I have never really been comfortable with designating the truly Bad People on the intertubes, "trolls."

When I was a kid, which I confess was back in the last millennium, trolls were short, hairy, needle-nosed creatures, perpetual grumps who seemed to be eternally afflicted with vicious hangovers, which caused them to menace goats who clip-clopped too loudly upon the planks of bridges laid over watery troll wallows.

This is, admittedly, probably not the way anyone would really want to be.

But neither is it glorying in indulging in "sadism, antisocial behavior, psychopathy, and machiavellianism," which is what the brain doctors tell us intertubes trolls, they do be.

Also, I must confess, when I was a child, and my brother was a child, we together passed many a happy hour, in make-believe games, involving some sort of plastic spaceman, about three inches tall, whom we called "Robbie The Robot," and a naked, smiling, eyes-wide, plastic troll doll, of similar height, with LSD-colored hair, sprouting all and everywhere, from out the top of his cranium, known, to us, simply, as "Trolly."

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0praxBMGK4]

Together, my brother and I, we passed these unalive alive plastic beings, together, through all and every story, that we could conceive, through all and every, that we could conceive, solar system.

All our stories, they occurred out in space.

Because that's where we most lived.

That's where we all most live.

My brother was most often the robot. And I was most often the troll.

I can still summon up, sorta, smoker's-coughingly, "Trolly's" voice.

My brother, he can't summon up much of anything. Not that any of us can easily hear, at any rate. Because, he's dead.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVZey3HTzWA]

A guy who truly knows trolls is Thomas Keightley, an indisputably eccentric gent, one who more or less admitted to having "wed" a fairy. Keightley spent his life meticulously documenting the doings of such non-ordinary lifeforms as dwarfs, kobolds, nisses, fays, mermaids . . . and trolls. And what he says of the latter, I find interesting.

According to Keightley, trolls, like hobbits, dwell in hills, mounds, and hillocks, and thus are sometimes known as Hillpeople.

They are often quite wealthy. During occasions of great troll festivity, passersby have reported seeing trolls, unashamedly drunk, roaring and reeling and shoving great chests of money about.

It is alleged that troll homes, behind their modest dirt exteriors, are constructed of gold and crystal.

But they are not misers, these troll people. Trolls are generally "obliging and neighbourly; freely lending and borrowing, and elsewise keeping up a friendly intercourse with mankind" . . . except when they run unaccountably wild, and steal from humans not only "provisions, but even women and children."

Well. Shit. Maybe these people, they needed to be stolen. Who knows? Let's check with CPS . . . .

Trolls totally hate noise, which explains their reaction to the clip-clopping goats.

Their aversion to noise apparently began when Thor used to hurl his hammer at them; Thor, it is said, hated these troll people, and worked to strike them down wherever he was able.

These days, trolls are most discomfited by church bells, which cause them to foam at the mouth with fear, and move forthwith to wilder, more pagan territory.

Trolls can render themselves invisible, and can also assume whatever shape they choose, which explains Karl Rove. They can foresee future events ("Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside US"?); can confer prosperity, or take it away (Bush tax cuts?); and can perform feats of physical strength beyond the power of mortal man (Darth Cheney surviving 136 heart attacks?).

Trolls are—so sorry to put it this bluntly—pretty damn ugly. Keightley phrases it more kindly: "of personal beauty, they have not much to boast."

These days, they can be kinda scary, in their sprout-haired plastic smiling dancing nakedness.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjw3D8NCjbk]

Often they're hunchbacked, or have long crooked noses. Sometimes they're just fat and sit in a chair smoking a cigar while bellowing lies like a demented foghorn (Rush Limbaugh?).

If you try to speak to a troll, it is said s/he will often respond with a shriek of "Me! Me! Me! Me! Me Me!"

Which, true, pretty much jibes with a lot of our experiences, here on the intertubes.

The word "troll" is believed to derive from the name of the Scandinavian waterfall Trollhaeta, which translates roughly as "the abyss."

There are no trolls, it is said, in France. France is a troll-free zone.

What there are in France, at least in southern France, are fairies the size of adult human beings, who usually dwell in rivers and streams, but who occasionally find it amusing to assume human form, walk among humans, and even take a human as husband or wife.

I do not know what sort of fairy it was that Keightley wed. But, I'm pretty sure, it was this form of French fairy, from out of the water, with whom I cohabited, and for many years.

Until we fucked it up. And drained each other, for each other, of all that we most were.

Something out the corner of the eye. Stranger who's strangely familiar. Endless like the sky. For all time.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SdcwAYKSxo]