Monday, January 31, 2005 , late afternoon

Brain rot

I was in the garage last night, taking out the trash, when I realized there was a song running through my head.  I was horrified to realize that the song was Glen Campbell’s “Galveston”, but with the word, “Panama” substituted for “Galveston”.  I was channeling a mixture of Glen Campbell and David Lee Roth while carrying dog poop to the curb.  Did I die and no one told me?  Am I in Hell?

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/31 at 05:57 PM
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Sunday, January 30, 2005 , mid-afternoon

Parrot food

What do you feed your parrots?  We’ve got 6 parrots of varying styles and sizes—an African Grey, a Goffin’s cockatoo, a peach-fronted conure, a dusky conure, a cherry-headed conure, and a white-capped Pionus.  For some reason our birds have a tendency towards liver problems, with our Pacific parrotlet dying from liver disease in 2004, and our Pionus recently diagnosed with an enlarged liver and high cholesterol.  The peach-fronted conure is also prone to beak overgrowth, so I’m watching his health as well.  All these liver problems are surprising, as we’ve never been ones to just toss our parrots a handful of sunflower seeds and call it “dinner”.  All our birds are pellet eaters—most were raised as pellet-eaters from fid-dom—and while they’ve always been fed supplemental seed, just a small amount has had an adverse affect.  When Pepe the Pionus was diagnosed with skyrocketing cholesterol in November, I took it as an opportunity to wean all the birds off seed.  Now they receive a pellet and fresh food mix every day, rather than a pellet/seed/fresh food mix.  In the afternoons they’re given a “seed snack”, but it amounts to only about a tablespoon of parrot seed mix.

I’ve maintained the usual fresh food routine, as the vet says it sounds healthy and the birds all seem to enjoy it.  Every morning I mix up half a cup of instant brown rice, half a cup of instant white rice, about two tablespoons of some sort of small pasta, and half a cup of uncooked (but soaked) beans, and cook in the microwave for 5 minutes until the water is absorbed.  I then add a half-pound of frozen veggie mix (lima beans, corn, carrots, peas), about a half cup of greens (usually collard greens), and some sort of fruit (often raspberries or blueberries, but sometimes mango or even banana).  I then heat the entire mix in the microwave again, not really to “cook” it, but just to thaw and warm it.  The birds are served a quarter-cup of pelleted food, topped with the warm fresh mix.  I’ve also been sprinkling the mixture with Prime vitamins, as they seem to enjoy the taste.  Total prep time, including “serving”, is usually about 20 minutes.  It’s a good opportunity for me to visit with the birds, check their overall health, see who’s got an appetite, etc.  I’ve noticed that Pepe’s beak overgrowth has really slowed down, so hopefully we’re on the right track with this diet.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/30 at 04:58 PM
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Friday, January 28, 2005 , late at night

Stiff

It’s with a bit of sadness that I announce I’ve finished reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach.  I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages and happily, it was well-worth the wait.  Surprisingly, it was really funny, not something you’d expect from a book about dead bodies.  It was just the right mix of information and black humour, the latter helping to take the edge off some sections which were rather disturbing.  It’s not a book for the overly-sensitive, and especially not for the overly-sensitive animal lover, as many of the experiments which now use human cadavers were once performed on animals, often live animals.  If you can overlook those things (I gritted my teeth and tried not to think about them too much), you’ll find the book is a great overview of the positive contributions you can make after you die.  By the time I’m old and grey, medical schools might not be using human cadavers for dissection anymore (more and more of them are starting to use sophisticated computer models), but there will probably still be opportunity for my body to be used in experiments to ensure safer vehicles, safer protective gear for military and police, etc.  I could also probably make a contribution to forensic science by being allowed to decompose under supervision.  I actually feel a bit chilly at the thought of lying naked in a field, exposed to the elements for months on end, but if scientists could clothe me in something soft and fleecy I might be up for it (especially if there’s a nice view of a lake or something).  The one thing I know for sure I don’t want is to be embalmed—it just seems like an invasive process which just delays the inevitable.  I also don’t want to be buried in a coffin, as it’s a big waste of money and space.  I’d always been set on cremation because it’s neat and tidy, but thanks to Mary Roach, I now know how I want to go out: Ecological Burial.  To put it roughly, your body is freeze-dried, pulverized with ultrasonic vibrations until it’s reduced to dust, and then it’s placed in a small, biodegradeable box made of corn starch.  The box is placed in the ground, and a plant can be put in the ground as well, with the corn starch box and “freeze-mains” acting as organic compost.  In a way, you eventually become a tree, or a bush, or a flower, or whatever has been planted with you.  That’s exactly how I want to be remembered.

Oh, one more thing I enjoyed about Stiff: a medical student quoted in the book finally put into words a feeling that I’ve carried around for many years.  When I was working on human cadavers in anatomy lab I was never bothered by their faces—it was their hands which gave me the willies.  I still remember shivering as I brushed against the hand of the female cadaver (even as I was endeavouring to avoid it), and I remember finally forcing myself to reach out an touch it, as if on a dare.  The medical student in the book hit the nail on the head when she said that she too felt that cadaver hands were the most intimate part of the body, because when you touch them, they touch you back.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/28 at 11:41 PM
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Psycho Kitty?

Time to get caught up on the all the books I’ve finished reading and/or perusing lately.  Psycho Kitty? is a fascinating little book by “feline behaviourist” Pam Johnson-Bennett, who’s probably great fun at parties because of all the stories she has to tell.  I’m sure that if she even left out all the stories that involved litterboxes, she’d still be good for hours of entertainment.  Psycho Kitty? is a collection of reports about cats who seemed to their owners to be acting “crazy”, but who were ultimately found to have perfectly understandable—and fixable—reasons for acting psycho.  It’s not really the book about generalized cat behaviour that I was hoping for, but it was an interesting read and made some good points about how cats react to change and stress.  When it comes right down to it, I know next to nothing about cats, and having three of them in the house has been a bit of a puzzle.  I’ll still probably look for a more generalized book about cat behaviour, especially one about how cats interact in groups.  I’ll probably try to pick up a copy of Johnson-Bennett’s Cat vs. Cat and see if it can enlighten me as to how the little beasts think.  I use “little beasts” as a term of endearment, really.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/28 at 11:29 PM
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Thursday, January 27, 2005 , late at night

I’m moving!

I decided today that I wanted to move my blog to another domain I own, http://www.TheBlogPound.com.  It fits nicely with the “theme” of my blog (i.e., all I do is talk about my pets), so I thought I’d give it a whirl.  If you’re reading this on http://www.CynicalBlog.com then you can check the new url and see if I’ve been successful, and if you’re reading this on http://www.TheBlogPound.com , then Yay, me! :)

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/27 at 11:31 PM
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Tuesday, January 25, 2005 , late at night

Playing catch-up

There’s now a trailer available for the Wild Parrots movie if you’re interested in viewing it; it can be downloaded from http://www.wildparrotsfilm.com/trailer.html.  I loved the trailer and have a VHS “preview” copy of the film sitting on my coffee table, so I hope to have time to watch it later this week.  I knew Mark Bittner aspired to be a musician, but until I saw the trailer I had no idea he had any talent ;-)

Random things… our kitchen window still leaks and tomorrow it’s supposed to rain, so it’s back to towels on the windowsill for a few days.  The builder says he’ll fix the problem but it will involve the “ripping out” of stucco, so we need to wait for nice weather.  We used to have nice weather all the time in Vegas, but then Bush got re-elected and it seems that it really pissed off Mother Nature.  The cats are all doing well and getting more sociable with each other, so in the evenings our livingroom turns into a regular kitty circus with cat toys flying everywhere.  Derek continues to be my lovebug and cuddle bunny and I just adore him so much.  I still do miss Sweet Pea as I think we really understood each other, but getting to know Derek has been the bright side to Sweet Pea’s death.  Even the dogs are adjusting to having the new cats around, and Eli only whined for 30 minutes tonight rather than her usual hour.  I can’t wait until our camera is repaired (it should be by next week), so I can fill my blog with photos of feline fantastic-ness.  Fantasticosity.  Cat pictures.

I don’t want to get into how I found this today (I didn’t look it up myself, let’s just say that), but it was brought to my attention that my name was mentioned in the “Secrets of Angels and Demons” press release.  I’m amused and humbled by the fact that I’m the only contributor to not have some sort of descriptive modifier after my name—I didn’t even get called, “writer”.  It’s like I’m being subtly referred to as a “passer-by”—we have no idea who this person is but her name is here anyway so just try to ignore it.  I obviously need to give myself a title and/or marketable skill.

Want a little excitement in your life?  I know you do.  Treat yourself to a glass of Manila Gold calamansi juice and then go listen to the adventures of Maritess as she works for truth, justice, the American way, and clean floors.  And when you’re done all that, go enjoy the web comic Gay Balls of Fire.  Be sure to post a little blog comment to the artist to say hi, but don’t mention the chicken.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/25 at 11:31 PM
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Friday, January 21, 2005 , late at night

Stiff

I’ve been reading Stiff by Mary Roach, and I just love it!  It’s sometimes gross and icky and makes you feel uncomfortable, but it’s also funny and approachable and full of information we really all need to know.  I’m just starting chapter 4 now so I’ve got a while to go—I’ll report back when I’m finished.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/21 at 11:55 PM
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My dark side

I’ve discovered that I have a dark side, my own personal Mr. Hyde.  The magic potion which changes me from mild-mannered webmaster to seething and calculating revenge expert is carried by teenagers—angry, dramatic, text-messaging, bitching teenagers.

A few years ago, Nancy and I made the mistake of starting a “fan site” for a “celebrity” (and I use the term loosely).  We had no particular interest in this celebrity, but knew she’d be having a brief moment in the spotlight and thought we’d try to take advantage of that.  Our original plan had just been to throw together a quick but thorough site so search engines would consider us “an authority site”, but eventually the site became our pet project and we decorated and enhanced it with all the bells and whistles we could pay for.  We still didn’t care for the “celebrity”, but wanted to see if we could make a truly great website.

We did make a truly great website, and people flocked to it by the thousands.  People also incessantly stole content from our site, taking everything from entire text passages I’d written, to our entire photo gallery.  In every case the thieves were teenagers, and if you asked them to stop stealing your hard work, they’d just laugh and say it was “public domain” because it was “on the Internet”.  Many a night I lay awake fantasizing about flying to Australia to strangle other people’s rude and obnoxious brats who were taking credit for my hard (and in many case, expensive) work.  We were able to cut down on some of that sort of theft by using anti-hotlinking code, banning the IPs of troublemakers, etc., but we then started to find even bigger headaches on our message board.  Teenagers by and large insist on writing in text messaging abbreviations, which are impossible for non-English speakers to read, and are pretty much impossible for me to read as well.  They don’t even all use the *same* abbreviations—they make up their own based on their perverse concepts of spelling.  If you ask them to write in “proper English”, you get called “uptight”, or even worse, a (sic) “communist Natzi”.  A large number of teenagers feel the need to lie and tell outrageous stories—if I had a nickel for every teenager who’d claimed to have suffered multiple, dramatic injuries, or the number of teenagers claiming to be millionaires with butlers, or the number of teenagers who insist they’ve had sex with their teachers, I could retire wealthy.  I just wanted to have a message board where young people could have nice conversations with other nice people, but nearly every day there’s some new person who wants to brag about how drunk they were the night before, how many people they slept with, how their gym teacher has a crush on them, etc.  If they’re not bragging, they’re angry and depressed, and talking of getting tattoos to commemorate the times in their lives when they nearly committed suicide.  They’re just so self-centered and feeling sorry for themselves, and I rarely see any of them attempt to seek out positive experiences.  I suggest they volunteer at an animal shelter during their summer vacation, but instead they paint their walls black and write bad poetry about how much their lives suck.  I just despise them!  I know I was never like that!  I know I was sensitive and took things very seriously, but I also had an interest in the world around me, and read a lot to expand my horizons.  My dreams were to travel and to go to college and to to have exciting jobs—I know I never fantasized about the days I’d be able to get into bars to get drunk.  If I was a teenager today, would I be self-centered too?  I really hope not.

In any case, that “celebrity” website is causing me so much agitation that it’s about time to close it down and move on.  It was an experiment, I learned some stuff I didn’t really want to know, and now I’ll work on some project that’s less interactive.  I’ve reached my celebrity fill, and Ellen Degeneres, this means you, too.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/21 at 11:28 PM
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005 , late evening

The Stupidest Angel

I think I’ve developed a sudden love/hate relationship with Christopher Moore.

My father sent me a copy of The Stupidest Angel as part of my birthday gift, and I started to read it the day it arrived.  After the first couple of pages I worried there would be a problem, as I thought the individual sentences in the book were hilarious, but found the chapters as a whole were unbearably frenetic.  The first two nights I picked it up to read I ended up shutting it after only a few pages out of sheer mental exhaustion, and I had to go back and re-read the initial pages for reminders of all the wild and wacky characters.  I think that was the problem I had when I started reading—there was so much wackiness and facetiousness and sarcasm and parody that my head felt as if I was watching an IMAX film about rollercoasters after downing a gallon of gin.  For me, The Stupidest Angel was not so much a light and fun read as it was a reading challenge.

Now the good news.  About halfway through the book, I started to really like it.  The characters were fleshed out, and instead of just being wacky and cartoonish, they had depth and real personalities.  The craziness of the plot also settled down into a nice rhythm that was comfortable and intriguing.  By the time I finished reading I wanted to know more about the characters, and have put a couple more Christopher Moore books on my wishlist so I can find out the origins of Roberto the Fruit Bat, for example.  I’d become so used to Moore’s style of writing that when I started reading Stiff by Mary Roach, it was a bit of a let-down.  It was like eating a big bag of spicy jalapeno potato chips, and then being given a Ritz cracker.  There’s nothing wrong with a Ritz cracker—they taste great and I love them—but it’s not a wild ride like a jalapeno chip.  I can’t eat (or read) jalapeno chips every day, but I think they’ll make a great occasional literary snack.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/18 at 10:59 PM
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Sunday, January 16, 2005 , late at night

Gifts for good dogs and cats

Having, oh, a lot of dogs and cats means we buy a lot of stuff for dogs and cats.  There have definitely been favourite purchases for pets and owners alike, so I thought I’d mention a few in case you’re looking for a perfect gift for Fido or Fluffy’s upcoming birthday.

Three out of three cats agree that the Little Pink Sock catnip toy is the best damn cat toy featuring catnip that’s ever been invented.  These toys provide your cats with hours of fun as they toss them in the air, drop them from high places, rub them against their faces, or simply nap on their soft pink surface.  Socks come two to a package and are stuffed to the brim with aromatic catnip (which to me smelled like camomile tea).  Your cat will think you’re wonderful, and you’ll love the cute packaging.  I don’t know how long the catnip will last, but I think I’ll order an extra set to have on hand so we’ll never run out.  Even Chelsea loves the little pink sock, and otherwise I don’t think Chelsea loves anything at all.

Three out of three cats surveyed also agree that when they’re in the mood to hunt, they want to hunt Toy Shoppe Teasables cat wand toys.  Actually, I lied—only two out of three cats surveyed love chasing the wand toys, but that’s just because Derek feels hunting and playing would cut into his cuddle time.  Still, Chelsea and Jackson think the wand toys are great fun, and they might be a good workout for me, too.  In a few months I’ll have one freakishly huge bicep from holding a wand out while I watch TV.

Dog toys are tougher to recommend because our dogs are all so different.  The thing all our dogs love, big or small, is the Toughchew Dog Bed.  We originally bought one of the “nearly indestructible” Toughchew beds for our Anatolian shepherd, as he was always ripping up dog beds we were buying.  We figured it was better to spend $180 on one really durable bed than to repeatedly pay $40 for beds we’d have to replace.  Also, the Toughchew bed came with Orvis’ great “lifetime guarantee”, so we figured we had nothing to lose.  Unfortunately, we seem to have one of the rare dogs who can annihilate a Toughchew bed, as Dante the Anatolian was able to put a tear in it after being left alone with it for 10 minutes.  HOWEVER, Orvis did immediately honour their replacement warranty after a quick email to them about the incident, and a few days later a brand new bed arrived.  We still have to keep it away from Dante unless we’re there to watch him, as he loves to take dog beds and drag them outside (no matter how large they are).  However, when he’s sleepy the bed is his favourite thing in the world, and it’s also supremely comfortable for our aging German Shepherd.  We now have a second bed for our wee dogs and they also think the bed is heavenly.  Our terrier-mix loves to grab it and shake it, and she’s been unable to even break a thread.  If you want a good, reliable, comfortable bed for your dogs, and want to know that it will last a lifetime, buy a bed from Orvis.  You won’t be disappointed, they guarantee it, and if your dog eats it they’ll send you a new one.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/16 at 11:46 PM
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