We also got a weird fascination with blonde teenagers.

This all probably started with Sissy Spacek’s performance as Carrie in 1976, but it really flourished in the 80s.  Let’s take a look at three different versions of this strange fetish for blonde girls:

Kirsten – Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors

Also comes in a Medium

This was Patricia Arquette’s first role (she’s better known today for the TV show The Medium, hence the bad pun above).  Kirsten is a young woman with the power to pull people into her dreams.  Sounds great, unless you happen to live on Elm Street.  Kirsten uses her power in The Dream Warriors to take her therapy group with her into the dream world to fight Freddy, with predictably poor results.  Of course, they do win, but most of the group is killed.  The reason for her power? Well, she is one of the last Elm Street children.  Other than that…because she’s blonde.

Tiffany – Hellbound: Hellraiser 2

Tiffany is the semi-autistic patient of the evil Dr. Channard in Hellraiser 2, aka the last good Hellraiser movie.  Like Rainman, Tiffany is good at doing one thing over and over.  In her case, it’s solving puzzles, so it’s quite convenient that her mother brought her to a doctor who’s obsessed with the Lament Configuration puzzle box.  The good…er…evil doctor eventually takes Tiffany to his funky office that looks like it’s been decorated with a mix of Pier 1 and Halloween USA props, and she solves the box for him, but the cenobites, not being complete idiots, realize the girl isn’t the one who called them.  Tiffany still gets stuck in hell, of course, because this is Hellraiser and otherwise the title would be kind of silly.  She and her new best buddy Kirsty (notice that K names were also big in 80s horror movies?) eventually defeat the doctor and Tiffany manages to turn the box back into a box which makes the evil god Leviathan turn into a box.  Don’t worry if you don’t get it, it doesn’t much matter anyway.  The point is, Tiffany uses her super puzzle solving skills to close the door to hell.  Also, she learns to speak again, starting with everyone’s favorite epithet, “Shit!”.  The reason for Tiffany’s powers?  Brain damage and emotional trauma!

Tina – Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Sissy who?

With a timeline that is only slightly less complicated than the one in Back to the Future, Friday the 13th manages to shoehorn in Tina, a young girl who grows up at Crystal Lake between teen slaughter orgies.  Tina is a telekinetic, which means she should be able to take apart Jason Vorhees pretty easily, but that would make for a boring movie, so instead we get a few hours of her hanging out with her new buds when she moves back to the old family home on the lake after many years away.  Tina is the most direct Carrie rip-off of our three flaxen-haired maidens; she’s telekinetic, her powers manifest because of her abusive father (whom she kills), and she’s about as socially awkward as can be.  Tina does defeat Jason, of course, but he never actually stays dead, so we’ll call it a draw.  The reason for her powers?  A raging alcoholic father and blonde hair!

So there you have it, three girls, three franchises, basically the same exact role.  In fact, Tiffany in Hellraiser and Kirsten in Dream Warriors are written almost exactly the same.  If you want to look for more proof of the blonde conspiracy, look at Carol Ann from Poltergeist.  She’s younger, yes, but still possessed of a strange power for no other reason than being blonde.

There’s just one thing about Patience Worth and her writings; you see, Patience had been dead for several hundred years when she wrote her novels, stories and poems.  Patience Worth is the name of a spirit that dictated her work through a housewife named Pearl Curran, and to this day her writings are one of the most mysterious curiosities of literature.

Pearl Curran was a Chicago housewife in 1912.  She had no particular literary background, was not well read, and generally was as average and normal as a person can be.  Her husband, John Curran, was also an average man, and neither of them had any particular interest in the supernatural.  Then one day in July, Pearl and a couple of her friends tried out a Ouija board.

In the early 1900s, Spiritualism was a sweeping sensation in the United States.  Seances were as common as cocktail parties today, and Ouija boards were the new fad.  Pearl didn’t particularly want to try one out, but her friend Emily Hutchings convinced her to give it a try.  Usually a Ouija session would lead to nothing but some gibberish, but with Pearl, something strange happened.  The board began spelling out actual sentences.  It became clear that the ladies were being contacted by a spirit that called itself Patience Worth.  Patience claimed to be from “across the sea” and had lived somewhere around 1649 to 1694.

Thrilled with their contact, the ladies continued to meet and call up Patience, but it quickly became clear that Pearl was the focus of Patience’s attention, and the only means of contacting the spirit was having Pearl at the board.  Soon, Pearl was able to use the board all on her own, spelling out long messages from Patience.  This quickly led to Pearl no longer needing the board, and she first dictated what Patience was saying, and eventually began typing or writing it out herself.

It would be easy to dismiss Patience as just a hoax, but there were compelling reasons to believe that it wasn’t Pearl producing the stories and poems.  There were differences in language that Pearl had no way of knowing, and descriptions of events she couldn’t have produced.  It became apparent that Pearl was a Medium, and through her Patience was able to communicate.

As I said above, she quickly became famous, and her novels were critically acclaimed.  Some critics even said that they were at a loss for how she was able to produce such vivid descriptions of ancient events.  At parties, famous poets challenged Patience (through Pearl) to make up poems about random topics, which she did without hesitation and in a way that the poets found impossible.  She needed no time or preparation to quickly provide a well written poem on any topic.  One poet challenged her to produce two poems, at the same time, on two topics.  She did so, alternating lines, producing two poems for the challenge, though afterward Pearl said her head felt quite fatigued.

Of course, there were plenty of skeptics, but unlike most “Mediums” of the early twentieth century, Pearl never attempted to cash in on her fame.  She did submit the stories and poems for publication, but she didn’t make a lot of money from them, and she did not “perform” for money, only in friendly parties.  She published a number of novels, including The Sorry Tale, Telka, and Hope Trueblood.  Her novels spanned different time periods and even different languages, with Telka being written in a middle English dialect.

Patience and Pearl also didn’t always get along.  Patience was critical of Pearl, and on a number of occasions referred to her host in quite condescending words.  Pearl also didn’t allow Patience to intrude upon her private life, and kept the spirit’s communication contained to periods of her choosing.  The relationship between the two eventually became more like a partnership, and Pearl would continue to act as Patience’s Medium for many years.

Late in 1937, Pearl told a friend that “Patience has just shown me the end of the road and you will have to carry on as best you can.”  It seemed that Pearl was not long for this world, and indeed two months later, she died from pneumonia.

One of the most fascinating bits of this story is that no one has even proven that the spirit didn’t exist and didn’t dictate the stories through Pearl Curran.  One theory holds that Patience was a separate personality, and that Pearl had multiple personality disorder, but that’s unlikely as she exhibited none of the other symptoms.  Additionally, there wasn’t the usual trauma that goes along with MPD.  Several highly successful skeptics tried to debunk Pearl’s connection to the spirit of  Patience Worth, but none ever succeeded and more than a few gave up and took her for real proof.

From time to time after Pearl’s death, people have claimed to have been contacted by Patience Worth, but there’s been little proof that the spirit has returned to continue her work.  Perhaps she’s too busy now, sitting with her old friend and talking of days gone by.

Darbydale isn’t really a town; it’s an extension of the extreme west of Columbus, just past Hilliard.  In fact, one of Hilliard’s high schools is “Hilliard Darby” and there is a Darby Elementary.  Ohio is filled with these little “towns” that don’t really exist, or are nothing but two or three houses and a road sign.

The cemetery in question is actually named the Little Pennsylvania Cemetery, and is also known as the London-Darbydale Cemetery.  It’s located on London-Groveport Road, about a mile or so from Georgesville Road and the shopping centers there.  However, since it’s on the extreme edge of the Columbus metro area, that short distance transforms the road from normal urban travel to full rural back road.

Teenagers from Hilliard and the West Side tend to vandalize the place, mostly due to the various stories, no doubt, and it’s not in the best repair, but it’s a fairly interesting place to visit.  It’s mostly family plots, laid out long ago, with many of the plots bounded by decorative cement edging.  The cemetery is fairly old for the area, with the first burials beginning in 1834.  It’s still in use, but only rarely, with most of the headstones dated in the 1930s or earlier.

So why the fuss over this cemetery?  The answer is that there are three unconnected legends surrounding it.

The first involves not the cemetery itself, but a house supposedly built across from it in the mid to late 1800s.  The house, said to be located at 665 London-Groveport Road, was the home of Mr. Willy Butcher and his family, which included at least one young daughter.  The Butchers were well known and respected according to the legend, but the house was considered creepy.  Something was wrong about it, but people couldn’t say what, precisely.  Willy ignored the comments and lived happily with his family…until one night he apparently went insane and took a knife to his wife and children, then killed himself.

The nearby villagers discovered what happened and either the house burned down on its own or they burnt it down, depending on the version of the legend.  However, it was the talk of the tiny village, and many thought that Butcher’s madness was caused by the cemetery, thus leading to them calling it the “Willy Butcher Cemetery” and eventually this morphed into the “Woolyburger Cemetery” over the years.  People claimed to see Butcher’s daughter walking alone in the cemetery from time to time, and to hear the screams of the family in the night.

I’ll point out that this story bares more than a passing resemblance to Mooney’s Mansion, another Ohio legend I’ll tackle in a week or two.

The problems with the legend are that there’s no proof there was ever a house as described across from the cemetery, and no evidence of a Willy Butcher and family living in the area.  There is a William Boucher buried in the cemetery, but he died in childhood.  Also, for the name of the cemetery to go from “Willy Butcher” to “Woolyburger” doesn’t seem to really work.

The second legend is what I like to call “the mystery cult” myth.  There’s dozens of cemeteries and other locations that share similar myths.  The legend goes that a satanic cult (it’s always satanic, isn’t it?) used to use the cemetery as a meeting place in the 1940s-1960s.  The usual concoctions of sacrifices and orgies are associated with this supposed cult.  Where the Woolyburger legends depart from the usual convention is that some of the stories aren’t about a satanic cult, but rather about a real life cult, the KKK.  It’s no secret that probably every state has had and still does have members of the Klu Klux Klan as residents, but the idea that the cemetery isn’t haunted by ghosts but by hate-filled men in ghost-like sheets is pretty intriguing.  It certainly seems more plausible than the standard “satanic cult” stories.

There’s no actual evidence that the Ohio Klan ever met at the cemetery, though maybe there was a burial there for one of their members at some time.  I can’t say this particular legend isn’t plausible, though it’s highly doubtful that Klan members use the site today for meetings.  Also, this set of legends doesn’t explain how the cemetery got its strange name.

The third and final legend does give the cemetery its name, and does so in the most direct way possible; it’s all about a creature called the Woolyburger.  According to the stories, the Woolyburger is a Bigfoot-like creature that inhabits the forests near the cemetery.  Despite the fact that this legend is the best direct link to the nickname of the cemetery, it’s also the one with the least evidence.  There have been no actual reported sighting of the beast, only stories of stories, meaning the whole thing could easily be a reverse engineering of a legend based on the funny name of the place.  That in and of itself is interesting, as it shows how people will create myths to fill in the gaps left by incongruous information.

The actual reason for the name of the cemetery is unknown, though a Woolyburger is a type of lure used in fly casting and there is a small river nearby.  It’s unlikely anyone will ever know exactly how this place got its name or why there are three separate legends surrounding it.

Right now, I want to talk about the upcoming Marvel cross-over event of the summer, Avengers vs. X-Men.  Right off the bat, you have a pretty good cross over here, though it has been done before (1993′s Bloodties, for example), mostly because you have one of the major X-characters, Wolverine, as an active Avenger as well.  So far so good…but then you get to the meat of the crossover – the Phoenix Force is coming to Earth, apparently to find a new host.

O.k., first of all, if the Phoenix wanted to “come to Earth” it would be there pretty much instantly.  The Phoenix Force has the power to open “star gates” between suns.  Second of all, everyone in the preview that came out this week is certain it’s coming for Hope Summers, the Mary Sue…er…I mean Mutant Messiah that has been around for the last few years.  The X-Men, or rather, the Cyclops Kill Crew on Utopia, want to train Hope so they can use her to reverse the Scarlet Witch’s “no more mutants” mandate.  The Avengers pretty much want to kill the Phoenix and, failing that, stop it from taking a host.  Why?  Because it’s a “parasite” and always destroys everything around it.

O.k., wait.  Stop.  Flag on the play.  Multiple flags on the play.  This premise is bullshit from the start.  Let’s take a look at how.

First, everyone is certain Hope is going to be the host.  Why?  Because maybe she has a link to Jean Grey?  Maybe she’s Jean reincarnated?  Sure…maybe.  Then again, the longest living host of the Phoenix force is already on Earth and we know where she is and what she’s up to.  Once again, Marvel is completely fucking ignoring that Rachel Summers (Grey) was Phoenix for literally YEARS.  She was bonded with the Phoenix force longer than Jean, has gone through a hell of a lot more with it, and pretty much ought to be who it’s coming for.  Marvel ignored her in the idiotic Phoenix: Warsong mini-series a few years ago and still seems to.  If I had a chance to come into the Marvel X-bullpen, I’d take a baseball bat to the head of whoever is the idiot who keeps forgetting about Rachel.

But this gets better…one of the Avengers being sent to intercept the Phoenix is…Captain Britain.  Gee, wasn’t he one of the founders of a super hero team called Excalibur, and wasn’t Rachel ALSO a founder?  Didn’t they live together in a lighthouse for quite a while, spent god-knows how long on a train during the Cross Time Caper, and even switch places temporally?  Oh yeah, they did.  And there’s Captain America and Iron Man saying the Phoenix always destroys everything around it while Brian Braddock doesn’t speak up and say, “well, actually, no, and my former teammate was rather adept at handling it.”

You know, it’s not like Rachel is an unknown character.  It’s not like she’s currently sidelined – she’s in TWO X-titles.  So what the fuck, Marvel?  How are you going to explain this all away?  Oh, whoops, yeah, we forgot about the character who was Phoenix for more than a decade and is currently in the line up on two books.  Just forget about that.  It’s magic, we don’t have to explain shit.

Fucking retarded editors.

Anyway, let’s get back to a few things about this cross-over.  The fact that the Avengers are sending a “suicide squad” to try to stop the Phoenix is also stupid.  They have other friends to call on.  A Nova Corps member was almost killed bringing them the info that the Phoenix was coming…why not contact them?  Or the Guardians of the Galaxy?  Or Silver Surfer?  And since when did the Avengers go for “suicide missions” in the first place?

Seriously, this sounds like a twelve year old wrote the basis for this crossover, one who had only watched about half of the X-Men cartoons from the 90s and picked up the rest from Marvel vs. Capcom.

O.k., rant over, but really, Marvel?  Hire some people who can write.

1. Who the hell at Marvel thinks folks like Namor or Black Panther are popular characters?  Seriously, guys…there are some C or D list characters that just. aren’t. popular.  They never will be.  Namor is a great example – every time he shows up, Marvel does this big fanfare of “oh look, it’s Namor!” like people are going to be genuinely pleased to see him in whatever role he’s playing this time (usually he plays the “asshole who you unfortunately have to work with”).  Black Panther is another of these characters.  Marvel wants to play him up…why?  He’s boring.  Is it because he’s black?  There are other black superheroes who are, you know, actually cool.  Blade, as an example, or Storm, or War Machine.  Black Panther has always seemed like a bad racial stereotype character that Marvel keeps trying to polish in a way that makes it look like it’s not a bad racial stereotype.  It doesn’t work, never has, so why do they keep doing it?

2. How the hell hasn’t the Punisher been killed?  O.k., I know he has been, more than once, but I want to take a moment to examine Frank Castle, the Punisher.   On the surface, he’s a decently meaty character.  Good, dramatic background, nice dramatic “shades of gray” mission, and his costume doesn’t entirely suck.  He works rather well as a concept…until you drop him into the Marvel Universe.  In a “normal” world, Frank Castle would be an engaging and interesting character.  In the Marvel Universe he should be killed by Electro…you know, the guy Spider-man regularly thrashes…in about five seconds.  Why?  Because the Punisher is a somewhat realistic character – he uses real equipment and real guns…against supervillains.  He has no powers, his gadgets are rarely up to Batman-level, and he doesn’t have any particular advantage over the average cop in terms of tactics.  How the hell has he survived this long.  One would think that once he pissed off someone powerful enough, say King Pin, whom he’s pissed off a number of times, would eventually send someone other than Bullseye or similarly piss-poor villains to take him out.  Or maybe just, you know, a decent hit squad outfitted with a little AIM tech?

3. Why hasn’t Reed Richards cured cancer?  Seriously, is this guy just a dick or what?

4. How does Wolverine deal with metal detectors?  I think it’s fair to assume the guy never flies commercial, but there are metal detectors all over the place these days.  How does he handle going through them?  Does he have one of those cards they give veterans who have metal plates in their skulls that he can present?  He is a veteran, after all, of multiple wars including the American Civil War, World War I and World War II, and I think he was in Vietnam too…if I recall.

5. Is Peter Parker just a complete moron?  Granted most of his actions are forced by editorial fiat (may you burn in hell forever, Joe Quesada), but seriously, is the character just a complete moron?  In his own book he is often scraping by and  can never have anything approaching a social life.  But at the same time, he knows lots of ridiculously rich people.  The aforementioned Reed Richards…dude could set Peter up with a yearly grant and use him as a lab assistant.  They get along well and Pete’s actually a member of the Future Foundation, so…seriously, why scraping by?  And as for a social life – at least Ultimate Spider-Man got this one right – date superheroes.  They already know the score and live by it themselves.  Plus, instant team-up when things get out of control.  The Peter-Kitty Pryde pairing in the Ultimate Universe was brilliant, but why not have Pete hook up with someone like, oh, Rachel Summers, or Rogue, or Jessica Drew (Spider-Man/Spider-Woman marriage…tell me that wouldn’t sell like a billion action figure sets!).

6. Last and probably least…how does Galactus go to the bathroom?  Does he just, you know, go behind a planet somewhere?

You may be asking yourself, “what the fuck is the point of this?”  The idea is that after the 18 minutes and the hilarity of getting people to try to build their structures, the lesson comes that the best at building these structures aren’t business students, but kindergartners!  This is supposed to open your eyes to the fact that…um…kids are better at things?  It’s kind of muddled at that point.  Also, it’s a complete lie.

The presentation notes, in fairly small print because it doesn’t support their conclusion, that the actual best at this are engineers.  You know, people who are specifically trained and have experience doing stuff like this.  So the actual lesson should be: HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE DOING.  Instead, it’s supposed to show you that too much planning is a bad thing.

The lesson goes that kindergartners are good at this because they don’t spend time planning, and just begin building, trial and error style.  That’s great…but again, that means the rules are different than the challenge – if the kids are “rapid prototyping” (which is what the presentation is getting at), they would have to have more than the allotted materials.  Each attempt would require more sticks and tape and string because there’s no chance they don’t break or use up the material.  However, in the challenge, the material is limited.  No replacing the sticks, no replacing the tape or the string.  Also, I guarantee that more than once a kid ate the marshmallow and it had to be replaced.  If that’s supposed to represent your goal in business, I don’t think that the best metaphor is one greedy kid eating it all, though it certainly does describe most CEOs.

So basically you have two fallacies right off the bat: One, kids are NOT the best at this, highly trained professionals are; and Two, the “rapid prototyping” of the kids only working with essentially unlimited starting materials.  Really the moral of this whole this is: spend the money on people who know what the fuck they are doing (engineers), and spend the money on materials so they can make multiple prototypes.  Or if you want to turn it into non-tangible business goals, hire people who best know how to achieve the goal, and give them all the data/info/etc. they need to make it happen.  That’s what the point SHOULD be.  Instead it’s that kids are better than business students.

Well, that’s fucking useful to know.

But then the “Challenge” (I’m using sarcastic quotes now, since it’s based on two lies) goes a step further to make the point that winning the challenge earns you nothing.  It claims incentive makes things bad.  That’s lovely 1% thinking there.  Of course your workers shouldn’t be PAID or anything, goodness no.  The WORK should be the reward, right?  Fuck that, Mr. Tom Wujec (the asshole who created this whole idiocy and presented it at TED).  Fuck you for further impressing upon business types that paying people as little as fucking possible is the best way to go.  In fact, your whole goddamned premise is false.  Incentive means “to get something for work done”.  It doesn’t matter if the incentive is money or to win praise, you’re still doing it FOR A REASON, idiot.  Doing something for no reason at all is insanity.  But hey, that’s what Mr. Wujec would like you to do.

I’m sure he doesn’t have to worry about whether or not to put gas in his car or eat this week, so sure, to him, incentives only cause people to fail.  He discovered what sports fans have known for, oh, I don’t know, the history of sports: high stakes situations can cause people to choke.  Fan-fucking-tastic, Mr. Wujec.  That doesn’t mean incentive leads to failure, it means STRESS BECAUSE THE PEOPLE MAKING THE RULES ARE BEING ASSHOLES ABOUT COMPENSATION LEADS TO FAILURE.

But hey, way to miss the point.  I bet kindergartners would have gotten it.

By the way, if you go to the “Marshmallow Challenge” website (it’s linked above, I’m not giving them two links), you can see Mr. Wujac delivering this “breakthrough” concept at TED (and, therefore, essentially setting up another generation of people being taken advantage of by incompetent bosses looking for easy solutions to complex issues).  If there’s ever been a picture that is more deserving of the caption “DOUCHEBAG”, I’ve never seen it.

So in conclusion, fuck this idiotic challenge, and its inventor, who was so insistent on making a point his demonstration doesn’t actually support, he released yet another business manager virus upon the world.  I hope there’s a special hell just for you where they make you watch poorly designed powerpoint presentations and do ridiculous arts and crafts for all eternity.  Preferably while doused in extremely caustic acid.

Huffington Post has a couple of good ones I thought I’d share.

Here’s the first:

Looks like a nice, normal pic of some people enjoying a bright, sunny day, right?  Look again, between the two girls.

Here’s a second pic, no help this time:

I already had two computers – my HP Mini netbook, which is perfect when I’m just running around, but doesn’t have the horsepower of a real PC, and my boat anchor Compaq Presario.  It’s about eight years old, and I’ll put it this way…it barely runs World of Warcraft.  It was fine for the basics, but beyond that…

Now I have a lovely new Acer laptop with a dual core processor and graphics that could play Warcrack fairly well if I wanted to get back into it.  And I swear I’m not going to…not this time…

…which is why I am downloading Star Trek Online.

I can currently do the whole thing in about four and a half minutes. Anyone want to try to beat that?

Stephen King Novel Test on Sporcle

According to cryptozoologist and paranormal expert Ivan Sanderson (1911-1973), there are twelve spots on the globe that are areas where ships, planes or people go missing for unexplained reasons.  He called these navigational hazards the Vile Vortices.

Sanderson’s “Bermuda Triangle” is more of a trapezoid, but it’s still the best known spot for mysterious ship and plane disappearances.  Oddly enough, despite its reputation, there are only a handful of actual known disappearances in the triangle.  The most well known is Flight 19, a military training flight.  Fourteen airmen vanished, and the search squadron sent to look for them also vanished, claiming an additional thirteen airmen.  Flight 19 is well known in part because it was featured prominently in Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Although the Bermuda Triangle is better known in the Western world, the Devil’s Sea (also called the Taiwan Triangle) south of Japan is also a source of missing ships and planes, and appears on Sanderson’s map (upper left corner, difficult to make out).  The Devil’s Sea has long been known to Asian sailors, and according to some reports, shortly after World War II the Japanese fleet lost several ships in the area prompting the government to declare the region unsafe for travel.

Sanderson's actual map, showing additional areas

It would be easy to disregard Sanderson’s maps, but the man wasn’t your usual crackpot.  He worked for the British Naval Intelligence during World War II and traveled extensively as a young man.  He was an early follower of Charles Fort, and established the Ivan T. Sanderson Foundation, which eventually became the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) in 1967.

Others have refined Sanderson’s work, coming up with ten vile vortices instead of twelve.  These they sometimes claim are the “corners of the world”.

The meaning behind the vortices is unknown, and there are as many theories as people who study them.  Sanderson’s interest was more in cryptozoology, a term he himself coined.  However, everything from ley lines to magnetic field fluctuations have been used to explain the seemingly mysterious nature of the various vortices.  Perhaps there is another explanation…