Caine == Alfred

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.

No food? No problem.

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.

Inaugural Speeches from Our Action Heroes

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.

Guarded optimism

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!

Confusion

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!

I hate everyone

get a fucking life

The wrong reason, but definitely the right move

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.

Sadness

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.

Neal Adams revisiting Neal Adams

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.' "

Dr. Who #2

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.

Client quotes

Desiree and I had fun with this list over AIM this morning. If you've ever had to work with clueless or unreasonable clients, you might too. (Found via Blogdex.)

Why dammit, why??!!!

For two freaking days "Paris Hilton Cancels Letterman Appearance" has been one of CNNs major online stories. WHY??? By all that is holy...WHY???

Oberon update

For those who are interested, Oberon came out of his surgery ok. Unfortunately, the surgery prompted more questions that we need answered, but he's coming home today and we'll focus on that happiness for now.

Positive thoughts...positive thoughts

Today our little Oberon went in for surgery. Needless to say, we're a little (read: a LOT) worried about him. So please send your positive vibes this way today as we wait to hear from the vet.

Yeubing!

Well, I just can't express how happy I was to see that Oolong's owner has gotten a new bunny named Yeubing. It took me some time to be able to really look at the new bunny and site without crying (seriously), but here it is.

Enjoy the new bunny. :)

Ahh..the resurrection of a nearly dead language...

...so cool! The linguist in me just loves to come across stories like this.

Silbo Gomero is a whistling language from one of the Canary Islands. It was used to communicate over long distances...and sounds quite ingenious.

It is now required for all children on the island to study Silbo Gomero until age 14, ensuring that even if the language isn't necessarily practiced, it will not be forgotten.

Real Men of Genius

I've been listening to these radio spots for the last few years...back when they were originally "Real American Heroes" (pre-9/11). I always thought they were hysterical, but lamented not being able to share them with my non-radio listener husband and friends.

Well, now they're planning on making some television commercials...I'm so excited!

Here are some samples:
From Mr. Tiny Thong Bikini Wearer: "If you've got it, flaunt it, that's your motto. Which is ironic, because you haven't got it. So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, sweet cheeks, and know that if you weren't wearing that suit, we'd ask you to take a bow."

From Mr. Fancy Coffee Shop Coffee Pourer: "What do you do with a master's degree in art history? You get a nose ring and pour coffee for a living."

From Mr. Handlebar Mustache Wearer: "You may not be a Civil War general, but with a handlebar mustache, even a simple computer programmer can rally the troops."

Add some female background singers and the former-Survivor lead singer, and you have commercial gold. :)

COPS vs. cartoons

An open letter to the TV industry:

I'm a sucker for a good story. It doesn't matter much what it's about as long as it can pique my curiosity and/or my imagination. Stories about heroes following through on their duties to protect the innocent could have decent potential to accomplish that goal. Still, there's enjoyable ways to tell those stories and then there are ways that irritate me to no end.

I'll take those in reverse order. COPS, which I blame for mutating the concept of cinéma vérité into the steaming pile of poop that is the "reality TV" genre, is a perfect example of a television show about good people doing work I respect. That doesn't mean I wouldn't need to be physically restrained, drugged, and then have someone nail my eyelids to my forehead in order to watch it. I can read the fucking newspaper, thank you very much. What's next? Cops taking a crap? Cops doing 60 hours of paperwork because they had to touch a suspect to restrain him?

I understand the propaganda value of police shows in general (and COPS in specific), both domestically and internationally. Thanks to the miracle of syndication, criminals all over the US can see how the police always catch and punish you if you do something wrong (and, as a corollary, "regular" citizens can be made to feel safe). One noticeable exception: Miami Vice, which showed you that as a drug dealer, you would have the finest material possessions and countless beautiful women to tend to your every whim up until the time your life was abruptly ended by more bullets than were fired in the Spanish-American War - or possibly via helicopter rotor-induced decapitation. And internationally - well, you've got to love it when people in other countries are asking why they aren't being Mirandized or allowed to make a phone call/see a lawyer after they get arrested. [Note to conspiracy theorists: THAT is the impact of a globally dominant American pop culture.] Yes, I'll even concede that there are people who watch COPS as some kind of twisted ego boost - "now I can feel better about myself because at least I'm not a wifebeating crackhead!"

Despite all that, depicting actual, disconnected, random events in mind-numbing detail isn't storytelling - it isn't even entertainment. It's simply arbitrary. What the hell happened to narrative structure?

In contrast, this past weekend's episode of the Justice League animated series (another TV show about dispensing justice) was pretty far out there - a Lovecraft-ian homage of the "Ow, you're stepping on my pineal gland" variety (the episode was even entitled The Terror Beyond) and featured a tentacled Elder God named Cthulhu (oops, I mean Icthultu) and his many bizarre, nightmarish minions. And truly, who else could give voice to the not-so-subtly-named Icthultu other than Rob Zombie? That was some damn inspired casting, if you ask me. Throw in Dr. Fate and Solomon Grundy and you have a really strange and interesting trip - one with (gasp!) a beginning, middle, and end. Even Superman - not too far from an Elder God himself - had a well-written part; he didn't forget that his eyes can shoot lasers, for starters. It wasn't original - not to mention that the underlying treatise on faith was a bit strained - but damn, it was good fun.

Cartoons, fantasy, science fiction - these formats and genres are appealing to my desire for well-crafted stories. Adding elements of the unreal to a story (or at least not artificially constraining it with the burden of realism) increases the chance that it will intrigue and engage me. It's a hint that there's been some thought given to the telling and to the value of the story itself instead of an uninspired cycle of alternately lurid and boring facts. Reality is full of the mundane and unnecessary - what in the world would make you think those things are essential ingredients in the overall recipe for a good story?

He was how old?

This is a tragic story, and I shouldn't poke fun. But after reading it and lamenting the tragic, sudden death of a high school student, I couldn't help noticing that this particular high school student was 20-YEARS-OLD...that's tragedy in it's own right!

MmmMMmMm... vitriol.

Fortunately I can report that none of my brothers-in-law are insipid, but that doesn't make McSweeney's "Words and Expressions Commonly Misused by Insipid Brothers-in-law" (found via Gravity Lens) any less amusing. It reminds me of the old Usenet days, updated with a much more personal and intense hatred of the subject being flamed.

"Sometimes Spellcheck doesn't cut it. Use a dictionary." Hint: That's a REFERENCE.

Spybot - Search and Destroy

Without touching on the blog taboo that is work, suffice it to say that I'm a savvy computer user. I'll even push the limit a bit and say I've held more than one job in my career where my sole focus was on information security, especially with respect to the Internet.

As anyone who has read this blog for more than 0.65 seconds knows, Desiree and I are huge gamers - tabletop, console, computer, etc. The "computer" part of that hobby makes it impractical to have anything but a Microsoft Windows OS on my primary desktop computer at home. In what can only be described as a victory of convenience over common (and occupational) sense, I also use Internet Explorer as my main browser on that machine. Since we have a weblog, it wouldn't take very keen detection skills to come to the (correct) conclusion that we browse the web. A lot.

Why am I rambling about all of this? This is a cautionary tale. No, not THAT cautionary tale. Just take it under advisement that even someone who carefully administers a hardware firewall for their home network, updates virus definitions and runs virus scans religiously, and for whom Internet security has been a profession can still fall prey to adware and spyware.

Read more about the subject at Tom Coyote, and grab their recommended (free, but donations requested) malware scan/fix program, Spybot - Search and Destroy. My personal experience is that it has found and fixed many things that my antivirus software couldn't/wouldn't.

Harry Potter Trailer!

Yay! The Prisoner of Azkaban teaser trailer is out! Check it out here.

Marvel at just how dorky and awkward Draco looks, how "appropriate" the new Dumbledore seems to be, and how awesome the Dementors turned out.

And yes, Gary Oldman is the cool shoeshine.

I know about monsters - I am the Doctor!

Thanks to Gravity Lens for reminding us that the first episode of the new Dr. Who animated series is now online over at BBCi.

Dark Shadows

Sci-Fi Wire is reporting that the WB, who apparently can't get enough vampires, has ordered up a pilot for the third incarnation of Dark Shadows.

Octopus Erection

I don't know whether to be disgusted or intrigued. Must have been a slow news day because the Trib decided to report on the discovery of erectile tissue in octopus's tentacles.

Ew.

What are we, stupid?

I'm not sure if any of you have been keeping track of the story of the four malnourished adopted boys, aged 9-19, who, when found by police, were no more than 4 feet tall and weighed 45 pounds or less.

Their adopted family insists they ate "normally" and had meals with the rest of the family....that they ate insulation and rummaged through garbage cans because of an EATING DISORDER! Anyone want to clue me in on which eating disorder this is? Oh, right, I call it....NOT BEING ALLOWED TO EAT!! The parents put a freaking alarm on the fridge because of this "eating disorder".

Of course the biological children are lying...they don't want their freaking horrible parents to go to prison (which is where they belong). You don't get so stunted and malnourished over night...oh no...it takes years to reach this level of abuse.

So now the parents are on the news with Dan Rather requesting that their children be returned to them. Do they think we're morons? No one on this planet deserves that kind of hell...let alone to be returned to that hell once they escape.

Jedi Academy v1.01

Go grab the patch here.

John Woo flick or reality?

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for helping people who have been disfigured. Still, there's something about grafting a dead person's face on to a living patient that strikes me as somewhat disturbing.

Clerks and Marvel Fans alike...rejoice!...

...and enjoy this! :)

This is a fabulous Flash movie (complete with alternate ending!) set in the Clerks settings and starring some of our favorite Marvel heroes. Most notably we have Silver Surfer filling in as Jay, and Galactus making a surprising appearance as Silent Bob...requesting Moon Pies to satiate his world devouring hunger. :)

Enjoy!

Mars and Chile

In an interesting bit of investigative work, an international research team was able to recreate the results of a Martian soil test using Chilean sand from the Atacama desert.

The upshot is that the initial test performed by the Viking spacecraft in 1976 may have led to a "false negative" when ruling out the presence of organic material on Mars - but until we go back and run more tests, we can't know for sure.

Damn you Macromedia!!

So my work recently purchased the Academic version of Macromedia Studio MX 2004 for me. The box and the CD both stated that it was the Mac and Windows version, so I figured I could use it on my PC at work as well as my laptop when necessary. Knowing I was about to go to Dreamweaver and Flash training, I installed it on my OSX laptop.

After training, I realized it was way too hard to try to do Dreamweaver and Flash on my 15" screen iBook. So I did as was instructed...launched the program on my iBook, went to Help and "released" the activation, rendering the software on my iBook useless.

Then I took the software and installed it on my Windows machine. Went to activate the license and was told that there were "too many activations". I was prompted to call the "Activation Office". They told me I was forbidden from crossing platforms, but they would make an exception. They had to do something manually to release my activation code. They told me to wait 10 minutes and then try again.

I did...."too many activations."

*sigh*

So, I found and read the EULA. It did say that I couldn't go cross platform, but also said I could have the software installed on two machines, as long as only one had it running at a time.

Armed with my EULA, I called the "Activation Office" again. They told me something had to be done manually because I had changed platforms (sound familiar?) and that I should try again in 10 minutes (hmm...).

As of this posting, I've been too much of a wimp to test the activation. I have a copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004 that I can't use, and I'm getting madder by the minute.

One year

As mentioned in a previous post, Extrasonic was launched one year ago today. Since we've had so much fun with it thus far, we've stuck with the format but made several changes to the content, not the least of which is adding The Cat's Meow and Coldforged.org to our list of favorite weblogs, while some that we simply didn't find interesting anymore were removed.

Read on if you want a summary of the other changes.

Categories
The category known as "computing" has been broadened to "tech" to be more of a catch-all for computing, the Internet, consumer electronics, and other neat technology. Due to potential conflicts with work, I can't really post as much as I'd like to here. Still, it's a big part of our lives so we'll try to post what we can.

The categories "dining", "shopping", and "travel" have been consolidated down into a single "lifestyle" category. We still eat, drink, shop, and travel a lot - but we found that we typically don't blog about it.

Finally, two of our largest categories were split up - "books" was split into "books" and "comics" (complete with an icon straight out of Detective Comics #27), and "film / tv" was split into (you guessed it) "film" and "tv".

Links
The navigation on our main page (which, among other things, includes four links per category on the left navbar) has been updated to reflect the changes. The "favorite weblogs" has been updated (as mentioned above) and Bruce Sterling has been added to our list of celebrity weblogs. I've made a decision not to remove the link to Gibson's weblog, since I have a feeling it's a place he'll come back to between books. Now if only Orson Scott Card would start weblogging...

Other new link highlights include Comic Book Resources, Slush Factory, Rotten Tomatoes, and Television Without Pity.

Misc.
We're still considering ideas for some new functionality/features - the first (and only definite) to-do on our list is getting an anti-spam plugin installed. We're certainly open to suggestions, so all comments are welcome. Well, except the spam comments.

Crazy Ass Flash

Ok, I came across this flash movie and I'm not sure what to say about it. It's seriously strange and you'll have to pause it a few times to catch some of the quickly made comments. I think someone took a Japanese song and threw in some "english translation".

Just to give you an idea as to how strange this is:
"Man he sure was nasty
Oh you should have
Sued him God, or
Something Flushy.
Get the net
Use it there!"

Anyway, look for lots of cameos including: Link, Pikachu (on a condom), Darth Vader and Monica Lewinsky.

Enjoy!

Extrasonic's birthday

Pardon our dust... over the course of the weekend, we'll be making some changes to the site in celebration of Extrasonic's 1-year anniversary on Monday, 10 November.

The "dozen categories of geeky goodness" will be tuned to better reflect what we actually post about, permalinkage to other blogs and elsewhere will be cleaned up to reflect what we're really reading a year later, and so on. If you have any thoughts on the changes, feel free to post them here.

Desert Combat v0.5

Desert Combat v0.5 is available for download, as is the v1.5 patch for BF1942 itself.

Doom3 website launched

'nuff said.

Serious research

Not only do the Brits have a handle on beer mat flipping optimization, but the BBC has seen fit to report on it.

Indian monkeyshines

While I'm sure that it's not that funny when it's happening to you, the mental picture of monkeys stealing lunchboxes and raiding refrigerators in India is pretty amusing. Atul Gupta of the Wildlife Institute of India blames deforestation, stating succinctly that the monkeys "have learned the tricks of finding food in an urban environment" out of necessity.

Cloned food

On Friday (that's right, Halloween), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had a trick of its own up its sleeve - it issued a draft assessment regarding the safety of consuming "food products derived from animal clones and their offspring".

While this is just a draft and does not legalize the sale of food from cloned animals in the U.S., it does state that food from cloned animals is "likely to be as safe to eat as food from their non-clone counterparts". This telegraphs the FDA's intention to commercialize cloned food unless new information comes up or there's significant public outcry.

Promisingly, the announcement about the report does go on to say:

"Although the document being released today does not specifically address ethical issues, that fact does not mean FDA is overlooking those issues. The draft risk assessment is intended only to address the safety of food from animal clones and the risks to animal clones, and the assessment is only one part of an orderly and public process to address the many facets of the cloning issue."

While I am not against cloning per se, I would like to see issues regarding cloning debated thoroughly and thoughtfully, so I will be following this story as it develops over the coming months and years.