The · diary · of · a · very · foolish · Norwegian · woman, · LJ · edition

Well, I haven't a clue, and my parents can't remember, either. But I do know this: by the time I was two, I could form coherent sentences and had a rather well-developed vocabulary. At the age of four, I had the grammar down. Is it any wonder, I ask you, that I turned out the way I did? XD What did my parents do to me, I wonder, to make me a freakshow like that? A cute freakshow, true, but still. Not normal. I merely wonder because I intend to do it to my own kids, when I get some, because all children should learn their language properly! :P

I was delighted. I really love anything and everything Irish, so I enticed them over to our table by way of beer. They thought Norwegian people were really nice and joined us. One of them was too drunk to sit up, the second merely too drunk to speak very coherently, and the third was a regular Don Juan, doing his level best to charm my cousin and me into the rafters. He even kissed my hand when they left.

Squee! Just... squee! There was Irish music, people dancing and singing, and then suddenly there were dangerously charming Irish lads who made me laugh and told me where they were going nightclubbing tomorrow, in case I might like to join them. I might have to go around smiling like an idiot for days now.

If you know anything about this, or know others who do, please comment! I need to know this, for many reasons, there among commentary essay reasons :)

And the movie I saw? Star Trek. I've never watched the show, so it was a novel experience for me, finally finding out which one's Spock. The thing actually made me cry during the first five minutes (you'll know why if you've seen it), which is a thing not many movies manage to do. And I liked it; I hadn't expected to, but I really liked it. But then I realized I have Spock's hairdo, so now I'm really anxious to get to the hairdresser. Because as smexworthy as the bloke playing Spock is with that particular hairdo, I do not like myself in it. But the movie was a lovely thing; I might have to start getting involved in fandom now.

And, of course, I went later to see Duplicity. But that was boring in comparison.

It is a question of how impressionable one is, of course, but assuming that one takes a moderate interest in the underlying morals of the film or book one is watching or reading, it is hard not to start pondering one's own life after receiving such inspirational input. What I mean is, unless you're completely bored or made of stone, you're bound to start thinking. Thinking of life, thinking of success and accomplishment, thinking, perhaps, of how we will be remembered after our deaths. And I suppose this is, in some way, the point of the entire genre that I shall henceforth call inspirational input; those who create such films, books, songs, plays or whatever, wish to make us think about our lives and aspire to something better. To seek happiness in new ways.

And this is what everyone seems to be doing these days. We have all embraced the article of the American constitution that dictates every man – or woman, as we've all come to agree over the past few centuries – has a right to seek happiness. The pursuit of happiness, whatever that may be, is the unavoidable climax of every person's life. When all other things are duly handled; when our children have grown up, when we've finished our schooling and education, when we've got a reliable income and our own place to call home, then it's time to pursue happiness. Or before other things are handled finished, as the case may be; the individual's happiness must now be sought at the cost of everything else – things like tradition, convention, family, the greater good can all go hang if confronted with and opposed to the potential for happiness.

Now, don't go haring off thinking I am in any way defending the (quite frankly) archaic idea that mankind should sacrifice their own happiness and self-realization on the crumbling altar of tradition and convention. You couldn't get me to defend such a practice if my life was at stake; I vehemently maintain that freedom of the individual is more sacred than any established mindset Society can possibly come up with, and if I ever heard anyone suggesting I should put my life, dreams and ambitions on hold for the benefit of my family's name or whatever, I would laugh in their faces. Scornfully. There is a very good reason why I won't even contemplate children until I've finished my education; what would I do with the things while I sought to fulfil my dreams of academic achievement? There, you see, I put my own happiness before any potential life I might spawn, seeing as I am biologically in my childbearing prime. The ultimate act of selfishness, and defiantly feminist in the face of tradition. I am not, I repeat, not a champion of self-sacrifice, and least of all to the cause of convention, which is in itself a thing I despise.

No, I simply mean to illustrate the importance we place in the pursuit of happiness. Nothing can compare to that mission; not even our own genetic sequence, carried on in our young. Though the idea of a strong identity, a private self, is a fairly new one (according to the Norwegian cultural historian Waage, the idea of a clearly defined self more important than the whole of mankind under God or the king, wasn't fully present in Society until some time in the sixteenth century), we have already become so obsessed with this individual's happiness that all else has to make way. And to achieve such happiness, what do we do? Well, this is where the inspirational input genre really runs onto the field, eager to start playing.

The Yes Man said yes to every single opportunity that presented itself. McCandless burned all his money and went off alone into the Alaskan wilderness. Thoreau parked himself in a somewhat remote cottage and strived to live in self-reliance and outside society, the better to observe it. What these characters or personae have in common, is that they make radical changes or live in a fundamentally different way than your average human being, in the pursuit of happiness or, perhaps more often, self-realization, which is a means to happiness, I suppose. And this is what makes them so inspirational, you see: we all need to dramatically change our lives to achieve happiness, and these brave men will lead the way. Frantic to find happiness before it's too late, we follow their example, each to his own preferred extent.

And man is frantic to find happiness; he is desperate. In a world where we have everything, what do we live for? Love, obviously; we must find our soul mate and never leave them or have a fight. Material wealth, though people living in this part of the world usually have more than enough money already. Fame; who doesn't want to be chiselled in marble and forever remembered by an adoring public? And, perhaps most importantly, this self-realization business. We must develop every potential talent; we must never let a chance go to fully be ourselves in all our resplendent humanity. We must do whatever we can to confirm our own existence; only then can we truly be happy. And so we take classes in belly dancing and meditation, we learn to draw and play the piano, we take flying lessons and pierce sensitive body parts and buy motorcycles and try to write our own books and attend seminars on how to take control of our own lives. We desperately seek that confirmation of our own self, because without it, how can we possibly be happy?

... If you ask me, this is all a lot of bullshit. We don't need it. We don't need half of it; we don't need to stand on top of Mount Kilimanjaro and say, “I did it!” and we don't need to spout affirming mantras at the mirror every morning. We don't need to see our own rag on the best seller list in a bookshop, and we don't need to live with monks in a Tibetan monastery for six months. Of course, these things are all well and good if you go in for that sort of thing; if your dearest dream is to see the top of the Alps, then for God's sake go climb them. If you've long dreamed of being an author then send your novel to all the publishing houses you can think of. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, but don't try to tell me that it's the road to happiness. If you do, I will laugh scornfully at you again. Ha. Ha. Hah.

You see, this, in a nutshell, is what bugs me: happiness has become something extravagant. With all this inspirational input, it would appear people have begun thinking that happiness can only come from truly, madly, deeply confirming your own identity, and so doing requires nothing short of a transformation of your life. You must hop on the next plane to nowhere, build up your own business from scratch, and take a vow of silence for two years. Oh, and while doing so, you should discover at least three hidden talents you weren't aware that you had, such as composing music without formal education or developing your photographic memory. If you're, say, content to spend a Friday evening curled up with a nice book, then you're stuck in the captivity of negativity, if the Prison Break crew will excuse me paraphrasing a certain psychotic serial killer-and-rapist. You're living a boring, boxed-in, mediocre little life, and you'll never be great. And you'll never – be – happy.

And it is to this that I say bullshit! With knobs on, for good measure. Who ever said happiness has to stem from living in a frantic search of improvement? Who decided, quite suddenly, that life is only worth living for the exceptional? That happiness can only be found at the top of some mountain, or in the deepest Amazonian forests? Who decided that to feel content is a sign of a dull mind, and who bloody well has the right to tell me how to be happy?

Well, let's take a look at these perceived means to happiness, then, and examine them lightly.

I, for one, do not believe that we're all destined for greatness. Every great man or woman must be carried on the shoulders of the unremarkable masses, as the chap said. We can't all go down in world history; you can't possibly measure your happiness after how many people know your name and your deeds. Besides, we can all see very well, thank you, how shitty life can be for the famous; for the public personality. Just have a look at Hollywood rehab clinics; I'd say that's a pretty good indicator that fame and glory is no safe route to happiness.

So forget having your name carved in stone. What about going back to basics? Start living with Buddhist monks, the Aborigines, tiny fishing villages in Siberia or something equally free of unnecessary possessions and the hunt for power and money. It's true that the children I met at an orphanage in Kaliningrad, seemed happier and more extrovert than the children I meet every day here in Norway. But I'll bet my ass you wouldn't be very happy if you simply didn't have money, would you? It's all very well and good to temporarily spend more time on meditation than on eating, but would you be happy if you had no food? No clothes, no opportunities, no possible means of education? I don't think so. Giving up every modern commodity is probably a liberating experience, but the freedom of choice makes the whole difference. Freedom makes people happy, we can't argue with that. So does being rescued from an alcoholic, violent father; that doesn't meant the children at that orphanage were happy about their worn clothes and their future prospects of going to bed hungry because there's just no food. Poverty is not necessarily the road to happiness.

I could go on, but I would get tedious and repetitive. I will content myself to say the following on the subject of happiness.

I am one of the happiest people I know, despite sounding like an utter hag in these blessays of mine. I genuinely like my life. I can't think of much I'd rather do than live my life. And yet, my life is in every way unremarkable. I have an ordinary part-time job at a local bookshop, I study to be a teacher (and four years of hard work remain before I can crown myself with that title), I'm looking at overpriced apartments in order to move in with my two best friends, I exercise too little and eat too much, I read books and listen to music like the next person. My sex life is virtually non-existent. I have two pet rabbits, none of whom are very intelligent. And yet, despite all this appalling normality; the mediocrity of it all; I am happy. More than happy; I love life.

I've done nothing extraordinary in my life. I partake of inspirational input and get inspired – I concede these films and books give you a lot of good ideas – but I don't go running for my passport, thinking I have to go out and be extraordinary right now. Because happiness, damn it, doesn't come in great, flamboyant packaging with attention-seeking letters. Sure, for some people it does. I'm certain that it's an excellent way towards happiness. But I don't believe for a second that happiness has to be extraordinary to be real; to qualify. That we have to go out of our way to find it. Whenever I see someone desperately scrambling at things that might make them less unhappy than they are right now, I feel sorry for them. They shake their lives up and follow the Yes Man example, they just have to learn to parachute or sky-dive, they go out looking for things they can't even recognize or handle because they think it will automatically make them happy.

What about a truly amazing book, then? What about Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and Rachmaninov and Howard Blake? What about lying perfectly still in the shadow of a tree in summer, watching a ladybug crawl up your finger? What about dancing until you're cross-eyed because your feet are too light to stop? And sod it, what about a friend calling you up just when you need to hear their voice? If you tell me none of these things make you happy, then I'd say you're a sodding miserable worm, unable to separate the unremarkable from the extraordinary.

Now, I'm not going to sit here all night, listing everything that makes me happy. It would take days. And I suppose there's not all that much of a punch line here, so I'll sum it up in short orders: what with the frantic pace of man's hunt for happiness, it's no surprise he'll never find it. And they, the inspirational input, dare – at a risk of sounding pretty un-insightful, if you ask me – call me mediocre and dull; I, who stay up to watch the sunset at four AM because it makes me smile until my cheeks hurt. I, who cried with joy the first time I heard Finlandia and still fly into bouts of pure, unadulterated joy whenever I hear the 1812 Overture. I, who got exactly what I wanted for my birthday simply because my friends know me well enough to guess what that is. I, who spend half an hour talking to a stranger in the bookshop because we've read the same fantasy books.

I suppose what's eating me, is the distinct impression I get that I'm somehow considered stupid for being happy. That only a fool can be content in an unremarkable, tedious, standardized life, like mine apparently is. According to “their” philosophy, I should be miserable, caught in my unremarkable life. But the fact is, my life is utterly remarkable, filled as it is with happiness and absolutely empty of great spiritual or physical journeys.

Not to mention, I won't starve to death in the Alaskan wilderness, either. I'll be snug in my favourite armchair with a cup of hot chocolate. How's that for happiness?

Oh, and I'm going to play Heroes of Might and Magic III. Just because I can.

This also goes for food that has passed its sell-by date, or expired, as they say. Of course, weeks old milk is a thing to avoid, and I won't eat anything. When the food can walk out of the fridge on its own hairy, little legs, then you might want to consider calling someone, or at least attack it with chlorine. But if the food looks alright, smells alright and tastes alright, well, why not? Eat it, say I.

I have never given this much thought. Of course, we are all taught as children not to eat things off the ground, and to wash our hands before meals. These are sensible sanitary rules, if you ask me; our immune systems are hardy things, but there are only so many germs they can handle at one time. And I always considered myself a very cleanly, hygienic creature where foodstuffs are concerned; I clean utensils and frying pans and other cooking equipment rigorously, and I wipe down countertops and what have you. Hygienic, yes?

Apparently not. I had a friend over for coffee the other night, and he asked for milk in his caffeinated beverage. I hadn't remembered to do the shopping that day, so we only had one carton of milk left. It expired that same day, so I figured it was fine, and handed it to him. My friend chortled and asked me if I'd forgotten to do the shopping.

"Yeees..." I said, somewhat confused as to why that would make him laugh indulgently, as he so often does when confronted with one of my many shortcomings.

"Well, I'll take my coffee without milk, then," he said.

I suppose this all seems both irrelevant and incoherent, but let me sum it up thusly: my friend did not figure the milk was fine. He won't drink milk that expires today, nor that expired yesterday. He wouldn't pick up a chocolate bar if he dropped it on his lawn or veranda; not to eat, at least. And according to him, and others of his ilk, I am somewhat of a slob when it comes to my comestible-related hygiene.

Personally, I scoff at such squeamish behaviour. If I drop my cookie onto my own living room floor, I will eat said cookie, because I know my floor isn't that filthy. If I'm at a picnic and leaves fall in my food, I'll pick them out and then eat said food. Nobody's ever died from a little grass or sand. And washing one's hands with ordinary soap is more than adequate to remove any undesirable elements before eating or cooking.

But it seems I am a dinosaur to hold this reasonable, if somewhat careless, opinion. People appear to get more and more hysterical about germs; nothing's ever clean enough, enough measures cannot be taken to ensure we never fall ill. And it doesn't stop there, either; parents have begun worrying over their children so much that they're scarcely allowed to climb trees or investigate newt ponds for fear they'll fall or get bitten or something equally necessary to learn how life works.

In kindergartens, the teacher can't even let the kids run outside, for fear they might scrape a knee and thus provoke the mighty rage of mollycoddling parents. Wherever I look when in Oslo, I see people cleaning their hands with disinfectant fluids - available at all pharmacists and drug stores now - after so much as touching their own handbag. The last time I stopped at a roadside diner, or roughly an equivalent thereof, I saw a family who actually carried disposable utensils of their own, so as to avoid the filthy silverware of the diner. Food worth more money than I care to estimate, gets thrown out or fed to the dumpster rats every day because it's not crisply fresh anymore; it's more than a few days old.

And the flu shots; don't even get me started on that! Oh, fine, I'm already headed that way. The flu shots! People are getting vaccinated against the common influenza, a disease that shouldn't have worried anyone since Marianne Dashwood almost kicked the bucket. I know, I know, toddlers and senior citizens can actually die from this, as can people who don't get enough to drink and enough rest. But healthy adults? My friend, even the swine flu isn't lethal if you just stay in bed a few days, take a few Aspirin and drink plenty of water. People spend small fortunes getting vaccinated for anything that could possibly befall them, and I'm not talking about seriously dangerous things here like polio and tuberculosis. No, I'm talking about not very virulent strains of influenza. Did I hear anyone say hysteria?

Which is, I guess, what all this is about. People are terrified of getting sick; we have longer life expectancy than ever today and yet the public is so obsessed with health that a single news bulletin on the swine flu, or the avian flu, or malaria, hepatitis, bubonic plague, STDs, tick borne diseases or whatnot, is enough to provoke pandemonium. We wash away our external defenses against disease; there's supposed to be fat and other useful things coating our skin. We let our immune systems kick back and rot because it never gets any exercise; if you've never touched a filthy surface, how do you expect your body to react when it's finally confronted with loads of viruses and bacteria? And if you, as a kid, never once fell and hurt your knee, and never once got stung by a wasp you didn't have the sense not to touch - well, then it'll be bloody overwhelming, won't it, when you're hit by a friend in an argument or even bitten by an ant.

According to Wikipedia, that infallible source of divine knowledge, we're expected to live about twice as long today as we were a hundred years ago. This is apparently due to public health services, vaccinations, improved dietary options, better hygiene and what have you. But I think, and this is just my personal theory, mind you, that we're in worse shape than a few years ago. True, we're getting fatter and lazier, and the world's polluted to the brim, but that's not what I mean.

I'm talking about ten years ago, when - in my world - disinfectant soap was only found in hospitals and other vitally-important-to-keep-clean places. When I picked my sweet roll up and ate it after having dropped it in the sand at the beach, and my mother didn't so much as raise an eyebrow, only reminded me to brush the sand off because it crunches when one chews it. And when our parents didn't give us computer games to keep us indoors and learning math at the age of four, but sent us out into the garden to play or, if it rained, gave us a toy tool set, including a hammer that I more than once hit my finger with by accident.

Yes, I got my share of scrapes and bruises. I've probably eaten more germs than some modern kids have ever been exposed to, let alone all the stuff I've touched that would certainly not have made it past an airport security control for the sheer number of bacteria on it. I've shared a drinking bottle with at least two dozen different people. And I've drunk milk that expired three days ago, I've eaten salted meat that's been stored in wooden lofts for a year or so, I've cut meat and vegetables on the same board and fried them in the same pan. I've even used roadside public toilets so full of flies I could hardly see the paper, and you know what? I'm rarely sick, and when I do get sick, I recover quickly. I wouldn't even like to contemplate the state my immune system would be in if I hadn't done all these nasty things on a weekly basis.

No, I find people in general are much too squeamish about food, hygiene and disease. They're too cautious, too ruled by fear and much too serious about it. And the funny thing is, these same people - adults, mind you; kids don't think much about keeping their hands clean - these people, while reaching desperately for their pocket-sized flask of anti-bacterial gel, will clean and cleanse and anguish over everything that seems even remotely filthy - yet never think twice about putting other people's body parts, frequently used for excretion of bodily fluids, in their own mouths, or for that matter, inside their own bodies. Just imagine where those might have been!

Norwegian summers are fantastic. If only I didn't have to be at work in exactly five hours.

You see, when I'm ever sad or depressed (a rare occurrence these days), or just plain emo, then my creative skills merely kick back to welcome sweet oblivion, and my need for social interaction shrivels up to nothing. I start going for long walks and read a lot of books. In such a state, I'm liable to do all my schoolwork very dutifully, because I "have nothing else to do" and my life "won't be worth squat if I don't pass these exams" and other silly things like that. In short, I get very productive.

When I'm happy, however, the tune's a quite different one. I'm so utterly in love with life that I simply can't bring myself to care if I flunk a subject or two. "Meh," I tell myself, "it's only an exam. Life goes on; there are more important things in this world!" I spend idle hours watching videos on YouTube, IM'ing people, taking pointless online quizzes or - like in this very moment - updating my blog. I get hundreds of ideas for fic and short stories, and I can't get enough of my friends. I start wasting time and, like tonight, am stuck with a humongous paper to write in mere hours because I simply couldn't bring myself to care.

So really, I should start feeling miserable once in a while. Then I'd actually get shit done. But it's so difficult! Have you ever heard the Discovery Channel commercial tune? "Boom de yada?" That's how I feel about things now. The world is just awesome, and life is too short to waste on boring papers. I can't stop being riddiculously in love with things; I go into seizures of squee whenever I buy a new book, I repeatedly eargasm over Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, I'm already infatuated with my new purple iPod Nano (which I got today), I get rave reviews for fanfic and just have to grin like an idiot about it...

I can't even bother to hate Peter Singer and Rosalind Hursthouse for having to write this stupid paper about them. The world is just too awesome.

What's more, he's got a perfect "ear", that is to say, if you say to him, "Give me a B flat" he can sing it without needing to hear the note first. Just like my father. My brother now sings and plays the guitar, and is learning the piano.

I play the French horn, the piano (albeit haltingly), and I sing. (I can also produce music of a sort on the penny whistle, accordion and zither. But I try to shelter the public from these facts.) My mother and sister both sing, and my sister used to play the piano, too. My grandfather and his eldest son, my uncle, are both conductors and organists.

I'd go so far as to say it runs in the family. Of course, we've all been raised to love and work with music, if only as a hobby, but it's a lucky shot that we're all musical, what? I mean, what if I'd been born tone deaf, or completely without rhythm? Then it would have sucked to be me in a family that basically lives and breathes off music.

And when my throat de-swells, and I get my lungs back to working order, I'll hopefully be back to alto, too. When my tonsils began fucking up, my voice was lowered to a high tenor. That sucks, when you're a girl of 21.

Squee point: I can eat! I can eat! I'm down to only four painkiller pills a day and I can eat soft foods again! *munches some soft fries* I almost laughed at myself; when I tried sitting up today, I got dizzy and had to lie back down. Pretty sure it's dehydration, but never mind, 'cause today I've been drinking like I've never seen water before. And now I'm gonna try my mouth at chocolate, which will hopefully melt on my tongue ^^

Squee point: tomorrow is my old school band's musical concert. I'm going, if I have to be brought there in a wheelchair. My friend A's picking me up, the lovely little gentleman ^^ And I'm gonna eat ice cream in buckets tonight to recharge.

Squee point: the baby wabbits are so sociable and cuddly, they're just little bundles of joy and make me wanna go into motherhood mode.

Squee point: I've read two Wodehouse books since I had my tonsillectomy, and listened to an audiobook. Going to read another Wodehouse book tomorrow; namely, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. Furthermore, I've watched series 2 and 3 of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and introduced my sister to the Jeeves and Wooster series, which I think she rather enjoyed. I've also watched series 4 of House MD. In other words, I've accomplished a lot.

Squee point: I was directed, by one of the members over at indeedsir, to a wonderful online radiostation: Radio Dismuke, which plays NOTHING but jazz music from the 20s and 30s! I adore that station ^^

Okay, I'm done squeeing now. Get on with your lives, all ^^

Why don't I eat, then, the more intelligent of you might wonder? Well, the truth is, I can't. It just hurts too much. It hurts more than being hungry. My throat feels like it's full of shards of glass whenever I so much as take a sip of water. So right now, I'm just lying here, trying to heal my pains by planning my spiffing Jazz Age party and listening to the Threepenny Opera. How's that for a sick leave?

Meh. I'd gladly go back to work and school tomorrow, if I could only eat. The first thing I'm going to do when my throat decides it's going to let me swallow stuff again, is have a huge breakfast/brunch/lunch with all the workings. Toast with plum marmalade, bacon, scrambled eggs, tea, orange juice and maybe even a side of those cheese-and-spinach muffins I found a recipe for. Like dinner muffins. What a great idea, eh?

Okay, I'm done whining now. I'll just sit here and ache for food nao.

Reasons why a tonsilectomy sucks:
- my throat hurts constantly
- I'm so hopped up on pain meds I can barely read Wodehouse, let alone more serious literature
- I'm constantly hungry because I can't eat (swallowing hurts; even water's painful)
- I feel weak and useless because I can't eat, and so I don't get shit done
- I can't go out for coffee, hang with people, go to band practice... NOTHING!

But, in true Bertie Wooster spirit, I've found the silver lining. Good things about having your tonsils carved out with a device that simultaneously fries the flesh (or cautherizes the wound, if you will):
- I get roughly two weeks off work - and I get paid for it!
- instead of the (converted to US currency for my flist) $1,500 it would have cost me if I'd had it done in a private clinic, I coughed up roughly $60. Hah. The Norwegian healthcare system is made of win
- I can't eat, so I've lost 4 kg in 4 days. If this keeps up for another week, I'll accomplish my New Year's Resolution about losing weight
- I get ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream!
- everyone thinks I'm practically an invalid, and keep running and fetching things to keep me comfortable, even when I tell them not to

Well, yeah. As you can see, it's not all that bad - I'd say the smooths and the roughs equal each other out. And when I go off the medication, I can at least get stuff done, 'cause my throat won't hurt and my brain won't be all fuzzy. Yay me ^^

But to the insufferable shithead *cough cough CHEATING SCUMBAG cough cough* who told me this wouldn't be as bad as all that: STFU, you wanker. It IS that bad, and you can keep your crude jokes about eating hard, raspy stuff to yourself. I'd like to see you survive two weeks on fluid foodstuffs only! Seriously, if I hadn't already decided to break things off with you, I'd have done it now because of your insipid insensitivity. Dumb-ass.

Yes, they really are that cute.

Here's the link to the Facebook album, which I made public: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90418&id=576726897&l=04d21d1159

Because LJ hates me and won't upload my pictures here >:(

Jane Austen - the almost-white tiny one; she looks so delicate and fluffy
Oscar Wilde - the gray one; he's the odd one out
Bismarck - the fat gray-and-white one (he's really fat! As in, almost baby-rabbit-obese!)
Snowball .2 - the fat albino; she reminds me of an earlier rabbit in the Birchgrove household named Snowball
Gizmo - the underdeveloped albino; I've never seen such a Gremlin-like animal. Looks like a little lizard
Bertie - the gray-and-white one with no balance skill and a tendency to bounce off the others
Jeeves - the one with markings on his head who always looks at me with a sort of disapproving, soupy gaze

Yay. Double yay ^^