The exotic Far East....

Why am I thinking about "Tomb Raider" all of a sudden?

Gakked this from adamlizz:

You're Cambodia!

Life's been really rough, but it's slowly improving.  You know
way too much about the skeletal structure of humans, mostly from being forced to study
it.  This has given you a fear of many things, most especially the color red.
 The future has to be more promising though, and your greatest adversary can now
never come back to hurt you any more.
Take
the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

I have some friends who are going to live in Cambodia later this year. I feel envious: it's a place I've always wanted to visit, judging it only from photographs in magazines and scenery in movies.

In honour of Martha Kent...

And the new LJ community marthackent"


Who Do You Love?
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About to go for a walk....

But first I browsed my friends lists, which can currently be subdivided into three parts: (1) Those who have read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, (2) those who are in the middle of reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and (3) Those who haven't read it, who probably don't much care.

Hmm. I haven't read it. This makes reading my friends' list pretty simple - downright sparse - at the moment, just skipping all the Harry Potter talk. I enjoyed the conversation between ubertood and dolimir about cute guys. Michael Rosenbaum, uh-huh. Good pictures from "Rave Macbeth" but I really prefer him without hair - which is simply to say, I prefer the pictures of Lex. I want to see "Rave Macbeth" though. Presumably someday it will fall into my hands somehow.

The Harry Potter book however caused me to do something I have never done before: I read the last page in the bookstore. I am a person who hates spoilers, who never, never reads endings before beginnings and middles, and who thought she never would do such a thing. I felt extemely radical and wild doing such a thing yesterday.

The wicked novelty of it has, however, worn off, and I've already forgotten what was on the last page. Without all those preceeding pages it doesnt' mean so much.

Which is probably why I never do that, normally.

Daily Zen: Do you have a pet? Tell us about it if you do.

I have four pets, all budgies.

Wisdom is the ringleader: green belly, yellow head, black markings. Unsure of gender when I first got him/her/it, I named Wisdom after Pete Wisdom in the X-calibur comic book. Created by writer Warren Ellis, Pete was a British black ops operative with a smart mouth, a chequered past, and a thing for former X-Man Kitty Pryde. I always thought of Pete Wisdom as being a benign Marvel version of John Constantine, who in turn is like Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But Pete Wisdom is dark-haired. He broke up with Kitty (bad move) and went on to run X-Force, which might have been okay if ... well, it turned out not to be okay, and Wisdom was (apparently) killed. Death at Marvel is never permanent and I expect he will be back, if he hasn't been already: the question is, will there be anyone capable of writing him properly?

If one thinks of Pete Wisdom from the comic as being unpredictable, wild and slightly dangerous; outrageously funny and too clever for his own good, then my Wisdom lives up to his name. Wisdom is the ringleader among my budgies. Wisdom is the quickest to explore, the quickest to react, the one who's the finest escape artist and who gets to the treats first.

I bought Wisdom at the same time as Pryde, so the names went together. Pryde is mostly while, with a pale blue belly. She doesn't hesitate to tell Wisdom what she thinks he should be doing, but he doesn't listen to her. She used to follow him into a lot of scrapes, but she was quite an explorer too, and would sneak away to forbidden zones like the bedroom of bathroom if I was foolish enough to leave doors open. Once she hid behind the books in my bookcase.

About six months ago, two more budgies joined the household. They belonged to a friend of mine, Madonna, who remarked to another friend at a party that she was looking for a good home for budgies. Knowing I was a budgie lover, she was pointed my way.

The new budgies had names from "Toy Story", given to them by their five-year-old caretaker, Madonna's daughter. I renamed them Simon (after the doctor in "Firefly") and Kaylee (after the mechanic in "Firefly".) Simon is roughly the same colouring as Pryde, without any black markings, and Kaylee looks rather like Pryde.

On first arrival, they remained in their old cages, Simon and Kaylee together, Pryde and Wisdom together. Then Simon decided to chase after Wisdom. They moved into the same cage, and when (by accident, I think) Simon and Kaylee got back into the same cage and I closed the door on the a few weeks later, they fought beak and claw. It's like a divorced couple. So now I make sure that Simon and Kayelee don't end up in the same cage, and they all get along fine. If and when I let all four birds out at once, they don't fight elsewhere. Not that I've noticed, anyway.

Now Wisdom has taken to laying eggs, and is spending most of her time on the eggs in her black plastic nesting box. I don't see much of her, but if I put parsley in the cage, or millet, she's up and at it in moments.

Inside the cage, Wisdom's favourite game is to run and run in her hamster wheel - at least it was, before the eggs. Sometimes she used to run inside the wheel while Pryde ran outside. One they both ran inside, one rightside up and one upside down, like feathery yin/yang symbols. Wisdom and Simon don't do that, but Kaylee and Pryde still play the hamster-wheel running game. Simon's favourite pastime is to hang upside down by his mirror, tapping the corner of it with his beak. He'll do this for hours. I think he's bored, with Wisdom sitting on eggs all the time.

Outside the cage, everyone likes to sit on the curtain rod, looking out at the world, occasionally chewing the ceiling plaster before I get a chance to stop them. Climbing down the outside of the curtains is something they like, too.

They all love Visitors, and TV, especially things with loud noises - they adored the battle scenes with cannon in Horatio Hornblower. On all occasions, they try to drown out the television and the conversation, and usually have to be banished to the bedroom, in the dark, before we can have any peace.

And sometimes, when they want to, they sing beautifully. They have a chirpy lullaby at sunset that is particularly nice.

They love the sound of running water.

Of the house of Malfoy...

This was not what I expected. It was better.


With Which Harry Potter Male Are You Most Sexually Compatible?
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