AUGUST WAHNSINGER

Dealing With the Evil Lords of the Electrified Gossamer

I allowed myself a rare glimpse at my own website today. "Egads!" I said to my lemming friend, Christopher, who was aiding me. "It looks all right, but we must get some proper wallpaper in there! Christopher – take me to the wallpaper menu, post-haste!"

He did, and we saw this:

 

"All right," I said, "Let's see if we can't just modify the theme I've already got, which appears to be... Beckett."

 

Christopher nodded and chirped at me, and punched some keys. He took us where we imagined we might actually find the website designs and be able to subsequently modify them. We went to "Saved Designs".

I was able to identify my site's theme easily enough. Evidently, I'd made a copy of my site's design at some point, too! So, I looked at my options:

 

I stared at Christopher, somewhat distraught.

"Is there a modify, or perhaps an edit option?"

Christopher strained his poor, rodent eyes at the screen, and shook his head. I could tell he was becoming distressed.

"Odd that one can save a design," I mused, "but then cannot change that design once it's been saved. This is most inconvenient."

Christopher nodded with me.

"Even Xanga lets you do that much... and that site is free!"

Christopher rolled his eyes.

"Do you know how much Williams pays for this site?"

A worried look struck Christopher's face. Granted, this is quite normal, since he is a lemming, but this one stemmed from direct response to my question.

"I hear TypePad^® sites go for over $100 a year, but knowing what kind of a cheapskate Williams is he probably went with th $90 version. That's American dollars, mind you, not the Canadian ones. $90, and you don't even get a basic utility that exists at a free blogging site?"

Christopher and I both sighed.

"Well, next step's next – let's go ahead and make a brand new theme, I guess. I saw something about customisable themes; let's head over that way."

We went back to the theme menu, clicked customisable themes, and opened the menu that we figured we'd be able to change the background from:

 

I shuddered. "No, no, no! That ghastly shade of pastel blue will not suffice at any website that I happily associate myself with! We must change this immediately! Why, the default on this is hideous – look at what it would do to my glorious webpage –

 

– that's horrendous!"

Christopher nodded his head in enthusiastic agreement.

"What kind of brain-hemmorrhaged fool would ever willingly choose a theme like this, let alone make the custom design of MY weblog default to something with the aesthetic value of a rejected Scientology tract?"

Christopher stared wide-eyed at the screen.

"Mac^® people are responsible for this," I mumbled. "And to think it didn't even let the blog's current theme's settings transfer over."

I thought for a moment about the circumstances. "Well, if we've got to start from scratch, we might as well start," I said. "Christopher, upload the new wallpaper!"

(For the record, the new wallpaper was to look something like this:

 

Tasteful and pleasant, yes? And most importantly, it keeps with the general ambiance that with which I wish to imbue this site.)

Christiopher, pensive and puzzled, stared at the screen.

"Any minute now," I said.

He scratched his head with his cute lil' lemming paws, and then shrugged and chirped.

"There's no field for uploading the background?" I asked.

He shook his head emphatically.

"That can't be right – everything from MySpace to WordPress to Xanga to Ning to Blogger to, well... you name it, and they let you fiddle with background images. Some of those sites charge you for this, I'll grant – I mean, WordPress makes you do $15 annually for this – but this is a $90 blog here! You'd expect something basic like this to be covered!"

I paced back and forth and tapped my chin. "Maybe," I speculated, "maybe we're just missing something. Go to help. Type in 'background'. See if anything comes up."

Christopher, ever the dutiful servant, pulled up an entry quickly. "Tips:" it was labeled, "Adding Background Images to Your Weblog"

My eyes narrowed. 

 

"Pro-level?" I mumbled. "Christopher, how much does 'Pro-Level' cost?"

A few clicks of the keyboard and mouse, and I had my answer:

 

(Highlight provided in the original)

"So, it will cost Mr. Williams an extra $60 a year to get to do what he could do for free on Blogger, Xanga or MySpace, or only $15 annually at WordPress?"

Christopher looked at the screen in suspicion.

"I think Mr. Williams has officially been ripped off. I mean, if it were only this, then I suppose there wouldn't be a problem, but there are the issues about TypeKey (which seems to never remember when someone's logged in), the difficulty in leaving comments, the lack of compatibility with other blog sites, the relatively low amount of customisation and widget options when compared to other sites. I mean, they're uploading things that other free sites have featured for years, and acting like they're brand new!"

"Do you think he should switch to WordPress, then?" Christopher seemed to say with the gentle look in his eyes.

"Well, I think he should. Whether the lazy idiot who fell for this scam in the first place will be able to get his head out of his arse long enough to see this for what it is – that is another question! And besides, he's already uploaded all his files on here. If he decides to leave, all that goes to dust and ashes. I suppose he's more or less trapped, no?"

Christopher allowed a cute little sigh. I simply hung my head in dismay.

"One is born every minute, Christopher," I mused. "It just so happens that I would wind up working with one of them for all these intarweb things."

I had him turn off the computer. I went back to trying to resurrect Count Grishnakh's skeleton army (a favour for an old friend.) The joy of working with arcane powers in order to unleash a hellish ghost army upon the Candaian frontier quickly put my dealings with TypePad out of my mind.

I'll keep you posted on how that skeletal army is coming along.

Delusions of Modern Realism

It's been a strange week... After a rousing moose hunt with the local wolfpack, I returned to my fortress only to be hounded by yet another series of visions. Contrasting with the usual course of things, neither elves nor laser cannons featured prominently in these revelations. There wasn't even some infra-dimensional spectre involved. It was just... normal! Almost depressingly so.

I am trying to make sense of these visions. I'm filing them under The Children and Grandchildren of Whores and Thieves. Perhaps a coherent narrative shall emerge from these initial encounters...

---

Nicki Bainbridge's grandfather was born in 1941 to a gas station owner and his wife. His dad went off to fight in World War II – and never came home. His mother raised him by herself, sold the gas station and worked as a waitress to supplement her widow's pension.

Nicki Baindbridge's grandfather was one of the first latch-key kids. He was allowed to do as he pleased.

He fell in love with cars, guns and pin-up girls; not necessarily in that order. He started off wanting to become a mechanic when his friends started getting involved with biker gangs. He joined up too, and consigned the next decade-and-a-half of his life to drinking, riding, gambling, thieving and fighting.

Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother had a different story. She grew up in various post-war, middle-class neighbourhoods. She was born in 1947 to a career army officer and his wife. This army officer knew little enough of honour, and was constantly cheating on his woman. He also started sexually abusing his daughter when she turned twelve.

At sixteen, Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother ran away. Shortly thereafter, John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

She found life on the streets hard and miserable. She became a drug addict and a prostitute long before it was rewarding or fashionable to do so. She traveled around, tried to survive, subjected herself to abuse at the hands of other men like her father. In 1965 she found work at a stripclub. Nicki Bainbridge's grandfather also worked at that stripclub as a bouncer.

Nicki Bainbridge's grandfather's interest in her grandmother began and ended with her grandmother's willingness to have sex with him. Since Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother never thought a man would love her for any other reason, she found their relationship amicable. In fact because he never beat her (even if he never stayed faithful to her), she pretty much fell inhead over heals for him. He was also tough and well-connected. He kept bruises off her body, and she provided what his body craved. It was the most stable relationship either of them had ever been in.

This lasted until June, 1966, when Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother became pregnant with Nick Bainbridge's mother. Nicki Bainbridge's grandfather left her for the next diesel-fuelled wind that blew through. Her grandmother lost her job and had to move into public housing, go to public health clinics, and survive off public handouts. Roe v. Wade was still six years away, and it happened that Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother lived in a state that had kept abortion illegal. She resented having to stand in line with the niggers and hillbillies. She was brimming with spite by the time her child was born.

The first phrase Nicki Bainbridge's mother learned to say was "I hate you."

A contrary sense of duty, ingrained in her from a military childhood, pushed Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother away from giving her daughter up for adoption. It also forced her to put in the minimalist effort in providing for her, emotionally or materially. Nicki Bainbridge's grandfather sent the occasional child support check, but it was never enough. He drifted in and out of his daughter's life until 1973, when Roe v. Wade passed, his daughter was six years old, and he found Jesus and got married. He settled down on the other side of town from where Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother lived, and tried to do his best to make amends for decade after decade of lawless living. Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother didn't appreciate his visits much.

It worked out then that soon enough Nicki Bainbridge's grandfather had a child with his wife, and then another, and another, and another. This allowed Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother to ignore the man who fathered her child, and instead subject her daughter to a string of abusive boyfriends and malevolent would-be father figures as she tried to make ends meet. She was a waitress, a hair-stylist, a grocery bagger, a baby-sitter, and, on occasions, a drug dealer. Sometimes she worked all these occupations at once, leaving her daughter in the hands of neighbours or her sleazy boyfriends while putting in nearly one-hundred hour weeks.

Nicki Bainbridge's mother learned her life's lessons well. She lost her virginity at age eleven, took up drinking and smoking by age twelve. She was a veritable alcoholic by the time she was thirteen, and shortly thereafter became pregnant. She didn't know who the father was. No one was surprised.

Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother urged her child to get an abortion. Nicki Bainbridge's grandfather, staunch evangelical that he had become, intervened and promised that if his eldest daughter kept her baby, he would raise the child and pay for Nicki Bainbridge to go to college. Nicki Bainbridge's mother never liked her mother that much. Spite was more involved in her logic than her father's promises.

Melissa Nicole "Nicki" Bainbridge was born at 3:48 PM on Wednesday, October 28, 1981. Her grandfather and step-grandmother raised her along with their four other children, three daughters born in 1974, 1976 and 1977, and a son born in early 1980. He provided well enough, though it was a notably blue-collar household, despite Nicki's grandfather's success. Since coming to Christ in the early seventies, he had taken a job as a mechanic and ultimately managed to buy the shop he worked at, as well as the gas station it was connected to. He supplemented the family's income with regualar speaking engagements where he shared his testimony and voiced support for the Christian Coalition. His wife stayed home with the children, like a good wife should.

Nicki Bainbridge's mother sobered up after her child was born, and left her mother to go live mostly with friends and extended family. She graduated high school to everyone's amazement, and her father made good on his pledge to pay for her schooling. She became a nurse. In 1991, Nicki went to live with her mother for the first time. She wanted to become a dancer and a movie star. Her mother told her she could be anything she wanted to be.

Nicki Bainbridge moved to Los Angeles to be what her mother said she could be. That same year, Nicki Bainbridge's grandmother fired a pistol into the back of her mouth.

Nicki Bainbridge missed the funeral.

On the Topic of Vampires

I have made the acquaintance of many vampires in my day. Often have I accompanied them as they hunted foolish youths down gloomy European alleyways, or spread disease through the countryside in order to swell their ghastly ranks. I have interviewed vampires for Harper's, New Yorker, Esquire and Ladies' Homes Journal, only for the editors to laugh at me over their high-balls and assert that I should not have believed them when they promised to pay grandiose sums for my exclusive content. Besides, they would add, Anne Rice did it first. Those editors are now, each and every one of them, psychically overthrown slaves to my dear friend Count Krdszyć the Defiler. I think this goes a long way in explaining much about those publications' content in recent years, but now I'm rushing ahead of myself, dear me!

I have worked with vampire hunters at whiles, too. From these intrepid men and women, I have learned where the nosferatu nest. I know what kinds of people make their favourite meals (surprisingly, it isn't Eastern Europeans). I know how they relish in pain, suffering and misery. I have seen how every kind of vice, disease, torture and evil is supported by their machinations. People often forget these days when dealing with the chyldren that they are, in fact, realisations of mankind's most diabolical predilections. Their vice is not limited to the presently vaunted debauchery that receives such a frequent pass, either, but unequivocally I mean every kind of evil. Genocide, hatred, violence,  greed, arrogance, exploitation, thievery, witchcraft... just name something, anything, that has been justly and roundly rejected by the great moral thinkers of this universe (and at least a good twenty to thirty others), and history will show that vampires have avidly supported it!

I have danced with vampires, I have sung with vampires. In one dimension, I even used a morphogenetic projection of myself to attempt dating a vampiress (it didn't work, mind). Vampires fascinate and sicken me even as I both fascinate and sicken myself. They are dark, vicious, unholy and perverse constructs that exist because of the darkness that lurks within mankind's own heart. Unlike us, however, these beings are beyond redemption. Vampires are evil. They are not playthings. Our own affinity for glamourising these horrible creatures may very well lead to our downfall – granted, I often find them quite fitting myself.

All that aside, let this simply show that I know vampires.

 

You, sir, Edward Cullen, are no vampire.