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June 27 was an amazing day. Amazing in that my madness did grow great, and I learned to smell, and smell, and then smell more.
Lately previously I had been enjoying others of my newfound madnesses: Star Trek, Concolor's provided Battlestar Galactica, and the teasing and jokes of my new coworker Thalia, who replaced Carrie when the latter departed for greener pastures.
The more I watch Battlestar Galactica (infrequently, for my computer and my DVD player sporadically dislike Concolor's wonderful enabling) the more amazed I am at how good it is for a sci-fi show. Acting, story, writing, concepts...and I am only on episode 3, please keep this up!
And as for the community which made "enabling" enter my vocabulary...
Alas, at a later date, that very lord of the underworld who had been so discreetly narcissus with me, showed me the other side of his nature, and I concluded that the labdanum note in both Sheol and him raises dark spectres of Donna Karan Black Cashmere, and makes me want to be sick. The dark horror of it.
Speaking of which, I am sure some of my readers (possibly even an integer rather than a fraction) are wondering, "So, what happened to the Dark Lord? He was my favourite character all along!"
Yes, all 1/10 of you will get your wish. I will tell of my last interactions with the Dark Lord.
At the beginning of May, the school's quarterly newsletter went out. In it there was a brief article on the trivia night, which included thanks to a bunch of people, including "the Dark Lord, the ideas man." But not to me. Now, as the wise Jarvenpa pointed out, both my Taurus Sun opposite Pluto in the 12th House and my Chiron in the 7th House make me a wonderful at loving and giving - as long as I feel I get something back.
And my Scorpio rising makes me absolutely anal about promises kept and trusts broken. He had told me to keep him out of this! I sought out the Lady Mollweide, and she told me she had indeed written the paragraph, she had been unaware of the Dark Lord's request for privacy, and she had kept herself and me out of this because we would get credit at the end. Oh, and they had already set a date for next year's trivia night, to coincide with a Spaghetti Night scheduled by some other service club.
I sighed and agreed, my smouldering Chiron still not fully appeased, and on the Friday before we left for Reach Provincials, I went to find the Dark Lord at lunch, hunted him, and finally cornered him.
*TOU: [% as usual, bypassing the redundant formalities] I owe you an apology for letting your name
be in the newsletter when you had requested it not be.
*DAR: It's all right.
*TOU: And Lady Mollweide told me that she had scheduled next year's trivia night for November. So I shall see you in August.
*DAR: Sure, that's fine.
%com: Tourmaline marks those words very well indeed
*DAR: Wait, I may not be there then. Well, Tourmaline, I am sorry, but I am running a little behind schedule now, so I shall talk with you later.
*TOU: It is ok. Later whenever. I need to go get some lunch.
And so I went to Toronto, musing to myself. Just before the eventful weekend I had already written poetry about, I went
down to the Mac lab again; the other Lord who taught the combined graphic arts course had left the door open, and I had walked in with my usual silence, and greeted them both, startling the other one. The Dark Lord was robed in white as he, as usual, wrought magic over his laptop.
I recounted to him the tale of my line from the Toronto gala: "Just give me your contact information, sir, and I'll sell you the Robotics Club!"
"Wait a couple of years," said the Dark Lord.
Then the well of our conversation ran suddenly dry. My desperate Ceres conjunct Chiron in the seventh house ("Ideas, exchange of information, learning, talking, writing--these are things that feel to Tourmaline as "yes, I am being cared for" and are the primary ways she tries to care for others") sought for other topics, but it was awkward, it was artificial, it was painful. To this day I will not know why he wore white. And, now that I think of it, why should I care?
"I will go," I said, and turned on my heel.
There came a word that seemed very odd, as its semantics did not match its intonation, which did not match its context, a context where I had never heard it before.
"I beg your pardon?" said I.
"Sorry," the Dark Lord repeated.
"A good long weekend to both of you," I nodded, and walked out. I now forget what song I sang as I headed beneath the blossoming lindens to the university lab, where I, and my Chiron conjunct Ceres in the seventh house ("Fears about communication, a sense from childhood of not being heard properly...") were needed.
I finally realised what I needed from the Dark Lord to carry on a proper conversation; he is not like Concolor, with whom one could talk about anything and feel the communication justified. To communicate with the Dark Lord, a teacher with inarguable talent for his job, you need to ask a question. And right now, I wrote, I lack questions that are (a) those he can answer (b) those he will answer (c) those that I cannot answer myself easily in other ways. The Dark Lord, unlike Tourmaline, is not a trivia machine. I am sorely in need of friends, but it is no use trying to make friends out of oracles.
So I wrote.
After Chicago, one of the first people I wanted to chat with was Lady Cauchy, so on Wednesday, the day after I slept for thirteen hours, I went to the math office after work, and gave on the door my usual double knock that I had not made in a long time. And a tall figure in blue opened the door, whom I did not expect to meet there and was not prepared for.
"Can I help you?" asked the Dark Lord, and I saw him smile for the first time in a long time.
When I am caught off guard, I can say wrong things; and I believe I had explained that the Dark Lord always makes me say the wrong things, for such runs the interaction. I said something to the effect of, "No, what would I talk to you about? I no longer need the lab," and requested to speak to Lady Cauchy.
Of course you all know what happened then: I hardly recall what I spoke to Lady Cauchy about, I was clearly aware of the Dark Lord leaving the math office behind my back, and (we all know you, Tourmaline, you would not be Tourmaline any other way, and we really should make a habit of provoking you to be rude to us, because the aftershocks are so fun) Tourmaline was haunting and hunting the hallways the very next day. To do what? Chorus it, Best Beloved: a-po-lo-gize.
I did manage to find him, and in a classroom, to boot.
"First of all, I need to apologise, I did not mean to be so rude yesterday, and I do need to talk to you," quoth I.
As usual, he said it was all right. As for the proposed discussion (I was a little amused-afraid to contemplate that he might be afraid of my asking him more than he was ready to answer), he suggested the exam period.
"When?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "I have supervision in the gym on the first day..."
An announcement came through the P.A asking teachers to log off the system as they meant to do something about it. The Dark Lord asked me to wait a little as he needed to check his email before he got off the system.
"Sorry," he said. "It is all right," said I, wondering why him apologising me seemed like such a rare thing, and so fine.
I left soon after, with the idea of the exam period clear in my mind. Alas, the Dark Lord, for all of the powers he is renowned for (irony at silk setting) has no clear visions of the future.
On Monday I came and saw him, and he asked me to come on Tuesday or Thursday. On Tuesday I came and could not find him at all. On Thursday, when he wore red (red? Yes, red, and the sad thing is that I did not get my brain completely addled by the sense of wrongness of that; the Dark Lord of kyanite colours that I had know and loved has changed) he asked me to come on Tuesday or Wednesday the next week, after the exams were finished. Now it is a deep sign of something wrong with me that I actually did not give up, for I did need the Mac lab.
On the Tuesday, that eventful Tuesday June 27, I went to the school. I had a sneaking gut feeling that I will not be able to find him again, but I wrote my excuse as talking to Lady Cauchy (and the Choco Leibniz ritual...)
Sneaking gut feelings are often unreliable, and sometimes kablooie.
Lady Cauchy and I had a long and happy conversationl she too had been shocked at the Dark Lord's use of the colour red, apparently more shocked than I was, whatever that means. I introduced her to my blog's "50 Reasons Picard Is Better Than Kirk" post (and, sly imp I am, added the blog, not the post, to her Favourites file) and downloaded The Picard Song for her. Alas, we could not hear it on her laptop, but she said she will get to listen to it at home, where her sons may know what to do about this. Then I went to the Mac lab - on the off chance.
Another teacher coincidentally let me in, and so, for the last time this year, I did finally ask the Dark Lord about plans for next year.
He inquired further into the logistics of having Trivia Night and Spaghetti Night, since he had already discussed the disadvantages of the cafeteria at great length. I said that I will email Lady Mollweide that very day to inquire about those details (I did; as of the time of this writing, she has not replied to me).
So about the use of the Mac lab, he said he was amenable to the very first day of school; I repeated the question several times, so he better have been sane when he said that, because I am taking him at his word.
As I moved to go, I offered to share with him too the boundless glory of the Picard Song. He politely declined; "Not in the mood." I was a little startled at this being the same man who once upon a time quoted Star Trek left, right and centre, but whatever.
"So on the very first day of school I shall be back to haunt and bother you," I said by the door.
"You never bother me."
Now I have evidence to contradict that, but who am I to dispel illusions that work to my advantage? "I will find a way. Have a good summer."
And thus, closure achieved, and no more Dark Lord Saga for the summer, you readers may skip to this point.
Last night, on the full moon of July 10, I applied Khephra as usual, and I had a dream:
Ra is stronger than ka (Egyptian soul) or Kali.
I lie, tossing and restless, on a bed when this idea comes to me, and afterwards I go to a school, where they perform dramas in the bathroom - Ra is stronger than Kali - and I have to collect gems of lapis lazuli and turquoise and chrysocolla, but a skinny urchin steals a ball of turquoise from me, and I make him give it back or else I will throw him by his wrist over my shoulder. I make the acquaintance of Professor Kingsley, a blue-eyed, curly-headed man, who saws down birches for me, large ones near the school, because Ra is stronger than Kali. I go up with A. Rosenbaum, who is inviting us to a choir concert, and I see in the library twenty volumes on astrology, bound in soft green leather. I cannot take out even Volume I, but I help the women with me fold glossy paper over the library selections they had chosen. Ra is stronger than Kali.
That Ra, the god of the rising sun, may be stronger than Kali, Hindu goddess of war, is a fairly obvious moral. Is it worth disturbing my dreams to tell me that peace triumphs over war?
Lately previously I had been enjoying others of my newfound madnesses: Star Trek, Concolor's provided Battlestar Galactica, and the teasing and jokes of my new coworker Thalia, who replaced Carrie when the latter departed for greener pastures.
Tourmaline to Concolor, June 25
Thalia has been teasing me about my partiality for Worf ("But he's bumpy!" "On his head, yes." "But how do you know he won't be bumpy elsewhere, too? And he is unstable, with all his talk of honour.." "At least I know what drives him. I don't trust the quiet men, I like knowing what the man likes and dislikes clearly.") On Friday, she started doing an imitation of Schwatzenegger, as well as talking about crushes. I remarked that having a crush on a fictional character is the ultimate safe thing for teasing purposes, as the chances of me actually meeting "the big burly Klingon of my dreams" are nil. Thalia replies (Schwartzenegger voice): "Oh no, you're going to marry him (Worf). You're going to have his Bumpy Babies."
The Bumpy Babies sent me into paroxysms of laughter for about three minutes, with my stomach hurting for the rest of the day. Thalia also coined the word "Blingon" which she interprets as "rapper Klingon" and I interpret as "Klingon who likes jewelry."
My geek quotient is going through the roof, but as I said to Thalia, there is absolutely no one I know who is not geeky in one aspect or another. Let him who has no geekiness upon himself cast the first stone.
Concolor to Tourmaline, June 25
Bumpy Babies..I like that.
...Now go find yourself a nice Blingon who can treat you right!
Tourmaline to Concolor, June 25
Is there a bar where they congregate?
The more I watch Battlestar Galactica (infrequently, for my computer and my DVD player sporadically dislike Concolor's wonderful enabling) the more amazed I am at how good it is for a sci-fi show. Acting, story, writing, concepts...and I am only on episode 3, please keep this up!
And as for the community which made "enabling" enter my vocabulary...
Tourmaline to Irene, June 27, 2006
The order came!!!
Silk Road is in an amber vial! And there was Nephilim, Sheol, Hades, Moscow, AlShairan, Nyarlathotep, and frimpage: Blood Countess, Kyoto, Bewitched, Tum, Cathode and Faustus!
Now which to try first???
Tourmaline to Irene, June 27, 2006
This is the text of my post in the I Got My Order! thread:
OMGWTFBBQ!
Never thought I would use this, but I need to!
I got the order you can see above in my morning mail. It must have come at around 9:00, I went down at 9:30 to pick it up, first thing on getting out of bed (day off, I love ya). I danced around the room, sorted out the imps, posted, made tea...then at quarter to eleven I see a mail truck pull up, I pop out as soon as they finish to check what's there: another order for me!!!
With no CnS
Order: 5/5
Shipped: 6/22 (no CnS)
Arrived: 6/27 - super fast!!!
5 mLs of Ra, Ahathoor, Tum, Khephra (two are in amber vials, I wonder why)
Imp pack of Masabakes, Anubis (X2!), Death on Pale Horse, Scales of Deprivation, Block Buster, and Love Me
Frimps of: Twilight, Thalia, Yerevan (on wish list), Belle Epoque, Golden Priapus, March Hare, Zephyr, and Jezebel!
Now what else can happen on a day when I dream of my love in the night and the day starts like that?!!
Gotta go soap my hands; I am running out of wrists to try the booty!!
[endquote]
No, I did not dream of Worf, why do you ask?
Miracle BPALs that break all the rules: Scents that shouldn't work on you but do
Nyarlathotep!
Incense in Kathmandu made me want to be sick; even the hint of incense in Death on a Pale Horse (not listed) made me wary. But Nyarlathotep calls me to him again and again, and his incense is just enough to make him smoky and dangerous and darker, like a bad boy with a feline swagger that makes me feel quivery against all reason...
And what scents absolutely broke your heart when they did not work on you?
Hades showed me his narcissus side and nothing else. I expected a more exciting, mutable scent. I dreamed of exotic words like opoponax and ambergris. I tend to him gently, hoping that this Lord of the Underworld would someday be persuaded to show his exotic and creative side he promised before. Perhaps he fears hurting me, so only shows himself as a delicate flower. Little does he know that I am strong, I can bear a little variability, if only for the sake of CHANGE! A tear stands in my eye, as this reminds me too much of an unrequited love I am trying to persuade myself to drop, and vowed to do so the very day Hades arrived.
Alas, at a later date, that very lord of the underworld who had been so discreetly narcissus with me, showed me the other side of his nature, and I concluded that the labdanum note in both Sheol and him raises dark spectres of Donna Karan Black Cashmere, and makes me want to be sick. The dark horror of it.
Speaking of which, I am sure some of my readers (possibly even an integer rather than a fraction) are wondering, "So, what happened to the Dark Lord? He was my favourite character all along!"
Yes, all 1/10 of you will get your wish. I will tell of my last interactions with the Dark Lord.
At the beginning of May, the school's quarterly newsletter went out. In it there was a brief article on the trivia night, which included thanks to a bunch of people, including "the Dark Lord, the ideas man." But not to me. Now, as the wise Jarvenpa pointed out, both my Taurus Sun opposite Pluto in the 12th House and my Chiron in the 7th House make me a wonderful at loving and giving - as long as I feel I get something back.
And my Scorpio rising makes me absolutely anal about promises kept and trusts broken. He had told me to keep him out of this! I sought out the Lady Mollweide, and she told me she had indeed written the paragraph, she had been unaware of the Dark Lord's request for privacy, and she had kept herself and me out of this because we would get credit at the end. Oh, and they had already set a date for next year's trivia night, to coincide with a Spaghetti Night scheduled by some other service club.
I sighed and agreed, my smouldering Chiron still not fully appeased, and on the Friday before we left for Reach Provincials, I went to find the Dark Lord at lunch, hunted him, and finally cornered him.
*TOU: [% as usual, bypassing the redundant formalities] I owe you an apology for letting your name
be in the newsletter when you had requested it not be.
*DAR: It's all right.
*TOU: And Lady Mollweide told me that she had scheduled next year's trivia night for November. So I shall see you in August.
*DAR: Sure, that's fine.
%com: Tourmaline marks those words very well indeed
*DAR: Wait, I may not be there then. Well, Tourmaline, I am sorry, but I am running a little behind schedule now, so I shall talk with you later.
*TOU: It is ok. Later whenever. I need to go get some lunch.
And so I went to Toronto, musing to myself. Just before the eventful weekend I had already written poetry about, I went
down to the Mac lab again; the other Lord who taught the combined graphic arts course had left the door open, and I had walked in with my usual silence, and greeted them both, startling the other one. The Dark Lord was robed in white as he, as usual, wrought magic over his laptop.
I recounted to him the tale of my line from the Toronto gala: "Just give me your contact information, sir, and I'll sell you the Robotics Club!"
"Wait a couple of years," said the Dark Lord.
Then the well of our conversation ran suddenly dry. My desperate Ceres conjunct Chiron in the seventh house ("Ideas, exchange of information, learning, talking, writing--these are things that feel to Tourmaline as "yes, I am being cared for" and are the primary ways she tries to care for others") sought for other topics, but it was awkward, it was artificial, it was painful. To this day I will not know why he wore white. And, now that I think of it, why should I care?
"I will go," I said, and turned on my heel.
There came a word that seemed very odd, as its semantics did not match its intonation, which did not match its context, a context where I had never heard it before.
"I beg your pardon?" said I.
"Sorry," the Dark Lord repeated.
"A good long weekend to both of you," I nodded, and walked out. I now forget what song I sang as I headed beneath the blossoming lindens to the university lab, where I, and my Chiron conjunct Ceres in the seventh house ("Fears about communication, a sense from childhood of not being heard properly...") were needed.
I finally realised what I needed from the Dark Lord to carry on a proper conversation; he is not like Concolor, with whom one could talk about anything and feel the communication justified. To communicate with the Dark Lord, a teacher with inarguable talent for his job, you need to ask a question. And right now, I wrote, I lack questions that are (a) those he can answer (b) those he will answer (c) those that I cannot answer myself easily in other ways. The Dark Lord, unlike Tourmaline, is not a trivia machine. I am sorely in need of friends, but it is no use trying to make friends out of oracles.
So I wrote.
After Chicago, one of the first people I wanted to chat with was Lady Cauchy, so on Wednesday, the day after I slept for thirteen hours, I went to the math office after work, and gave on the door my usual double knock that I had not made in a long time. And a tall figure in blue opened the door, whom I did not expect to meet there and was not prepared for.
"Can I help you?" asked the Dark Lord, and I saw him smile for the first time in a long time.
When I am caught off guard, I can say wrong things; and I believe I had explained that the Dark Lord always makes me say the wrong things, for such runs the interaction. I said something to the effect of, "No, what would I talk to you about? I no longer need the lab," and requested to speak to Lady Cauchy.
Of course you all know what happened then: I hardly recall what I spoke to Lady Cauchy about, I was clearly aware of the Dark Lord leaving the math office behind my back, and (we all know you, Tourmaline, you would not be Tourmaline any other way, and we really should make a habit of provoking you to be rude to us, because the aftershocks are so fun) Tourmaline was haunting and hunting the hallways the very next day. To do what? Chorus it, Best Beloved: a-po-lo-gize.
I did manage to find him, and in a classroom, to boot.
"First of all, I need to apologise, I did not mean to be so rude yesterday, and I do need to talk to you," quoth I.
As usual, he said it was all right. As for the proposed discussion (I was a little amused-afraid to contemplate that he might be afraid of my asking him more than he was ready to answer), he suggested the exam period.
"When?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "I have supervision in the gym on the first day..."
An announcement came through the P.A asking teachers to log off the system as they meant to do something about it. The Dark Lord asked me to wait a little as he needed to check his email before he got off the system.
"Sorry," he said. "It is all right," said I, wondering why him apologising me seemed like such a rare thing, and so fine.
I left soon after, with the idea of the exam period clear in my mind. Alas, the Dark Lord, for all of the powers he is renowned for (irony at silk setting) has no clear visions of the future.
On Monday I came and saw him, and he asked me to come on Tuesday or Thursday. On Tuesday I came and could not find him at all. On Thursday, when he wore red (red? Yes, red, and the sad thing is that I did not get my brain completely addled by the sense of wrongness of that; the Dark Lord of kyanite colours that I had know and loved has changed) he asked me to come on Tuesday or Wednesday the next week, after the exams were finished. Now it is a deep sign of something wrong with me that I actually did not give up, for I did need the Mac lab.
On the Tuesday, that eventful Tuesday June 27, I went to the school. I had a sneaking gut feeling that I will not be able to find him again, but I wrote my excuse as talking to Lady Cauchy (and the Choco Leibniz ritual...)
Sneaking gut feelings are often unreliable, and sometimes kablooie.
Lady Cauchy and I had a long and happy conversationl she too had been shocked at the Dark Lord's use of the colour red, apparently more shocked than I was, whatever that means. I introduced her to my blog's "50 Reasons Picard Is Better Than Kirk" post (and, sly imp I am, added the blog, not the post, to her Favourites file) and downloaded The Picard Song for her. Alas, we could not hear it on her laptop, but she said she will get to listen to it at home, where her sons may know what to do about this. Then I went to the Mac lab - on the off chance.
Another teacher coincidentally let me in, and so, for the last time this year, I did finally ask the Dark Lord about plans for next year.
He inquired further into the logistics of having Trivia Night and Spaghetti Night, since he had already discussed the disadvantages of the cafeteria at great length. I said that I will email Lady Mollweide that very day to inquire about those details (I did; as of the time of this writing, she has not replied to me).
So about the use of the Mac lab, he said he was amenable to the very first day of school; I repeated the question several times, so he better have been sane when he said that, because I am taking him at his word.
As I moved to go, I offered to share with him too the boundless glory of the Picard Song. He politely declined; "Not in the mood." I was a little startled at this being the same man who once upon a time quoted Star Trek left, right and centre, but whatever.
"So on the very first day of school I shall be back to haunt and bother you," I said by the door.
"You never bother me."
Now I have evidence to contradict that, but who am I to dispel illusions that work to my advantage? "I will find a way. Have a good summer."
And thus, closure achieved, and no more Dark Lord Saga for the summer, you readers may skip to this point.
Last night, on the full moon of July 10, I applied Khephra as usual, and I had a dream:
Ra is stronger than ka (Egyptian soul) or Kali.
I lie, tossing and restless, on a bed when this idea comes to me, and afterwards I go to a school, where they perform dramas in the bathroom - Ra is stronger than Kali - and I have to collect gems of lapis lazuli and turquoise and chrysocolla, but a skinny urchin steals a ball of turquoise from me, and I make him give it back or else I will throw him by his wrist over my shoulder. I make the acquaintance of Professor Kingsley, a blue-eyed, curly-headed man, who saws down birches for me, large ones near the school, because Ra is stronger than Kali. I go up with A. Rosenbaum, who is inviting us to a choir concert, and I see in the library twenty volumes on astrology, bound in soft green leather. I cannot take out even Volume I, but I help the women with me fold glossy paper over the library selections they had chosen. Ra is stronger than Kali.
That Ra, the god of the rising sun, may be stronger than Kali, Hindu goddess of war, is a fairly obvious moral. Is it worth disturbing my dreams to tell me that peace triumphs over war?
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