kleenexwoman | Compulsive updater? Me? You must be joking.

So I’m sitting at the library computer, happily typing out an invocation to the muses, when I turn around and see

diraskyria there. “Hey,” I say. “What are you doing here? I thought you were off in Aryneth doing research.”

“Hey yourself,” she says. “Want some of my espresso? I’m not going to finish it.” Which should have tipped me off right there, because they don’t allow coffee in the computer labs.

But hey, I was thirsty and kind of tired, so I take the paper cup, swig it down, and say, “Hey, where’d you go?” And fuck me if she’s not in the bottom of the cup, grinning and waving at me.

“Come on in!” she says. “It’s fun!”

And actually, the coffee looks pretty nice and warm after the cold day outside, so I’m just about to jump in and join her when I see this flash of white and black streak by. Well, I can’t just let a moving target pass me by, so I chuck the cup and follow it into the stacks. It skitters around a corner, and I’ve lost it; luckily, my predator’s eye is sharp enough to see footprints on the deep-pile acid-trip-dyed library carpet. I sneaky follow it into the B-829 section.

It’s a guy in a black suit, and he’s hanging onto the moving shelves for dear life. He’s pale as milk and maybe a little shorter than me, and he’s glaring at me with the clearest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. I recognize him immediately--it’s

drworm’s evil (or was it good? I can never remember) twin. Dunno what he’s doing in Mt. Pleasant, but he looks tasty. I hunker down and swish my tail at him. “My territory,” I growl.

He whips a book out from the shelf and brandishes it at me. “My book,” he says. “I just came here to get it.”

“What? No! That belongs to the library!” I try to read the title. The book’s all covered in skin.

“Not anymore!” He tucks it inside his jacket and swings off through the shelves, howling like an orangutan.

I lope off after him. He leads me on a merry chase through the B-F section, but I finally corner him and knock him down in an elevator. “Put the damn book back.”

He snarls a little, but he eventually takes it out of his jacket and gives it to me. Well, I’m breathing rotted meat on him, and I like to think that my fangs are pretty sharp. Yeah, I’m intimidating. Queen of the forest, yo. He still manages to scramble out between my legs when the elevator door opens, but now at least I know where he is: On the 3rd floor of the library, and it’s impossible to get out of there without one of the librarians showing you exactly where the wormhole is. And they’re never around anymore, because of budget cuts…so I wouldn’t worry. Anytime you want to come get him, Seth...

Anyway, I take the book back down to the computer lab, and it really doesn’t belong to the library. There’s no magnetic tag on it. So I flip through it a little, to see who it belongs to...and then a freaking tentacle whips out at me. I slam the book shut, and it kind of flops lifeless to the side. And then I see the author’s name.

lily_lemony, you remember that manuscript you were telling me about, the one that you accidentally lost through the library portal system? Yeah. It’s here, and it grew.

Eh, it’s really no worse than my Journalism class. Professor Jerusalem is practically obsessed with finding out the horrible truth behind my LARP group. I keep telling him that there’s nothing going on, but he insists that a bunch of people who run around pretending to be vampires have some ulterior motive. They don’t! They’re just pretending! The fact that they only come out during the night and can turn into bats is incidental!

I tried to get him to let me cover the Satanic orgies that CMU President Rao is having, but he says that’s old news. I told him that the fact that he’s funding them out of the students’ tuition money is probably newsworthy, but he said that he already held Rao at bowel-disruptor point and yelled at him about it.

Sigh.

nyghtshayde, do you think I should say hi to him for you? Maybe if he finds out that I know you, he’ll go a little easier on me. I know you guys were tight back when you were his Filthy Assistant...

Oh, and

ghostgecko? The miniature Tyrannosaurus you genetically engineered for me is starting to chase its tail and whine. Are they supposed to do that? Is it lonely? I started taking up rare roast beef for it from the dining hall, because it’s kind of hard for it to find enough mice and squirrels to eat in the winter, but I’m a little worried that it’s an unnatural diet for it. What should I do?

Anyway, that’s about all that happened today. I have a Beginning Sorcery class in a few minutes, though, and Dr. Mordrid hates if you walk in late. I’m going to ask him whether necromancy is legal, though.

josephwaldman keeps telling me about the time he conjured up the ghost of Elvis, and if that ever gets out...oh boy.

But yeah, other than that…it was a normal day.

Current Mood: silly
Current Music: "White Rabbit," Jefferson Airplane

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

diraskyria.livejournal.com

No coffee in the computer labs tipped you off? How about the fact that I was giving away unfinished espresso? Or just that I said I wasn't going to finish it?

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

But you always do! You practically throw espresso all over people! "Here! I'm not going to finish it! No caffeine for me! Nuh-uh!" It's like a shower of coffee.

From:

diraskyria.livejournal.com

I nearly orgasmed at the idea of a shower in coffee, until common sense came along, hit me upside the head, and made me understand that it is significally less cool and generally a really poorly considered concept. :P

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

I'm not so sure. One of the most decadent and pretentious things I used to do during my senior year of college, when I had an apartment all to myself, was take two loooooooong-ass baths on Saturdays, when I didn't have to work or really study until the next day. The first would be in the morning, with a stack of newspapers that I'd pilfered from the student mailroom for me to read and a big carafe of coffee on the edge of the tub, and the second would be at night, with the stereo going full-blast (all my nearby neighbors were over seventy-five and stone deaf) and a jug of cheap Carlo Rossi wine on the floor. I discovered that, the more hyper you get with the former and the drunker you get with the latter, it's really cool to pour some of your drink of choice into the tub water and just sit there watching it swirl around the white porcelain for an hour or so. A mild mental orgasm, of sorts. At least that's what it seemed like at the time. I could have been wrong. World War III had just broken out that September and I had the mental stresses of final-credits roundup and an on-again/off-again/no wait, on again/damn it, off again girlfriend to contend with. Maybe I should have stuck to smoking dope with the art-student kids instead.

From:

gyr-falre.livejournal.com

wtf?

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

http://crisper.livejournal.com/73274.html

From:

ghostgecko.livejournal.com

It probably needs its anal glands expressed. I'd suggest finding a licensed vet to do this for you. Amateurs tend to lose a few fingers in the learning process. Also, I'd cut back on the mammal protein a bit. You run the risk of gout. Try crickets from the pet store, or cockroaches - c'mon, it's s college, I'm sure there are tons of cockroaches. Dust them with bone meal, for roughage.
Whatever you do, DON'T get another mini-rex unless it's exactly the same size and the opposite gender (again, don't try and determine this yourself!). Rather like praying mantids, you can't really keep two tyrannosaurs together.

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

Ew, yeah, I'll take it to the campus vet for that, and scrounge some bone meal off one of the Bio majors. And I'll have to let it catch some of the dire silverfish that are still skittering around my room--I was worried they were poisonous, so I just squished them myself. I guess it'll be good to let the little guy get some more exercise--can't really take him out for walks anymore now that it's cold.

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

I once knew a lawyer named Silverfish. Or maybe it was a doctor. Or a banker, or a rabbi. Might even have been named Fishsilver, or Blumenstein, or Goldroth, or . . . (keep typing in Jewish surname variants for next eighteen hours)

From:

beetle-breath.livejournal.com

Heeee. I can't even think of a funny thing to say.

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

and if you go chasin' rabbits, and you know you're going to falalalala...

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

...say hi to the fucker for me. He still has my underpants. And I'm in a mood to be fucked...so tell him his Filthy Assistant said to get his bald ass back here. Pronto. *g* I have things in store for him. When I'm through with him, he'll give you A's. Nothing but A's.

Oh yes.

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

I totally will on Monday, if he's even there. Last week, he went on a bender and showed up with three new tattoos and a hangover, and the entire class discussion subject was "Shut up and fetch Professor more industrial-strength analgesics." Jeez.

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

He does that. Just you wait. One of these days, he'll bring the cat in. Then you'll all have cat-piss duty.

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

A friend and I came up with this theory a few years ago: that anyone who grew up in a house with three or more cats, as each of us did, is forever inured to the presence of feline urine stains on the carpet, droppings in the hall, claw-scratches on the furniture, or vomit on the bedcovers. "Oh, look at that," we think as we walk past the bedroom, "Dizzy threw up again." Then we forget about it for the next two years. Or: "Hey, Kimba, you wanna jump on my lap? Ohhh, such a good cat, yessir, pissing in my water glass, you're such a good boy!" This, you see, is why dogs chase cats: dogs have this paranoid thing about their owners that causes them to resent having to go outside to do their ejectory businesses, because they think that the master won't love them anymore if they do it in the house (not true, we only get mad for about thirty seconds), but they know the cat has to stay indoors because he's too small and too fast and therefore too much of a bait for cars passing by, and so they despise 'em. Either that or it's just fun.

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

My dogs and cat get along really well. Sometimes the cat gets irritated with the little dog (shown in the user pic), but otherwise, they're all siblings. And I don't get as upset over, "Oops, Medwyn threw up on the rug," because hey, he doesn't know how to go puke into the toilet. It's not his fault. He's a dog. That's what they do. What he does do is look at me pitifully when he does feel sick and then I'll get him into the kitchen (small apartment) and he pukes there. Easier to clean up. Oh well. It happens. Hells, I've seen kids just get sick wherever they are because when they've gotta go, they've gotta go (or whatever bodily function it is) and if they're not near a toilet, they're not going to be able to hold it because they've got small systems. But parents don't hate their kids nor do they get mad at them for it. Why get mad at dogs and cats for it?

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

Why get mad at dogs and cats for it?

Oh, because of the stronger emotions attached to animals, no question about it. By the time people get old enough to start popping out kids -- and this as much if they're fifteen and it's an accident as it is when they're thirty and it's planned -- they're beyond the point of innocence about the human race and its various tricks and turns and motives and impules. That is, they understand how people can go from malicious to golden-hearted within a fraction of a second, and then switch around again, and sometimes combine the two; and so they're wary of any new human they happen to cross paths with, no matter if that human happens to be made from their own bone and blood. So there's a kind of passivity and withholding of emotional reserves on the part of one's kids. But animals, they're all heart, all soul, no pretense or planning, and so us nerve-jangled humans tend to pour out all our essential being onto them. It's either that or the fact that pets are pre-programmed to eat bird guts before they slobber all over your face.

Well, as long as on the subject,

http://www.geocities.com/josephwaldman/Pics/PetsPics/PetsPics.html

is my own repository of pet pix. Said I to kleenexwoman a few weeks ago, re the Internet: "Don't people know that it was designed for nothing more than illegal Simpsons sound files, cat pictures from some bored housewife out in Podunk, Iowa, and 'fR#e V_!ag@ra n0VV!!!' spam messages from Penis K. Caltech?".

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

I don't know. I think if I had kids, which I thankfully don't, I wouldn't be nicer to them than I was the dogs and cat. I just don't like kids very much with the exception of one or two that belong to a couple of friends of mine. Then again, I don't like two-leggeds much at all...so I tend to be a lot more easy going on the non-humans of this world.

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

A wise man (I think it was Joseph Stalin) once observed that we humans can make all the additional humans we want, but just try to make an animal. This is loop-de-loop logic in so many ways that I can't think about it for more than thirty seconds without getting a headache. Yet somehow, it makes sense.

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

*laughs*

Well, considering that humans are just two-legged animals who've come to think we're superior to everything else on the planet, we technically can make animals. Just...two-legged ones.

At least, that's how I view it. I have no superiority complex...

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

As the very old, very bad, and very smutty joke goes:

Why do dogs lick their balls? Because they can.

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

Why do dogs lick their balls? Because they can.

Given how many guys I know that would kill for that ability, I would definitely say that the dog is the superior creature. *g*

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

I once got into a long, convoluted discussion about how it was or was not fair for women because all their stuff's on the inside. What're you gonna do, some kind of cycloptic mutant between the Three Stooges' eye-poke and the first-and-pinky pseudo-Satanic symbol to the lower regions of a lady's abdomen, in terms of fighting back when you get kicked in the nads?

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

*dies laughing*

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

And as long as we're on dirty jokes . . . what's the difference between oral sex and anal sex? Oral sex makes your day. Anal sex makes your hole weak.

*ba da boom*

From:

wolf-heart9.livejournal.com

Boooo!!!!

hehehe

From:

lily-lemony.livejournal.com

So THAT's what happened to my manuscript. Damned little thing kept slithering away from me. Howard has a copy too, he just hasn't returned it since 1931. Never a borrower, nor a lender...well, a library borrower is okay, though. Will give me an excuse to use that wormhole and spend the day up in Arkham, wandering with him around those glowing woods.

(Somehow blissful that "my book" is in a University library, no matter how fictionalized.) :)

Dr. Worm's evil twin sounds just as handsome as Seth himself. :)

And can I just say damn it all to hell I didn't know about the Alice writing challenge? Grrrarrr...

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

Yeah, now I can finally sit down and read it when I figure out how to quiet it down enough to let me read it. Does it like music?
Ach, that Howard...well, be careful in the glowing woods, that's all I can say. (Wink wink nudge nudge etc.)

It's never too late to do Rabbit Hole Day!

From:

lily-lemony.livejournal.com

Yeah, now I can finally sit down and read it when I figure out how to quiet it down enough to let me read it. Does it like music?

I couldn't really tell you as I've never tried feeding it music, but Daniel seems to like The Smiths quite a bit. ;)

Coming, Howard! :)

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

I wouldn't say exactly that I conjured up the ghost, but damn me if I ain't had some sort of weird ESP-type moments, not only re Elvis, but also the whole aura of magic sonic power that surrounded Sun Records. Dig: I'm a friggin' atheist, have been since I was twelve, but I find it no surprise that into that mysterious void of the human spirit came Elvis, Led Zeppelin, and from there onward, and onward, not long after I made the break with religious foolery. And I half expected that something peculiar and synchronistic would occur when I went to Memphis two years ago, and sure enough, when I was at Sun that afternoon, and I'd missed the final tour of the day by just ten minutes, and I was bowing on the sidewalk before the building (okay, it was partly for a funny photo, but it was also something I felt in my heart that I had to do), Sam Phillips's son Jerry just happened to be walking by, and . . . and meeting him was like meeting the son of God. (Not to be confused with Jesus O'Nazareth, who did some cute magic tricks back in the day but apart from that was nothing more than the first reform, small r, rabbi.)

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

:nods wisely: It's the power of music. Taps into that need for...something, in the human soul. Dig it. :is incoherent at the end of "let's make up silly shit to put on Livejournal and confuse everyone that's not in the joke" day:

(frickin' awesome story & picture.)

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

Thankee much, and there are about 625 more photos where it came from, and I'm not exaggerating that number. These include shots of me on the john (a staged photo, but still a good 'un), the jungle room at Graceland (Elvis is rumored to be buried somewhere in the three-foot-thick shag carpeting), and a highway sign for the town of Climax, MI. Yelled I as we drove by: "Hey, Climax, we're coming!"

From:

josephwaldman.livejournal.com

Oh yes, pic of said chance meeting is at

http://www.geocities.com/allthewaytomemphis/WithJerryPhillips01.jpg

From:

drworm.livejournal.com

I like how my evil twin has blue eyes. How else would you tell us apart?

Of course now I have to go get him before someone write doppelganger fanfic about us...

From:

kleenexwoman.livejournal.com

How else would you tell us apart?
Well, he's also a charismatic, talkative Socialist who believes in the inherent sparkly specialness of the common jackass. Or so the librarians tell me. But, you know, it's hard to tell just from chasing him down.

Of course now I have to go get him before someone write doppelganger fanfic about us...
Uhm...too late. (I didn't! I swear! It just spontaneously generates in the library. Kind of like that copy of "Lolita" I sent you where Lolita is eaten by a robot at the end of the book--they just evolve on the shelves because they can.)