Stories, Songs, and Stuff
Just a place with all the stories, songs,
and stuff that didn't fit elsewhere.
Wizard Rules
- People are stupid.
- The best of intentions can have the worse of results.
- Passion rules reason.
- What cannot be taken, can be given.
- The illusion of power, once belived, is power.
- Knowlage may be spent more than once.
- Nothing is ever easy.
"The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates"
(As seen in Schlock Mercenary)
Rule 01: Pillage then burn.
Rule 09: Never turn your back on an enemy.
Rule 13: Do unto others.
Rule 27: Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.
Rule 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more, no less.
Rule 30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.
Why God never received tenure:
- He had only one major publication, and it had no references.
- Written in an obscure language.
- Some people doubt he wrote it himself.
- He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects.
- He expelled his first two students...for learning.
- When one particular experiment went awry, he tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
- He rarely appeared in class, usually just telling his students to read the book.
- His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountaintop.
- His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
- Often had his son teach the class.
- Although there were only ten requirements, many students couldn't pass the final exam.
- Was very harsh with failed students.
- Scientific comunity has had difficulty reproduceing his results.
- It may be true that he created the universe, but what has he done recently?
A form of the Celtic Rede
Bide these Wiccan laws ye must
with perfect love and perfect trust.
Live and let live
fairly take and fairly give.
Cast the circle thrice about
to keep all evil spirits out;
to bind a spell every time
let the spell be spoke in rhyme.
Soft of eye and light of touch,
speak ye little, listen much.
Deosil go by waxing moon
sing and dance ye wiccan rune.
Widdershins go by waning moon
chanting out the baleful tune.
When the Lady's moon is new,
kiss ye hands to her times two.
When the moon rides at her peak
then your heart's desire seek.
Heed the Northwind's mighty gale,
lock the door, and trim the sail.
When the wind comes from the South,
love will kiss you in the mouth.
When the wind blows from the West,
departed souls will have no rest.
When the wind blows from the East,
expect the new, and set the feast.
Nine wood 'neath in cauldron go.
Burn them fast, and burn them slow.
Elderwood, the Lady's tree,
burn it not, or cursed you'll be.
When the Wheel begins to turn,
soon the Beltane fires will burn.
When the Wheel has turned to Yule,
light the log, the Horned One rules.
Teaching, flower bush and tree
by the Lady, blessed be.
Where the rippling waters go,
cast the stone, and truth you'll know.
When ye have and hold a need,
harken not to others' greed.
With a fool, no season spend,
or be counted as his friend.
Merry meet and merry part
bright the cheeks and warm the heart.
Mind the Threefold Law ye should
three times bad and three times good.
When misfortune is anow,
wear the star upon thy brow.
True in love ye must ever be,
lest thy love be false to thee.
These eight words in rede fulfill:
And ye harm none, do what thou will.
What color is the city sky at night?
What color is the city sky at night?
During the day, if it's a small city, the sky is blue, or a whiteish-gray if the clouds are about.
Big citys have smog, so the sky isn't really blue. it always has a gray to it.
But what color is the city sky at night?
Is it black and filled with stars?
No, even in the country the sky is never really black, and in the city all the stars have
been taken down, and put in windows, or headlight, or in streetlights.
Instead of shining down on Earth, they shine up toward heaven, and cover the darkness.
So what color is the city sky at night?
Sometimes, when the clouds hang low, and the snow is softly falling, I can almost make out the sky. Not quite black, and certainly not blue, but a swirling orange-gray, mixing in you eye. Like when you stand up too fast, or get hit on the head too hard.
Many people don't look at the sky anymore. They just stare at the ground, and plod along. I guess if your looking at the ground, you don't step in something, and you seldom run into things, or people. But you never meet these peole you don't run into. You never see the falling star, or the moon peak from behind a cloud. You seldom see the colors the sun paints on the clouds, or the swirls of the wind. You miss the birds soaring overhead, and the squirels in the trees. You don't see whaen the leaves change, or when they begin to fall. You don't even see the people around you, not really. That person you just past, who were they, really? If they were that guy from down the block, who was that guy? What does he want, and dream? Who are these people next to you each day? What color are there eyes? Are they smiling?
I bet not.
People don't smile too much anymore. Not real smiles anyway. A real smile doesn't always touch your mouth, it's in your eyes.
Maybe people are just too tired to smile today, they'll smile when they get that next big raise, or that big promotion. Or maybe the one after that.
Maybe they just don't see the point anymore. No one else is smileing, why sould they?
Maybe they just aren't happy anymore, and don't care.
Maybe they have too many worries. Too many problems.
"When will that memo be in?"
"How am I going to pay for that?"
"Who messed this up now?"
"Why do I put up with this?"
"Where has all my life gone?"
What color is the city sky at night?
-Ray D. 1997
Letters to an Incipient Heretic
A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the market place to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a speaker for the dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.)
The rabbi walks forward and stands beside he woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. "Is there anyone here," he says to them, "who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?"
They murmur and say, "We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it."
The rabbi says, "Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong." He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the marketplace. Just before he lets go, he whispers to her, "Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he'll know I am his loyal servant."
So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.
Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her, and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, "Which of you is without sin? Let im cast the first stone."
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgivness and another chance. I should treat her the way i wish to be treated.
As they open their hands, ad let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head, and throws it down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.
"Nor am I without sin," he says to the people. "but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it."
And so the woman died because her comunity was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most comunities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such perfect balance that we could perserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.
-"Speaker for the Dead"
Death is before me today
Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man.
Like going into a garden after a sickness.
Death is before me today:
Like the ordor of myrrh.
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream.
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
Like the home a man longs to see, after years spent as a captive.
-Preludes & Nocturnes
Malkav's Words
In the singing shattered midnight
By the coral sands of time
Through the bloody gates of heaven
Past the sentries in my mind.
Bring about the change so quickly
Bring about the terrors night
Bring about the blood of Lovers
Bring about the smell of fright.
I see you watching where I walk
Through the moonlit jasmine field
Listen closely as I talk
About the stars and Lovers past.
Past the field of Poppies burning bright
Into towers of Blackened Bone
Follow me Bastard of Caine
Come with me. I have no home.
As I drain your lifes blood sweetly
As you sigh into my warm hands
As I suck your maddness neatly
Streaming down like crimsion bands.
I dance the dance of the fool
And pray you find me mad
For if you lay your hands upon the root
You'll know me, without illision
And find me guility of the Truth.
Loki's trick.
"Many years ago I convinced Thor of the aesir that the reason for his impotance was that he was pregnant."
"PREGNANT?"
"Mmm. He's not very bright. And I told him to lie face down and naked on his sleeping furs until I came and delivered him of child."
"He listened to you?"
"I was disgused as a wandering physician. And, as I said he's--"
"Not very bright?"
"Exactly. So I feed him a gallon of castor oil, painted his arse blue and shoved a cork in his bum-hole."
"Why?"
"Because it amused me to do so. I told him it was the cure for his condition. Then I went off to sleep with his wife."
"HOHOHO!"
"She wasn't much of a lay. But it amused me to know that it would destroy him if ever he found out. So Thor is lying facedown with a cork up his fundament for a week and a day, while his insides continue to rumble their course. And now he's got a pain in his gut like you wouldn't belive, as the pressure continues to build... I'd told him he might experience some pain. That it was common in pregnancy. Suddenly, into the room, through an open window, bounds Ratatosk, the squirrel who lives in the branches of the world tree. Ratatosk is curious as any little squirrel. And he climbs on top of Thor's straining, squirming buttocks, and he--pulls out the cork.
THRRRRRRRRPPPPPP!
It's an explosion--eight days' worth of oiled shit thunders forth from the fundament of the Lord of Storms. And the mighty Thor sits up, and looks round, and sees Ratatosk on the ground-- stunned, gassed, and befouled. And slowly, with hands as big as ham hocks, he picks up the little animal, and stares at it. And then, with one ponderous motion, he clasps it to his bosom. "Your ugly," he says"You're hairy, and you're covered in shit. But your mine, and I love you!"
-Loki to Puck, "The Kindly Ones"
With appoligies to anyone who used to like Norse tales.
"I've been making a list of things they don't teach you at school.
They don't teach you how to love somebody.
They don't teach you how to be famous.
They don't teach you how to be rich, or how to be poor.
They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer.
They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind.
They don't teach you how to what to say to someone who's dying.
They don't teach you anything that's worth knowing."
-Rose Walker, "The Kindly Ones"
Q: How many angles can dance on the head of a pin?
A: Depend on the tune.
Give me a sword and a ship to sail
(And I'll never come home again)
Well I was born with my feet on the deck of a ship upon the brine.
My father was a fighting man, his blade was keen and fine,
He took me up upon his knee when I was nine or ten
He said "Get you a sword and a ship to sail
And you'll never come home again."
CHORUS
Give me sword and a ship to sail, and I'll never come home again.
I'll travel the waves and kiss the maids, and fight a hundred men.
I don't know why I'm leaving lass, I don't know where or when,
But give me sword and a ship to sail, and I'll never come home again.
I left my home soon after and I bought myself a sword
I fought for silver and for gold. I built up quite a hoard.
And so I went down to the wharf and bought a boat and then
I had me a sword and I ship to sail, and I never went home again.
CHORUS
O'er many years I've plied the seas, and I've seen nigh every sight
I've cut the throat of men by day, loved lasses I the night.
I've fought and drunk and learned far more, than many a wise man's ken
And with my sword and a ship to sail I'll never go home again.
CHORUS
The sea has always been my love, the blade has been wine life
But one morn after too much wine, I woke up with a wife
And alas she kept me home, and clucked at me like a hen.
So I gave her a sword and a ship to sail and she never came home again.
CHORUS
And now I'm old and stooped and gray, my eyesight's growing dim
But when I die I'll happily go, I won't be glum or grim
For I have seen the great wide world, I didn't stay in my den
Cause I got me a sword and a ship to sail, and I never went home again.
CHORUS
THE MODERN MAJOR-GENERAL
by W. S. Gilbert
I am the very pattern of a modern Major-General,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral;
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical;
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With interesting facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalcules.
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
I know our mythic history--KING ARTHUR'S and SIR CARADOC'S,
I answer hard acrostics; I've a pretty taste for paradox;
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of HELIOGABALUS,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous.
I tell undoubted RAPHAELS from GERARD DOWS and ZOFFANIES,
I know the croaking chorus from the "Frogs" of ARISTOPHANES;
Then I can hum a fugue, of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that confounded nonsense "Pinafore."
Then I can write a washing-bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you every detail of CARACTACUS'S uniform.
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
In fact, when I know what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin,"
When I can tell at sight a Chassepot rifle from a javelin,
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat,
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery,
In short, when I've a smattering of elementary strategy,
You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee--
For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
But still in learning vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I the very model of a modern Major-General!
How many people do you know?
I mean really know?
Do you know their goals, their wishes, their dreams?
What images run in their head?
Who are they in their brain?
What do they do when their alone?
Do you know your neighbor?
Your friend?
Your lover?
Do you even know yourself?
-RAX, 1997
We live in a world of half-truths, lies, shadows and illusions.
The mad are given power, and the sane locked up.
The foolish are followed and the wise scorned.
So we lock ourselves up in a ssad little room, and ask:
"What's wrong with the world?"
-DurCarak, 1997
What if the entire universe is one big cop out?
What if, when you die, you step through some great, shining door,
to a plane made of sparkeling light.
And before you stands a beutiful figure, dressed in the stars of Heaven.
You ask: "What is the meaning of it all?"
And he answers: "What?! I thought you knew!"
-DurSul, 1998
Love is like the uncovering of a pit in your soul.
And the thing that you love fills the pit, and sooths the pain.
But when your beloved is gone, the pain is full; and it hurts.
Perhaps you find something to fill the hole,
or perhaps your beloved returns.
But the fit is never quite the same.
Perhaps a gap is left, and your soul is yet incomplete.
Perhaps the edges rub, and tear,
and your beloved brings you pain.
Or perhaps it fits better than ever before, and fills you,
and the pain goes away for a little while.
-RAX, 1998
When things die, they are forever changed.
They can be reborn, or new can rise from the ashes of the old,
But what is truely dead can never truely live again.
But, what truly lives, can never truely die.
-RAX, 1998
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