corollary

a corollary to Physiology, dated sometime 2007.

the elves have, of late, discovered commerce. sidhe theorists (and there are few of these) argue that it was only natural, especially since the invention of the air conditioner ('fuck morning dew and the sweet flavour of a virgin's pure soul' says Lord Hardburrow of the Kingdom of the Abandoned Twig 'nothing's as good to a proximity to the little air throwing vent of the air conditioner tuned to very very cool').

so how do they manage, you might wonder, given their incapacity for organisation and a fundamental inability to operate any machinery more complicated than an 8 in 1 brick game.

the answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. to be more specific, they catch air skippers - slithery and perdominantly vapourous ectoplasmic worms that travel through the air, moving through the goblin and dervish population, entering through ear lobes, grabbing whatever thoughts might be around and getting the fuck out with them (leading to the phrase 'just skipped my mind darling).

djinss set magical nets to catch them (someone once described them as giant cobwebs in the sky). the day's catch is then distilled to remove useless thoughts (keychain locations, deadlines, coffee appointments, etc.) from the good ones (symphonies, plots for films and books, ideas for enterprise, etc.). the good ideas are then used by the djinn in question (the one who's caught the skippers) to generate revenue and buy air conditioners.

and here's a piece of trivia to reward your patience. once in the early twentieth century, a senior cricketing captain (whom we shall not name here) was given the assignment of coming up with a better term for the generic 'captain'. the man, close to the fag end of his career, chanced upon the perfect word ('like finding a diamond in the rough', he mentioned to a bystander upon his discovery). the man kept it to himself, hoping to present the word at a public meeting to make sure the credit didn't spill. this was when a particularly egoistic skipper happened to cross his mind and, in what's clearly a sui generis event, replaced the word instead of just taking it.