Showing posts with label hamster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hamster. Show all posts

Friday, May 25, 2007

Stray Animals, Music and an Incidental Hamster (of course!)

Have you been following the story of the whales who swam up the Sacramento-San Joaquin River here in Northern California? They don't seem to want to leave quite yet. They've tried using recordings of whale songs about feeding, scary killer whale noises and now they've resorted to water cannon of a fire-fighting boat. The whales get a 3-day weekend's rest, at least. Maybe they were hoping to get a glimpse of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Not to be left out of the news, Southern California has it's own stray animal story. Down in Los Angeles they've got a locally famous alligator, named Reggie, who made the national wires by finally getting nabbed after taking up residence in Harbor Regional Park's Lake Machado for the last two years. According to CNN "The gator inspired a zydeco song, two children's books and innumerable T-shirts. Students at Los Angeles Harbor College next to the lake adopted Reggie as a second mascot."

Zydeco! I've mentioned it in times past, but newer folk reading here may not know of my fondness. I first heard zydeco on Seseme Street when my children were small. I have a few songs on my iPod, it's great music for lifting the spirits. Lisa Haley & the Zydecats Krewe did the Reggie Alligator (you can hear about a minute's worth of the song at the link) song mentioned above.

In hamster news (and you thought couldn't possibly be going there again, didn't you), there really isn't any but I was looking and found a cute hamster image instead at this blog. Is that not one of the most adorable hamster pictures, ever? If I didn't have three cats, I might be driving out to the pet store for a hamster right now.

Wikipedia had to lock its article on librarians due to bit on Stephen Colbert's May 25th show, The Colbert Report, where he interviewed Jimmy Wales the founder and put up a "secret" message that "librarians are hiding something" during that interview. If I wanted to get intellectual about it I could try and talk about some of the interesting points Colbert made about the "democratization of information", especially the part about for too long the "elites who study things got to say what is or isn't real" and how with Wikipedia "anybody with a computer and the patience to put in a password can change anything". However, it's all been discussed in detail by some very smart people over on Making Light. I wonder if Colbert lurks over there?


Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Gay Flamingo Foster Parents, Shaggy Beards and an Occasional Hamster

In my wandering around Science Blogs the other day, starting as usual on Pharyngula, I saw this article about a pair of gay flamingos adopting an abandoned flamingo chick. Apparently the couple wanted to be parents badly enough that "they had resorted to stealing eggs from other pairs as they sought to fulfil their desperate desire to start a family of their own." It's a fascinating article by GrrlScientist, "a molecular evolutionary biologist who studies and lives with parrots and other birds."

Is it a generation thing that I don't find scraggly beards or overlong beard stubble sexy? I was reading the post at Shakesville (formerly? Shakepeare's Sister) about the season finale of Lost and the poster plus a number of commenters thought Jack's untamed facial hair sexy. I like beards but I do prefer them trimmed and neat. Not real crazy about the long stubble look at all.

Found a new web comic (thanks to Joel who left a link in a comment on Making Light) to seriously adore. Sequential Art. It's got an artist guy and a cat girl and a squirrel-girl and a penguin and a platypus and the occasional hamster and evil little things that I'm not sure what they are!

The illustration is good and the story is funny with a number of real laugh out loud moments as I caught up through the archives from the beginning tonight. I wish I could put it on my reader, but there's no feed that my Google Reader could find. *sigh* I'll just have to go there the old fashioned way with a bookmark. Funny how you get attached to new gizmos like the reader and everything else seems like so much extra effort now.

I got an email from the International Weblogger's Day folk today, reminding me of the event and this year's topic. Click the button to learn more. InWeDay is June 14th.

International Weblogger's Day 2007

Cons and Other Places I'm Planning to Go, With Extra Hamster News, Too.

This August I'm going to NasFic, aka. Archon 31, August 2 - 5 in St. Louis, MO. The WorldCon is in Japan this year (and wouldn't I love to go there!).

I'm also going to try and be at the Star Trek Con in Las Vegas on August 9 - 12 held at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. It's an annual "anniversary" event for the hubby and I. Our old anniversary was August 15th, 1991 our new one is August 19, 2006. This year is the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Should be a pretty good con. Wil Wheaton is going to be a guest. We've enjoyed his previous visits and gotten him to autograph his books (Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot) there as well as heard him talk and seen some improv/sketch work he does with a group called ACME comedy theatre. He's funny and very generous in giving time to his fans.

I just wandered over to Wil's blog. Apparently AOL has blocked him from emailing anyone with a 'aol.com' email address. Those folk all need to get gmail, IMO. Read more at his blog WWdN: In Exile

Next year I'm going to go to the WorldCon in Denver.


Denvention 3 - the 66th Worldcon - Denver Worldcon in 2008


Aside from cons I'm looking forward to a visit from my son and a trip with him to SoCal to visit my family and go to Disneyland. I reserved our rooms online this evening, and called Disneyland for "Priority Seating" aka, a reservation, for dinner at the Blue Bayou restaurant. If you've never been to Disneyland it's an indoors restraunt at the Pirates of the Carribean in New Orleans Square. The Disneyland website says of it:

Savor the down-home Cajun flavors at this New Orleans-style eatery with a moonlit ambience, a dining terrace that overlooks Laffite's Landing, entry to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, and the finest Crescent City cuisine outside of Louisiana.

Menu items include:
  • Classic Cajun gumbo and jambalaya
  • Dinnertime offerings of Alaskan King Crab Legs and Filet Mignon
  • Lunchtime exclusive of the Blue Bayou's signature Monte Cristo sandwich
  • Savory choices of broiled fish, chicken and beef dishes
  • Mouth-watering appetizers and delectable desserts


Haven't been able to get in the door to eat there on any of our last few visits - it's always booked up. Last year we got there around 9 or 10 a.m. and tried to get reservations for dinner. I even pulled the "we're newlyweds" card - it didn't help. Then I discovered that you can call up to 60 days in advance and book a table.

The only time I can recall eating there (and that doesn't mean I haven't since, I just don't remember) was back in 1977 when a bunch of college theater friends and I drove down for the day in the middle of the week around Thanksgiving time.

Another blog on my reader that writers might find interesting: Craigslist Curmudgeon. He talks about postings on Craigslist that are insulting to writers.

Lots of news posts about researchers discovering a hamster jetlag cure (I picked that one to link because I, 1) like ScienceBlogs and 2) it had the best title) ...how often do hamsters cross timezones, anyway, that this should be a problem for them? (Yes, I know - but don't disabuse me of this notion, I'm enjoying the imaginary world of jet setting hamsters I've created in my mind, ok?) My first notice of this item was via Jaycinth on Absolute Write, btw.

Monday, April 30, 2007

A Dawno PSA: Patrick Nielsen Hayden - Make an Appointment With Your Dentist!

This announcement comes to you via a request from Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Feel free to spread it around our little corner of the blogosphere - it's for his own good that we get the word out.

In other news: as if it's not enough to use poor little hamsters as Roomba control drones*, now there's the Hamster powered paper shreader.

*There are other hamster related links in that post. This one is definitely disturbing - I think the BBC should do an expose on the insidious global conspiracy to Borgify hamsters.