Currently I am one state over, visiting my family, and yesterday my parents and I went shopping for presents for my niece and nephews. We were in the toy section, of course, and my father held up a stuffed animal and said, "Look at this!" It was a hedgehog! It was one of those stuffed animals that comes with a code to enter into the online world (let's call it ePlush), so it was about twice the price of a normal stuffed animal, but it was very cute.
I don't know much about ePlush, other than that Hardingfele's daughter Rock Star Tailor (who is 7 going on 15) is a complete addict, but as someone who is thirty-something-going-on-five myself, I decided to splurge and buy the ePlush Hedgehog. (I am a pathetic aunt; I spent more on this lousy experiment than on the young relatives I was actually shopping for.) It sounded like a lot of fun: the real Sylvia is about halfway through her average life expectancy of four years, but now she could exist in virtual reality forever! (I wasn't ignoring Charlie and Cashmere, but they are only about four years into an eight-to-twelve year lifespan, and anyway we didn't see any ePlush bunnies.) So I bought the little stuffed hedgehog (which is about twice the size of the real Sylvia) and logged into ePlush at my parents' house. (Unlike me, they have internet access at home - that's how I have been blogging lately.)
It wasn't too difficult to adopt the fake Sylvia. (Almost as easy as adopting the real Sylvia; her owner asked me to hedgehog-sit for a weekend and never took her back.) I picked a user name and password, entered the code on Fake Sylvia's tag, and said what I wanted to name her and that she was a girl. Up popped an adoption certificate with a birthdate of May 29, 2008 (the real Sylvia was probably born in April of 2006), a cute picture of the fake Sylvia, and a proclamation that I, Famous Hat, had adopted a girl... PORCUPINE???? I looked at the tag on Fake Sylvia more closely, and sure enough, in font about three microns high, it clearly stated that the animal was a porcupine. (Made in China, of course.) Now in my humble opinion, as well as that of my parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephews, Fake Sylvia looks like a twin of Real Sylvia, except that she is a soft silvery gray while Real Sylvia is what I believe is technically called "agouti," meaning her quills are striped brown and white so that she looks a little bit filthy all the time.
I was supposed to have a photo my brother had taken, of me holding both Sylvias, so that all five of my readers could weigh in on this extremely vital matter: is Fake Sylvia a porcupine, or is she clearly a hedgehog? However, Brother Dearest, after swearing up and down to me that he would email the photo right away, has failed to do so. I will post it as soon as he sends it. (OK, now I have posted it, but it's teeny. I hope you can get an idea of the Two Sylvias!)
Anyway, ePlush is clearly aimed at children, but there are some fun video games on it. Also, you can talk to your pet and she always has something sweet to say in return, like, "You're the best owner!" and "I just love playing with you!" Real Sylvia mostly just says, "HISSSSS," although she does say, "Squeak! Squeak!" when she's happy. Not once has she ever said to me what a great owner I am. The take-home lesson here must be that porcupines are superior pets to hedgehogs.
Famous Hat
1 comment:
We have throughly introduced Famoushat to ePlush world now. She has far better reflexes on games than either of us and she answers all of Quizzy's questions correctly. She may be one of those high scorers on the score board soon
What I want is ePlush virus world. I collect plush bacteria and viruses found at www.giantmicrobes.com
What if they made an ePlush world where you can play with your virtual germ, cause disease epidemics, get wiped out by antivirals and antibiotics, pick up a date and an STD. That would be kinda cool and creepy at the same time.
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