Our Tribute to Swan Lake

The Pennsylvania Ballet's production of Swan Lake closes later today.  This is my favourite ballet, and I have a subscription, so there was no way I wasn't going.  I went to the matinee.  It wasn't perfect - I really wish they'd cast someone else as Odette/Odile - but the choreography was awesome, the Prince was great, and there were a lot of really neat things about the production overall (e.g. the character dances, particularly the Russian; the stuff with the mirror; Odile's tutu; the demise of Rothbart).

There's a primary opposition in Swan Lake between white and black, with the lead female dancer playing the dual role of the white swan and the black swan.  Since this is both generally and specifically awesome, the denizens of the Wild Republic have put together an honourary tribute to Swan Lake by playing up the various possibilities for black/white contrasts.

Here we have Cami and Vim, artistically arranged.

There are multiple contrasts going on there, of course, besides just the black/white: feline/ursine, patterned/solid, shy/rambunctious, and so on.

Then here we have me with our two men of mystery, Magick and Murchison.

This is in fact exactly what I wore to the ballet today, although you can't see the black rosettes in my hair in this picture.  Slightly more of what was going on with my hair can be seen in this picture of me and Magick:

and this one of me and Murchison:

My belief that I am one of the least photogenic people on this planet has not changed, but this deficiency doesn't bother me as much as it used to.  Just to prove it, here's one of me without the boys.

The Wild Republic Reacts to the Season's First Snowpocalypse

This is a very special post for me: it's the first one to include pictures.  (AJD is the one to thank, because it's his camera.  But I'm the one who took them, so he's not responsible for their obvious lack of photographic expertise.  Photography is not one of my talents.)

Over the weekend, we were treated to our very first major snowstorm of the winter, about a foot in all.  The snow appears to have stopped, but the wind continues to be very impressive; we're scheduled for gusts of up to 40 mph all day, maybe into Wednesday.  Apparently this is the first time in a century that we've had so much snow in a strong La Nina.  Last year we had like four or five big storms like this (though less windy), which led AJD to coin the term "snowpocalypse".  We have decided to stay inside and not go anywhere for a few days.

Naturally, with animals from so many diverse climates, opinions in the Wild Republic are sharply divided over whether the snowpocalypse is good or not: the animals from warm climates are horrified, but the animals from cold climates are delighted.

Last year, we ended up putting all of the cold-climate animals in the windows downstairs so that they could look out at the shovelled walks (which make the piles of snow seem higher) and feel at home.  We haven't moved them downstairs yet, although we still might, but they made a beeline for the windows in AJD's room as soon as the snow started to get serious.

Here you can see Murchison, Flurry, and Vim staring happily down at the snow-swept sidewalk.

The Ice Age animals had a similar idea, but they picked a different window, the one that is partially covered with ice on the bottom.  That's Mimsy, the mammoth, on the left; Gus, the glyptodon, is on the right, but you can't see him so well.  (Mammoths tend to unintentionally take up a lot of space.)

The rest of the animals decided that the thing to do, when faced with a blizzard, was to have a Jingo.  What, you ask, is a Jingo?  Basically, it's a sort of party that warm-climate Wild Republicans throw to distract themselves from the snow.  The idea is very simple: you run around and around in circles, get massively overheated so that you don't notice how cold it is, and then pass out from exhaustion and sleep for a while.  I suspect alcohol may also be involved.

Between the winds and the Jingo, poor AJD didn't get any sleep last night at all.  He's been awake for almost twenty-four hours now.

The aftermath of a Jingo resembles a massacre.  To give you an idea, I have pictures from two different angles.

It looks kind of like a massacre, right?  Or maybe an orgy?  But no, it's a Jingo.

If you suspect you may have spotted a walrus in these pictures (and hey, isn't that an upside-down penguin?), and you're wondering why Humphrey isn't in the window, well, yeah, some of the cold-climate animals did opt for the Jingo over the window.  In Tibby's case, it was probably the excitement; he's an inquisitive little chap and he probably wanted to see what these warm-weather sorts were getting up to.  Humphrey... well, remember I said I suspected alcohol was involved?  Humphrey's involvement is one of the reasons behind this suspicion.  As to Plouie, well, who knows about Plouie.

Two warm-weather creatures did not participate in the Jingo.  Reggie is in my room for south room duty this week, so he spent the night bonding with Seal (as you might imagine, sea lions and river otters have stuff in common) and being perplexed with Sleepyhead (frisky otters do not know what to make of narcoleptics).  Meanwhile, Cami decided that the thing to do was simply sit on the floor by AJD's radiator, thus simultaneously a) placing himself in the warmest place in the room and b) placing himself where he can't see the horrible white stuff outside.

Doesn't he look cute (and cold)?

Plouie's Aliiiiiiive and the Arctic Animals Are Eating the Iceberg

Yesterday AJD discovered that the Brothers Chap had finally posted a new cartoon after a very long hiatus.  We watched it together, and since the cartoon featured Senor Cardgage, Plouie watched it too: AJD wanted to see whether Plouie would have an affinity with him or not.  Apparently not, sadly.  The cartoon featured lots of snow, which made Plouie quite excited, but the plot was completely over his head.

Afterwards we discovered that Plouie loses you if he's not looking at you, even if he's actually standing on you.  I was wearing a sweater, which excited him because sweaters remind him of snow, so AJD put him down on my shoulder, but he wasn't facing me, and as a result he was looking all over for me until we directed him to turn around.  Then he did it again a few minutes later.  Plouie doesn't have much in the way of longterm memory.

It's definitely nice to see him moving about and bouncing again.  He'd been very quiet for some time; he spent most of last month lying on his back and staring fixedly at the ceiling.  I was getting worried that he'd blown his circuits for good, but it must have just been a longer cycle than usual.  Plouie sort of has phases, like the moon, only less regular: periods of hyperactivity followed by catatonia and then back again.

Returning to the subject of snow, the arctic animals are currently trying to eat the iceberg.

AJD used to have a desktop Mac, but about eighteen months ago he replaced it with a laptop because it was ancient and slow.  It's now sitting on the floor about a foot from my side of the bed.  Since it's large and white, the animals with snow affinity have concluded it's an iceberg, and they often take turns perching on it.  Similarly, his duvet is blue, and the animals with water affinity sometimes treat it like water.  They know it's not; it's a purely nostalgic phenomenon.  We're less clear on whether the iceberg is nostalgia or not, or whether it depends.  (Plouie almost certainly takes it for a real iceberg.)

I went into AJD's room this morning to ask him some questions about Yiddish, and in the process noticed that Vim (the polar bear) and Murchison (the Arctic fox) were both lying on the floor near the iceberg.  They're either licking it or trying to eat it.  We have no explanation for this bizarre phenomenon; they've certainly never done this before.  And while Vim is young, and therefore can be expected to do odd things, Murchison is an adult, and a very canny one at that.  Maybe they're anxious for it to snow now that's winter?  Or maybe there's something about the psyche of snow animals that we don't understand? 

A few minutes later, I noticed that Cami was entangled in the shoelaces of one of AJD's shoes, but that seems like typical feline behaviour.

One might think that one has complete control over the antics of one's plush menagerie, such that one will never be surprised at their antics.  This is totally false.  They have a remarkable capacity for doing cute things with no help from us at all.

Religion in the Wild Republic

AJD and I are both Jewish.  If this factoid led you to assume that the Wild Republic is essentially Jewish, you would be wrong.  Diversity is one of the hallmarks of the Wild Republic, and religion is no exception.

That's not to say that none of the animals are Jewish.  Desmond (the manatee) is very Jewish.  As a matter of fact, Desmond is currently studying to become a rabbi.  His studies aren't progressing as quickly as they could be, because his Wild Republic duties take up enough time that he's only a half-time studentt; he was a rabbinical student before he ever got here, and he still has a way to go.  I quite respect his ability to multi-task.  But Desmond is the sort of fellow who believes in doing many things and all of them well, so the dual vocation will probably work out for him in the end.

Some of the animals are of uncertain religious affiliations, by which I don't mean they're necessarily areligious, but that they don't talk about it.  Sleepyhead (the panda), for instance.  We haven't even been able to get his name, let alone his religious preferences.  Murchison (the Arctic fox) is another.  He's a consummate professional, and his profession happens to involve espionage, so he's pretty closed-mouthed about anything pertaining to his personal life.

Sir Tristan, of course, is a member of the Church of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, or "Church of WPM".  At least, he's nominally a member.  He seems to be the sort who enjoys elaborate liturgies but doesn't follow the Church's official stance on much of anything.  I'm not totally clear on the theological or social positions of the Church of WPM (it's not even clear to me whether they're Christians - as you'd assume from the name - or something else), but I'm given to understand that Sir Tristan's attitudes are very typical of its parishioners, so possibly the details don't really matter all that much.

Seleucus, on the other hand, is a bona fide hard-core Zoroastrian.  This is because he's a Bactrian camel.  Actually, he's not just any Bactrian camel; he's a royal Bactrian camel, and apparently the royal family takes their continued adherence to Zoroastrianism very seriously.  Heritage is very important to royal Bactrian camels.

Then there's the situation with the cats (with the exception of Sir Tristan).  They're all Buddhists. Three of them - Mahler, Flurry, and Rusty - are from Asia, so geographically speaking it makes sense that they'd be Buddhists, but Khamsin and the lion are African, and Cami's Mesoamerican, so given the general areal distribution of human Buddhists, one might expect they'd be something else.  Apparently, though, Buddhism spread like wildfire amongst felines of all types, so now they're all Buddhists wherever you go, outside the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy.  This seems rather improbable to me, given that, well, they're all carnivores, but there you are.  Apparently the doctrine of Feline Buddhism is extremely complicated.  Cami has tried several times to explain it to me, but I think you have to be a cat yourself to understand how it works.

One of the complicating factors is that many cats aren't only Buddhists; they're Buddhists plus something else.  Cami himself, for instance, is a Buddhist and a Jaguar Agnostic.  Jaguars, as you probably know, were considered sacred in Mesoamerica and South America, which put the jaguars in an odd position: they were being worshipped, but they weren't really clear on why, given that they didn't see themselves as divine and felt kind of weird about the whole thing.  Had they been lions or tigers, they probably would have just drank it up, but jaguars are both less full of their own consequence and a lot more given to philosophic speculations.  Rather than enjoy their perceived divinity, they developed a bit of theological insecurity, and this eventually led to a mass conclusion that they couldn't know whether gods existed or not.  I'm given to understand that this somehow made them more receptive to Buddhism, but again Buddhism didn't supersede the local agnostic movement.

Not all of the animals are averse to self-worship.  Take Tibby, for instance.  Don't let his name fool you: he's an imperial penguin, after all, and "Tibby" is short for "Tiberius Claudius Pingo".  Like the human Claudian emperors, the Claudian penguins are more than happy to see themselves as divine, and their religion is more or less identical to the pre-Christian emperor cult of the Roman empire, modulo the fact that all their divinities are penguins.  It's easy to forget about this; Tibby's a modest little chap, and pretty matter-of-fact about the whole divinity thing.  One does wonder if it contributes to his cheerful self-confidence, though.

Most of the other animals either adhere to the native faith of their species or mix it with a dash of the religion of the nearest human population.  I'll use the wolves (Alfredo and Beppe) as an example, both because there are two of them and because their theology is possibly the most complex of all.  Our wolves are Italian wolves, and their religion is a tangled mixture of the human polytheism of ancient Italy (before the emergence of the emperor cult) and the native lupine tribal beliefs, with a pinch of Catholicism thrown in for good measure.  We haven't really got a good grasp of how it works just yet, because we've had wolves here less than six months.

No discussion on this topic would be complete without explaining Plouie's take on theology.  Plouie believes in the Blue Penguin of Happiness.  We're not really quite sure if this is an Adelie penguin thing or something he came up with on his own after listening to us reading too many faery tales out loud, or some odd combination thereof, but whichever it is, he's quite earnest about it.  He even remembers it from one day to the next, which is really impressive by Plouie standards.  We don't have too many details about the Blue Penguin, but our working hypothesis is that it's some sort of Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Faery figure.  Beyond that it's hard to tell.  Plouie's end of all of our attempted conversations on the subject consists primarily of "The Blue Penguin of Happiness!  The Blue Penguin of Happiness!", accompanied by increasingly fervent jumping up and down until he passes out.  It makes him pretty happy, though.