Natural Disasters Edition II: Hrithik Saves Greater New Jersey

The worst of the storm is over, anyway, and Alfredo has rescinded the evacuation order.  The Wild Republic is now emerging from the closet.  They appear to be no worse for the wear, but they're all a bit cranky.  Being crammed into close quarters like that was evidently an experience:

• Rusty complained most of the time because he wanted to watch the storm.
• The kittens got bored and sang a lot of 'One Hundred Bottles of Beer' whenever Jasper's attention was diverted.
• Cami and Angel Joe were pretty terrified the whole time.
• The Wild Parliamentary Monarchy delegates, plus Seleucus, Leprosy, and Desmond, spent the entire time having a spirited intellectual discourse on the nature of reality, which everyone else felt wasn't really in keeping with the gravity of the situation.
• Omri spent the entire storm trampling all over everyone in an effort to find Alfredo's clipboard, which (it was later revealed) Parsley was sitting on.
• Quixley, deprived of his usual dosage of caffeine, was pretty grouchy the whole time.  You can't really blame him, I guess, because he was worried that he'd have to configure the computer system all over again.
• Nicky fainted, but he got better.

By far the most notable happenstance, however, is that Hrithik insisted on meditating the entire time, because he was convinced that in this way he could keep the destruction outside to a minimum.  Naturally this began to wear on everyone else's nerves almost immediately, but with his Jeopardy! track record, no one could really make a compelling case against him.  Zebulon probably could have, but Zebulon, either in a show of Team Malagasy solidarity or because he's crazy, decided to take Hrithik's side.  Team Malagasy has pull, I'm telling you.

Now, of course, Hrithik is claiming sole credit for the fact that the entire eastern coast of the United States hasn't disappeared Atlantis-style beneath the waves, despite the fact that even the most alarming of the pre-storm predictions had not mentioned this as a possibility.

Oh - one other thing.  Sleepyhead managed to sleep through the entire hurricane, and quite possibly never noticed himself being evacuated to the closet at all.  Apparently this how giant pandas respond to natural disasters.

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? 

Stripes

The denizens of the Wild Republic have a peculiar fascination with each other's tails.  Quixley, , for obvious reasons, is particularly impressed with Hrithik's tail.

The aesthetics of this picture are very satisfying to me.  I'm not sure what Team Malagasy is talking about, by the way.  They confer a lot, and they stop talking when you appear to be paying attention too closely.

Aye, aye!

When Alfredo was sent here to head the local chapter, he knew it would be a challenge, but he hadn't realised that he would end up host to a sizable international delegation.  He likes challenges, but he doesn't like ulcers, and the combination of prestigious international delegation with a tribe of hyperactive kittens, a deranged moronic penguin, and his own puppy son keeps him up nights worrying.  He's absolutely terrified that somehow his constituency is going to start a war.  Conscientious to the point of neurosis: that's Alfredo.  But one has some sympathy for his position.

So, in addition to a disciplinarian for the kittens, Alfredo has been lobbying with his superiors for some sort of resident legal counsel, just in case.  He'd met with about as much success until the Bubble Gum Tail Incident, and then his superiors promised that they'd send him a good lawyer.

And they did send a good lawyer.  They sent one of the most promising young up-and-coming lawyers they could find, a fellow who breezed through law school, aced the bar exam, and has an excellent track record in court.  This is a lawyer who has won the respect of all his peers for the incisiveness of his mind and his uncanny ability to work the law to his advantage.  Despite his relative youth, several of his arguments have been collected as examples for law students to study, because of their unusual clarity and persuasiveness.

But the lawyer in question was... not quite what Alfredo was expecting.

Poor Alfredo.  He looks so dejected.  You can almost hear his inner monologue: 'Why me?'

Zebulon is an aye-aye, and aye-ayes are primarily famous for three things: they all have an inexplicable fondness for ships, despite lacking all aptitude for sailing them; they are all, without exception, incredibly brilliant; and they are all, without exception, absolutely bat-shit insane.  Zebulon is a very good example of his species.  He's the most promising lawyer of his generation, but he has a few screws loose, and you'd never know it from his behaviour out of court.  Out of court you're lucky if you can get him to say anything other than 'Aye.'

I think Alfredo can be forgiven for not quite trusting that Zebulon will live up to his hype.  We haven't seen him in action yet.

The denizens of the Wild Republic are of two minds about Zebulon.  Some of them try to steer clear of him, because they're not quite sure what to make of him and can't quite believe he's not another Plouie.  (I mean, Plouie gives the impression of having a larger vocabulary.)  The other group finds him kind of fascinating.  Barry, for instance, rather likes Zebulon.  One wonders how much of this is due to the fact that Zebulon's conversational peculiarities make it easier for Barry to talk about himself.

Humphrey is being far more patient with Zebulon than one might have expected, given that he's a retired commodore and aye-ayes are notorious amongst nautical men.  See, they really like climbing around in the rigging and untying knots, and when you are a sailor you have a vested interest in keeping knots tied, so having an aye-aye aboard is a massive inconvenience.  They're sort of like gremlins that way.  But Humphrey is doing a commendable job of keeping his anti-aye-aye biases under control.  He's had a number of conversations with Zebulon that consist of Humphrey talking about his nautical exploits, punctuated by lots of "aye aye" from Zebulon.

Actually, on second thought, Humphrey's tolerance for Zebulon is not really that unlike Barry's.

Hrithik is the only other local who has had previous experience with aye-ayes; this is because Zebulon, like Hrithik, is from Madagascar.  Hrithik is excited enough about having another member of Team Malagasy - and a fellow primate, to boot - to overlook some of Zebulon's peculiarities.  He's also our primary source about aye-ayes in general.  When we first asked him what he thought of Zebulon, he did that "draw a circle near your ear" gesture with his tail, but then he elaborated that they're all like that.

Here's Team Malagasy, perched in a very short tree.

Hrithik spends most of his time on top of one of my bookcases; that's his tree.  Zebulon is less picky about his habitat, but he has a habit of hanging on things, usually upside down.  Sometimes this takes his neighbours by surprise.

Gilly and Nicodemus hadn't even realised he was there until after we took the picture.  They were rather startled.

Zebulon is kind of okay to have around, all told.  He really likes being scratched, and makes the most adorable noises when you indulge him thus, and also the most reproachful noises when you stop.  He seems to like Jeopardy! so far; he started watching mostly out of curiosity, like Hrithik once upon a time, but the game appeals to him.  Also he appears to be something of a hypnotist, which makes me rather nervous.  AJD stopped him in the middle of hypnotising me and we're not really sure what would have transpired if he hadn't.