Technical Difficulties

ROUND 1
1st BIPED¹: What the fuck?
UNDERFOOT CAT: Is new toy!
1st BIPED: ... that's a mouse.
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, EMMA, & MIRANDA*: Kill it! Kill it!
UNDERFOOT CAT: Is toy! See! [bats at mouse softly, no claws]
1st BIPED: Seriously?
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, EMMA, & MIRANDA: Kill it! Kill it!
UNDERFOOT CAT: Is awesome toy!
MOUSE: [escapes]
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, EMMA, & MIRANDA: D'oh!
1st BIPED: Where the fuck did it go?
UNDERFOOT CAT: I will find!
1st BIPED: I wish you wouldn't.
2nd BIPED³: [emerging belatedly from the study] Mouse?
1st BIPED: [brightly] Adventures with nature!

INTERLUDE, in which there is much peering under furniture by UNDERFOOT CAT and both 1st & 2nd BIPEDS

ROUND 2
2nd BIPED: [from under the piano] JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
1st BIPED: [dryly] Did you find it?
2nd BIPED: It's on top of the radiator. I thought the cat was just on crack.
UNDERFOOT CAT: Toy! I has finded you!
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, EMMA, & MIRANDA: Kill it! Kill it!
1st BIPED: [advances with makeshift mouse-capturing device] Cat, you are as much use as a trapdoor in a canoe.
UNDERFOOT CAT: [being dragged away] But! Is toy!
1st BIPED: [captures mouse]
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, EMMA, & MIRANDA: Biped! No interfering!
2nd BIPED: [gets door]
1st BIPED: [advances to suitable mouse-release point and lifts makeshift lid of makeshift mouse-capturing device] Fuck, I don't have it.
2nd BIPED: [facepalm]

INTERLUDE, in which CATZILLA scoots anxiously through the living room & completely and utterly fails to notice the mouse

ROUND 3
UNDERFOOT CAT: Toy is in radiator! Make it come out!
2nd BIPED: [attempting to pry mouse away from the radiator with a dowel] You're a strong little bastard, I'll give you that much.
MOUSE: [escapes]
2nd BIPED: FUCK.
1st BIPED: It's over here! Gimme the--
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, EMMA, & MIRANDA: Kill it! Kill it!
UNDERFOOT CAT: Where is toy?
1st BIPED: HA! [captures mouse in makeshift mouse-capturing device]
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, EMMA, & MIRANDA: INTERFERENCE!
UNDERFOOT CAT: To-ooy! Where has you gone?
2nd BIPED: [gets door]
1st BIPED: [releases mouse at suitable mouse-release point]
2nd BIPED: This is not how I wanted to spend my Sunday morning.
1st BIPED: At least you're not the mouse.

CODA
UNDERFOOT CAT: [peering under bookcase] Toy? Is you under here?
2nd BIPED: Really, cat?
GHOSTS OF RICHIE, BEN, & MIRANDA: This is very embarrassing.
GHOST OF EMMA: Oh my god I can't even.
1st BIPED: I no longer wonder why he was found up a tree.
CATZILLA: ... Is something going on?


---
¹Played by my lovely husband, mirrorthaw
²a.k.a. the Orange Creamsicle Dream Cat, the Elder Saucepan, and the First and Second Ninjas
³This would be me.

UNDERFOOT CAT: [on the bathroom sink] All right, where is it?
ME: [from the other side of the bathroom] It's not over there.
U.C.: Where the hell did it go?
ME: It's over here.
U.C.: Oh don't be ridiculous. How could it have gotten over there? It was right here.
ME: It's a bug. It has wings.
U.C.: [comes over to check] Wings?
ME: Which means you're not going to be able to catch it from the floor, either.
U.C.: [thoroughly put out] Wings is cheating.
(BUG: [from somewhere above our heads] Ha ha!)

CAT A: OH MY GOD BIPED I AM STARVING
CAT B: ::sleeps::
CAT A: STARVING DID YOU HEAR ME
CAT B: ::sleeps::
CAT A: I AM ABOUT TO PERISH UTTERLY
CAT B: ::cracks one eye::
CAT A: UTTERLY
CAT B: ::goes back to sleep::
CAT A: ... utterly ...
ME: All right, all right, already.
[Cat A and I go downstairs and I put Cat A's food down]
CAT A: HALLELUJAH
[I leave the room for a minute to make a cup of tea and return]
CAT A: ::rampages merrily overhead::
CAT B: ::gives me a look and goes back to eating Cat A's food::

CATZILLA: [loudly from about five inches away] MROWWL
ME: That's not a very nice thing to do to a person trying to do balasana.
CATZILLA: Y'know, I really think you're over-thinking this whole stretching thing. It just goes like this [stretches forward] [stretches aft] and then you're done, see?
ME: Screw you, you smug asshole.
CATZILLA: purrs

ME: Underfoot Cat, why are you in the bathtub?
UNDERFOOT CAT: Because.
ME: What are you doing?
U.C.: Stuff.
ME: It looks to me like you're chasing your own tail.
U.C.: . . . Maybe.
ME: You realize this is a misappropriation of the bathtub.
U.C.: I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
ME: That's you purring.
U.C.: Same difference.
ME: I could turn the water on.
U.C.: You wouldn't.
ME: . . . Maybe.

Underfoot Cat: What are you doing?
Me: Taking a shower.
Underfoot Cat: Why?
Me: Personal hygiene.
Underfoot Cat: Wtf? Why don't you just use your tongue?
Me: Because reasons.
Underfoot Cat: ... You're not putting me on, are you?
Me: [getting out] No, really, this is how we--
Underfoot Cat: OH MY GOD YOU'RE MADE OF WET

ETA: Kirkus gives The Goblin Emperor a starred review. Please add exclamation points to taste.

My splendid editor, casacorona, has an equally splendid assistant, who today sent me the dust jacket for The Goblin Emperor.

Fig. 1: My lovely assistant Catzilla* will show it to you:



Fig. 2: What do you mean, that isn't what you wanted?



Fig. 3: For somebody we only keep around for your thumbs, you're AWFULLY picky.



Fig. 4: Is THIS better?



Perfect, Catzilla. Thank you.

---
*No, Catzilla isn't his real name. It's his internet handle.

1. For anyone looking for verisimilitude, below about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit is too cold to ride. (Below zero is too cold for ANYTHING.)

2. Our Formerly Feral Ninja was well taught by her Feralista Mama. On Saturday I found her with a dead mouse (!) in our bedroom (ZOMG!!!11!1!). She hadn't eaten it yet, thank goodness (because the only thing worse than a dead mouse is a dead regurgitated mouse, don't ask me how I know), but she was definitely giving me the fix my toy, biped look. I did not oblige her.

3. My dear friend and frequent enabler, heresluck, gave mirrorthaw and me Season One of Elementary this holiday season. It took us a little more than a week to watch the whole thing, plus the special features (this is why it's a good thing I don't like many TV shows, because I am the opposite of will-power). I liked it a bunch. I liked the games it was playing with the source material; I adored Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and Aidan Quinn (and Jon Michael Hall also!, although his character is not in the slightest canonical). In some ways I liked it more than Sherlock, in some less. I may make a longer post about it at some point, but the thing I actually wanted to note here is not directly related to the show; it's something I noticed in the special features, something I knew but that it's good to be reminded of. It is very difficult to give an interesting answer to a general question. The actors and writers were getting thrown these slow underhand lobs over and over (you could tell by the answers they were giving), and it just didn't give them anything interesting to say (especially because they had to avoid spoilers). There was nothing they could hit out of the park. The set designer and the prop guy and the editor and the composer, on the other hand, who could talk about very specific details, were awesome. The composer actually demonstrated the way he puts music to a scene, which was very cool, but the best bit for me was the prop guy, who said, "Every prop has a ghost." By which he meant that, once you've established a prop, an object with which an actor interacts, it's a visual cue that tells its own part of the story without anything needing to be said. It was a tiny interview, but it was brilliant.

But nobody asked Jonny Lee Miller, in these tiny special feature interviews, specific questions about the choices he was making as an actor. Nobody asked the writers to talk specifically about how they wrote a particular episode, or how they decided what they were going to do with the bits of canon they chose to interpolate. (And there are some very interesting and specific questions that could be asked.) And so they couldn't really get beyond platitudes, like the platitudes Crash makes Nuke rehearse in Bull Durham. And it's worth remembering as a rule of thumb: to get interesting answers, you have to ask specific questions.

4. Things are better with my little Cthulhu machine. We tied the tentacles to the headboard with twine, and I can now roll over without encoiling myself. I still hate the fucker, but that's a different problem.

5. The present given me by 2013, like a cold dead squirrel on my pillow, is migraines! I now get migraines as part of my PMS package. Did you know, there is nothing cool about migraines at all? Nothing works on them except specific drugs, and those specific drugs can cause heart attacks and strokes by the inherent nature of what they are. (The first one I tried also made me so light-headed and woozy that I was no better off than I'd been with the migraine and its wicked little nail gun.) And mine last for days.

They aren't bad migraines. Even without the drugs, I'm not incapacitated. I'm not nauseated. The pain is, comparatively, not as bad as my menstrual cramps even now (and not even in the same league as the menstrual cramps I had in college, which routinely hit too serious for numbers).

But dear freaking Jesus is it annoying.

Someone should have been out at the barn with a camera today. June the Barn Cat jumped on my shoulder while I was grooming Milo, resulting in a three-species karmic chi love thing: June purring like a maniac while Milo whuffled her ear and then mine.