The wages of cute is death

That poor bear is dead. It's a sign of a sheltered life no doubt but bearing a brief witness to him in Berlin a couple of years ago was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. There's been enough side by side evolution with dogs and cats for me to not be disturbed when a dog or cat obviously can't really tell the fundamental difference between themselves and a human; dogs and cats never forget that they're a dog or a cat, and their domesticity comes in assuming that their people are some sort of dog or cat too. But that bear obviously had no idea he was a bear, and no idea why he was being seperated from all of his fellow-humans standing three-deep around his enlosure, gawking and flashing at him. And until I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume the poor fucker died of a broken heart. Reminds me of the protagonist of Brave New World except a hundred times worse.

The poor fuck. Of course I don't know what could have been done for him instead if his mum rejected him. You can't just let a baby die, at least when you're a money-making concern whose business model is based on people gawking at cute animals, and it's a fucking polar bear baby, which are definitely in the top-20 of the baby-animal-cuteness-stakes on a planet full of fucking cute baby animals. He probably needed some foster-siblings. Maybe some grizzlies. Grizzlies and polar bears can fuck each other and make babies now so it would've made good sense. Oh well.

Anyways, Knut, you poor fuck, thanks for dying this week and briefly distracting me from imagining prefectures-full of Japanese orphans who can't find their families while they're panicking about a nuclear Godzilla blowing up and eating the country. Sometimes it feels better to be angry and indignant about animals than to have to think human misery like that through. Since we're human ourselves, though, it wouldn't do to make a career out of it, which is one of the reasons I fucking hate PETA.

Being paid to think

Japan is doing my head in. I guess my natural inclination would have been to ignore it as far as I was able and send some guilty-white-person money if it was a developing country, but because I'm nominally in charge of Japanese coverage for our magazine I can't. I have to pay attention to what does seem to be a nuclear meltdown (the core is partially melted in one of those things; that counts as a meltdown and will be called a meltdown in the history books, and isn't being called a meltdown right now to help prevent the whole world from shitting itself), I have to pay attention to all the dead people, have to pay attention to a big wave of water that swept away boats and buildings like matchsticks.

Luckily we don't have a television so I'm spared most of of film footage but I do have to watch clips filming where factories used to be, and it's devastated enough that your imagination can pretty much fill in the rest. Those poor fucking people. What do you do when suddenly the ocean spills? Holy fuck.

Anyways.

There goes my peaceful Monday

I was looking forward to a relatively peaceful week and then Japan blew up, so work is going to be fucked. Poor Japan. For the rest of the world, it's mercy it happened in a country like Japan, where the infrastructure is decent so rescue efforts, efforts to not let nuclear plants totally fucking explode, etc., will be pretty close to the top of the game. But for Japan - shit. Our stringer there is sending us all this news and even though he's a pretty crusty older man who I'm sort of scared of I just wanna hug him.

I am taking a break from running today, not because of running, but because I went on quite a decently long kayak with the local club on Saturday, and it's left my legs stiff as a morning boner. My arms held up nicely though. Also, I don't have anything that doesn't reek to high heaven to run in. I've been juggling one inappropriate pair of cotton shorts and one running skirt, and running five times a week, and the laundry system broke down. Luckily another running skirt appeared in the mail this morning so hopefully I can construct a new and better system for staying reasonably hygienic.

Anyways, having to write endlessly about the fucking devastation in Japan and not being able to go for a run is sort of compounding my stress today, as everything seems to be ticking along nicely in terms of our acquisition of The House, which is good but also meant I had a bad half-hour just now when I thought I was going to have a forge a few signatures when I couldn't find a signed copy of my work contract for the bank. But I found one. And the pest inspection is done already, and there aren't any, as far as they can see. And I checked with the council, and we will, if we choose, be able to keep not only chickens (max. 10), but also one sheep. They're a herd animal so that seems sort of cruel, but the F-word, who half-grew up on a farm, claims that they're out-with-the-fairies enough to feel perfectly contented if you just put up a picture of a second sheep.

So things are ticking along so nicely, in fact, that I think I'll give The House a name - a blog name, anyways - I suppose considering both our names'll be on the mortgage I'd better give the F-word a say in its IRL name. I think Batalonia, in double-honour of the flying fox colony and my plans to recreate Guell Park in the fucking ridiculously huge back garden.