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Friday, September 28, 2007

Oh, Me… An Animeme

by Nanette

Well, gee… I innocently stop by Theriomorph’s to see how the move to almost paradise is going and I find out that she’s tagged me for a meme. An animeme, no less. 

I do not blame her for this, however, knowing what moving house can do to a person’s mind. No - per her instructions, I blame Chris.

[ETA] I almost forgot to pass this on to others, so that they too can do some blaming should they decide to do the meme. So, I am passing it on, with no obligation, to:

Joan Kelly (because I don’t believe commenters should be able to get away with being meme-less)
Kai, - because you just know he has some interesting stories
Nancy, when she gets back from the book thingy
Black Amazon, - for one of these days, someday, even if not today - because sometimes thinking about not much of anything is a good thing
Also Arwen, who I think has a blog, but if not, there is the commenter thing.
And Arcturus, who has returned.

And anyone else who wants to! It’s nice to share.

Animal questions. Okay, then… I’ll see what I can do. My experience with animals these days consists of a cat I am caring for temporarily until I can find her a good home. A neighbor gave her to my daughter when she (the kitten… well, and my daughter too) was really too young to be separated from her mother - and refused to take her back. I had to feed her with an eyedropper until she was old enough to eat normally… but that doesn’t mean I am keeping her! She may have been living with me temporarily for 17 years now, but as soon as I find her a good home, out she goes. Her name is Cat.

Okay, now for the questions:

An interesting animal I had:

Hmmm. When I was young we had all sorts of animals in and outside of our house, at one time or another. I really don’t know how my mother stood it… cats, dogs, rabbits, (pet) mice and rats, hamsters, fish - no birds, that I can remember - but I think the most interesting animal we had was the whippersnapper. The whippersnapper was what we called the wee strange beastie that my brothers found - who knows where - one day. We put it in the garage because we had no idea how big it was going to get. We (raised on Godzilla movies) thought it was quite possible that it would become huge. This creature provided countless hours of scary enjoyment for us.

Almost every day we’d slowly open the garage door, just enough to peek in and make sure the coast was clear - which it always was, to our dismay, as our beastie stayed quite wee no matter what we fed it. Of course, not knowing what it was, we didn’t know what it ate anyway, but we dangled many delicacies in front of it, always avoiding its snapping claws. Or trying to. After much discussion with the neighborhood kids we all decided that it was not a baby monster, but rather a baby lobster and we need not worry that it was going to grow too big for the garage or for the shallow pan of rocks and water we kept it in. I was quite disappointed, though, that it never did grow at all.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I found out what our whippersnapper actually was… and while it turns out to be quite common and mundane (even if a bit odd for Los Angeles), I still look back on it fondly as the animal that most fired our imaginations, and thus, the most interesting.

An interesting animal I ate:

I am not a very adventurous eater… if it’s an “interesting” animal, or if it “tastes like chicken” - but is not chicken - I tend to avoid it. Most of the strange things I have eaten, it’s been by accident. Like the time I was working in the bakery of a restaurant and one of the main cooks came back and asked me if I wanted a fried seafood platter that had gotten a little too well done. It wasn’t burnt or anything, just not up to par for the customers, as it was one of the highest priced menu items - so I said sure. Yum, seafood.

So there I am, noshing away on fried clams, a couple different kids of fish, chicken wings, shrimp and… when I start to notice that the chicken, though delicious, looked um… a bit different - and it occurs to me that chicken is not usually considered a seafood.

And that’s how I came to, accidentally, eat (and thoroughly enjoy, til I realized what they were) frog’s legs. Which, may I just mention, are also not seafood.

An interesting animal in the Museum:

There are so many… but I’ll have to go with dinosaurs (Godzilla effect again, no doubt). I am not fond of dead things, stuffed and displayed… although certainly the look of them has gotten much better over the years.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal:

I am still thinking about this one. I have had animals that have done interesting things (like one amazing cat which found us after we moved and who also tried to become a wetnurse) and I’ve done interesting things, no doubt sometimes in the presence of animals, but I am not sure what I’ve done actually with or to one that could be considered interesting.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat:

Elephants! Not that I’ve ever seen them in their natural habitats, mind you, but I find them endlessly fascinating. The more I learn about them, the more wonderful they seem. I wish I knew their language.

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Sunday, December 10, 2006

Nearest Book Thingy

by Nanette

Sigh! Everyone else has all these high minded books, and I have.... 

Right before the Second World War, Ballantine somehow got a grant from the University of Chicaco to travel and study in Africa. How she spent the war years, or where, wasn’t clear, but in 1949 she signed a contract with University of Chicago Press for her book on Ritual Dance Among the Bantu of West Equatorial Africa. They paid her five hundred dollars.

--from Blacklist, by Sara Paretsky

Tagged by sunrunner, I gamely grabbed the nearest book, thankful that it wasn’t total fluff, and valiantly typed up the (thankfully) short passage ;).

Here is how it works:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence
3. Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog
4. Name of the book and the author
5. Tag three people

So, I tag um… well Nezua hates these things, but I am curious, so there is one. And Prometheus6 and Piny.

Posted by Nanette on 12/10 at 09:21 PM
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My Virtual Bookshelf

by Nanette

So many great things to read and remember… so little time. And brain. 

I have started a ‘virtual bookshelf’, over on the left hand side of the page. Quite often I come across articles, blog posts and so on that either are amazingly written, or become meaningful to me in some way… but eventually I forget where they are! Even if they are the work of a site I visit often.

So (and I really, really will get around to a blogroll type thing soon), I have decided to set up a bookshelf/library of writings I want to keep track of, or revisit often to learn this or that from. The shelves are still pretty bare as I just thought of this last night, but I’ll be filling it up with all my old and new favorites over time. Probably will also copy these and other articles into the wiki, once I get over my wikiphobia and figure out how to set it all up, as sometimes links get lost in the ether. 

Posted by Nanette on 12/10 at 08:26 AM
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Friday, December 01, 2006

Finally, Someone Recognizes My True Nature

by Nanette

What? Of course I believe it, I read it on the internet didn’t I? So it must be true. 

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Posted by Nanette on 12/01 at 11:20 PM
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Sunday, November 19, 2006

Ugh. Cats!

by Nanette

Such entitled creatures. Or, at least they think they are.

They wander out from just visiting the litter box, throw up all over the carpet and then want to come curl up in your lap and snuggle. And look cute.

Okay, I guess they are not unlike human kids in that regard, but still. Sigh. 

Posted by Nanette on 11/19 at 05:16 PM
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Friday, June 09, 2006

We have blogs!

by Nanette

Yes it’s true, Human Beams is joining the blogging revolution. Well, even more than before, that is. Down below on the page you’ll see our “Blogger’s Row” and the three new blogs we’ve recently added. There are more in the planning, and I’ll be posting about those as well as introducing our current bloggers soon.  As well as other new stuff… it’s been bizzy, bizzy around here!

Posted by Nanette on 06/09 at 04:29 PM
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006

You Just Don’t Mess With The Fairies

by Nanette

US developers think they have it bad, having to plan around spotted owls and other endangered species. Little do they know…

This is just the greatest story:

Fairies stop developers’ bulldozers in their tracks

VILLAGERS who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.

Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. His first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village, which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn.

He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of Dundurn mountain, where in the sixth century the Celtic missionary St Fillan set up camp and attempted to convert the Picts from the pagan darkness of superstition.

“Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said.

In fact, even as his firm attempted to work around the rock, they received complaints that the fairies would be “upset”. Mr Salter still believed he was dealing with a vocal minority, but the gears of Perthshire’s planning process were about to be clogged by something that looked suspiciously like fairy dust.

[…]

“A lot of people think the rock had some Pictish meaning,” Mrs Fox said. “It would be extremely unlucky to move it.”

Mr Salter did not just want to move the rock. He wanted to dig it up, cart it to the roadside and brand it with the name of his new neighbourhood.

The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: “Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission.” Mr Salter said: “We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.”

The new estate will now centre on a small park, in the middle of which stands a curious rock. Work begins next month, if the fairies allow.

This is even better than the Garden Gnome Liberation Front!

I showed this story to a British friend, mainly because I wasn’t sure if it was something real or a spoof (British humor is sometimes difficult to get… there you are, laughing away and then you figure out that the joke was on you). Anyway, he said that it seemed real to him… in many rural societies in Britain pixies and elves and fairies are still very much believed in. Or, at least such a part of the thousands of years old (pre-Christianity) traditions that actual belief or disbelief is immaterial.

That makes sense and considering that a number of cultures have ‘little people’ traditions, although by different names, well… who knows?

Posted by Nanette on 01/25 at 06:55 PM
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