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HOLY JESUS ANTS
No, not holy ants, but HOLY JESUS, ANTS. Today I woke up to ants, quite a lot of them, crawling on my legs. To call the situation uncool would be, I think many of you will agree, a vast understatement. What was especially trouble about it, was that it reminded me of another Waking To Insect Invasion incident that's wormed it's way into a bit of prime real estate in my psyche.
After smiting the ants I found myself running through my repertoire - just how many insect related annecdotes do I have? Quite a few, actually, but I'll be kind and relate only one. The most traumatic of all my insectoid encounters. It's not the most disturbing - that honor goes to an incident involving honey, a hive of bees and box - but it's the one that's stuck with me, through thick and thin. It's my go-to insect trauma.
This was back when my family had a cat. My family now has a dog, and I'm back living with them, while I attend school. I can't imagine things would have gone terribly differently had this happened during my dog days, and not my cat days, save for my cat's slightly more evolved badass genes. As I've said before, the puppy is a scaredy-dog.
In any case, then, like now, the AC was broken and we survived the heat by leaving the windows open near constantly. Since I was young, and stupid in the way that most young people are stupid, I went the extra mile and removed the screen from my bedroom window. The side benefit to this was being able to throw shit at people foolish enough to sit on the balcony under my window. Additionally, although this wasn't my intention, insects and small furred animals now had an entry point to the safe and secure environs of my house: my bedroom window had become the road to El Dorado.
One night, much like every other night, I went to sleep. And much like other nights, (because my insomnia does indeed go back that far), I woke up, some time after midnight. The cat was sleeping on the floor. I was tangled in the sheets, only half covered by them. Normal enough. But there was a rustling, a faint shuffling. I went still and quiet, trying to identify the source of the noise. It seemed to come from all over. That couldn't be, obviously, so I lifted my head off the pillow, to use both my pitiful human ears to track it down. There was the rustling again - right beside me.
On the floor, the cat stirred. She yawned her way into wakefulness; stopped mid yawn, her eyes suddenly alert and tracking something. Something I couldn't see. She hissed.
Something was moving on my legs.
I scrambled blindly for the lamp, and flicked it on. For a second, everything was white, but my ears worked just fine: the cat hissed again, louder this time; the rustling, it was everywhere. Then my eyes adjusted enough for me to make out shapes. I looked to my legs, and there was... there was something on them. Multiple somethings. Vague shapes quickly resolved themselves into more defined forms. Insects. They were insects, moths and something else I didn't take the time to identify.
I took in the room, in snapshots, nothing like normal vision. They were everywhere. Clinging to the walls, to the furniture, to the pile of dirty laundry I'd kicked out of my way before curling up in bed. Clinging to me. A blanket of wings and feelers and sticky insect feet.
I wanted to shriek out my horror, but found my throat closed, not even capable of choking out a whimper. I looked down to cat and saw agreement there. I flung the sheets off me; sent them flying across the room. Things skittered this way and that in confusion. I stumbled to my feet and bolted for the door, through a cloud of insect life, the cat racing ahead of me. She had fur. I had skin. I brushed mine clean while running. She clawed at the door, yowling. I pulled it open, for once not being careful of her, but she was alert at padded out of the way in time to avoid getting smacked. I squeezed through the smallest opening I could possible squeeze through and slammed the door behind me.
I flicked on the hall light. Almost screamed, but managed to keep it to a gasp. Some of the creatures had made it out
In a rare moment of perfect human-animal communication, the cat and I moved as one: the creatures could not be allowed to breach the safety of the rest of the house. The battle was epic, but the cat was brave, and soon the hall was cleared of infestation.
I decided to wait out the night, thinking perhaps they would be gone in the morning. I took down some spare sheets from the linen closet, and locked the cat and myself in the main bathroom for the night. I spent the night in the tub, with the cat curled up beside me.
In the morning, we went to my bedroom door. We stood by it a moment, listening. Nothing. I took a deep breath and pushed it open. Still nothing. We inspected the room, the cat checking the most difficult to reach corners. They were gone.
As you can imagine, I immediately replaced the screen in the window.
***
And now for a sudden gear change! Things, things, things. *crash*
Thing one: I'm sort of casually reading When You Are Engulfed In Flames, by David Sedaris. It's a collection of essays on 'death and dying'. It can be summarized as, "Death! OMG irony! lolarity!" I'm not particularly familiar with Sedaris' work, but I'm enjoying it so far. We shall see. *eyeballs the book*
I'm also reading CJ Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg, which contains some interesting ideas and some very interestingly out of date science. It was published in 1985, so I can forgive the idea of an alien species, with a level of technology exceeding our current state by maybe a hundred or so years, being able to engineer a human with seemingly very little trouble. Whaaaa? In any case, she makes it easy to forgive the conceit, because she really makes a go of the old human-raised-by-aliens yarn.
I'm a big Cherryh fan, though you wouldn't know it from my entries here. Any Cherryh fans on the flist that I can babble to? I recently read Regenesis, the sequel to the epic Cyteen, and it's spurred me to do a big Alliance-Union verse reread. I'd love to talk about it, but Cherryh fansites are few and far between. Oh world! How unjust you are.
Thing two: And the reason for the icon. *points* Madmen is coming back soon bbs! Peggy! Don! Roger! Pete! Madfan check in - who's watching? Who wishes they were cool enough to be watching, but just aren't?
Thing three: because I obviously needed another thing to run, right? Right. *facepalm* Thank the Great Gazoo for co-mods, amirite?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kijikun is my co-conspirator in this latest bit of madness.
Sequential Crack is a new recing community, in the Crack Van mode, for comics fanworks. We'll be recing fanart, fic and fancomics. Sign ups are now open for:
Batfamily
Superfamily
Justice League
Young DC (Teen Titans, Young Justice, Blue Beetle...)
X-Books
Avengers
Spider-Family
Young Marvel (Young Avengers, Runaways, Spider-man Loves Mary-Jane...)
Watchmen
The Authority
We're also looking for fandom overviews for all of the above. Come on people, your fandom needs you!
After smiting the ants I found myself running through my repertoire - just how many insect related annecdotes do I have? Quite a few, actually, but I'll be kind and relate only one. The most traumatic of all my insectoid encounters. It's not the most disturbing - that honor goes to an incident involving honey, a hive of bees and box - but it's the one that's stuck with me, through thick and thin. It's my go-to insect trauma.
This was back when my family had a cat. My family now has a dog, and I'm back living with them, while I attend school. I can't imagine things would have gone terribly differently had this happened during my dog days, and not my cat days, save for my cat's slightly more evolved badass genes. As I've said before, the puppy is a scaredy-dog.
In any case, then, like now, the AC was broken and we survived the heat by leaving the windows open near constantly. Since I was young, and stupid in the way that most young people are stupid, I went the extra mile and removed the screen from my bedroom window. The side benefit to this was being able to throw shit at people foolish enough to sit on the balcony under my window. Additionally, although this wasn't my intention, insects and small furred animals now had an entry point to the safe and secure environs of my house: my bedroom window had become the road to El Dorado.
One night, much like every other night, I went to sleep. And much like other nights, (because my insomnia does indeed go back that far), I woke up, some time after midnight. The cat was sleeping on the floor. I was tangled in the sheets, only half covered by them. Normal enough. But there was a rustling, a faint shuffling. I went still and quiet, trying to identify the source of the noise. It seemed to come from all over. That couldn't be, obviously, so I lifted my head off the pillow, to use both my pitiful human ears to track it down. There was the rustling again - right beside me.
On the floor, the cat stirred. She yawned her way into wakefulness; stopped mid yawn, her eyes suddenly alert and tracking something. Something I couldn't see. She hissed.
Something was moving on my legs.
I scrambled blindly for the lamp, and flicked it on. For a second, everything was white, but my ears worked just fine: the cat hissed again, louder this time; the rustling, it was everywhere. Then my eyes adjusted enough for me to make out shapes. I looked to my legs, and there was... there was something on them. Multiple somethings. Vague shapes quickly resolved themselves into more defined forms. Insects. They were insects, moths and something else I didn't take the time to identify.
I took in the room, in snapshots, nothing like normal vision. They were everywhere. Clinging to the walls, to the furniture, to the pile of dirty laundry I'd kicked out of my way before curling up in bed. Clinging to me. A blanket of wings and feelers and sticky insect feet.
I wanted to shriek out my horror, but found my throat closed, not even capable of choking out a whimper. I looked down to cat and saw agreement there. I flung the sheets off me; sent them flying across the room. Things skittered this way and that in confusion. I stumbled to my feet and bolted for the door, through a cloud of insect life, the cat racing ahead of me. She had fur. I had skin. I brushed mine clean while running. She clawed at the door, yowling. I pulled it open, for once not being careful of her, but she was alert at padded out of the way in time to avoid getting smacked. I squeezed through the smallest opening I could possible squeeze through and slammed the door behind me.
I flicked on the hall light. Almost screamed, but managed to keep it to a gasp. Some of the creatures had made it out
In a rare moment of perfect human-animal communication, the cat and I moved as one: the creatures could not be allowed to breach the safety of the rest of the house. The battle was epic, but the cat was brave, and soon the hall was cleared of infestation.
I decided to wait out the night, thinking perhaps they would be gone in the morning. I took down some spare sheets from the linen closet, and locked the cat and myself in the main bathroom for the night. I spent the night in the tub, with the cat curled up beside me.
In the morning, we went to my bedroom door. We stood by it a moment, listening. Nothing. I took a deep breath and pushed it open. Still nothing. We inspected the room, the cat checking the most difficult to reach corners. They were gone.
As you can imagine, I immediately replaced the screen in the window.
***
And now for a sudden gear change! Things, things, things. *crash*
Thing one: I'm sort of casually reading When You Are Engulfed In Flames, by David Sedaris. It's a collection of essays on 'death and dying'. It can be summarized as, "Death! OMG irony! lolarity!" I'm not particularly familiar with Sedaris' work, but I'm enjoying it so far. We shall see. *eyeballs the book*
I'm also reading CJ Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg, which contains some interesting ideas and some very interestingly out of date science. It was published in 1985, so I can forgive the idea of an alien species, with a level of technology exceeding our current state by maybe a hundred or so years, being able to engineer a human with seemingly very little trouble. Whaaaa? In any case, she makes it easy to forgive the conceit, because she really makes a go of the old human-raised-by-aliens yarn.
I'm a big Cherryh fan, though you wouldn't know it from my entries here. Any Cherryh fans on the flist that I can babble to? I recently read Regenesis, the sequel to the epic Cyteen, and it's spurred me to do a big Alliance-Union verse reread. I'd love to talk about it, but Cherryh fansites are few and far between. Oh world! How unjust you are.
Thing two: And the reason for the icon. *points* Madmen is coming back soon bbs! Peggy! Don! Roger! Pete! Madfan check in - who's watching? Who wishes they were cool enough to be watching, but just aren't?
Thing three: because I obviously needed another thing to run, right? Right. *facepalm* Thank the Great Gazoo for co-mods, amirite?
kijikun is my co-conspirator in this latest bit of madness. Sequential Crack is a new recing community, in the Crack Van mode, for comics fanworks. We'll be recing fanart, fic and fancomics. Sign ups are now open for:
Batfamily
Superfamily
Justice League
Young DC (Teen Titans, Young Justice, Blue Beetle...)
X-Books
Avengers
Spider-Family
Young Marvel (Young Avengers, Runaways, Spider-man Loves Mary-Jane...)
Watchmen
The Authority
We're also looking for fandom overviews for all of the above. Come on people, your fandom needs you!
no subject
Our cats will double-team moths and wasps. As in, they actually stalk them down together, like a pride of lionesses or something (cockroaches, on the other hand, are different. They are Tony's special and unique prey, and any attempt by Steve to horn in on hunting and killing one is met by hisses and growls).
no subject
The time a nest of Ladybugs hatched outside our front door and coated the whole front of the house in a three-deep layer of crawly little beetle-things was bad enough (and our parents wonder why my sister and I hate ladybugs...).
*shudder* Did you get hit by the hoard of Asian Ladybugs a few years back?
no subject
I loved Cuckoo's Egg, and was disappointed there wasn't more of it. I tried reading some other Cherry books, but found it difficult to get into them. I may have started with the wrong ones, since I just grabbed what I could find in the used book store. I like her realism, but the few books I started reading (I don't remember the titles anymore) put me off with their bleak and pessimistic tone. Can you recommend a good Cherry beginner's book?
no subject
I also quite like her Alliance-Union universe, but it's hard to figure out where to start in that. Downbelow Station is a good bet. It's got a large cast of characters, and is fairly epic in some ways - you get a quick overview of the whole of the A-U universe, with each side's political and cultural position sketched out. More good aliens, though of a very different sort than Cuckoo or Foreigner. It's a war story though, so if you're not a fan of that kind of thing, it won't work for you.
Also, do you like fantasy?
no subject
Yes, I do like fantasy, but it depends. I like fantasy inspired by folklore, but I don't like recycled and watered down folklore, like fantasy written by people who've read Tolkien, but are obviously ignorant about Scandinavian folklore. I like psychological realism. I'm fine with melodrama, but I don't like weeping ukes with telepathic horses or anything like it. I like internally consistent natural and supernatural laws. I like believable world building. I like complex plots. I like ambiguity. I like world building which frees itself from medieval European societies - if fiction is speculative, why should we have to put up with old-fashioned patriarchy, unless it's there to be examined and commented on?
no subject
The fortress society is patriarchal, but it is commented on. It's not a central concern of the story, but their definitely some frustrated proto-feminists in the series. It's got all kinds of political, social and religious conflict, along with a generations long magical conflict. There are two protagonists, a human prince, who's the center of the social/political conflicts, and something-not-human guy, who just shows up on his doorstep one day. He's at the center of the magical and the religious conflict. Religious, because most human religions say he's a demon, a sorcerer, or doesn't exist at all. He *appears* to be a reincarnated Sihhe, from the previous ruling dynasty. A dynasty that was murdered by the currently ruling family, from which the prince hails. But while this is all playing out, there's also a fight between Tristan, the not-human-guy, and all kinds of magical forces that most people can't even perceive.
I really like what she does with magic in this series. It's kind magic as a science or force that we don't yet understand. There's magic, which is inborn. Only the Sihhe people had it. Then there's wizardry, which is learned, and only the Galasieni knew it - they were the ruling dynasty before the not-quite-human Sihhe. Then there's sorcery, which is corrupted wizardry. Wizardry is a little bit alchemy, a little bit early science, and a little bit shamanism. Magic, on the other hand, just is. It's the nature of Sihhe - they're sort of god like beings, who can bend space and time, and aren't born in any fashion. No one knows where they actually come from, or why they exist.
It's all very fun.
no subject
I only wish I could concentrate on reading fiction at the moment!