Variety is reporting that Michael Caine will play Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler in the upcoming Batman film, Intimidation Game, according to Sci Fi Wire.

This was widely posted last week, but I still find it fascinating if it’s true - the BBC reports that a fakir who claims not to eat or drink was put to the test and underwent observation in an Indian hospital for 10 days without food or water. He succeeded.

Catching up on some old links: McSweeney’s inaugural speeches from various cartoon characters. When Optimus Prime drops some innuendo that the Decepticons are built in France, you can begin to get a feel for what his administration is going to be about.

Hope everyone who celebrates it had a good Thanksgiving.

Not to turn extrasonic into a cat blog, but a quick update is in order - Oberon saw the veterinary oncologist on Friday, who said that he tended to agree that Oberon does not have cancer. His interpretation of the results are that Oberon has a mild birth defect of the blood vessels in his bladder, and that now that it has been removed surgically, he’ll simply grow out of it. We are getting a fourth opinion regarding Oberon’s biopsy at a pathology lab of the oncologist’s choosing. Assuming that they also agree it’s not cancer, we will continue to monitor Oberon’s condition with regular ultrasounds but will very likely be out of the woods.

Thanks to those who shared their encouragement; we’re very attached to our pets and it has been a stressful time. Back to your regularly scheduled blogging!

Ok. We’ve been thrashed around on this emotional rollercoaster long enough. I, for one, want to get off.

In addition to our 12-year-old tabby, Miller, we got two Devon Rex kittens earlier this year - Tristan and Oberon. They were around 5 months old at the time.

Shortly afterwards, Oberon came down with feline conjunctivitis (more commonly known as “pink eye”). While he was at the vet getting this treated, he urinated on the exam table. The vet thought that it looked a little dark, and tested the urine which was found to have blood in it.

The initial diagnosis was that the blood in the urine was the result of a urinary tract infection. This seemed odd given his age and the fact that he’d almost certainly have to have contracted it while he was still living with the breeders.

After several weeks of antibiotic treatment with no improvement, the vet performed an x-ray and then an ultrasound on Oberon, and the diagnosis was changed from UTI to bladder stones. There are two kinds of bladder stones in cats; both can be treated via surgery, but only one can be treated via a special diet. Since we didn’t know what kind of stones Oberon had and we thought he was still too young for surgery, we put him on the prescription diet and hoped we were treating the right ailment.

Two more ultrasounds later, we were told that the stones weren’t getting any smaller and were instead getting bigger. We were still concerned about Oberon’s age, but at this point he was between 9 and 10 months old and we didn’t have any other options, so we chose to have the surgery performed.

Oberon came out of the surgery like a champ, but we were informed by the vet afterward that while there were some very tiny stones in his bladder, there was a thickening of his bladder wall in one area, and that a biopsy was taken and sent to a veterinary pathology lab for analysis. This was alarming, but we were not seriously worried as our vet told us that it was most likely due to irritation from the stones (not to mention that Oberon is only 10 months old and therefore hasn’t been alive long enough to develop anything more serious).

Well, sure enough, we received a pretty grim call from the vet on Monday. We were told the following: The pathology lab had determined that the biopsy was cancerous. Not just any cancer, mind you, but feline hemangiosarcoma - a cancer of the blood vessels that would spread quickly due to its proximity to the circulatory system. It extended “into the margins” of the biopsy sample, which meant that some of the cancer cells had not been excised from Oberon’s bladder. Since it had been caught so early and a great deal of it had been surgically removed, our vet thought that there was a good chance that chemotherapy would be successful, so we immediately made an appointment with a feline oncologist. We were warned, however, that a 10-month-old kitten with cancer could only be the result of a genetic defect, and even if this instance went into full remission, Oberon would be at high risk of recurrance and for the development of other types of cancer for the rest of his life.

I asked the vet if this could be a mistake. Our vet told us that they verified that the sample was from Oberon and hadn’t been mixed up with another cat, and that the pathologist who performed the analysis on the biopsy was “a Ph.D.”. As Desiree noted, we were devastated.

Then we received another call from our vet yesterday. It seems that two more pathologists examined the biopsy sample and both independently determined that it was NOT cancer at all, but rather a thickening of the bladder wall as a result of trauma that could have been caused during the surgery or in a previous urinalysis (urine is extracted from the bladder via a needle in most cases and he could have gotten poked). It also could have been caused by irritation from the bladder stones, as we were originally told.

Now we have no idea what the hell to believe. We’ve got 1 vote for and 2 votes against cancer and no clue who to trust or why. Common sense says that there’s no way in hell that a 10-month-old anything could have cancer - genetic predisposition or no, there’s got to be a trigger, and it’s not like he swallowed weapons-grade plutonium or something. We’ve requested that the biopsy be sent to a new pathology lab for additional (and theoretically unbiased) analysis, and we’re planning on keeping our appointment with the feline oncologist, who will hopefully have an opinion of his own. Naturally we don’t want to subject Oberon to chemotherapy if it’s not required, but on the other hand we don’t want to lose weeks or even days that could prove the difference in achieving some sort of remission if he does have cancer.

Honestly, I have no idea how those of you with human children can deal with even the possibility of this stuff, let alone the reality. It’s been hard enough to figure out what to do with a kitten!

get a fucking life

Dell has announced that they are moving most of their customer support out of India.

I couldn’t help but get terribly excited when I heard the news. Maybe I’m jaded because I work in computer customer support and I know there are many, many Americans who would jump at the chance to work for Dell. I was pretty upset to hear that they (and several other companies) farm out their customer support to India. Hence my gladness to see they’re bringing some of it “home”.

Their reasoning, however, sucks ass. They’re not doing it to give jobs back to Americans. They’re doing it because the Americans can’t understand Indian accents. Don’t even get me started on my can’t-you-freaking-Americans-even-attempt-some-tolerance-patience-and-understanding rant.

We received a call from our vet last night informing us that our little Oberon has cancer. We are devastated but not willing to give up. Today I’ll be talking with a specialist about chemotherapy. Please keep your hearts and thoughts with our little guy.

The Washington Times has a story about the new Batman Illustrated, which reprints some of Neal Adams’ groundbreaking work. The article also talks about Adams himself and the controversial decision to redo some of the work found in Batman Illustrated. His explanation:

“If you guys are going to [fiddle] with this stuff,” Mr. Adams says he told DC, “at least let me [fiddle] with this stuff.” He added: “I’m trying to reach a new audience, while saying to my old audience, ‘Had it been done properly the first time around, this is what it would have looked like.’ ”

Don’t forget to watch the second episode of Scream of the Shalka, and while you’re thinking about the good Doctor, you might as well check out this gallery of Doctor Who monsters.