kill you.

-True beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder is looking at you through customized cross-hatches, run.

-If you can’t say it with flowers, you can improve it with mutant bees.

-Don’t worry, love. You were delicious.

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The Right Writing Environment

Things I promise not to invite me over to your place with your boyfriend.

(a) Hit on you.
(B) Hit on your boyfriend.
(C) Hit on your cat. I cannot, however, stop Thisbe from hitting on me.

Things I will bring with me if I visit your place:

(A) A clipboard on which to write.
(B) Story ideas with which to inspire us.
(C) Absolutely NO catnip.

Things I will do if I visit:

(A) Drink.
(B) Write.
(C) Write on the cat while drinking.

Things I will not do when I visit:

(A) Spontaneously learn Turkish.
(B) Make a superabundance of jokes about your boyfriend, the coder.
(C) Write on the cat in permanent marker.

Things I will do when I leave:

(A) Accept awkward hugs.
(B) Give doubly-awkward hugs.
(C) Find out, too late, that your cat has shed all over my coat and eaten my clipboard.
 

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Absinthe Country Song

Just sittin’ listenin’ to the jukebox,
Been broke since 1999;
Broke and just won’t work no more,
Both the jukebox, and this heart of mine

Take my calories today in liquor,
Same as the day before.
Maybe I can hallucinate
So I don’t see her no more;

Tequila makes her clothes fall off her,
Whiskey makes the good times come,
Gin’s gonna win despite the state I’m in,
But it’s absinthe that makes you numb.

Maybe it’s just bad luck,
And maybe it’s just fate,
Maybe it’s like that old, old song,
The one by Mr. George Strait

No matter what you got,
It feels like nothin’ at all
It ain’t just the mighty
No, even the low can fall.

(Chorus:)

Absinthe is a chore to drink
It ain’t the best for shots
It take some time to get it right,
But time’s all I really got.

Some like fancy white absinthe,
Some like strange old green
I like whatever bottle
Will wipe my memories clean.

(Chorus)
(Last chorus:

Tequila makes her clothes fall off her,
They’re dusty now, on the floor
I got the green fairy, for today
To help me think no more.

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