Son of Reader Mail

Wherein I respond to many several two interesting comments which have sprung from my Curse/Or Grand Unified Theory posts.

1.
DemonicBunny, in response to my Theory of Magic post, did utter:

Agoramancers.
The more cats they keep the more power they get.
The more cats they get the less power they wield.
Neither cats nor fully fledged agoramancers wield any power at all.

Who are the agoramancers and why can't they wield any power?

I think you mean Ailuromancer, Bunny, because an Agoramancer would have something to do with wide-open spaces. You bring up an interesting point however, and it immediately draws to mind the fact that cats were revered in Egypt, even being accorded the same mummification and burial rites as nobility. The reason they were revered is because the cats preyed upon the vermin of the city, specifically the rats that would otherwise eat from the royal granaries.

So now I'm thinking of the old ladies who hoard cats, and why they don't have power. Well, for one, they don't properly revere the cat. They are, at best, spoiled by their owners, given kitty treats and not allowed to go outside because they might get hurt. But cats are predators, you see, they need to run free to stalk and kill. A proper cat isn't owned; it owns you.

So these hoarders are amassing cats when they should be amassing grain (or something else that vermin would eat.) They're short-circuiting the paradox by trying to control the cats, when it is the freedom of the cat that grants power.

So an ailuromancer wouldn't have a house full of cats. It wouldn't even own a single cat. A proper ailuromancer is allergic to cats, because as everyone knows, those are the people that cats like best. Of course, most people who are allergic to cats hate them (which makes the paradox stronger), and people who hate cats aren't likely to have them around, let alone develop an obsessive magical worldview based upon them.

Fear... fear the angry divorced homeless man who lives in an area curiously devoid of vermin. His ex-wife mysteriously suffocated to death in her sleep, and when her body was found it had been partially eaten.


2.
Ricochet, she of the Pinball Mind, asked:

So if the internet is a huge mad brain with a billion voices shouting within it at once and theoretically linked to each consciousness that touches it, does this mean that we are all at risk of contracting organic forms of digital viruses via the electronic impulses in our brains?

What do you think an Internet Meme is? (No joke. I'm actually planning on using this in the book. Both you and Bunny are likely to be amused and distressed when I introduce a certain antagonist provisionally known as K.K.)

Think about it. How long did it take for the "Chuck Norris Meme" to make its way from the internet to a mainstream media campaign commercial?

Answer: about 2 years. Pretty slow for a cultural phenomenon, but about right for a disease transmission from original source to new population.

Cos if so, not only could you make a mint selling cerebral protection software, it would explain a lot of the shit going on in the world today.

The first thing that popped into my head was the phrase "mind condoms".