Ham-Ham Heartbreak

My hamster is very sick.

I first noticed it last Monday - the usually lazy, but healthy ham seemed to be staggering around his cage and obviously breathing heavier than normal. I also noticed that the left side of his face, around his eye and nose, were swollen. He was making small panting noises, and wasn't sleeping through the day as normal.

At first I thought he was just old and dying, but when I took him out of the cage he started to bolt around the couch as normal. Everything about him other than the symptoms above was normal. At this point I also noticed that he had not touched his food (not even his treats, which is completely absurd) in two days. I felt helpless for a little bit, hoping that he wasn't hurty, and then turned to the internet.

All of his symptoms showed up in a search for hamster problems - the culprit, according to several websites, was an abscess in his cheek pouch. I was somewhat relieved, but also worried even more now - especially due to the lack of appetite he seemed to develop. I took him to the doctor the next day.

Getting a hamster to a vet is kind of a pain. People on the phone at the vets offices seemed to be taken aback by the fact that I wanted to bring a hamster in. I think one of them laughed at me. Eventually I found him an appointment at a place in Fairless Hills for the same day. I learned that hamsters are considered "exotic" and therefore more expensive to bring in. Funny to me how they are probably one of the cheapest pets you can buy.

Having the hamster at the vet was very cute but very worrisome. I giggled the whole time the vet was handling him. He weighed him in a little bowl, used a stethoscope to listen to his little heart, used a little pointer thing with a little light to check in his mouth and ears. The vet said he seemed pretty healthy, he was acting very normal, but he did have a problem. He said that there wasn't enough puss in the back of its mouth for it to be an abscess, but he thought it would be more of a tooth issue. Either way he wasn't exactly sure what it was, but gave me some medicine for him and said it should help. He was prescribed an antibiotic which he is to take twice a day for ten days, painkiller that he can take once or twice a day, and some powdered diet.

I took him home and started him on the medicine. He seemed to like the painkiller, as it made him sleep a lot. I had a lot of problems feeding him, though. The dropper the vet gave me was too small for any food particles to make it into the dropper, so I was basically force-feeding him water for at least a day.

For two days he seemed to be alright, I gave him pieces of apple that he chewed a bit of, and he was still running around happily.

However, Saturday morning things took a turn for the worse. I woke up the ham to give him his morning dose of medicine, and noticed that he had diarrhea. I also noticed that his weight had dropped significantly more - I could now feel the little bones in his rib cage and back. This made me very upset - my hamster has always been very fat and seeing this physical change in him was quite a shock.

I assumed that the diarrhea was because of the fruit I had given him, so I made a change. Instead of giving him the apple I was going to feed him more times a day with the liquid diet. I cut the top off of the dropper and finally got it so it sucked up nothing but food. He ate for awhile, but definitely made it known to me when he didn't want anymore. He spent the rest of the day sleeping.

Sunday morning and afternoon he did not have diarrhea again, so I was relieved. he did eat, however, instead of running around a bit he just sat in a ball cuddled up on my lap. Every time he tried to move around he stumbled a bit - it was completely obvious that he was weak and starving. This morning his condition had not changed at all, but instead of eating a lot I believe he stuffed up his cheeks with a lot of the food. I hope he eats it.

So this is where we are now. I'm feeding him once in the morning and once at night, and I plan on adding another scheduled feeding after I get home from work today. The outlook is grim, I'm really unsure where to go with this, but I'm doing all I can.

50 Movie Pack - Nightmare Worlds MOVIE REVIEW TIME FUN YAY part deux (a French word for "2")

Saturday and Sunday I was able to fit four more movies in.

ATOMIC RULERS OF THE WORLD
IMDB link
This is the first of the two Starman movies I watched. (There are 3 in the entire set, and also 3 American movies.) Starman movies are about what I discovered to be Japan's first on screen superhero, Starman, played by Ken Utsui. A little wikipedia digging informed me that Ken Utsui is a respected actor, but to this day refuses to talk about the role, mainly due to embarrassment. Apparently they used to stuff his crotch area with cotton. The suit was a little silly too.

Regardless of what you think about Starman's cape attached to his arms or his little antennae coming out of his over the head spandex costume, the movies are kinda neat. Originally parts of movies from a Japanese series called Super Giants (yes plural, and there's only one super hero.. he is not very giant either..), the plot revolves around a group of aliens from a distant planet who need to protect Earth from nuclear disaster. They do this in order to protect their own planet; nuclear fallout on Earth could directly affect them. Somehow, from space, many miles away. I'll allow it. Starman is their answer to Earth's bodyguard needs, armed with this watch that gives him the ability to speak every language on Earth, look like a human, and fly through space. I think he is also made of super powerful metal, because he has super human strength. It is Starman's duty to thwart any nuclear threat on Earth, which is convenient, because in these two movies a country that doesn't really exist and some aliens from another planet, respectively, are determined to blow up the Earth.

Starman is a friend to children, and boy that is a good thing because there is a group of sneaky orphan kids that sure do like to get themselves into trouble in these movies. In both movies one of them gets kidnapped and Starman, being the gentleman he is, makes it a point to save them. After all, children are the Earth's future. That's the movie talking, not me.

White people always play the villians in these movies. They're pretty decent, I think, and kind of cute. There's some really bad fight scenes, I think he was fencing in one of them. These two movies were basically the same plot with different people, but I enjoyed watching them both.

The Alpha Incident
IMDB link
I thought that I had finally reached a movie that wasn't about aliens coming to Earth, but boy was I wrong. This one definitely tries to sneak it past you though.

A space probe comes back with a deadly virus. It killed a bunch of rats. We aren't told how they died. These scientists for some reason think its a good idea then, to put this virus on a boxcar train guarded only by some guy that reminds me of a girl I went to high school with's dad (Mr. Rogers but less fun and totally scary). They don't even package it up well. It just kind of sits there in jars in a box.

The hillbilly that is driving this boxcar train gets so curious as to what those bottles are that he breaks them open. Now this guy is a piece of work. He's really endearing because of how silly stupid he is, and I felt bad for him the whole time to tell you the truth. Anyway, boxcar stops at a station, Evil Mr. Rogers discovers that the bottles have been broken, and is totally forced to quarantine himself and the three or four (doesn't matter) people who are at the station.

Long story short people start to freak out, wondering what happens when they die. We find out here that the way to survive is to stay awake. They do some drugs, a woman kills herself, one guy falls asleep and dies. And I'll spare you having to watch the movie, his skull contents like his brain and eyes and shit start to expand and bubble out of his head. The whole thing is pretty gory and gross, but its the only good part of the movie. In the end the government doesn't find a cure in time, and goes to exterminate or whatever the whole place. At this point Evil Mr. Rogers discovers he's fallen asleep but hasn't died, realizing he hasn't been infected. OOPS, TOO LATE, the government exterminators shoot him in the stomach. He's dead.

The end!

Beast of the Yellow Night
IMDB link
Yellow Night indeed! The whole film was washed out and yellow and dark and at times completely unviewable. Good job.

The only thing I got out of this film is that a man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for his life, he may or may not have become immortal. This said man also has a hot wife, who he either hates or loves. This man is the head of a company somehow and tries to dick a bunch of people over. Or not. He may or may not have tried to kill his wife. I am 80% sure he ends up turning into a vampire or demon or wereworlf at night eventually to pay the devil back. And according to this movie I am 100% sure the devil is a fat Philippino man in a bad suit and snarky attitude.

50 Movie Pack - Nightmare Worlds MOVIE REVIEW TIME FUN YAY

I bought a 50 movie pack featuring Sci-Fi movies from Best Buy this weekend. I plan on watching each one of them and posting a review of each. I find it hard to keep up with blogging when there are so many things I'd like to write about, so I thought this might help me get my shit together.

Today while doing some freelance work I watched two movies. Please be aware that I might have some of my facts wrong because I wasn't paying complete attention to them the whole time, but I don't think that is mandatory to enjoy these to begin with.

First I watched:

ALIEN CONTAMINATION

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082000/

Alien Contamination is about aliens coming to take over Earth. A mystery occurs on board a cruise ship; mostly everyone is dead, or hopped overboard abandoning ship in the middle of their meals. A team is sent to investigate. They find some dead bodies that look like they've been "blown up from the inside". That is what the investigating team said, not me. I thought they had contracted some rare skin virus. The team also happens to find a glowing, pulsing, humming pod, which once picked up proceeds to rhythmically hum and glow faster, then explodes. The green goo turns out to be acid, and everyone starts bleeding and face melting, then exploding. (There are a lot of exploding people in this movie.) Somehow one of the investigating team members makes it back to whatever lab they had come from, and we're introduced to a cold-hearted bitch scientist CIA whatever woman who's name escapes me. She has some kind of fucked up love affair going on with some other member of her team. Somehow that is relevant to the rest of the movie because they talk about it through the rest of the movie.

They (the scientists, or some scientists, not really clear on this one) bring back a pod from the ship. Bitch scientist lady proceeds to explain to people who I have no idea what relevance they carry to anything be it government or what have you that when the pods warm up they explode acid everywhere. She then makes sure that they get the point by injecting some of that acid into a rat (WTF?) and everyone gets to watch the rat explode about five seconds later.

Later on they somehow seem to end up with a TON of pods in what seems to be a warehouse that may or may not be in the process of being robbed by thieves. Of course the scientists run into the thieves and try to warn them about the exploding pods, but they fail, and all of the who I am assuming are thieves explode.

Either before or after this the scientist lady contacts an ex-astronaut. Apparently he and his partner a few years back had traveled to Mars and might have seen these pods before. Of course the ex-astronaut is an alcoholic and accused of being insane. Its the lady scientist's job to get him to tell her what he actually saw (reluctantly because she was involved with his removal off the astronaut squad back in the day because no one believed him the first time). We have a nice little Mars expedition flash back here. She convinces him to help. He slaps her in the face (I think). No one explodes in this scene.

They decide that they're all going on holiday to south america. I think this is because ex-astronaut's partner, retired from the astronaut force, is running a coffee company down there. And why not? A bunch of things happen. Again, no one is exploding.

Once they get to South America scientist lady becomes a bitch because she wants to shower before dinner. This is really important. The two dudes don't get it so they go off to get drunk and play loud music in their rooms. Somehow scientist lady gets trapped in her bathroom. With a pod. No one can hear her screams because they are off playing loud music in their rooms. I guess she escapes though, because she's alive later. No exploding people in this scene either.

I won't ruin the end of the movie for you, but you definitely get to see a pretty creative alien named "The Cyclops". A couple more people explode, and someone gets eaten as well. This movie was a great start to this dvd set. It was both hilariously awful and hilariously gross. The special effects were pretty bad, but they weren't terrible, and exploding people definitely make up for everything else that sucks about this film. Actually the film didn't really suck at all.

I would recommend this movie to a friend.


I just finished watching the second movie, called Alien Species.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115506/
This movie is about aliens coming and invading earth.

It was so bad I'm not even going to waste my time talking about it. This is one of those movies where you just sit and wonder to yourself how it ever got made. It looks like it was shot on my parents camcorder from 1987. The acting is worse than Southland Tales. The plot doesn't make any sense. Nothing ever gets resolved. Somehow people are stuck underground with aliens. There's some classic early 90's special effects in there, the kind you'd see in the student work commercials for the Art Institutes. The song in the ending credits has seriously got to be from 1985.

If I was me now sitting next to me then watching this movie, I'd probably fast forward to a few parts for a laugh, but no way would I let myself watch it in its entirety.

All in all 50% awesomeness is a good start to this DVD adventure.

What one might call a "hairy" situation

So I have been catching this show on the science channel called My Shocking Story the last two days. Its a pretty amazing show. Yesterday I watched people get face transplants (woah), and today, real werewolf-people. Well, children, rather. There are a few people in the world with a disorder that causes hair to grow all over their bodies.

According to hairweb.org,

This phenomenon manifests itself in extreme growth of hair all over the body - almost the whole body is covered in hair. It is known as an extreme form of hypertrichosis and it is one the worlds rarest hereditary diseases - due to a gene defect.

You can see pics of people with this on the internet if you're really curious, but it looks just like it sounds.

Anyway they were discussing a young boy from India who has this whole problem and the treatments he was receiving and you know all that good Science Channel stuff. They went on to explain how the doctor who was treating him in India was working with an American doctor from Columbia University who deals with genetic science. They showed a clip of the doctor from India on the phone with the American doctor, speaking about the genetic mumbo jumbo and discussing some options. The Indian doctor agreed to send her samples from the boy (hair, skin, etc) to see what they can or might be able to do. Sounds great for him, right?

Then they showed a picture of this doctor from America.




If I was the boy's doctor in India, I would hesitate to show the boy's parents a picture of this woman. Considering HER hair issues, I don't think they would feel very hopeful about their son's future relationship with his hair.

image from http://clonemyhair.com

Green Ginger Tea to the Rescue!!

Sara and Lee and I sold a bunch of stuff at the punk rock flea market in Philly today. We had something for everyone! I sold mostly toys, Sara sold clothes, and Lee sold some stuff and records. We all did well! And I sold four pieces, two paintings and two bottles. Super! IT WAS SO PACKED. They overstuffed the place with tables, there was SO much traffic. I don't think they were expecting that many people to show up. There were people lined up AROUND THE BLOCK to get in. Jeez. R5 better make some adjustments here. We also all agreed that we will get a table in the future. We had a really good time. Even having to crawl under the table was fun in its own way.

I was just watching the commercials during the superbowl, and some of them were in "Real-D". Well I have a pair of those glasses from the movie My Bloody Valentine (which was AWESOME btw, a great slasher flick), so I put them on, and they didn't work. Are there some kind of differences between movie glasses and tv glasses, or were those commercials really not in Real-D?

Things that make you go hm?!

I met The Muffs!

Jesse and Mike and I went to see The Muffs at maxwell's in hoboken. I went with every intention of meeting them, because their singer and guitarist Kim Shattuck has been a hero of mine ever since I got into them. In case you aren't familiar with her band at all, you might know her as the girl who guest sang on Lori Meyers on NOFX's Punk in Drublic. Being that they were playing at Maxwell's (a small hole in the wall to say the least), I figured that I had a big chance to make it happen, so I brought my autograph book with me and some of that liquid courage.

They played a great set - way better than what I had heard from their live recordings. They rocked out a lot, they sounded great, and they even played new material, which not only super surprised me, but got me excited for a new album!!

After the show we stood next to the stairs leading down to the basement of the place, which we were assuming was a large area with many rooms and corridors. I stood up at the top of the steps, nervous and giddy as all hell, trying to get up the courage to go downstairs and find them. Thank goodness for Jesse and Mike and their "DO IT" egging me on, because without them I don't think I could have done it. I almost fell down the steps from excitement, and when I got to the bottom of them to find only a single storage room, there they were, just hangin out. I couldn't believe it, it was way easier than I thought. I talked to Ronnie (bass) first, telling him that I have been listening to them since I was 13, that I'm so excited to meet them, to see them, blah blah blah, I was a wreck. I got Ronnie's autograph and then talked to Kim, telling her something like, I sent you a myspace message years ago and she's a hero of mine and I'm sure I didn't make much sense and thinking back to it I must have sounded like the biggest idiot ever ever ever. She gave me a hug, even. I got a hug from Kim Shattuck!! I know, it sounds like no big thing to you, but it was really just plain awesome for me.

Kim and the drummer both signed my book, and Jesse and Mike also came downstairs, so I even got this awesome picture thanks to Jesse's iphone. I could go on about what a complete toolbag I felt like I sounded like after we left, because I am rather embarrassed about the whole thing, but I think I will leave it at that. I mean, a 28 year old girl acting like a 12 year old groupie of the Jonas Brothers for a punk band that's been around for 18 years .. kinda silly.

Thanks to them for understanding how silly I must have felt and being so cool about everything, and playing an awesome set. And on a side note, Jesse Rohland has the coolest bedroom in an apartment I have ever seen in my life. And Hoboken sucks, by the way.

Killer Jellyfish!

Image from: irukandjijellyfish.com/

These things are really tiny, only 2.5cm big. Its one of the most poisonous things on the planet! From wikipedia.com:

Irukandji syndrome is produced by a very small amount of venom and includes severe pains at various parts of the body (typically excruciating muscle cramps in the arms and legs, severe pain in the back and kidneys, and a burning sensation of the skin and face), headaches, nausea, restlessness, sweating, vomiting, high heart rate and blood pressure.

And to top it all off, there is no anti-venom. ANNND that pain lasts anywhere from hours to days. On the TV show on Animal Planet that I heard about this from a girl they interviewed while she was all doped up on morphine from a sting which they said barely masked the top of the pain and she talked about how painful it was ugh and she was in pain for two weeks. TWO WEEKS! That's scary!

I just heard that you can't keep them in a regular fish tank because if it runs into the wall it will die!

Obamamania!
I'm happy about the fact that our new president is just a regular guy who grew up in a regular family and got some pretty damn serious ambition to do some shit. I think that means more to me than anything, because it really does prove that anyone can do what they put their mind to it. All around I feel that we can only wait and see what really goes on for the next four years, but at least people are trying to feel good about something when things are obviously so bad.

The Muffs!
I'm totally going to see them tomorrow. YES!! I'm bringing my autograph book to see if Kim will sign it. I feel kind of embarrassed about it. But she rocks so hard! The Muffs! I wonder if they will have any new material. We're heading to a guy I used to work with's house up there to throw back before the show because I'm broke!! I really want a t-shirt tho. =o(

Punk Rock Flea Market
Lee and Sara and I are selling shit at the punk rock flea market on feb 2nd. Come check it out! I'm getting rid of mad 80's toys and stuffed animals and just some shit I have laying around the house. Should be a good time. At the Electric Factory, btw.

Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavillion is so good! They really reached a point where they can say the sound is completely theirs. Not that their other stuff sounded like much else, but this album is much more well fused than their previous material. I still love the Jam, but I can't get enough of songs like My Girls and Summertime Clothes.


I'm sleepy..