Witch Week: Spell Check

If you can cast a spell then you're a witch, right? No need to be all goth-y and morbid about it. You could be a bubbly person and be a witch -- perhaps a bit too bubble-headed, as Aly in Spell Check turns out to be.

Haunted Houses up next week -- as well as some crazy cross-posting, because Sean and I cant try to sort out the difference between a haunted house and a ghost. I mean, does a ghost story necessarily have to be a ghost out in a field or a yard to NOT be considered a haunted house story? And can you truly have a haunted house story withOUT a ghost? The "ghost" in Jane Eyre was human, yet there's a definitive haunted house right there. We've got some ontological razmatazz to sort out by tomorrow's post. -- Jeff

Witch Week: Cuss Words

Another little girl is the star of Cuss Words, which means again I've got to pretend I've got pigtails and a room full of Barbies for the reading. In actually, only one of those is true. And honestly, most of the girls buried in my root cellar were names Maria. But I think one of them had the middle name Barbara. - Sean

Witch Week: Butcher Paper

I am a sucker for a phrase that sounds more malevolent than it really is for these stories. Such a phrase is Butcher Paper. The stuff is used for all sorts of wrapping. It's what people sit on when they go to the doctor. And, of course, the Macaroni Grille and many other cheese-n-pasta establishments use it as a tablecloth.

I know a fair lot of pagans/witches/druids/wiccans, and they all have radically different takes on what it exactly is they're worshipping, if they worship it at all. In a lot of ways it is make-your-own-religion,a nd I don't mean that in at all negatively. There are some people, though, who the sort of people who go to the timeshare weekend just for the trip and skip the sales pitch. They are interested in religion solely for the superpowers. The folks in this story are these kinds of witches, although they're a distinct minority...possibly because a few candles and thinking real hard won't turn you into Willow, not even third-season Willow where it was just a pencil floating around.

Witch Week: Mental Vacations

My concentration here in business school is going to be pharmaceutical management. Part of this is practical. I'm in New Jersey, home to lots of pharma companies. My school has an excellent pharma program, and the big companies recruit here. A pharma degree from here is worth more than one in another concentration. (And, of course, they pay more than Burger King.)

Part of it is idealistic. I would like to make a big difference to the world. Consumer product companies look fun, banks look impressive, and consulting looks lucrative. But who can say that their work directly benefits people, literally saves people's lives? Sure, you contribute to the economy by efficiently running a company, but you do that in any job. Pharma companies make drugs and vaccines that save lives. They do make money, and plow that into development of future drugs and vaccines. And hopefully I'll be at one of them soon.

With that off my chest, Mental Vacations is about a crazy voodoo lady. She's crazy enough to tie people up and do mind-swapping with sacrificial chicken blood. And she might agree with me on my rant. - Sean

Witch Week: Angry Mob

The date of this story, Angry Mob, is about five hundred years ago, back when Lithuania was an actual Grand Duchy. Being a big fan of the Simpsons, who ware in turn a big fan of rabid mobs, I feel I must warn you that there are no crowds waving pitchforks and torches. Being from Northern New Jersey, I feel I must also warn you that guys named Vito and Joey and Carmine do not make an appearance either. Not even any Russian mob connections.

I have no right even using the word mob, in other words.

Witch Week: The Shoppes at Marblehead

Jeff's in a three-day celebration of Columbus' accidental Caribbean cruise, so I'll double up on posts. The Shoppes at Marblehead uses my 2 1/2 years of real estate experience, the job I left to join grad school. Real estate was interesting stuff, the people very happy to talk and the workload more than I've ever had before. It wasn't the job so much as the second and third jobs piled on me when it was realized that I wouldn't quit with more work on me. That worked until I quit. A benefit of that is that 18 credits of brutal financial number-crunching feels like every week's a three-day weekend. (Ignore for the moment that I get Fridays off.)

This story also uses my knowledge of the town of Marblehead, where Jeff and I lived from kindergarten through half of third grade. Check the Massachusetts page of your atlas: the town's where I say it is. - Sean

Witch Week: Burn the Witch!

A clarification for our new Witch Week. There are no warlocks. No wizards. No Hogwarts students. No Wiccans. We are here for the ones you think of when you say "witches." If she's got a black pointy hat, a wart on her nose the size of McNugget, and likes to eat children, then she'll be welcome here. Green skin a plus.


Paradoxically, let's go to Burn the Witch! Which is not about a witch like that at all. But is also it. Historicaly, witches weren't burned at the stake back in the American colonial days, but hung. To properly have a story about being burnt at the stake, I had to go to the Dark Ages. I finally made it to the Cloisters in upper Manhattan yesterday, to see a lot of surviving art and architecture from that time. Half the statues have lost hands due to a millennium's worth of wear and tear. There were probably one too many Darth Vader jokes made about that. - Sean

Graveyard Week: Disinterred

Fortuitous timing lets me conclude Graveyard Week with Disinterred, a story about the grave of a victim of a witch hunt. Fortuitous because next week is Witches Week!

I don't know if we can keep this up every week: it may be a one-time occurrence. Certainly when we go from Sea Monster Week to Montana Week we'll have some problems, Montana not being by the sea. Ditto for Mummy Week and Martian Week -- although we never do see Marvin the Martian's face. Maybe it's mummified.