Snake Eyes and Bird Wings

All right, fine. I have mostly been ignoring everything having to do with the strange panic regarding the Mayan calendar and 2012. Firstly, because giving obvious pseudoscience the time of day is painful to me, secondly because I'm not Mayan and am growing increasingly irritated with people assuming I am. (This mostly happens at work, with people who apparently think that "born in Mexico and indigenous" now equals a Mayan ancestry. What?)

But now that someone has finally pointed out that they never even translated the dates correctly to the Gregorian calendar to begin with, I feel better. Not just because I can finally stop twitching and choking down the urge to scream "You're doing it wrong!" when people mention the Mayan calendar, but because people will hopefully stop talking about it. The calendar ending when the date rolls over to 13.0.0.0.0 does not mean they thought the world was ending, any more than people switching their calendars from 1999 to 2000 thought the world was ending, Y2K panic aside. 

As for why the Maya stopped there, it's most likely a combination of humans liking nice, round numbers and them not seeing any particular reason to keep going. The words "Someone else can update the damn thing later, I'm tired of carving" were probably spoken.

[Originally, Quetzalcoatl had wanted to get a tattoo of Coyote to celebrate Coyote's birthday, the way Coyote had done for him. But one of the unfortunate reptilian habits he has is shedding his skin, and any tattoo he got would be badly degraded in a few months. Instead, he uses some of his many connections through the museums and universities until he finds what he's looking for: a carved statue of Coyote, dating back to the days when the Aztec Empire was flourishing and his people prayed to Coyote for vitality. Holding it almost takes Quetzalcoatl back to those days, and he leaves it sitting at the foot of their bed for Coyote to find.]

( Cut for sexy T.A. )

Happy Genocide Day, everyone.

I wonder sometimes if it was always going to be this way, if there would have been any way for our people to avoid what happened. Not just the Aztecs, but all of us. Even if Columbus and his ships had sank midway through the Atlantic, Europeans would have become aware of North America eventually. Even if we'd eaten Cortez's heart and drank his blood like wine, more like him would have come. 

It wasn't a fight against England or Spain or the Dutch. It was against an entire continent who didn't even see us as human. And they just kept coming. 

If I ever gave into my occasional desire to become famous over the Internet, I think I've discovered just how I would do it:

Drunk History.

In which a person gets very, very tipsy and discusses a historical event, which is later acted out by various celebrities. Doing this would combine my two great skills, which are telling humans things and making poor decisions under the influence. 

And there's so many things that I could discuss. (Not the Spanish conquest of the native Mexican population, though, as that just ends with me screaming, sometimes throwing things, crying and occasionally becoming a snake. It would turn into something ugly) The Mexican-American War would be a possibility, or the French invasion. Some of the stories about Pancho Villa or Benito Juarez would also work. If it has to be an event from American history, the Battle of the Alamo would do nicely; Americans have some tragically mistaken notions when it comes to the history of Texas.

I wouldn't want to do the interview on someone's couch, however. I'd want to be in a leather chair, holding a smoking pipe, with a fire blazing behind me. If I'm going to be intoxicated in public, I'll at least look very stylish while doing it. I think that's fair.

I enjoy teaching.

Given the amount of complaining I do about, it might be easy to assume I don't. It's because humans today are ungrateful. It used to be they appreciated learning things, such as the calendar and the cycles of seasons and how to plant maize. Now they expect all that knowledge to just come to them. Entitled brats. And sometimes being a professor only increases my desire to put all of humanity in some kind of collective time-out.

But there are days when most of the class shows up, have done the reading, and ask some very smart questions. Today was that kind of day. Combine that with the above average scores on most of the quizzes and I'm feeling fairly pleased with my job.  

I dislike earthquakes. Not just because they remind me I'm on the ground and not flying, but because now that I'm living in New York, I've got a fear that all of these skyscrapers are going to collapse onto me. I'm fairly certain I'd be able to get out, but that doesn't change the fact that it would be annoying.

Also, the bird is glaring at me like this is all my fault somehow. But it's not.

Two men arrested for wrestling with a stolen snake in the parking lot of a McDonalds.

...

A new semester has started at NYU, and as such, I'll present my reactions to this in outline format.

I. Snakes
   A. Do not want to wrestle with you. 
   B. Will never want to wrestle with you.
   C. Do not actually care what you do as long as you don't try and wrestle, you morons.
   D. Regret not being able to strangle you.
      1. Or swallow you whole, either one.
II. Stealing Things
   A. Why a snake?
        1. You really stole it just to wrestle with it?
   B. Why go to McDonalds with the snake?
       1. Why go to McDonalds ever?
   C. Why wrestle with your stolen merchandise in the parking lot of a fast food restaraunt?
III. Humanity
    A. I am 99% sure I made you smarter than this. Explain yourself.
    B. 'McDonald's parking lot snake wrestling' will never be a good idea, regardless of how high you are.

I feel better.
  

[Texted to Quetzalcoatl and Coyote]

Someone down the hall is playing "Hot for Teacher" at full blast. I thought of you guys.

So, Ehecatl seems to be settling in well. He rides around on my shoulder most of the time, and enjoys perching on Coyote when he can. I can only encourage this behavior. Thank you again for helping me set up perches for him, Huitzilopochtli. The bird likes lurking up by the shelves and watching everyone in between naps.

I'm a little worried about how he'll adjust when classes start up again and Coyote and I are both gone during the day. But I suppose as long as he doesn't peck or otherwise damage the books while we're gone, everything should be fine.

[Viewable to any Aztecs and Native Americans]

So! I just found out that all of you were real, thanks to Billy and Quentin Coyote and Quetzalcoatl. I'm their T.A., Danny. Well, Daniel, but it's mostly Danny. Anyway, hello. They mentioned that they both had family in the city, so I thought I'd introduce myself.

[When one of Elena's contacts in Guatemala (left over, ironically, from the days when she'd been planning to be a missionary) had called and asked if she had any use for an extremely pretty, extremely fussy bird called a quetzal, she'd jumped at the opportunity. Getting it through customs had been an enormous pain in the ass, but she had to admit, as it sat sleepily in a cage on her desk, it really was very pretty.]

Quetzalcoatl, my lord, I have a present for you.

The library is a very informative place. No one minds the giant piles of Starbucks cups I create.

So, guess who's back from Virginia Beach? (Finally!) I was originally supposed to only be down there for a week or two, but I decided to be a good person and ended up helping out with some of the Gulf clean-up stuff. It was actually really fun. Uh, as fun as cleaning up after a major environmental disaster can be.

Would you believe New York actually feels chilly compared to how hot it was in Louisiana?

So, here's the thing. I usually spend today in a state of alcohol-soaked, indignant rage, ranting to anyone who will listen and taking advantage of all the free drinks. And I still plan to do that.

However, the government is considering suing Arizona for being almost cartoonishly racist, which would be one of the few things the American government has ever done that I actually approve of. So, hesitant congratulations, America, for at least protesting the fact that one of your terrible little states is trampling all over the human rights that you like to talk about so much.

All right, that's out of the way. Time for tequilla and Jello shots.

Several thousand vuvuzelas arrived at my house today. My feelings on the matter cannot be conveyed with words, only animal shrieking.

Who wants a free terrible noisemaking machine?

I think I've lasted longer than most people. But I can't take it anymore

I never want to hear another vuvuzela as long as I live.

[Elena listens to Coyote's voicemail curiously, only slightly surprised to hear a woman's voice. Afterwards, she sits down and starts flipping through the cult's contacts. It takes about an hour, but she managaes to find a Navajo man who can be on a plane headed to New York in a few hours. She puts out a message through the grapevine that the cult is having a meeting. She calls Coyote back once it's done, not surprised to get her voicemail]

[Voicemail to Coyote]
"This is Elena. Everything's taken care of."

Guess who can turn into a giant snake again?

It's a really wonderful, wonderful day.

[Midway through one of his finals, there was a scream from outside. Suddenly, the lights went out. Someone in the class screamed, and the hair on the back of Quetzalcoatl's neck went up. 

"Everyone, calm down," Quetzalcoatl said, but he wasn't feeling very calm himself. This was not a blackout. He let his eyes shift, until he could see his class as a large heat signature, all reds and oranges. Danny was next to him, more defined and nearly clinging to his arm. Quetzalcoatl had a lighter in his pocket, and it ignited after a few tries. Danny's face was pale and scared, and the rest of the front row wasn't looking much better.

"Professor?" Danny asked. They could feel it too. The darkness was nothing normal. Quetzalcoatl made his way carefully to the door and peered out. It was total darkness, the noon sunlight that should have been filtering in through the huge windows gone. Quetzalcoatl had seen this before, or at least something like it. When he and Tezcatlipoca had struck the sun out of the sky (all four times), it had been a lot like this, inky blackness consuming the world. But nothing quite so terrible and foreign. Then something rushed past the door, making a rustling noise.

Quetzalcoatl jerked backwards, barely keeping ahold of the lighter. He grabbed one of the nearby chairs and jammed it under the door handle, barricading the room.

"Danny," he said, voice rough, "go stick a desk in front of the other door and lean against it."

"What?"

"Do it!" he snapped, turning to look at Danny. Danny looked at him, then gasped, and Quetzalcoatl realised belatedly that his eyes were still snake eyes. He held the lighter a little further away from himself and repeated, "Stick a desk in front of the door and lean against it. There's something out there."

The entire class was eeriely silent, scared and frozen in place, besides the few people who'd also had matches and lighters on them. Danny, loyal as ever, shoved a desk against the door and leaned hard against it. Quetzalcoatl leaned against his own door, silent as something started banging on both the doors. There was the sound of claws scraping against wood, a loud hissing noise, and a growl.

Someone in class started crying. Quetzalcoatl closed his eyes and put more of his weight on the door as whatever was outside started slamming against it.

Twenty minutes later, when the lights flickered back on, Quetzalcoatl dismissed his class and said he wouldn't count the final. They filtered out without protest. Quetzalcoatl spent the next half hour calling Coyote.]