morphinegodess (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} morphinegodess) wrote,@ 2006-10-11 00:45:00 |
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Ah, an update finally!! Okay so a number of hilarious things in today's edition.
First, I can't wait to see Michael and Matt this next week. It's my fall break, and andrew and I are driving up to NY and then a few days later driving down to DC. It should be realllllllly fun! (also, apparently, in DC we're going to the Renaissance Fair. Which means ELEPHANT RIDEs!!!)
Speaking of
An Elephant Crackup?
By CHARLES SIEBERT
Published: October 8, 2006
"We’re not going anywhere,’’ my driver, Nelson Okello, whispered to me one morning this past June, the two of us sitting in the front seat of a jeep just after dawn in Queen Elizabeth National Park in southwestern Uganda. We’d originally stopped to observe what appeared to be a lone bull elephant grazing in a patch of tall savanna grasses off to our left. More than one ‘‘rogue’’ had crossed our path that morning — a young male elephant that has made an overly strong power play against the dominant male of his herd and been banished, sometimes permanently. This elephant, however, soon proved to be not a rogue but part of a cast of at least 30. The ground vibrations registered just before the emergence of the herd from the surrounding trees and brush. We sat there watching the elephants cross the road before us, seeming, for all their heft, so light on their feet, soundlessly plying the wind-swept savanna grasses like land whales adrift above the floor of an ancient, waterless sea.
Then, from behind a thicket of acacia trees directly off our front left bumper, a huge female emerged — ‘‘the matriarch,’’ Okello said softly. There was a small calf beneath her, freely foraging and knocking about within the secure cribbing of four massive legs. Acacia leaves are an elephant’s favorite food, and as the calf set to work on some low branches, the matriarch stood guard, her vast back flank blocking the road, the rest of the herd milling about in the brush a short distance away.
After 15 minutes or so, Okello started inching the jeep forward, revving the engine, trying to make us sound as beastly as possible. The matriarch, however, was having none of it, holding her ground, the fierce white of her eyes as bright as that of her tusks. Although I pretty much knew the answer, I asked Okello if he was considering trying to drive around. ‘‘No,’’ he said, raising an index finger for emphasis. ‘‘She’ll charge. We should stay right here.’’
I’d have considered it a wise policy even at a more peaceable juncture in the course of human-elephant relations. In recent years, however, those relations have become markedly more bellicose. Just two days before I arrived, a woman was killed by an elephant in Kazinga, a fishing village nearby. Two months earlier, a man was fatally gored by a young male elephant at the northern edge of the park, near the village of Katwe. African elephants use their long tusks to forage through dense jungle brush. They’ve also been known to wield them, however, with the ceremonious flash and precision of gladiators, pinning down a victim with one knee in order to deliver the decisive thrust. Okello told me that a young Indian tourist was killed in this fashion two years ago in Murchison Falls National Park, north of where we were.
These were not isolated incidents. All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, from within and around whatever patches and corridors of their natural habitat remain, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings. In fact, these attacks have become so commonplace that a new statistical category, known as Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was created by elephant researchers in the mid-1990’s to monitor the problem. In the Indian state of Jharkhand near the western border of Bangladesh, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004. In the past 12 years, elephants have killed 605 people in Assam, a state in northeastern India, 239 of them since 2001; 265 elephants have died in that same period, the majority of them as a result of retaliation by angry villagers, who have used everything from poison-tipped arrows to laced food to exact their revenge. In Africa, reports of human-elephant conflicts appear almost daily, from Zambia to Tanzania, from Uganda to Sierra Leone, where 300 villagers evacuated their homes last year because of unprovoked elephant attacks.
Still, it is not only the increasing number of these incidents that is causing alarm but also the singular perversity — for want of a less anthropocentric term — of recent elephant aggression. Since the early 1990’s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in ‘‘a number of reserves’’ in the region. In July of last year, officials in Pilanesberg shot three young male elephants who were responsible for the killings of 63 rhinos, as well as attacks on people in safari vehicles. In Addo Elephant National Park, also in South Africa, up to 90 percent of male elephant deaths are now attributable to other male elephants, compared with a rate of 6 percent in more stable elephant communities.
That's right... Elephants. And my dear GOD how hilarious is that? Now, dear readers, if you found that to be funny, please PLEASE read the next bit. I know it's long, but it's completely worth it. I laughed so hard I cried.
Quick backstory: Alex asked Betsy in the dining hall on Sunday if she knew where I was and stated that she's not been this mad in 4 years. Betsy was like... uh? I don't know... (lol cuz she's not my MOM) and afterwards, this note was written on facebook. Yes, I did say Alex. As in THE Alex. for those of you asking, WTF? Hasn't it been like a year since you guys even talked? I respond 'Holy CHRIST, I KNOW!!!'
by Alexandra Becerra (notes) 8:29pm Sunday, Oct 8
To all who like vicious rumours, please read on. This note is very important, and hopefully might make a difference. Firstly, I feel sick for having to defend myself. If I was guilty of some true offence, there would be a reason to defend myself, but today I speak out in defence for nothing. I can tell you my life story moderately quickly: I was born in Glencoe, Illinois, and at the age of one moved with my parents to London, England. My parents (both being American citizens, my mother growing up in Chicago and my father growing up in various states across the counrty) lived in the USA till they were in their twenties. That gave enough time to establish themselves as Yanks and provide them with the necessary tell tale accents. When we moved to England I was, as I said, only one. I hadn't really begun speaking yet. It would make sense that I would develop the accent of my parents, wouldn't it? Wrong! I learned to speak at British schools up until my move back (so to speak) to America when I was 15 years old. 15... I guess I could have come to America and lost my British accent immediatly. In retrospect I wish I had; it sure might have saved me from the vile rumours that I am hearing now. It would have saved me from the pain I am now in. The funny thing is, actually, is that I should be used to this. I guess a persons heart and ego are always vulnerable. When I was eight years old I attended a school that was an all girls school and had only nine students per year. Small cliques are always a breeding ground for cruelty and if someone is just a tiny bit different they are often picked as the victim. I was a Brit, they never contested that, Brits know their own kind, but my parents were Americans. My mother was very beautiful and always dressed stylishly and when she picked me up after school all the other students got to compare their mothers who wore army green raincoats and wellies to my very pretty one. Immediatly, ther rumours began. And then my parents divorced... this paticular school was in a very small town called Arundale (google it to get a picture of the size) and divorce was very uncommon. I will never forget one day when I walked into a class and the other students were sitting around and they glared at me as the main bully said, "What's the D word Alex, what's the D word!!!" The D word obviously meaning divorce. I would tell of the other rumours they spread, but they hurt too much. Such cruel things were spread about my parents and me just because I ws a girl with American parents. Oddly, when I moved to America rumours were never spread about me. I find this odd because I attended a High School in Colorado that was notorious for is cliques and cruelty. And so I am shocked, absolutely shocked that rumours at Oberlin College could be more disgraceful than the ones in High School. What rumour? I am sure you have guessed by now, but basically it is that I fake my British accent. One thing on people who fake their accents: they might do it for one night at a bar to pick up a hot chick or to impress someone but to fake an accent every moment of ones life is almost impossible! To assume that I have put the effort in to this... why, someone must really hate me, because this is the silliest most pathetic rumour I have ever heard! Yet I am writing this note on facebook for people to see because I am so hurt by this silly rumour. I have agonized whether to write this note or not, but finally I decided that this rumour was no longer worth my tears and sadness. I never heard this rumour until a year after it was started, but just incase certain people are reading this, I know who started this rumour and I know the people who have backed it up and I KNOW that these people know the truth and that their only motivation is maliciousness. So in order to clear my reputation for something that I have never done, I have composed this note. Did you know that 60 million people reside in England? It is just possible that a few of them have come to America. People also have complicated and interesting lives, and I suggest to the people that believe rumours to get a life like this, because it could only be a boring and sad person who would either believe or spread lies about people they don't know. Bullying and rumours are for kids, not for mature adults, or people hoping to become so. Thank you for reading this note.
Now, I don't think she has a COMPLETElY fake accent... but I do think that she exaggerates this much more than any normal/sane human being would. This, I would say to her face. Note my new Facebook status.... I really hope she does.
Also, the reason this entry is public is because it's hilarious in nature and all who know me well enough to know my journal should be able to read this.
First, I can't wait to see Michael and Matt this next week. It's my fall break, and andrew and I are driving up to NY and then a few days later driving down to DC. It should be realllllllly fun! (also, apparently, in DC we're going to the Renaissance Fair. Which means ELEPHANT RIDEs!!!)
Speaking of
An Elephant Crackup?
By CHARLES SIEBERT
Published: October 8, 2006
"We’re not going anywhere,’’ my driver, Nelson Okello, whispered to me one morning this past June, the two of us sitting in the front seat of a jeep just after dawn in Queen Elizabeth National Park in southwestern Uganda. We’d originally stopped to observe what appeared to be a lone bull elephant grazing in a patch of tall savanna grasses off to our left. More than one ‘‘rogue’’ had crossed our path that morning — a young male elephant that has made an overly strong power play against the dominant male of his herd and been banished, sometimes permanently. This elephant, however, soon proved to be not a rogue but part of a cast of at least 30. The ground vibrations registered just before the emergence of the herd from the surrounding trees and brush. We sat there watching the elephants cross the road before us, seeming, for all their heft, so light on their feet, soundlessly plying the wind-swept savanna grasses like land whales adrift above the floor of an ancient, waterless sea.
Then, from behind a thicket of acacia trees directly off our front left bumper, a huge female emerged — ‘‘the matriarch,’’ Okello said softly. There was a small calf beneath her, freely foraging and knocking about within the secure cribbing of four massive legs. Acacia leaves are an elephant’s favorite food, and as the calf set to work on some low branches, the matriarch stood guard, her vast back flank blocking the road, the rest of the herd milling about in the brush a short distance away.
After 15 minutes or so, Okello started inching the jeep forward, revving the engine, trying to make us sound as beastly as possible. The matriarch, however, was having none of it, holding her ground, the fierce white of her eyes as bright as that of her tusks. Although I pretty much knew the answer, I asked Okello if he was considering trying to drive around. ‘‘No,’’ he said, raising an index finger for emphasis. ‘‘She’ll charge. We should stay right here.’’
I’d have considered it a wise policy even at a more peaceable juncture in the course of human-elephant relations. In recent years, however, those relations have become markedly more bellicose. Just two days before I arrived, a woman was killed by an elephant in Kazinga, a fishing village nearby. Two months earlier, a man was fatally gored by a young male elephant at the northern edge of the park, near the village of Katwe. African elephants use their long tusks to forage through dense jungle brush. They’ve also been known to wield them, however, with the ceremonious flash and precision of gladiators, pinning down a victim with one knee in order to deliver the decisive thrust. Okello told me that a young Indian tourist was killed in this fashion two years ago in Murchison Falls National Park, north of where we were.
These were not isolated incidents. All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, from within and around whatever patches and corridors of their natural habitat remain, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings. In fact, these attacks have become so commonplace that a new statistical category, known as Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was created by elephant researchers in the mid-1990’s to monitor the problem. In the Indian state of Jharkhand near the western border of Bangladesh, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004. In the past 12 years, elephants have killed 605 people in Assam, a state in northeastern India, 239 of them since 2001; 265 elephants have died in that same period, the majority of them as a result of retaliation by angry villagers, who have used everything from poison-tipped arrows to laced food to exact their revenge. In Africa, reports of human-elephant conflicts appear almost daily, from Zambia to Tanzania, from Uganda to Sierra Leone, where 300 villagers evacuated their homes last year because of unprovoked elephant attacks.
Still, it is not only the increasing number of these incidents that is causing alarm but also the singular perversity — for want of a less anthropocentric term — of recent elephant aggression. Since the early 1990’s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in ‘‘a number of reserves’’ in the region. In July of last year, officials in Pilanesberg shot three young male elephants who were responsible for the killings of 63 rhinos, as well as attacks on people in safari vehicles. In Addo Elephant National Park, also in South Africa, up to 90 percent of male elephant deaths are now attributable to other male elephants, compared with a rate of 6 percent in more stable elephant communities.
That's right... Elephants. And my dear GOD how hilarious is that? Now, dear readers, if you found that to be funny, please PLEASE read the next bit. I know it's long, but it's completely worth it. I laughed so hard I cried.
Quick backstory: Alex asked Betsy in the dining hall on Sunday if she knew where I was and stated that she's not been this mad in 4 years. Betsy was like... uh? I don't know... (lol cuz she's not my MOM) and afterwards, this note was written on facebook. Yes, I did say Alex. As in THE Alex. for those of you asking, WTF? Hasn't it been like a year since you guys even talked? I respond 'Holy CHRIST, I KNOW!!!'
by Alexandra Becerra (notes) 8:29pm Sunday, Oct 8
To all who like vicious rumours, please read on. This note is very important, and hopefully might make a difference. Firstly, I feel sick for having to defend myself. If I was guilty of some true offence, there would be a reason to defend myself, but today I speak out in defence for nothing. I can tell you my life story moderately quickly: I was born in Glencoe, Illinois, and at the age of one moved with my parents to London, England. My parents (both being American citizens, my mother growing up in Chicago and my father growing up in various states across the counrty) lived in the USA till they were in their twenties. That gave enough time to establish themselves as Yanks and provide them with the necessary tell tale accents. When we moved to England I was, as I said, only one. I hadn't really begun speaking yet. It would make sense that I would develop the accent of my parents, wouldn't it? Wrong! I learned to speak at British schools up until my move back (so to speak) to America when I was 15 years old. 15... I guess I could have come to America and lost my British accent immediatly. In retrospect I wish I had; it sure might have saved me from the vile rumours that I am hearing now. It would have saved me from the pain I am now in. The funny thing is, actually, is that I should be used to this. I guess a persons heart and ego are always vulnerable. When I was eight years old I attended a school that was an all girls school and had only nine students per year. Small cliques are always a breeding ground for cruelty and if someone is just a tiny bit different they are often picked as the victim. I was a Brit, they never contested that, Brits know their own kind, but my parents were Americans. My mother was very beautiful and always dressed stylishly and when she picked me up after school all the other students got to compare their mothers who wore army green raincoats and wellies to my very pretty one. Immediatly, ther rumours began. And then my parents divorced... this paticular school was in a very small town called Arundale (google it to get a picture of the size) and divorce was very uncommon. I will never forget one day when I walked into a class and the other students were sitting around and they glared at me as the main bully said, "What's the D word Alex, what's the D word!!!" The D word obviously meaning divorce. I would tell of the other rumours they spread, but they hurt too much. Such cruel things were spread about my parents and me just because I ws a girl with American parents. Oddly, when I moved to America rumours were never spread about me. I find this odd because I attended a High School in Colorado that was notorious for is cliques and cruelty. And so I am shocked, absolutely shocked that rumours at Oberlin College could be more disgraceful than the ones in High School. What rumour? I am sure you have guessed by now, but basically it is that I fake my British accent. One thing on people who fake their accents: they might do it for one night at a bar to pick up a hot chick or to impress someone but to fake an accent every moment of ones life is almost impossible! To assume that I have put the effort in to this... why, someone must really hate me, because this is the silliest most pathetic rumour I have ever heard! Yet I am writing this note on facebook for people to see because I am so hurt by this silly rumour. I have agonized whether to write this note or not, but finally I decided that this rumour was no longer worth my tears and sadness. I never heard this rumour until a year after it was started, but just incase certain people are reading this, I know who started this rumour and I know the people who have backed it up and I KNOW that these people know the truth and that their only motivation is maliciousness. So in order to clear my reputation for something that I have never done, I have composed this note. Did you know that 60 million people reside in England? It is just possible that a few of them have come to America. People also have complicated and interesting lives, and I suggest to the people that believe rumours to get a life like this, because it could only be a boring and sad person who would either believe or spread lies about people they don't know. Bullying and rumours are for kids, not for mature adults, or people hoping to become so. Thank you for reading this note.
Now, I don't think she has a COMPLETElY fake accent... but I do think that she exaggerates this much more than any normal/sane human being would. This, I would say to her face. Note my new Facebook status.... I really hope she does.
Also, the reason this entry is public is because it's hilarious in nature and all who know me well enough to know my journal should be able to read this.
