Allerca is Now Lifestyle Pets

Remember the sham company Allerca? Well now they're called Lifestyle Pets. I guess word got around that their CEO, Simon Brodie, is a con man so they re-invented their name and image. The new "image" of Lifestyle Pets sounds and makes it look like the cats will accessorize your modern furniture nicely. How thoughtful of them. Now when my cat expels hairballs and sheds on my furniture it can match in an elegant and classy way!

Still pushing their supposed hypoallergenic cats (that, still, no one has seen) at an elevated price of $5k (and upwards of $130k), you can now supposedly buy exotic mini-leopard looking 25 lb. cats (called the ASHERA) that are also hypoallergenic. I'm sure they'll be coming out soon with another genetically modified cat that doesn't even poop!

They've also shed that "San Diego-based company" area code, which either means that Simon Brodie moved Delaware (the new area code location) or someone got a cell phone plan there and brought it back to SD.

I've e-mailed them again to see if Simon Brodie is still affiliated. Updates forthcoming when I receive a response.

Random Associations

Yesterday I hit up THE Dog Beach in OB for some more pooch shoots, which is always good for the soul. Who knows why, but this dog reminds me of Helena Christensen in Chris Isaack's video, Wicked Game. I think it's the hair. And because another dog was trying like crazy to hump her.

The Web Has Spoken...

And it wants more baby animals.

After the recent feature on Yahoo! You Witness News Photos, I found out one of my photos was hand-picked on The Kitten Channel back in November. On one hand I wish it was something that reflected my wicked photography skills, but hey. I'll take the plug. So will the Cat Adoption Service of San Diego!

"Winter" Storm's a-comin!

I went over to Ocean Beach to get some shots of the swell happening from the approaching storm (thanks for the tip, Lauri). This wins cutest picture of the day, but this gives you a better idea of the size of the waves coming in. Totally tubular.

Update: Hey! Hey! Look whose photo made it into Yahoo's You Witness News Photos! Odd that they didn't tell me that they accepted my submission, but go on over and click on that "recommend" button!

Foster Kittens

Go ahead and die when you look at these photos of the kittens we fostered and bottle-fed this past weekend. I was looking at the pets section on Craigslist on Friday (because I'm in constant denial that I'll never have a cat) when I read an ad posted by Cat Adoption Service of San Diego saying they had an urgent need for bottle feeder foster homes. I emailed an offered to help out very short-term if they were desperate enough. I figured Ryan's allergies could handle a weekend of kittens who are bound to a box anyway. Needless to say, they took us up on it--apparently feral cats are busy birthing at this time of the year. So it was cool because these kittens would have otherwise been euthanized. It got a little less cool when I had to potty them and continue feeding them every two hours through the night. I could handle the day, but every two hours during the night makes a person become quickly emotional. Hat tip to all you mothers out there.

Otherwise this ranks, by far, as the cutest experience I've ever had. They were passed along on Sunday night to another foster home that is able to raise them until they're ready for adoption. That killed me. I got attached. I totally want the little black kitten who would crawl into my palm, roll around on her back and play with my fingers. Then she'd crawl up to the crook of my neck and fall asleep there. :'( I miss them.

Oreo 1999-2007

Well crap. Any more it feels like all I do are obituaries on this blog. Just three weeks after DeeDee's passing, Oreo suddenly succumbed to the exact same thing today as well. I'm just speechless.

Keep your fingers crossed for my mom's now one remaining cat.

DeeDee 2000-2007

DeeDee
Originally uploaded by kellinahandbasket.

In a sad turn of events, my poor mom had to put DeeDee to sleep today. I guess it's up in the air as to what happened. Pulmonary edema and possibly a series of strokes within 24 hours? Very very sad.

Media Monday! Allerca Cats

ALLERCA Hypoallergenic Cat - CBS Early Show


Woe is me. I remember reading about this company two years ago, and now more and more interviews keep popping up with them so I guess they're legit. This place is the answer to me getting a cat while co-habitating with an allergic lover and damn! do I want one! If you got far enough in the video or on the Web site to hear that they're roughly $4000, you'll understand why I'm undertaking "Campaign Kitty: Get Kell a Cat." Donations can be made through PayPal at right.

Sniffle.

Update: Allerca is a scam! See comments for further info.
Update #2: Allerca is now Lifestyle Pets. Same sham. Different name.

Bug Cam

Aroundcinci.com has several interesting icams around town (rhinocam, gorrillacam) which the viewer can control. The one on Fountain Square is particularly powerful, and is recently featuring the bugcam as shown to the left. A sad documentation of urban insect suicide. What a way to make a statement.

Update: I emailed the company to let them know about the tragedy. Stephanie Busack of Time Warner Cable responds, "Thanks for writing to let us know. I forwarded your last response to our applications engineer. I'm not sure when he's planning on doing maintenance for the camera, but as soon as he does, we'll clean the dome out."

Follow the drama with the Fountain Square cam and keep us updated on the bug's status. Still there or not? (When you point the camera straight down, you can monitor his/her presence or lack thereof)

Categories: Video/Media, Links/Miscellaneous

Task #29: The Heidelberg Zoo

Find this place (Marhs included a picture of a building with a string of elephants on it) and take a picture of yourself there, (go ahead and take a tour of the place while you're there too), then after the tour, wander the nearby streets and see if you can find other symbols that refer to the type of thing you just learned about.

I don't know why, but I'm not entirely sure that the zoo is the solution to this because is the zoo a "type of thing" you learn about? Was I supposed to do some sort of museum study of the zoo and analyze the psychological impact of viewing animals through bars versus glass? (By the way, if an animal must be displayed inside a building, I think glass should be mandatory. Listening to taunting kids and adults the entire day is its own form of torture.)

Well, instead I looked at the animals in their very tiny cages and revisited that uncomfortable feeling I always got from going to zoos even though I grew up with, like, the 3rd awesomest zoo ever: The Cincinnati Zoo (behind San Diego and Berlin, I believe).

What didn't suck:

• Lots of cats, big and small
• The tiger had cubs (and while I didn't get to pet them, their small cage enabled me to view them roughly 20 ft. away)
• Great opportunity to try out the new camera
  

What sucked:

• The small cages for the obvious reasons and because an animal is in such close quarters with other animals, they mark their territory like crazy. Holy stink.
• I generally don't like monkeys. I arrived at the monkey house in time for feeding causing the chimpanzees to go chimpshit. Scary.
  

So while I'm not the biggest fan of zoos, it was fascinating enough that it maintained a significant amount of conversation at dinner. I'd rather watch something like the BBC's award-winning series, The Life of Birds, which we have and which I strongly recommend, as nerdy as that is. The BBC's documentaries are amazing.

Pictures of my zoo trip (without me...I haven't mustered the confidence to hand a complete stranger the new camera) can be found on my flickr page, along with a bunch of other photos I recently uploaded.

Otherwise, other "symbols" that referred to the zoo in the neighborhood were, uh, the bus stop sign, and uh, parking lot. Well and there's the huge Tiergarten Schwimmbad. This is one of two public outdoor pools and the Tiergarten Schwimmbad is insanely huge and popular complete with an open air movie program in the summer. This is a must for people with kids and for those who don't mind crowds.

Are Goats on Crack? Through the Lens of the Scientific Method

Observation: Goats are idiots.

Question: Why are goats idiots?

Hypothesis: Goats are on crack.

Prediction: If my hypothesis is correct, a video search will generate "goats on crack" videos as evidence that goats are on crack. If my hypothesis is incorrect, further analysis will explore why goats are not on crack.

Background: Mary Roach's book,Stiff,says that goats have the most similar lungs to humans but if faced with a lung transplant that involved a goat donor...I'm not sure I could accept. I mean, if goats are eating tin cans and shit, who knows what they've decided was a good idea to inhale. They sure act like they're on crack. And it's too bad because it's the kids who suffer: neglected by his/her parents, a kid's behavior is often out of control and abnormal as you'll see in this video of a crack kid, confusedly barking.

Experiment: Two experiments are being applied to this research. The first is an ongoing research project, polling readers' opinions about the drug habits of goats. The second is data generated using Yahoo! Video Search and the results that the "goat" submissions yield.
Experiment #1

Are goats on crack?

Yes.Baaaa.No.I like corn.Walka Walka

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Experiment #2 : Yahoo! Video Search: word search, results. Evidence and data gathered in this section is also used in the "Background" section listed above.

• "goat" = 300 results minus 200 bestiality videos = 100 videos
• "goats" = 114 videos
• "goats on crack" = 0 videos
• "goat on crack" = 0 videos
• "goat in tree" = 1 video
  
• "crazy goat" = 1 video minus 1 (bestiality video) = 0
• "silly goat" = 0 videos

(This may also be an ongoing experiment)

Analysis: A couple of things can be deduced from the second experiment: goats on crack wouldn't necessarily be labeled as such. It is, after all, an illegal substance. These goats are just leaping over buildings and ingesting tractors like any "normal" animal does. Or people just assume goats to be on crack and feel no need for labeling them as "crack" would be synonymous to "goat" or "boring" is to "math."

Actually I don't think goats are on crack. Can you imagine being the dealer for a goat? That can't be good for business--they'd blow your cover way too easily:

Dealer: Okay be cool, kid (har), be cool

Then the goat takes coke out of his hand, eats the plastic bag and all in one swift gulp and runs up a tree--runs straight up a sequoia. The drug dealer's looking around, whisper yelling to the goat:

GOAT! KID! GET BACK DOWN HERE, GOAT! THEY'RE GONNA SEE YOU! JUST CHILL THE FUCK OUT AND HEY! WAIT KID! YOU CAN'T FLY! DON'T DO IT!

Then the goat leaps off and flies around a little bit--pretends to do the backstroke through the air. I don't know. Maybe goats are on crack. No opposable thumbs, no real fingers or anything and they manage to get in trees all the time.

Conclusion: Goats...anything that defends itself by butting its head (sacrificing its brain) speaks for itself. Whether or not goats are on crack does not matter; rather their confidence does. That confidence can be put to good use if goats focused a little more. Roach's book also discusses how victims of airplane crashes sometimes survive the impact of the ground but suffocate from poisonous fumes in the fire and the inability to open emergency exits. Where do the crashes always take place? A farm, it seems (aka: where goats live). With a little focus goats could save lives by eating open the emergency exits.

Impossible Desires Made Simple

After giving it a lot of thought, I finally have an answer (that I can remember) to one of those generic questions that puts you on the spot during stupid situations like icebreakers, organized parties, religious gatherings or post-casual sex. And that question is:

If there is one thing you could do in life, what would it be?

And that, quite simply, would be to pet a baby tiger. Or a lion cub. Or a cheetah cub. I'm not picky. The idea is to be able to spend time with one of the big cat cubs. At least four hours. And maybe feed it with a bottle too.

And this desire has become a bit of an obsession for quite some time, being fUnemployed and all.

Whenever I hear Beck's "Paper Tiger" off of his album, Sea Change, I can't sing along without changing the lyrics to, "I want to pet a baby tiger..."

I've fantasized about throwing myself a surprise birthday party where I blindfold myself and drive off to the zoo where I've managed to arrange special access with the zookeepers for myself. They take me into the cub nursery, take off my blindfold and I see five little

tiger cubs tackling each other and then turn, suddenly curious about me, their new visitor. The zookeepers keep their distance, not chiding me like a child about the dangers of these predators, probably because I've given them the evil eye for keeping these cats cooped up and because they see that the cubs like me much better than them, which kind of makes them jealous and wondering if they picked the right career path. They hate cleaning up tiger shit anyway. And by the end of the visit when someone says, "Time's up," and all the cubs are lying against me either napping or purring, and the mother hisses at them when they try to pick me up off the ground with the cubs, they decide to offer me a job, playing with the cubs everyday.

I've hated the "one thing you could do in life" question because it implies the impossibility of ever getting to do that thing. Maybe I won't get a job playing with cubs, but my desire seems simple enough to me. It doesn't call for the accumulation of millions of dollars on anyone's part and major zoos (usually housing one kind of big cat or another) always seem to at least be within a couple of hours distance. So why is it so hard for me to fulfill my wish without developing a terminal illness to enlist the sympathies of the caretakers? Just short of becoming a celebrity or buying a tiger cub I'm not sure what I can do about "doing that one thing in life." Except for, maybe writing a few letters to some zoos. It just might be the perfect fUnemployment project...