The Wild Republic Hits the World Wide Web

Quixley, as previously mentioned, was sent here to force the local chapter into the computer age.  He spent the first month or so of his tenure just fixing up the machines themselves, which were old and slow and riddled with spyware.  After he managed to get everything in place, he started giving the others tutorials.  Some of them were a bit hesitant, and Leprosy still grumbles about everything, but his efforts are starting to see results.  Consequently, Quixley's job is much more laid-back these days.  I thought I should share with you a few of these results.

First of all, Parsley has developed a massive crush on Sandra Day Okapi, one of the justices on the Zoo-preme Court.  Parsley caught on to the whole web-browsing concept pretty easily, and it occurred to him to look up how Day Okapi was doing on the court.  He's never met her, but he has a lot of species pride, and she is his people's hero.  She's also apparently pretty hot, if okapis are your type.

He's taken to doing a lot of soulful pining in front of the computer like this, gazing on the image of his goddess.  At least it's not porn?

Gilly, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, has discovered online shopping.  Here he is at his favourite site.

Since we have remained staunch in our refusal to give him a credit card, Gilly can't do more than look, but he looks a lot.  He even has a wishlist.  He also has a really irritating habit of leaving the site up when he's ended his browsing session; we assume this is a new tactic intended to guilt us into giving him what he wants.

The website that has been the biggest hit around here is LiveJournal, despite LJ's recent issues.  Every last member of the local chapter, including all of the foreigners, has opened an LJ account, friending all of the others.  Here, for instance, you can see Omri writing in his journal; the text reads, 'Hey everyone, my next dancing bear show will be on Wednesday night.  I'm playing the dancing bear!'

This is kind of cool, but also logistically problematic, because there's only one computer between them all (except for Murchison and Magick, who have iPhones).  So someone is always on LJ, and there's always a queue of others waiting for their turn at LJ.  Here is the queue behind Omri while he was taking his turn:

You see the problem, right?  Someone posts something, and then everyone else wants to check their friends-list so that they can read it and leave comments, not to mention posting something of their own; but there's only the one computer, so they're always in the queue, and then sometimes someone spoils the folk still in the queue on what was posted and those who haven't had a chance to read it yet get angry.  It's kind of unfortunate.  Meanwhile, Gilly and Sir Theo are annoyed because they have less time to play Dominion now that everyone else wants computer time.

The juveniles have things a bit better, because they have periods of time when they can be on the computer while the adults are still working - although they do still have to contend with each other.

But this means that the adults boot them off when they're done working, so their computer time is restricted in other ways.  The kittens have complained to Jasper about this, but he hasn't been very sympathetic.

Facebook has been much less successful around here.  About half of the animals have joined it.  They seem to find it overly complicated or something.  Here's Quixley giving Humphrey and Seleucus a Facebook tutorial; Quixley said afterwards that no matter how many times he went over how to "like" things and Facebook walls, they didn't seem to catch on.

Over all, Quixley's done a good job of introducing computers to the local chapter of the Republic.  He's been less successful lobbying for a bigger budget, even with Alfredo's support.  Quixley thinks they need at least five machines, preferably ten, but the bureaucracy won't give him more money for this unless he can show that the computers are being used primarily for work, which he can't, because with only one computer, no single individual can get significant work done.

Dancing

I mentioned a little while ago that Omri turns out to be a bona fide dancing bear.  Laszlo, who is a trained tap dancer (he was never a professional, but this was mostly just because he wanted a career in government), was delighted when this came up in conversation.  So the two of them have taken to dancing in the evenings most days.  Here they are:

Some caution is required in dancing with Omri, since he's got pretty impressive claws, but he and Laszlo seem to have worked that out.

Omri's pretty good at other types of dancing, too.  He was pretty excited when he found out that AJD and I have been going salsa-dancing lately, although disappointed to learn that bears aren't allowed to go.  But he offered to help AJD figure out a few tricks.  It's much harder to go social salsa-dancing as a beginner when you're a guy.  Girls have it easy; you just sort of let the guy twirl you around and try to stay on the right foot.  Guys are expected to know how to do the twirling.  Here are Omri and AJD practising.

AJD says that there are obvious readjustments in technique when one is salsa-dancing with a bear, but not so many as you'd think.

Omri's first love, naturally, is vaudeville, so he and AJD have been having some fun with that too.  I took this picture last night when they were working on their rendition of "Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear."*

* This song, interestingly, is sort of the reverse of "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes" from Cabaret, if you know what I mean.

Maybe it was over here...

So we have this new bear.  His name is Omri, and he's a sloth bear, which means that he has very unusual teeth and very large claws.  Sloth bears are awesome, and if you didn't already know that, you should go read about them on Wikipedia.

Omri is our new investigative specialist.  He's here to help Alfredo find things.  You know, car keys, pencils, missing important diplomatic documents, and so on.  If you're concerned that important diplomatic documents go missing often enough around here to warrant a trained specialist to be sent here, well, that's fairly normal for the Wild Republic.  It happens when you have a lot of deranged penguins and peppy puppies hanging around.  Not to mention the kittens.

In the interest of complete candour, I have to say that Omri's general method for investigation is not the most inspiring.  It seems to consist primarily of pacing back and forth, or occasionally in circles.  He's not particularly subtle about it - actually, it's something of a production.  We recently caught him on camera when he was trying to find Seleucus's personal stationery.

Is it over here?

No, maybe it's over here.

...No, maybe it's over here.

...No, maybe it's over here...

As you can see, Omri's investigative efforts tend to generate a sizable audience.  I should point out that it's not at all clear why the stationery should be by the radiator at all, but Omri was pretty devoted to the idea that it was.  

I will tell you what happened to Seleucus's stationary later.  (It has been found.)

Now, in Omri's defence, he's still very new to the investigation business.  He's only just completed his training; this is his first real posting, and he really wants to impress everyone, and as a result he hasn't got over his initial nerves.  Also, the training that they receive leaves something to be desired.  They hide something in one of two locations, so if it's not in one, it really is probably in the other.  Having more than two possibilities for missing objects is throwing Omri off his game.  He was really good when there were only two possible locations.

Apart from his occupational insecurities, Omri is still something of an enigma to us.  The other thing we've learned about him so far is that he's a trained dancing bear.  Laszlo, who is a world-class tap dancer, is over the moon at this revelation; we'll show you pictures of them together later.