I identify with those children. Near my hometown they build a 50 foot tall marionette of Zozobra (Old Man Gloom) every year and burn it. As a kid I used to insist on watching it on TV, to make sure that fucker was dead.

And yet you all do nothing to stop Kokopelli!

Zozobra is a word for sadness in Spanish.

My girlfriend likes porcelain dolls in pretty clothes. Not quite Chucky-sized, but close.

She excuses it saying that she didn't have any dolls when she was a little girl, and still feels deprived. She's not deprived now though, because she has arranged dozens of the things in our study room, and stand staring with their cold dead eyes at all hours of the day or night.

Or so I hope. I have pointed out that in any film those fuckers would come to life at night, but she says that she would love them to come to life. I pointed out that they would murder us in our beds, but she says that they are kind and lovely, and wouldn't do that. She loves those dolls.

Sometimes at night, if I reach for the light switch in that room, my fingers touch a small ceramic hand instead.

Last night I noticed that the mirror in that room is aligned, just so that when you walk out of the bathroom, you can see two of them staring at you from that room.

So, if I suddenly stop commenting on SE, please check the news reports to see if a British couple has been found murdered in their beds, and the police have nothing to go on...