Vampires

Absolute evil (if that exists), bloodsucking creatures, with not a care. You’d imagine Dracula, perhaps. Lestat, the chap from Slayer, and most of Rice’s - thought of whom - curdle your blood.

But apart from Dracula, the first vampire to get to me was Andre LeBrel. Young looking, neat as a pin, warm, and a good guy. Bless Lackey, for since I have not been able to think of vampires as all-evil. There’s Otto Chriek, and the Black Ribboners on Discworld; no Pratchett fan can forget Carpe Jugulum. Then came Digital Knight. I believe Stephanie Meyer’s vampires abstain from human blood.

So after someone asked me a question - I’m wondering. What do you think of them?

Five words you can use to describe vampires? or which you associate with them?

Notebooks

It’s been a year since I had a brand new notebook. You see, I’ve been brought up to the creed “do not waste” and so, of course, I use other people’s left over, part-used notebooks (ripping them apart with great satisfaction). Perhaps it’s noble (recycling, environment etc).

It’s also sad. A little pathetic even.

I want a fresh, new notebook.
All mine, Mine, MINE.

And its endess possibilities.

Swept Away

A little less time, or a little more and I could have stayed. Who can dig thier toes into the sand at the fringe of land, with bubbles and foam around your ankles and stay unmoved?

It was the moon.

It shone, and washed away the bright painful colours of the day, lending a soft glow and patient hope to temptation. It made morality, education and society’s rules which were dinned into your mind since childhood seem as slender as the webs of a spider - to be swept away.

It made you forget that the spider’s silk is stronger than steel. There on that beach with crabs that broke out of thier coccoons and turtules going extinct, things were possible. Impossible vistas would open, and it would take just one more step, just one more.

To follow that wave that returned into the heart of the ocean, cold foam, warm water. The shelf is short along the coast of the Deccan. Adam’s/Ram’s bridge lies about the depth of the Bay of Bengal. It is hungry, and people no longer notice when it finds another sacrifice - one willing to simply step forward and give in to the tide.

I am the moon’s daughter. What else could I do? I was swept away.

Why do you hide?

Do you ask for faith only to betray it?

Dear Ass. Ed.,

Once, a long while back, I got very angsty about a review I received (Many more negative - and worse - reviews I’ve handled much better than this). Now I’m more or less C’est La Vie-ish about it, but back then, I’m sorry to say, I wrote this. Then I hid it.

Please don’t pull just any paper from the literature and shove it at us to read. Either read our manuscript and figure out what it is about, or say that the manuscript is not clear about the focus of the work.

Take a hint from the title. We *want* to address a specific area. That is, by definition, a limited study. We’ve even spent a page on why.

As for the papers you have asked us to reference:
buddy, the first paper has nothing to do with our work. Just because the model used a term which we use frequently in the manuscript… Two paragraphs on the generalised item, which we have emphasised we are not working on, do not have any connection, or, for that matter, any relevance to the comprehensive survey we have carried out.

For the others, did we mention yet? We have a specific study, with specific results, and a general paper does not substitute for that. You can extrapolate, but we have proof. Surely you recognise the value of that? Let me spell it out: if we were to extrapolate instead of prove everything a) science would be extinct b) you’d be out of a job.

Grow up. Don’t side with the nay-sayer just because it is politically expedient. Read the damn manuscript before you decide what you’re going to do.

So we were long winded. But you never read anything but the abstract and conclusions, or you would know we have covered all the ‘concerns’ you have. End of vent.

I wish I could say you can take your journal and stuff it up yours. But — the problem was that my Abstract and my Conclusion did not convince you: I was a bad communicator. So I won’t send you this, and will fix the manuscript. Because it really is good work and really will be of some use in this confused field.

Yours sincerely,