Is this how we propogate?

I am now part of Hyperspace, the Official Star Wars fanclub. My username for it is first name, followed by the question.

I subscibed maybe a week ago, a couple days after my birthday. Lemee tell you about that birthday.

Yes, I do ramble _that_ much.

I turned seventeen on the twenty-fifth. And it was... forgotten. For the first time. I was crushed. Not completely forgotten, no, but my mother procrastinated cake and card to late afternoon on that very day. And I didn't get anything from my parents until the next day. Because "nothing was wrapped".

I don't like that.

What I did get- well, it was entirely from my other relatives. My aunt in Monroe mailed me a card with five dollars. My grandmother in Battle Creek mailed me a card with a twenty-five dollar Borders gift card. My uncle in Kalamazoo mailed me a fifteen-dollar Barnes and Nobles gift card, which wasn't signed and misspelled my name.

When I did get something from home, it was the card my mom had procrastinated to get, and twenty dollars inside of it.

Well, and my dad lent me his credit card number so I could subscribe to Hyperspace.

Don't get me wrong. I like what I have. It's just... well... I don't like being BS-ed. How is "It's not wrapped" an excuse for not giving me a card and some money? I feel like I'm being forgotten. Someday, LJ-luv, I'll tell you about that.

Besides, I can't spend anything until somebody takes me to a store. Preferably a bookstore. A big one. And then leaves me there for two and a half hours.

So... anyways, I'm now part of Hyperspace. The Star Wars site is interesting. There's a lot of stuff there... and a lot of stuff missing. And I dearly wish that, after a link was clicked on, it would change colors like on other sites.

As for the "Is this how we propogate" title, it connects back to an incident in a bookstore some time ago.

I was in the Star Wars section(of course) when a little kid came up and asked me to get one of the Illustrated Guides on the top shelf. I gave one to him, made some small talk about the movies, and at some point he asked me what the Core Systems are.

So of course I got to explaining how Corusucant and all these important systems are Coreward, while later-discovered systems are Rimward.

And at some point he asked me how I knew. You know what I did, LJ-luv? I puffed up and told him that I knew because I was a fanatic. He didn't know what a fanatic is. I told him that a fanatic is so crazy about something that she tries to learn everything about it.

Then his mother came by and saved her kid from the crazy girl.

Heh. Really, _is_ this how we propogate? Will he be a fan, in future?

Or am I just going to be that weirdo in the bookstore?

Parrots.

Taking time out from this annoying Concrete Metaphor thing...

Couple days ago... hmm.... yeah, Friday the 2nd, I think- my dad went to get dry cleaning and, lacking something better to do, I went into PetsN'Things.

There were parrots in glass... thingies. Ack. I have to describe them.

See, at this particular pet shop, some parrots are kept in big cages. Others are kept in sort of aquariumlike things- glass sides, open tops, fine gravely floor. Set at a convenient height. Easy enough to reach in, if you're an employee.

Anyway, there were numerous birds there. A big pinkish cockatoo was in one, a pair of macaws were in another, and there were some slightly smaller birds that I didn't see.

I was looking them over- I like parrots- when one of the macaws _auuked_ loudly. So I went over to look at them, saying aloud, "One of you is gonna scream and scare me, I just know it."

They didn't.

The sign read something like "Baby blue-and-yellow macaws, hand-raised." The two of them were certainly sleek and handsome fellows.

Or ladies. I can't tell.

Anyway, they hopped down off the wood in the tank and made their awkward-looking way over. They both perched on the edges of their feeding bowls and just looked at me.

I crouched to bring them to eye level so I could look at them. One of the birds dinked its glossy black beak on the glass and I saw that knobby black parrot tongue. I told it that I knew it wanted to bite me, didn't it. They tilted their heads.

Parrots have eyes on the sides of their heads, but they can still look straight forwards. These two had pretty grayish eyes. Is that a youngness thing or a parrot thing?

Other than the dinking, they were silent.

They followed my hands on the other side of the glass and dinked their beaks at me some more, and we did a lot of staring, before my dad came back and I left.

I know that, being hand-raised, the macaws just wanted to bite me or get fed or climb around or something. But the cockatoo was also hand-fed, and it ignored me completely.

I'll never be able to keep one, but I like parrots.

Whooo, that's only too much procrastination. Get back to work, lazy!