Household Reorganization

[rushthatspeaks]

We've had a shuffle of roommates lately-- eredien moved into a place in Somerville which is providing her with infinitely more space and serving as a sort of annex, and B. headed to Virginia-- so at the house meeting to do things like reapportion chores we happened to rename the place, sort of by accident. Essentially by default (although most people didn't like the name) the household as a whole had been called Gerbilhouse (or any variant spelling) for a while, but the last gerbils passed away quite some time ago and we aren't going to get any more; the individual units had been called after the various forms of non-human life there resident, so that we had Unit Fish, Unit Plant and Unit Cat, but post-eredien we realized we hadn't got any plants.

So we've renamed Cat Bubastis, so that Ruth can now go about calling the cats her little Bubastards, and we've put an action figure of an Ent into Plant and called it Fangorn, and we're calling Fish Utgard, since it is the place Thrud lives and she spends so much of her time being Loki. And as a whole we're calling it a Congery, since this is a) appropriate and b) sounds a lot like 'conjury', which is a thing what happens around the house.

I do realize ninety percent of you won't care about the names, but we really *don't* have gerbils anymore, and it's confusing to have people think that we do.

I am reading Clive Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf while attempting to write an essay on Marjorie Bowen, and both of them are going on and on longer than I would really like-- but one of them I haven't got any control over, and the other one keeps having things that really can't be left out because they are so neat.

Comments

[jedibl.livejournal.com]

sooo... who all does live at the place now? (By my count, there should be 5, total? Is there someone new that I'm missing?)

I will endeavor to remember to stop referring to you all as "Gerbilhouse"... but it'll be difficult, since that name is definitely engraved into my memory pretty strongly. Of course, I'm not there all that often, so you probably won't notice anyway. :-) Didn't you try to rename yourselves a few years ago (may have been when there were only one or two units) without success?

[weirdquark]

Yes, but we didn't really have a name that we liked to replace Gerbilhouse with, so we couldn't go around calling ourselves anything else.

I suspect that if we all use the Congery to refer to where we live, in a few years, people will be used to that too.

[jedibl.livejournal.com]

OK, just one more question: Is "Congery" pronounced with a hard G or a soft G? :-)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Soft G.

[sovay]

To be honest, I hadn't been aware that your collective was even referred to as Gerbilhouse until I saw weirdquark's post a few days ago. That said, I find this—

So we've renamed Cat Bubastis, so that Ruth can now go about calling the cats her little Bubastards

—a totally valid reason. I must remember, however, not to make any plague jokes.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

They are only a plague upon one of our houses.

Yes, you must; it would be tasteless.

[shahnasa.livejournal.com]

You rock.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

You don't need to do the Marjorie Bowen essay if it's too much trouble.

Alternatively, if you're doing it anyway, you could try selling it to IRSOF or Strange Horizons.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I was thinking IROSF and I'll email a copy to you; it may be a tad obscure for Strange Horizons. I've been meaning to write this essay for two years anyhow, so it is good that you have provided impetus.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

I have very little idea what your essay is about, but in general I do recommend that you submit stuff to Strange Horizons. Especially fiction, if only because I know the senior fiction editor (jedediah), and I've seen examples of some of the dreck he gets otherwise. :-)

[sovay]

and we're calling Fish Utgard, since it is the place Thrud lives and she spends so much of her time being Loki.

Speaking of Loki—whatever happened with that drastically bad piece of Loki/Baldur shonen-ai? I assume that no one died because of it, but I can't necessarily rule out apoplexy or murder attempts.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Hysterical laughter, to the point of being on the floor for a while. I believe she got a copy for her friend who plays Odin, to spring without warning.