Quixley Prepares for Frankenstorm

There are all sorts of things going on down here in the Northern Domicile, but I haven't got around to writing about them yet for the very same reason that I have things to write about.  How about that.

Right now, of course, what is happening is that we're about to be pounded by Frankenstorm and possibly all die.  It's very exciting.  I'm not really supposed to say that because Alfredo doesn't want anyone to panic, however.  He's decided that we have to keep the curtains totally closed so that no one notices anything unusual about the storm outside.  I'm not sure what he'll do if the power goes out, and I'm not sure how he's circumventing the fact that about half the denizens of the Northern Domicile have smartphones these days either.  Somehow I bet this is going to get out of control.

Wow, listen to that wind howling.

I'm actually posting about the Southern Domicile, because Rochester has concluded that everyone down there is mature enough to handle news of their possible impending demise.  They seem to have decided not to get too fussed about it.  Or at least Quixley, who has been IMing me off and on all morning, isn't too fussed about it.  Although he's pretty laid-back generally, so maybe he's not the best test specimen.  Anyway,  he sent me this picture of himself a bit ago and I had to share it with the world in general:

Quixley tries on KEP's boots

KEP was kind enough to share her boots with Quixley, as you see.  (She's pretty cool that way.)  They look rather fetching on him, don't you think?  Totally his colours.

The other news about Quixley is that he has a new boyfriend.  His name is Quellidore and they met playing WoW.  When he told me this, I was like, 'Didn't you just have a new boyfriend you'd met playing WoW the last time I talked to you?' but Quixley explained that no, no, that was like months ago and it's so over now.  Quellidore is totally different.  I dunno.  Quixley's always assuring me that his newest True Love is totally different from the others, but they always turn out to be really high-maintenance.  I wonder if he'd have better luck if he'd, like, meet them in person first.  But who knows?  Quellidore might actually really be different. 

I personally suspect that part of Quixley's problem is that he's been on the rebound for a long time, sort of.  He had this boyfriend in school -- his name was Quenevire -- and they were together for a few years, and then broke up (I don't know why; Quix won't tell me), and I think Quixley never really got over him and just sort of throws himself into relationships so he doesn't have to think about it.  Or possibly he was really on the rebound for a while and sort of fell into that pattern and got stuck.  It's been like five years, though.  It makes me wonder whether he should just look up Quenevire and see if they have any chance of rekindling things.  But,  you never know; maybe one of these online things will eventually work out.

Quixley Says: It Gets Better

As many of you may know, yesterday was National Coming Out Day, and in honour of the occasion, AJD reports, Quixley decided he wanted to have his picture taken with the gay pride zebra shirt.

It probably hasn't come up on this blog before, but the southern domicile has an iconic gay pride zebra shirt.  My parents sent it to me for my birthday a few years ago without comment - I hadn't realised before that they were actively supportive of the gay zebra community.  We hung it up in the living room in order to indicate to any gay zebras who happened to be wandering in the neighbourhood that they were quite welcome with us.  It has been worn exactly once, when AJD went to a masked ball dressed as a gay zebra.

So, anyway, Quixley decided he should have his picture taken in the gay zebra shirt.  First, however, he wanted AJD to take a picture of himself emerging from AJD's closet beneath the banner of the shirt, as a "coming out" metaphor.

Quixley "comes out" beneath the Iconic Gay Zebra Pride shirt as a Dramatic Metaphor.

 Then he wanted to have his picture taken in the shirt.  Since Quixley is an actual zebra, and the shirt is not designed for actual zebras, but rather for human allies, this did not really work all that well.

Quixley attempts to don the Iconic Gay Zebra Pride shirt.

So instead, he and AJD decided to just have Quixley photographed with the shirt.

Quixley and the Iconic Shirt

Prior to yesterday, AJD and I had not realised that Quixley is gay.  In retrospect, this is primarily because zebras are apparently very supportive of the LGTBZ community, and Quixley himself is a pretty laid-back, chill kind of guy.  He doesn't make a big deal out of his personal life (or most other things), and it's no secret, since he's been out for ages.  So he naturally assumed everyone already knew.  It was partly my fault too, because I saw a photograph he had of himself and a cute girl zebra and leapt to the wrong conclusion as to their relationship, having not got a close enough look at it.  If I'd got a better look, I'd have realised that the female zebra was Quixley's sister Quincilla.  They're really close - he's only a year older.

Anyway, AJD asked Quixley to say a few words in honour of the occasion, so Quixley paused for a second and delivered the following speech, which AJD carefully notated verbatim:

Um, everybody... it gets better.

That's a few words, all right.  It's hard to envision a speech of fewer words, come to think of it.  Very characteristic of a zebra of few words.

Quixley later said that being gay really isn't a big deal if you're a zebra, as long as you're with other zebras.  He encountered a lot more trouble when he started attending high school in a more mixed environment; not all species are as accepting as zebras.  But then he graduated, and started doing his IT training, and found that yeah, it really does get better, even when you're not living with other zebras.

Stowaway!

Beppe is in so much trouble now.  Oh boy.

I went down to visit the Southern Domicile on Friday, as well as to take care of a few things and go salsa-dancing with AJD and EHC (who was also visiting).  I opened my suitcase to take out my toothbrush, and guess who popped out?

Of course it was Beppe.  He was so glad to be there, too; the moment AJD came in to see what the deal was, Beppe launched himself at him in a flurry of excited yips.  I'm really not sure how he managed to stay quiet for the whole bus trip from NYC to Philly, although I guess he spent the bus journey proper in the baggage hold where no one would hear him.

 

 

Rochester and the Fox gave Beppe a very stern talking-to.  He was initially unrepentant, but after a few minutes he started feeling more contrite.

Beppe unrepentant

Beppe contrite

We could just see Alfredo freaking out and the temporary Northern Domicile crawling with questing fluffies.  This is every parent's nightmare, after all.  While Rochester and the Fox were lecturing Beppe, Quixley immediately hurried to the computer to email Alfredo that everything was all right.  Then we just had to hope that Alfredo got the email, as I had taken my laptop south and the new computer system won't materialise until we have a permanent NYC abode.  Alfredo has a BlackBerry, but he's not very good at using it yet.  We could only suppose that he'd have Magick and Murchison glued to their iPhones.

Here's a close up of the text of Quixley's email.  You should be able to read it if you zoom in.  Note that Quixley prefers Gmail's "Ninja" theme.

A Qmail

Barry seized advantage of the opportunity to grill Beppe about whether or not he's seen Duke Ellington.  This was a complete failure, as Beppe had no clue what he was talking about.

So this morning I left Philly on a much earlier bus than I'd intended to, in hopes of preventing Alfredo from having a heart attack.  I got to my 8.30 bus so early they put me on an 8.00 bus, and I was home a little before 11.  Quixley's email had been received, thanks to Murchison lending Alfredo his iPhone, but Alfredo was nonetheless visibly agitated until Beppe popped out of the bag.  Naturally Beppe got another series of major talking-tos, first from his father and then from Desmond, Jasper, and Lady Faraday.  Moreover, Alfredo has informed him that he's not to be allowed out of his father's sight until after we find a permanent Northern Domicile.  He seems to be finally understanding that stowing away was maybe not a brilliant idea... but he still enjoyed every minute of it.

Bluh bluh Moving.

So I'm in the process of moving, which is one of my least favourite activities in the entire universe of activities.  Moving always transforms me into this insane evil demon bitch while simultaneously depleting me of all energy.  Ugh.  I'm really lucky that I have some awesome friends who have been lending me a hand.  Otherwise I'd have withdrawn my live savings, gone to Rome, and thrown myself off the Ponte Vecchio, I kid thee not.

Anyway, so after a few hours of stuffing things in boxes and reviewing logistical plans with AJD, I kinda conked out on AJD's floor.  While I was lying there, Quixley realised that I was wearing his colours and climbed aboard.  He knows a good aesthetic when he sees one, and he'd had at least conversation with us on the beauty of the black/white contrast, so he knew that we appreciate such contrasts too.  Here we are:

Then AJD and Quixley, being awake enough to have active brain cells (unlike me) had an even better idea.  Sleepyhead is both the right colours and the right affect.  So AJD retrieved Sleepyhead from the south room and he and Quixley swapped places.

I was aware that they were doing this; I don't think Sleepyhead ever noticed, even though he was moved from the south room to the north room and back again.

So yeah: moving is hell.

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.

And the Streak Continues...

It happened yet again: Hrithik was meditating in the south room and the kittens collectively won Jeopardy!.  The category was "My Favourite Things", and it was actually about the Rodgers and Hammerstein song(!), so the top-level clue was kittens.  If this keeps up, I might start believing in Hrithik's mystical powers myself.  Maybe.

One could make a case for Alfredo and Beppe winning too - and Hrithik is - because Rome was also mentioned, and they're Italian wolves from an area near Rome; but Rome comes up a lot on Jeopardy!, so it doesn't have the same punch as Madagascar.  On the same note, one could make a case for Tibby, with his imperial connection, but I'm adamant that he's awfully Antarctic for it to count.

The category for the final today was "Comic Book History", which was how we learned that Zebulon is a comic book enthusiast.  Apparently he likes to talk comics with Quixley; they read some of the same comics, and Zebulon is interested in hearing about the ones he doesn't have time to read.  It's not clear that Zebulon and Quixley participate equally in these conversations, though, since Zebulon's half consists entirely of "Aye" and therefore Quixley can't really tell whether Zebulon is just being generally friendly or is interested in comics because he's not familiar with them or whether he actually knows comics himself.  I'm reasonably certain, in fact, that Quixley has probably not entertained the last, and correct, of these alternatives.

Stripes

The denizens of the Wild Republic have a peculiar fascination with each other's tails.  Quixley, , for obvious reasons, is particularly impressed with Hrithik's tail.

The aesthetics of this picture are very satisfying to me.  I'm not sure what Team Malagasy is talking about, by the way.  They confer a lot, and they stop talking when you appear to be paying attention too closely.

So Very Aesthetic

AJD and I are still obsessed with the aesthetics of black-and-white contrasts... and now we have a zebra to add to the mix.  Ergo, when AJD caught Murchison talking to Quixley the other day, he seized the opportunity to summon Magick for a photo op, and here you are:

Imagine Murchison and Magick, charging towards each other full speed, neither intending to deviate from the inevitable collision.  They run into each other and BAM! both of them are instantly annihilated, but a zebra is created.  

Yes okay that's very silly, but, you know.

The Wild Republic Gets Tech-Savvy

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.

Expansion!

Our local chapter of the Wild Republic has just been enlarged by five.  All of them are adults, which I'm quite pleased about; I love the young ones (they're so cute!), but I was afraid the balance was tipping too far in the juvenile direction.

Alfredo is particularly relieved.  He'd been requesting some reinforcements from his superiors for some time, and the bureaucracy finally decided to grant his requests.  This had more than a little to do with that incident a bit ago, the one where the kittens somehow managed to get illicit bubble gum on Leprosy's tail.  Alfredo had been telling his superiors for months that he needed someone sent here specifically to handle the kittens: it's all well and good that our chapter was chosen to train young felines, but without anyone actually in charge of them, they were getting out of hand.  I'll explain more about this in a later post.  But anyway, his superiors finally admitted that they really should have been listening to him all along, and they found someone to deal with the kittens.  They also agreed that, with such a large foreign delegation stationed here permanently, and with some of the members of the local chapter being more than slightly eccentric and unpredictable (*cough* Plouie *cough*), Alfredo was correct that he could use some permanent legal counsel on staff.

So here they are, our five newest denizens of the Wild Republic:

In the front row, left-to-right, we have Jasper, the leopard, who is here to look after the kittens; Quixley, the zebra, whose exact responsibilities are not yet clear to me; the aye-aye, who has not yet gifted us with his name, and who is the promised legal counsel; and the sloth bear, whose exact role is not yet clear either.  Behind them all we have Meph, the bat, who is from the Ministry of Transportation and who intends to reform the local postal service (i.e. Plouie).  ("Meph" is not his full name; apparently bats are fond of giving each other very long names.)

Yesterday was a long day, full of meetings between various old and new residents.  Alfredo was particularly busy getting everyone settled in.  He's really delighted that we have Jasper now, as you can imagine (so is everyone), but he's not sure quite what to make of the aye-aye.