So we have a zebra now. His name is Quixley. You will note that there are no "z"s in this name. Zebras get sick of everyone always wanting their names to begin with "z"; it's an old joke and they're over it. 'You're a zebra! Is your name... Zachary?' In fact virtually no zebras have names that start with "z". They much prefer "q" and "x". Like Quixley.
When we first introduced him to Quixley, Parsley was rather distraught. He's a very sweet guy, but more than slightly high-strung, and he has a bit of an inferiority complex that pokes its head up at odd moments. In particular, he has this thing about zebras; he thinks that okapis are disfavoured because they're less stripy than zebras are. If you look at this picture, you'll see Parsley's initial reaction upon realising that we'd brought home a zebra.
He was a bit taken aback. You could see him looking at his stripy legs and then at Quixley's all-over stripyness and getting more threatened by the moment. Then he ran over to AJD and stared up at him as though he'd been betrayed. It took a while for AJD to sufficiently reassure him that we hadn't acquired a zebra because we thought Parsley was deficient and that we're very fond of Parsley and Quixley will never supplant him in our affections.
To our great relief, this actually worked. Parsley went back over to talk to Quixley, who graciously pretended not to have noticed his temporary panic, and they ended up having a sort of ungulate bonding session with Lazslo.
Fortunately Quixley is pretty chill that way.
Quixley is here because the powers that be in the Wild Republic hierarchy have decided, after months of debate, that it is time they entered the new millennium and got with it. That is, it's time everyone learned how to use computers. At the moment, the Wild Republic's technological expertise is sadly lacking. Some of the animals - Sir Theo and Gilly, for instance - know how to use a computer for gaming purposes, and Rochester caught Mahler and Khamsin trying to get to a cat-porn site a while back, and a few of the others know how to use Word and Excel and check their email. Tibby's computer skills are actually quite good. But by and large, they're all pretty useless when it comes to computers, and the systems they've been using are all hopelessly out of date.
And this is where Quixley comes in. He's a trained IT professional whose mission is to bring our local chapter into the new millennium if it kills him. Everyone is supposed to be subjected to mandatory tutorials and training classes and this and that. This should have commenced a week ago, but Quixley's still trying frantically to get the computers updated. The systems they were using were so out-of-date, and had so many problems, that he's been working overtime. Sadly, the budget doesn't extend to getting wholly new equipment (the powers that be aren't savvy enough to truly understand the necessity), so poor Quixley has his work cut out for him.
It's a good thing that Quixley appears to be the laid-back sort. Lesser zebras might have been panicking by this point, but Quixley just drinks more coffee, shrugs, and gets on with things.
Eventually his job will become a pretty easy one, and he'll be able to spend his time doing whatever he feels like while answering the odd call of duty, but those days are still in the future, because many of the community members are less than thrilled about all this new-fangled technology crap. Leprosy and Humphrey are particularly resistant to the idea, and are making it clear that while they'll comply with the mandatory training, they are doing so under duress. Some of the others (Alfredo and Stal, for instance) are more willing but don't obviously have the aptitude. The kittens are the most enthusiastic about the new technology, and will probably take to it more readily than the others, but come with their own set of problems. Quixley doesn't seem fazed. He says that he likes a challenge, and that it will all work out in the end. You have to give the guy credit for his attitude.
Quixley is our resident geek. It's not just that he's an IT expert, either. He's watched every single episode of every single Star Trek series at least six times (and all the movies), and every episode of Babylon 5 at least thrice, and he's really into WoW, although he says his guild is about ready to disown him since he's been so busy working lately that he's neglected them sadly. He likes computer and video games in general, particularly the sort of old-timey classics, although he also really likes Portal. And Portal II; he's been after AJD to play Portal II so that they can talk about it, but AJD hasn't yet. He's also a huge fan of George RR Martin, and is really looking forward to discussing the first season of the TV series with Alfredo, who hasn't read the books but liked the show because of the portrayal of wolves. Quixley, of course, had read the books beforehand, so he's very curious to hear Alfredo's take on it.
Anyway, so Quixley is fun. He doesn't take anything, including himself, overly seriously, but he's dedicated to his job all the same. These are both qualities that should serve him well with this bunch. I'll let you know how the training sessions go once they're underway; there's bound to be some interesting stuff to say about them. The first thing Quixley means to do is explain to Plouie and the others that the iceberg is just an obsolete desktop, which should be interesting.
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