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I blather about my family's menagerie a lot. Because they're awesome. As I'll be saying goodbye again until Christmas come Sunday morning, I'm going to devote a moment to the various beloved critters we keep. All those listed are current.

Beginning with birds, I should note for anyone who hasn't heard (why do you read my lj, person who's clearly never had a conversation with me?) that my father was once the chair of the Great Chicago Caged BIrd Club, is a successful breeder, and all around bird man. Not to be confused with Birdman. Definitely a different guy. We have an absurd number of parrots, mostly adopted from people who moved, were allergic, or predominantly couldn't be bothered.

Those who share big cages share entries. They kind of come as a set in my mind.

Fudd (yes, his first name is Elmer, but it's seldom used) is my best buddy among our current parrots. He is old and senile. He's beginning to be funny looking. His nostrils are asymmetrical and he walks like an old man, if an old man were a plump double yellow head. If you sing jingles from the seventies (J-E-LL-Ooooooohhhhh being his favorite), he perks up considerably. He spent one Christmas season living in my room, which at the time was actually a small section of hallway for various reasons. There, he impersonated me. Successfully. To my mother. He also attempted to spell one time. Not with the least success, but really, A+ for effort, considering he's a bird. Fudd is too old to have any random Amazon violence left in him, and as such likes to just chill out on the big perch Dad keeps over the cages. He lets himself out of his cage and will sometimes hang out up there for days at a time. Fudd basically wins.

Mr. Bill Jingles and the Green Avenger are a pair of yellow napes. They are very large as Amazons go. The species can tend to aggression, but both are rather well behaved. They're quite bonded, but not mates. Many parrots form partnerships like this. It's kinda cute. They don't come out to play much, but they're polite enough. By way of names, Mr. Bill was originally just Jingles, but one day began to say "Hello Bill! It's a wonderful world!" Clearly left over from some previous owner. It's not often a pet tells you his name, so he kept it. Also, you can sing it to the tune of Mr. Bo Jangles. The Green Avenger, or Greenie as she's usually known, was, well, named by my brother. He was ten. She's cool with it.

Spike and his progeny Emma and Larry inhabit the next cage over. They're a rather sour bunch. Every blue front we've ever had has been a bit of a pistol. Emma was hand fed and raised, but she took a real aggressive turn, as many Amazons are wont to do, when she hit the equivalent of her teens. Larry is her elder brother (it should be noted that it's impossible to tell the gender of a parrot without having it sexed, unless it lays an egg, so all genders are mainly hypothetical) and very like in temperment. Spike was always a crank, but when he set up housekeeping with his mate, he turned nasty, and has been rather depressed since he died. They're sort of the unsettingly well armed hillbilly family of the flock.

Up above the yellow napes and blue fronts lives the rather personality-free Roosevelt, Rosie for short. He is a lovebird belonging to my youngest sister. He doesn't do much except putter around his cage and occasionally sit on Clare's finger. He tends to get lost among the bigger parrots.

Tee-toe (originally Tito) lives the next cage over. He's an African gray, not an Amazon, rather smaller, a few orders of magnitude cleverer, and a bit of a punk. He's a very good mimic, at least compared to the other birds. He does my brother particularly well, but has a bit for just about everyone in the house. An African gray exhaustively trained to talk can handle complete sentences, grammar, and syntax. Tee-toe just likes to pretend to be the phone and rattle his cage until you give him a peanut. He's one of our misogynist parrots.Very sensitive to the emotions and opinions of their owners, parrots will often prefer one gender over the other, sometimes revealing quite a bit about their previous household. However, he will tolerate my younger sisters and sometimes me. Actually, come to think, it's mostly Mom he doesn't care for. Hmm.

Suki, Mikey, Creepy, and Carmine make up our small flock of Mexican redheads. They're also called green-cheeked Amazons, because they... have green cheeks. So do most Amazons, but I'm sure it's more distinctive than the big spot of brilliant scarlet on their pointy little heads. Suki is an accomplished shrieker and rioter, not given to shutting up. She does a very good impression of a large truck backing up. Especially at six in the morning. Carmine is patently insane. He even looks insane. His wings cross a little funny. Mikey is an inoffensive little fellow. I have nothing special to say about him. Creepy, well, is Creepy. She's very quiet, lurks in corners, and does a great vulture impression. She didn't even have a name for years and was referred to as the Creepy Little Hen. It just sort of grew on her.

Simon and Toto live upstairs in what was once my room and is now generally Bridie's. They're another bonded but not mated pair, which is good considering they're different species. Toto is a red lorred, Simon an orange wing. I don't know Toto particularly well. She's sweet and quiet, which makes me suspect she wants to rip my ears off. Amazons. Simon is very loud and very stupid. He only shrieks for attention. If you pull a blanket over your head, he'll think you've disappeared and be quiet. I like him, though. Orange wings are some of the smallest, plainest, and most gentle Amazons.They both prefer my sister over me, reasonable considering she's usually the resident they're accustomed to.

Honorable mention to my dearest departed friends, Marley and Captain. Marley was the world's quietest macaw and he liked Brazil nuts. Captain was a cranky old woman hater (except for me, on account of either awesomeness or masculinity) who imitated boat engines and delivered nautical commands. Hope you're enjoying the rainforest in the sky, guys.

Leaving the birdies behind, I'll move on to Hugo. Hugo is a standard poodle. He is sometimes called a poodoodle, as part of a commentary on designer dog breeds. He's also sometimes called a substandard poodle, as he's about two ounces above the minimum weight for his breed, and that's when his hair is long. My dad is considering getting a miniature poodle, which I hope would also be black and unusually large, so we'd have two of 'em. Hugo likes to eat bananas and chase squirrels, cars, and mailmen. He's only allowed to do the former. Otherwise, he's a well-behaved, happy dog and allowed to sleep on whatever furniture he likes.

Since I gave a shout out to some of the birds since departed, I will likewise solute the doggies. Shadow (devoted golden retriever), Alice (ugly, braindead, yet oddly lovable mutt), Oslo (eternally rotund cocker spaniel), and Waldo (exquisitely loyal retriever/collie mix and by all accounts my third parent), you guys were furry and awesome.

Last and probably least is Evil Henry Wulf. It's been suggested that his full name is Evil Henry Wulf, Stupid, esq., but it probably isn't. As a kitten, he was named Wulf. My sister had just started German and thought it was cute. So that was fine. And many cats are evil, though most don't take it to the point where it becomes eponymous. We really don't know where Henry came from. E.H. Wulf enjoys ignoring people, eating, making people watch him eat while pretending to ignore them, and being afraid of mice. 

Gone before were Rachel, who didn't like me once I got tall but never did any harm, despite a lack of personality, and Wilie, a mostly Main coon with a happy dog's personality. 

Previously kept creatures of other species include many fish, an iguana named Frill, two red-eared turtles named Spicy and Sari, a hedgehog called Ambrose Spike, and a few Russian tortoises have since shuffled off this mortal coil.

The fur, fins, feathers, scales, and spikes past and present of the Duffey household are here enumerated. So it is written.

I've been having really vivid, interesting dreams lately, I think because my job allows me to set my own hours and therefore wake up pretty gently. There've been some really entertaining ones, but I think this one can't be beat.

Giant platypi.

Were-giant platypi.

I have no idea if a giant marine platypus ever existed, but I hope one did. I'm pretty sure that whatever the case it did not turn into the semi-immortal son of a WWII veteran who was also a were giant platypus.

Seriously, subconscious. Win.

At work I've taken to listening to LibriVox, a project trying to get public domain recordings of as many public domain books as possible. It's great for keeping my sanity while I count and measure hundreds of shells all day long, I must say, and there's a really good selection. I'm currently listening to Pride and Prejudice. The volunteer reader, well, didn't exactly check her pronunciations. An occasional misspoken word is one thing. Happens to me all the time, and I read aloud a lot, what with having a five year old about. Unfortunately, though, she seems to have an issue with place names. For instance, she pronounces Meryton as "Mary-tin" and Derbyshire as "Darby Shie-er." I'm wondering how long this'll take to move from amusing to irritating to insufferable.

My sister got The Brave Little Toaster from the library today. I watched a bit with her. That movie is three things. Hilariously dated, totally nonsensical, and fucking terrifying. I think the best is that bit toward the end when the cars are singing as they're fed into the compactor. What? And why was I okay with this as a child? Still pretty awesome, though.

I've been devouring children's books while I've been home, especially the new editions of Freddy the Pig books the library's bought. There're a lot of the later ones, which are sillier and more entertaining. And Freddy should perhaps get some credit for early steampunk. Featured: a clockwork child, a home-built space ship, an "atomic powered" station wagon that flies when necessary, a bomb sight that fires reliably 150 feet to the left/self filling piggybank, an alarmclock filled with fireworks, and a homemade spaceship. Freddy and the Spaceship, incidentally, contains what I think is the greatest line in all literature. "The Busy Bee of course carried a full line of excellent space suits, but they had to be modified to fit a pig. Charles had to have his specially made, for no amount of tailoring will make even a space suit for a small boy fit a rooster."

So I would say Freddy is the best thing since sliced bread, but the first book actually prdates commercially available sliced bread by a year (thank you, Wikipedia). I shall therefore go on the record as saying sliced bread is the best thing since Freddy.

For a closing note, I just googled my name out of boredom. Apparently Siobhan Duffey was a smoking hot punk singer from the eighties. Funny, rock star never really struck me as a career path.

Clare did not want to sleep tonight. Keeps crazy hours for a five year old, even in this family. I read to her for about an hour from Jennifer Murdley's Toad, which is certainly all well and good, but she wasn't sleepy and my voice was shot, so we went down and watched Wall-e, which I still hadn't gotten around to seeing. She fell asleep on my lap about an hour in, in the middle of telling me not to worry because Eve was fine. This was round about midnight, and I decided to keep watching. Silly to stop then. The next to arrive is the cat, who isn't very affectionate during daylight hours but likes to lie next to tired people. He looked very cute curled up next to the sleeping kid half on my lap. So at this point, it's a bit crowded, but escapable. A few minutes later, apparently feeling unloved, the dog hops up on the sofa, and rather than lie on my book and purse, which were lying at the end of the sofa all day for some reason, he plopped downon my other side. Exactly. At this point I am trapped between poodle and sleeping kindergartener. With a side helping of cat. They both looked so peaceful I didn't want to shove anyone, so there I sat. For at least half an hour after the movie ended. It helped that my book was right there. Eventually my hips kinda hurt from being a child and dog pillow, so I squirmed out and carried Clare upstairs, but for a good while there I was pretty packed in with the cutest three things on this street.

I much prefer to focus on this sort of thing. There's a reason you guys only hear about my family in silent vignettes or disembodied quotes, and there I shall leave it.

On a totally random note, I found a David Eddings book I was given at the end of high school by one of the few other fantasy geeks I hung out with then. He and I have rather different tastes, I tending to the mind-fucking and quirky, he to the traditional high fantasy style, and I never got past the first chapter. It came to Smith with me, then went home at some point, a bookmark I remember from first year still stuck around page six. Needing a little break from my Moorcock kick (angsting Elric and co. and smiting Stormbringer: proof that there can be too much of a good thing), I opened the Belgariad again, and lo and behold, I like it! I can't figure out why. The story is patently unremarkable, with some mild twists on your standard "young chosen one goes on quest to claim greatness" plot. The worldbuilding is terribly lazy and derivative. Yes, people are totally divided into good, evil, sneaky, earnest, etc. based on what gods they happen to worship and where they wind up geographically. You have to be Tolkien to get away with being Tolkienesque.

So what I'm left assuming is that the characters are strong enough to carry the weak plot, and the writing masks the lack of creativity. I actually like these people! The main character is effective, the sorcerers have personality, and even the random side characters do stuff. Weird! Reminds me a bit of Mickey Zucker Reichert's Renshai books. Crap world, boring plot... actually, her character were kinda bland, too. Why did I like those books again? Maybe her weird conviction that macaws are Asian birds. I think my point here is I found something to like where I noramlly wouldn't. Isn't it nice when that happens? Anyway, I'm gonna see how the virtuous youth who's obviously heir to the Rivan throne is doing with his escape with the wizard and his daughter to catch the guy who stole the ultimate magic item. 

Once upon a time, there was a small village inhabited by irksomely content folk known as the Trids. Though small in stature they were great in spirit, and lived simple, prosperous lives at the foot of a mountain. One day, their serenity was disturbed when a giant descended from the hills and, though he did no permanent damage to citizen or property, he took great delight in kicking the Trids up and down their picturesque streets all day long. When their humorously futile efforts to reason with the giant failed, the Trids sent a delegation (bottoms smarting) to a nearby city. They searched for a man of importance, capable of intimidation, who would come to their aid, but only an old rabbi headed their plea for assistance. The rabbi followed them to their formerly peaceful village, climbed the forboding mountain alone, and entered fearlessly. He called into the cage, "Giant, what have the Trids done to earn your ire? Why torment the Trids, why darken their days? Why do you not kick me instead?"

The giant looked up from the legs of several lambs he was having for lunch and replied, "Silly Rabbi, kicks are for Trids."

Today, I finally thought to find a recipe for my favoritest food ever.

Skordalia
3 medium potatoes (this seems like a lot)
8-12 cloves fresh garlic
1/3 cup olive oil
3 T red wine vinegar
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt

Peel potatoes and cut into large chunks. Boil them until tender but not mushy. Drain them and let them dry a bit. Put the them in a food processor with the fresh cloves of garlic and a hefty pinch of salt. Pulse until combined and no large pieces of garlic remain. Add liquids little by little, alternating and pulsing until combined. Taste as you go, adding salt and more of any of the liquid ingredients to your desired flavor. Serve on bread or as a side to dip sausages or fish.

Thank you, Greece, for giving us not only the cradle of Western civilization, confusing ruins of obnoxiously ancient computers, and crazy Classics teachers, but the best (and most garlicalicious) food ever.
 

Know how the majority of our conversations that aren't about "perverted sex talk" (to quote the batshit crazy sensationalist who wrote Mazes and Monsters) are about how kid's shows now suck compared to the ones from our own childhoods? I just found one I really wish had been around for me. I'm watching it now with the tiny one. She makes a great excuse. It's called Jane and the Dragon, about a twelve year old who wants to be a knight instead of a lady-in-waiting. And who is friends with a dragon. Basically, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles meet Alanna meet just about everything I was about from age three to... let's face it. Now.

Anyway, here's some for your viewing pleasure. The animation is just stylized enough to be interesting, though the people have a slight case of Uncanny Valley.

Looking for a way to procrastinate? Mad-lib drabbles! http://prillalar.com/drabbles/ Here's mine. Some of you may find this funnier than others.

The Miracle Of The Ray

Kal hated Christmas. He didn't just dislike Christmas, he hated it like mist on lake of God's own tears.. He loathed it.

Every December, Kal would feel himself getting all dreamy inside. He refused to put up a Christmas book, he snapped at anyone cacophanous enough to sing a carol in his vicinity, and he never, ever bought anybody any presents.

On December 13, Kal had to go to the mall to buy a darling camel. When he got there, there were so many shoppers pushing magnificently around and so much Christmas music blaring periodically, he thought his belly would explode.

Finally, he was done. Just outside the door was a splendid man collecting for charity. Kal never gave to charity, so he started to walk past without a word.

Suddenly, the splendid man dropped his bells and ran under a bridge. There was a muddy ray right in the path of an oncoming truck. But the splendid man slipped and fell, so now they were both in danger!

Kal rushed out and jubilantly pushed them both out of the way. There was a moist bang and then everything went dark.

When Kal woke up, he was in a malevolent room. There was a Christmas book in the corner and soft carols were playing. Also, Kal's eyebrow hurt. A lot.

The splendid man came into the room. "I'm so opaline!" he said. "You're awake. My name is Ramon. You saved me from the truck. But your eyebrow is broken."

Kal hardly knew what to say. Even though there was a Christmas book up and his eyebrow was broken, he felt quite irreducible, especially when he looked at Ramon.

"Your eyebrow must hurt daringly," Ramon said. "I think this will help." And he poked Kal several times.

Now Kal felt very irreducible indeed. He didn't hate Christmas at all now. In fact, he loved it. And he loved Ramon. "I love you," he said, and kissed Ramon hesitantly.

"I love you too," said Ramon. Just then, the ray ran into the room and nuzzled Kal's foot. "I brought him home with us," Ramon said.

"We'll call him Miracle," Kal said. "Our Christmas Miracle."

It was the best Christmas ever.

If your name was Baron Franz Nopsca von Felsoe-Szilvas, what would you do? If the answer is wander Europe on a motorcycle with your devoted secretary and lover Bajazid while investigating dinosaur extinctions and acting as a spy and politico during WWI, congratulations, you are correct. Unfortunately at the end he commits suicide, as all mad geniuses are apparently required to do, but up until that point, he may be my new personal hero. All Transylvanian noblemen with fantastic mustaches and motorcycles should act accordingly (again, minus the murder-suicide bit in 1933).

I love feedback. It doesn't matter how inane, sometimes. Even just a single, misspelled word sometimes brightens my day when it comes to praise. I think Bruce Coville said it best. Your words are like your babies. You send them into the world and want people to love them like you do.

But I'm terrible at giving it. There are artists and writers I adore all over the world, online or otherwise, and at least some of them must enjoy praise as much as I do. Therefore, I am resolving to tell all the awesome creators out there how much I like them. Not as a mass campaign. That'd be tiring. But as it comes up. Henceforth, instead of saying, "Wow, I should tell him that," I simply will. I think I'll start with the webcomics folks. They're easily accessible by email.

P.S. This is in no way procrastination on studying for my paleo test.

Sedimentology. I was actually pretty excited about the class. Not my favorite part of geology, but fun teacher, probably worthwhile. Compared to some of the stuff I have to take thanks to Smith's completely arbitrary and Draconian geo major, pretty damn pleasant. Some things are reasonable, of course. Mineralogy, petrology, sed, etc. are all big parts of what geology fundamentally is. But such offerings as geomorphology, paleontology, and structure only interest so many people, are only pertinent to some fields. There's no reason to require them all. Or how about not giving credit for more than one of a half dozen very interesting 100-level courses? I love the department, but someone needs their head checked. My friends from other majors, is there anywhere else on Smith where there are six required core courses? Anywhere?

But anyway, sed. Looked interesting. Sounded fun. Until I realized it conflicted with literally every single biology class I wanted to take. Every single one. I only need one more credit for my bio major, but 300-level lab credits don't float around unattended (apparently they used to, but Ginny doesn't teach that class anymore). There's a good chance that next semester I'll be forced into whatever 300-level pseudo-premed mostly biochemical class I can fit and spend my last semester miserable. Because apparently it's impossible to schedule any bio class that doesn't suck any time but late morning Tuesday and Thursday.

So, in short, dear nonspecific entity that has nothing to do with the actual professors and students I know and love: Stab yourself in the face with a rusty railroad spike. In lieu of that, change the requirements, damn it!

Rocky had the right idea about these things. Mad Libs are very cathartic. Here one exceptional one.


( Carol Christ and the Tibia )

Will be on campus sometime tomorrow between one and five p.m., because travel plans that involve a plane and three buses are just awesome. I'll need to prevail on a Ziskind/Cutter dweller to let me in. Or maybe I'll just stand outside and look sad, since I have almost no one's number. Anyway, see some folks tomorrow, at least.

My little sister (the 14 year old, not the 5) is toiling over a dense and nonsensical-read "high school"-research paper regarding Mansfield Park. Must be something in the air. Anyway, as I attempted to cheer her through it, I happened on this idea

"Transforming Magical Girl, Pretty Fanny!:

"Pretty pure tiara virtue transformation!"

And... so on. Does this excuse my recent audacity in defending Jane Austen's contribution to the Western literary canon?

Anyway, at the zoo today with short stuff, I saw a lion get her teeth stuck in a plastic toy. That she stole from another lion. And to get it off she had to bang it on some rocks, and then dropped it into the... moat thingy around her enclosure. And was very mad. It seems like some sort of fable, but seeing the reactions of the zoo keepers, I think the real moral of the story is "No one wants o be the one to pry the big piece of plastic off the pissed-off lion's mouth."

This entry is both whiny and about gaming. So probably should be skipped.

It sucks to lose a character you're not ready to. Usually character death takes some effort, or a big enough accident takes time to sneak up on you. Usually I sacrifice a character on purpose. Or occasionally, ditch is the better verb, once they've run out of interest for me. I was just getting into the swing of Ian, just learning to like him and see him as a person, not a collection of stats and a funny accent. It's my own fault for taking Veteran, which is designed to be dangerous, but it still gets to me that he was offed so summarily. Mind you, he died because he had principles, which is rare for a character of mine, and there's some satisfaction in that. If he had survived, his life would have been a complete misery, denied even the few comforts he had. I would in short, have had to be emo for a while and then die anyway. But he deserved the time to be emo. He was worth it.

There's also some irritation in having spent an hour pestering every GM to find a way to get Ian the denouement he deserved and then being cut off before it could even begin. He didn't even get to try to be redeemed. He'd probably have failed, but failure over time would have been a spectacular tragedy, not a perfunctory bullet to the head. Sure, he died because he wouldn't budge on principle, but not the principles the lycanthropy violated, so that doesn't help.

It just wasn't a satisfying or complete end. I wouldn't have said no to a happy ending, but that's not what I was after. I just wanted a good ending.

Leaving aside the narrative aspect, Ian was the first character I've had since Wulfie who felt like part of town. Deadlands is a very communal game. People play all the attendant nasty tricks and such, but for the important stuff, the town works together. I was an outsider with no story to share for the past two characters. And being part of a community is always hard for my characters. My contrary nature just comes out in them. Ian walked into town and immediately made a lot of friends, moved right into the larger story. I was part of the game again, not just playing.

Le sigh.

Are these even chapters? I'm not sure. Breaks, really. If this ever forms itself into something resembling a concrete story I'll figure it out in detail. For now, it shall simply serve to amuse the handful of people in the world who find Blake amusing.
 

No offense to Herr Westerdale and Reverand Sir, or even Scott (though my shoulder's been aching since I wrenched it yesterday and I must say I'm totally cool with no climbing today), but YAY! Back to bed. I was having the strangest, most vivid dreams. That included Torchwood cameos, even, so that's neat. Also, I remember something about Mount Holyoke students screaming at seven in the morning. Something tells me my brain incorporated my neighbors' responses to discovering our current class situation into my dreams. Go brain, I guess. So, administrative offices, have you gotten too many complaints about your usual method of only sending yourselves home during a weather emergency?