To Barbara, May 2022

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 23:00:54 GMT

To Barbara

Quiet and still, still you lie

In your bespoke coffin

Laid out with your head on a little pillow

Just as my mother left you.

How long have you lain

In the dark

Alone

In the dark

While the world turned on?

When did my mother last embrace you?

Hold you close and whisper

“There there, my sweet one”?

How often were you a blessed memory to her?

How long was it since the miracle

Of human empathy

Graced you with a semblance of a living spirit?

It didn’t matter to you, since there is no you

Only matter

Cloth and plastic and ceramic

Shaped by but not shaping

Thought.

I see your tiny shape in a faded brown box

And I weep for the love my mother lavished on you

Gone now, with her, these two years already,

And miss the Archimedean firmament

She gave me for half a century.

I appreciated it, appreciated her, every moment of my life in that time,

and yet I knew not what I had,

as fish do not comprehend the sea.

Like a little boat left behind by the shores of the Chad and the Aral

I am left desolate by her dissolution.

You mean nothing to me, but I am heartbroken to let you go,

as I let her go.

Her love was real, even if you were not,

And the shapes of the past blow away in the wind.

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A report on the factual basis of various folk delusions

Wed, 15 May 2024 19:00:59 GMT

A report on the factual basis of various folk delusions (or “Urban Legends”, as they are often now termed.)

Prepared by [redacted] for [redacted].

For over a century, the truth about the “North Shore” of Massachusetts has been assiduously obscured by the austere Yankee ruling class of the region, a cabal of WASPs1, Brahmins2, and Puritans3, often described by the Irish folk hero Mayor Curley as “God’s Frozen People.”4 The full extent of their motives and plots would bore my readers insufferably, but the basic reason is that they can’t stand everyone making a fuss. It may surprise outsiders to learn this, given that Massachusetts history flares with incidents such as the Boston Tea Party5, the Boston Massacre6, or the Boston Molasses Flood7, however it is precisely because such incidents were so commonplace that, in the dark days of the War of 1812 (have gotten our asses kicked in yet another invasion of Canada), this starchy race struck a terrible bargain.

The groundwork had been laid more than a century before, during the Salem Witch Trials, in which many innocent people were accused of consorting with the devil, put on trial, and, in a few cases, executed8. In an effort to rein in the populace, it became the custom to force anyone who wished to lay a charge of witchcraft to eat half a dozen apples, into which court bailiffs would insert needles or sharpened clam shells. Much as someone accused of being a witch would be tossed into a pond and floated would be found guilty, anyone who could consume the apples without rendering themselves speechless was deemed to have God’s blessing for their accusation. This is, of course, the origin of our modern tradition of inserting razor blades into apples at Halloween.

The central figure of our main story was none other than the first president of the United States, the great Samuel Adams himself. Fueled by his special October brew, Adams traveled to the small town of Innsmouth, a new vanished town commemorated, after a fashion, in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, who got most of the facts wrong.9 Lovecraft’s fictions were hardly the only fragments of the truth that have seeped into history and popular culture. Through painstaking research at Boston Public Library and the [redacted] archives, I have pieced together snippets in back issues of the [redacted] Picayune of Haverhill, which provide a fairly complete account, hidden in obscure portions of the classified ads. Thus, I believe that I can relate the main points of the arrangement. Adams agreed to three conditions, which he and his fellow conspirators would engineer and, in exchange, Massachusetts would remain pleasantly dull and decorous.

No one may ever park their car in Harvard Yard.
The Great Green Monster of the Fens shall be appeased with libations and chanting by crowds of devotees in their secret temple built along the Fenway, where they must annually sacrifice the “Sweet Caroline”.10
No matter how dirty the water of the Charles River became, one must still love it, and Boston, as their home.

Several parts of Adams’s covenant, it must be added, leave grounds of grave concern for us, his modern descendants. In particular, the stipulation that [several sentences redacted] seems almost suicidal in today’s shoe and clothing marketplace, although we can all breathe a sigh of relief that [redacted] went out of style before our species developed nuclear weaponry.

In conclusion, despite any moral or aesthetic objections, one cannot deny that Adams’s pact with the [redacted] worked. It is a measure of how faithfully that we Massachusettonianites have observed this covenant that you have never heard of us, our city, or our quaint folkways. And that’s just how we want it.

1 An acronym

2 A metaphor

3 Today mostly Episcopalians

4 Not a metaphor. Many of the most prominent Yankee families, such as the Cabots, the Lodges, the Lowells, the Winslows, the Peabodys, and the Eliots (though not, alas, the Dows) are, in fact, cryogenically preserved in much the same fashion as is erroneously ascribed to Walt Disney and reside in special vaults beneath the Old North Church, awaiting the so-called Return of the Mayflower.

5 A real event, though not a real party, and more an act of civil disobedience opposing new taxes.

6 Another real event, though not a real massacre, more a street riot which spiraled out of control and, while five people were killed, the crowd did get the ball rolling by stoning the soldiers summoned to restore order.

7 I didn’t make this one up, either. It sounds hilarious, and should be, but it was actually a horrifying industrial accident that killed more people than the first two, combined.

8 This was triggered, incidentally, by an unfortunate accident: children in the area had by then taken to snacking on “popping stones”, small pebble-like objects perhaps made from corn, and long a favorite of the Massasoit people from whom the state gets its name. One of the young women of Salem Village, while enjoying these treats, unfortunately also snuck a few swigs of a potion from her father’s medicine cabinet. This tonic, a mix of caramelized sugar syrup, soda water, and cocaine, was known as Mr. Starkey’s Spirituous Infusion, or more commonly as the Coca Elixir. Unfortunately for the young lady, Popping Stones combust on contact with Coca Elixir, and a small but distressing explosion occurred. Her father, rather than confess to his apothecarial dependency, proclaimed it witchcraft, the work of the devil, and totally not his fault. The resultant rash of false accusations went on for months, and was only squelched when some overzealous souls charged the governor with being in league with Satan. The essential truth of these charges only made the ignorant hysteria behind them all the more galling.

9 He was from Rhode Island, after all.

10 Children were, of course, the preferred offering, but the taboo was nearly broken at the end of the first world war, when the devotees of the monster, known for their red-dyed stockings, took too many Italian children. The Curse of the Bambinos has been bemoaned since 1918, though most people have forgotten why.

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The Tombs Of The Timelords, episode 4

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 22:07:26 GMT

( The first thing Yaz noticed was the smell... )

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Tombs Of The Timelords, episode 3

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 21:59:49 GMT

( How old is Kazukonoe? )

Continue to the Conclusion.

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The Tombs Of The Timelords, episode 2

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 21:38:33 GMT

( Yaz struggled to keep her head up... )

Continue to Part Three.

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The Tombs Of The Timelords, Episode 1

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 21:24:19 GMT

( It's a sunny day, late morning, on a beautiful tropical beach. )

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wyrdwritere

To Barbara, May 2022

A report on the factual basis of various folk delusions

The Tombs Of The Timelords, episode 4

Tombs Of The Timelords, episode 3

The Tombs Of The Timelords, episode 2

The Tombs Of The Timelords, Episode 1