Hey, @Gretel, if you still need some help with those spirits, I would happily take them off your hands. I know a few people.

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I watched the light men (or snow-men) leave tonight. I was closing at Sapir/Whorf and looked out the window and saw them filling the streets. Walking calmly, drawn like moths to a flame towards the street lights.

Then, they started to ascend. Or according to @Ella Shanks descend, I guess. But they were dissolving and floating upwards, bit by bit, like electric snowflakes or rain or tiny sparks, up into the lights. They didn't make a sound.

I watched it for awhile, then finished sweeping up.

Was it really right to send them all back? They never ended up wrecking the place or killing anybody like in @Princess Karnack's article. They seemed to fit in real well, actually, except for the shocking people part. Why were we scared of them? Was it really our right to send them back?

Or maybe they were more like weird dimensional deep-sea creatures, just responding to stimuli, and we used that to guide them home?

Either way, it kinda spooked me to think about on my way home in the dark.

I guess closing a portal can be as easy as pulling a plug. I'm really sorry about my apocalyptic predictions about the cascade effect of the Cassandra Propaganda. I thought I did all the math right, but I'm still learning all this as I go along.

We still have all the snow-men to deal with though. The gateway has been shut, so where do they go? They're everywhere - stumbling through town, getting part-time jobs, running for office. Which is fine, really - I'm not one of those anti-dimensionalist immigrant people at all. But these beings really aren't human. They're literally a force of nature. They didn't even come here on their own, but were a distortion artifact created by a madman. And after they've been cut off from their dimension long enough I think they'll start to go wacko, just like in @Princess Karnack's news clippings.

We need to send them back. We need to run the cycle backwards. The last show I went to I took a lot of readings with the equipment I snuck in, and I was able to record the whole sequence - descent, search, and ascent. The snow-men have ascended. Now they need to go back - down. Which I can do by reversing the Cassandra Propaganda wave.

I've done a full advance spectrum analysis, with full noise interference on the forward and return path. For a carrier wave, we need something that transmits as continuously as possible, and has the widest coverage. Radio waves won't do because the snow-men have already entered the visible spectrum. But light waves will work. Which is why I'm going to commander the streetlights all over town.

You might have noticed that streetlights were all recently replaced with digital LEDs. This is more energy efficient for the town, but does give everything that kind of hazy, digital feel. Like it's all on TV. Which is perfect.

I know I promised not to touch the controls anymore, but I think this calls for it. I'm going to start moving the knobs again, and if I can set up the frequencies just right, I think I can give the snow-men a ride back home.

You might want to stay in. And shut your blinds and curtains if you can see the streetlights at all. Because this might give you a headache if you stare at it too long.

That's IT. I've had it with @Hormiga Man and his Cassandra Propaganda. That's why I pulled his plug.

Hey, I'm in Science Leaders of Tomorrow. I KNOW about safety. That's why I'm in charge of Hazardous Waste Disposal, and believe you me I had to take a lot of tests about it! Over and over and over.

But I just couldn't take it anymore! Just when my tambourining is really starting to take off, I NEED that practice space. It just isn't fair. That's why I got on the big rubber gloves and the goggles and the insulated boots and disconnected their main.

It wasn't my fault that @Hormiga Man had his head in another dimension. Well, the whole top half of his body. When we broke down the door and went in with our flashlights, it was really weird because all he was was a butt. All he is is a butt. On two legs. The rest of him got trapped on the "other side" when I killed the power and his portal closed. On him.

But he seems fine, really. "@Hormiga Man Butt" can walk around and do things just like he was really here. So he's still driving somehow. And breathing. And apparently eating and drinking, but I don't want to talk about that.

I'm very sorry about the campus-wide power outage that it caused, though. They just had to replace a bunch of transformers. But all better now, huh?

NOW back to my true love in life, the tambourine.

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I think we all underestimated the Cassandra Propaganda. They took one good riff and turned it into a screeching chasm between dimensions. The frequency distortion is in a cycle with three phases: the "descent" (loss), the "search" and the "ascent." By having such attention focused on the contents of the cabinet (and the ancient memories of death and rebirth that they generate), the modulation of the spectrum brainwave activity opens up the door. That's where the snow-men are getting in. They incorporate the distortion algorithms into baseline-human forms and pop into our world, like bubbles. But if my calculations are right, @Hormiga Man has gone too far, and started a cascade effect that can't be stopped, and will create a ripping of our reality that can never be closed.

The Cassandra Propaganda will shred infinitely.

Just when I'm about to get my big break in the chromosonic shoegazer scene, @Hormiga Man and his Cassandra Propaganda refuse to play out. "No more shows! Studio only!" he says. And Power Value Stance isn't big enough to get anybody to show up on our own. I was playing my tambourine to a janitor and his dog last night at the Spoon Bender.

Worse, The Cassandra Propaganda has taken over the practice space on campus and won't let anybody else in. That's what that big continuous arc flash is east of the gym. It's got its own line right to the school's generator and they're just cranking it 24/7. But they won't even let anybody in.

@Big Jim can't you kick them out and let some other kids in there?

Sapir/Whorf is holding an anti-Black Friday/buy-nothing learn-in and guerrilla salon this weekend, but only the regulars showed up. Plus the whole anti-Black Friday thing is now getting co-opted by giant corporations, so what's the point? Might as well buy something from your local/indie stores and help out mom&pops, I figure.

But the streets of town are filled with the snow-men or whatever, the static/light people, doing a giant shopping crawl from the Walmart to the Costco. It's like a zombie riot out there! If you get caught up in it and need to escape, drop by Sapir/Whorf and I'm here making PWYC coffee.

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