Baby Tigers and Half Blood Prince

First. The zoo I work at was on the front page of the Seattle Times today!

Go here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009501163_a1tigercubslo20m.html?cmpid=2628

There's an adorable video of the baby tigers on that website. They're way cuter in real life, but pretty much any of you who read this, won't be able to see them.

On to the main subject of this blog...

I saw Half Blood Prince for the second time today, so I feel sufficiently capable of writing my thoughts on it down.

Therefore, if you haven't seen the movie OR read the 7th book yet, you should probably not read the rest of this unless you want to be spoiled.

Stop.

Now.

Hokay. So i really liked the movie. A lot. Obviously, there were things I didn't like. It's not the book. It's not going to be perfect, according to my ideas.

My biggest problem with it was how much of the horcrux information was left out. No mention of the cup at all, nothing about items from the four founders (have the founders even been mentioned in the movies??), only a small bit about Riddle liking collecting things, which was just shown, and only mentioned as thievery. So I'm sure they'll be able to make it make some sense in the next movie, when Harry is suddenly all "We need to find a cup! And something of Ravenclaw's!" but it could have been so much easier. All they had to do was replace the weird conversation where Dumbledore asks Harry about him and Hermione with a little conversation where Dumbledore goes "Riddle liked to collect trophies. He's Slytherin's heir. He might have made the horcruxes out of the founder's objects." Yay!

There were also a few too many awkward Harry/Ginny moments. Now, I love Harry/Ginny, but I never saw them as that awkward. The first time I saw the movie, it didn't bother me too much. I was mostly just excited that they finally fit Ginny in. But when i sat through them all a second time... Not so good. One or two would have been ok. The scene on the couch was amusing, I guess, except for the whole "don't you trust me" bit. Well, yeah, but I don't really want you shoving this weird cookie in my face... I did like the Slug Club scene though, when he stands up at the table. That was all cute and gentlemanly awkward. They could have left it with that. And the kiss was just ok. Not nearly as awesome as it should have been. Plus. Really. Call me old-fashioned, but the guy should kiss the girl.

Bellatrix was the only character the really, really annoyed me. We was like a little destructive child with a weird shoulder fetish. She just blew things up, acted like a little kid, and constant put her chin on everyone's shoulder. It was mostly just creepy and not really scary. Which is totally not what Bellatrix is. I wouldn't have minded her unnecessary presence if she was at least as scary as she was supposed to be.

Now on to the things I did like.

I liked some of the small things that they did to set up the next movie. Such as showing Ollivander's kidnapping, introducing who Regulus Black is through Slughorn's shelf, and mentioning that Harry's eyes are like Lily's again :) The last bit gives me hope that they'll do the Prince's Tale stuff right.

I finally liked Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. I don't know if I will ever forgive him for shaking Harry almost senseless in Golebt of Fire, but he finally seemed eccentric enough, calm enough, and powerful yet weak enough to be Dumbledore. In fact, a lot of the actors became more of their characters for me. Especially Daniel Radcliffe as Harry. Which is a pretty big compliment to him, because Harry is one of my favorite characters of all time ever. But he was hilarious, particularly in the Felix Felices scene. Ron was amazing, too, in the love potion scene. Even Hermione's eyebrows were better.

There were so many new characters that I really liked too. Both of the Tom Riddles were just soo creepy. And Lavender was hilarious and perfectly fangirly. And Cormac was way more good looking than I pictured him, but I'm not going to argue with that. He made a pretty good vile, jock-type.

Oh. Something else that bothered me. We never saw Snape teach DADA. It's just mentioned in the beginning and then we hardly see Snape. I was looking forward to a little more of Snape in this movie, seeing as he is the Half Blood Prince, and then we don't even have a class with him. Hmph!

Other things I liked: Harry and Ron's pillow talk, the cave scene, Harry's entrance to the Burrow with all the heads popping out on the stairs, every scene with Luna, Fred and George and the joke shop, all the bits of magic in the background like the penguin sakting on the cake at Christmas.

And that's all I've got today. Hopefully I will be making a video later, mostly because my outfit today is extra cute. And I will mention this blog in the video, so that may be how some of you came here. Hi!

And now, Bye!

Frugal lemurs

I intern at a zoo.

Working at the zoo has it's ups and downs. It's definitely not an easy job. It's more of a if-i-have-to-move-one-more-inch-i-think-i-might-collapse-oh-yes-sure-i-can-go-rake-that-stretch-of-gravel kind of job. It has it's rewards, some of which are the few moments when i get to carry a bird on my arm, or stop weeding long enough to pet the deer. I also get to take home ridiculous stories of the ridiculous "general public".

One gem that i collected today happened outside of the Black and White Ruffed lemurs. We have a sign by them that says "The most frugivorous species of lemurs." Now i get "What does frugivorous mean?" a lot from guests, which is understandable. "Frugivorous" is not a particularly common word. However, I do expect most people to connect that it is describing an animal, and also sounds like other more common words like "herbivorous" or "carnivorous".

Apparently, my expectations are a little too high.

Today, I passed a group of people trying to decide what it meant:

"Frugivorous. Sounds kind of like 'frugal'. Maybe it means they're the most frugal lemurs."
Sounds of agreement.
"I wonder what that means, to be a frugal lemur..."

At this point I couldn't help stepping in and explaining that frugivorous means they eat mostly fruit. They accepted this definition and realized it made more sense than what they had been thinking. They probably felt a little silly too, because, really, what on earth would it mean to be a frugal lemur? And why would we feel the need to put that on a sign next to the habitat as though it's the one fact we want you to walk away with.

The intelligence, logic, and common sense of the general public continues to astound me...