_ _ _ _ ___ __ _| |__ | | ___ __ _ _ __ ___ _ __ ___ | (_)_ __ ___ / __/ _` | '_ \| |/ _ \ / _` | '__/ _ \ '_ ` _ \| | | '_ \/ __| | (_| (_| | |_) | | __/ | (_| | | | __/ | | | | | | | | | \__ \ \___\__,_|_.__/|_|\___| \__, |_| \___|_| |_| |_|_|_|_| |_|___/ |___/ by HOUSEMAID & THE FEAR __________ __..._____||||____ /__-- --__\ \ \ \ ___| ___||___ | | | | / ||\/\/\/\/||__________/ / \__ / || || / \____....___ /____ ||/\/\/\/\|| _____---' / \ ---------- / \ \ || || || | | \ \ \ || | | | | || | | | | | | || || | | | | | | | || | | | | | | | | || | | | | ___ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ ____ ___- _- __ -------- EXCERPT FROM: HURLEY'S LITANY BOOK 7 SECTION 46 CHAPTER 37 FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE STUDIO, MODULAR, SYNTHESISER, PERCUSSION, POLKA, AEROPHONE, ACOUSTICS AND CYMATICS WORLDS. 75. CABLE-TAKERS Also known Cable Gremlins, Cable Goblins, Cable-nobblers. In Finnish pieni kaapelipaholainen or pikku kaapelipaholainen. In Russian, шнур-воришки (shnur-vorishki) or шнуришки (shnurishki). In Swedish, Kabel-nisse. In Dutch, Kabel trol or Snoer kabouter or Koord knager, sometimes Tros fee. In Cornish, Bastardyon travyth Kevy bocka du Though this is in some dispute as one of our researchers was told something completely different down the pub by a visiting member of Prof. Stuart Mclean's research staff. Further dispute has been brought by academic on the Goldsmiths faculty as they affirm that a Cornish translation is impossible, due to the fact that "everybody knows Cornwall does not exist." To which our one, rather embattled Cornish researcher has asked us to print. Te Omgyjor. For our Irish readers and folklore enthusiasts; though definitely native to the island, no Irish translation has been included as a staff member revealed the names were "poorly disguised swear words and curses. Some of them were not even in Irish, they just were written really close together see…" adding later "...I tried saying the one at the end there where the paper was all bent, yellow and folded and my dog turned inside out. Don't print those." Due to their connection to the earliest points of the commercial electricity, Cable-Takers were initially dismissed as an atavistic superstition by academics. Until noted academics Prof. Edvard Mehler (Viking and Old Norse Studies, Helsingborg) and Dr. Bo Retzner (Old Norse Studies & Pre-Electrical Synthesisers, Landskrona) brought voluminous evidence of Viking & Norse ship builders speaking of nefarious creatures they referred to as Rope-Takers. The creatures are only referenced with rope, twine, string and lace and never noted as taking tools or anything else. The Chronicon of ElEbb makes note of a remedy given by a prisoner from Ireland that stated they could be turned to good use if all the knots on the boat were poorly done and that this would force the creatures to come and retie all the knots better thus preventing them from stealing any rope. No outcome is given to this story and bizarrely the Chronicon finishes shortly after this entry. Similarly, a diary recovered from deeply buried Great Fire era ruins in London details blacksmith Kavain Space's continued trouble with the beings in his forge that kept stealing his chains. Interestingly, screwdriver sprites are discussed at length in Foucault's essay Excuses & Folklore and further in his book Customs & Folklore. Initially used as an example of where humans use folklore to explain shortcomings, malice and chance, Foucault recounts an incident in Edinburgh in The Doric where a local man called Edgar Upton argued harshly with him over his essay Excuses & Folklore. Upton's conjecture was that Foucault did not have enough local knowledge to state such creatures could or could not exist. That it was highly possible that while not the intelligent humanoid creatures human give fairies credit for being, that perhaps some cross between a pine marten and a raccoon with crow like tendencies could well exist. Upton's reasoning was that as a father of four who worked two jobs and one at the weekend, with a sick mother, he could not possibly have the time it took to hide his screwdrivers on himself, sober let alone drunk. When Foucault disputed this, Upton invited Foucault to accompany him on week in his life. In an emotive paragraph Foucault ends up agreeing with Upton, suggesting that "…as we miss things in the ocean everyday. It stands to reason that there could possibly be and likely are smaller glitter and shine obsessed rodent-sized mustelid-like creatures that in this time of modernity have become fixated on our screwdrivers and other polished tools." Though like the nine-times cursed screwdriver sprites. The Cable-Taker is one of the rarest sighted though often blamed of the fairy folk and house spirits. In fact, The Cable-Taker has been so rarely been spotted that no visual representation exists. From 1883, in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable mentions a Henry M. Wollenhaupt of Hastings, New York whose reports repeatedly refer to "the little things" "in the wires" "Beaks saw one…I've never seen one, just the back of one shadow as it scurried away with the copper. Looked small and not entirely hairy." A later edition would make mention of letter to The British Almanac in 1897 from a J. Hill, Camden Town asking about help preventing the "…little bastards with the claws…". In 1902, a Michael Ash of Scrofula, Devon in the Northeast Devon Bugle formerly the Royal Northeast and Northwest Devon Herald, again in the form of a concerned readers letter would recall "…appeared to be wearing a small grey coat of some sort or have very loose skin…like a ferret…wearing a suit…or if a ferret's skin was a suit, like a businessman's suit, but without all the hair, and it rustled in the breeze when the ferret ran away on two legs, like a wee businessman, except not…" 1904 would see acoustic engineer Chris Sealey of the University of Winnipeg would write a small paper on the creatures citing several unverifiable sources that the Cable-Takers were usually accompanied by a faint smell of ozone. Much like that in a subway station. In the same year another academic, Wilson Chauncy-Claridge of Cymatics Department of Pennskolyow Kesunys yn Kernow University, England, would make mention in a footnote that the creatures left behind a smell of yesterday's food with sometimes, an ever-so slight undertone of alcohol. Often cider. In 1918 James St.James J. Dafydd James creator of the soft-noise genre would interrupt a seventeen and a half hour Telharmonium concert (one of, if not the last concert) to talk about the creatures that regularly invaded his music space to hide his "connection ropes, leads, and valves". As is noted by the seminal essay on the subject by noted Dutch Cryptographer Prof. Pepijn Kok (Aalten) "Over Kabel klootzakken en hoe te falen om ze bij de kladden te nemen" - it would appear near impossible to catch the creatures or to make them leave and it would seem once you have what Cornelius Moss refers to throughout his biography as "those bastards those utter bastards" they will never go away. Reaching some sort of appeasement with the Cablebastards seems to be the best someone can hope for. Prof. Kok is noted for burning down a small neighbourhood in Haarlem in an attempt to "…burn out the scourge that haunted his offices." As the mathematician Cornelius Moss mentions in his biography "Six zero six and three zero three: my life as a base number" - "In order to combat the utter bastards that presumably are stealing and hiding your cables, judicious practice must be adopted in the study or work space. Because they must be, mustn't they? Because why would you do that to yourself? Who would do that to themselves? And the time, the time it would take, to put them all those places. No, indeed it must be those wee bastards. Those cable thieving bastards…ooh it makes me so angry, those gits, this one time I had to…" (as the reader can see, even the mere mention of the Cable Gremlins can dissolve a man of science into distraction. Today, Cable Goblins are a serious issue for electronic music artists. Stories persist that London-based artists such as Simon Lob and The Wogan Christ have accidentally murdered assistants as they have tried to get "the bastards" with what are thought to be illegally obtained firearms. Indeed, the urban legend about The Aphex Twin and Rephlex's Cornish Wicker Man cult against the bastards is repeated so often in electronica circles that it is generally taken as fact and young artists are warned from visiting Cornwall in August 'lest they find themselves trapped in a giant wicker Moog 55 screaming for help as the sun rises and they burn away to nothing so that the coming year with have a bountiful harvest of tones and be free of cable losses. "Don't go to Cornwall in August" they say, "they'll burn you, those synthesiser folk, they'll burn you…" So the story goes anyway. In a time of resurgent modular synthesisers, Cable-Takers or as they are referred to in the community; banana-bastards, patch-gits, cord-gobbling- shitfucks are a growing menace and noted musician and scorer Tom Holkenborg has reportedly taken to banning dwarfs from all venues he plays and will kill on sight any human of 147cm or below that attempts to enter his studio. Further, it is said that Holkenberg and Brian Williams are personally responsible for a 39% decrease in the population of vertically challenged or short people in the Venice Beach area and new local governance banning the sale of ferrets. Both musicians were recently investigated due to rumours they had been kidnapping people suffering from dwarfism and hunting them for sport amongst the dunes. While the investigation proved inconclusive, a degree of notoriety was attained when it was revealed Brian Williams refused to co-operate with police unless all reference to people who might be below 147cm in height and therefore a possible Cable-Taker be changed and made as "bastards.” A Venice Beach police source was quoted off the record as saying that this "…made everything very time consuming…" "Time consuming? Just like the bastards, those bastards, who keep hiding my cables." was the answering statement read out on local television by Brian Williams' publicist. Whether Cable-Takers are figments or delusions used for blame against a creeping and frightening loss of faculty in a cruel and indifferent world. Or some for- gotten type of glitter-attracted rodent or mustelid remains to be proven and possibly, a question for the ages. One thing is for certain Cable-Takers and their superstitions have not faded away with the passage of time like lepre- chauns, knockers, gorbin-mikael of the drains or the pancake fairy. Rather worryingly, this has not gone unnoticed in the tech community and researchers at Goldsmiths University have noted a rise in neurosis about Cable-Takers and Blockchain. Drawing parallels between it and amphetamine psychosis. Assurances that the Cable-Takers are ancient things that could not possibly think the Blockchain is like a cable or rope are often met with fury and violent reactions as wild-eyed coders screaming "You don't know that, you don't know that, because you can't know that! Look at Mt. Gox - we don't know!" And we don't. Know that is.