Mulling Scary Things

The other day I was telling the Professor about our neighbors’ dog who just recently had to be put down. And she asked, “The one you didn’t like?” and I said, “Yes, but we were starting to get along.” “And you’re worried your curse worked?” she asked, teasing.

But I had a brief moment where I was like “yes” except that I didn’t put a curse on poor Leo. But it is a kind of fear of mine that my ill-feelings towards someone might become manifest in their terrible misfortune. Because, dude, I might not like you, but I don’t really want you to suffer, you know? But it’s not just that–thought it’s that at some level; it’s also that I don’t want to be tied in some way to someone I don’t like and the idea that I could cause the suffering, just by wishing it, of someone I dislike? That would seem to be a road that would have to run both ways, you know?

Anyway, I’ve been mulling and mulling over this Sue Allen project, though calling it a project is at this point wildly optimistic. I have some notes. I have a timeline of weird Nashville history, and I have an outline of an alternative history of Sue Allen’s life that is fine, but isn’t really sparking my imagination. I want to write something really, really creepy. Really unsettling. And I don’t feel like just a straight-forward fake biography really gets at that.

So I’m thinking about what I find scary and why. What’s funny is that, if you look for “What makes something scary?” the most useful information comes from people who lead role-playing games–like really thoughtful stuff about what’s frightening and why and how to lead your player through it in a way that keeps them engaged and makes them feel satisfied in the end. The writing sites and the movie sites are just not as helpful.

I’m also thinking that I need a good book on the Golden Dawn and those kinds of formal, esoteric magical movements, because I wonder if some of the tension in the book isn’t between “this is the right way to do this” v. “this is what works.” Not that those aren’t often overlapping things, but you know. So, recommend away if you have them. Ceremonial magic has never really interested me, but I might need it.

Blurry is the New Fashion for Pets

It’s so warm today that I should have broken down and turned the air conditioner back on, but I don’t know if it’s the lack of humidity or just that I was very sleepy all day or what, but it feels really nice. And now that the clouds are rolling in, temperatures are dropping and it will be a different kind of comfortable in here in an hour or so.

Gardeners, Let’s Discuss Weeds, Philosophically

Okay, until today, when I weeded, I threw the weeds out of the bed, raked them up, put them in the compost pile, waited some unspecified amount of time, and then put them back in the flower bed as compost.

Today, though, I asked myself, “Why would I walk these weeds back to the compost pile only to walk them back to the bed after some unspecified amount of time?”

And so, I didn’t. I pulled weeds and then I left the weed corpses in the dirt to… I don’t know… compost, I guess? It sure felt like a kind of mulching. I put some weed corpses around the rose, especially, in a way that sure went like mulching.

Is there something I’m missing? Some reason not to do this? Except that it looks kind of crappy, why don’t we just leave the dead weeds in the bed?