dreadcrumbs

Get Your Goat

Scapegoat is officially available for theft and purchase!

To celebrate this auspicious occasion, I am doing four things, two of which I will announce publicly.

First, The EVENT. Tomorrow, Wednesday the 22nd, 5:00, at The King's English Bookstore. I will be there, with my wife and spawn, to sign any books you want me to sign. Except for any "Rabbit" books by John Updike. Those I will not sully with my unholy scrawl.

Second, The CONTEST. Three contests, really. A contest array.

Bronze Contest: The first person who comes to the event and can verbally identify how I infused Scapegoat with Canadian Pride will receive an origami goat, folded by me, with a secret message inside. You will need to dismember the goat to get the message.*

Silver Contest: The first person to request a piggyback ride from me without fear in their eyes will receive said piggyback ride.

Gold Contest: The person who sends me the most interesting** picture of themselves or a loved one with The Book will receive one personal scapegoat service. What this means is that I will take the blame*** for anything for which you are actually responsible.

*Despite stories to the contrary, wrong answerers will NOT receive a dead goat with a secret message inside. That is just gross.

**"Interestingness" will be judged by a conference of Deans from parallel Earths who have taken to identifying themselves as "The College."

***This does not include things for which I would have to go to jail, pay a fine, or be hunted by a violent cabal. Eligible offenses include, but are not limited to: not doing your homework, not doing your chores, missing a significant other's birthday, eating all the pie, leaving dirty diapers in the living room, starting a fight with the mailman, and Saying The Wrong Thing. Ineligible offenses include, but are not limited to: Causing grievous bodily harm to yourself or others, theft of anything worth more than $2.22, plotting a coup, driving a coupe, forming a junta, manufacturing danger, and lying under oath.

Cry Havoc!

The chute will be opened on June 22nd at 5:00 PM. 

That's what they call those things that the bulls wait in before they release them to trample Spaniards, right? Chutes? 

We're doing that, except with goats. Or with goat-themed books, anyway. And in Utah, not Pamplona. And no trampling. 

Mark your calendars! Arrange for transport! Dance a Jig!

For on this day goats will be scaped.

Wednesday, June 22 at 5:00

The King's English Bookshop

1511 South 1500 East

Salt Lake City, Utah

The Goat Approaches

It's June, long heralded by the ancient overlooked Norse as the Month of Goats and Tyranny. To celebrate this auspicious occasion, Bloomsbury Publishing is releasing "Scapegoat: The Story of a Goat named Oat and a Chewed-Up Coat."

I've read this book, and I have to say that it may well be worth purchasing. I've changed the site in honor of the book, and will be announcing a contest shortly. You'll likely win as you're the only person who knows about it.

Workplace Post Omega

A few days before I was graciously excused from full-time employment, the daughter of one of my co-workers had to stay in the office for a few hours. She looked to be about ten, and I felt pity for her, as I remember how crushingly boring adult life can be when you are that age.

At any age, really, but you do get used to it.

In any case, being the co-author of two books whose largest fanbase consists of people of just this girl's demographic, I thought I would offer the copy of "Rapunzel's Revenge" I had at the office for her to read. If she seemed to like it I was fully prepared to just give it to them.

It played out a little differently, though.  Right after the event, I documented it in this way:

ACT ONE 
A melody is heard, played upon a cardboard flute. It is small and irregular, telling of tiny grass, tinier trees and an inadequate horizon. Before us is a Cubicle. We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides. Only the blue light of the sky from a side window falls upon the cube and fore-stage; the surrounding area shows a dreary gray glow.  An air of defeat clings to the place, the living denouement of apocalypse. The desk at center is bland though not insipid, a single laptop computer lies upon it,  casting a synthetic pallor on LINDA. She is a business executive of about forty with an air of hurried tension, possessing the ability to project an aura of frenzy even in tasks requiring little to no movement.  To the right of the desk is a large window facing onto a slowly dying golf course.  HAPLETIA, a young girl of about ten, stands before the window, mannequin-like, an empty husk of a human being. (From the right) DEAN, the Protagonist, enters, carrying a slightly oversize book. The flute plays on. He hears but is not aware of it. He is nearly forty years of age, dressed opaquely. Even as he crosses the stage to the doorway of the cubicle, his exhaustion is apparent. He coughs once, enters the office, and raises his burden up, conjuring a smile of goodwill upon his face.  Linda looks up immediately, an expression of patient irritation flaring.

DEAN: I was wondering if maybe you guys would like a

LINDA: No.

DEAN:...book to read.

LINDA: Hah thanks but she's got enough

DEAN: It's...

LINDA: Plenty of lots of things to do

DEAN: Right...

LINDA: To keep occupied

DEAN: Oh yeah, okay.

Dean withdraws the book from display and takes a step backward, shrugging.

DEAN:(attempting to reorient with amiable mugging)Well... I'm sure whatever it is can't possibly be as cool as 

LINDA:(Rapidity of speech muting subtle verbal sneer) What is it a comic book?

DEAN:...this is. Er, yeah, sort of. See?

Hapletia watches as the pages turn while Linda moves to block her line of sight. Linda's expression is not one of anger, or even irritation. In this moment, she is the horse whipping its tail at the horsefly, an agent of consequence, free of any moral cognition.Dean closes the book and exits left. Linda then artfully maneuvers Hapletia behind a cubicle wall, hiding her from the view of the audience for the remainder of the play.

END

 

NOTE: It strikes me now that the mindset that allowed me to comfortably use work time to write autobiographical absurdist play-stubs might be the very thing that made my salary difficult to justify. However, as that is too difficult to prove, I will continue blaming the gypsies.

 

Invitation Portfolio

I recently advertised my invitation writing services on twitter, but realized that unless you had been invited to some of the very swanky parties to which I have written invitations, you would really have no idea of my qualifications. I thought it only appropriate to provide a few recent examples:

-

V. invites you to an evening of laissez-faire grinning and hilarious guilt-free mutilation. 
10PM, March tenth.
Your children will be fine.

-

Alphonse. 4th Annual Velvet Abattoiree. You.
This year's theme: "Trouble the Small." 
10:10/10

-

Limn House invites you to an evening of fine wine and friends.
GORDON WILL BE THERE.
5/5/10 7:00PM

-

Mr. Zaroff cordially invites you to the Grand Opening of
Club: Zafari!
Ladies will be free until 10:00.

-

Come visit everyone who loves you.
There will be no knives.
4/07/10 11:00 PM

-

PLEASE
1am tonight

- 

Overheard at home

Maggie, 4: "I'll show you how, Max."

Max, 7: "Show me what?"

Maggie: "How to kill."

Max: "What!?"

[pause]

Max: "Did you say 'how to kill?'"

Maggie: "...no."

Max: "What did you say?"

Maggie: "...how to...count."

Max: "Oh, I know how to count already."

Maggie: "...okay."

 

Blunt Prejudice

As I was listening to the vaguely musical sounds of "Indestructible" this morning on my way to work, I was struck by a realization of pervasive cultural discrimination against bludgeon aficionados. 

I know. Shocking.

Some level of social antagonism toward people who own devices of physical destruction is expected, but it seems to me like there's an unfair hierarchy of integration and acceptance, roughly thus:

1. Firearms
2. Fists and Feet
3. Knives
4. Axes
5. Bludgeons

My evaluation is based primarily on the accessibility and legality of avenues of practice for each category, combined with the availability of socially acceptable employment options.

Firearms have a variety of domestic shooting ranges and animal hunting areas. Job opportunities: Soldier, police officer, retailer, mercenary.

Punchers and kickers have a multitude of dojos and dojo-like places, as well as the streets and schoolyards. Job opportunities: Teacher, stunt person, bodyguard.

Knife fans have kitchens and haberdasheries. Job opportunites: Chef, tailor, gardener.

Axe fans are good as long as lumber remains an industry and trees remain the vile enemy of man they have always been. Job opportunities: Lumberjack.

Bludgeoneers, though...you're Unclean. As the proud owner of two official bludgeons and several more unofficial ones, I feel solidarity with those mace and club users that lack an appropriate venue for practice. "Just go hit a tree or a rock or something in the park," you say. Yes, well, reality generally dictates that you are able to hit anything with anything, but you are also able to shoot, kick, chop, or stab anything, too. I think it's where you do it that determines social acceptability.  If I was seen taking shots with a .357 in a public park or found repeatedly stabbing a shrub (This is purely theoretical, as I do not own a handgun), authorities might be called. These activities have their assigned places. Without them, gun and knife hobbyists would be forced to practice in secret, their sense of right and wrong slowly curdling in bitterness until they become a danger to society.

So, really, do you want giant people with giant clubs (or, less threateningly, regular people with regular clubs) walking the streets idly looking for opportunities to practice their art? 

No. 

So I advocate the construction and propagation of clubbing ranges. 

Imagine! A multitude of warehouses, fields, and private basements populated with meaty homunculoid representations of miscreants, wild beasts, and irritating people from your own personal history. For an extra charge, some targets could be fitted with breakable "bones" to provide that visceral crunch you need to feel some days just to stay sane.

I'm just saying. It seems like a good idea to me.

*Special Note for Spear and Pike enthusiasts: You're pretty much out of luck, too, unless you count needles as spears, in which case, no problem. Job opportunities: Nurse, Tattoo Artist, Acupuncturist, Mean Guy at Birthday Party

UPDATE: Just realized blacksmithing could be an option. Or the SCA, but section III, paragraph B, sub-paragraph 1 of the Marshall's Handbook states that "Striking an opponent with excessive force is forbidden," so that's out. I still want my basement meat garden.

My Night with Them

I came home last night to discover the house completely silent and dark. The sun had already set, so it was pitch black, and having a family which now consists of four wrigglers under the age of eight, silence is uncommon. 

You might think that meant everyone was gone, but my wife's car was in the garage, and the twelve degree temperature outside would have prevented anyone from going on a family skulk outside. 

It was a bit troubling. I definitely felt like something was in the house. That odd little twinge that you get when there is a *presence* nearby you can't readily see. If I trusted the twinge, it ruled out the possibility that an in-law (or slaver) took my family from me and fled.

That left two options. Either the entire family of adult (36), child (7), child (4), baby (0.3), and baby (0.3) were hiding in complete silence, or whatever had done away with them was still there, lying in wait.

One interesting thing I'm realizing as I recount the experience is that I didn't bother to turn on any lights as I walked through the house. Either I'm instinctually stupid, or way too comfortable on the sharp-toothed side of the predator/prey continuum. I didn't even have my new war club with me.

It did turn out to be the entire family hiding, of course. If they had been kidnapped by organ farmers or killed in retribution for some past offense to a criminal organization or ritual murder cult, I would not be blogging about it. Especially since I haven't blogged in like a year. What a loser. Hey, I'm tweeting now, okay. That's something, right?

In any case, those of my family with working legs leapt up suddenly from the living room, each yelling some variation of "Surprise!"

The creepy wasn't gone, though, because in the darkness it looked like all their faces had been erased and replaced with crude marker drawings of eyes and mouths.

The lights come on, though, and their faces still look like that.

They've decided to have a "papa party" for me, and each of them is wearing a mask of my face. 

They sound excited, they sound happy, but the little crayon Dean-golems just stare.

Not the babies, though. They were deemed similar enough in feature and head-hairlessness to not require a costume. And they usually wear the same expression as the masks, regardless.

I am given a paper crown and told to sit for a play that the children have written and rehearsed by themselves. My wife is stage crew, in charge of background music.

My son disappears from stage and my daughter enters. "Here is a boat," she says. "This boat is going to the sea city of R'lyeh." She gets on the couch and mimes driving the boat and bouncing on the waves.

"Here is the city," she says, getting off the couch and looking around. She picks up what I think is a sweater and holds it in front of her like parchment. 

She mimes reading, which she can't actually do yet, and says, haltingly, as if translating an ancient tongue, "It says…Cthulhu comes…at night…"

At this moment, a picture of a night sky is thrust up from behind the couch-boat, she shouts "Oh no! It's night!" and my son rises up from behind the couch bellowing "BLAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!"

He chases her around the couch as she shrieks in madness and terror. After a few laps, she jumps onto the boat and frantically drives away.

Cthulhu watches her go and shrugs.

"The End," says my wife.

Awesome. I'm not sure what this reveals about the damage I may have already done to the psyche of my children, but still. Awesome.

The Snow/Zombie/Feces Triad

Ten ways in which snowflakes are like zombies are like animal droppings:

1. Each one is unique
2. They often show up when you least expect it
3. They seem to be everywhere these days
4. One is okay, two is fine, three is pushing it, and four or more is too many
5. Masses of them are best dealt with using a specially modified shovel
6. Driving on them is a messy, dangerous, and altogether nightmarish ordeal, and those who enjoy the experience are probably unbalanced
7. Scraping frozen ones off your car in the morning is no fun
8. Having them melt into a shallow wet smear is preferable to having large heaps of them lying around 
9. Leisure activities in which they are required to be underfoot can sometimes be entertaining to watch, but only in a coliseum-like, slow-decay-of-civilization way.
10. You can eat them, but probably shouldn’t

Fun with abstract thought

When on trips, my wife and I will occasionally play a game that has no real name, but which I will call "Disturb-o-drome" here so as to cement its realism. The game starts by posing two relatively mundane words, objects, or concepts that fall together into some kind of category. The category, really, is what needs to be determined first, because as the game progresses, you mine the category for different concepts until you find the one thing in that category which is fundamentally the most disturbing.

As an example, let's say the category is "kitchen utensils." I would take two members of this category, something like a knife and a spoon. Often, both of you will immediately agree on the more disturbing of the two. If you disagree, you discuss the issue - try to convince the other that really, truly, the spoon is much more disturbing. Consensus is usually reached, as the conflict tends not to stem from the nature of the Things in question, but in the nature of what "disturbing" is. It's easy to slide from disturbing to creepy, and from creepy to scary, and from scary to dangerous (I know from personal experience). But those are all very different things.  For me, a knife is more dangerous. Maybe more scary, too. But disturbing? The spoon is more disturbing. 

Once you agree on "spoon," the other person suggests a new combatant, "fork." For me, this is a trickier contest, but in the absence of any rebuttal, I'd probably stick with spoon. This keeps going until you can't come up with any other viable contestants from the category, and you both end up pretty convinced that something like the slotted spatula is the most disturbing of all kitchen utensils. You probably wouldn't have come up with that initially, but group-think makes it so. 

It's possible that you have to be a certain kind of person to want to play this game, or to think it is any kind of fun, but it's my favorite travel activity. You'd probably want to change it up based on your players, though. If my kids were involved, I'd just make it "scary," instead of "disturbing." For the people at work, assuming a universe in which I would actually play a game with them, maybe "absurd." With the lady at the DMV, "kafkaesque." 

As in all things, your mileage may vary. It requires you actually talk to the people you're playing with, so, obviously, I haven't done much beta-testing.