I have only been able to spot two black widow tetras in the last two days
I must admit I haven’t looked at all closely for them specifically in quite a long time. I wonder is one constantly hiding, did I miscount ages ago (although I think that would be quite hard), or has it died and very quickly been eaten – it’s certainly not attached to the intake, and hasn’t been. How confusing.
The neons are growing on me, slowly.
It has been so long since I wrote in here…
So long, in fact, that I have kept putting it off because there is too much to write and I am lazy.
Every single one of my angels is dead. It happened quite suddenly and, as far as I can recall, there were no symptoms. They were still in the qt. I called Coburg afterwards and asked if they’d had any problems with them; they got snooty and said no. However, someone on TTT said they’d also had angel issues from there, took in a sample of their water plus ths receipt and got a refund. I only found this out ages later… lesson learnt.
The last batch of babies are in the qt and having much fun, it seems. They are always hungry, or at least act it, and almost seem to know how to go about getting fed: whenever I am in the kitchen, they cluster in the closest corner of the tank (where I do usually feed them). I did buy an ornament: a large Grecian urn-type thing. It’s a bit tacky but I like it, and some of the fish seem to like swimming around in it. Whenever I prune the main tank, I have taken to putting the cuttings in the qt; seems like a good idea for dealing with the nitrates, and gives the fish some shade. The reason I’ve been induced to write today, actually, is… more babies. Miss Molly hatched them last night. I wasn’t expecting her to for a few more weeks, actually, and I see that today is 2 months to the day since the last batch were born; how interesting. But what a pain… what am I going to do with 80-100 babies? I might advertise on the Boronia forum again. I am a bit distraught, I must admit.
We came home to discover a SAE on the floor, quite a way from the tank, three weeks ago; that too was a bit distressing. It had obviously jumped out of the tank, through quite a small hole, and wiggled over there. Probably I should not fill the tank quite so much, so there is a greater gap between the top of the water and the lid.
One more gourami has dropsy – has looked ill for maybe a fortnight now. He’s the one who was looking constipated ages ago… I had thought he was getting better, although never entirely losing the constipated look. Now, though, it’s quite clear he is sick.
We went fish shopping about three weeks ago. We got nine harlequin rasboras – who are just gorgeous, happily schooling and zooming around – and ten neon tetras. They are just about to go in the main tank; I wanted the tetras to be qt fish, but James insisted they be moved. Actually, we’ve left one neon in the qt; he doesn’t look very happy, perhaps a bit bloated.
The main tank now contains:
three cloaches
three black widow tetras
four gourami (one ill)
four adult mollies
? baby mollies
three SAE
two male platies
nine rasboras
nine neons.
It’s looking quite beautiful, too.
Well, that wasn’t quite as hard to write up as I had thought. I may now get back to writing more regularly.
I am still intent on getting a betta at sometime – if it wasn’t for the gourami, I would be tempted to get one right now to eat some of those pesky babies. Maybe I will get one – qt for a few days, then into the main one – and qt the gourami (all of them), because apparently they might have relationship issues. I wonder if I can convince James…
Talking to strangers
It’s a cliche to say that you shouldn’t talk to strangers.
People do talk to strangers all the time, of course – you can’t help it if you want service and so on. Of course, there are also times when you don’t have to talk to strangers but you do. I went to give blood a few months ago and, having drunk copious amount of water so that I would bleed quickly and beat my brother, I needed to find a toilet. I didn’t want to take my bag with me, though, so I turned to the woman next to me. I didn’t know her; I’d only heard her speak once or twice, to her friend. However, I said something like – ‘excuse me, could you mind my bag, make sure no one runs off with it?’ And she smiled, and said yes, so I left and then came back a few minutes later and it was all ok. I thought about it later, though, and I wondered – who was to say she wouldn’t run off with my bag? I had no idea whether she was a kleptomaniac or not. Did my having sat next to her for maybe 10 minutes somehow alter her status as a stranger? And was my bag any safer with her supposedly keeping a watch? Was she exuding some sort of alert to would-be bag-nickers that she would beat them over the head if they attempted to steal the bag of a person she didn’t know?
It was very strange.
Music
I’m not old enough to complain that today’s music is crap, even if it is. I happen to think that there has been and is crap music (in my judgement) in every era of music: there is bad blues, bad jazz, bad 60s pop, and I’m sure there was bad stuff when humans first started making music. My problem with some music at the moment is the sheer unoriginality – worse, the blatant plagiarism. I’m not talking about covers; some covers are good, some bad (Joe Cocker’s With a Little Help from my Friends far surpasses the Beatles’ original; Madonna’s American Pie was boring). I’m talking about when somebody decides to take the melody from one song and put different lyrics over the top, and claim it as new. This goes beyond sampling – which I don’t have a beef about (Fat Boy Slim’s Bird of Prey, with Jim Morrison’s lyrics, may be a good example). I’m thinking, for example, of a song that came out a few years ago: it took the music of John Cougar Mellencamp’s Jack and Diane, put boring love-happy lyrics on top, and called it a new song. Very annoying. I think one of the things that really gets to me is that people without much exposure to old songs will think this is new, and be very confused when/if they do hear the original. I also strongly object to ‘dance-ifying’ songs. I heard Tasmin Archer’s Sleeping Satellites the other day with a very offensive beat on top; to me this is almost sacreligious, since it was a dear favourite of mine and my brother’s when it first came out. It adds nothing to the song, and in the latter case takes away every single element of mystery and lament.
The Plato Papers
This book spins me out.
I read it all in one sitting, this afternoon (it is only 139 pages), and I’m glad I did – it had a greater impact because of that, I think. It’s a bit weird, and I am left with a number of questions unanswered: what are these ‘people’ like – would they be recognisably human? How do they classify themselves if not by such systems as we deem fundamental, such as gender? Who are they? But it has also given me questions to ask about history as we tell it. If they can make the logical assumption that “Charles D”, author of The Origin of Species is Charles Dickens, and that it is “a comic masterpiece”, what sort of erroneous assumptions may we have made in our reconstructions? This is something that has always caused me some grief – in particular I’ve never really known whether or not to be suspicious of the ‘argument from silence’ line, since who knows what we may have lost between now and ‘then’? And then there’s the whole point of cultural context, let alone oral history…
It is a good book, for all that, and I think it should probably appear on the reading list for some history courses – like the prereq subject for honours at Melbourne – just to make people think.
One of the black angels died yesterday; it was quite sad and unexpected
No visible symptoms – guess it’s a good thing they’re in quarantine. We caught the one baby we still have from the last batch and moved her to the qt – because she’s a she and we don’t need more babies. She seems to enjoy swimming with the white angels.
As well, we got a parcel from Aquamail yesterday – very exciting. So we now own a 25 foot gravel vacuum, and a huge amount of food. We had given up on our order ever turning up, so we bought a bucket of flakes from Coburg anda some sinking tablets, and then Aquamail comes through with a bucket of flakes and two containers of freeze-dried tablets (the sort we originally had). Well, I guess it will keep. James insisted on trying out the vac; it worked well in the qt, and then we tried it in the main tank – it worked quite well; there’s a small section that looks remarkably clean – but it stirred the crap up a lot, too (or that might have been James’ technique). Of course, it’s a bit hard to do with all the plants. We may have to do as I heard someone else say – de-plant and vacuum sections at a time, do the whole tank over a year or so.
Warriors of God #2 – who does he think he’s kidding??
Describing James d’Avesnes: “who apart from Richard was the most gallant and chivalrous warrior of the entire European army.” Sorry? What’s your definition of chivalrous here?? I don’t think that your discussion of Richard so far allows for him to be called the most chivalrous warrior in the army by any stretch of the imagination!
I don’t think he can make up his mind whether Saladin was a wonderful person or not; sometimes he is the oh-so-holy Defender of the Faith, and sometimes he is “cruelly” beheading Christians – how do you do that cruelly, anyway? I guess he doesn’t have to make up his mind, but in these sections it seems like he has, and then he changes it…
I’m about 2/3 through, and I’m glad to have read it for a look at the period and people but, obviously, I have some issues with the portrayals.
Warriors of God
It’s not as academic as I had hoped. The author, James Reston, has probably set out to write a very approachable books – and it is, which is great. However, it rankles when he says ‘one chronicle remarks…’ and doesn’t tell you which chronicle that is. And, probably the most annoying thing, he does not give much reason for wholeheartedly accepting the theory that Richard and Phillip Augustus were lovers… and that annoys me. I don’t care if they were, I just object to the unscholarly way he approaches it – like he’s sensationalising it, and making Richard seem more modern, or something.
He also seems to have a love of Saladin and rather ambiguous feelings towards Richard. Which is fine, and I don’t mind authors saying that, but I do think they should make an effort to present balanced evidence, however much that is possible when you’re writing history.
It is a good book, though, and I think it is a good introduction to the period and people. I even like that it has me annoyed and asking questions, because that gets me doing my own research.
New books
Very exciting – bought two new books today. Readings have a $9.95 table at the moment, so I got Peter Ackroyd’s The Plato Papers and Jim Paul’s Catapult: Harry and I build a Siege Weapon, which is apparently now ‘a much beloved classic’ although I’ve never heard about it before. So, they look good.
Babies!! So many babies!
Probably close to 30, I think; so exciting. She is looking much slimmer, naturally… but a little harried. I’d like to catch her and put her in the qt, but a) she’s very hard to catch and b) there are 5 angels in there, so that might go against the whole idea of having a qt. So yes, we got angels on Friday – which was also highly exciting – three white, veil-finned ones (long fins), and 2 mostly black fairly normal looking ones. They seem to be quite happy in there today – eating, etc.
Randomly Yours, Alex 