Self-Portrait

Yesterday, AJD asked me where I'd put his camera, since I'd been the last to use it.  I said I'd thought I'd put it  back where I'd found it, but obviously it wasn't there.  This set off a flurry of searching with no success: we had no clue where the camera had got to.  I was particularly baffled, because I was dead certain I hadn't even taken it out of the room.

Well, it turns out Navarre has suddenly developed an interest in photography.  We finally found the camera in his clutches, and he confessed.  He swears he was going to put it back when he was done; he says he's borrowed it a few times before, but he'd been able to replace it before anyone had noticed.

You know how a lot of people with cameras want to take pictures of themselves taking pictures of themselves?  Navarre is one of these folk.  The results are extremely adorable, although I have to admit that they kind of all look exactly like this.  He hasn't expanded his repertoire yet (assuming he's not a photographic Frida Kahlo).

Jasper has sternly reprimanded Navarre for taking the camera without permission; we've told him that it's okay if he borrows it provided he asks first, but he's not allowed to for the next week.  Jasper suspects that he was sneaking around with the camera rather than asking because he was embarrassed to admit that he'd become interested in something that didn't pertain to preparing for his future as a monarch.  Like AJD and myself, he's delighted that Navarre's found a hobby.  He's always so serious and so intent on studying, and it's great to see him lightening up a little. 

Wild Republic Deathmatch

Summer is a slow time for the government in the Wild Republic.   It's the time when the legislative bodies adjourn and everyone else takes turns having vacations so that they can go home and hang out with their own species for a while.  This is less true in local chapters like ours; everyone gets a bit of vacation, but not at once, and the chapter is expected to stay open and operating as usual nevertheless.  With so many government employees on vacation elsewhere, though, this makes things a bit dull for the local chapters.  This means that everyone has more time to themselves; but it also means that they get a bit bored.

I think this is why they decided to have a local Deathmatch.  Apparently it was Mimsy's idea.

By the time AJD and I got wind of this, they'd already more or less worked out how it would go.  They had the tournament brackets all set up, so everyone knew who their first opponent would be.  Everyone was supposed to participate, including the youngsters and visiting diplomats.  Even level-headed types you'd expect to raise objections to this scheme - like Leprosy and Lady Faraday - were really into the whole idea.  (It must be noted that Leprosy was scheduled to fight Plouie, and therefore may have had an ulterior motive.  Lady Faraday was going to fight Rochester and has no such excuse.)  Let this be a lesson to you: civilisation only takes you so far.

Before anyone reading this gets too excited: no, this didn't end up happening.  It was called off at the eleventh hour.  Mind you, it wasn't called off because everyone came to their senses; or at least, not exactly.  It was called off because Desmond suddenly pointed out that Magick was going to win.

I don't think that the fact that Desmond, a manatee and rabbinical student, was scheduled to fight Murchison, an arctic fox and special agent, should detract from the wisdom and perspicacity of this observation.

Anyway, that was kind of the end of it.  Of course Magick was going to win.  It was blatantly obvious in retrospect.  So much so that it was agreed that they didn't need to go to all the trouble of having the fights to determine the winner.  Magick has been proclaimed the Official Champion of Wild Republic Deathmatch and everyone settled down to have a party.  I mean, parties are good too.

Magick suggested a poker game, but no one took him up on it.

Despite all the excitement that had been brewing over the cancelled event, there was surprisingly little disappointment in the group.  I guess they really were mostly bored.  In fact, there were only two disappointed personages: Rusty and Navarre.

My understanding is that the initial match-ups were the result of chance; Quixley wrote some sort of script that randomised them.  Therefore, perhaps no one should be blamed for an unfortunate oversight produced by the script.  Rusty's first match was to have been with Laszlo and Navarre's with Cami.  The winners of these two matches, however, were to fight each other; and Rusty and Navarre were grimly excited for this.  Each of them was dead certain that they'd win the first match, and then they would have a completely sanctioned reason to beat the shit out of each other, as they've been longing to do for months.  (I think they may be underestimating Laszlo, but never mind that.)  Now, with the golden opportunity snatched away just hours before, they were pretty devastated.

So one Deathmatch match did actually happen.  While everyone else was imbibing various spirits and telling stories, Rusty and Navarre snuck into the corner and succeeded in beating the shit out of each other.  The match ended in a draw.  Here they are; somehow in the excitement no one noticed what they were up to until it was over.

Since the fight was no longer sanctioned, technically they needed to be punished.  Discipline was left to Jasper, who decided that they really couldn't be blamed that much, given the oversight.  Offering a lion and a tiger a likely chance to duke it out and then snatching it away?  Not a great idea.  Feeling some degree of responsibility in the whole affair, and also noting that they'd already done a damn good job of punishing each other, Jasper decided to put them in detention together for the next twenty-four hours, where they proceeded to ignore each other.

 

This is as far apart as they can get until they're out of detention.

Jasper's opinion is that when they emerge from detention, they'll either have found a new common ground, or they'll pretend that the whole shameful episode never occurred.  His money is on the second.  The first, in his view, is not improbable, but he thinks they have a lot more fights to get through before they make it there.

This is really getting ridiculous

I missed most of Jeopardy! tonight because I stayed late at work, and this is a shame, because it was a very eventful game.  Not only did a college student win $48,000 without breaking a sweat, either.  

When I got home, the Double Jeopardy round was not quite halfway over and Laszlo and Navarre were downstairs watching with AJD, Gilly, and Zebulon.  This was, naturally, due to the effects of Hrithik's alarmingly effective meditation routine.  Laszlo had won an honourable mention because the winning contestant's anecdote was about getting in-between a female moose and her offspring (moral of story: this is a bad idea).  And Navarre really cleaned up, because there was an entire category about lions in the first round.  It's not clear whether this counts as a five-game win or as winning one game five times, but either way, this is an unprecedented accomplishment.

Hrithik, naturally, is claiming all the credit.

This is on top of AJD's recent discovery, mentioned in the comment thread on an earlier post, that the conference he's attending next month has sessions on the dialectological situation in Madagascar.  We'd joked before about Murchison needing to monitor Team Malagasy for suspicious behaviour, but it must be said that since Zebulon got here and Hrithik started meditating, things have been strange.  What is next, and what is going on?  Madagascar gets to host an Olympic games?  Madagascar suddenly becomes a world empire? 

Recreating Snow White

Approximately a year ago, well before it occurred to us that we could use a camera, AJD took advantage of an afternoon nap I was taking to give me what was simultaneously the most adorable and most surreal moment of my entire life to date.  We have endeavoured to recreate it for you.

What happened was approximately this: I had fallen asleep on AJD's bed, and while I was asleep, he convinced the entire Wild Republic to encircle me.  I was sleeping with someone the original time this happened; we didn't remember who, so in the reenactment Sir Theo did the honours, as he's the hardest to fit into a circle.

Here's the same thing, from a slightly different angle.

AJD was very proud of this idea and its execution.  He was particularly proud of his ability to withstand the temptation to wake me up, and left me to wake up on my own.

And so I woke up, surrounded by inquisitive furry faces.  If you've never had this experience, I strongly urge you to get someone to help you remedy the fact, because there's really nothing quite like it.

After we had completed the reenactment, we discovered to our chagrin that Navarre had been omitted from the fun; he'd been playing around on AJD's computer and missed the summons.  He was very disappointed, and AJD was very jealous because he hadn't got to be the one in the middle of the circle, so I swapped places with him and we let Navarre be featured in the middle.

Sir Theo later took advantage of the gathering to deliver a rather lengthy address on the topic of meadow vole politics.  This sounds really dull, but the animals seemed to find it entertaining; at least, none of them cut out early.

Anyway, so there you go: the cutest and most surreal moment of my life, recreated photographically for your pleasure.

The Royal Seal; or, In Honour of March

Navarre and Nicodemus have recently developed an interest in AJD's computer.  More specifically, they've developed an interest in watching AJD and Sir Theo playing online Dominion, which has been generalised into an interest in the computer.  We've been encouraging this interest in Nicki's case because it keeps him from eating things.

When Navarre and Nicodemus frame AJD's laptop, they look kind of like the Royal Seal of Great Britain.  Here, I'll show you:

The alternative title of this photograph is In like a lion, out like a lamb, in honour of the old adage, 'March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb,' which is extremely relevant because we are in fact at the beginning of March.

The Lion Has a Name!

So, AJD and I have acquired two additional pieces of knowledge.  First, the lion is named Judah Navarre Androcles.  Second, leonine onomastics are reaaaalllly screwed up.  The second fact evidently contributed to our delay in discovering the first.

Apparently all lions have three names.  The third name is the name of their lineage.  Navarre's is particularly august: his family are direct descendants of the lion saved by Androcles, and to show their gratitude (and, further, to satisfy an obscure point of honour which I, frankly, do not understand), they replaced their original lineage name with his name.  Navarre doesn't know what his family's name was before the Androcles episode; it's not clear this is because he's quite young or because it's been forgotten.

The astute reader may be wondering why I am referring to our lion as Navarre rather than Judah?  This is the part where leonine onomastics get rather peculiar: all male lions of the clan to which the Androcles lineage belongs have Judah as their first name.  Every single last one of them.  Just as the lion was the symbol for the tribe of Judah (you know, the Lion of Judah), so the tribe of Judah is evidently the symbol for the lions of Navarre's clan.  Judah of the Lions.  I have no idea where this tradition comes from - neither does Navarre - but there you go.

Lionesses do not take the clan of Judah as their mascot.  They have their own: the Egyptian lion goddess Sekhmet.  Accordingly, all lionesses of Navarre's clan have the first name of Sekhmet.  I will not pretend to understand the rationale, but it makes marginally more sense to me than the male lions using Judah.

So our lion's name-name, the one he actually uses, is his second name, Navarre.  Which is a nature name, kind of sort of.  Apparently lions often use the names of specific geographic features as their given names, and by extension started using the names of regions as well, particularly regions associated with lions.  I told Navarre that this was cheating, which he took as something of an affront; he said that the tradition exists because lions are all uniformly the same colour and it's hard to get many different names out of that and most of the ones that exist are considered feminine.  So they do this funny thing with named geographical features and regions instead.  They do use real nature names, sometimes, though: his own mother's name is Goldenrod, and Sandy, Tawny, and Honey perpetually top the most popular names for lionesses.

I did say that leonine onomastics were pretty crazy, right?

Another thing lions like to do is give all siblings names starting with the same phoneme.  Navarre, for instance, has two older sisters; the elder is Nemea, who is artistic and Goth, and the younger is Nittany (a popular name in the current generation), who talks on the phone a lot and is always whining to their mother about something gross her baby brother has done.  (I asked Navarre if she were telling the truth when she went whining and he ran away and pounced on Flurry, from which I conclude that even really Boy Scout lion cubs aren't above being pesky little brothers.)

All three of them have names associated with lions, sometimes tangentially.  The lion Heracles fought was from Nemea; the Nittany lion is the mascot of Penn State (yes, wrong kind of lion, but we've already noted that they're not very picky about this); and Richard the Lionheart was married to Berengaria of Navarre.  One of Navarre's aunts is named Macedonia, birthplace of Alexander, the new Heracles.  His father's name is Kilimanjaro, which I think is associated with lions only insofar as both lions and Mount Kilimanjaro are African.

So, there you go: they might take their royal responsibilities seriously, but lions aren't above bending rules when it suits them, and they're not above being weirdly pretentious on occasion, either.

Opposing Archetypes Collide! Epic Struggle Ensues!

Every now and then, implacable foes meet each other and fight for ultimate dominance.  Light and dark.  Good and evil.  Fire and ice.  Matter and anti-matter.  Lions and tigers.

Obviously, this post is about the last one.

Lions and tigers are each completely convinced that they are the most important, biggest, and most bad-ass cats around.  Each of them has a legitimate claim: lions are generally acknowledged to be the kings of beasts, but tigers are larger.  Both groups take the rivalry equally seriously, although in different ways.  There is no room for compromise, and they get a bit annoyed if you try to remain neutral.

Lions obtained their title because they're of generally steadier and more serious temperaments; they're also more social, and their internal cohesion does give them a bit of an advantage.  Tigers are scrappier and wilder, as well as larger, which means that they're less disciplined even though they're a bit more aggressive.  They're also largely solitary, except in mating season.  To use a handy D&D metaphor, lions are lawful and tigers are chaotic.  One suspects that this is as much a part of their enmity as the whole status thing.  Even if jaguars were bigger, lions and tigers would probably still hate each other's guts on principle.

Since we acquired the new lion, the feud has been introduced to our chapter of the Wild Republic.  Rusty and the lion are more or less the same age, which is probably for the best; it means they're equals, and if one or the other ends up dominant, it will be on the basis of merit.  So far it doesn't seem that either of them has an edge; we've seen them wrestling a few times, and they're pretty equally matched.  The wrestling matches tend to end with the two of them lying on their backs side by side with their feet in the air, which is kind of adorable.

Our lion and tiger are pretty representative of the Epic Feud as a whole, so they make a useful case study.  Rusty is kind of a bully, sad to say.  He's very aggressive - he even likes to chew on us sometimes, and he's always pouncing on people, just for the hell of it.  He really wants everyone to acknowledge him as the top cat, and he's totally convinced that tigers really ought to be the kings of beasts instead of silly boring old lions.  Rusty is rather endearing in his own way, but it's kind of in spite of himself.  Skandar (the white tiger) is not dissimilar, although he's mature enough that he's more likely to mouth off to people than randomly pounce on them.  If you provoke Skandar, though, he'll go after you.  Tigers are hot-heads.  Casper, the older tiger, is more of a gentleman (I think he's a different sub-species from the other two), but he's still pretty snarky even if he's more genteel about it, and I bet he was a lot different in his younger years.  Tigers are bad boys.

Our lion, on the other hand, is a law-abiding fellow who is cheerfully planning to go to grad school (never mind that he's not yet in middle school) in order to make himself as educated and informed as possible when it's his turn to lead a pride.  He's a solemn, earnest little fellow, kind of a gentle giant.  Last night we discovered that he's learning Yiddish (I'm sure Desmond is delighted), not because he's Jewish (he's Buddhist, of course) but because it will add to his experience and make him a better lion.  You see what I mean?  He's basically an overachieving boy scout, except when his anti-tiger instincts kick in.

It kind of reminds me of The Outsiders, you know?  Or something like that.

Personally, I kind of think lions deserve their royal status, because they're much more aware of the responsibilities placed upon them.  Nothing worse than a negligent, entitled royal, right?  But I've always kind of had a thing for tigers.  It's partly because they're stripy and partly because I have a major weakness for bad boys.

If you're a wild feline who is neither a lion nor a tiger, one of the truths you're taught very early on is that choosing sides in this epic battle is not really a good idea, all things considered.  Naturally some of them do have obvious preferences.  Cami, being both shy and intellectually inclined, gets on much better with the lion; their personalities are more alike, and the lion is less likely to randomly pounce on him.  Sir Tristan rather prefers lions on a general principle, mostly because he's from the Wild Parlimentary Monarchy.  But they're both careful to remain as officially neutral as possible, even though lions and tigers have little patience with this.

The others are either more evenly split or less invested.  Flurry really doesn't care; he's too young.  Mahler, older than both of them, professes not to care, but has a slight inclination towards Rusty as a fellow Asian cat. Khamsin's stance is the most nuanced and interesting: he's inclined towards the lion, since they're both Africans and have a certain ancestral affinity; but he's also inclined towards Rusty, because tigers are more physical, and cheetahs are the most athletic of all the cat species.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.  The adults have very little patience with the lion/tiger feud, and as far as they're concerned, the main reason a baby lion and tiger were both sent here was to foster mutual tolerance within the Republic.  They're likely to try to get Rusty and the lion to cooperate with each other, or even become friends.  Apparently it's not unheard of for odd love-hate friendships to crop up between lions and tigers in this way.  It's far too soon to tell whether this will be the case for our chapter, but Alfredo is not one to underestimate.