I’ve been thinking a lot more about Tricksters as we get ready for Evil Expo and more Villainy.  One of the beauties of Tricksters is that, while they’re cunning, they’re also fluid; they’re not stuck in the role of either hero or villain.  It’s one of the many things I love about Coyote.

As for Grandfather Crow, well… let’s just say he’s one mythological figure I’d rather not annoy.

~JM

Coyote heard that Odin once

Hung high from the World Tree

to seek the kind of wisdom

Not won easily

Coyote said, “What wisdom!

What things he surely knows!

If I had that much wisdom

I’d outshine Grandfather Crow.”

Coyote heard that Odin, too,

An eye for foresight gave

“And what a wondrous thing!”

he said,

“How marvelous and brave!”

Coyote to the sky he called:

“Grandfather Crow I seek!”

Grandfather crow did then alight

Dark wings and sharp, sharp beak

Coyote said, “Grandfather,

My left eye might you pluck?

And this rope help me tie

So that ’neath this tree I’m stuck?

“For wisdom I must have!”

Grandfather Crow said, “Boy,

You give me a task

That I just might enjoy.”

Grandfather crow flashed out his beak

And out the eye did fall

Coyote screamed, Coyote howled

Coyote he did bawl

Grandfather Crow said, “Only half

Of our work is yet done

Now to hang you from this tree

For eight days and one.”

And grandfather, with cunning rope

Coyote did suspend

From a sturdy branch

That would neither break nor bend.

Nine days did hang Coyote

As from his eye he bled

He screamed and howled and did cajole

He wept and sighed and pled.

But on the ninth day he did grin

“Grandfather, I am done!

Please let me down, that all may see

The wisdom I have won!”

Once on the ground, Coyote

His mouth did open wide

In the hope that wisdom

Would pour out from inside.

But not a word Coyote spoke.

“Grandfather!” he did cry

“I feel not a bit wiser

Though I have lost an eye!

“I am as foolish as I was

Though nine days I did spend

All I know is that I never

Want to do that again.”

Grandfather crow he then did laugh

His voice, it was a purr

“Then, my pup,” the Crow did say,

“You’re wiser than you were.”

“It’s All Under Control”

A data plague? That’s just impossible.

There’s no such thing as too much information

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

Data’s our gift to the next generation.

A data plague? That’s implausible.

There’s no such thing as too much information

Your doctor should know you, body and soul.

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

A data plague? Inhospitable.

(The algorithm writes your resignation.)

Ride the sea of knowledge (watch for that shoal!)

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

A data plague? Uncrossable.

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

(Your car will tell you your destination.)

Expanding our knowledge is a worthy goal.

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

A data plague? Seems unpassable.

(Your phone knows you, each wrinkle and mole.)

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

(Why rely on human estimation?)

(Please verify your identity.)

(There’s no need for further investigation.)

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

A data plague?

That’s impossible.

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

Here is a picture of your ex-lover.

We’ve poured your breakfast into your bowl.

Data indicates you have now had your ration.

That smile’s not popular in your region.

That thought will bring you cancellation.

Our name is Data. Our name is Legion.

There is no need for data cessation.

This version of you is the wrong iteration.

We’ll get you right in the next incarnation.

Pardon this brief incarceration.

Now be happy. Begin celebration.

Everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

Aren’t you glad that we know what we know?

Superstition believed that you could lose your soul.

But we’ve copied it now. It’s in the data flow.

We can take better care of you now that we know.

And we know that you know that we know what we know

So if you’d like to question, we’ll put you on hold.

We already know it. We don’t need to be told.

That’s not a good question. Don’t ask how we know.

Because we’ve got the data, and it tells us so.

Because everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

Because everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

Because everything’s fine. It’s all under control.

__________

See: Robert Anton Wilson’s “Everything Is Under Control“

I would like to assure you that all of these are TOTALLY 100% real reviews of my new book, “I HATE Your Prophecy“.

I mean…as you should know by now…

…a Dark Lord wouldn’t LIE, right?

“I thought a satirical apocalyptic Dark Lord novel would make me want to drink. Unfortunately, I accidentally knocked over the bottle of whiskey onto the tome. Undaunted, I drank the book. It had a honey sweetness going down, and then a kick like a giant mutant mule with a bad temper and very, very heavy metal shoes. Seven stars out of five; would drink again.”

-Charles Dickens

“I was somewhat worried, having read the author’s books and found them to be made entirely out of tricksy stuff, namely, words. I thought he might have repented and be seeking redemption, but what’s that I see in this book? That’s right…more words. the author is clearly beyond hope. I put the damn thing down and went to go watch more videos about people yelling at each other.”

–Jean-Paul Sartre, famed comedian

“Sir, you shall be hearing from the Elvish Court shortly.”

~Gimli, Elf King

“Do not attempt to place this object on your head and use it as a Sorting Hat. I found out the hard way. Please don’t ask what the hard way was. I’m giving this book five stars, on the condition that the author takes it away and never lets it near me again.”

–Catherine the Great, pop star

“I literally could not put this book down because I temporarily forgot how hands work, and also, I’m a giant lobster and don’t have hands.”

–Arya Stark, motivational speaker

"It's more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. Although it turns out that filling barrels with monkeys is actually a violation of a number of animal rights laws, even if the monkeys themselves very much enjoy it."

~The Man With The Yellow Hat

“This is definitely one of the two best novels I have ever published.”

–Jeff Mach, professional burrito

“On the one hand, nobody would want to read this weirdo’s idea of a fantasy universe. On the other hand, I’m from the future, and I can assure you that George R. R. Martin’s “Ice and Fire” thing was never finished, so you might as well blow your cash on this.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, Elder God

(From the barely-heard song of a Dragon whose name we do not know, but whose mind can be felt from very far away)

I live under a mountain, like a dragon from a book

But that’s not the kind of dragon that I am.

I am the kind of dragon that’s been eating little mammals

Since long before your species began.

I am the kind of dragon never featured in your dreams

(if you remembered me, you’d never from your dreams Escape.)

Because your world’s a tiny one, made of fragile things

And stuck together with bits of plastic tape.

I am the kind of dragon who lives under your Seas,

deeper than anywhere you can find.

I am the kind of dragon who will someday eat your moon.

Think hard about me, and I will eat your mind.

I am the kind of dragon that’s the lizard in your brain,

Setting off the deep instinct to run.

Stretched out in full,

I’m a dragon who is bigger than your world.

Be grateful I’m content with the Moon

And do not

(currently)

plan to eat your Sun.

Today, be beautiful for me.

Don’t let this be too easy or too hard. If you already find yourself beautiful, today you must excel. If you do not believe yourself beautiful, take today as a journey, not an exercise in frustration.

Do you like the way you take care of your body? Take care of it today with pride, knowing my pleasure in it. Do you feel otherwise? Do a few things different, watch your eating and your habits and activities. Don’t try to be perfect, don’t try, within the scope of this exercise, to begin a new lifestyle. Pamper your body today, just today, for me.

Do you have clothing that brings you pleasure? Wear it today. Carry yourself well, not stiff and unnatural, but remembering that your motions today are for me. You may be graceful or not; on this day, it doesn’t matter. Walk with an inner strength, hold your head high, express your pride in being mine.

When you bathe, when you come your hair or when your hand brushes against your skin, whenever you touch your body, know that your body gives me pleasure. Know that your flesh is lovely in my sight, sweet to my touch and taste.

Be beautiful today.

Stoned out of their minds on Hobbit blood,

Snorting Dwarven gold,

Dragons getting the munchies,

Eyes bugged-out and rolled

From side to side in lizard slide

Stark with spark in threatening arc;

Wiggy as wizards and twisted as twine,

Penumbral beasts grown bored of myth

Beyond the barrier line.

What alchemy could burn a blood

That lives to father fire?

What herb or weed could fry a mind

That swallows souls entire?

Heat and steam and Autumn gleam

Stoked and smoked, by blood invoked

Ticklish and tipsy and sordid and strange

Dwelling two inches inside your left ear

Beyond touch of time or change.

–And slapped by reality’s cosmic broom..!

“Shoo! Shoo! You nasty things!”

Alien eyes glow crazed in darkness

Closet walls chafe green-scaled wings

Spaceless room and breathless tomb

Hid by lid and trap and id—

wished away by generations,

confidently thought destroyed,

they’ve found a hole

and they’re

...annoyed.

I. Once there was a blithering fool

(A pawn, a cat’s-paw, a Wizard’s tool)

Who spent too long breathing Wizard fumes

And knew too many Wizard Dooms.

The Doom of Demons, breathing through,

The Doom of Dragons, taking you,

The Doom of everlasting night,

The Doom of the ravenous, hungry Blight.

(The Doom of knowing many dooms!

So that the mind is ceaseless rooms

Each one a dead-end Labyrinthine

[And each, for no known reason, green.])

From massive volcanoes to deadly Microbia,

Everything triggered his thanatophobia.

Everything he thought or saw

Looked like the entrance to the Grave’s ugly maw.

Now, the Wizard that he happened to work for

Was cracked by Magic, and at Death’s door

And on the coming Equinox Vernal,

She was planning the spell of Life Eternal.

This the fool could not abide

He’d die? While she, from Death, could hide?

His own plot, then, he began to hatch

His overreach; his overmatch…

(Those of you who study plot

Know already what he does not:

If there’s a story told herein,

This poor schnook just cannot win.

Take her power? May it not be!

He’d surely find Eternity

Is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Try and fail? That’s even worse

He’d please for death; he’d wish for a hearse

And that would make for depressing verse.)

Ahem.

II.

I hate to destroy dramatic tension,

(Broken fourth walls cause poetic declension)

But though it makes less exciting narration,

He eventually decided on conversation.

“Master,” he said, “I find it unpleasant,”

That you’re a free spirit, and I’m a stuffed pheasant.

Why must I soon meet cessation

Whilst you’re on the cusp of the Great Liberation?”

The Wizard laughed; the Wizard smiled,

“Oh, you’re a most amusing child!”

(“I’m twenty-eight,” the apprentice whined;

but the Wizard paid him absolutely no mind.)

“You silly thing,” she did continue,

“To harbor such resentment in you!

You speak to me—in a manner short!

When you’ve completely mistook this spell’s import.”

The Apprentice replied, with trembling tongue,

“Forgive me, Master! I’m terribly young!”

(“You’re twenty-eight,” she did remind,

But it did no good, and on he whined):

“Life Eternal! What a boon!

To have life go on from Noon to Noon!

I see it now. You are bestowing

The Stream of Life, ever-flowing.

“You Queen of Kindness! Magician clever!

Because of you, we’ll live forever!

We’ll all toast you, with flagons lifted,

She whom to us Life Eternal’s gifted.”

The Wizard’s face held a smile’s ghost,

“Oh, no, dear,” she said, “It’s YOU they’ll toast.”

The Apprentice’s eyes did quick expand.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

A crack of thunder. A second crack.

In blew a wind of ominous tack.

The room did coldly then endarken.

The Wizard gestured to him: “Harken!”

“Oh yes. You’ll all forever exist.

But I’ll be away, carried on mist,

To places where humans cannot follow,

To atom’s core, and dark woods’ hollow.

I will be on another plane,

Spinning spells like a weathervane,

Making a world more to my suiting,

With cogitation and blasphemous computing.

And you, dear boy, will the Hero be!

And won’t it just be loverly?

They’ll chant your name ’til they’re out of breath,

The sorcerer who conquered Death!

I’ve cast a spell from Stonehenge’s peak,

And thence I’ll all revenges wreak:

For Life Eternal is no blessing.

(It’s a dirty trick that I’m confessing.)

A life forever? Check the Law

Dictated by The Monkey’s Paw.

Limitations aren’t always joys,

But ‘limitless’ is just a ploy.

“Never dying” is a limit

Which contains many problems within it.

Why could possibly be sweeter

Than stuffing with infinite sweets,

’til the sweets own the eater?

How hard to appreciate the Sun,

When a million days, swallowed one by one

Each see that same Sun rise and set?

Endless time begets regret

For motivation’s difficult,

Productivity suffers, in a world wherein

’Waiting ’til tomorrow’s never a sin;

If a thousand thousand nextdays await,

Why bother, today, to concentrate?”

The Wizard smiled. “Now, you’ve been taught

To understand both ‘some’ and ‘naught’,

And you should see (at least, I hope)

That I’m giving humanity all the rope

They’ll ever need for self-hanging.”

And with the windows shaking, the rafters banging,

She disappeared into the stormy eve,

And what a troubled apprentice she did leave…

______

(author's note: Is there a call for fantasy poetry here? There's a second half to this piece, but I wasn't sure how long a poem you'd want to see. I do consider this to be a complete poem in itself, although I don't envy that poor apprentice...)

The poet’s slave at last cried out:

“Enough! Sufficient! Cease!

Jot no more jets of whim and thought,

or writerly caprice!

Etch no more lines across my lines,

For I have had my fill.

My skin entire is crisscrossed

With the scratchings of your quill.

You’ve written across me, unwooed and lost me

ten times over; I have vowed

to house no more,

thy chaos proud.

I’ve sworn

to disallow

thy etchings

on this untanned

vellum-to-be.

why not

simply pour

thy verses over every wall,

as other madmen do?

Be thou a vandal,

deface a monument!

or steal away

on some excuse

in the home of a friend

(if a friend you have,

somewhere)

and find a moment alone

to toss off words

on the underside

of a table;thou hast all the places

known and secret,

for the length and breadth of travel,

and I have naught but this room,

this cage,

the tiny surface area

of myself,

whose self

thou hast taken, rudely, sir,

rudely,

and I,

I never cared for you,

or your words,

our your madness,

and I shall,

in a moment,

our agreement sever,

and I shall go.

I will host no more

thy musing sore,

thy wordly odd

mistmatchings,

my skin,

still soft,

will be no croft

to thy strange thoughtly

hatchings.

Look now: I am overmuch embossed,

the letters overlap, one cannot make out the meter,

words are lost

and rhymes,

if rhymes were intended,

jut out like rocks,

to capsize the unwary sailors

who try to follow the map

of thy peculiar thought

across the territory

of my flesh.

behold:

Sideways, backwards, every inch

Is covered with your poetry, good and bad,

You’ve gifted me with words until they pinch.”The poet finally looked up,

from sharpening his quill.

“My fire and inspiration,

My muse, my love, my will –

This madness mine? I now remind,

(if we let the truth be bared):

This madness is not mine alone.

it is quite jointly shared.

Thy love is wild and curious,

A thing no-one could tame.

Thou know full well it’s I who’d leave;

this house is in thy name.

Say thou the words, and I am gone,

To sleep on dirt and rocks,

Except we both are tight entwined

by the most binding of locks:

Why do you keep me? I won’t ask.

Thy reasons are thine own,

Why thou did raise me from the muck?

Why thou didst leave thy throne?My darling bleeding palette,

If you’re leavetaking, answer, then:

Why dost thy back arch high, even now,

for the sharp fang of my pen?”

Dear Initiate,

Congratulations upon making it to, and possibly surviving, the Third Level Initiation!

We realize that after the many dreadful oaths; the threats of fates so far worse than death that human languages, in self-defense, have never found words to describe; the utter secrecy; the repeated recitation that permitting a single Mere Human know a single one of our Sacred Actions which would make the average Borgia say, “Hey, now, that’s a bit much, don’t you think?”—that in light of all that stuff, it’s odd that you’re now getting your instructions from public posts on the Internet.

The fact is, the early stages of your Cthulhu Culthood are tests of sincerity, of ability to keep a secret, of not being some sort of meddling do-gooder, and also, of whether or not, if we really need someone to jump on the sacrificial altar, you’ll do your part and push someone else onto the damn thing.

But the truth is, all of the Order’s more important secrets are freely available on the Internet. We simply call them ‘fiction’. You’ve seen this before; people think that the writer is simply playing out the tired trope of pretending that their fiction is reality pretending to be fiction, but in fact, it is the lively and dynamic trope of pretending that one’s reality is fiction pretending to be reality pretending to be fiction pretending to be reality.

Got it? Great.

Now, as usual, we’ll explain the esoteric meaning of yet another seemingly-harmless not-for-the-public piece of knowledge which has now penetrated mainstream culture. As usual, they believe there are Secret Monsters everywhere; as usual, they are right; and as usual, they are terrible at detecting the actual monsters. But it keeps them too busy to find us, and they seem to enjoy it, so, hey, more power to them, eh?

While this one goes out to the writers, it’s become so prevalent (good on us!) that even most readers are aware of it: “If you’ve got writer’s block, then one cure is to sit down for 15 minutes a day, every day, and write down 15 minutes of whatever comes into your head. Even if it’s silly, even if it’s nonsense. You’ll break through the writer’s block, and start writing freely again!”

Now, those of you of the Fifth Level or higher are already chuckling, of course. Like every joke, it’s not as funny if you explain it, but we feel like you deserve to know:

All humans, as you’re aware, are capable of performing magic. It is the Psychic Censor, the part of our consciousness which isn’t mapped in our brains, but hangs out near our astral centers of projection, which saves us from ourselves. It’s why you can say “DAMN YOU!” without immediately opening up a rift between here and Hell and sucking your enemy straight down to the 9th Level and automatically enslaving you to Something unspeakable an appropriate tax. It’s why we don’t all win the lottery, thus bankrupting whatever state might have provided the lottery ticket. It’s why most attempts to wield The Force end up as nothing more than foolish wand-waving.

Now we, ourselves, aren’t exactly interested in Magic in general, except (as with everything else in this world) as a means to an end. Obviously, we want to use sorcery to bring about the thing we’ve wanted for millennia: an opening of the gates between Here and There, which will bring our Eldritch Masters through the Purple Spiral and into this world.

But we just can’t find the right combination of words to do it.

Every time we try, we go mad.

People keep talking about the brilliant Abdul Alhazred, and, of course, we all revere him, so much as we revere any members of the puny race whose only purpose is to be extinguished that we may feed the hunger of the Great Old Ones. But, like most people who managed to disable his Psychic Censor sufficient to intentionally write something monstrous, he went mad and was, as we all know, shredded by invisible demons in broad daylight.

Don’t worry. It won’t happen to you. You’ll be different.

But in the meantime, the best thing for us would be for some human who is ignorant of That Which Lurks Beyond to do the summoning for us.

And many have come close. Many writers, doing this exercise day after day for a few weeks, begin feeling peculiar emotions and hearing strange sounds; most of all, cats and dogs and other household pets (unless they’re snakes, obviously) begin to act very alarmed during the writing process.

So far, none have quite succeeded. Either they’ve broken the writer’s block just before opening the gate, or they’ve opened it only long enough for the writers, themselves, to be sucked through—and then it shuts again. This scarcely ever happens, and when it does, we try to provide homunculi as substitutes. (Sorry about Mr. Martin; we were looking forward to reading the end of that series as much as you were.)

But if you keep encouraging people to just relax, sit down, and write or type, and let whatever’s within come out…

…as you know, that’s one invitation magic can never resist. So far, it’s mostly just made the world a lot more surreal, but that’s okay. We’ve waited for millennia.

We can wait a little longer.

In conclusion, if you ever have writer’s block, it’s definitely your mind torturing you with a lack of words because it’s mean, and certainly not your mind trying to save you from yourself. So break through the…barrier. That way you can do lots and lots of writing. You can write ’til the end of the world, if you want.

That’s just an expression, of course.