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PLEASE Don’t make me repeat myself about this whole Santa Claus thing
Everything has ground to a complete and utter halt.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But it’s a small one, because things in Hell are, frankly, hellish, and it’s all Santa Claus’s fault.
If you read the cable from Wentworth that I posted, then you’d know that the fat old elf has decided to sit this Christmas out. You’re probably human so you probably didn’t know he could opt out of the holiday he was literally made for, but he can. It’s not the first time, either.
People have always been there to back the old son of a bitch up. Occasionally it’s a mortal who stumbles onto Santa’s drunk carcass after he hears him fall face-first into a snowy thorn bush, or it’s an elf who has to cover for another of the old man’s eggnog binges or even Mrs Claus, who actually did the job for a few decades while wearing a false beard and an ace bandage around her bosom because the Jolly Old Elf was so depressed and put out by the invention of forced-air heating.
I can see where this story is going. The threads of that dumb narrative have been flying off since Lucy flew off to Boss Knows Where and I’m the one who’s been stitching them all back together. I barely have the front office of Hell figured out - and I mean barely - and now the fates are trying to get me to do the one thing that no demon in Hell or anywhere else ever thought he would ever be asked to do? I don’t think so, Universe. Not this time. No way. Not on my watch.
I am not taking over for Santa Claus this year.
Am I making myself clear?
I AM NOT TAKING OVER FOR SANTA CLAUS THIS YEAR.
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Transmission from Whitney Wentworth, December 19th : from the North Pole (Earth)
The transition from Hell to Santa’s part of the Celestial Plane has been difficult, to say the least. My new Blackberry doesn’t get any reception here (it’s a wasteland), so I have to send this by imp. It may not make it, but I bribed him with a vacation package in the Bile Baths, so I may have a chance. I’m learning that in this job I have to use whatever leverage we have. I’m never sure if anyone is on our side. Or what our side really is. But, that’s neither here nor there.
Frances, we have a problem.
Santa’s a mess. No red suit, no merry laughing belly, just a guy in a ratty bathrobe drinking sherry. A lot of sherry. The scuttlebutt is that Mrs. Claus left weeks ago and I certainly don’t see any signs of her around the gingerbread fortress, which is a wreck. One of the neighborhood elves said that before she left, they asked her what to do about all the letters and the gifts to be delivered around the world.
“Send ‘em to hell, for all I care!” she barked.
Explains a lot. It’s freezing here. Why would you design this as your home if you only needed to imagine what you wanted and it was so? Is Santa kind of a god? Are angels kind of gods? This class system perplexes me, but all of you entities kind of look at me like I’m something on the bottom of your shoe. You’re not that different from humans at all, I think. You have your petty jealousies and ego wars, you have good days and you have bad days.
Anyway. I don’t think there’s going to be a Christmas this year. Let me know what I should do, and soon. The Claus keeps asking me to sit on his lap.
W. Wentworth
Executive Secretary to the Lord of The Planes of Suffering and the High General
of Hell’s Armies(thanks again to mortal Kristin Ross for putting the words in Whitney’s mouth)
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The Soul Audit is done and now Santa won’t return my calls
It’s been weeks since I blogged last, mostly because of the soul audit we’ve been dealing with. I actually had to look Michael (the archangel!) in the eye and defend the entirety of Hell and what we’ve tried to accomplish in the last hundred years.
We all exist at the behest of the Big Guy, the Boss Upstairs, I reminded him. If the Boss didn’t want demons running around on earth then we wouldn’t be there, right? Michael isn’t much of a thinker, but he acted like had never heard that argument before. Is that even possible? I know that the Host has issues with thinking creatively (they think that job is up to The Boss and humans, obviously), but that’s almost unbelievably dense.
So he shrugged and dropped the issue, which is good because I didn’t have much of an argument after that. I mean, I can’t really figure out why the Big Boss Upstairs keeps us around, either. Don’t tell anybody, but I’d get rid of us, too.
The Audit itself was pretty painless, but it took forever. The archangels did something where they could slow down relative time, so we spent probably 18 months during what passed for about a week in Hell and I think even longer on Earth (there are relative time issues all over the place in the cosmos, especially in the celestial planes. Never ask an angel to set your watch).
The process of an Audit is simple - the Good Guys take a look at some of the souls we have and make a case for why we shouldn’t have them.
In some cases, it’s just a Platonic Plane name, which - well, wait. I don’t think I’ve explained those yet. I should do that now. Okay, real quick:
If you’re a human, you have three names.
Your original name is your immortal name, your Celestial Plane Name, or your True Name. It’s your unique signature that identifies you as you no matter where you are in the entirety of creation, from Heaven to Hell and everywhere in between - literally. That name is given to you by The Boss, in a way - the actual metaphysics of how that name comes about actually combines a lot of different variables like your parents’ True Names, but it’s simpler to say that it comes from the mind of the Boss. Every human, angel and demon has a True Name.
The second name, the one that identifies you uniquely on the Material Plane, is also unique to you but it’s not as permanent as your True Name. It can change because it’s kind of a succinct report, a unique string of characters, that identifies you in your current state. It changes all the time because you’re changing all the time. When you die and pass into the Celestial Plane for eternity, your Material Name disappears. Every living thing has a Material Name.
The third name is the name you go by. In more particular psychological and spiritual terms, it’s the pattern of thought that flickers across another person’s mind when they invoke you. More simply, it’s your name - John, Mary, etc. We also call it the Platonic Name because it lives in the non-place that Plato imagined where all of the ideal constructs exist. It’s a place where human minds spend a lot of time, because it’s kind of the midpoint between the Celestial and the Material plane. That name lasts for as long as it’s remembered on the Material plane, and as long as something created by the owner of the name persists, the name does, too and kind of a part of the owner does, too.
So when we get a clerical error in the Soul Audit, it’s often a name thing - somebody’s soul isn’t connected properly to his other two names, and he gets put in a place where he doesn’t belong. This always means he’s in Hell when he should be in Heaven.
We never yank anybody out of Heaven who’s already there. It just doesn’t work that way. Even if we find out somebody up there should be down here because of a mistake, it’s an act of extreme cruelty to take him out of paradise. Nobody in Heaven could let that happen.
I won’t go over the specifics of the Audit now, because it’s really not very interesting - one or two guys here, a few more there.
In other news, the meadows are starting to get cooler and little drifts of sparkling snow have started to appear in some places. The sheep are still appearing and disappearing but some of them are still knocking around, like the one under my desk. He or she or whatever really likes it down there, and I don’t have the heart to get rid of it/her/him.
What’s much more interesting than that? The letters to Santa.
We’re getting thousands of these things a day. They’re from all over the world. We’ve been trying to reach the man himself (Santa lives in the Celestial Plane, believe it or not - he’s a real guy!) but he’s not answering. He only has one phone - the guy really isn’t hip with any technology past like 1900. He prefers to communicate with paper. I’ve sent Wentworth over there to see what’s up now that she’s not buried in paperwork and frankly I think she could use a break from this place.
I hope she dressed for the cold.
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Frances will be back soon! Check back on Monday night!
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Christmas is coming and we’re so not ready
Christmas is only a month away! Do you have ANY idea how busy we are down here? It’s not just the soul audit, either. We always have field agents (demons, mostly) working double overtime to cause light acts of social sabotage in order to make the most chaos we can with as little effort as possible.
It’s not just a game we play for our own amusement, either. The Boss upstairs leaves us alone for the most part, but the archangels in charge of day-to-day operations still hold a grudge. If they catch us doing anything big, like blowing up a bridge or something, they kick our asses all the way back to The Pit and it takes ages for those field agents to generate enough spark to project a physical body again.
So we stick to what Lucy started out doing: give the humans enough rope to hang themselves, then take the rope away and then let them beg us for it, which they always do. Remember that the next time you go to Vegas or AC.
I’ll write more about the Lucifer Method some other time, because his way of bringing souls down here is really interesting when you break it down. And it’s much more fun to be on this side of it rather than the guy pushing the papers around. You wouldn’t believe how much paperwork is generated by ONE broken escalator at Dulles Airport on December 24th.
Oh, and there’s been some kind of snafu at the post offices on earth. They’re sending US all of Santa’s mail! Well, me, actually. I tried talking to somebody up there but nobody really knows who’s in charge.
Sounds familiar.
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Vanity Fair talks to "Satan"
Look, if you’re going to pretend to talk to me, at least make if funny. I mean, I try to be entertaining here and I’m not always successful and usually just telling you about what’s been going on around here is silly enough to be funny just by itself.
And, as the Devil, I have no official position on global warming. You’d think that I’d be in favor of it, since Hell is known for being hot, but that’s simple-minded and if you really do think that then you’re not really thinking it through.
It’s like asking me what I think about hot dogs or portable music players or the dimensions of the capitol dome in Albany. Do I have to have an opinion about everything?
If a person gives a homeless man a hot dog, then I’m against them, but if a man throws a hot dog in anger at another man at a Yankees game then I’m for them. It’s not about the idea it’s about the people.
You’d think this would be an easy concept to understand!
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This is another portrait! This one was drawn by @msprout who is on “Twitter” which is not a thing for birds. He’s very talented, as you can see. He also has a website!
And I wasn’t going to keep the beard, but I like the way it makes me look so…scary!
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godamongmen-deactivated20110307 asked: Salutations, Frances. Death here again.
Sorry it's been so long. I've been busy lately, you know. There was a typhoon or something in southeast Asia and I had to go take care of that mess.
I actually spoke to Lucy the other day. Or, at least, I thought it was him. I went to a fancy dress up party for Halloween in San Fran, and I think I ran into him. Granted, I was a little drunk, and so was this guy. And he was wearing a mask, you know, that rabbit from Donnie Darko? Great costume.
Anyway, we chatted for a while. Not about anything specific, mind you. He seemed like he was doing well. Asked about my cat. Pretty pleasant conversation.
I couldn't stay very long, a bunch of teenagers were swerving all over the road in Des Moines, so I had to run.
Anyway, I thought I'd let you know. And, again, that lunch invitation is always open. Just drop me a note.
I will say, though, that if it was Lucy, he seemed pretty relaxed. The most I've seen from him in a long while.I’m not sure it was Lucy you saw. See, there are lots of demons who like to pretend to be Lucy when they go topside and Lucy always used to encourage it. You probably already know that since you’ve been around as long as any of us (well, at least since the Fall), but I can never be sure.
It became a problem for those of us in Archives because we had to figure out a way to categorize all of those Lucifer sightings - which ones were the real ones and which ones were fake? We couldn’t be sure. Local newspapers are no help, as you can see in the article I posted the day after Halloween.
Actually I guess they were right THAT time, since it was actually me, the Devil, even if those kids didn’t think it was me.
You say he was relaxed? He doesn’t have all of this horrible office crap to do anymore, so that’s probably why he left. This soul audit coming up is going to be a real pisser. I haven’t seen Wentworth in days - I’m afraid she might be buried somewhere under the banker’s boxes. I’m going to have to give her a Blackberry or something. I’ll have to talk to the IT guy.
San Francisco? I don’t know where Lucifer went, but I’ve been hearing some rumblings. Bermuda came up. Abu Dhabi. Timbuktu. I’m reasonably sure he hasn’t strayed off into the multiverse or some corner of the time stream, but I’m basing that on what the demons in at the monitoring stations say. Somebody as powerful and old as Lucifer can’t just dance through the barrier between planes without somebody noticing.
I appreciate you keeping an open line of communication between our areas. I’ve heard great stuff about Purgatory lately - very efficient, very clean. The damned coming out of there have nothing but nice things to say about it, but considering where they’re coming from, I guess that’s no surprise.
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Hell is Big, Folks. edit: PLEASE DON’T READ THE END!
Hell is a big place. It’s really, really big. It’s so big that the human mind is incapable of even imagining how big it is. In fact, most demons can’t even imagine it. I wasn’t capable of imagining it either, until I got this job.
Part of my orientation has been the bestowment of abilities and powers that are usually reserved exclusively for archangels and are bestowed upon them just as part of becoming an archangel, which they are when they are born. There are only a few archangels in Hell because a fallen archangel tends to be a selfish asshole and they all want to be in charge at the same time.
But only one person can be in charge at a time, and that’s me, and instead of doing something they can’t (turn me into an archangel) the Council did a ceremony and waved their hands around (most of them were archangels).
So one of the first things I noticed after the ceremony was that Hell was really, really big. There’s an infinite number of Hells, really. There’s enough Hell for everybody who comes here, which is good because sometimes you need a lot of space to encompass some of the souls we have down here. But there’s also enough Hell for all of the offices we have, which are a lot. You know about the Punisheers and the Archives, which are two of the biggest departments, but we have thousands more, and enough demons and imps and ghasts and ghosts and assorted creatures, beings and monsters to fill the places up and get some of Hell’s work done.
So I always knew it was big, but I didn’t really appreciate exactly how big, which is to say, I can’t really say. Well, I can say but it won’t make any sense to you. If I try to describe it, the words I use will just look like nonsense.
Here, I’ll try: Fasdvne g vmd efer adibo.
See? You can’t comprehend it. Oh, and don’t try to pronounce those words out loud or you’ll break something. I don’t mean you’ll break something in your body but in reality, like the universe. I probably shouldn’t have posted that after all but now I can’t delete it. Every time I try, it just comes back.
Oh damn.
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New Assistant Candidate Interview #2845 (final)
- - BEGIN TRANSCRIPT -
- Frances Mustang: So, Ms Wentworth, um, I guess there's nobody else to really talk to, huh? I mean, you're the last resume I have here on the stack. On the bottom of the stack, I noticed.
- Whitney Wentworth: Yeah, well. Pretty much anything's better than going back to the steno pool in the pits. Well. Pretty much anything. Except maybe, this job.
- FM: Look, I haven't really asked you a lot about yourself. I mean, like what you did to end up here?
- WW: You've asked me that before, sir. I told you I didn't want to talk about it. Let's just say I died in the 1920's and there was a lot gin and jazz and things just happen. That's really a personal question. I don't think I have to tell you.
- FM: Yeah. No, I mean, you don't. I could just look it up, you know. I mean, I'm the Lord of Hell now. I can find out why you're here. But I didn't. I haven't. I won't. Um, I guess what I'm saying is, I respect your privacy. Nobody has privacy in Hell. It just doesn't work that way here. Do you see where I'm going with this? Lucy didn't do that. He would have never let somebody work so closely with him without knowing everything about her. Do you see where I'm going with this?
- WW: You know what, buddy? Go ahead, look it up. I don't give a flip. I just don't want to sit here and talk about it, because it's really complicated and emotional. Did you just laugh at me? You did! You're really an asshole, Frances. Send me back to the steno pool. What. Ever. I was only hanging around because I was hoping Lucy would come back. He used to invite me to his chambers, you know, back in the day. He was a good time. You? You're a freaking jerk. You have no idea what you're doing and even less motivation to figure it out. You shouldn't be interviewing anyone. They should put you in the Demon Asylum, where you can shuffle around all you want, wondering where you put your keys.
- FM: (long, thoughtful pause. only the sound of a sheep chewing on paper can be heard, muffled by the desk) When can you start?
- - END TRANSCRIPT -
- (every word attributed to Ms. Wentworth anywhere on this blog is written by Kristin Ross, the best collaborator anybody could ask for)
