Archive for April, 2010
Ike Turnbull Answers ‘Rabbiless in Renton’
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Uncanny Pittsburgh welcomes new columnist Ike Turnbull, who will answer questions from uncanny people just like you on life, love, and self-actualization.
Dear Ike,
I’m a golem who’s been having trouble with my rabbi. When I was first created, he ranted to me and gave me orders all the time. It was like a dream. But I think he’s just tired of me now. He never sends me to defend anything or gives me new prayer scrolls any more. I hate myself for suspecting this, but I think he might be getting mixed up in ouija boarding. What can I do?
Rabbiless in Renton
Dear Rabbiless,
Don’t guess at what your Rabbi might be thinking: talk to him. Maybe he has concerns he doesn’t think he can tell you about. Create a safe environment for him to share his feelings. If you want to know if he’s using a ouija board, ask him. If he is, help him understand that he has a problem, but that there is help. Courting random spirits with an upside-down tumbler just isn’t what healthy people do. There are safe facilities where he can go that will help him understand why ghostly manipulation of the alphabet isn’t the answer, and that can help him transition back to a normal life through substitutes like touchpad finger painting and air hockey.
But if ouija boarding isn’t the problem, ask yourself frankly what your role has been in the relationship. Do you stand silently awaiting his orders for months or years as necessary? If not, why not? Have you killed anyone for him lately? Sometimes all a golem-Rabbi relationship needs to perk up is the destruction of someone truly evil. Try to think about both your needs and his needs. How can you work together so that everyone feels fulfilled?
And this doesn’t relate to your question, but golem friends of mine always tell me to recommend cocoa butter. Apparently it keeps your clay as fresh and malleable as the day you were wakened, even in hot sun. Just a handy tip.
Ike
Ike Turnbull is the author of Women are from Venus, Vampires are from Hell and How to Cope With Your Poltergeist. He welcomes questions from readers of Uncanny Pittsburgh and in comments on its sister publication, The Daily Cabal.
The Tale of the Astrolabe
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Beyond the city lay fields of grain watered by irrigation tunnels from under the mountain. Between the fields and the herdsmen’s savannah stood a line of towers, roosts for owls who kept the fields clear of mice. Tower-keepers patrolled with slings, killing any snake that might climb up to raid eggs from the nests.
A boy named Saan was one of the few not born into the role–his mother and grandmother arranged the job, hoping he might be the first male in five generations of their family not to be devoured by lions while tending the herds.
One evening, as he walked the path between towers, he saw an owl disappear down a dry irrigation tunnel, an astrolabe in its talons and he ran after it, thinking that whatever magus had lost the instrument would pay a good reward for its return.
Down he ran and down, not realizing how far he’d gone until the dog-headed guardians challenged him with riddles. Saan had heard enough stories to know that the first answer was always “death;” the second, “fear;” the last, “hope.” As he answered the final riddle, a cart drawn by dozens of fennec foxes drew up. He climbed on, and they rolled away into the darkness.
The cave went on, a moonless, starless midnight desert of salt dunes. The only light was an occasional ruby glow deep under the salt-sand, by which Saan could see his fellow-travelers–a pair of elderly troglodyte women, a baboon in a filigree robe, and a scorpion-man with translucent carapace skin and sting-tipped fingers. They rode for hours, and Saan’s stomach rumbled with hunger even though the baboon had shared some dates and the scorpion-man had passed around a bowl of candied scarabs.
The cave narrowed to a tunnel which brought them to the shore of a silent, faintly luminescent sea, along which stood a line of towers like those he’d left above.
“We have arrived,” said the scorpion-man, and the others nodded.
“Where?” said Saan.
“The place of your training,” said the baboon.
“Of your testing,” said the troglodyte women in unison.
Saan saw that the fennec-drawn cart stood near the passage back to the salt desert.
“Can’t I just go home?” said Saan.
“Anytime,” said the scorpion-man.
Then Saan saw that the entrance to the cave passage was carved like the mouth of an immense lion.
“I guess I’ll stay,” he said.