Poor whale :(

The Loneliest Mystery of the Deep

For the last 12 years, a single solitary whale whose vocalizations match no known living species has been tracked across the Northeast Pacific. Its wanderings match no known migratory patterns of any living whale species. Its vocalizations have also subtly deepened over the years, indicating that the whale is maturing and ageing. And, during the entire 12 year span that it has been tracked, it has been calling out for contact from others of its own kind.

It has received no answer. Nor will it ever.

Gender and Games

Game Boys for Play Girls! games & gender by Babsi
Barbara ‘Babsi’ Lippe enjoyed a typical postmodern childhood filled with cartoons, action figures, comics and video-games. The latter in particular had a great impact on her life: she has just finished a 1000 page PhD thesis about Games and Gender! PingMag interviewed the cheerful Austrian expert about why Japanese game esthetics are more appealing to women in the West and how the market in Europe is slowly changing.

Sometimes you just have to live and let live. I've been told that my place is like a jungle, not because it's untamed, messy and uncivilised - even though it IS all of the above, but because of the numbers of non-human wildlife that coexist with my more genetically-related family. There're times humans and non-humans just have to live with each other in harmony. *zen* *sings Circle of Life*

There's a spider that lives on the window-sill next to my study-table (or rather, my dad's table, which I've claimed as my own by choping it with my notes).

Another spider lives in my bathroom, though I haven't seen it recently.

Baby grasshoppers regularly frequent my laptop because of the heat and light. (The baby grasshoppers probably came from the plants in my balcony, where there're bigger grasshoppers. Yeah, my mum the gardener lives and lets live too.)

Baby lizards, or rather, young lizards (the one that visited last night wasn't that small) come to my laptop, probably for the same reason. The really small ones are cute though, because they're prone to acrobatics, jumping up and down for no apparent reason. (Sorry, Joyce)

Usually I'm less tolerant towards bigger/grosser forms of wildlife, and my human family members are tasked with chasing them away. These include cockroaches, BIG grasshoppers, moths/butterflies (but only when they fly into the house), beetles (esp. the stinky ones!), hairy spiders.

I'm also tolerant of wildlife insofar as they don't actually crawl on to me.

Breaking news

"I don't know how some people can be so effortlessly elegant," Friend comments as she brushes crumbs off herself.

"Yeah, totally." I start picking crumbs off myself too.

"They have such poise, such manners... and they know exactly which utensils to use." Friend looks pointedly at me while I pick my croissant up, ignoring fork and knife.

(My hazy impression of that very early Friday morning breakfast conversation. And I've kindly left Friend anonymous.)

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The bus-stop outside my house is right next to a semi-d, which houses one very big (and cute!) retriever (I'd say golden, but actually it looks off-white).

The reason I know this (despite the non-transparent fence that circles the semi-d) is because I regularly peer under fences (and toilet doors and skirts), and therefore spied four hairy (canine) legs. And because I like to fancy myself a FOD (friend of dogs), I always cluck away at it. It usually responds by lying flat on the ground next to the fence, and sticking its snout out at me, which is about all it can manage, given the fence. And I get to peer into the sad soulful eyes of a wolf-at-heart who would love to pounce on irritating-human-who-sounds (and probably tastes)-like-chicken and rip out my throat if not for this... darn... fence...

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At this same bus-stop yesterday, a School Bus made a slow and stately stop, and regurgitated a Small Boy.

This particular specimen of Small Boy must be privy to some Small Boy ritual that I'm ignorant of, cos I got quite a scare when he screamed 'TOILET PAPER' at the School Bus. And from within the cavernous depths of the School Bus came a 'TOILET PAPER' that was dripping with contempt and sounded very much like a kid-sized (but very heavy) gauntlet slapping the floor. Or a dirty martini cascading over coiffured hair and 1 inch of cosmetics in public.

A great fury rose from within the innermost core of our Small Boy, and behold! he shook with righteous indignation, a pale flush staining his lily cheeks. From that same innermost core (it's a big one, so it can hold things like 'great furies' and large amounts of half-digested candy), and with Herculean Effort, our Small Boy expelled a last 'TOILET PAPER!!!!!!' at the departing bus, a war-cry that seemed to vibrate through the whole of his defiant, youthful (if somewhat vertically challenged) being.

And then the enemy fled to fight another day, and pursuit was hopeless, and the battle over, and the toilet flushed, and the sun set upon the wealth of the earth, and the moon rose like a queen to her throne (and so on), so he allowed his maid to help him with his armour-disguised-as-school-bag, and made his weary way home.

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One note to readers, this is a frivolous blog. It's pink. Therefore posts are not to be taken seriously. Therefore if I say that I'd like to pull someone's fingernails out and insert them in a painful manner under that same person's toenails before hanging said person from a cactus by his entrails, this means I might have made detailed plans. But that's all.

So when I say 'breaking news', it probably means 'nothing important'.

plasticine lizard

A strange-looking lizard died in the middle of my living room. For some reason it looked fake, like a lizard made of dark brown plasticine... Being the coward that I am, I ran into my bedroom while my mum got rid of it.

I like baby lizards. They're cute.