I’m at work and exhausted. Too exhausted to explain why. Too lazy to type much. So instead, here are two bits of things I put down in the comments section of other live journal users – two things I decided to dig up and pin to my own journal. One is a set of instructions for improving a very practical skill. The other is a brief history of our world (according to me anyway). If you learn anything…it’s entirely coincidental.

CACKLING: The Subtle Art
A good maniacal cackle is a more subtle art than one might, at first, ponder. There is, on the surface dimension, the overt substance, the laugh itself – start with a god “Mwa” sound. And then let go. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAA!

But subtly comes in the finer points of execution. Rhythm is important. Your syllables should be slow and discrete at the beginning and end of the laugh…but should jumble manically in the interim. Like so – slow-slow-fastfastfastfastfastfast-slow-slow (or some variation thereof).

Subtlety in one’s artifice also manifests in the physical manifestation one brings to the cackle. You don’t just laugh with the mouth, but also with your fingers, let them stretch out, talon like, and spasm. That’s it.

Now, configure your posture to fit the laugh. Some stand up straight and allow their heads to shoot back and release the cackle, perfectly vertical, into space and sky, like a demonic PEZ dispenser. Others prefer to hunch over and cackle with an undulating spine, a simulacrum of Igor or some deranged hobgoblin. Either way, remember that the shoulders can also laugh, like the mouth, and, yay, like the fingers. Pump the shoulders thusly. Yes!

Keep practicing and rehearsing and you too can have a cackle that will curdle milk and form angry mobs in any small village of the Middle Ages…or Texas.

MY HISTORY OF THE WORLD: Part I
As for Adam and Eve…they had a few bumps in their relationship all right. First of all, there had to be some uncomfortable conversations in the morning, about Adam’s first wife (Eve was the second), Lilith. Lilith got bored with missionary sex and tried being the dom. in the bedroom – “Save a horse, ride a cowboy!” – she would yell.

Adam, though turned on in the back of his mind, could not handle the stronger woman and said, “Uh…God…do something!” Well, actually, Adam had one of those S/M masks on so it just sounded like, “Uh…uhhhd…ooo….mming.”

But God is God and he has super telepathy and he freed Adam from the ceiling harness and banished Lilith from Eden and into Darkness. Well, Eden was a posh place and Darkness didn’t have the kind of zip code one would brag about and Lilith did not take this all very well. She shrieked and keened, wailed and keened and transformed into a winged, blood sucking, child eating monster of ancient Hebrew myth and nightmare. She swooped out of the sky to devour her victims. She became the first feminist. Most modern feminists don’t have wings or eat people (just the really militant ones).

Then her black womb spawned countless monsters. Many of these were put up for adoption…but none of them turned out very well – you know there’s little hope for monsters in the state’s crappy child care system, inept public schools, and sluggish bureaucracy.

So Adam and Eve had talks about all this. Then there was the whole apple incident. And they each blamed the other.

“You gave me the apple!”
“You didn’t have to eat it.”
“Why were you talking to that snake?”
“You never take me out to do nice things anymore.”
“Holy shit! We’re naked!”
“We are…must be cold…”

And then Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden and had to stay in Darkness and Lilith laughed, but not for very long cause she had lots of monsters to feed and the social worker was due that day and the support check was lost in the mail.

Adam and Eve stuck together and had kids (hardly any monsters). But then their sons, Cain and Able, got into a scuffle. Able always ate meat and sacrificed meat to God. But Cain always used vegetables. He was the first vegan. God was not a vegan (he made cows to be eaten…that’s why he filled them with meat). So Cain killed Able and became the first militant Vegan.

God punished Cain by putting a hideous zit on his forehead (the “mark”). And anyone that tried to kill Cain would know that the zit would pop and curse them a hundred fold. So Cain found no relief and it would be some time before Oxy the Zit Zapper (worshiped by the ancient Mesopotamians).

So it was quite a twisted family and God invented Jerry Springer so they’d have a place to go and, ever since, Jerry Springer has shown the monsters and the freaks and the outcasts (many of whom are the children of Lilith). Last week, they had a big, family reunion episode. But Lilith swooped down and ate Jerry Springer.

THE END