Discriminatory Language – Chapter 7, Epilogue 03

Well, things are slowly beginning to look a little more finished over here. ^_^; It’s still quite some distance to full functionality and final look, but progress is there. You know, like the narrator of The Beast of Yucca Flats put is so memorably: “Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast. Progress.” *cough* >_>

Today’s strip boldly addresses one of the great injustices of the animal kingdom. Predators that hunt at night have a cool adjective: nocturnal. Daylight hunters have a slightly less cool, but still perfectly acceptable one: diurnal. But what about those hunting during the periods in between – at dawn or at dusk? They’re called cathemeral or even crepuscular. Crepuscular. ._. That sounds like it’s Latin for “creepy and covered in boils”. I just can imagine Bela Lugosi using that word: “Do not be afraaaid of my crepuscular assistant. He is repulsive, but verry obedient.” While cathemeral sounds like Latin for “A cat that exists for less than a day”. >_>

Today’s new introductee heavily objects to either description, as you can see. He’s not covered in boils, he’s not creepy (only creeping at times in the normal course of his hunting activities), and while he is kind of a cat, he’s dead set on existing beyond the day. So he’d definitely encourage zoologists to clean up their act and come up with some less discriminatory adjectives for hunters with a fondness for twilight.

His name, by the way, is K’ip, and I hope you’ll like him…since he’s going to be around for a while. More proof that you shouldn’t call him cathemeral!

More on Monday!

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