"The Creative Mundane"

SOMETIMES it just doesn't seem worth it. You have to stand around in court garb your girlfriend made, making reverences right and left and saying things like, "Good morrow, milady," just to have an excuse to scarf down huge feasts and guzzle quarts of mead and ogle girls in bunny-fur bikinis. Sometimes it seems like just one more, "Pardon, milord," and you'll have to show these people just what a berserker really is.

"The Creative Mundane" is for you. With the aid of these articles, you will soon be able to resist any urge toward "forsoothliness" (whatever that is) even when beset by hordes of determined Laurels, Knights, and Royal Peers. With these techniques you can safeguard yourself on all fronts, prepared to send every authentic medieval influence screaming for sanctuary.

Mind you, you can't be all mundane all the time. If you are, one of two things will happen. Either everyone will conclude you are a newcomer and will bombard you with helpful advice, or everyone will conclude you are a jerk and will pester you to shape up or get out.

But almost everyone, even the most experienced Laurel and the most noteworthy Knight, is mundane now and then. With the help of "The Creative Mundane", you'll learn to keep your mundanity at a nicely calculated level, so that you can go merrily on your way, staying just under the radar of the Authenticity Police.

After all, it's not the Society for Compulsive Authenticity.

Part I: How to Dress Mundanely — Clothing to keep your mundane frame of reference intact.

Part II: How to Outfit Mundanely — Preserving your mundanity by keeping all your toys around you.

Part III: How to Behave Mundanely — Making sure a comfortable "presence" of mundanity extends all around you.

Note: "The Creative Mundane" is always looking for new mundanities to recommend. Please contact me with your favorite mundanity-preservation techniques. I'll add the most general, useful, and imaginative to "The Creative Mundane."