You will notice a chihuahua-looking thingy in my icon. I drew her after I came home from the park yesterday. There was a person with a little dog with the MOST rediculously furry ears I have ever seen on a dog. Then I thought to myself: WANT. So I drew the dog with the furry ears as my icon, same color, same everything (except that here I have anthropomorphised the animal in my likeliness...somewhat). So now, Furry Ears is my character. I still don't know what kind of dog that was, but my character will be a chihuahua/papillon type thing. So there.

  Last night, I had another seriously weird dream that's pretty worth sharing (don't worry it's short). This one sounds more like a freaky science fiction movie rather than a horror one....

In the dream, I found a box of eggs, which I showed to some scientist/collector person.  Apparently I have had them for a while, but I kept them in the pantry (wtf?). These weren't any ordinary eggs; they were the size of ostrich eggs, and each egg contained the embryo of an extinct human race (the dream apparently takes place in a future where certain race/ethnicities of humans have been completely eliminated...and in a world where humans hatch from eggs). 

So, containing the last specimens of these human kinds, obviously the eggs were extremely valuable (despite the fact that my dad had bought them at Costco...again, WTF). Well, the scientist/collector person was very interested, so I told her I would bring the eggs in to her lab one day. 

When that day came, I  somehow dropped the box of eggs. All of them were cracked except for three, and I knew I was in some deep shit. There goes a good portion of the human race.

Then I woke up. Yep, that's it.



...Oh and happy Fourth of July and whatnot....

   I just came back from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Having been entranced by the spectacular first "Narnia", The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I was excited to see the sequel, which everyone had been telling me was much "better than the first". 

"Prince Caspian" starts and ends without leaving a sense of magic. The entire film was essentially a series of battle scenes wrapped around a lacking plot (Evil uncle wants Caspian's throne, Caspian has to defeat him to gain his proper place and save the Narnians in the process). 

Where the first "Narnia" had a magical sense of imagination and wonder, this sequel brings us a chain of  battle sequences dragged throughout the entire film. Basically, it's moment after moment of arrow stab, slam, kick, claw, stab, stomped, stab again, bite,... etc, etc, for most of the movie time. It gets very tiring to watch, and after a while you just blankly stare at the screen without a sense of excitement. Basically, this is a movie about kids who go into another world and dimension and spend the whole time killing people.

This time in Narnia, said Narnians (the magical creatures that gave the first film its fantasy element) are supposedly extinct, as humans have taken over. That said, we get a total of two talking animals (a badger and a tough 'ol mouse named Reepicheep...there is also a squirrel who gets a few seconds of dialogue), one memorable dwarf, and a centaur. The rest of the Narnians don't say much, if anything. So this sequel is more realistic than fantasy, in that sense.

Another issue I had with the film was the incomprehensible lack of Aslan the lion (who doesn't look as good as he did in the first film). There is this huge war going on in the world of Narnia, and all this time Aslan is...hanging around in the forest doing nothing? I mean, come on; he waits until Lucy goes and gets him right at the last second of the battle, and then goes and immediatley stops what he could have prevented ages ago (just a few hundred deaths and a war), if only he would have gotten out of that forest.  The film could have at least given us an explanation as to why he was hiding in the forest and all of a sudden appears out of nowhere. But then again, if he had gotten his tail out there sooner, that would just ruin the plot, and we wouldn't have gotten to see ALL OF THOSE AWESOME BATTLE SCENES. Urgh....
At least Aslan gave us the chance to see walking, fighting trees and a river that turns into a monster. Those were visually impressive.

I am beginning to get the feeling that the only reason my friends saw and "loved" this movie was because of the Prince Caspian himself. If that is the case, then I have some seriously superficial, shallow, shameless friends.  This character pushed the original four children to the side of the screen throughout the film; not surprising, given the title of the movie itself. The problem I have with him here is that, as a character, I thought he was rather empty. I personally did not find him hugely memoreable or admireable.

So, "Narnia" doesn't enchant, but it isn't absolutley horrible. Walden Media brings us some spectacular monsters and creatures, as always. The filming locations are beautiful, and the instrumental score, despite much of it being re-used from the first "Narnia" is noteably good. 

The first was, however, better.

Remember my freaky post about the woman with the white hair and the gray cap (see previous post)?

WELL THE STORY DIDN'T END THERE!

I feel like I'm living in some cheap horror movie with this crap that keeps happening to my mom and I when we leave the house...

Yesterday, my mother and I went to Safeway, as we got these weird cravings for donuts. When we were going to pay, I glanced to my right and could have sworn I saw that woman with the white hair and the gray cap again. I kept it to myself though, as I didn't want to panic like I did when I saw her at  the Micheals store and got all paranoid. 

And then...my mother gives me a frightened look. She whispers, you're not going to believe this but...OMG it's HER. 

Now I knew I wasn't going crazy. My mother and I decided that we had seen enough, and began to come up with all of these different possibilities. What if she's a stalker? What if she's a detective hired by someone in our family? What is she's a "sign" of some sort....a ghost (yes, we seriously suggested that last one)?

We got out as fast as we could and went to our car. We were driving home, when my mother starts telling me to look to the left; the woman with the white hair and the gray cap was NEXT TO US, in her car! X( X( X( It was a white car, too. 

She drove ahead of us, and this time we decided to turn the stalking role around. As we followed her in our car, she kept taking every street that we were going to go to. I told my mother to get her license plate number, and she did (just in case).

Suddenly, the woman made an unexpected turn right without signaling, and we lost track of her and headed on home. 

If I see this freak one more time at a store, I'm going to scream. My mother said she wants to confront her, but I don't think that's such a good idea.  

UGH, please tell me this is just a coincidence and we're just being paranoid!

Sunday, Fathers Day, we went to Safari West (http://www.safariwest.com/home/). It is essentially like a zoo, except the animals are in gigantic, very wide and opened enclosures so they are rather free and behave as they would in the wilds of Africa. Basically, it's an African experience in California.

We started off with a special Fathers Day brunch; a buffet-style meal with a huge selection of very good stuff, and a BBQ going on. Even while eating, you're bound to meet some animals wether you are eating outside or in the very cool dining hall (as we were). Some dogs came in and walked around under our tables, and outside some African guinea fowl were running around, and there were macaws in the trees. Like I said, a good deal of the animals are loose.

Then we got on the Safari tour bus thing (which is open on all sides), and this took us inside the enclosure, so the animals got REALLY close.


The giraffes stuck their heads in and around the bus, spewing oceans of slimy saliva all over the place. Giraffe drool. It's pretty disgusting, yet hilarious, considering we were upset at first that we didn't get the closer side of the bus (but we were thankful we didn't after this incident)! I took the video below, in which we weren't in the area with the loose giraffes quite yet (you can see that it is behind a fence) but it's still pretty funny:


We were lucky to arrive on the day that we did, because the day before, a giraffe had just been born. It was very cute.
Some animals on the tour:




After that, we got off the trailer thing and went on the walking tour, where we saw enclosed animals such as fennec foxes, lemurs, two cheetahs, tortoises, and a look (inside!) the aviary (where they keep the birds).



It was a cool experience. The tour didn't include all the animals, (we saw four of their supposed twenty-something antelope species, only two of their four cheetahs, etc.) but it was alright.

   The following will probably be upsetting to some, as it was for me, considering how this reality check was like a kick in the face. I don't know why I never accepted this fact before, but to sum up the entire following entry: 

Animals: They aren't as smart as we like to think.

Want to keep reading?  In this day and age, we tend to anthropomorphise animals until they speak fluent english. We like to believe that animals think like we do, feel how we do, and put thought and reasoning behind their actions. In truth, with the exception of very few species, animals cannot reason or think, nor are they aware of themselves as an individual or feel complex emotion. An animal can feel pain; that is quite obvious. No non-human animal with the exception of the elephant however, displays complex emotion or has some understanding of death and the true ability to mourn. 

Elephants are also one of four animals which have been proven to have consciousness or knowledge of their own selves. This is tested by seeing if the animal recognizes itself in the mirror, which only the elephant, some great apes, dolphins, and whales have been able to do. Other animals are not aware of themselves; for instance, a spotted cat wouldn't know it had spots, nor would it realize it's fur if it had been dyed pink. 

The elephant in this case had an x drawn on its forehead. When looking at itself in the mirror, it touched the x with its trunk, knowing that that x did not belong there and changed its body image in some way. An invisible x was also applied to make sure the elephant was not using smell or feeling to detect this; the elephant did not respond when looking at its reflection because, in fact, it could not see the x. This concluded that the animal knew that the reflection was its own, that it was aware of itself.


Another mark of intelligence is the ability to reason, or problem solving. This involves abstract thinking; not many animals can look at something and think in their heads, "okay, I need to lift this latch, turn this knob, slide this door, and insert this key to get to that nut". Some animals however, have been able to do this, even without training.

Crows are famous in the science world for being among the most intelligent of animals. They have been able to solve problems such as the one described above, showing that some animals do in fact think. The motive behind any animal's actions however is always personal gain, as animals do not feel sympathy for other animals or would therefore help them, except for a few rare cases which have generally not been proven. 


Alex (Avian Learning Experiment) was an African Grey Parrot and subject of a thirty-year experiment that concluded that birds could reason on a basic level and use words creatively. Many parrots can mimic speech, but they do not tie significance or meaning to these words, rather, they are nothing but sounds. Alex however, not only was able to understand these words, but could even form sentences and identify over fifty different objects. When asked the color of an object for instance, he would respond correctly. 

When he was tired of being tested, he would say “I’m gonna go away,” and if the researcher displayed annoyance, Alex tried to defuse it with the phrase, “I’m sorry.”  This shows a rare instance of animal guilt. If he said “Wanna banana”, but was offered a nut instead, he stared in silence, asked for the banana again, or took the nut and threw it at the researcher. This showed another remarkable sign of intelligence, the ability to distingush between two different objects.

By the end of his life, Alex had the striking intelligence of a five year old human. This is reportedly the highest mental age recorded in an animal, at least to my knowledge. Perhaps Alex's most spectacular feat, occured between him and his researcher; They went through their goodnight routine in which she (the researcher) told him it was time to go in the cage. 
Alex said, "You be good. I love you."
 She responded, "I love you, too." 
He said, "You'll be in tomorrow," 
and she responded, "Yes, I'll be in tomorrow."

There, an actual conversation took place between a human and an animal, and the animal had full awareness of what he was saying and why. 


Dogs and other animals have displayed to connect word with meaning. Tell your dog you're taking him on a  "Walk" and he'll probably respond with a wagging tail and excited behavior.  The animal learns to associate the sound of the word with some sort of action, and can learn certain commands. Border collies, reportedly the most intelligent dog breed, have been recorded to learn and respond to up to 200 words.

It is likely that dogs do not have the ability to premeditate an action to solve a problem. Some dogs may, however, have more drive to keep trying various things until they accidentally reach a solution and still others might have more ability to make the association between the "accident" and the result.
This is how some dogs learn to lift the latch on a door to escape; they didn't actually think it over, but rather stupidly discover it by accident and associate "lift the latch" with "escape". 

In his 1996 book Good Natured, ethologist Frans de Waal discusses an experiment on guilt and reprimands conducted on a female Siberian husky. The dog had the habit of shredding newspapers, and when her owner returned home to find the shredded papers and scold her she would act guilty. However, when the owner himself shredded the papers without the dog's knowledge, the dog "acted just as 'guilty' as when she herself had created the mess." De Waal concludes that the "guilt" displayed by dogs is not true guilt but rather the anticipation of the behavior of an angry superior in a given situation.

Many animals, from dogs to circus tigers, have the ability to learn and repeat certain tricks. This proves existance of memory and the ability to learn to perform an unnatural feat....

So, animals aren't the deep-minded, wise beings we like to think of them as, which brings me to question why I like to picture myself as one, and why therians and furries practically worship them. What's to admire in an animal? Sure, they look good, and they may have amazing strength or abilities, but all in all, animals are fairly simple-minded, even dumb creatures by human standards.

..........................or are they?