Kestrell

I still have very little voice: I can whisper at level 1 and, for short bursts, at volume 2, like if I need to check my voice mail on my cell phone (the irony of a cell phone with voice recognition commands). The thing about whispering is that it's like yawning: occasionally people automatically start doing it too. I don't sound as scary as Whispering Wendy, though. Whispering Wendy is this evil-sounding synthetic voice. You may wonder, how evil can a female voice named Wendy sound? Well, the way I've always imagined the backstory is that Tinkerbell succeeded in offing Wendy, leaving Wendy this disembodied ghost that acts as a sort of psycho-dorm mother for the Lost Boys. I like to contemplate Whispering Wendy and Coraline's mommy in a smackdown.
But you can check out Whispering Wendy for yourself
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/rhythmsp/ASA/AUfiles/35e.AU

Today I cross-referenced and decluttered my laptop hard drive and backed up all my ebooks. For the curious, my ebook directories are Drivers, Fantasy, Horror, Nonfiction, Media & Cultural Studies, Science Fiction, and Writing, with appropriate subdirectories. Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction get their own directories due to size.

This morning I finished scanning Wade Davis's _Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie_ (1988), which is, basically, a more academic version of his _The Serpent and the Rainbow_ (1985), which is one of my favorite books. There is a lot of good material for untold zombie stories, mostly in how Davis proposes the theory that the process of creating a zombie cannot be separated from the culture and the community, that the medical ingredients of the zombification powder are basically inert without belief, and that making a person into a zombie was a form of social punishment against someone who had betrayed or exploited his community (in a Haitian community, for instance, Scrooge could have been turned into a zombie, and wouldn't that be a creepy sight, all those poor street urchins and starving mothers silently watching Scrooge shamble through the foggy streets of London?).

Another good zombie story: "The Dead One" (2007), a film featuring a Day of the Dead narrative based on the graphic novel "El Muerto" by Javier Hernandez, although I've had no luck finding a copy of the comic to purchase. There is some really wonderful imagery, and the story delivers a few surprises along with a rich mythology.

And here's another cool comic which Alexx read to me last night: Volume 2, Issue 1 of "Locke and Key" written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. No zombies but there are ghosts, and a spooky house, and many many strange keys. This issue also answers the immortal question: what does a ghost bring to a knife fight? An ectoplasmic chainsaw.

I need to say that again: an ectoplasmic chainsaw.