Quick: What's the difference between oscillate and vacillate? It is true when I say that I vacillate and pendulums oscillate. It is equally true to say that I can oscillate, but pendulums cannot vacillate. It's all about simple physics and simple human nature. How beautiful is that?
A few days ago, I was working out with Kelly. I had borrowed a friend's hair clip to pull back my hair, which I did without looking in a mirror. Later, when Kelly and I were washing our hands in the locker room (and washing our hands is not a euphemism for anything, we really were washing our hands because, yuck, some of those weights and machines are drippingly disgusting), I looked in the mirror at my fucked up hair and said to Kelly, "It looks like I combed my hair with a chicken." And she said, "An angry chicken."
That made me laugh.
When I was living in Tokyo, I absolutely adored the crows. They were enormous--about two or three times the size of the American crows I've seen--having grown large on a steady diet plucked from the garbage left on the street. They had the most beautiful silky, black feathers and loud, raw voices. (They were the most wild things in a locked-down city so of course they were considered more than a nuisance, they were a scourge.) I loved to watch from my balcony as they stole from other balconies. One brazen pair once plucked drying t-shirts from their hangers and then flew off with the hangers. The looks of disbelief that I used to get from my friends and coworkers when I said that I loved crows made loving them even more satisfying. One woman cautioned me never to be mean to them because they would remember and punish me.
This week The New York Times online has an article about crows' ability to recognize faces. Several researchers have noticed that previously trapped crows will become very unhappy when they see the researchers that trapped them, even years after the event. Someone finally got the idea to test whether trapped crows became shy of all people or just shy of specific people. One test they did used two masks, and evil one and a neutral one ("evil" and "neutral" are the researchers' terms). The evil-masked researcher trapped the crows and the neutral-masked researcher did nothing. Later after the crows were released, they would scold and swoop down at anyone wearing the evil mask, whether the person was male or female, even when the mask was obscured by, say, a hat. The crows didn't bother the neutral-masked researchers. It seems totally subjective, but when you watch the video of the crows quietly sitting in the trees when the neutral researcher goes by, then the loudly scolding, swooping crows when the same researcher crouches and dons the evil mask, you'll be amazed.
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