Tag Archives: people

Taking Applications

Structures & Ways & Means, , , ,

New Job Opportunity!

Karst University, in coordination with the City of Aulinta, is pleased to announce a new position.
Apply now to be an avatar of the supernatural folkloric witch Baba Yaga, for a period of one year (with possibility of extensions).

Duties will include:

  • Taking small groups of incoming university students and exchange visitors into the fields and woods and teaching them about flora, fauna, what not to eat, how not to get lost, how to make a debris shelter, and other woodcraft.
  • Living in the Baba Yaga hut located in the former Kalkar quarry near the university.
  • Once every three weeks, acting as the 24-hour crisis support for university students.

Compensation will include:

  • Membership in one of the University Food Co-ops.
  • A adequate amount of your preferred medium of exchange (t.b.d.).
  • Free housing in the Baba Yaga hut and occupation rights for the Baba Yaga clearing, which includes a spring, nearby herb and vegetable garden with guest cabin, storage shed (on stilts, naturally), and other amenities. The hut is not on the city grid, but does have its own small cleverly-concealed solar collector. However, the Baba Yaga is expected to primarily use candles and candle lanterns, and to cook on a woodstove.

We are employing the Baba Yaga in her aspect as a powerful earth witch (though we do not require that the avatar be a witch themselves). While you can be strange or even somewhat frightening, we ask that the Baba Yaga refrain from:

  • Cannibalism.
  • Decorating the place with skull lanterns.
  • Forcing students to do impossible tasks before dawn.
  • Absolute mayhem (minor mayhem ok).

We are asking to receive your applications by June 1st, so we have time to interview and select the right candidate as well as train them before the start of the new school year.

The duties of the avatar of the Baba Yaga may extend to groups of secondary school or even younger students, depending on the chosen candidate’s particular manifestation. Weirder or more terrifying Baba Yagas may be limited to university orientation and to exchange groups from more-Baba-Yaga-savvy Slavic areas.

*Please note that while Baba Yaga is depicted as female, we are not limiting the gender of our candidates. Anyone can be the avatar of the Baba Yaga!

Below are some photos of the house, shed, garden, and guest cabin of the Baba Yaga.

Not interested in being the Baba Yaga? Please watch for our upcoming calls for applications to be the avatars of Great God Pan (nighttime woods safety and Panic control), an as-yet-to-be-decided supernatural river being (river and stream knowledge and safety), and an as-yet-to-be-decided ocean god or other supernatural ocean being (ocean and lagoon knowledge and safety). Please be aware that all avatars will be on the 3-week crisis support rota.

Writing Advice

Faff, , ,

It was Open Stage night down at the The Last Visible Dog, and Fuze was up.

“Ok, so, I was looking through old journals for something to read, and I stumbled across ones from when I was younger and…it was terrible. So, instead of reading any of that stuff, I’d like to read this review of them and some advice.

It’s possible that when the author achieves her mature voice her work will be interesting. But as it stands now her writing is a monument of how not to write when in your 20s. Or, perhaps, a series of examples of the kind of personal journals that should be lost and never rediscovered.

The only benefit we get from these petty maunderings is a list of things not to do if one wishes one’s writing to be readable by one’s future self. Namely:

1. Don’t date anyone. Or, if you do date anyone, don’t write about your everyday feelings. Or, if you must write about your feelings make sure to write both the first and last names of your love object as well as a description including their job, pet names, etc. Include a photo if possible, but don’t make a fucking scrapbook because that’s just sad.

2. Don’t write about yourself. You will not care about how awkward and out-of-place you saw yourself. It’s precisely the amount of awkward and out-of-place you will feel twenty years later. Just take awkward and out-of-place as a given and move the hell on.

3. Write about things you see in the world. Not the world at large. What are you, a historian? NOPE. What you see, like, out the tram window on the way to the county fair. That’ll be way less abysmal to re-read later, let me tell you.

4. Don’t write about your supposedly deep thoughts on how humans work. You’re in your 20s. You don’t know. I don’t know. We’ll never know. It’s all speculation, and it’s really not very interesting to read about.

5. If you travel, don’t write about how travel has really made you know yourself. Because it hasn’t.

6. Write about other people. But not people you’re dating. Seriously. That shit’s a total snoozefest.

7. If you cannot follow these guidelines, do not for any reason return to those journals. If you encounter them DO NOT READ THEM. Instead, gather them up, build a wee boat, and give them a Viking burial on the duck pond at the city park. That’s the only way to be sure.”

viking-funeral

Struggles

Cultures,

Our friend Struggles lives in Red Wood (formerly known as the Forest Formerly Known As Nisene Marks), in a tree house halfway up a big redwood, powered by a variety of solar collectors. His ski-lift-style zipline allows him to zip down into town, then hitch a ride back up on the circular line.

Struggles takes people with struggles of whatever kind (developmental, mental, social, physical) on woodland adventures.

Here is a picture he drew of his house and surrounding area. The lower self portrait expresses his feelings about himself nowadays.Click on the image to see it bigger for more details.