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.

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.

Wild Fascist Dictatorship Newsflash: DUCKS

Owing to the extreme nature of the storm presenting striking the Eastern Seaboard, Ebenezer Popcorn has ordered his entire citizenry to transfer themselves into ducks or face steep fines, thus throwing the country into panic.  Reports indicate that conspicuously non-avian animals have been seen wandering around the capital city in duck masks and fake duck flippers, the latter sometimes worn on the wrong feet or on too many feet.  No arrests have been yet made - it is possible that news of the fraud has not yet reached the proper authorities - but sources are predicting that some citizens may be forced to stand trial for duck fraud.

It is worth pointing out that the Wild Fascist Dictatorship is located somewhere in Austria, and that at this time there have been no reports that Austria has been unduly affected by Hurricane Irene.

Natural Disasters Edition

Well, so there's a hurricane.  Exciting, right?

At the first signs of severe weather, Alfredo ordered the entire local chapter evacuated into the closet to wait out the storm, ambassadors and all. This isn't actually a sign that he's an alarmist so much as a practical matter; Alfredo may be neurotic, but he rarely panics.  His objective was mostly to ensure that everyone kept away from the windows and stayed in one place, so that the more easily scared animals - Plouie, Cami, Angel Joe - were neither staring at scary weather nor being tortured with it by animals made of sterner stuff.  He did let Rusty watch for just a little bit, though; Rusty loves storms.

Several hours after the evacuation, I discovered that Murchison wasn't in the closet.  Whether he stayed behind on his own initiative or Alfredo's is not clear; he's not saying.  I persuaded him to move further back from the windows, anyway.

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. 

The Many Guises of Seal

Sometimes you can know someone for years, and think you know pretty much everything there is to know about them... and then they surprise you, and you realise that there are still things about them you never even suspected.

I went to take a nap a bit ago, by which I mean, I sort of collapsed facefirst onto my mattress.  Immediately a problem revealed itself: I was wearing an oversized T-shirt that I'd tied with a scrunchie, and if I insisted on sleeping in this fashion, the scrunchie was going to make it uncomfortable.  So I sort of heaved myself up just long enough to pull the scrunchie off the shirt, and then I stuck the first place I could think of that it wouldn't get lost, which happened to be around Seal's neck.

This had a most unexpected consequence: observe.

Seal is an Elizabethan!  Look at how naturally he wears the ruff and how well it suits him!  I never guessed!  Here we've been together twenty-seven years and counting, and I never realised that my sea lion companion is Elizabethan.  I felt pretty embarrassed, let me tell you.  How could I have failed to notice it before?  But Seal was very nice about the whole thing.  He said that it took him quite a long time to realise it himself, and in fact hadn't twigged to it until I put the scrunchie around his neck.

Sometimes we surprise ourselves.  It's true.

Despite what you may think, Seal is not a stranger to cosplay.  Nope.  I'm a Jew-by-choice, not a born Jew, and I was raised Catholic.  Every year at Christmas, I used to torture poor Seal by dressing him up in the little Santa Claus costume my mother made for him when I was three or four.  I still have this costume, and Seal graciously agreed to be photographed wearing it (the things one does for love, right?).  

See, he's a Christmas Seal.

Come to think of it, he was awfully delighted when I told him I was converting.

Laura's Eyes

As I said in a recent post, Alfredo worries about Beppe a lot, because e's convinced that he's dooming his son to a lifetime of psychological problems because he's a single parent.  Beppe, as far as we can tell, shows no signs of deep psychological damage; he behaves just like any puppy of his age should.

Nevertheless, Beppe has of course been affected by his mother's death.  He was telling us the other day that he can't really remember her anymore, and he feels pretty sad about that; he wishes he had at least one clear memory of her.  So I pointed out to him that he has his mother's eyes.  

Alfredo's eyes are amber, but Beppe's are very blue, just like Laura's were; Alfredo has told us before that he's very glad about this, because he can see a little bit of Laura whenever he looks at Beppe.  I told Beppe what his father had said, and suggested that whenever he feels a bit sad because of his mother, he can go look at himself in the mirror, and know that his eyes are just like hers.  It's not the same as havivng real memories of her, of course, but it's similar, and he'll always be able to do that.

Beppe immediately brightened.  His father doesn't tell him constantly how much his eyes are like hers, and so he'd forgotten it.  He says he feels much better knowing that he has her eyes, even without the mirror strategy.  This didn't stop him from trying the mirror idea too.

Happily, this experiment was also a success.  Beppe was so delighted that he hurried off to tell Alfredo about it, which made Alfredo conspicuously misty-eyed.