The Wild Republic Hits the World Wide Web

Quixley, as previously mentioned, was sent here to force the local chapter into the computer age.  He spent the first month or so of his tenure just fixing up the machines themselves, which were old and slow and riddled with spyware.  After he managed to get everything in place, he started giving the others tutorials.  Some of them were a bit hesitant, and Leprosy still grumbles about everything, but his efforts are starting to see results.  Consequently, Quixley's job is much more laid-back these days.  I thought I should share with you a few of these results.

First of all, Parsley has developed a massive crush on Sandra Day Okapi, one of the justices on the Zoo-preme Court.  Parsley caught on to the whole web-browsing concept pretty easily, and it occurred to him to look up how Day Okapi was doing on the court.  He's never met her, but he has a lot of species pride, and she is his people's hero.  She's also apparently pretty hot, if okapis are your type.

He's taken to doing a lot of soulful pining in front of the computer like this, gazing on the image of his goddess.  At least it's not porn?

Gilly, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, has discovered online shopping.  Here he is at his favourite site.

Since we have remained staunch in our refusal to give him a credit card, Gilly can't do more than look, but he looks a lot.  He even has a wishlist.  He also has a really irritating habit of leaving the site up when he's ended his browsing session; we assume this is a new tactic intended to guilt us into giving him what he wants.

The website that has been the biggest hit around here is LiveJournal, despite LJ's recent issues.  Every last member of the local chapter, including all of the foreigners, has opened an LJ account, friending all of the others.  Here, for instance, you can see Omri writing in his journal; the text reads, 'Hey everyone, my next dancing bear show will be on Wednesday night.  I'm playing the dancing bear!'

This is kind of cool, but also logistically problematic, because there's only one computer between them all (except for Murchison and Magick, who have iPhones).  So someone is always on LJ, and there's always a queue of others waiting for their turn at LJ.  Here is the queue behind Omri while he was taking his turn:

You see the problem, right?  Someone posts something, and then everyone else wants to check their friends-list so that they can read it and leave comments, not to mention posting something of their own; but there's only the one computer, so they're always in the queue, and then sometimes someone spoils the folk still in the queue on what was posted and those who haven't had a chance to read it yet get angry.  It's kind of unfortunate.  Meanwhile, Gilly and Sir Theo are annoyed because they have less time to play Dominion now that everyone else wants computer time.

The juveniles have things a bit better, because they have periods of time when they can be on the computer while the adults are still working - although they do still have to contend with each other.

But this means that the adults boot them off when they're done working, so their computer time is restricted in other ways.  The kittens have complained to Jasper about this, but he hasn't been very sympathetic.

Facebook has been much less successful around here.  About half of the animals have joined it.  They seem to find it overly complicated or something.  Here's Quixley giving Humphrey and Seleucus a Facebook tutorial; Quixley said afterwards that no matter how many times he went over how to "like" things and Facebook walls, they didn't seem to catch on.

Over all, Quixley's done a good job of introducing computers to the local chapter of the Republic.  He's been less successful lobbying for a bigger budget, even with Alfredo's support.  Quixley thinks they need at least five machines, preferably ten, but the bureaucracy won't give him more money for this unless he can show that the computers are being used primarily for work, which he can't, because with only one computer, no single individual can get significant work done.

Natural Disasters Edition II: Hrithik Saves Greater New Jersey

The worst of the storm is over, anyway, and Alfredo has rescinded the evacuation order.  The Wild Republic is now emerging from the closet.  They appear to be no worse for the wear, but they're all a bit cranky.  Being crammed into close quarters like that was evidently an experience:

• Rusty complained most of the time because he wanted to watch the storm.
• The kittens got bored and sang a lot of 'One Hundred Bottles of Beer' whenever Jasper's attention was diverted.
• Cami and Angel Joe were pretty terrified the whole time.
• The Wild Parliamentary Monarchy delegates, plus Seleucus, Leprosy, and Desmond, spent the entire time having a spirited intellectual discourse on the nature of reality, which everyone else felt wasn't really in keeping with the gravity of the situation.
• Omri spent the entire storm trampling all over everyone in an effort to find Alfredo's clipboard, which (it was later revealed) Parsley was sitting on.
• Quixley, deprived of his usual dosage of caffeine, was pretty grouchy the whole time.  You can't really blame him, I guess, because he was worried that he'd have to configure the computer system all over again.
• Nicky fainted, but he got better.

By far the most notable happenstance, however, is that Hrithik insisted on meditating the entire time, because he was convinced that in this way he could keep the destruction outside to a minimum.  Naturally this began to wear on everyone else's nerves almost immediately, but with his Jeopardy! track record, no one could really make a compelling case against him.  Zebulon probably could have, but Zebulon, either in a show of Team Malagasy solidarity or because he's crazy, decided to take Hrithik's side.  Team Malagasy has pull, I'm telling you.

Now, of course, Hrithik is claiming sole credit for the fact that the entire eastern coast of the United States hasn't disappeared Atlantis-style beneath the waves, despite the fact that even the most alarming of the pre-storm predictions had not mentioned this as a possibility.

Oh - one other thing.  Sleepyhead managed to sleep through the entire hurricane, and quite possibly never noticed himself being evacuated to the closet at all.  Apparently this how giant pandas respond to natural disasters.

Wild Fascist Dictatorship Newsflash: DUCKS

Owing to the extreme nature of the storm presenting striking the Eastern Seaboard, Ebenezer Popcorn has ordered his entire citizenry to transfer themselves into ducks or face steep fines, thus throwing the country into panic.  Reports indicate that conspicuously non-avian animals have been seen wandering around the capital city in duck masks and fake duck flippers, the latter sometimes worn on the wrong feet or on too many feet.  No arrests have been yet made - it is possible that news of the fraud has not yet reached the proper authorities - but sources are predicting that some citizens may be forced to stand trial for duck fraud.

It is worth pointing out that the Wild Fascist Dictatorship is located somewhere in Austria, and that at this time there have been no reports that Austria has been unduly affected by Hurricane Irene.

Natural Disasters Edition

Well, so there's a hurricane.  Exciting, right?

At the first signs of severe weather, Alfredo ordered the entire local chapter evacuated into the closet to wait out the storm, ambassadors and all. This isn't actually a sign that he's an alarmist so much as a practical matter; Alfredo may be neurotic, but he rarely panics.  His objective was mostly to ensure that everyone kept away from the windows and stayed in one place, so that the more easily scared animals - Plouie, Cami, Angel Joe - were neither staring at scary weather nor being tortured with it by animals made of sterner stuff.  He did let Rusty watch for just a little bit, though; Rusty loves storms.

Several hours after the evacuation, I discovered that Murchison wasn't in the closet.  Whether he stayed behind on his own initiative or Alfredo's is not clear; he's not saying.  I persuaded him to move further back from the windows, anyway.

Self-Portrait

Yesterday, AJD asked me where I'd put his camera, since I'd been the last to use it.  I said I'd thought I'd put it  back where I'd found it, but obviously it wasn't there.  This set off a flurry of searching with no success: we had no clue where the camera had got to.  I was particularly baffled, because I was dead certain I hadn't even taken it out of the room.

Well, it turns out Navarre has suddenly developed an interest in photography.  We finally found the camera in his clutches, and he confessed.  He swears he was going to put it back when he was done; he says he's borrowed it a few times before, but he'd been able to replace it before anyone had noticed.

You know how a lot of people with cameras want to take pictures of themselves taking pictures of themselves?  Navarre is one of these folk.  The results are extremely adorable, although I have to admit that they kind of all look exactly like this.  He hasn't expanded his repertoire yet (assuming he's not a photographic Frida Kahlo).

Jasper has sternly reprimanded Navarre for taking the camera without permission; we've told him that it's okay if he borrows it provided he asks first, but he's not allowed to for the next week.  Jasper suspects that he was sneaking around with the camera rather than asking because he was embarrassed to admit that he'd become interested in something that didn't pertain to preparing for his future as a monarch.  Like AJD and myself, he's delighted that Navarre's found a hobby.  He's always so serious and so intent on studying, and it's great to see him lightening up a little. 

The Many Guises of Seal

Sometimes you can know someone for years, and think you know pretty much everything there is to know about them... and then they surprise you, and you realise that there are still things about them you never even suspected.

I went to take a nap a bit ago, by which I mean, I sort of collapsed facefirst onto my mattress.  Immediately a problem revealed itself: I was wearing an oversized T-shirt that I'd tied with a scrunchie, and if I insisted on sleeping in this fashion, the scrunchie was going to make it uncomfortable.  So I sort of heaved myself up just long enough to pull the scrunchie off the shirt, and then I stuck the first place I could think of that it wouldn't get lost, which happened to be around Seal's neck.

This had a most unexpected consequence: observe.

Seal is an Elizabethan!  Look at how naturally he wears the ruff and how well it suits him!  I never guessed!  Here we've been together twenty-seven years and counting, and I never realised that my sea lion companion is Elizabethan.  I felt pretty embarrassed, let me tell you.  How could I have failed to notice it before?  But Seal was very nice about the whole thing.  He said that it took him quite a long time to realise it himself, and in fact hadn't twigged to it until I put the scrunchie around his neck.

Sometimes we surprise ourselves.  It's true.

Despite what you may think, Seal is not a stranger to cosplay.  Nope.  I'm a Jew-by-choice, not a born Jew, and I was raised Catholic.  Every year at Christmas, I used to torture poor Seal by dressing him up in the little Santa Claus costume my mother made for him when I was three or four.  I still have this costume, and Seal graciously agreed to be photographed wearing it (the things one does for love, right?).  

See, he's a Christmas Seal.

Come to think of it, he was awfully delighted when I told him I was converting.

Laura's Eyes

As I said in a recent post, Alfredo worries about Beppe a lot, because e's convinced that he's dooming his son to a lifetime of psychological problems because he's a single parent.  Beppe, as far as we can tell, shows no signs of deep psychological damage; he behaves just like any puppy of his age should.

Nevertheless, Beppe has of course been affected by his mother's death.  He was telling us the other day that he can't really remember her anymore, and he feels pretty sad about that; he wishes he had at least one clear memory of her.  So I pointed out to him that he has his mother's eyes.  

Alfredo's eyes are amber, but Beppe's are very blue, just like Laura's were; Alfredo has told us before that he's very glad about this, because he can see a little bit of Laura whenever he looks at Beppe.  I told Beppe what his father had said, and suggested that whenever he feels a bit sad because of his mother, he can go look at himself in the mirror, and know that his eyes are just like hers.  It's not the same as havivng real memories of her, of course, but it's similar, and he'll always be able to do that.

Beppe immediately brightened.  His father doesn't tell him constantly how much his eyes are like hers, and so he'd forgotten it.  He says he feels much better knowing that he has her eyes, even without the mirror strategy.  This didn't stop him from trying the mirror idea too.

Happily, this experiment was also a success.  Beppe was so delighted that he hurried off to tell Alfredo about it, which made Alfredo conspicuously misty-eyed.

A Bored Libertine

So Magick is bored.  Extremely bored.

Few things aggravate Magick more than monotony. There's a higher-than-chance probability that this is directly relevant to a certain poker game that took place not long ago.

It's not entirely clear why Magick is with this delegation at all.  There's some sort of mystery surrounding it.  We more than suspect that he's involved in covert operations (although everyone is too polite to inquire directly), but from hints that some of the others (mostly Nicky) have let slip, we've concluded that this does not explain why he is here as opposed to somewhere else, because there seems to be some sort of scandal connected with his current job.

This explains a number of things, actually.  Magick likes challenges and action; this sort of job, which mostly limits him to hanging around a group of colourful but largely sedentary characters, is clearly not well-suited to his temperament or abilities.  Sure, Murchison is here, and they clearly have a working history of some kind, and it's probable that Murchison's presence is a partial explanation for Magick's... but only a partial.  Magick is quite obviously wasted here, and he knows it.

From what Nicky's let slip, we suspect that there's a female involved here.  Magick's reputation with the fairer stuff is quite notorious.  Not that this is surprising, given his rank, his looks, and his innumerable talents.  According to Sir Tristan, female felines have never been able to resist Magick, and he's never been able to resist them either, even the ones he really should resist.  So our current working hypothesis is that he got a bit too intimate with the wife of the wrong cat.

If females are indeed the source of Magick's current exile, he's paying for it now, because there are virtually no females here, and definitely no available ones.  Lady Faraday is his best friend's girlfriend, and anyway that boat has long since sailed; there's no interest on either side.  Sithri is quite firmly attached to Skandar, such that it would likely require surgery to detach her, and Skandar gets pretty possessive whenever Magick is around.  Magick and Sithri actually have some sort of history together, although it's not clear whether he was involved with Sithri herself or with her sister-cum-rival-cum-best-friend Smitra or with both of them; whatever happened appears to have ended badly.  I don't really know what would have happened had Skandar not been around to keep Magick away, but from the sound of it, history is unlikely to repeat itself.

This leaves Skwidjit the grey cat, who spends most of her time on AJD's window, often on top of the A/C.  She's not really his type at all, but she's the closest thing to an available female cat on the premises, so Magick can often be found checking her out anyway.  He's been here long enough without putting any moves on her that I don't think he's going to, but checking her out appears to alleviate his boredom somewhat.  She doesn't seem to mind; he's not her type either (she told me once that she fancies ginger toms), but she finds the attention flattering.

This arrangement is less satisfying to one member of the Wild Republic, for whom one really must have sympathies.

Poor Mahler.  He's had a crush on Skwidjit ever since he got here, and seeing Magick - his idol and hero - with her apparently in his sights... well, that's shot all his hopes to pieces.  Never mind that he's much too young and callow for her, nor that she showed no signs of returning his interest before Magick got here... nor that in all honesty Mahler's reasons for being interested in her are probably not that different from Magick's, in that he's a horny adolescent and she's the only available female around.  Mahler is all gooey over Skwidjit in the way that only adolescent males can be.  He probably writes her poetry in secret and everything.  So he's been pretty mopey over the whole thing.

The only other female around here is me, and, well, I'm not a cat, so the chemistry just isn't there. 

Magick and I get along pretty well, I have to say, and he has a lot of the qualities that attract me in a man, and I appear to have a lot of the qualities that attract him in a female... but I'm not a furry and Magick prefers his females fluffier and with more pairs of breasts, and these are obstacles neither of us can get past.  If he were a guy or I were a leopardess we'd totally run off together, but we're not.

So the upshot of this is, Magick is really bored, and much as I love having him around, I do hope for his sake that whatever scandal he's been sent away to avoid resolves itself with due haste so that he can get back to doing things he finds more fulfilling.

Psychiatrist Wanted

Alfredo is fighting with his superiors over adding new members to his staff again.  He only won the battle for legal counsel and a full-time supervisor for the kittens about two months ago, but this isn't stopping him.  This time, he's trying to convince them that his chapter needs a full-time psychiatrist.  He is, in fact, probably quite correct; but not for the reasons he thinks.

See, Alfredo has two chief reasons for getting a mental health professional here.  The first is Zebulon.  He's yet to see a firsthand demonstration of Zebulon's legal prowess, because although Zebulon's taken several cases since he got here (and won them all), they were all cases on the side; he's too good a lawyer for his post here to be the sole extent of his responsibilities, especially when you add his personal ambitions to the mix.  So Alfredo remains highly skeptical.  He'd feel better if there were a shrink on site to maybe make Zebulon a little less crazy - or even declare Zebulon unfit, although he doesn't think this is likely to happen.

Unfortunately for Alfredo, Zebulon doesn't really need a shrink.  He's insane, but all aye-ayes are insane, and he's highly functional despite his insanity; it doesn't interfere with his job, and it bothers other creatures much more than it bothers Zebulon himself.  So getting a shrink on-site is not likely to alleviate Alfredo's fears.

His second reason for wanting a shrink is his son.  Alfredo is absolutely terrified that Beppe is going to have serious psychological problems because he's motherless.  He's sure that he's being too strict a parent, or maybe too lax.  It's bad enough that Beppe's mother died; now he's stuck with a father who is an incompetent parent.  At least, that's how Alfredo sees it.

Actually, Beppe seems to be doing just fine.  Certainly his mother's death has affected him, but he appears to be quite well-adjusted despite that.  Moreover, Alfredo, despite his anxieties, is doing a perfectly good job as a single father, and Beppe seems to enjoy having a bevy of doting uncles, kittens to play with, and Lady Faraday to lick his fur every now and then.  Sure, he could probably benefit from some counselling, but his situation isn't very urgent.  All things considered, he's in good shape.

Despite the fact that Alfredo's two main reasons for getting a shrink aren't really as urgent as he thinks they are, the local chapter really could use a shrink anyway, because plenty of other locals could use some help.  Take Sleepyhead; Pedro has concluded that there's nothing physically wrong with him, but maybe a mental health professional would find reasons for his persistent somnolence.  All three of the Ice Age creatures could use some help with their extinction issues, especially Mimsy, who is slightly batty.  At least three of the kittens could use counselling: Navarre because he takes himself far too seriously; Rusty for his ego issues; Cami for his anxiety.  Parsley and Nicodemus have insecurity issues.  Angel Joe has been doing much better lately, but he still has some lingering trauma and would definitely benefit from some professional help.  Omri, we suspect, has made poor career choices.  And then there is Alfredo himself: neurotic in the best of times, uncertain of his abilities to parent his son, and still deeply grieving for his beloved wife.  All of them would benefit from the presence of a skilled therapist.

Plouie, of course, is probably a lost cause.  But never mind that.

It's probable that Alfredo's current lobbying campaign will not meet with immediate success, but he's confident that it will ultimately prove successful.  He has cards he hasn't played yet: he's willing to offer to take a pay cut if they'll send someone qualified.  They would never force a pay cut on him - for Beppe's sake alone - and he knows it, but he also knows that they'll realise he's serious.  He's a wily one, our Alfredo.  Anyway, so we're likely to get a new psychiatrist around here eventually, although it might take a while.

Another Emissary

Somehow I have been remiss in mentioning that the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy are not alone in sending emissaries to our local Wild Republic chapter.  There is another emissary: Alcindarias the gryphon, who comes to us from the Wild Mythical Federation. We don't often have cause to mention him, as he has a history of remaining rather aloof.  He's formidably intelligent and doesn't play well with others, so to speak - gryphons don't, as a general rule.  I can't say I blame him, really; he's ancient, after all, so dealing with the Wild Republic and with us must feel like dealing with infants to him.  That said, he is a little stand-offish.  For a very long time he wouldn't even tell us his name.

He's also very well-educated, as you can see from his surroundings and accessories.  He holds so many illustrious degrees that I can't remember them all, and he speaks a ridiculous number of languages, from the various mythic tongues to some cryptic dialects to several regular animal languages and a number of human languages (yes, including Classical Greek).

Alcindarias has made his presence felt a bit more strongly since the delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy got here, because he and Sir Theo really hit it off.  They're of similar sizes and a similar degree of gravitas, and Alcindarias has some affinity for felines.  One finds them sitting together like this a lot, near the window away from the rest of the mob.

Alcindarias likes us okay too.  We're immensely flattered, actually, because he doesn't seem to have a particularly high opinion of humans - not that he seems to entertain particularly high opinions of non-mythics in general.  Here he is with me:

We have no idea why he decided to come here, to be honest.  It's not typical for the Wild Mythical Federation to send ambassadors; they're not really a political organisation per se, so much as a group of allied species who are fiercely protective of their privacy and of each other.  One suspects he's here for motivations of his own that he's unlikely to tell us.

Desmond Studies

It's been mentioned before that Desmond is a rabbinical student in his spare time.  He's been studying for quite some time now, and his teachers have told him that he'll be ready for his ordination soon.  The problem is in the scheduling.  There's going to be a lot of upheaval in the Wild Republic over the next month or so, which is going to leave him without a lot of time for studying, and is also going to make scheduling the ordination quite difficult.

Desmond is taking this very philosophically, because that's the way he is.  Alfredo has agreed to let him have a few days off for study while there's still a lull in activity, and he's been making the most of it.

He's not studying Torah here, actually; he's reading the section on the four Parashiyot in A Guide to Jewish Ritual Practice.  I've embiggened this picture so you can see the text if you squint a bit.

Desmond's of the opinion that he knew his rabbinical studies would take a very long time, since he has to do them in his spare time; and in fact he's progressing much faster than he'd anticipated.  So a minor delay in the date of his ordination isn't something to fret about.  I wish I had his equanimity.

Mass Snuggling

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'm just going to give you the picture:

AJD says he highly recommends participating in group snuggles of this nature, if you can find an opportunity.

Magick's Fan Club

Jasper's arrival was a huge relief to the entire local chapter, because it effectively put an end to the kittens' running about wrecking havoc because no one was looking after them.  Several residents were, as I have mentioned, particularly relieved.  Alfredo is relieved because he needn't be quite so worried about them causing great offence.  Stal is relieved because he felt like it was his fault they were so unruly even though it wasn't.  Lady Faraday is relieved because she can do her real job without feeling an urge to intervene.  All of this I've mentioned before.  What I hadn't mentioned before is that there is one other highly relieved party, namely Magick.

One can't really blame the kittens for idolising Magick.  He's what all young male cats want to grow up to be: dangerous, suave, brilliant, successful with the ladies, you name it.  So it's not really surprising that immediately upon his arrival, they started hounding him.

This is such a typical moment, I can't tell you. Mahler, Navarre, and Rusty are the most persistent; Cami, being the shyest, hangs back a lot.  Mahler gets close to him, mimic his every movement and manner of speech (down to the accent, I'm afraid), and try to show just how cool and impressive he is; Khamsin pesters him with questions; Rusty and Navarre alternate between behaving like Mahler and behaving like Khamsin; Flurry just sort of rubs against him a lot and makes excited noises; and Cami stares at him shyly with mute hero-worship in his eyes.

Magick is actually rather fond of them, but it's rather hard to conduct one's business - particularly when a large portion of said business involves being mysterious - with a pack of kittens shadowing you around everywhere.  He's much too well-bred to be rude to them, but they're kind of hard to discourage, and the whole experience was extremely embarrassing.  A lot of the time Magick would be reduced to pacing around the room with his entourage in tow until another of the adults took pity on him and swooped in with something else for the kittens to do.  

So quite possibly Magick is the person most relieved by Jasper's arrival.  He certainly made a point of befriending Jasper from the start.  Of course, they're both leopards, both intelligent, and both good at sparring, so they'd probably have been friends anyway; but Magick's gratitude at Jasper's existence helped break the ice.  Magick's a great guy, but he's not normally quite so gregarious.

Zzzzzzzzzz

I'm not really sure why AJD wanted to take this picture of me and Alfredo, but he did, so here it is.

My Little Gilly Monster

Gilly and I have this rather silly game we like to play with each other.  It consists of him pretending to eat me, and it goes something like this: we'll be hanging out, often cuddling a bit, and then he kind of starts gnawing on me a little bit.  He likes gnawing on me, for some reason, although he doesn't eat me very much.  Red pandas aren't that carnivorous - they eat mostly bamboo - but they do eat birds and insects and small mammals.  I'm not, from Gilly's perspective, a very small mammal, and part of the game is that I have to remind him of this.

When I remind him that he's probably not supposed to eat me, he puts on this dramatic display of innocence - Gilly does a very good dramatic display of innocence - and then I scratch behind his ears and call him my little Gilly-monster, and then he nibbles me a little in good monster fashion and then the game is over.  There's also a shorter variation we play sometimes, if I refer to him as my little Gilly-monster without him first attempting to eat me.

...I never said it was a particularly thrilling game, but we rather enjoy it.  Especially him, because he's not the one getting eaten.

Wild Republic Deathmatch

Summer is a slow time for the government in the Wild Republic.   It's the time when the legislative bodies adjourn and everyone else takes turns having vacations so that they can go home and hang out with their own species for a while.  This is less true in local chapters like ours; everyone gets a bit of vacation, but not at once, and the chapter is expected to stay open and operating as usual nevertheless.  With so many government employees on vacation elsewhere, though, this makes things a bit dull for the local chapters.  This means that everyone has more time to themselves; but it also means that they get a bit bored.

I think this is why they decided to have a local Deathmatch.  Apparently it was Mimsy's idea.

By the time AJD and I got wind of this, they'd already more or less worked out how it would go.  They had the tournament brackets all set up, so everyone knew who their first opponent would be.  Everyone was supposed to participate, including the youngsters and visiting diplomats.  Even level-headed types you'd expect to raise objections to this scheme - like Leprosy and Lady Faraday - were really into the whole idea.  (It must be noted that Leprosy was scheduled to fight Plouie, and therefore may have had an ulterior motive.  Lady Faraday was going to fight Rochester and has no such excuse.)  Let this be a lesson to you: civilisation only takes you so far.

Before anyone reading this gets too excited: no, this didn't end up happening.  It was called off at the eleventh hour.  Mind you, it wasn't called off because everyone came to their senses; or at least, not exactly.  It was called off because Desmond suddenly pointed out that Magick was going to win.

I don't think that the fact that Desmond, a manatee and rabbinical student, was scheduled to fight Murchison, an arctic fox and special agent, should detract from the wisdom and perspicacity of this observation.

Anyway, that was kind of the end of it.  Of course Magick was going to win.  It was blatantly obvious in retrospect.  So much so that it was agreed that they didn't need to go to all the trouble of having the fights to determine the winner.  Magick has been proclaimed the Official Champion of Wild Republic Deathmatch and everyone settled down to have a party.  I mean, parties are good too.

Magick suggested a poker game, but no one took him up on it.

Despite all the excitement that had been brewing over the cancelled event, there was surprisingly little disappointment in the group.  I guess they really were mostly bored.  In fact, there were only two disappointed personages: Rusty and Navarre.

My understanding is that the initial match-ups were the result of chance; Quixley wrote some sort of script that randomised them.  Therefore, perhaps no one should be blamed for an unfortunate oversight produced by the script.  Rusty's first match was to have been with Laszlo and Navarre's with Cami.  The winners of these two matches, however, were to fight each other; and Rusty and Navarre were grimly excited for this.  Each of them was dead certain that they'd win the first match, and then they would have a completely sanctioned reason to beat the shit out of each other, as they've been longing to do for months.  (I think they may be underestimating Laszlo, but never mind that.)  Now, with the golden opportunity snatched away just hours before, they were pretty devastated.

So one Deathmatch match did actually happen.  While everyone else was imbibing various spirits and telling stories, Rusty and Navarre snuck into the corner and succeeded in beating the shit out of each other.  The match ended in a draw.  Here they are; somehow in the excitement no one noticed what they were up to until it was over.

Since the fight was no longer sanctioned, technically they needed to be punished.  Discipline was left to Jasper, who decided that they really couldn't be blamed that much, given the oversight.  Offering a lion and a tiger a likely chance to duke it out and then snatching it away?  Not a great idea.  Feeling some degree of responsibility in the whole affair, and also noting that they'd already done a damn good job of punishing each other, Jasper decided to put them in detention together for the next twenty-four hours, where they proceeded to ignore each other.

 

This is as far apart as they can get until they're out of detention.

Jasper's opinion is that when they emerge from detention, they'll either have found a new common ground, or they'll pretend that the whole shameful episode never occurred.  His money is on the second.  The first, in his view, is not improbable, but he thinks they have a lot more fights to get through before they make it there.

It's still a new record

Okay, the fun's over.  Sleepyhead has fallen back to sleep, and Seal is upright again (he says he has a pounding headache).  It's still not clear whether Sleepyhead's unusual wakefulness was the result of Pedro's examination or not, but either way he appears to have reverted back to normal.  He stayed awake for a good forty-seven minutes, though - very impressive by his standards.

Out of Character

Hmm.  It seems that Pedro's examination had an unexpected result: Sleepyhead is awake right now.  He's been awake for all of fifteen minutes!  Look at this.  He stayed awake long enough for the event to be captured on camera.

You may be wondering what exactly Seal is doing upside down like that.  He says he's trying to encourage Sleepyhead to stay awake by being particularly entertaining.  I'd say I hope Sleepyhead appreciates how many creatures have inverted themselves for him lately, but I know he doesn't.

To be fair, this may not be a direct result of Pedro's efforts at all.  Sleepyhead didn't actually wake up while he was being examined, so it may have been coincidence.

Pedro's Working Vacation

Pedro recently took his turn in the south room, having earned a bit of respite from kittenish antics.  It proved to be a working vacation, but I would like to stress that this was entirely Pedro's own idea; no one pushed him to work while he was off.

This was Pedro's first tour of south room duty, which meant that it was his first encounter with Sleepyhead.  All of Pedro's medical instincts went into red alert when he realised just how much sleeping Sleepyhead does on a typical day.  'No healthy panda ought to sleep this much,' he informed me, and immediately set about trying to get to the bottom of this.

Sleepyhead, however, is not a particularly cooperative patient.  He'd apparently decided that he wanted to sleep on the floor between my mattress and the nearest bookcase, and he had himself wedged in there pretty good, with the result that there was no room for Pedro to really get in there with him.  Pedro's principal technique in diagnosis involves judicious sniffing; he requires close proximity to his patients.  Naturally there was no chance that Sleepyhead would come out on his own, either, and Pedro is too small to move him around if he's not helping.  Magick was on south room duty too, but he refused to get involved, although he watched the proceedings with something suspiciously akin to amusement.

So, after grilling Seal for about twenty minutes for a full description of Sleepyhead's habits (which Seal tolerated very good-naturedly), Pedro sort of hung himself upside down over the edge of the mattress and went to work.  This must be a terribly awkward position in which to conduct medical examinations, so he deserves commendation for his devotion to his medical calling.

This is an unusually good picture of Magick.  Usually attempts to photograph him just result in a sort of Shapeless Black Void, because his fur is so very black, but this picture does a pretty good job of showing his silhouette.  A Black Void in Silhouette is much more demonstrative than a Shapeless Black Void, don't you think?

Anyway, I'm sorry to report that Pedro's efforts were largely for nothing, as he was unable to find any signs that Sleepyhead's persistent somnolence is the result of a medical condition; in fact, Pedro pronounced himself completely baffled.  His recommendation is that Sleepyhead consult a psychiatrist.  Sleepyhead, who seems perfectly satisfied with his life, is rather unlikely to do so of his own accord; but Alfredo has been lobbying for an on-site mental health professional, so if his campaign is successful, Pedro might get his way.

A Tutor

AJD just got back from visiting his old college roommates DS and L-AS, who recently welcomed their first child, JKS.  DS was the other half of the creative team behind the puzzle featuring some of my menagerie in the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt, and so of course when the Wild Republic learned that he had a new baby daughter, they concluded that they ought to send her a tutor.  The tutor they chose is an owl named Archimedes; he naturally has the highest of credentials and is eminently qualified to tutor young humans.  Owls make the best tutors anyway, you know.

By fortunate coincidence, Archimedes and AJD ended up travelling together.  See, Archimedes is actually an old pupil of Twilby's; his mother is from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, so he did a lot of his schooling over there.  When he received his new assignment, he decided to stop by for a visit with his old teacher, and Twilby was only too happy for a chance to catch up with one of his favourite former pupils.

Archimedes hung out with the local chapter for a couple of weeks, and then he and AJD left on their epic road trip.   AJD had a conference to attend in London (Canada, not England) first, and although Archimedes is not a dialectologist, he's a generally intellectually curious chap and was more than happy to check things out.  Then it was off to the S household, where Archimedes met his new pupil for the first time.

She looks pretty intrigued, doesn't she?  I bet she's realised that her new tutor is big enough that he could probably fly her around her room if due care were taken.  Sort of stork-fashion, you know.  

I'd like to know what she's thinking in the second picture. She looks like she's mulling something over.  Maybe Archimedes has asked her a question?