Yesterday I wore my Catwoman boots to work. These are neither the totally insane over-the-knee affairs of the 80’s Catwoman, as worn with purple unitard and lipstick, nor the short, broad-buckled motorcycle boots of the current incarnation, which doubtless have “Mobster Ass” and “Crooked Cop Ass” carefully inscribed on the soles, right and left. These are Catwoman boots largely by dint of my saying so. They more closely resemble those worn by Trinity in the first Matrix. They are black PVC, knee-high, with a medium chunky heel suitable for both balance and beauty. I bought them for $12 or so at Ross Dress for Less for my Catwoman halloween costume, pictures of which I will neither post nor suffer to exist.

Under black boot-cut corduroys, such as I wore yesterday, they look like mild-mannered black leather office boots, probably only ankle-high. ‘What is the point of wearing them under such pants, then?’ some might ask. Well, my friends, that is precisely the point. Whilst the office-mate or casual passerby notices nothing amiss in my attire, I feel deep down inside that I am a stupendous badass. Of course, this agreeable feeling can always be simulated by the careful application of imaginary swords, giant orichalchum powerbows, fluttering capes, et cetera, but the boots, unlike these salutory visions and accoutrements, are always there. In such boots, I am constantly secretly a stupendous badass. I know you’re jealous.

Today I sat under the tall evergreens eating my hot lunch, and scribbling blog notes on a legal pad. The picnic table being both wet and grimed with long years, I perched in my warm greatcoat on a scant layer of legal pad paper. I was knee-deep in a shoewear-related musing doubtless destined for some future article, when I had a visitor. He broke from the trees and shrubs like a small king, demanding homage.

Now, in my two months on this campus, I have seen an entire herd of deer, the tracks of a coyote, one newt of ill repute, and two distinct black cats. But no such specimen of cathood had previously crossed my path or even fled the corner of my eye. I look at him as I scrawl these words. A sleek and well-fed feline, with clear blue eyes just slightly crossed. His thick fur, impeccably clean and without scar of battle, is a dignified black and white tabby at his face, but gives way at his pricked ears to a milky white upon which stripes are etched in dusty taupe. Not merely stripes, not tabby, not “tiger-cat” stripes, but indeed tiger stripes which band his legs and give him an air of power. One patch of this dusty color streaks down his hindmost back, trailing off as it reaches his tail, which is black relieved with white sparks of thwarted banding. His legs from behind are also dark, and his underside a spotless cream. He moves with assured majesty and feral caution, and while he mewed for my attention only until my (sadly vegetarian) meal was concluded, it seemed not a cry for help but a call to worship. He never attempted the supine twine of the legs or any such base inveiglement, but contented himself with sitting just out of clear view, noting his continued presence in measured tones.

He looks at me now, wondering why I disturb his nap with the loud rustling of paper and insistent skitter of pen, and I am unsure how to deal with him, how to show my respect to this manifest spirit of the magisterial hunt, how to worship his beauty without caging it, how to offer homage without insult. And so it is, as always, to my pen I turn, to stop this moment of watchfulness and this glorious impossibility of a cat from passing beyond my sight and being lost to me in the shadowy woods.

Matt thought I should post this for consumption outside my soon-to-be Dungeons & Dragons group. So here it be. A creation story and a few associated notes that are of minimal interest to those not likely to play in said game, but possibly amusing nonetheless.

In the Beginning—if there is a Beginning, for you know that there are many worlds, waning and waxing like the ringing waves of a raindrop in water—in the beginning of our own world, then, it is said there were only the Stars and the blackness. The Stars gave light through the blackness, and with their light they sang each other songs. There was one Star, however, who began to think how the songs of the Stars differed, and decided that, since the Stars’ songs were different, one song must naturally be best—and, as you may expect, he decided that the best was his own.

The Star turned inwards, then, and kept all his songs, his light, love and attention, for himself. “This is folly!” cried the other Stars, “No Star can hold within him all his light!” And so it was, for the Star began to burn, his light escaping despite himself in tongues of destructive fire, and he became the Sun.

The other Stars feared the fiery Sun, and sang together of a way to turn him from himself. “Why are the other Stars,” they said, “turned outwards to their brothers and sisters?”

“Because we are all joined in a fellowship of love,” sang the Evening Star, and they knew that it was so.

“But this Sun has rejected us,” they mused, and so it was they came to fashion a bride for the Sun, to turn him from himself and back to ways of love.

They formed her out of the blackness, that she might need his light, and adorned her with their songs, that she might be beautiful in his fiery eye. The younger stars sang her a body of stone, and the Evening Star sang her clothes of water, and all the stars together sang her into beauty and life, their choruses bringing forth leaves and fruit, birds and beasts, a million forms and ideas wherever the songs touched.

At first, the Sun looked upon this bride, the Earth, and found her beautiful. He touched her, and kindled within her his own heat, and so it was both that she came to have mountains of fire, and her child the Moon. The Moon was as both of them—both of the dark stone of her mother, and of the light, albeit pale, of her father. But the Sun looked on the Moon and saw only how his purity had been tainted, and he threw her angrily into the starry sky before turning in rage to her mother.

For now the Sun had been reminded of his own beauty, and now the shapely Earth seemed only competition. He rushed against the Earth with songs of burning hatred and destruction, and only the songs of the Stars and the new, strong voice of the Earth kept him at bay. Long they wrestled with him, and at length with songs they bound him out of the darkness and away from the Stars, beaming his hatred and his escaping light at the Earth his mistress.

And now the Earth was quite alone, save for her daughter tumbling crazily in the sky afar. She turned to the beasts and plants, but they heeded her not, and she asked the Stars once again to sing her life. From herself she took stone, and formed the dwarves, that they might be at home in the deep places and the high of her stony mountains. From the clay she formed the halflings, that they might ever change and adapt, and be too slippery to be long caught. From the rich loam she shaped the elves, that they might live and thrive with the trees and flowers. From the dust she shaped the gnomes, that like that medium they might fly far and wild on the waves and wind. And last she took from herself sand, and made humans, that they might be as plentiful and wide-spreading as the sand itself. And while the beasts and birds multiplied across the earth, those few that had heard the First Song now grew and changed in the Second, so they were strong in the songs of being, and became the Gods of the many peoples.

And how did the evil things come to the Earth-mother? Did they spring unseen from her soil in the birthing songs of the world, planted by the jealous songs of the Sun or the crazed Moon? There is no one, now, who knows, but many tell this tale of the birth of the Earth and her people. And many of those people think it’s rot.

---

Further roleplaying info:
Most people worship a totemic animal. This seems to work fairly well, though I will note for those of you who have played D&D before that the totemic animal gods are a little more…direct and hands-on than you may be used to. I like my animal gods. If you want one, let me know :)

Worshipping the larger entities is a little more fraught with peril. For instance, in order to get any favors out of the Sun, you have to sacrifice sentient beings to him approximately 12 times a day. Hence the Mectul, the cruel conquerors of the North, who constantly make war upon their ever-further neighbors in order to feed the sacrificial altars of their cities.

The Moon, by contrast, is easier to get along with. You just have to give up your sanity. I guess every little bit helps when you are as crazy as her.

The Stars are kind, but in order to hear them you must never step on the noisy face of the land. The Gnomes, therefore, live at sea, and only one Gnome per boat has made the ultimate sacrifice and stepped onto the land to deal with its peoples, giving up the soft songs and wise counsel of the Stars.

The Earth is the softest touch, but in order to get any more favors than the usual—you know, the bounty of food, shelter, et cetera she gives to all her chillins—you have to pretty much swear yourself to do what she wants. The dwarves as a people have done this, and she has given them a general commandment. Any individual dwarf can decide he is special and ask for a more specific command, but it’s kind of uppitty and the rest of the dwarves find it Shocking.

I have learned two new words today from RPGnet Forums.

In one corner, we have: maieutic, courtesy of Justin Achilli, Vampire line-developer. Extra points for non-spellability and hoitiness.

In the other corner, we have pleonasm and pleonast, a powerful family duo! Extra points for usability and applicability as an insult!

Who shall win the title of Champion New Word?

When first we came to our happy home, many asked, “What is the best thing about your new house?” Without exception, I said, “The kitchen!” but without exception, when I showed people around the new house, I felt compelled to add, on entering that palatial workspace, “I hate the green. I wanna paint it.” The calm, almost Italianate tile and borders in beige, cream, and white, and the linoleum with the faint tracing of fallen leaves, was accented with walls of bright hospital mint green, the kind of color you’d expect daubed onto a dentist’s rotary polisher, not smoothed on kitchen walls. “Artificially cheerful,” lissell called it.

So, as some of you may have the dubious honour of knowing, I painted my kitchen this past weekend. I removed every power tool and oddment from the kitchen counters, scoured the walls of grease with industrial cleaning solution, contorted my body into strange corners of cabinetry and precision-laid a half-mile of masking tape. Finally, I carefully painted the walls, squinting to find the million places where the high texture had left traces of mint green lurking under the dusty sky blue. I spent a little under 20 hours, perhaps, on this task, from the first scrape of sloppy mint green with the glass cutter to the final remnant of masking tape peeled painstakingly off the trim. I joked with Matthew, as I viewed the many rectangles and odd shapes into which a kitchen wall resolves itself, that two weeks from now I would wake up screaming because I would dream a patch of it was still mint green.

On Monday, lissell and wonko came over to play Exalted, and were forced to view and praise the newly blue room. Swashbuckling fun was had, the guests went home, and I paused with my hand on the kitchen light switch, revelling in the first day of my kitchen, clean, restored to usefulness, and fully blue. I looked across to the microwave, tucked in a custom-built shelf, and saw behind it the unmistakable radioactive cheeriness of Unpainted Mint Green.

And now, the stunning conclusion!

Two guards in the courtyard looked at each other in consternation as a pen-knife and an ink-cake rattled to stillness in Lihan’s dusty wake. “Was that an Anathema?” said Cuprek, rather wistfully, and Arn nodded. “I always thought they’d be…bigger.” “Scarier,” Arn agreed, watching the blaze of light dwindle down the road like a will-o-the-wisp. “THE ANATHEMA IS GETTING AWAY, SNAILS!” shrieked the red-headed brat in her very best regal manner, and the guards, along with those dashing from the manse, rushed to horse.

---

“That was my best pen-knife, too,” Lihan fretted, “what a terrifying day.” The horse did not reply, and there was no company but the sound of hoofbeats and the choking dust. However, the hoofbeats were too many, and company he would soon have. The piebald was already tired from its messenger run, and the guards he saw behind him were gaining, for all their heavy armour.

“Er, the Exalted of the Unconquered Sun easily lay low their enemies, right?” The horse once again disdained to answer, and Lihan studied his long, thin fingers, smudged with ink. “I think I might be able to lay low a small dog, if he were an enemy. More than that, I fail to see.” The horse flicked an ear backwards, as if to indicate that perhaps those heavily armed people coming up behind might care a little more than he did. Lihan looked over his shoulder, and found that the guards were close enough that he could see their oiled moustaches glinting in the coruscating light of his anima. “Fewmets of the Forest Dragon!” he swore, and, from some instinct born from the coupling of fear and deeply stirring memory, thrust one thin, spidery hand over his shoulder, shutting his eyes in fear and fervent prayer.

There was a sound like a plague of locusts scraping their carapaces together as they settled down for a rest in a ruined field. A thousand flinty whispers of sound and menace, and a rushing sensation, an almost feathery breath, caressing his palm. The next sound he heard was screaming, and he opened his eyes wildly to see the guards falling in a tempest of black, glassy shards that had clearly issued from his hand. Their horses slid and fell amid the fallen weapons, and their blood seeped among the bright colours of their enameled breastplates. He blinked. “Pity about the horses,” he whispered, “I think they were nicer than you.”

---

Nageru the bookseller dusted his wares and sniffed in self-congratulatory joy at the warm steam of stew-scent spreading from his kitchen. Tonight his house-guest, the illustrious First Age expert, Professor Hawkhome, would give a private lecture to the local chapter of the Seekers of Lore. It was, of course, a Highly Select and Secret organization, no less so because no one had ever seemed interested in ferreting out its existence or finding out what librarians, aging relic hunters, and other such scholars did in their evenings off. The shutters would be closed, the stew spooned out, and a frisson of secrecy would add to the pleasure they all took in their shared knowledge and interest. He hummed slightly, and didn’t even hear the sound of hoofbeats until Lihan careened into the room, his coats knocking over two piles of manuscripts.

“Nageru! I need your assistance at once!”

“Er…Professor Hawkhome, why are you…glowing?” the tubby little man shrunk back among the epic poetry section.

Lihan frowned, considered quickly, and drew himself up to his full height, pulling his long coats around him like an ermined robe, and calling forth the light of the wise setting sun to play about his head and wreathe his red-brown hair in aureoles of fire. “Nageru, I have been called to the service of the Unconquered Sun,” he intoned, “and to the ranks of the Children of Twilight. But even such as is my newfound power, I will need your aid —” he broke off as the man’s rosy face split in two to allow the eruption of a shout.

“Help! Help! Anathema! Unclean! Guards! Earthly Dragons, help me!”

Lihan dropped his airs, rolled his eyes, and grabbed the little man, who squeaked miserably. “Nageru, you nitwit! You know too much of the Golden Age to believe that swill! Weren’t you singing an ancient song of praise unto the Sun while you were doing the dishes last night?” he released the man, who stumbled backwards towards the books of epigrams.

“Well, yes, it’s a very old song, and, er, it’s—” he glanced around, “if someone saw you come here, I’m dead! Dead! The Dragon-Blooded will tear me to bits and burn me in my own books! You must go!”

“I need one of your carts, Nageru.”

He moaned, “I cannot help you! I must find guardsmen! I can’t be put in this position!” He backed into a pile of erotic poetry. “Anathema!” he shouted weakly.

“Well, at least I didn’t tell you where I’m going,” Lihan shrugged, and knocked the man out with a collection of Northern folk songs. Stepping over the sighing sleeper, he made for the stable, the ports, and the free Scavenger Lands.

Monkeys are cute.

Happy Monkey Year.

Imagine my shame to find, on looking up the word of the day, that I have been using it incorrectly. I suppose it is just as well I learn my mistake in good time, and it is still an excellent word.

perspicacity: Acuteness of perception, discernment, or understanding.

The little girl was much praised for her perspicacity.

Today the tower was alone. It is actually quite large for its ilk - a beige colossus quite worthy of its name - the Citadel. In college I used to claim that Matt had bought it as other men buy hot cars, so that I might claim my boyfriend’s computer was larger than any other girl’s boyfriend’s. Of course, the truth was that he couldn’t pass up the sheer number of drive bays for the price.

Now, however, the tower has fallen in importance, and sits on the ground swathed in cable like the curiously draped Reichstag. Two lesser towers of dark gunmetal purr across the interdesk chasm at each other, and the once-proud ‘mithrandir.cwru.edu’ is rechristened the military, utilitarian ‘citadel.’ Within its vasty innards it processes our mail and dutifully spits forth our web pages on demand. The most attention and diversion it can expect is the occasional ssh’d game of nethack.

How much more neglected it must feel, then, when the stream of mundanity from the outside world, the page requests and mail-checkings, cease, and it is alone in the quiet house? Or, indeed, does it manufacture these hard times to punish us for our neglect?

You may remember Kenny from his previous adventures.

“Hey, Kenny here. There’ve been a few downturns for me since I last filled you in. It isn’t easy to be a Drider-American.

“First off, I lost my job at Home Depot. I know! How could they slough me off, with my gifts? Who can check the labels on the shop-vacs on the top shelf like a drider? And who could let that drider leave his warehouse of home improvement goods? My supervisor, that’s who. Mr. Ronald McParkerson.

So there I was, Tuesday at 5 pm. The Home Depot doesn’t really hop at that time, and I was just shootin’ the shit with some of the countertop guys over in the kitchen models. There’s a few shoppers lookin’ at the built-in wine racks nearby, and this little kid is bangin’ all the cupboard doors open and shut—I dunno, maybe they got those safety sprockets on ‘em at home, cuz he was pretty excited. Safety sprockets are in aisle 12b, by the way. So suddenly the little jerk looks up and sees me, in my eight-legged glory and my orange apron that says “KENNY” on it in Sharpie.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE! He shouts, like one of the High Priestess’s boy-slaves being disciplined, or a surfacer bein’ thrown into the spider pits. At first, I thought he slammed a cupboard on hisself, but he’s looking at ME, and next thing I know, the dad’s comin’ at me with a reasonably-priced replacement sprayer nozzle suitable for all standard kitchen sinks. WHACK!

”’Er, sir, there’s been some kinda misunder-’

”’Monster! Someone call security!’ WHACK!

”’Umm, sir, I’m a Home Depot associate, here to help you with all yer -’ WHACK! -‘cut that out!’

”’Patty, get a security guard!’ He rolled his eyes at Julio and Jack. ‘Dear God, people, why don’t you help me?”

“Damn idjit just wasn’t gonna stop. So I weighed my options. I could kill the guy, but from the Customer Care and Service class I took, I think it’d get me in trouble. So finally, I let rip with a darkness spell-thing, and ran for the nearest wall as the inky black of my subterranean home billowed from the empty air, an’ all that.

“Sweet Mother of Spiders, how they took off! And not just my nozzle-wielding bunch, but every customer as far as I could see, from the nursery wall where I was hangin’. ‘Gas!’ I heard them yell, ‘Terrorists!’ That upset the security guard, and the next thing you know the whole building’s evacuated and the police are takin’ Nozzleman’s statement. And me? Mr. McParkerson told me to take my coffee mug and leave my apron.

”’You can’t be firin’ me over this!’ I said, ‘It’s discrimination!’

”’You’re some kind of de-formed freak,’ he said.

”’That was an expression of my specialness!’

”’That was some kinda evil hell-fart, an’ it’s gonna cost the store thousands in revenues!’

”’I’m differently abled!’ I pleaded.

“The piggy little man’s eyes narrowed, and his face looked redder than ever above his orange apron. ‘From now on, you’re gonna be differently employed’.

“I broke his mug on my way out of the breakroom.”

Next Kenny chronicle—“Looking for Lolth in All the Wrong Places!”