Gripes and birdsong

The little finger of my right hand has been a study in scarlet, so to speak, this weekend. I'm learning about anatomy. Which is good because Thursday's judo class wasn't all that rewarding otherwise.

Apparently a finger can dislocate and relocate all at once, or at least so quickly that by the time you turn you head to see what the popping sound was, it's where it ought to be again, looking all innocent. (And by "relocated" I mean to its original position; my finger didn't migrate.)

Anyway, ow. My finger is close to the size and color of its opposite again, but I wouldn't mind if it could hurry up again. It makes it hard to grab things or type. Also, the "p" on my keyboard is being troublesome, so that when I write "paper" it tends to come out "aer" and so on.

Oh, what a world, what a world.

Entirely unrelatedly, I have half a mind to try JulNoWriMo--that is, NaNoWriMo in July. It would be exciting and/or foolish because I have absolutely no idea what I would write. One advantage/disadvantage is that it would require me to finish off the story I'm writing now by the end of the month. That would be a good thing to do if I could anyway. So, as you can see, I really am ambivalent.

Yesterday morning I was in Philadelphia, awoken by an intriguing bird. It was cycling from song to song not unlike a car alarm, and it just kept going. I understand that some birds advertise for mates by showing off their extensive musical repertoire. If birds really go for that than this one must have been neck-deep in ladies. He went through what seemed like easily 100 songs.

I got to thinking about whether there were trends or memes in the world of birds. It reminded me of the internet, with people gathering and disgorging vast numbers of words and phrases stripped of context. I'm not sure it increases the odds of mating in humans, but we do it anyway.

This particular bird stuck to bird songs, but I do remember the mockingbird that picked up my mother's alarm clock and things of that nature. I was reminded of the impressive Superb Lyrebird, who adopts his songs indiscriminately. This one, for example, that picked up the sounds of construction at the zoo.

Birds don't understand us or what we do, as a general rule, but apparently they think some of our noises are cool enough to repeat. Is it all one to them, or do they know that human sounds are different from the other songs they pick up? Are these bird memes? Do birds repeat people noises because they're nonsensical to them? Do they think we're hilarious?