So a guy walks into a bar… and says OUCH!

Sorry, that was corny. But appropriate for my current state of clumsiness. And I do have a story:

So I wake up in the middle of the night for a bathroom call, and when I look in the mirror, there’s blood on my nose. I’m like what the– I scrub at it. It’s a gash. Or at least a deep scratch. Now I’m feeling paranoid. How is it I’m getting cuts on my face in my sleep? Did I scratch myself? My nails are nonexistent. Did Maimer do it? But the little kobold’s just sleeping innocently at the foot of my bed. Did I fall asleep with paper and pencil again? I’m gonna lose an eye if I keep doing that.

Accepting the strange reality that I somehow sleepwalked face first into a cheese grater, I slap a bandaid across my nose and head back to bed through the pitch black of my room. I go to dive into bed and run face first into the Leaning Tower of Music and Reading Material that lives on my nightstand. This could have something to do with it, I’m thinking. I’m afflicted with life-threatening clumsiness! Combined with chronic disorganization, it’s amazing I’ve lived this long. So it’s still pitch black, I still have a bandaid on my nose, but now my face and hands are throbbing, I’m catching books, cds and papers as they slide every which way and the commotion has awakened Maimer who decides now’s a good time to maul me with love. I can’t see a thing, but she’s yapping and growl-purring, rubbing against my arms and biting my fingers as I hold desperately onto the crumbling remains of the Leaning Tower. When my Cowboy Bebop mix cds start hitting her, though, she starts to complain.

So if any of you are confused as to what kind of animal my kobold kompanion is really, it’s on purpose. If you’re not confused, then I’m not as clever as I thought (a distinct probability) or else you’ve met the real thing in real life (for those few of you who have, I’m sorry, she’s just like that). But if anybody’s confused as to what a kobold is, plain and simple, I can help you there. And I’ll do it with an acrostic!

Kowardly
Ontisocial
Bicious
Ogly
Lizard
Dogs

There! It’s like a kobold wrote it! Cuz they’re stupid, too. But I couldn’t fit that into the acrostic. Now, there’s some disagreement as to whether kobolds are reptilian or canine. (In Baldur’s Gate, I always thought they looked like organ grinder’s monkeys, with little red vests, going “oo-oo-ah” when I killed them.) But, since each side of the debate is spearheaded by the greatest geniuses of gaming (Wizards of the Coast say lizards, while Ninth Level Games and Dork Storm say dogs), I like to integrate both into my concept of kobolds. Plus I just like the sound of “lizard dogs.”

To see different visual concepts of kobolds, do a Google image search. You’ll find some gnome-looking things in there, too, since kobolds used to be mythical mine-dwelling spirits before Wizards of the Coast got a hold of them.

Wait! I can fit “stupid” in there! Kobolds are always plural! KOBOLDS! Kowardly Ontisocial Bicious Ogly Lizard Dogs that are also very Stupid!

Get glad

I’m making like a freakin’ Pollyanna and playing the Glad Game. I am glad that at least now I can quit checking the mailbox every day. It was really getting irritating, especially in the rain.

I don’t really have anything else to say, but this is my last chance to post this year, since I’m going to a family New Year’s party in a few minutes. So I wanted to post. And use my little angry sphinx emoticon.

My Kobold Kompanion is super needy tonight. When she gets super lovey like this, she just wants to purr and chew on my foot, which really really hurts. It’s worse when she uses her claws. It worries me a bit that my foot tastes so good to her…

That sweet smell of rejection

Got my second rejection slip today. Second in my life, first for fiction (other one was for poetry).

Feel like shit.

Shit shit shit.

I’ve got nothing else to say about it. I’ve been struck with Tourette’s or something.

I’ve been dying to use this crying sphinx icon, but lately I’ve been riding so high, like bad underwear, I couldn’t imagine anything getting me that down. Nice of the literary agency to oblige, a whopping 3 weeks later than their listing promised they would.

Suck!

Grrr, I just gotta suck it up! I plan to get lots and lots of these icky squares of heavy bond paper, I can’t turn into Random Profanity Girl every time.

So instead, I’m going to launch a new “column” as it were of my LJ:

My Kobold Kompanion
Now, not every adventurer is brave (or stupid) enough to choose a Kobold for her animal companion (and I use “companion” in a strictly non-kangar** sense here), but Maimer is like a part of the family. The last surviving member of her clutch, she has few other redeeming qualities. She is chaotic evil, after all. Her life consists mostly of long naps, punctuated by aimless ambulatory periods of loud complaining and, if she’s not feeling too lazy, chasing her arch-nemesis, my sister’s Kobold Kompanion, Peebag.

There, I feel better already.

Sphinx smileys

Woo! I did it! I made my own emoticons! Unfortunately I’ve only figured out how to upload a few of them. But here’s my favorite, the sleepy one.

Mmmm… sleep. Sounds good…