Ah, finished my chores... the bathroom is clean, my laundry is done. I don't have much in the cupboard, but I'm not interested in heading out in the thick rain. The local delivery can take care of me for supper tonight. There's a Cantonese place I haven't tried yet, so we'll see how China Yung is. It's a stone's throw away, right next to the museum f art. If it's good, I'll make a note of it as a place to visit with Danny, though he generally prefers Thai and Japanese food. I think that he'd be happy going out for sushi every time we get together.

I remembered to pick up a fresh tape to feed the VCR for today's 4-hour "Egypt-a-thon" Starting at 3pm on TLC. They have a spiffy Ancient Egyptians activities page, too. I'm kind of disappointed that it ends at 7pm, but I guess they have to make way for the next prime time show.


You are Spearmint.
You are quick-witted and sharp. You pay close
attention to details and you can tell what your
friends are feeling. You are always the first
to understand a joke and you are valued for
your insight and advice. However, you
sometimes isolate yourself from other people,
afraid to share your own feelings.
Most Compatible With: Cinnamon


Which Tic-Tac Flavor Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Interesting. I was right between that and Wintergreen. "You are Wintergreen. You are cool and collected. You are very comfortable with yourself and what you do. Even if you have a lot of responsibilities, you always manage to be in control. You are sometimes laid-back and you are always the voice of reason. However, others may see you as lazy or detached sometimes, unable to act responsibly. Most Compatible With: Lime "

I was reflecting this morning on being a pod person. Usually when I mention that here or there, folks think that I'm trying to put myself down, or build myself up... but that's really not the case. Sure, I have some fundamental primate instincts... I want to defend my mate and my territory, as well as enjoying a solid group dynamic. Ive discovered that some of my attitudes have softened quite a lot over the last couple of years. I'm not so quick to judge some things (though there is still plenty that clicks on my "right or wrong"-o-meter), but I can cut a little more slack to those that I might have thought unworthy of it in the past. Rather than cut a problem out immediately, now, theres an impulse to at least give a little bit of a chance to people... giving them a chance for redemption before handing them the black spot. Of course, all things have limits.

---

Fine quotes about magic (and X and Y, by extension) from Terry Pratchett's novel, Equal Rites (if you haven't read the discworld books, I highly recommend them.) -

And so, as the winter turned and started the long, reluctant climb toward spring, Esk spent days at a time with Granny Weatherwax, learning witch craft.

Magic seemed to consist mainly of things to remember.

The lessons were quite practical. There was cleaning the kitchen table and Basic Herbalism. There was mucking out the goats and The Uses of Fungi. There was doing the washing and The Summoning of the Small Gods. And there was always tending the big copper still in the scullery and The Theory and Practice of Distillation. By the time the warm Rim winds were blowing, and the snow remained only as little streaks of slush on the Hub side of trees, Esk knew how to prepare a range of ointments, several medicinal brandies, a score of special infusions, and a number of mysterious potions that Granny said she might learn the use of in good time.

What she hadn't done was any magic at all.

"All in good time," repeated Granny vaguely.

"But I'm supposed to be a witch!"

"You're not a witch yet. Name me three herbs good for the bowels."

Esk put her hands behind her back, closed her eyes, and said: "The flowering tops of Greater Peahane, the root pith of Old Man's Trousers, the stems of the Bloodwater Lily, the seedcases of -"

"All right. Where may water gherkins be found?"

"Peat bogs and stagnant pools, from the months of -"

"Good. You're learning."

"But it's not magic!"

Granny sat down at the kitchen table.

"Most magic isn't," she said. "It's just knowing the right herbs, and learning to watch the weather, and finding out the ways of animals. And the ways of people, too."

"That's all it is!" said Esk, horrified.

"All? It's a pretty big all," said Granny, "But no, it isn't all. There's other stuff."

"Now bees," said Granny Weatherwax, "is real magic."

She carefully lifted the lid of the first hive.

"Your bees," she went on, "is your mead, your wax, your bee gum, your honey. A wonderful thing is your bee. Ruled by a queen, too," she added, with a touch of approval.

"Don't they sting you?" said Esk, standing back a little. Bees boiled out of the comb and overflowed the rough wooden sides of the box.

"Hardly ever," said Granny. "You wanted magic. Watch."

She put a hand into the struggling mass of insects and made a shrill, faint piping noise at the back of her throat. There was a movement in the mass, and a large bee, longer and fatter than the others, crawled on to her hand. A few workers followed it, stroking it and generally ministering to it.

"How did you do that?" said Esk.

"Ah," said Granny, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Yes. I would. That's why I asked, Granny," said Esk, severely.

"Do you think I used magic?"

Esk looked down at the queen bee. She looked up at the witch. "No," she said, "I think you just know a lot about bees."

Granny grinned.

"Exactly correct. That's one form of magic, of course."

"What, just knowing things?"

"Knowing things that other people don't know," said Granny. She carefully dropped the queen back among her subjects and closed the lid of the hive.

"And I think it's time you learned a few secrets," she added.

At last, thought Esk.

"But first, we must pay our respects to the Hive," said Granny. She managed to sound the capital H.

Without thinking, Esk bobbed a curtsey.

Granny's hand clipped the back of her head.

"Bow, I told you," she said, without rancor. "Witches bow." She demonstrated.

"But why?" complained Esk.

"Because witches have got to be different, and that's part of the secret," said Granny.

They sat on a bleached bench in front of the rimward wall of the cottage. In front of them the Herbs were already a foot high, a sinister collection of pale green leaves.

"Right," said Granny, settling herself down. "You know the hat on the hook by the door? Go and fetch it."

Esk obediently went inside and unhooked Granny's hat. It was tall, pointed and, of course, black.

Granny turned it over in her hands and regarded it carefully.

"Inside this hat," she said solemnly, "is one of the secrets of witchcraft. If you cannot tell me what it is, then I might as well teach you no more, because once you learn the secret of the hat there is no going back. Tell me what you know about the hat."

"Can I hold it?"

"Be my guest."

Esk peered inside the hat. There was some wire stiffening to give it a shape, and a couple of hatpins. That was all.

There was nothing particularly strange about it, except that no one in the village had one like it. But that didn't make it magical. Esk bit her lip; she had a vision of herself being sent home in disgrace.

It didn't feel strange, and there were no hidden pockets. It was just a typical witch's hat. Granny always wore it when she went into the village, but in the forest she just wore a leather hood.

She tried to recall the bits of lessons that Granny grudgingly doled out. It isn't what you know, it's what other people don't know. Magic can be something right in the wrong place, or something wrong in the right place. It can be --

Granny always wore it to the village. And the big black cloak, which certainly wasn't magical, because for most of the winter it had been a goat blanket and Granny washed it in the spring.

Esk began to feel the shape of the answer and she didn't like it much. It was like a lot of Granny's answers. Just a word trick. She just said things you knew all the time, but in a different way so they sounded important.

"I think I know," she said at last.

"Out with it, then."

"It's in sort of two parts."

"Well?"

"It's a witch's hat because you wear it. But you're a witch because you wear the hat. Um."

"So -" prompted Granny.

"So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you're a witch and that's why your magic works?" said Esk.

"That's right," said Granny. "It's called headology." She tapped her silver hair, which was drawn into a tight bun that could crack rocks.

"But it's not real!" Esk protested. "That's not magic, it's it's -"

"Listen," said Granny, "If you give someone a bottle of red jollop for their wind it may work, right, but if you want it to work for sure then you let their mind make it work for them. Tell 'em it's moonbeams bottled in fairy wine or something. Mumble over it a bit. It's the same with cursing."

"Cursing?" said Esk, weakly.

"Aye, cursing, my girl, and no need to look so shocked! You'll curse, when the need comes. When you're alone, and there's no help to hand, and -"

She hesitated and, uncomfortably aware of Esk's questioning eyes, finished lamely: "- and people aren't showing respect. Make it loud, make it complicated, make it long, and make it up if you have to, but it'll work all right. Next day, when they hit their thumb or they fall off a ladder or their dog drops dead, they'll remember you. They'll behave better next time."

"But it still doesn't seem like magic," said Esk, scuffing the dust with her feet.

"I saved a man's life once," said Granny. "Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I'd bought it from the dwarves. That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest."

She patted Esk's hand as nicely as possible. "You're a bit young for this," she said, "but as you grow older you'll find most people don't set foot outside their own heads much. You too," she added gnomically.

"I don't understand."

"I'd be very surprised if you did," said Granny briskly, "but you can tell me five herbs suitable for dry coughs."

---

Also...

"I mean there's no male witches, only silly men," said Granny hotly. "If men were witches, they'd be wizards. It's all down to -"she tapped her head "- headology. How your mind works. Men's minds work different from ours, see. Their magic's all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing, as if that really mattered. It's all power. It's all -" Granny paused, and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, "- jommetry."

I like to try and find the right mix of masculine "jommetry" and the feminine organic/natural side of things. I can always stand to learn more about the ways of people, which is why I think of myself as a pod more often than not.First off, Saddam Hussein has been captured alive in Iraq. He was found in a farmhouse near Tikrit, in a "spider hole" (basically a small cellar). I wonder how long it'll take before I start to hear conspiracy theorists tell me that he was caught months ago, and that they were waiting to see what Democrat was going to be Bush's main competition before trotting out a wildcard.

The tree is up, it's snowing outside and the news is full of reports of a rarely seen man with a beard and a bag full of loot.

Q: What's the difference between Santa Claus and Saddam Hussein?
A: No one has to check Santa For lice.

Also, Santa never ordered 170 men be tied to posts and shot - body part by body part - after sealing thier mouths shut with glue so that they couldn't cry out. (via suzette)

Well, I got two calls last night that was a wait to launch at 9am this morning. One was girl that went missing Wednesday night, but was last seen at school on Friday. The parents are giving the Miami police heck about "not doing enough," even though the parents apparently couldn't be bothered to know with any useful detail about the girls friends, boyfriend, or favorite hangouts. It's hard to know where to look for someone if you don't know very much about them... best we could do is get a description of what she was wearing, and the fact that her house and school are close enough together on the map to make for a little overlap map to seek her out.

Another call last night was looking for a deaf boy in Polk County... another late-nighter. wake-up and look calls at 11pm and again (after the dogs followed the trail north) at 2am over the trail further north. Busy evening... stuff started kicking after 10 pm. I need to remember to try and take a nap midday.. it seems that calls don't seem to come in until before noon, and after 3pm.

My intuition has been spot on, lately. Gut instinct (or whatever intuition really is) has been very helpful in making decisions in regards to missing kids and dealing with other folks at the org.

Fairly Oddparents Christmas Special was pretty keen, especially the jazzy holiday "Mass Combat" music near the end.

*note to self*- Infinite space restricted to a finite area can be very unstable. Don't let Newt at the Hypercube.

Chris Kattan as Gollum on SNL was cute, and the pilot for "A hard hobbit to break" sitcom was right on target.

pointed out Big Fish to me... How'd this sneak past my radar? I wonder if there's a nearby theater with a pre-January release? Witches and giants are some of my favorite people.

Lists of collective nouns

Feral Children: collects information on socially stunted kids raised by wild animals or extremely cruel parents.

Nicole Kidman & Jude Law as the leads in the Cold Mountain movie? Kind of good looking for the way I envisioned the characters. I wonder if they'll change the book's ending in the movie? (I, like most folks, didn't terribly care for it.)

Hmm... interesting marketing... Sony Pictures is promoting Spider-Man 2 by offering Blogger and Livejournal templates and icons.