Reach beyond the normal boundries...

Seals!

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:06:16 GMT

I went to the zoo today (yes, again), and noticed that the seals were doing something odd.

*Drumroll.*

Why, why, WHY do seals always swim upside down? 'Cause every seal I saw was apparently spending seventy percent of its time on its back. In the water, people. Upside down. Why?

Also, there was one seal that was weirdly attracted to bottles. I spent some time making it do elaborate 'follow the empty Dr. Pepper bottle' maneouvres around the underwater tunnel. I don't know, maybe it thought it was a fish?

On the stupidity of an expanding population.

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:44:54 GMT

The human population of Earth is six billion and growing. Fifty years ago -as far as I know -it was more like five billion. Waaay back in medieval times, it was...about two billion early on (soon after agriculture became both widespread and reasonably developed?) and more like three billion before we hit the 'early modern' stage.

There's a name for this. It's 'population explosion'.

The huge, undeniable damage that the human race has collectively inflicted on other animals, numerous species, entire ecosystems, and in a couple of cases the actual climate? It's not a result of using too many cars.* It's not (just) because we're irresponsible and selfish. It's because there are far too many human beings around.

Really, our NOT causing immense problems would be kind of a feat.

People living destitute on the edge of a rainforest will fell the trees indiscriminately to survive. That's natural suvival instinct -but there are thousands of people doing that, and while one person doesn't have much of an impact, add them together and they do.

People all over the world are trying to improve other people's standards of living. Great. Good for you. What nobody seems to have realised is the fairly elementary point that human beings reproduce. Human beings in optimal conditions reproduce rather rapidly. And with fewer deaths to balance the suddenly boosted survival rate, the population expansion gets going with considerable vigour.

Really, is it any surprise that there are suddenly so many of us?

Modern medicine and hygine.** Both are very necessary things, and I agree that as many people as possible ought to have access. But once these were introduced, human numbers took off. We increased and increased. We didn't stop having kids just because suddenly more of them suvived, you know. (This point is --kind of --refuted by the fact that most First World countries do have, on average, enough children to replace their parents. Stable, in other words. But it took a while to slow down.)

Our numbers grew fast. And I guess that I'm okay with. But what gets me is that everyone seems to think we need to carry on with this insane trend. They say that we need more land and better crops to supply the burgeoning population.

Um, no. What we need is a contraceptive. Preferably a cheap one that can be dissolved in water. And then distributed to all places where population growth is out of control.

We need it, and fast. We need to stop the world overloading of humans right now, before we, in our vast and expanding numbers, cause irreversible harm. We need to stop human expansion. We need to find a way to reduce our numbers over the generations --not only in the 'First World', but everywhere.

There are way, way too many of us. Often it seems like I'm the only one who thinks that.

So...does anyone else think something like this? Or have any opinions to share? An insight into any relevant factors would be appreciated.

*(Not that we don't do that too.)
**Agriculture is another culprit. I'll rant on that later.

Wildlife Watch.

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:11:06 GMT

School trip to Reading happened on Monday. It is utterly characteristic of me that I spent the entire trip there and back looking for birds.

Wildlife count: Three rabbits, one deer, eleven kestrels, thirty-four buzzards, and a possible peregrine falcon. (Almost as large as a buzzard, but with scythe-shaped wings.)

In the interests of allowing for double counting, the bird tally on the trip outwards tallied six kestrels and twelve buzzards.

Nobody probably wanted to know about this.

Walks in the semi-country.

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:10:50 GMT

It was a nice, sunny day today, so I went for a walk on the Downs.

There's this place which is full of dips and valleys, with cycle tracks along the ridges, that's really quite lovely. Apart from the cycle tracks, it's completely overgrown -several different types of long grass, loads of different flowers, plus thistles and nettles and other stuff. Really beautiful. I think I saw a black-cap, too.

It was just...nice, you know? Dreamy and lovely and real.

Snakes.

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:01:47 GMT

It says quite a lot about me that I went to the Bath Uni Open Day and the only thing I can think is, "I got to hold a corn snake!"

Lucid Dreaming.

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:23:41 GMT

Last night, I had a very odd dream. I was kind of...awake inside the dream.

Recently, I've found that things pop into my head without me wanting them to and really confusing what I'm thinking of at the time. This annoys me.

So, in the dream, I walk into this wooden building and into this room. There's someone in a green T-shirt standing opposite me. It's me standing opposite me. I couldn't see the face, but it was my green shirt, and I just knew I was looking at myself.

And the other me said, "These things keep popping into your head because you're worried about them coming into your head. If you just stop worrying, and let them come, they'll go away. They keep coming in because you're always sort of thinking about them and sometimes your mental blocks fail." (That was the gist of it, anyway.)

I said, "Okay," and walked out of the building. And then I halfway woke up and realised that I had given myself a psychological analysis and a solution...in a dream.

This is very weird indeed. I suppose it supports the theory that dreams are a safe way of working out real-life problems.

Day Awesome/Day Awful.

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:13:26 GMT

I went riding today. We had 'buzzard weather' -that's when it's really warm so the buzzards fly up on the thermals.

It was a singularly apt name today. I saw loads of them. At one point I was riding around and I happen to look over -there are EIGHT BUZZARDS in the air. Six of them are over the same field and in a height range of 50-200 feet. At one point about halfway through four of them came close enough for me to see wing markings. Ten minutes into the lesson, I saw one flying low after the field next to the ring.

So I felt pretty awesome. Then at the end of the lesson I went to lead Ebony into her box -and she trod on my foot.

Ouch.

No bones broken, fortunately, but my big toe is going to be pretty bruised. Horses are heavy.

Zoo!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:50:04 GMT

I went to the zoo yesterday. For three hours. Got there around ten, was there till half-one.

What did I find out? That lions and okapi are larger than you imagine even when seen at a distance, that sand cats are very shy, and that seals like to swim upside down. And gorillas are smaller than you think.

I went inside the red-ruffed lemur enclosure -there's a kind of walk-through you can do -and they kept jumping all over the place. They made this weird loud hoot/growl noise, too. They are cute. They're the size of a big cat, with long, fluffy fur and long black tails and these weird yellow eyes.

The rockhopper penguins were entertaining, but not as much as the seals. The gorillas had surprisingly long canine teeth, and the howler monkeys have had a baby. I wish the tigers had still been there, though.

Decidedly silly story of the plural of platypus.

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:05:03 GMT

For some reason this snippet came into my head. (Okay, okay, it was Two in the Bush, all right?) The idea of wartime leaders demanding Australian wildlife kind of lodged and turned into...this.

Warning: May contain silliness.

"You know what we need?" Tom said thoughtfully.

"No. Do tell."

"A platypus."

There was a pause.

"A platypus," Jordan said carefully.

"Yep. A platypus."

Collette eyed the pair of them. "I don't suppose you'd tell me why we need a platypus?" she asked.

"Historical rule," Tom said. " All outnumbered leaders on the side of right must, at some point during a difficult war, demand platypuses. Milit'ry tradition."

"What is the plural of platypus?" Sara wondered and then began experimenting with endings.

"Good idea though," Jordan said thoughtfully. "It'd be nice to have a platypus around the place."

"We could keep it in the lake," Tom suggested.

"Two things," said Collette. "Where are we supposed to get a platypus, and how, exactly, did this tradition start?"

"Winston Churchill," Tom explained. "He demanded a platypus in the middle of World War Two. Bloke in Austrailia caught one and trained it up, sent it over to England..."

"What did they do with it?"

"Nothing, really; it died two days out from Liverpool."

"And you think our venture will be more successful because...?"

"Wel, for one thing," Tom said, pushing himself up on an elbow, "we won't be dropping depth charges."

"How would we get it here?" Jordan asked. "Troop of eagles carrying it in a net?"

"Good grief, that'd give the most stotic of platy...podes a heart attack."

"Isn't Austrailia far away?" Sara asked.

"That's not the point," Tom said firmly. "The point is that we are obtaining a platypus."

"For no reason."

"Of course there's a reason," Jordan said. "It'll be fun."

Festivities.

Sat, 03 May 2008 14:05:36 GMT

Does anyone know of an English custom which apparently involves walking around the streets with your face painted green, dressed in strips of fabric (also green), carrying long sticks (which are clacked together at intervals) and accompanied by a person dressed as a ten-foot tree with a crown of flowers, while accompanied by an accordian and a drum? If it helps, the accordian was playing a rather medieval-sounding tune, and the tree had strips of fabric attached.

Um...just such a procession walked through the streets from Redland Park about five minutes ago. They took exactly the same route I remember seeing them take two or three years ago. The music was nice, but it was all a bit bewildering.

On writing.

Fri, 02 May 2008 17:10:13 GMT

Spent sixty-nine minutes today drilling the keyboard, an activity otherwise known as 'writing'. I refer to it as 'drilling the keyboard' because for a large period of it I was typing frantically in an effort to see where the story was going, and the noise made it sound like I was braking the keys with a hammer.

Why was I so eager to find out where the story was going? I had three girls, one of them blind, stuck in the hold of an aeroplane (destination unknown) full of enemies, trying to work out why one end of the hold was equipped with cages, and also trying to find a way off because if they were aboard when the plane landed they were, quite literally, dead. Eventually they jumped out in mid-air while being shot at and turned into birds on the way down, subsequently discovering that the country they were flying over was Africa.

Next time I can access the document, I intend to make them have a dangerous run-in with hippopotomuses. Hippopotomi. Whatever.

This is...kind of strange.

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:52:56 GMT

Witness me attempting to be deep.

It's a dialogue from a Yeerk talking about love and hosts and how the two can mix together until they become addictive. The host is asking the questions. Has a sad ending.

"Do you know why I didn't turn you in?" Yesin 485 of the Kian Sichar pool asked aloud.

"No," Jordan replied grumpily, regaining control of her vocal apparatus. "I thought at first it was to reassure the others...but that wasn't it, was it? You weren't...I don't know." Her voice faded away.

"It was because..." Yesin trailed off. She shook her --their --head and started again. "Do you know what a Yeerk feels?"

Jordan shrugged, gazing at the golden sun on the horizon. "Fear, anger, pain. Ambition, I think. Uh, loyalty...I'm not sure of. Friendship? Respect?"

"Yes. We are...trained to feel hatred, fear, and anger. Ambition and respect -admiration -tend to show up as part of the process. Loyalty and friendship are not hard currency in the Yeerk pool though, I'm afraid. But there's one thing we really don't feel."

"And what's that?"

Yesin was silent for a moment.

"Jordan, when I entered your brain...you don't know what it was like, it was...when we are first given hosts, in training, we experience a great deal of sensory input, almost an overload. There is so much to experience. Sight, sound, touch, taste...all of it, it is overwhelming! It's wonderful and terrifying in equal measures.

"When I entered your brain...it was almost like that. It was emotional overload. To go your whole life with such a limited range of emotions, things I didn't even really feel, and then to be bombarded with everything you felt...your mind was so alive, so vivid. It knocked me over. And yet I wanted more of it."

Yesin laughed sadly. "Maybe not at first, maybe not then...but even in the pool, tying into your brain was like tapping into a firework display. All the anger, all the accusation was a dozen times stronger than I'd ever felt it. Your mind was alive, screaming at me, fighting me."

"Yeah, I do /know/ that."

"It wasn't until afterwards, when we were out of the pool, with the others --that was what made me want to stay. All the feelings you felt right then."

Yesin was laughing and crying, tears trickling down grimy cheeks. "Everything you felt was stronger than I could feel. The exultation you experienced when you were flying. The love when you looked at your sister. Your grief and joy. I didn't even know what love was, and I...I wanted more of it. I wanted to feel it, again and again. That burst when I, when /we/ realised that someone loved you. The way Tom looked at you when you weren't arguing and he was just happy to have you there. The way you loved."

The geese were flying, honking, and the rising sun had stitched the land with threads of gold where the rivers ran. The leaves brushed her arms like the ghost of a promise for a better life, more whole, and she knew that she had accepted it.

"It was addictive. You were more than me, so much more than me, in the way you thought and felt and lived. You were bright and vibrant and I was tired and so, so hungry. I lived for those moments --for the thrill of flying, the laughter on a friend's face..."

"And then?"

Yesin shook her head. "And then," she said in a low voice, "I realised I couldn't."

There was something cold at her back and the day stretched out before her, bright and perfect. If only she could have enjoyed it.

"I couldn't hold onto you. I couldn't damp you down. And I wouldn't go back to the pool, to live out my life with only the memories."

She felt the suspicion growing in Jordan's mind. "It's been almost three days."

"Yes. And in a few minutes...a few minutes...I shall die with this memory."

Buzzards.

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:53:06 GMT

Saw three buzzards out yesterday. It was a glorious day -very sunny, warm, bit of a breeze -and the buzzards around the riding stables sometimes come out on the thermals.

The first one was in the air -as soon as I saw it I knew it wasn't a crow, because it was twice as big as they were. At one point it got close enough for me to see the stripy pattern underneath the wings, but by then we'd started trotting and, as I was in the front, I couldn't keep bird-spotting.

The second one was in a tree next to a field just outside the stables, and the third -and nearest -was sitting on a telephone pole halfway back to town.

I love birds of prey.

Canon.

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:15:34 GMT

...so, the realisation occurs that while I am always pairing Tom up with people, I don't much seem to mind who. In Birds of Prey, it's Collette; in Escape 'verse, it's Melissa. Heck, in Miracle it was Inest. The only thing I seem to require is that the person he's paired with is morph-capable, is a decent person, and has gone through/goes through at least one hair-raising dangerous experience with him.

Compare this to Jake or Rachel, who I always pair with Cassie and Tobias respectively. Or Jordan, who, when she is romantically involved, ends up with Marco.

My brain is weird at times. (But then, you noticed that...right?)

Solution.

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:37:10 GMT

For anyone wanting to adjust the way things fit the screen in Vista:

Right click.

Hit 'Personalize'.

Go into 'Display settings', and adjust the screen resolution until everything is the right size.

ARGH.

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:23:22 GMT

You know what? Just once, JUST ONCE, I would like the computer layout to stay the way it is.

I would like the boxes that go around the text to fill the screen, the way they are supposed to, and not, as in the case of this entry text box, be squished over to fill the left half of the window. I would like the text to be in proportion and of a reasonable size. I would like the columns that some LJs appear in to have a sensible width, not a prescribed one.

Whatever has just been done to the computer has rendered these desires unfulfilled, or whatever you call it. Everything looks too small and is stupid. I. Hate. It.

More Animorphs.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:23:34 GMT

I'm getting productive in this fandom, aren't I? Here's another shot of AU Animorph 'fic. (I so want to say Animorphic...)

No father should have to do this, Steve thinks.

No father should have to kneel in the rain and press frantic hands down, again and again, on his eldest son's freezing chest. No father should have to feel the cold stiffness of a child's dying body under warm skin and fingers that cannot do anything.

No father should kneel in the forest and desperately try to bring back life that is fading fast from his own child.

Tom's dying. There's a wound in his stomach at least an inch deep, and already he's lost consciousness. If this frantic attempt at resucitation works he'll live, but that is a fading possibility. Steve grasps at it anyway.

No father should have to pound down again and again to force life back into a son's lifeless body. Fathers die, and their sons grieve and move on.

Five minutes he's been here already, praying for the kick of a heartbeat underneath his palms, but nothing comes. There's no half-felt jolt, no tension as the lungs begin to fill. There's nothing.

At last, Steve takes his hands away. Jake's crouching beside him, staring intently at the corpse, searching for life in a beloved face that's now only a shell.

Jean is crying.

And all Steve thinks is, No father should have to watch his son die.

...wow. That was depressing.

An Epiphany (of sorts).

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:07:05 GMT

I gave up chocolate for Lent. It was tough to do, but I managed it. Despite some very strong temptations, I held out until eight o'clock PM, the day before Easter Sunday.

At which point I discovered that chocolate has somewhat lost its taste.

Oh, I still like chocolate, of course. It's just that...well, now that I've lost my resistance, I notice the side effects far more. The way you feel kind of full, only hungry at the same time. The nausea that comes after eating half a bar of the stuff.

My Easter eggs are going to last me a very long time, indeed...

Sort-of Animorphs Fic.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:35:13 GMT

'Sort of' as in it features a bunch of minor characters, only two of whom recieved the morphing power in Canon (Auxilary Animorphs yay!). But they are Canonical characters. And while this story is in fact set in a complete AU universe, I just had to write it. Short and sweet.

It's a summer's day, and the sky is a misty blue. The air seem full of light, drifting pollen, so that the far-off hills are shrouded in a haze of pale gold.

It's a summer's day, and the sky's not entirely clear, so that the sunlight sort of drifts down lazily, making the world soft-edged, and fills the air with gentle warmth. It's a perfect day to be flying on, and so Melissa is flying.

She prescribes a lazy circle in the air, not really caring about the world below. The warm air lifts under her wings, and she goes into a long, slow glide, balancing on nothing with lanner falcon wings. It's a perfect day, slow and careless; the kind of day on which you laugh from sheer simple happiness. There needn't be any reason, except that the air is clear, and good.

Elena soars a few yards away, dips and drops, flaring and skimming as only a red-tailed hawk can fly. She's an acrobat in the air, as only Melissa can be an acrobat on the ground, and she shows off almost absentmindedly, as though turning and spiralling would be enough joy for her if she were alone. She moves through the breezes like a dancer, in her element.

Erica rides a breeze past them, a goshawk bigger than either of them. She turns, and they laugh, and together, without regard for watchers on the ground, they weave a kind of pattern in the air.

It's a summer's day and the air is full of light, and it's a time of simple pleasures. She has a goshawk on one side and a red-tail on the other, and the battles with the Yeerks are far away. She is flying through the air, and it's a day of friendship, and for Melissa, this is enough.

Memory...

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:36:28 GMT

Something entertaining happened in Biology today, and now I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

This is highly frustrating.

It may or may not have concerned the consequences of over-watering desert-dwelling plants.

In Which Everything that could Possibly go Wrong Proceeds to do so.

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:17:35 GMT

Firstly, I had an early lesson at Catseyes -that's a kind of pre-driving lesson thing, where you use an old runway to practice steering and so on.

Lesson was scheduled for eleven. One and a half hour drive, decided to leave at nine-fifteen. Mother wanted direction, tried to print from Google Maps. This produced a printed map, not the directions. I had to copy/paste the directions into MS Word. Then mother proceeded to yell at me as she hadn't a clue what was going on and it took me several minutes to explain that printing the web page didn't work. We set off late.

Then the printed directions sent us the wrong way.

These incidents combined to make us half an hour late.

After the lesson, it turned out the road home had far too much traffic on it.

And then? I had instructions to do supper. These entailed pouring fluid into dish of rice, wrapping dish entirely in tin foil, and placing in oven. Guess what? When I tried to wrap the tin foil around, the fluid slopped everywhere. Then the foild rucked up when I tried to put it in the oven.

I yelled at my sister to help. She wrapped the dish the wrong way, and while we were trying to put it in the oven, I had to drag Ruby away. Her back leg got caught and twisted between my feet, making me think I'd dislocated it.

Have had a thoroughly bad day.

Deadpan. Oh, yay, new stuff.

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:10:35 GMT

New family computer. I should probably feel grateful, but don't.

It arrived, oh, Wednesday? And my uncle's coming over to set it up today. So. Why do I have a bee in my bonnet about this?

It takes time. Too much time. Setting it up, that is.

I don't want Vista, I'm quite happy with the IE7 layout and functioning.

I just generally like this computer, dangit.

As a compromise, my parents have agreed to let me have this computer in my (overcrowded) room.

On the upside, AU Animorphs fic is coming along quite well, even if I insist on writing chapters out of order and therefore have chapters seven, eight, ten, and thirteen to eighteen on the computer at school while chapter three has yet to be written.

Bookses!

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:55:33 GMT

I ordered six Animorphs books from Amazon on Monday -or possibly Friday. Three arrived today.

There is nothing like the pleasure of seeing three new books waiting for you.

Merry Christmas!

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:13:20 GMT

May you all have a wonderful Christmas, with large trees and warm fires and tasty turkeys and sugary brandy butter and general happiness.

*Makes note to light fire tomorrow.*

*Wonders if she'll ever get around to writing that Tom/Collette story she was thinking of.*

Medical Treatments.

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:25:40 GMT

Just recently found out that Rhanim's gone to Africa to get her ears pinned back.

I can't think why; they've never seemed to stick out to me.

In other news...five days to go and I still have:
No presents for other people.
No idea what I'd like to get myself.
A 900-word essay to write for Biology...