Where the Troll Goes When the Troll's Not Here

Everyday I write the book.

Troll Music Means Fighting

Piano fights are excellent. Nothing like clubbing some poor sod with a Steinway.

The Sort of Daylight a Stone Troll Can Stand

Trolls always change in the daylight.

Fear of Hymns

Sometimes the Revised Troll Version (RTV) of God's Word results in awkward hymns. But enthusiasm counts for something.

Wood Gnomes Fear Girls

The part about wood trolls is totally true.

Bruised Not Broken

Bruising and breaking.

It is what we do. It is what we survive.

Trollbermaker

The most insecure braggadocio in the world. This is what trolls sound like when they whisper to themselves.

Can't Tell Trolls Nothing

A rare glimpse inside troll culture. Of course, and as always, humans are hired in place of real troll actors.

Because we tend to confuse the film equipment for craft services bagels.

Still Alive?

I, For One, Welcome Our New Web Content

Trolls are incredibly difficult to own. We are messy, we are loud, we are fiercely religious and we occasionally eat our masters.

But The Guild owns me. For now. I'm sure they are going to regret it once I drain Vork's supply of orange drink and release Clara's shoats into the wild, where they'll be better cared for by the snakes and coyotes.

But this extended interview by Zadi Diaz with show creator Felicia Day from the blog of Epic Fu does a great job of getting to the heart of at least one key facet of the art of start-up media: the origin of creation.

Scared? Really?

I'm not one for human politics, but there's been a new fad circulating that I really must crush swiftly.

"Scared."

That's got to go, people.

Almost every partisan I've heard has, at least once, resorted to the "I'm really scared of what may happen to this country if So-and-So gets the nomination."

I've heard people express "fear" of what would become of their nation under a Reagan Administration, a Clinton Administration, a Bush Administration. I recall Republicans absolutely gasping for breath after being "drowned" in Clinton for eight years, and I hear the same gasping this year, now coming from downtrodden Democrats.

But...

Really?

"Scared?"

As in, "My life, liberty and choices will fundamentally change for the worse if some politician gets a job and that makes me scared?"

People.

Calm down. If you've never led a rearguard action against the roving Stone Imps of the Mystery Leviathan, you may want to re-apply your use of the word "scared." That, my (imaginary) friends, was scary. Voting for a civil servant, even if he's sort of corrupt, or stupid, vain or mean-spirited, isn't going to thawart the restoration of your nation's mythical glory.

Because you live in a free nation, I'm afraid the duty for participating in the country's glory falls on someone else's shoulders.

Yours.

Keep in mind that, my simple public expression (whether you agree with it or not) by its very existence proves unequivocably that Orwell's nightmare scenario has in no way descended upon this nation (and, if you needed this blog to prove that to you, well...you're welcome.) And Clinton didn't turn this country into an orgy of selfish cultural cannibalism either.

Your cute little nation, with its ideals of debate and independence, representation and minority voices, still stands. Trust me, when the trolls take over, you'll know. The good news is, you won't have to worry about voting for the one who loses the contest. The bad news is, you won't have a vote at all.*

*[And the really good news is that Trollkind is pretty disorganized and generally underachieves. Once we tried to organize a raiding party, but ended up just wandering around at the mall.]

How to Be Normal

I'm sure you've been wondering how I became such a normal, upstanding Troll in the eyes of my peers.

Easy. I suggest taking the following steps with a daily religious devotion:

1) Wake up.
2) Do not punch anything or anyone.
3) Eat breakfast with a utensil.
4) Walk, don't skip, to work or to vehicular transport to work.
5) If wearing fedora or dickie, remove fedora or dickie before entering place of employment.
6) Say "hello" or "good morning" to colleagues, not "hail and well met" or "you are still ugly."
7) Roller skates are for wearing on the feet, not for licking or hurling at superiors.
8) Swordfights okay ONLY during smoking breaks.
9) Smoking breaks occur five stories down, outside in the fresh winter air/spring thundershowers, on the train tracks three blocks away, and involve cigarettes, not memorial pyres.
10) Gelatin is included in the food pyramid. This status should be accepted, not grounds for the blunt-force unconsciousness of the cafeteria supervisor.
11) Wear pants mostly.
12) Making eye contact should in no way involve your thumb.

These twelve steps should enable you to make the smooth transition from awkward social outcast to normal, normal, normal, super normal creature.

It works for me.

Dead Chickens and Kittens: A Love Story

When my grandfather was a boy, he was playing with a pet chick and a pet kitty. Bad combo: the kitten pounced on the chick and in his attempt to stop the attack (or in retribution, I've never been sure) Grandpa grabbed the cat by the tail and whacked it on the ground, killing it.*

Of course, the chick didn't survive the assault, either, so there sat my Grandpa, in the dust of an early-20th century Iowa farm, with two dead pets in front of him.

Somehow, this story helps me to endure the book of Leviticus. As I endure it, it becomes a living thing to me. All the repitition of clean and unclean, of skin diseases that have shiny spots or turn the hair white, of head lesions and animal sacrifice, of household mold and issues of blood, of conduct and order and isolation and detail, detail, detail - somehow this has come to life in my heart.

I think of the chick and the kitten and of keeping good things separate, of violence that blasts us far from what is good, of harmony turning to discord, of a trinity divided, of a great and fragile community under constant threat from within and without, and the steps crucial to its defense.

*My troll-roots run deep.