It's been four months since I parted ways with the only shaman I have ever believed in, and since then my world has shifted back to greyscale. Wonderful things have happened, and love has entered my life again, but it's still been without that spark, that knowledge that I am connected to something outside myself. Without him here, I am once again in doubt if there ever really was a connection, that my brief foray into spirituality was nothing more than a weak flailing in the dark.

I've never been able to hold my own connection to a god. I have never been able to do anything but leech off of others' tethers to their deities. I had hoped that my new life and my growing intimacy with the nature of pain would bring me something, would open something inside me that had previously been closed. I want so desperately to know that my existence causes ripples in the world, I want to know that I am connected to the earth and to the people around me. I have always wanted there to be something beyond what I can see.

But I know again, as I did before, that it's wishful thinking. That I am alone in my head. That the space between me and another person contains nothing more than air. That when I die, I will vanish. I hate knowing those things, but what choice do I have? I reach out and there's nothing there. It's empty.

The pets just keep coming and coming! This one's name is Shelob. And she is beautiful.

( Pics of my new friend )

I adopted a new rat today. His name is Wilbur, he belonged to the seven-year-old daughter of a friend of mine. And while the little girl seemed to be pretty fond of him, she didn't consistently take care of him, so her mother asked me if I would take care of him instead. He's not sick or anything, just quite portly, and understimulated. He looks very unusual to me, since he's an albino top-eared rat, which is usually the kind of rat bred for laboratory work rather than as a pet. But he seems very sweet and mellow.
I think he's a couple years old, which is pretty surprising, considering that his mother was bought for the sole purpose of being snake food, but when they took the food home, they discovered she was pregnant, and decided to keep one of the babies. Most rats like that have a lot of genetic abnormalities that give them cancer fairly early in life, but he seems healthy (although checking for tumors is difficult with him because he is so fat). I'll have to watch him closely for listing as well.
I introduced him to Mathias already, and although Mathias seemed pretty unimpressed, Wilbur was very interested in him. Poor Wilbur hasn't seen another rat since his brothers and sisters were eaten by a snake, so he's probably been a little lonely.
( Pics and a movie under the cut! )

He was just born yesterday. I missed the birth but I did get to see him stand up for the first time! Here are pictures of him a day later:
( Giraffe pix! )

Couple pictures of the zoo today.

( Misc photos abound )

We have a new Madagascar exhibit at the zoo, so I shall take this opportunity to show you pictures of our lovely Madagascar natives!

( Madagascar under the cut! )

So, I have a new camera, courtesy of Rockfur (thank you again!) and I have thus decided to put it to good use documenting the day-to-day life of the animals at the zoo.
( Adventures below the cut! )

So this is my possessive side, my jealous side, my Pride. Pride is my own personal cardinal sin, my demon, the one that interferes with intimacy and brings about my temper, the anger almost beyond control. But now I'm thinking that Pride may have some usefulness after all. Without it, I cannot recognize the injustices done to myself. Without it I cannot recognize when I am being treated as less than an equal. I try to suppress it, this ego of mine, but it seems to be flying free now, and I'm finding less and less justification to box it back up. I deserve to own what is mine, and I deserve to be treated according to how valuable I am. Because I do have value, whether or not someone can see it, even someone who is an ordinarily insightful, intelligent individual.. I have value and I'm not going to give that conviction up, because to lose that would be to lose my Pride.. which would be to lose myself.

This is getting better and better every day.

This goes way beyond awkward, to just plain wrong: The Wonder Years

It's basically an AU (alternate universe) fanfiction. At the very least this opens it up to the fans.. they can write as much Kirk/Spock slash as they want and can claim it's legit.. it's an alternate damn universe!

Needless to say (it's me, guys), I loved the movie. Regardless of the slash potential, I really love Kirk and Spock and their friendship, so it was great to see them meeting for the first time and all. Also: McCoy=sex. That is all.

What I would really love is if they kept this new cast for a TV show that would now follow this alternate universe.. it would be similar, but not identical to the original series. And it would be, you know, better written and all. That'd be so fun. I doubt they could keep the actors though.. I think the Star Trek franchise used the last of their budget on this movie. A very entertaining movie, to be sure, but may very well be the end of it all.

EDIT:

I was totally seduced by two people at once last night - an old friend and his new fiancee. It was bizarre to say the least, kinky and incredibly hott. This even has the potential of becoming a habit. Just thought you guys might like to know.

Why can't I seem to escape jealousy lately D:

Don't have much to say at this juncture. I graduate college on Saturday. This means I will never have to go to school EVER AGAIN. That is a truly bizarre feeling. Though I sense that the enormity of it hasn't quite hit me yet.

Do paranormal/supernatural events (you know, ghosts, magic, faeries, visions) really occur? And why or why not do you believe this?

So I'm not sure whether my absence was noticed or not, but I think I sort of switched to using Facebook for updates and stuff.. however I'm finding I can no longer be as candid on there as I would like to, so I think I'll come back here to rant about things. So hello again guys :)

New Gmail theme = Win. I feel like Durandal is checking my mail for me.

Christmas is slowly approaching! I am very excited for the break. I'm also going to do Christmas cards this year! They will be homemade and perhaps therefore crappy, but it sounds more fun than just buying some to send out to people. If you want a Christmas card from me, just send me your address! I promise not to stalk you.

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Anthropology of Sex and Gender. I thought it would be a class more about human sexuality but it turns out that it's actually about gender roles. And by gender roles they mean female gender roles. Our professor is apparently very involved in rights for lots of minority groups, including homosexuals, but all we've been talking about in the first two weeks of class is women's oppression. He wants us to read all these articles (most of which are very dated) about how men have so much power over women and women have been victimized and oppressed for all of time and up into the modern era.

Every single class I go to irks me and sends me into ranting mode (though I wait until after class to do so). Yes, it's quite obvious that our society is and always has been patriarchal, and that women have had less rights, and they've been beaten by their husbands and raped by men everywhere, and yes it's all very unfortunate. But those past circumstances are becoming less and less relevant. Society is slowly moving from a patriarchal one to an egalitarian one, but in my opinion it's being dramatically hindered by the so-called feminists.

It was my understanding that the feminist movement was a push to make women equal with men. But every feminist book I read, every feminist article published, every Women's Interest flier I see hung on the billboard emphasizes woman's miserable and oppressed past. In class we talk about how scary it is for women to walk home from school or work at night. We read an article outlining what the etiquette should be for men who happen to be walking home at night so as not to frighten any (poor, delicate) women that may be out and about. Our university makes a big deal about a certain week in October that's designated as RAPE WEEK. It's when you're most likely to get SEXUALLY ASSAULTED and they have informative posters out telling women not to go out after 10:00 pm or you're going to get RAPED.

From all the angry women out there, you'd think that women want equality with men. But you can't truly be equal with someone unless you feel equal to them. And you can't feel equal to someone if you feel victimized by them! All this information about how much women have been oppressed may be accurate, but it's also detrimental. It encourages women to feel afraid of men when they're walking home at night. It encourages them to blame the evil patriarchal society when their husband smacks them around (as opposed to just taking responsibility for a bad choice and getting the fuck out of the relationship). It promotes victimization, and it promotes, ironically, patriarchy. As long as women still feel like they're under men's boots, they are going to be. (Which is sort of funny, by the way, because how many men do you know who consciously want to deny women their rights?)

Sure, the psychological brainwashing is there. Women are viewed as objects in popular media; it's true. I myself grew up in an extremely patriarchal environment (a pretty heavy-handed religious one). Patriarchy taught me that women should cover their bodies so as not to be a temptation to men, it taught me that I could never have a position of true authority, and that I should refer to men for all of the judgment calls that I wasn't allowed to make. Yeah, I was oppressed by the system. And then I called it all bullshit, and got over it. Now I'm able to do everything in my life without feeling influenced by men. It's a miracle!

True feminists should stop trying to teach women that they're victims. They should start teaching them that they are responsible for their own decisions. In our society as it is now, where we're protected by the law just as much as men are, we truly could all be equal if we all really wanted to be. But until women stop telling themselves that they're oppressed, we're never going to be.

If you guys want to read all these fun articles (I especially suggest the one called SEXUAL TERRORISM): go here and type in the password CRA5100. We don't have a textbook, these are the required readings for our class. (Some of them are on things other than women's oppression, I guess we haven't gotten to those topics yet.) Also I suppose it's ironic that I'm posting this, after my last entry. This is what I actually believe about things, though.