From: Snowcat <simba@nospam.magic.mb.ca>
Subject: Re: Angst, anyone?
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 1997 11:06 PM

Vaughan wrote...

[slash]

>My question is this:
>
>Why?

[munch]

The little snow leopard decides to do one of his rare delurks and respond to
Vaughan's question: why?

Whereas he normally posts in first person, the snowy cat switches to third
person for no particular reason.  He considers posting in fourth person,
then abandons the idea imediately.  The problem is that he can't *quite*
figure out how to do that, and he doesn't want to look foolish in front of
the world by getting it wrong.

He ascends the on-line stage in one of those magnificent leaps for which is
species is famous, and concludes the move with a graceful, three point
landing.  He clutches a binder of loose notes to his chest with one paw, and
gives the appreciative audience a low, sweeping bow.  Uh oh.  Jumping is one
thing for a snow leopard, bowing is quite another.  What modicum of elegance
he manages with the bow is more than offset when he accidentally nails the
microphone stand with his voluminous tail.

With a gasp, he turns and lunges for the teetering stand, tangling his feet
in the microphone cable as he spins.  To his credit, he manages to catch the
stand as he's falling - only to pull it down on top of himself as he faces
himself on the floor with the meaty "thwump!" of a snow leopard encountering
wood.  The binder flies out of his paw, and loose notes flitter across the
floor - nearly a third of them flying off into the audience.  The proximity
of the microphone ensures that all present clearly hear his scatological
remark.

Things are not looking good for our hero, but it's *never* too late to
salvage a lecture.  In a vain attempt to regain some measure of dignity, he
picks himself off the floor, rights the microphone stand, and gives a
knowing nod and thumbs-up to the audience as if to say, "I meant to do
that!"  The cat cooly picks up his notes, and in a moment of despair,
realizes that page 211 is now right next to page 14, and many of the pages
in the lower 100s appear to be missing entirely.  A veritable squadron of
paper airplanes winging about over the audience give hint to the fate of the
errant sheets.

For a few hearbeats, his expression goes blank, and the corner of his mouth
twitches in uncertainty.  His friends recognize the expression as the same
one they saw on him just before he tried to rationalize the bottle of
"Fur-So-Soft" conditioner they discovered in his briefcase at work one day
(while one of them was ostensibly digging through it for an Oh Henry bar).
The moment passes, and the look of uncertainty quickly melts into one of
resolution.  Let them know that *this* cat is a master of improvise.  With
unnecessary flourish, he lays the rest of his notes on the floor beside him
and steps up to the microphone.

The audience falls silent, and the snow leopard realizes that the furry
on-line world is watching him, waiting to hear what he has to say.  Forcing
down a last nervous swallow, and a tugging on his collar that suddenly seems
to be fitting a bit too snuggly, he pulls the microphone close and tries to
ignore the growing flutter in his stomach.  He clears his throat once...
twice... and tugs at his collar again.  He opens his feline mouth to speak,
but out of it comes not the eloquent allocution he'd spent days writing and
rehearsing, nor even the witty salutation he had tested on all his friends.

In a trajectory that he couldn't hope to match intentionally arcs a big,
juicy, hairball.  It sails gracefully through the air and lands on the very
edge of the stage, where it alights with a noisy "splort" and begins to drip
down the front like the squishy antithesis of his planned discourse.  For an
instant frozen in time, the snow leopard stands motionless, eyes wide in
horror, and paws clamped firmly over his mouth.  The audience, for its part,
is alternately outraged, amused, and grossed out.  The moment passes, and in
a hail of jeers, the cat quickly picks up his notes and turns to leave.
Ears laid back in shame, and tail between his legs, he scurries as quickly
as he can back to the wings, and vows never to delurk again.

dave b