Entries tagged with animal friends

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Shades of Little Fuzzy

Those who have read Little Fuzzy know that the book's climax hinges on a court trial to both determine whether the titular species is sentient, and also to come up with a general definition of sentience.

Recently, a New York court tackled that question when it comes to chimpanzees. Should chimpanzees be considered sentient? Honestly, this is a question I'm conflicted on, though I think a good case can be made in general for better treatment of animals, as we're finding them to be more and more like us.

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Actual Play: Golden Sky Stories, the Little Shrine in the Woods Part 4

Actual Play: Golden Sky Stories, The Little Shrine in the Forest

So, after meeting the bear god, and making outraguous promises to right everything, we go to the final scene.

After a nap, in the afternoon we meet with Emi to tell her what we've found. This requires some of us deciding to wear human bodies- or rather how much like humans we want to look. Note that in the Change table, the cost to change to human is based on the time of day, and the amount of change. Most of the henge choose Full Human (4 for full human, 4 for daytime) costing 8 points. I decide that nobody is going to notice a tail under a sailor fuku (4 for day, 2 for tail). Bird chooses obvious flight capable wings, for 4 points, because well, the bird has no caution. This shouldn't bother the humans, right? After filling her in on the situation, a surprisingly calm Emi says that maybe her grandma might know something about old shrines. So we troop up to the cottage where we meet Emi's surprisingly sharp grandmother, who after a bit of a pause seems to see through our clever disguises. Fortunately she doesn't seem at all bothered. A variety of more or less inappropriate salutations occur, except for me, who says Ohayo Gozaimasue obasama- which earns me a narrow look.This aside, Grandma offers us tea and cookies, Pixel loves the cookies, which I very much approve of. "Yes. Go ahead and eat. Eat LOTS of cookies." For some reason Amasa has a bout of hysteria, screaming at Pixel that he shouldn't eat the cookies. A puzzled Pixel eats the cookies anyway.

( Oh yeah, and then there's the god stuff to take care of. )

There IS an epilogue. Mako has no interest in helping the others fix some stupid greenhouse and disappears on her own business. However, a couple days later, when Emi leaves the house in the morning, Mako is at her porch, waiting. "What are you dong here?" "Not like I care or anything- this place was on my way! And you need to hurry, you'll be late for school!"

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Actual Play: Golden Sky Stories, the Little Shrine in the Woods Part 3

So yesterday we had a picnic called on account of rabbit, an upset human girl, mysterious desecration of strawberry fields, and lots of amusing bickering.

*Part 3: In the Greenhouse*

So, big crashing in greenhouse. Tomo, Suzune and Pixel flew ahead, while I sensibly took my time. When I arrived at the greenhouse, There was a huge, tear in the plastic wall, and inside, an indistinct shape making a major mess among the plants and shelves and stuff. It was huge, black and glowing with two arms and I knew immediately what is was.

( "See. I told you. Mammoth." )

Next: the ancient force of nature! Oh yeah, there's also a god.

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Actual Play: Golden Sky Stories, the Little Shrine in the Woods Part2

*Actual Play: Golden Sky Stories, The Little Shrine in the Forest*

Part 2: The First Scene

Last time, we wen't through character creation, which was very much a group effort.Now, we find a mystery, bicker a lot, and make new contacts.

*SO, THE STORY*

It started off with me, Mako hanging out at the fox's shrine, because sometimes fish or fried tofu were left as offerings, and I was totally going to get them first. But it was a nice evening in late March, so we ended up at a picnic, in a field near a strawberry patch. Bunker the Tanuki thoughtfully provided shrimp from a dumpster, and I helpfully brought some breaded fried shrimp that some chef in a restaurant had left out on a counter. Well, he obviously didn't want it, did he? We smelled a wonderful odor of strawberries, so with Bunker leading, we- make that THEY rushed to the field, and I for some reason found my path going the same way. The gorging on strawberries was interrupted by a rabbit that pleaded with us to stop and therearenomorenostrawberriesleftforusandwecan'teatthestrawberriesreallyfastpanictalk. Eventually we got the rabbit spirit, named Amasa (aka "Sweetness") to introduce herself, and got a slightly less confusing rendition of a problem of strawberries disappearing and humans and someone was eating the strawberry fields and blablahblah. Bunker, thinking Amasa was hungry, offered some shrimp that had stuck to her coat- rabbits don't like shrimp.

( And that's when the human appeared! )

Next: The THING in the Greenhouse!

Current Mood: accomplished

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Actual Play, Golden Sky Stories: The Little Shirne in the Forest

Golden Sky Stories: Actual Play, "The Little Shrine in the Forest"

"Not that I care or whatever, but this is the story about me, the most important character in the story, and how I, OK, with the help of some other animal spirits, saved the world- make that a town- OK, a strawberry patch. And made a young girl's life better. Not that that's important to me you see. Because I'm a cat. And I just do what I want, just because." Mako, the black cat

This last weekend, at a small "Not going to Pacificon or Celesticon" NonCon, A one-off game of Golden Sky Stories happened, with five players who had never played GSS before, and a GM who had hadn't run a game in years.. This is the story of what happened, as related by Mako. The Most Important Character in the Game.

Golden Sky Stories is a game rather different from other role playing games. Rather than wandering dungeons, slaying monsters or the like, the players take the role f minor animal spirits who help the people in a small rural town in Japan. They help with minor crises, that are still quite important to the people involved. This is best described as a slice-of-life supernatural story, in the vein of Japanese anime such as Natsumi's Book of Friends, Totoro, Kamichu, Pon Poko, and Gingitsune. The emphasis is not on violence, but on solving minor problems in a heartwarming fashion.

( Part 1: Character Creation )

Next: the first Scene! Rivalries will be enacted! Shrimp and strawberries will be eaten! Rocks will be thrown!

Current Mood: amused

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Kitten. With a Tiny Hat. Eating a Tiny Ice Cream Cone.

Sometimes, that's all that really needs to be said.

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I like him better now than when he played the flute.

So what's Ian Anderson being doing recently? Well, aside from the occasional flute-playing solo gig wiith orchistras he:

Found some kittens, and writes on how to care for them.

He also really, really likes indian food. So much so, he wrote a guide to enjoying it.

From my P.O.V. that's a hella good way to use your official website. As I said, the man is cool.

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He keeps going and going and going....

Everyone of a certain generation has an idea of who Jim Fowler is, or at least would recognize him in the field. He was Marlin Perkin's assistant in Mutual of Omaha's wild Kingdom, the one who would do all the crazy, near suicidal stunts with animals, whenever a critter needed to be lassoed, tagged, diverted, oor given a human chew toy. Jim undoubtedly inspired the Crocodile Hunter with his "hands on" naturalist style. More importantly, my friends and I came up with any number of theories to explain his survival; multiple Jims was the easiest explanation, though theories ranged up to instant clones and terminator style cyborgs.

Oddly enough, he seems to have been human, and he's still around. After doing a number of television nature specials, he's focused on wildlife preservation and the Center for Wildlife Education in New York, a mysterious place that has almost no web presence, but may involve wild animal parks. Unless of course, that's merely a cover story to conceal the underground factory where vat after vat of bubbling, glowing green ichor is producing an army of nigh-invulnerable Jim clones to take over the world. Or wrestle leopards or something.

Current Mood: silly

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You know your interdimensional portal works too well...

...when you get NAZI DINOSAURS!

I've got to repeat that again, because that's so out there.

NAZI FREEEEAKING DINOSAURS!

T-Reich showing up is also how you know you have a really odd comic on your hands. And that's the case for Major Bummer, the comic about superheroes that could give the Mysterymen a run for incompetence. All this courtesy of scans_daily, which has the rest of this little story...including the GIANT CAT.

Gotta love a story with a giant cat.

Current Mood: cranky

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Separated at Birth?

So we start of with the Cat in the Bottle, which is seriously cute and fascinating.

But most people don't realize the disturbing implications: CATS ARE REALLY JUST FURRY OCTOPUSES!

More proof!

CUTE CAT

OCTOPUSSY!

There you have it. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Current Mood: amused

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This is SO totally my job.

Especially on days like today.

For anyone who's interested, this was actually part of a rather interesting and potentially important experiment on immunology research.

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It figures that Nature would get there first...

A while ago, I came up with the idea of Garbage Turtles; bioengineered critters designed to eat discarded metal and glass, and secret them into neat patterns on their shells, which then would be shed for easy recycling. I did it for a different project, but I was going to adapt it for Under the Green Moon, since one of the concepts of the setting is that easy sources of ores have been used up millennia ago.

It figures nature would get there first: Scaly-foot Snail secrets iron sufides into its skeleton. It just goes to show there's very few concepts that aren't mimicking in some way something that evolution came up with.

And here's the scaly-foot snail, also know as the gold-footed snail. Isn't it cute?

Current Mood: amused

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I don't normally post political humor...

...unless I'm amused by it. And here we have, courtesy of Snopes, a perfect example of Texan folk wisdom/humor.

"While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President. The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was. The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle. You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."

Now I want my very own drawing of a Post Turtle.

Current Mood: impressed

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Metal-Eating "Superworms"!!!!

Seriously! According to the article in Discvoer Magazine:

Newly evolved "superworms" that feast on toxic waste could help cleanse polluted industrial land, a new study says.

These hardcore heavy metal fans, unearthed at disused mining sites in England and Wales, devour lead, zinc, arsenic, and copper.

The earthworms excrete a slightly different version of the metals, making them easier for plants to suck up. Harvesting the plants would leave cleaner soil behind.

So all I want now is for them to grow up to 60' long, and be able to eat concrete blocks, houses, cars, small yappy dogs and the like. Then it would be a wonderful product of lost bioengineering science to have rampaging (well, actually slowly squirming) through my 'Under the Green Moon' setting.

Current Mood: content

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The best birthday cards I ever received...

Were given to me tonight by Alice and Dorothy!

( This is the cover to Alice's card )

( This is the inside of Alice's card- isn't it cute? )

( This is Dorothy's card...she's a little different. )

The important thing though, is I love them both, VERY VERY MUCH!

Current Mood: thankful

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In this Life I have some Egrets...

Today sucks, for a lot of reasons. Work, finances, stress...all combine to make one really depressing day.

But then again, just now on the oak tree across the stream from my work were two huge, beautiful snowy egrets. I watched them for a while, and then they suddenly took off, and curved around in flight over the parking lot. One sailed between me and the sun, turning his wings translucent glowing white.

They flew off, leaving me feeling better. I just needed to remember that there are bigger things in this world than my troubles.

Current Mood: enthralled

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Dinosaur Bird! I want one!

Well, Pteradon actually. An article in Azhdarchid Paleobiology suggests that this group of pteradons wasn't actually a shoreline predator as commonly assumed. By studying wing, neck, foot and beak structure and comparig them to modern birds, they came to the conclusion that Azhdarchid actually stalked inland plains, using it's wings as forelegs, and preying upon small dinosaurs.

Well, not THAT small:

(image courtesy of Mark Witton/University of Portsmouth)

So why the game tag? I've been considering a flying race for "Under the Green Moon, annd this is a great model for what a realistic large flyer might look like. I mean, it won't look exactly like that, but it definitely gives me ideas.

Current Mood: artistic

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The Chronophage Clock!

I so want this clock in my living room, to eat all that wasted time I have lying around.

Current Mood: amused

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Teleport Kitty!

Because there is always room for kitty films, I present the famous "Ninja Kitty" film.

Look! It moves without moving!

Current Mood: amused

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Keepon takes his act on the road!

Keepon is an experiment in human-robot communication, especially with children, through the medium of dancing. The question is, can he make it in the big city of Tokyo?

Street musicians, cosplayers, shoppers, and commuters: let's watch.

(Sorry, no embedded media for this one)

Additional information on Keepon is here.

The interesting thing to me is that it seems like movement is so much easier to identify as "human". Where Keepon and Wall-E have emotions and personality defined as human, detailed CGI portraits are still considered inhuman. It seems the Uncanny Valley isn't very deep, or is easily circumvented when it comes to motion. I can see some definite evolutionary reasons for that, such as it being more important to tell a cheetah from a human than to idenntify gestures as human or not, and this is a trait that can be exploited to make robots feel more "human".

Plus, this may be the cutest thing I've seen all week.