Voodoo Quotes

There is darkness inside all of us, though mine is more dangerous than most. Still, we all have it—that part of our soul that is irreparably damaged by the very trials and tribulations of life. We are what we are because of it, or perhaps in spite of it. Some use it as a shield to hide behind, others as an excuse to do unconscionable things. But, truly, the darkness is simply a piece of the whole, neither good nor evil unless you make it so. It took a witch, a war, and a voodoo queen to teach me that.

Voodoo Girl Her skin is white cloth, and she's all sewn apart and she has many colored pins sticking out of her heart. She has many different zombies who are deeply in her trance. She even has a zombie who was originally from France. But she knows she has a curse on her, a curse she cannot win. For if someone gets too close to her, the pins stick farther in.

I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same fifty percent rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't...Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe...same as the voodoo lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles. It's all the same...so just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself...

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.

I doubt you’ve ever been forced to nonstop bang a woman hyped up on the undead voodoo version of Spanish fly, have you?” His chuckle was soft. “Can’t say that I have, Kitten.” “Yeah, well, consider me an original.” This time, when his lips brushed across my skin, it lasted more than a moment. “I always have.

Does it give you déjà voodoo how alike the houses are?" "That's déjà vu, and I hate you right now

Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.

Does it give you deja voodoo how alike the houses are?" "That's deja vu, and I hate you right now." "For narcing on you to your mom? Wait until you hear what I tell your dad." From the sly grin on his face, she knew what he was thinking. "Don't you even think about it." "I could tell him about the time we-" "Hell, no.

Aaron: Dude, one thing the guy said is you don’t taunt voodoo. Zak: Am I taunting? Aaron: Dude, you’re taunting the crap out of it! Zak: I am sorry, I am not taunting you I am just talking...Talking loudly.

Most people write me off when they see me. They do not know my story. They say I am just an African. They judge me before they get to know me. What they do not know is The pride I have in the blood that runs through my veins; The pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people; The pride I have in my strong family ties and the deep connection to my community; The pride I have in the African music, African art, and African dance; The pride I have in my name and the meaning behind it. Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning. So you think I am nothing? Don’t worry about what I am now, For what I will be, I am gradually becoming. I will raise my head high wherever I go Because of my African pride, And nobody will take that away from me.

Damn Banger Voodoo.

When I kissed Sam, I was so scared of erasing Matt. But now I know that I could never erase him. He'll always be a part of me - just in a different way. Like Sam, making smoothies on the beach two thousand miles away. Like Frankie, my voodoo magic butterfly finding her way back home in the dark. Like the stars, fading with the halo of the vanishing moon. Like the ocean, falling and whispering against the shore. Nothing ever really goes away - it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.

She must have a voodoo pussy or something.

Oh, come on. I have to know about the who-do voodoo that you do. (Nick)

If he had to have strange powers, Aden wished they could have been more like hers. That voodoo voice would have made his life a lot easier; he could have sent certain people (cough Ozzie cough) away with no memory of him.

Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

You must have voodoo in your hoohoo.

As I recall, Drew made me take him to see a voodoo priestess he found in the yellow pages that week because he said the friend put a hex on his penis. For two weeks he slept with a two-pound package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts on his junk since he refused to sacrifice a live chicken.

He leans his face down, his cheek rubbing against my temple as he emits a sigh that's sounds similar to a muttered oath. And I swear it sounds like he mutters something about voodoo pussy but when I snap my head up to look at him he just shakes his head and smirks.

Fine, but I’m not ripping the head off a voodoo chicken or drinking anything disgusting. (Grace)

I turned to kiss his fingertips. He stared into my eyes again, those sex sapphires doing their voodoo that made me a puddle of voodoo goo. For him to woo. See what he did to me?

I can no longer believe in any voodoo spell or laboratory virus. This is something deeper, darker. This comes from the cosmos, from the stars, or the unknown blackness behind them. The shadows in God's boarded-up basement.

I'm not the one who's so far away When I feel the snake bite enter my veins. Never did I wanna be here again, And I don't remember why I came.

Once upon a time, there was Candy and Dan. Things were very hot that year. All the wax was melting in the trees. He would climb balconies, climb everywhere, do anything for her, oh Danny boy. Thousands of birds, the tiniest birds, adorned her hair. Everything was gold. One night the bed caught fire. He was handsome and a very good criminal. We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars. It was the afternoon of extravagant delight. Danny the daredevil. Candy went missing. The days last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks. I want to try it your way this time. You came into my life really fast and I liked it. We squelched in the mud of our joy. I was wet-thighed with surrender. Then there was a gap in things and the whole earth tilted. This is the business. This, is what we're after. With you inside me comes the hatch of death. And perhaps I'll simply never sleep again. The monster in the pool. We are a proper family now with cats and chickens and runner beans. Everywhere I looked. And sometimes I hate you. Friday -- I didn't mean that, mother of the blueness. Angel of the storm. Remember me in my opaqueness. You pointed at the sky, that one called Sirius or dog star, but on here on earth. Fly away sun. Ha ha fucking ha you are so funny Dan. A vase of flowers by the bed. My bare blue knees at dawn. These ruffled sheets and you are gone and I am going to. I broke your head on the back of the bed but the baby he died in the morning. I gave him a name. His name was Thomas. Poor little god. His heart pounds like a voodoo drum.

No evil ever came from a woman’s womb that wasn’t placed there first by a man.’... Tantie Neptune, Lucifer's Key by Charles A. Cornell, due 2013

Voodoo Beer?” “In honor of Loa and Boa for chasing away death.” “That was a big snake, wasn’t it?”“It was a seriously large snake. . . .

So I figured I might as well see if I could find something Gaspard didnt already know about. Like an herb or potion or something." "Hmm," said Georgia, looking off into some invisible dreamworld. "Or maybe bathing naked in the Seine under the light of a full moon"- she glanced up quickly- "in which case, definitely tell me when and where your voodoo's going down!

Jude is the only one awake. He never really slept as deeply as the other three, and I’m fairly sure he resents the hell out of all of them for sleeping as well as they have. And he resents me for my wicked vagina voodoo. My milkshake brings all the boys to naptime…Yeah, that’s not how that song goes. The song is a lot sexier, but beggars can’t be choosers.

It looks like a typical voodoo sacrifice. (Fang) Well, slap my ass and call me Sally if you’re not bright. (Thorn)

If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.

Risk discomfort and solitude for understanding.

Anthony pointed his finger, swirling tiny invisible circles in the air. “You must have voodoo in your hoohoo.

It'll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn't see this in the contract when I signed up. Was this part of the deal?

I've sort of been slacking off in my voodoo studies.I've trigonometry, you know?

She is psychic a little voodoo magic soulful with cranberry lips eyes full of fantastic.

Someone setting parameters for me. Has hell frozen over and no one told me? She had my balls in a fucking vice, and all I could think of was how much I wanted her. In my bed. In my office. At the track. In my life. And not just on her back. She must have a voodoo pussy or something.

what’s meant for you will reach you in time, and if you embrace it with your arms wide open it might just stay with you forever and bless you with more happiness than you could ever envision.

Catherine. " She swept by me without a hug. Okay, that was familiar, too. "You really should wear something warmer, it's freezing out. " Hello to you, too, Mom. Or whoever the hell you are, because you sure don't look like the woman who raised me. 123 "You should talk, " I managed. "I can see all the way up to your thigh. My God, if Grandma saw you now, she'd come right out of her grave!" My mother opened her mouth, paused, and then smiled. "I won't tell if you won't. " I was going directly to the kitchen to fall to my knees in awe before Rodney. Lo and behold, he'd managed to give her a sense of humor, and here I'd figured that would take voodoo, several headless chickens, and a lot of gris-gris.

Soul mates are said to be two souls destined to be together, programmed to recognize each other across time and space. I didn’t know whether that was the truth, but I was inclined to believe it

A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his dreams, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colourless void... The Sprawl was a long, strange way home now over the Pacific, and he was no Console Man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, hands clawed into the bedslab, temper foam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

Raising interest rates is voo-doo. You can't deal with a global system problem by trying to solve it with this.

You said I have magical powers, so what’s the big deal? I’ll voodoo some shit up, bring out my spidey-senses, and bam.” ~ Nexi

In his refusal to believe in anything supernatural or inherently evil, he was as unrealistic as an old voodoo queen who sees spirits everywhere.

I cursed. (S-word, f-word, s-word, d-word, s-word times three, f-word, and a z-word I made up on the spot.) I kicked a brick wall. I said the z-word again in response to the pain that came from kicking a brick wall.

Voodoo, bro. Don’t knock it till you try it.” “Ha. Now you’re all for it when a year ago you fought it every step of the way.” “Fought it until I realized a voodoo pussy is a grown man’s Lucky Charms.” Why the hell is he talking about cereal? “Come again?” His flashes me a grin. “Magically delicious.” I don’t even fight the laugh that falls from my mouth. Colton Donavan at his finest. “You are so fucked in the head.

Colton cleared his throat. "I'm no expert on spirits and the occult, but this is Keelan we're talking about. If by some miracle his soul did find it's way back to the Alpha Estate, Voodoo Meryn with a Ouija board doing incantations would scare him back the way he came.

Women hand sight down through the generations. Mother to daughter.

In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.

Rivers spill mysteries into the ocean, and the ocean washes the answer to the shore.

Efficiency and focus are the keys to success.

I'm a demon sent by God in his scorn for man's sins to entice thee with" - I cringed - a voodoo vagina

It wasn’t that she believed in voodoo, precisely—but she believed in the people who believed in voodoo—and that was scary enough. -Coralee Ayers

You and your damned voodoo dick will not pull me back in. Not making that mistake.

He might not have believed in what he preached, he might not have believed in voodoo,” she wrote of the Reverend, “but he had a profound and abiding belief in insurance.

Maybe art itself was a kind of voodoo, possessing you, giving you supernatural power, letting you see in the dark.

Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gram added. “Oh, I don’t know maybe the voodoo mind magic going on five minutes ago?” I said.

Bone Daddy. That's what they called him. A walking talking well-hung pleasure factory who, with a few easy orgasms, could bring you whatever your heart desired. Your boyfriend would propose, your boss would give you a raise. Rumor had it he could heal your scars, inside and out. If you satisfied his lust.

I’ve been a nomad for centuries. I don’t think I’ve ever settled down in one place for longer than a few months—until I met you. When this is over I want to be near you, wherever you are. And if you don’t want me, then I’ll wait in the shadows until I’ve conquered your heart and you find me worthy of your love.

Today Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

You know what you need?" Giguhl said. I raised a brow, bracing myself for a punch line. "A to-do list. Might help you keep track of all the beings who want you dead and the satanic birdlife you've kidnapped." I imagined a list in my head: 1. Perform voodoo ritual on evil owl. 2. Find out who sold us out to the anachronistic Caste vampires. 3. Make amends with a lesbian werewolf. 4. Rescue twin. 5. Murder grandmother. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. "Yeah, I'll get right on that." Gighul heard the sarcasm. "Suit yourself, but don't come crying to me if you forget who you're supposed to kill when.

There’s a hell of a lot you haven’t shared.” “Oh, I’m sorry. Be sure to send out invites to the pot-meets-kettle show you’ll be throwing.” “I’m sensing sarcasm. I think being in Cajun country’s given me some of your voodoo.

I fail to see where it would have been more uplifting for them to have been inside a church listening to a man urging them to 'contemplate the sufferings of our Lord,' which is just another way of punishing one's self for nothing. It is very much better for them to climb the rocks in their bare clean feet and meet Him face to face in their search for the eternal in beauty.

And then I got what she was saying. In the paranormal world, everyone was your enemy.

Only, in Haiti, I realized, is it possible to drink rum and haggle with a god.

The Americans have perfected weather forecasts: a model presents a model of the Earth, a map, and jabs at it with her pointer – here and here, this is going to happen. Voodoo.

I used to sing lullabies to voodoo dolls I kept in a chapel. Clearly, I have no place judging you.” -Lucus

Ren’s conquests fell into two categories: those girls who still pined for him and those who stuck pins into his voodoo likeness every night.

The human placenta is filled with nutritious benefits, one of which is creating a fertile environment. At my age, I'm going to need all the help I can to have a baby, and if having a placenta smoothie or two helps - I won't count it out." "That's like some pretty satanic shit." Ethan is quick to observe. "Like voodoo or something.

Imagine you are Siri Keeton: You wake in an agony of resurrection, gasping after a record-shattering bout of sleep apnea spanning one hundred forty days. You can feel your blood, syrupy with dobutamine and leuenkephalin, forcing its way through arteries shriveled by months on standby. The body inflates in painful increments: blood vessels dilate; flesh peels apart from flesh; ribs crack in your ears with sudden unaccustomed flexion. Your joints have seized up through disuse. You're a stick-man, frozen in some perverse rigor vitae. You'd scream if you had the breath. Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all— raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire.

Some people were like rubber bands--willing to stretch but eager to snap back into place at the first opportunity.

Sometimes knowledge is not worth the headache it brings.

She had a hundred precocious ideas, and some were good and true, but they could never be hers until she found them alone, for ideas are but words unless they are sown in experience.

I've always enjoyed a challenge," Niko remarked, shifting through the powder to lift something out. "I think perhaps there are other things I could enjoy instead. Bonsai trees, painting, forging my own weapons. The opportunities are endless." He opened his hand to show me the small braid of several yellowed hairs. "Voodoo." "Think it would work?" I perked up. Killing from a distance wasn't usually my thing, but in this case, I'd make an exception.

Voodoo very old magic - possibly one of the oldest forms of all time. It's often referred to as vodou or voudoun.... Voodoo worships the loa, which are literally spirits - like ghosts - but much more powerful. The priestess can summon the loa, and the spirit inhabits her body. It's called being 'ridden

Not too many years ago, the names of our perfumes bore testimony to such things. There was a popular scent called Tabu, there was Sorcery, My Sin, Vampire, Voodoo, Evening in Paris, Jungle Gardenia, Bandit, Shocking, Intimate, Love Potion, and L'Heure Bleue—The Blue Hour. Nowadays what do we find? Vanderbilt, Miss Dior, Lauren, and Armani, perfumes named after glorified tailors"—there were murmurs and gasps in the audience—"names that evoke not the poetic, the erotic, the magic, but economic status, social snobbery, and the egomania of designers. Perfumes that confuse the essence of creation with the essence of money. How much sustenance can the soul receive from a scent entitled Bill Blass?

[[ ]] The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip. The body count climbs through a series of globewars. Emergent Planetary Commercium trashes the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Continental System, the Second and Third Reich, and the Soviet International, cranking-up world disorder through compressing phases. Deregulation and the state arms-race each other into cyberspace. By the time soft-engineering slithers out of its box into yours, human security is lurching into crisis. Cloning, lateral genodata transfer, transversal replication, and cyberotics, flood in amongst a relapse onto bacterial sex. Neo-China arrives from the future. Hypersynthetic drugs click into digital voodoo. Retro-disease. Nanospasm.

People are by nature illiterate and innumerate, quantifying the world by “one, two, many” and by rough guesstimates.21 They understand physical things as having hidden essences that obey the laws of sympathetic magic or voodoo rather than physics and biology: objects can reach across time and space to affect things that resemble them or that had been in contact with them in the past (remember the beliefs of pre–Scientific Revolution Englishmen).22 They think that words and thoughts can impinge on the physical world in prayers and curses. They underestimate the prevalence of coincidence.23 They generalize from paltry samples, namely their own experience, and they reason by stereotype, projecting the typical traits of a group onto any individual that belongs to it. They infer causation from correlation. They think holistically, in black and white, and physically, treating abstract networks as concrete stuff. They are not so much intuitive scientists as intuitive lawyers and politicians, marshaling evidence that confirms their convictions while dismissing evidence that contradicts them.24 They overestimate their own knowledge, understanding, rectitude, competence, and luck.25

There are a lot of things in the world that are unexplainable - love at first sight, vegetable pizza, and potpourri, for instance. But I doubt your ex's murder is one of them.

He didn’t immediately answer. His focus, however, remained glued to her cleavage. Ground control, we have contact.

Perhaps it is natural for the god of the poor to be akin to the god of the dead, for there is something about poverty that smells of death

That must have been some serious Island voodoo: the ending I saw in the cave came true. The next day we went back to the United States. Five months later I got a letter from my ex-baby. I was dating someone new, but Magda’s handwriting still blasted every molecule of air out of my lungs. It turned out she was also going out with somebody else. A very nice guy she’d met. Dominican, like me. Except he loves me, she wrote. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to finish by showing you what kind of fool I was. When I returned to the bungalow that night, Magda was waiting up for me. Was packed, looked like she’d been bawling. I’m going home tomorrow, she said. I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.

Even if I have done the adequate mental jujitsu to convince myself that I appear like a normal human being, a trip to the bathroom to regroup can on occasion turn into the kind of fun-house voodoo that happens in DMV photos and long exposures of Victorian children. There is something about looking into someone else’s mirror, something that always gives me more information than I need.

Or possibly “I like cake.” (She likes cake. This is one of four things I know about her. The others are: 2. Her name is Zuzana, 3. she’s in her last year at the Lyceum, so is probably eighteen, which is young but not heinously young, and 4. she can freeze a person’s blood with a look. I’ve seen it happen, though I have not been on the receiving end. She has voodoo eyes, and is more than slightly terrifying.

This city has more history than hauntings,” he says. “For one, it’s the birthplace of jazz.” “And home to voodoo and vampires,” says Mom. “And real people, too,” presses Dad, “like Pere Antoine and Jean Lafitte—” “And the Axeman of New Orleans,” adds Mom brightly. Jacob shoots me a look. “I really hope axe is a kind of instrument and not—” “He went around chopping people up,” Mom adds. Jacob sighs. “Of course he did.

[Fire] is lightfooted and shamanic, dancing between the visible and invisible, undoing matter one collapsed molecule at a time, wreaking utter destruction with a touch softer than breath. Its poor cousins, wind and water, are one-dimensional rubes by comparison. Wind is all push, push, push. Water is suffocating, but passively so. And even when water gets it together to be a torrent or a tsunami, it is but wet wind. Fire is at once elemental and otherworldly. Fire dances on the grave of all it destroys. Fire is serious voodoo.

Allen Ginsberg—sitting amid a huddle of Yippies off to the right—began chanting again, as he had all evening: “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare….” Ginsberg believed; he believed in everything—in democracy, in socialism, in communism, in anarchism, in Ezra Pound’s idealistic variety of fascist economics, in Buckminster Fuller’s technological Utopia, in D. H. Lawrence’s return to preindustrial pastoralism, and in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Voodoo, astrology magic; but, above all, in the natural goodness of man.

All is indeed a Blessing IF you can just see beyond the veils; for it is ‘all’ an illusion and a test, and one of the greatest Divine Mysteries of this life cycle.” This IS my constant prayer, my mantra, my affirmation, reverberation, reiteration and my ever-living reality.

Individually, the experience of most people was of accelerating impotence and incomprehension. They lived in a world of superstition. They relied on voodoo - charms, fetishes, and crystal balls whose caprices they were helpless to govern, yet without which the conduct of daily life came to a standstill. Faith that the computer would switch on one more time and do as it was asked had more a religious than a rational cast. When the screen went black, the gods were angry.

The air is saturated with the stink of perfumes at war. There are video screens on which flawless complexions turn, preen, sigh through their parted lips, are caressed. On other screens are close-ups of skin pores, before and after, details of regimes for everything, your hands, your neck, your thighs. Your elbows, especially your elbows: aging begins at the elbows and metastasizes. This is religion. Voodoo and spells. I want to believe in it, the creams, the rejuvenating lotions, the transparent unguents in vials that slick on like roll-top glue… But this doesn’t deter me, I’d use anything if it worked – slug juice, toad spit, eye of newt, anything at all to mummify myself, stop the drip drip of time, stay more or less the way I am.” (Cat’s Eye p113), Margaret Atwood

It is nothing new, these vital lies men tell themselves, muttering and mumbling them like charms and incantations against the powers of Night. The voodoos and medicine men and the devil-devil doctors were the fathers of metaphysics. Night and the Noseless One were ogres that beset the way of light and life. And the metaphysicians would win by if they had to tell lies to do it. They were vexed by the brazen law of the Ecclesiast that men die like the beasts of the field and their end is the same. Their creeds were their schemes, their religions their nostrums, their philosophies their devices, by which they half-believed they would outwit the Noseless One and the Night. "Bog-lights, vapours of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies, pan-psychic hallucinations—this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your bookshelves. Look at them, all the sad wraiths of sad mad men and passionate rebels—your Schopenhauers, your Strindbergs, your Tolstois and Nietzsches. "Come. Your glass is empty. Fill and forget.

Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all— raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire.

One day you see a man walking down the road, the next day you come to his yard and find him dead... Why is it that he cannot do what the living do? It is because the thing that gave power to these parts is no longer there. That is the duppy, and that is the most powerful part of any man. Everybody has evil in them, and when a man is alive... he will not abandon himself to many evil things. But when the duppy leaves the body, it no longer has anything to restrain it and it will do more terrible things than any man ever dreamed of. - From 'Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica', Zora Neale Hurston, 1938

I could feel Monika nudging me furiously at this point, but I refused to look at her. I wasn’t feeling particularly reverent about my mother’s deadness, or about the vicar, but I do despise that ghastly, ‘You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?’ approach to religious occasions. As a young man, I often goaded my believing friends with crudely logical questions about God. But as the years have passed, I have found myself hankering more and more for a little cosy voodoo in my life. Increasingly, I regard my atheism as a regrettable limitation. It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather, a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mystery: a species, in fact, of neurosis. There is no chance of my being converted, of course - it is far too late for that. But I wish it wasn’t.

That's what love is, Marissa. It's not magic or voodoo. It's real. You can explain it. I an tell you exactly why I love Sarah." I hold my hand out and, thank God, Sarah gently interlaces her fingers with mine. 'I had lots of friends when I was little but by the time I turned eight they were mostly gone. It turns out blind Parker with a dead mom wasn't nearly as much fun as she was before the accident. I couldn't run around and play and I cried all the time and knocked over everything and turned into a royal bitch and one by one my friends disappeared until there were only two left. I'm not saying they were the only one who understood me or were nice, just that they were the ones who didn't go off and find easier people to be friends with. I love Sarah because she's been my best fiend and stayed that way when it got really really hard to be my friend at all.

As I make the ten-minute drive into town, I curse O’Shea for forcing this volunteer gig on me and ponder the authenticity of voodoo dolls. Eventually I decide it doesn’t matter if they’re real or not. It’d still be fun to poke needles into a teeny doll version of Frank O’Shea. Once it starts falling apart from all the holes, I can use the head as a stress ball. At a red light, I shoot a quick text to my teammate Fitzy—Hey, do u know how 2 make a voodoo doll? His response doesn’t come until I reach the small arena across the street from the school. Him: I’d think u were fcking with me, but the question is stupid enuff to feel legit. No idea how to make v-doll. Can prolly use any old doll? Challenge will be finding a voodoo witch to link it to your target. Me: That makes sense. Him: Does it?? Me: Voodoo implies magic, hexes, etc. I don’t think any doll would work. Otherwise every doll is a v-doll, right? Him: Right. Me: Anyway. Thx. Thought u might know. Him: Why the fuck would *I* know? Me: Ur into all those fantasy role-play games. U know magic. Him: I’m not Harry Potter, ffs. Me: HP is a nerd. Ur a nerd. Ergo, ur a boy wizard. He sends a middle-finger emoji, then says, Bday beers at Malone’s 2nite. U still down? Me: Yup. Him: C U ltr

Thankfully, Gabriel was five minutes late, and by the time he knocked on the door I’d just finished putting on lipstick and slipping my feet into sandals. I opened the door. “I hope I didn’t keep you wait . . .” His voice drifted off as he quite blatantly checked me out. “What?” I asked, hand on my hip. He flashed me a devilish grin. “The little pink dress. You look cute.” What I found frumpy, he found cute. Wonder what his response would have been to the tight number. My eyes gave him a discreet once-over. He wore jeans and a Yankees T-shirt. It wasn’t exactly going to win over the locals, but I had to admit, he filled the shirt out ridiculously well. His short black hair was damp, like he’d just taken a shower. I felt my face behind to flush, so I turned away. “Come on in.” He stopped and surveyed the foyer. “I was only here for a minute when we came to get Joni. I didn’t get a chance to check the place out.” He paused. “It’s not what I was expecting.” “What were you expecting? Voodoo dolls hung from the ceiling?” He smirked. “Maybe just a little one of me.” “That’s hidden under my bed.

(This is from a tribute poem to Ronnie James Dio: Former lead vocalist of the band Rainbow, Black Sabbath. This is written with all the titles of the hit songs of DIO. The titles are all in upper case) You can “CATCH THE RAINBOW” – “A RAINBOW IN THE DARK” Through “ROCK & ROLL CHILDREN” “HOLY DIVER” will lurk “BEFORE THE FALL” of “ELECTRA” “ALL THE FOOLS SAILED AWAY” “JESUS,MARY AND THE HOLY GHOST”- “LORD OF THE LAST DAY” “MASTER OF THE MOON” you are When my “ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE” With our “BLACK”, “COLD FEET”, “MYSTERY” of “PAIN” you crave You’re “CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE”, “BETWEEN TWO HEARTS” When “HUNGRY FOR HEAVEN” “HUNTER OF THE HEART” hurts “FALLEN ANGELS” “FEED MY HEART” “FEVER DREAMS” “FEED MY HEAD” “I AM” “ANOTHER LIE” “AFTER ALL (THE DEAD)” Not “GUILTY” if you “HIDE IN THE RAINBOW’’ With your perfect “GUITAR SOLO” “DON’T TELL THE KIDS” to “DREAM EVIL” Don’t “GIVE HER THE GUN” to follow “DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS” Those “EVIL EYES” can see “LORD OF THE NIGHT” “MISTREATED”; “MY EYES” hate to fancy “SHAME ON THE NIGHT” “TURN UP THE NIGHT” Now it’s “TIME TO BURN” “TWISTED” “VOODOO” does “WALK ON WATER” And today its our turn “BLOOD FROM A STONE” “BORN ON THE SUN” I’m “BETTER IN THE DARK” “BREATHLESS” The “PRISONER OF PARADISE” you are! Forever you are deathless “SACRED HEART” “SHIVERS” Laying “NAKED IN THE RAIN” “THIS IS YOUR LIFE”- “ WILD ONE”! Your “GOLDEN RULES” we gain “IN DREAMS” “I SPEED AT NIGHT” I’m “LOSING MY INSANITY” “ANOTHER LIE”: “COMPUTER GOD” Your “HEAVEN AND HELL”- my vanity! By “KILLING THE DRAGON” “I COULD HAVE BEEN A DREAMER” I’m “THE LAST IN LINE” To “SCREAM” Like an “INVISIBLE” screamer Now that you are gone “THE END OF THE WORLD” is here “STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HEART” “PUSH” “JUST ANOTHER DAY” in fear “CHILDREN OF THE SEA” “ DYING IN AMERICA” Is it “DEATH BY LOVE”? “FACES IN THE WINDOW” looking for A “GYPSY” from above Dear “STARGAZER” from “STRANGE HIGHWAYS” Our love “HERE’S TO YOU” “WE ROCK” “ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD” The “OTHER WORLD” anew “ONE NIGHT IN THE CITY” with “NEON KNIGHTS” “THE EYES” “STAY OUT OF MY MIND” The “STARSTRUCK” “SUNSET SUPERMAN” Is what we long to find “THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING” Is the “INSTITUTIONAL MAN” “SHOOT SHOOT” to “TURN TO STONE” “WHEN A WOMAN CRIES” to plan To “STAND UP AND SHOUT” before “ THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL” Though “GOD HATES HEAVY METAL” “EAT YOUR HEART OUT” to reach the goal. From the poem- Holy Dio: the Diver (A tribute to Ronnie James Dio)

Dear New Orleans, What a big, beautiful mess you are. A giant flashing yellow light—proceed with caution, but proceed. Not overly ambitious, you have a strong identity, and don’t look outside yourself for intrigue, evolution, or monikers of progress. Proud of who you are, you know your flavor, it’s your very own, and if people want to come taste it, you welcome them without solicitation. Your hours trickle by, Tuesdays and Saturdays more similar than anywhere else. Your seasons slide into one another. You’re the Big Easy…home of the shortest hangover on the planet, where a libation greets you on a Monday morning with the same smile as it did on Saturday night. Home of the front porch, not the back. This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it. Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch. Private properties hospitably trespass on each other and lend across borders where a 9:00 A.M. alarm clock is church bells, sirens, and a slow-moving eight-buck-an-hour carpenter nailing a windowpane two doors down. You don’t sweat details or misdemeanors, and since everybody’s getting away with something anyway, the rest just wanna be on the winning side. And if you can swing the swindle, good for you, because you love to gamble and rules are made to be broken, so don’t preach about them, abide. Peddlin worship and litigation, where else do the dead rest eye to eye with the livin? You’re a right-brain city. Don’t show up wearing your morals on your sleeve ’less you wanna get your arm burned. The humidity suppresses most reason so if you’re crossing a one-way street, it’s best to look both ways. Mother Nature rules, the natural law capital “Q” Queen reigns supreme, a science to the animals, an overbearing and inconsiderate bitch to us bipeds. But you forgive her, and quickly, cus you know any disdain with her wrath will reap more: bad luck, voodoo, karma. So you roll with it, meander rather, slowly forward, takin it all in stride, never sweating the details. Your art is in your overgrowth. Mother Nature wears the crown around here, her royalty rules, and unlike in England, she has both influence and power. You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure. Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch, the poverty and the murder rate, all of it, just how it is and how it turned out. Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix. —June 7, 2013, New Orleans, La.

Security is a big and serious deal, but it’s also largely a solved problem. That’s why the average person is quite willing to do their banking online and why nobody is afraid of entering their credit card number on Amazon. At 37signals, we’ve devised a simple security checklist all employees must follow: 1. All computers must use hard drive encryption, like the built-in FileVault feature in Apple’s OS X operating system. This ensures that a lost laptop is merely an inconvenience and an insurance claim, not a company-wide emergency and a scramble to change passwords and worry about what documents might be leaked. 2. Disable automatic login, require a password when waking from sleep, and set the computer to automatically lock after ten inactive minutes. 3. Turn on encryption for all sites you visit, especially critical services like Gmail. These days all sites use something called HTTPS or SSL. Look for the little lock icon in front of the Internet address. (We forced all 37signals products onto SSL a few years back to help with this.) 4. Make sure all smartphones and tablets use lock codes and can be wiped remotely. On the iPhone, you can do this through the “Find iPhone” application. This rule is easily forgotten as we tend to think of these tools as something for the home, but inevitably you’ll check your work email or log into Basecamp using your tablet. A smartphone or tablet needs to be treated with as much respect as your laptop. 5. Use a unique, generated, long-form password for each site you visit, kept by password-managing software, such as 1Password.§ We’re sorry to say, “secretmonkey” is not going to fool anyone. And even if you manage to remember UM6vDjwidQE9C28Z, it’s no good if it’s used on every site and one of them is hacked. (It happens all the time!) 6. Turn on two-factor authentication when using Gmail, so you can’t log in without having access to your cell phone for a login code (this means that someone who gets hold of your login and password also needs to get hold of your phone to login). And keep in mind: if your email security fails, all other online services will fail too, since an intruder can use the “password reset” from any other site to have a new password sent to the email account they now have access to. Creating security protocols and algorithms is the computer equivalent of rocket science, but taking advantage of them isn’t. Take the time to learn the basics and they’ll cease being scary voodoo that you can’t trust. These days, security for your devices is just simple good sense, like putting on your seat belt.