Surprisingly, Rosemary is proving relatively easy to find - all Phenex has to do is follow the trail of blown speakers and stoned angelheads shouting at each other over the ringing in their ears. She's making her way towards Fata's camp, which suits Phenex fine, because he's got a nasty suspicion about who might have started all this.
* * * * * * * *
Storm's coming. It's weird seeing the clouds rushing around the sky like that like they're in some kind of almighty hurry like when Daddy said the seals would be broken and the sun the sun the sun's on fire and I really think there's something wrong with me even though I don't feel sick. Sunstroke. Maybe I've got a fever and Mama's giving me iced tea and sponging my forehead with a cool washcloth and I'm gonna wake up with two weeks' worth of homework to do and wanting to eat everything in sight horizon to horizon and that thunder's giving me a heck of a headache. There's that tree again pretty all bright and silvery with little lights but that's not where I'm supposed to be right now and here comes the lady with the cards and she's looking all worried which is awful sweet of her but you know I think I'm okay now and I try to tell her that but I don't know if I'm talking or if it's just my inside voice.
"Two spoons... it's two spoons."
Two spoons of what? Sugar sugar water in my iced tea I never did get that lemonade but the tea was pretty good even if it was kind of bitter like wormwood the water tastes of ashes and wormwood where's Median where's my mom? Cardlady puts her hands over her ears all of a sudden and I think I might have given her my headache sorry cardlady cloudlady storm's coming...
* * * * * * * *
Median and Inri catch up to Phenex as he's shouting questions at Fata, who seems to be having trouble hearing him. She's moaning and holding her head, and as they approach Median can finally make out what she's saying:
"Too soon - she's starting too soon."
Phenex is furious.
"I know it's too fucking soon! That goddamn little weasel ratshit bastard thought it would be funny to dose her up, and now she's waking up and probably giving half the fucking sensitives in this camp an aneurysm with the noise she's been generating. We're going to find her first, but after Inri's talked her down, if she manages to talk her down, I'm coming back to feed Alias his nuts."
"Sonofabitch, I should have guessed," Median mutters, "The Devil and the Moon..."
* * * * * * * *
Time stutters and surges increasingly erratically around Rosemary as she staggers aimlessly through Black Rock City, trailing a cone of psychic feedback in her wake. She's no longer even thinking in words, much less in complete sentences. The less sensitive inhabitants of various encampments attempt to entertain, soothe, or restrain her, because she's obviously on something heavy, but she always manages to slip away, moving along a wobbly spiral path towards the epicentre of the festival, The Man. The flourescent tubes and strings of twinkling LED lights start to flicker as she approaches, then explode as the storm around her overloads the circuits.
She looks up, a rabbit frozen in highbeams, as the Man becomes a fountain of sparks. Her father's voice thunders passages from Revelation in her head.
* * * * * * * *
A lot of people... well, our kind of people, anyway, never really get why I ran. Other people mostly do, especially if they've been raised religious. Anybody who's read the Bible knows why people fall on their knees when an angel comes. Nowadays it seems everyone talks about their guardian angels and has coffee mugs or tote bags with cute little babies with wings on them, and that's not what they're like. That's not it at all.
Angels are... they're huge and terrible things with wings that blot out the sun and voices like every window in the world breaking at once. When they come, you can be pretty sure that someone's going to die. Or at least wish they were dead. So I ran like hell when I saw the angel. And yeah, from the outside it was just the Man, but where I was it was also an angel, with a spire of light stabbing into the sky behind it. And the light was all around me and it just wouldn't stop or fade away, so then I fell on my knees, because I figured maybe if I stayed down it wouldn't see me.
4.12.08
Canadian Democracy?
Well, Mr. Harper has managed to convince Her Majesty's representative, Governer General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament until January 26th, which means that we are effectively without a functional government for the next seven weeks. Way to go, Steve - instead of either trying to reach consensus with the other Members of Parliament elected by 62% of the 59% of the population of this apathetic bloody excuse for a country who bothered to vote [Note: To any suddenly rabid Tory supporters reading this who have been screaming about the coalition but didn't bother to vote, I suggest you go into the kitchen and dish yourself up a nice big bowl of "shut the fuck up".], we're stuck with a minority government who'd rather spend the better part of the next two months taking cheap shots at the opposition from behind the Queen's skirts. Nice.
I'm not saying I don't have grave misgivings about the whole notion of a coalition government, particularly one led by Stephane Dion, who's got so many daggers stuck into his back at the moment that he resembles a pincushion. However, the fact that Mr. Harper seems to feel that he can govern this country as though he'd been handed a landslide majority in the last election damn well needs to be answered with a resounding, "Hell no, you didn't." The fact that he decided to turn a plan to deal with the economic crisis into an attempt to financially eviscerate his political opponents makes him look not only like an arrogant idiot, but a mean-spirited asshole as well, particularly considering that the $30 million that the government would have saved by cutting the political party funding is basically just a drop in the bucket.
Ms. Jean's hands may well be tied by legal considerations, but this whole situation makes me inclined to join the anti-monarchist faction.
The only silver lining here might be the fact that if the public can muster sufficient outrage over this, the Tories might consider acting like adults and negotiate with the other parties.
Oh, and as far as the carrying on about the Liberals and NDs getting into bed with [OMFG] the scary treasonous separatists - when was the last time Quebec separation was seriously on the political agenda? Seriously - the Bloc hasn't said boo about it since 1995. They're basically a left-leaning regional party. You know, the way the Reform Party was a right-leaning regional party before they got sick of being ignored by Ottawa, held their noses, and got into bed with the Tories.
I'm not saying I don't have grave misgivings about the whole notion of a coalition government, particularly one led by Stephane Dion, who's got so many daggers stuck into his back at the moment that he resembles a pincushion. However, the fact that Mr. Harper seems to feel that he can govern this country as though he'd been handed a landslide majority in the last election damn well needs to be answered with a resounding, "Hell no, you didn't." The fact that he decided to turn a plan to deal with the economic crisis into an attempt to financially eviscerate his political opponents makes him look not only like an arrogant idiot, but a mean-spirited asshole as well, particularly considering that the $30 million that the government would have saved by cutting the political party funding is basically just a drop in the bucket.
Ms. Jean's hands may well be tied by legal considerations, but this whole situation makes me inclined to join the anti-monarchist faction.
The only silver lining here might be the fact that if the public can muster sufficient outrage over this, the Tories might consider acting like adults and negotiate with the other parties.
Oh, and as far as the carrying on about the Liberals and NDs getting into bed with [OMFG] the scary treasonous separatists - when was the last time Quebec separation was seriously on the political agenda? Seriously - the Bloc hasn't said boo about it since 1995. They're basically a left-leaning regional party. You know, the way the Reform Party was a right-leaning regional party before they got sick of being ignored by Ottawa, held their noses, and got into bed with the Tories.
17.11.08
Signal to Noise (dreamtime)
I'm flipping idly through a game module for some long out-of-print RPG - it's for an adventure in a "Forbidden City" which, by the setting blurb, sounds a lot like something Lovecraft or Chambers would have devoted pages of florid yet vague descriptive text to. The creepy thing is that the front cover of the module has been damaged, so the name of the city is obscured, as though water has been spilled on the cover and left long enough to bleed the ink down the paper. The really creepy thing is that every instance of the city's name has also been carefully excised from the book - not just crossed out or covered with white-out, but cut out neatly, so there are small holes in several of the pages.
Needless to say, I buy the module and make plans to run it using WoD rules.
The POV switches at this point to the action in the game itself. The party (including myself) is picking its way through a series of caves which turn out to be the ruins of a massive highway interchange on the outskirts of The City*
[* The City is a place I frequently end up in my dreaming life. It's huge, contains elements of every place I've ever lived and a few I've simply visualized from books, and for some reason contains large stretches of urban decay - not the dangerous, crime-riddled variety, but the wasteland that's left after even the criminals decide to move to a nicer neighbourhood with a better class of people. We're talking the Bronx during the late 1970s - early 1980s. Or maybe postwar Dresden. The Ciry also contains a huge university, a deeply confusing and arbitrary public transit system, and, inexplicably, an amusement park.]
There are five of us, and five small children. One of the kids is our guide, the others... from sketchy reports of this nameless place and what other people have told us, apparenty young children are the only people able to find their way around the city without becoming paralyzed with nausea from the bizarre geometry of the place. The unspoken reason they're with us, which I'm really not happy about, is that they can't run as fast as adults, so it's like the old joke about not having to outrun the bear, but the other person you're hiking with, only not funny at all. I've made a private resolution that this is not going to happen, no matter what sorts of godawful things we run into.
We finally reach the gates, where a bridge leading to the main entrance has been collapsed into a deep gorge separating the city from the surrounding countryside. Despite the place's reputation, there are a hell of a lot of people milling around, to the point that there's actually a lineup for the improvised cablecar visitors use to get across the gorge. I remark that for an allegedly forbidden city, there are an awful lot of damned tourists. Nobody laughs.
X. and M. wait in line. The kids go off to play with the hordes of other kids building forts out of rubble, chucking stones into the gorge, play-fighting with sticks, and other stuff kids do when left to their own devices. R., V., and I wander around to try to get some more reliable information on what exactly we're getting into here. A frail-looking blonde woman is sitting on a parapet overlooking the gorge, and she smiles at us when we approach. She's perfectly happy to talk to us, chatting about the inhabitants of the city, including her sister, who she's visiting. She says she's never heard of any monsters, and the people are no more mad than they are anywhere else. She brushes some hair away from her face, and I see a small black square on one cheek. V. stiffens and walks away without another word to her, and I make some excuse and hurry after him.
"What was that all about? She was being helpful!"
"Oh yes, very helpful. Didn't you see that mark on her face? She's starting to pixellate. We can't trust a word she says."
"It was just the one square!"
"On her face - but she was wearing long robes. For all we know, she could be nothing but static under there. I'm not willing to take the chance."
When I look more closely at the people waiting in line, I notice that the majority of them, particularly those who have been here before, have parts of their body missing - the area where the limb should be is a hole filled with grey static. Their voices, too, are occasionally obscured by the hiss of a dead radio or occasionally rise into a sharp whine of feedback. The little girl guiding us comes up and stares at me solemnly.
"It's nothing like monsters, really. Mainly it's just that when you can't see or hear anything in particular, you start to make stuff up."
Needless to say, I buy the module and make plans to run it using WoD rules.
The POV switches at this point to the action in the game itself. The party (including myself) is picking its way through a series of caves which turn out to be the ruins of a massive highway interchange on the outskirts of The City*
[* The City is a place I frequently end up in my dreaming life. It's huge, contains elements of every place I've ever lived and a few I've simply visualized from books, and for some reason contains large stretches of urban decay - not the dangerous, crime-riddled variety, but the wasteland that's left after even the criminals decide to move to a nicer neighbourhood with a better class of people. We're talking the Bronx during the late 1970s - early 1980s. Or maybe postwar Dresden. The Ciry also contains a huge university, a deeply confusing and arbitrary public transit system, and, inexplicably, an amusement park.]
There are five of us, and five small children. One of the kids is our guide, the others... from sketchy reports of this nameless place and what other people have told us, apparenty young children are the only people able to find their way around the city without becoming paralyzed with nausea from the bizarre geometry of the place. The unspoken reason they're with us, which I'm really not happy about, is that they can't run as fast as adults, so it's like the old joke about not having to outrun the bear, but the other person you're hiking with, only not funny at all. I've made a private resolution that this is not going to happen, no matter what sorts of godawful things we run into.
We finally reach the gates, where a bridge leading to the main entrance has been collapsed into a deep gorge separating the city from the surrounding countryside. Despite the place's reputation, there are a hell of a lot of people milling around, to the point that there's actually a lineup for the improvised cablecar visitors use to get across the gorge. I remark that for an allegedly forbidden city, there are an awful lot of damned tourists. Nobody laughs.
X. and M. wait in line. The kids go off to play with the hordes of other kids building forts out of rubble, chucking stones into the gorge, play-fighting with sticks, and other stuff kids do when left to their own devices. R., V., and I wander around to try to get some more reliable information on what exactly we're getting into here. A frail-looking blonde woman is sitting on a parapet overlooking the gorge, and she smiles at us when we approach. She's perfectly happy to talk to us, chatting about the inhabitants of the city, including her sister, who she's visiting. She says she's never heard of any monsters, and the people are no more mad than they are anywhere else. She brushes some hair away from her face, and I see a small black square on one cheek. V. stiffens and walks away without another word to her, and I make some excuse and hurry after him.
"What was that all about? She was being helpful!"
"Oh yes, very helpful. Didn't you see that mark on her face? She's starting to pixellate. We can't trust a word she says."
"It was just the one square!"
"On her face - but she was wearing long robes. For all we know, she could be nothing but static under there. I'm not willing to take the chance."
When I look more closely at the people waiting in line, I notice that the majority of them, particularly those who have been here before, have parts of their body missing - the area where the limb should be is a hole filled with grey static. Their voices, too, are occasionally obscured by the hiss of a dead radio or occasionally rise into a sharp whine of feedback. The little girl guiding us comes up and stares at me solemnly.
"It's nothing like monsters, really. Mainly it's just that when you can't see or hear anything in particular, you start to make stuff up."
3.10.08
Ash Tourist (dreamtime)
I'm packing a bunch of Pooh Bear's old clothes, soap and other toiletries, and stationery supplies in an old messenger bag. I plan to leave it in a visible location in the Land Rover when we arrive at the camp - the dossier said that the locals' pride would not let them accept charity, but the aid workers have an arrangement worked out. They leave the donations in easy-to-steal bags in convenient locations, and the recipients get to tell their friends that they put one over on the foreigners.
The landscape is flat and grey and barren, with low mountains in the distance. There is a light dusting of frost or ash on the rocky ground. The sky is almost the same shade of grey, and there's a sharp, cold wind, whipping fine grit through the thin air. I don't understand what these people are doing out here. There are no cities, no rivers, and the land obviously isn't capable of supporting anything in the way of edible vegetation. Surely there must be someplace a little less inhospitable they could stay.
At this point, the dream starts to get a little strange. There are several small replicas of ancient temples dotting the plain. They are whitish-grey and appear to be made of local stone. There's a replica of the Parthenon, the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, Hagia Sophia, and (of course) Stonehenge. None of them is more than about seven feet high. There is also a pair of gigantic legs straddling the road. The rest of the body is nowhere in sight.
We arrive at the aid workers' base, which appears to have been set up in an abandoned air base. The workers' tents are inside the hangars, mostly for added protection from the wind and dust. A couple of other people in the Land Rover get out and demand to know where we are, because the base was definitely south of the legs and this is west. I have no idea what direction we came from, because everything looks the same, but quibbling about directions strikes me as a bit stupid, considering that this base is the only landmark other than the temples in the area anyway.
I walk out and go to the other part of the camp. Sullen-eyed people of indeterminate ethnicity watch me from shacks made of scrap metal from the hangar and tarps and tents from the aid workers. Apparently the stones here are flammable, because that's what they're using to cook the field rations they've "stolen". They wear colourful clothes in strangely shiny iridescent fabrics. I allow one of the kids, a little girl, to pick my pocket. She takes the handful of candy back to her gang a short distance away.
I woke up shortly after this.
The landscape is flat and grey and barren, with low mountains in the distance. There is a light dusting of frost or ash on the rocky ground. The sky is almost the same shade of grey, and there's a sharp, cold wind, whipping fine grit through the thin air. I don't understand what these people are doing out here. There are no cities, no rivers, and the land obviously isn't capable of supporting anything in the way of edible vegetation. Surely there must be someplace a little less inhospitable they could stay.
At this point, the dream starts to get a little strange. There are several small replicas of ancient temples dotting the plain. They are whitish-grey and appear to be made of local stone. There's a replica of the Parthenon, the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, Hagia Sophia, and (of course) Stonehenge. None of them is more than about seven feet high. There is also a pair of gigantic legs straddling the road. The rest of the body is nowhere in sight.
We arrive at the aid workers' base, which appears to have been set up in an abandoned air base. The workers' tents are inside the hangars, mostly for added protection from the wind and dust. A couple of other people in the Land Rover get out and demand to know where we are, because the base was definitely south of the legs and this is west. I have no idea what direction we came from, because everything looks the same, but quibbling about directions strikes me as a bit stupid, considering that this base is the only landmark other than the temples in the area anyway.
I walk out and go to the other part of the camp. Sullen-eyed people of indeterminate ethnicity watch me from shacks made of scrap metal from the hangar and tarps and tents from the aid workers. Apparently the stones here are flammable, because that's what they're using to cook the field rations they've "stolen". They wear colourful clothes in strangely shiny iridescent fabrics. I allow one of the kids, a little girl, to pick my pocket. She takes the handful of candy back to her gang a short distance away.
I woke up shortly after this.
2.10.08
Debate Report Summary (reconstructed)
Just finished watching the second hour of the English-language party leaders' debate on CBC.
Overall impression of the leaders:
Harper: Tired and beleaguered
Dion: Sensitive and desperate
Layton: Aggressive and smug
May: Blunt and knowledgeable
Duceppe: Just there to disturb shit
Steve Paikin (moderator): Pretty good at keeping the candidates within their time limits and preventing the debate from devolving into a shouting match.
That said - who the hell thinks 45 seconds is an adequate length of time to respond to a question? Seriously.
Layton's quote for the night: "Where's your platform? Under your sweater?"
I'm really glad someone brought up the culture question - I know a lot of people who are involved with the arts, and not one of them can afford to do it for a living, much less attend these mythical fucking galas Harper claims are going on all over the place.
Dion's quote for the night (on culture): "First, it's fun. It's bringing us beauty, emotions, a beautiful novel, a beautiful movie. We need to have more of that, certainly." I mean, it wasn't a great quote in and of itself, but it came across as disarmingly honest. Making a case for art as a purely aesthetic value in it's own right without saying how much it contributes economically or how it helps define our national identity is something I can totally get behind. And saying that your party is in favour of more fun is just plain cool.
Wow - that dude from Toronto who asked what the leaders were going to do about crime was totally and obviously a Conservative plant. Way to go Jack for calling attention to the huge rate of incarceration among young Aboriginal Canadians and what the underlying causes are (lack of education, lack of opportunities, shitty facilities on most reservations, to name a few).
Ooh - the Afghanistan question. This is one of the few policy issues I'm seriously ambivalent about. On the one hand, if we pull out and the Taliban take over again, life is going to seriously suck for half the population. On the other hand, the Canadian military don't have the money or the gear to protect our soldiers from jury-rigged roadside bombs, much less anything more substantial. Booyah to May for arguing in favour of a broader UN mission with more emphasis on humanitarian aid. And another booyah for bringing up the fact that a huge chunk of our foreign aid budget (such as it is) is being poured into Afghanistan at the expense of Africa and other seriously impoverished areas of the world.
Sealab 2021 moment: "Oh, that tears it! How many more times am I gonna have to hear the phrase 'kitchen tables' today?!"
The "building a shed" guy sounds like a plant too, but damned if I can figure out for which party. Maybe he's just making the most of his 15-odd seconds of fame among the small subset of Canadian voters watching this debate instead of the no doubt riveting trainwreck of the U.S. vice-presidential debate.
I'm really glad May brought up electoral reform, although it could be argued that it's kind of self-serving, as (sadly) it's the only way the Greens are likely to get enough seats to be taken seriously. Regardless of motivation though - hells yeah, let's get proportional representation in Parliament. I'm sick of feeling like my vote doesn't count (see earlier discussion of dressing up orangutans and running them as Conservative candidates in Alberta).
Duceppe quote of the night: "I know I won't be prime minister, and three of you won't be prime minister neither. Some of you know it, but you won't say it."
Okay - I know I've got some heavy screaming pinko lefty bias going on here, but even so it looked like May was the clear winner. She'd done her research, and unlike certain other party leaders (Jack, I'm looking at you), she wasn't constantly getting into slanging matches with Harper. Harper just looked like he had better things to do than be there. Duceppe really didn't need to be there. Layton came across as a better politician than any leader the NDP has had since Broadbent, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. That, and he was kind of acting like a dick, especially when he went after Dion for things previous Liberal governments had done. I just feel more sorry for Stephane Dion than anything. He's inherited a real basket case of a party (thanks a lot, Jean), and it's probably going to be at least two more elections before the Liberals get their shit together.
Overall impression of the leaders:
Harper: Tired and beleaguered
Dion: Sensitive and desperate
Layton: Aggressive and smug
May: Blunt and knowledgeable
Duceppe: Just there to disturb shit
Steve Paikin (moderator): Pretty good at keeping the candidates within their time limits and preventing the debate from devolving into a shouting match.
That said - who the hell thinks 45 seconds is an adequate length of time to respond to a question? Seriously.
Layton's quote for the night: "Where's your platform? Under your sweater?"
I'm really glad someone brought up the culture question - I know a lot of people who are involved with the arts, and not one of them can afford to do it for a living, much less attend these mythical fucking galas Harper claims are going on all over the place.
Dion's quote for the night (on culture): "First, it's fun. It's bringing us beauty, emotions, a beautiful novel, a beautiful movie. We need to have more of that, certainly." I mean, it wasn't a great quote in and of itself, but it came across as disarmingly honest. Making a case for art as a purely aesthetic value in it's own right without saying how much it contributes economically or how it helps define our national identity is something I can totally get behind. And saying that your party is in favour of more fun is just plain cool.
Wow - that dude from Toronto who asked what the leaders were going to do about crime was totally and obviously a Conservative plant. Way to go Jack for calling attention to the huge rate of incarceration among young Aboriginal Canadians and what the underlying causes are (lack of education, lack of opportunities, shitty facilities on most reservations, to name a few).
Ooh - the Afghanistan question. This is one of the few policy issues I'm seriously ambivalent about. On the one hand, if we pull out and the Taliban take over again, life is going to seriously suck for half the population. On the other hand, the Canadian military don't have the money or the gear to protect our soldiers from jury-rigged roadside bombs, much less anything more substantial. Booyah to May for arguing in favour of a broader UN mission with more emphasis on humanitarian aid. And another booyah for bringing up the fact that a huge chunk of our foreign aid budget (such as it is) is being poured into Afghanistan at the expense of Africa and other seriously impoverished areas of the world.
Sealab 2021 moment: "Oh, that tears it! How many more times am I gonna have to hear the phrase 'kitchen tables' today?!"
The "building a shed" guy sounds like a plant too, but damned if I can figure out for which party. Maybe he's just making the most of his 15-odd seconds of fame among the small subset of Canadian voters watching this debate instead of the no doubt riveting trainwreck of the U.S. vice-presidential debate.
I'm really glad May brought up electoral reform, although it could be argued that it's kind of self-serving, as (sadly) it's the only way the Greens are likely to get enough seats to be taken seriously. Regardless of motivation though - hells yeah, let's get proportional representation in Parliament. I'm sick of feeling like my vote doesn't count (see earlier discussion of dressing up orangutans and running them as Conservative candidates in Alberta).
Duceppe quote of the night: "I know I won't be prime minister, and three of you won't be prime minister neither. Some of you know it, but you won't say it."
Okay - I know I've got some heavy screaming pinko lefty bias going on here, but even so it looked like May was the clear winner. She'd done her research, and unlike certain other party leaders (Jack, I'm looking at you), she wasn't constantly getting into slanging matches with Harper. Harper just looked like he had better things to do than be there. Duceppe really didn't need to be there. Layton came across as a better politician than any leader the NDP has had since Broadbent, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. That, and he was kind of acting like a dick, especially when he went after Dion for things previous Liberal governments had done. I just feel more sorry for Stephane Dion than anything. He's inherited a real basket case of a party (thanks a lot, Jean), and it's probably going to be at least two more elections before the Liberals get their shit together.
28.9.08
Getting What You Pay For
In other news, apparently the LHC is on the fritz less than two weeks after they first fired it up. I'm picturing wild-eyed Swiss scientists standing hip-deep in rapidly evaporating liquid helium screaming "You're the reason we can't have nice things!" at each other in chipmunk voices.
In other news, I'm very easily amused.
In other news, I'm very easily amused.
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