Last night we were sitting around in the living room, preparing for me to run a little Exalted for Rock Star and Matt, when there was a big clatter outside on the deck. We looked around, confused, and heard footsteps on the wood, more noises, perhaps even a scrabbling at the glass door.

“Is that the refrigerator?” asked Matt, as the fridge often makes strange sounds when ice is being made.

“No, that sounds like a person,” said Rock Star definitely.

Now, I have recurring bad dreams about burglars. Either they get into my house, and I am terrified, or I somehow kill them and feel dreadfully bad about their deaths. In either case, there is often a moment when I know they are there, behind a window, and I must pull aside a curtain and see for myself. I have to do this. It is necessary. I am forced to do it. Compelled by the inexorable spin of the universe towards its inevitable conclusion. And now, here it is. That moment. The disgustingly country mint green curtains wave against the glass door, concealing what must be revealed.

“Er,” I said, “can one of you not-fraidy-cats go get the curtain?”

So up leapt Rock Star and pulled back the curtain. There was a sound of scuffle and retreat, but I saw nothing. He flipped on the outdoor light, and peered out into the darkness. Perhaps he was gone, over the fences and away. Of course he was - why would he stay when he was discovered. I would never know, and always fear, and - “It’s a raccoon!” laughed Rock Star.

And indeed it was. Black gleaming eyes peered over the side of our deck at us, bravely defying us to shoo him further. Of course I could not. Such a cunning little plantigrade miscreant he was. And all he had done was knock down an empty metal planter. We all stared at him, and he at us, and at last he retreated into the night, convinced, I suppose, that we were not among those rare humans that would give him food. And I went off to make sure the trash can was firmly balanced at the curb.

As some of you know, our friend Rock Star is in town for his Spring Break. Matt is taking the week off work, and I myself am taking Wednesday through Friday off. So, in short, as much of my posting here comes at the expense of work, I shall probably not post further this week.

Our house, as previously mentioned, looks out on a small park where a creek dribbles innocuously by and ducks practice their mystic chants in expectation of the Webbed Old One’s return. It has long been too cold, too wet, and too muddy to contemplate a closer acquaintance with this park, but Sunday, as bands of cats criss-crossed the sward, children ran hither and yon in the sun, and nutria clambered out of the water to peer balefully at Spring, it seemed time.

We three tramped through the little park and continued to aimlessly take footpath after footpath through the suburbs, until we arrived at other parks, and from there, places that barely looked like suburbs at all—nascent orchards in their first three feet of growth, fields of tall, yellow-green grass beaten down by feet and bike tires. In the suburbs we saw extravagant lines, beds, and flurries of croci, and boisterous children. In the forgotten places we passed through a cloud of thick smoke as a family or neighborhood had the first barbecue of the season.

Finally we threaded our way back, and spent a while watching a large flotilla of ducks at the far end of the park. From our window we usually only see the common Mallard Ducks, but here we saw a great many of a smaller duck I didn’t recall seeing before. They were delicate, dusty, rosy things, and I have since discovered they were American Widgeons. We also saw a particularly large schooner that long eluded my keen googling skills, but which I have finally identified as a Muscovy Drake. This is the picture I’ve found that most closely resembles what I saw, as they vary a good deal. Ours had a white throat with occasional flecks of black, a more delicate red rugose region around the bill, and a gorgeous but subtle iridescent black body. I felt bad for him because he was alone, and such an ugly duck(ling) amongst those delicate creatures. He was quite lovely in his own way, though.

Spring!

My local friends, have you not noticed the proliferation of mattress shops in our fair city? The omnipresent jingles on the radio? The constant reminders that our beds are, in fact, not good enough, even if our back problems are more likely the fault of our days, not our nights? Matthew and I recently forayed into this wilderness of sleepland, and emerged with these impressions.

Mattress stores are concentrated capitalism. Perhaps it is the hefty profit margin, or the nebulous nature of the distinctions between products, or even the fact that everyone, just about, will someday pass those doors into the Enya-laden air of repose. They have every trick you can think of, and several you never ever have.

You walk into a mattress store and are confronted with a salesman and an array of naked mattresses, each coyly sporting a price tag. The salesman informs you that he can help you if you have any questions, hovers, and notes that there are many unadvertised sales (translation to people-speak: Price tags are lies to make you feel good when we tell you the real price). You lie on one, then the other… the salesman helps you in real ways, such as telling you that one over there is firmer/softer than the one you thought was too soft/too firm—and in imaginary ways that involve telling you about the Vastly Technologically Advanced World Inside Your Mattress (peopled by the dust mite race, of course).

All this one expects. Even the alternative version of “unadvertised sales”, experienced at Mattress Store #2, the “let me see if we have specially discounted mattresses in that model available at our warehouse” version… expected. The “unadvertised sale” price later inadvertently exposed as a quote devised especially for us being just over half the size of the putative price…not unexpected. The “unadvertised sale price” ending in the numbers 99? I expected that before I knew soft things to sleep on had a name! However, the sheer enormity of combining an offer to match or beat any competitor’s price on any mattress with a manufacturer system where each manufacturer makes 80 models, 6 different nametags for each model, and doesn’t publish specs, either on tags or online, for comparison shopping ease. 480 subtly different shades of soft thing to sleep on. Times about 6 brands.

The awesome majesty of capitalism spread out before me, and I saw that thousands upon thousands of grown people were dancing silly silly dances, making up names, coming up with imaginative stitch-squiggle patterns, trying to adorn industrial nylon in an appealling manner (HA!), coming up with new technologies and new names for old ones, devising new lies…just so that I would give them my money for a soft thing on which to sleep. When you think about it like that, it doesn’t seem so bad. I twitch my money and the jesters dance.

Here’s one that my dad always used in conjunction with words like ‘somnolence’:

A delectably long and euphonious word. As:
He lay back with a contented sigh, deep in a delicious postprandial somnolence.

In my continuing perusal by ear of Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, I was delighted to come across the following passage (Chapter 49, emphasis mine):

The word of command to halt being given, the soldiers formed across the street; the rioters, breathless and exhausted with their late exertions, formed likewise, though in a very irregular and disorderly manner. The commanding officer rode hastily into the open space between the two bodies, accompanied by a magistrate and an officer of the House of Commons, for whose accommodation a couple of troopers had hastily dismounted. The Riot Act was read, but not a man stirred.

The Riot Act! A piece of idiomatic miscellany whose roots I had often wondered about, but which I had never remembered or noted to look up later. Here was what was quite obviously a literal usage! So of course today I did remember to look up the infamous Riot Act, and was very much intrigued.

Here is the text of the Riot Act, created 1714 and enacted 1715 Anno Domini under the authority of King George I. It is a masterpiece of prolixity. To sum up, it is for dealing (as one might reasonably guess) with riots. Provisions are made for the punishment of rioters who destroy houses and other buildings, especially churches, whether of the C of E, the Catholic church, or dissenters (Protestants other than Anglicans), and for the payment of damages to repair said outrages… et cetera et cetera. But the meat of it is right at the beginning. There is a riot; one of the public officials specified by office in the law comes out and reads a short declaration from the Riot Act, namely:

Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

or something to the same effect. People trying to prevent him from reading this statement will be subject to the same dire punishment I shall mention later. At any rate, if the rioters don’t disburse within an hour - if twelve or more men remain, the mob is not considered disbursed - those remaining will be arrested by force and “shall suffer death as in a case of felony without benefit of clergy.”

This intrigues me more than a little. Not only is it, of course, quite a dire threat - no cooling it off in the drunk tank for these rioters (of course, it is worth noting that pinching a pocket handkerchief got you the drop in those days) - but the provision “without benefit of clergy” is fascinating. To the best of my knowledge of the Church of England, last rites are not a part of the necessary framework—nor indeed should I expect them to be necessary for a dissenter to go to heaven. So is this provision merely a streamlining clause, to help the local constabulary out by allowing them to shuffle off groups of rioters en masse as quickly as ropes can be knotted? Or is it a small dig directly at Catholics, for whom the Riot Act apparently includes a direct penalty for their immortal soul? Now I want to read up on the Riot Act and the exact circumstances of its creation…

Oh, and I also want to memorize the statement above (“The Riot Act” as read) for use in appropriate circumstances. Because I am affected and ridiculous.

Today I was at a loss as to what to post. So I gave myself an assignment: write something using three randomly selected words from the dictionary. Casting about for a “random word” function on Dictionary.com, I found none, and then recalled that my predecessor in this position had a rather dog-eared Webster’s. So I used the traditional flip-and-fingernail method, hoping for really juicy words like ‘carbuncle’ and ‘crepuscular’. I got, I kid you not, the following: ‘prejudice’, ‘custom’, and ‘the’. Yes, ‘the’. What a disappointment.

So instead, in honor of carbuncle (the only word I know of that can refer either to a big zit or a precious jewel) and crepuscular (far from the only word I know that sounds much prettier in French), I bring you a list of long, interesting c-words I believe deserve greater use.

Please feel free to add your own. The only rules are: Starts with C and Out of your head, not the dictionary!

‘The Haunted House’ has been removed in hopes that it may someday be published. I apologize to my loyal online readers, but my less naîve friends in the literary community inform me that online self-publishing like this could interfere with my little stories’ chances. Sadly, this means my best stories are the ones most likely to leave the site.

It’s raining! Terribly hard! When I was out in it earlier, before it swelled this much, it was plopping leadenly in my hair and making me shiver and laugh. But now it is burring, blurring down with a drum roll on every skylight all down the building, and spurting up from the sidewalk like millions of parade streamers. It’s so lovely and wet and home!

My husband hates Reed Richards. Maybe you haven’t heard of Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, the leader of the Fantastic Four. When you ask him why, he kind of splutters—“He’s soooo smart, and soooo rich, and…guh!”

I’ve figured it out. Reed Richards is a winner. Now, there are other characters in comic books of whom this is true. Most notably, Batman. He doesn’t have any special powers, he’s #4 or so in the rankings for best martial artist in the DCU… but he always wins. Even against people who are better fighters than him - because he’s so committed, so paranoid, and so prepared. But people love Batman. I’ve heard people say Batman is boring, or one-dimensional or too angsty, but the aggravation and eye-rolling hatred I’ve heard about Mr. Fantastic - not just from Matt (and not just from Victor von Doom)—does not adhere to Batman. Why?

I think I’ve figured that out, too. You see, Batman is smart. Maybe a genius, maybe just smart. He’s handsome, strong, incredibly rich. But the reason he always wins is that he has given up so much. He was robbed of his own family, he’ll never get married (the man was shying from commitment before Bridget Jones ever mentioned “emotional fuckwittage”), he never seems to let himself have fun. He’s not a good friend—not supportive, rather perfunctory. He has crafted his birth identity as Bruce Wayne into a mask to cover his “real identity” as Batman (unlike Clark Kent, who cheerfully admits that Superman is a mask to cover Clark Kent). He is basically deeply, deeply broken, and that’s how he wins all the time.

Reed Richards? Okay, he has superpowers. He has a gorgeous blonde wife, and two adorable kids. He’s a stuper-genius (yes, I said stuper), the smartest man in the Marvel Universe. He has, in addition to his own nuclear family, the rest of the Fantastic Four, the “family of explorers”. He has a kajillion patents, owns a big shiny building in Manhattan, and is openly a superhero - no angst. Even has a FF gift shop on the groundfloor of the Baxter Building. He’s the blasted Richard Cory of the superhero world - and if he ever, like said Cory, tried to put a bullet in his head, it would bounce back.

The current authors of The Fantastic Four have been making the story compelling by beating up on Reed. Scarred his face permanently, traumatized both his children, had the UN take him down, had Sue stay with relatives indefinitely, and killed The Thing. But that’s the problem. They’ve taken it too far. No one will allow them to leave The Thing dead. No one will buy the Fantastic Three. And so, as elasticly as Mr. Fantastic himself, the Marvel Universe will spring back to normal… and Reed Richards will have won again.

Brother Alta walked quietly and meekly behind the Tinker-Bishop as they processed into the Cathedral for daily prayer. Her burgundy robes were immaculately tidy and well-fitted, except for where they were caught on the butt of her weapon, as if by accident. She seemed not to see the priests of other gods staring at it with envy as she marched on in Bishop Tidwell’s train.

The Cathedral was, of course, a square building with the statues of the gods about its perimeter. The Tinker-God and Dreamer-Goddess touched uplifted palms above the doorway, the Wright-God and Farmer-Goddess held the altar on the facing wall, and the other pairs flanked the doors to the treasury and catacombs. From the ceiling, the enigmatic face of the Chronicler stared down. At the feet of each god, an unlit candle waited for its time; save at those of the Tinker-God, where the flame flickered in the draughts from the nearby door. All this was the same in any church; but here, the statues were of marble, their robes painted in the truest shades of their respective colors, the floor was tiled, and the vast fields of pews carved from imported hardwoods. The chamber was full of the smell of incense, the shimmering whisper of small bells, and the shuffle of the feet of the priesthood.

Brother Alta peeled off from the procession to sit in the frontmost pews with the other Tinker-Priests, and watched serenely as Bishop Tidwell took his place on the dais with the other bishops and the observer from the Order of the Chronicler. Most of the men and women in her pew smiled as the seven other Bishops awaited the Tinker-Bishop’s cue to sit. The service passed without event, the various groups of priests calling out what their god provided through the Church, and the other priests joining with them in praise and thanks. As was more and more common in these days, the praise and thanks for the Tinker-God from the other priests was desultory and faint. But no matter.

The service ticked along to its conclusion, the priests going through the motions of worship with accustomed grace. The sound of their voices rebounded from the walls and ceiling, so comfortable and accustomed that it might travel in timeworn grooves through the air. Now, as every day for nigh three years, the Tinker-Bishop stood to say the closing prayer, and held the congregation’s eye. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it and his gray eyes and shook his head.

“How great and majestic is our Church,” he boomed, “how glorious its harmony, that draws together all the enlightened lands under one shining roof of praise.” The priests looked at each other and murmured, discomfited shifting masses of green, mustard, grey, and all the colors of the gods. The Tinker-Bishop had not varied his address by a word for at least one year. “The natural course of history, as marked by the Order of Chroniclers, gives the world at intervals into the hands of our various gods. Our world and the heavens are as a perfect machine, a clockwork miracle that runs on faith.” Several of the young priests scowled at the metaphor, but the elders schooled their faces. “Only the hand of History can shift the world,” he frowned out at the dubious audience, “and cursed be the man who thinks his hand more worthy, his mind more canny, his heart more wise! A curse, I say, on the man who meddles outside his sphere! Or, indeed…on the woman.” He turned his gaze to the Bishops ranged around him, and stared at the Merchant-Bishop, whose face contracted into wrinkles of shock at the implication. The Tinker-Bishop drew forth the blood-stained note to Harris, and the men and women gathered in the Cathedral closed their eyes and braced themselves as if for a blow.