Light's Demons

WARNING!! MAY BE SCARY!!

Light never spoke. Nobody ever asked why. Not that she'd answer.

She was not dumb. She could write. In fact, she carried a pad of paper and a black pen
everywhere. But she didn't. Instead she drew shapes. Strange shapes. Shapes that curled,
twisted, slithered, crept, writhed on the page without ever moving an inch. She used a new
sheet every day.

Her parents were quite proud of her, for reasons known by all parents. But Light, who was
not her name, scared all who saw her. Something lurking behind her black eyes seemed to
warn all to stay back, run, save yourself. And they did. Everybody gave Light a wide berth.

Her parents wanted to exhibit Light's drawings, but they couldn't. At the end of every day she
ripped them into a million pieces and threw them into the fireplace. After that, she gave a
satisfied smile, and crawled to bed, slowly, excruciatingly, as if something had sucked all
energy out of her. And the next morning at breakfast she would start a new drawing.

But finally the day came when a lonely man who wanted a dance parter asked her at a small
Halloween party at her parent's house, "Light, what do you draw?"

Light looked up and locked eyes with him. It was a thoroughly disconcerting experience. He
felt like she was examining his mind with her piercing, haunted black gaze, sorting through
every thought, deciding if he was worthy to know her secret. Finally she spoke, barely more
than a whisper, for the first time since she was three and told her parents she saw a black
shadow by the window.

"I could tell you. But it might kill you."

Might. Curiousity overcame him. "Tell me," he murmured.

"Demons." The word came like a death toll. "I can see them, and only I. I bear the burden for
the world. And I must keep the world safe. They do not know. If only they did! Demons, lurking
everywhere, black and slithering, ready to take over the world and feed on your soul. I draw
them, every one, and destroy them in the night. It keeps me sane, keeps me alert, as if I slip I
will fall to them. And it weakens them, somehow. I do not know why." He was starting to feel
oddly numb. "Ignorance is your only escape. Once you know them, they have a way in. That
is all they need. I am the only one strong enough to hold them back." He was starting to hurt.
All over. The world was fading... The last thing he heard was Light saying in her weak little
voice, "I am sorry."

********
Happy Halloween!

(originally posted on Indie's blog, The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy, under the Halloween picture. There it shows under my old pseudonym Talespin. Posted here by request.)

Carrots And Tasers

Or, A Rare Glimpse Into The Workings Of A Guy's Mind

Me: "You have to say one word, and then you have to say another word that starts with the last letter of the word before. And they're usually in the same category."

The Dude: "Like carrot and taser?"

Me: "Um, yeah, that makes a lot of sense..."

So there you have it. Carrots and tasers go together like ebony and ivory in a guy's world. I guess I'll never understand how...

The Official Allen Wrenches Song

Allen Wrenches... that are blue
Allen Wrenches... they can screw
Allen Wrenches... from Yahoo!
Allen Wrenches comin' through-
JUST FOR YOU!!

Someone who makes Allen wrenches should take this up as their marketing campaign. Really.

Put De Lime In De Coconut

Le Edit- the next day-

no need for a stupid video anymore, because this song is now on my playlist, yaaaay!

I've been adding to that thing like crazy. It's now up to 52 songs.

And now back to your regularly scheduled Randomness.

An Experiment In (Un)Flattery

Is this person pretty or ugly? It is the same person in both. You decide...

PRETTY:
Her thick hair shimmered the deep, rich, earthy color of mohagony, tinted with autumnal colors like shimmering gold and flame red. Her eyes were large and dreamy, a deep, almost bottomless, the rich dark color of chocolate. Her skin was a light Sicilian golden-brown olive color, tanned from the sun, with a charming sprinkling of freckles across the cheeks. Her arms and legs were most attractively long. So were her fingers, long and elegantly tapered to the tips, perfect for playing the piano or holding a pen with.

UGLY:
Her hair was the dark brown color of a mud puddle. Her eyes were quite big, taking up most of her face and giving her a constant deer-in-headlights look, and the almost same muddy and murky color as her hair. Her skin was burned beyond belief, like you get from being outside in the summer 24/7, and across her cheeks a few freckles were carelessly scattered, like a last-minute hasty detail. Her arms and legs were so unnaturally long it looked rather as if her entirety had been stretched out. Not even her fingers had escaped, as long, thin, and bony as spider legs.

----------------
Now playing: The Beatles - Revolution
via FoxyTunes

FoxyTunes

I have downloaded FoxyTunes. It's a software you can use to listen to music through Firefox (which I have, too). It rocks! Literally! I love it. And, as I discovered while writing the last post, it has a built in music signature option! You know how I do that sometimes, when I feel like typing it out? Well, not I can save myself the typing of that! I just have to click a button! It's awesome! And just what am I listening to? You'll see...

P.S.- Click the song name and see what you find- even neater.

----------------
Now playing: The Guess Who - No Sugar Tonight & New Mother Nature
via FoxyTunes

Aaaaaaugh!

The slightly annoying, amazingly melodramatic Wilhelm Scream, screamed by the guy famous for doing the song Purple People Eater- that's right, the one-eyed, one horned, flyin' purple people eater song- has been being used in films for 56 years now. It's something of a tradition (or, given the hilariously overexaggeratedness -wow, is that a word?- of it, maybe it's more 0f a very long-running joke in the film industry). Maybe it's kind of like the guy saying "My leg!" I hear in every single disaster scene in SpongeBob episodes. I found this awesome compilation of slips from films containing the Wilhelm scream on YouTube.

Can you hear The Scream in every clip?

Sign of the Day

Announced in big flashing letters outside the hospital:

MOCK DISASTER DRILL
OCTOBER 13
BE PREPARED!!!

Now, you don't see a sign like that every day.

I was panicking until I saw the 13. Whew! I didn't know anything about a mock disaster going on two days ago, for the record. I guess I died. Heh, dark humor.

I love how they're not preparing for a specific disaster, it's just a generic Disaster. Don't you think more extensive planning would benefit for something as important as this?

Thought of the Day

"I wonder what I came into this room for. But from how fast I came in, it must have been something important."

-embarrassingly enough, me

Happy Blog Action Day!!

Today is Blog Action Day. So, in honor of saving the earth (kind of an important cause, don't you agree?), I am posting this lovely green spiral photo.







GO GREEN!!!!

(I almost wrote Happy Green Day but then thought, wait!)

Aaah, Dubai...

*sing to Kokomo*

I wanna take you down to Duu-bai
We'll get there quick and then low we'll lie-ai
Plane tickets I will buy
Way down to Duuuuuubai!

Thank You.

And now, an orange singing opera.

Raaaaandom Phrase Time!! *singsong*

*this is a phrase I copy-pasted with my eyes closed from one of my works*

Fermagglio, who was irritated that morning, simply sighed and twirled his moustache.

The Exception

Why does everything expire earlier in New York? It's drivin' me crazy here! Is it some food law? Or is it just different there?

File This One Under "WTF?!?"

Listening To: "A Girl Like You" Edwyn Collins (before you go looking, this one isn't on my playlist- it is on YouTube though)

Okay. So I went out to eat at a restaurant today. My dessert experience was interesting. To say the least.

My brownie was surrounded with what looked to be, to me, melted vanilla ice cream. I took a bite and...

HUH?

I had no idea what it was. But it sure as heck wasn't vanilla ice cream. I thought I tasted garlic. Could it be? I took another taste, and my suspicions were confirmed...

It was Italian salad dressing!

Yup. That's right. Brownie, ice cream, and salad dressing. Yum! It tasted very strange, let me tell you. It tasted wrong. Almost as wrong as the time I made myself applesauce with generous toppings of salt and cloves- but that's a story for another time.

I got a new brownie and a free meal. Their lame excuse was that they had a new dessert chef.

"What, one that came from the salad section? One that has sight issues and can't tell the difference between vanilla ice cream and effing salad dressing?" I wanted to say, but didn't. That's just out there. I don't even want to think about how it might have happened.

Another thing so weird it could only happen to me. What's next?

She Wondered

She wondered whether everyone else had to put their thoughts into words, or else they wouldn't make sense.

She also idly wondered whether everyone else often thought about themselves in the third person like she was currently doing.

YouTube Irony

These two videos could be found through each other over on YouTube. Thing is, though they both feature animated singing cats, they couldn't be more different. One is all joy-joy-joy-joy-joyful, and the other is all emo.

Random Link That'll Really Make You Think...

"The Day Before" Ad Campaign

The world can change dramatically, for good or bad, forever, in a day. This slightly eerie ad campaign shows pictures of places the day before huge historical events are to happen there, in blissful ignorance of what is to come. Simple yet hard-hitting.

Rest In Peace, Dear Friend The Tube TV

You know that TV station I discovered waaaay back when? You know, in this post? (Oh, and that song is in my playlist, second from the top, if you feel the need to hear it.) The Tube TV?

Well, it is no more.

When The Tube's channel number no longer worked on October first, I was mad. I just thought it was another channel that the evil folks at the cable company had yanked on me, like EuroNews. Then I went to TheTube's website, and discovered this:

Dear friend of THE TUBE Music Network,

We regret to inform you of the fate that has befallen The Tube Music Network. October 1, 2007 The Tube ceased its national broadcast.

Viewers, Artists, Music Companies, Investors, Business Partners, TV stations, Cable companies, Advertisers , Friends and our creative partners @Radical Media - your support of The Tube has always been highly valued and appreciated. The collective efforts of this team, fueled by the letters we received from viewers, sustained THE TUBE as it struggled through the financial limitations that ultimately contributed to its incapacitated state.

Thank you for inviting The Tube Music Network into your life.

Sincerely,

The Tube Music Network staff

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Whaaaaaa! I loved that channel! It was like MTV withought all the crappy shows! It was pure music! How can such an awesome idea go under? Is it because the public actually likes the drivel MTV shows better? (oh, right, we already know that)

The Tube was an awesome station and an awesome idea. It's too bad it had to end like it did. I will miss the station very much indeed.

Rest in peace, dear Tube.

5 Pence Premoniton

I found five pence in the bottom of my bag yesterday. Maybe it's an omen that I should head to the UK, stat!

What I Noticed On Saturday, by Chris

(some of these may be ever so slightly exaggerated)

A man walking down the side of the road holding what looked like a whole tower case full of CDs, without a case. They were everywhere. His arms were full of loads of them and they were sticking out of all his pockets (and he had quite a few). I give him major points for not dropping any. None of them were in cases, either. He was holding one out like he was looking at it, in particular. But what caught my attention was that he actually was carrying a few CDs in his mouth! Yep, that's right, holding them in his teeth like how a dog catches a Frisbee. I wonder what he needed them all for, and why he couldn't get a bag or something for them.

In the restaurant, a woman sitting alone at a table with like 6 emptied wine glasses in front of her, and one more half full. No food, just wine glasses, and lots of 'em. Go lady go! The seventh is always the best. I'm surprised she could stay in her chair.