After seeing the movie Star Trek for the fourth time, I realized one of the things I like about it comes from my own childhood experience.  Like Spock getting ridiculed for being part human, when I was in the third grade I was teased mercilessly for being like "Spock" because I have one pointed ear. (Yes it really is and no it's not been worked in Photoshop). It looks less dramatic now than it did when I was a kid.  But it is definitely not your run-of-the-mill normal person ear.   Here is a webcam picture to help illustrate.  

In the movie, seeing the depiction of children from another world carrying out taunts against one who is different makes me realize how in actuality real people (as opposed to characters in a movie) understand that such child dynamics go on all the time.   When I was a kid I didn't think anyone knew that kids were doing such mean things to each other (or particularly, me).  Of course, now, I believe that being different as a kid helped me to see difference as something to embrace and diversity as a source of strength.  It probably also explains my love of sci-fi as a genre.  So two cheers for pointed ears.
 

It won't surprise anyone who knows me that I saw the new Star Trek film twice opening weekend; once on a regular screen and once on an IMAX screen.  (The IMAX screen is worth the couple of extra bucks IMHO.  After seeing it the first time, I knew I really liked it even though I felt unsettled by it. 

I got home after the first viewing and began to hunt for other people's reactions, especially hardcore fans.  I was so surprised to find so much resistance to the film.  I kept seeing all this language calling it a "reboot"  While, I guess there is a certain truth to this idea of a "reboot," that idea was established as a possibility well within the first season of TOS.  

The Enterprise and her crew experience in the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" the exact same circumstance as what happens in the movie Star Trek.  The Enterprise is orbiting a planet that is emitting waves of time distortion and causing turbulence for the ship.  After Sulu is injured on the bridge, Bones revives him with a substance call Cordresine.  But just after, during a wave of turbulence, Bones accidentally injects himself with the remaining Cordresine and becomes temporarily mad and escapes to the planet's surface.

Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty and other crew, beam down to retrieve him.  They find a donut-shaped object at the center of the time distortions. It announces to them that it is the Guardian of Forever.  It is a portal through time. Bones manages to evade capture and leaps through the portal.  Immediately thereafter, all contact is lost with the Enterprise.  The Guardian tells Kirk and crew that time has changed and that all they knew and all their futures are gone - changed.  

By going into the Earth's past, Bones becomes a random element of change and alters the course of human history. Of course, in this episode, Kirk and Spock also leap through the portal to rescue Bones and prevent him from changing the past successfully restoring their timeline.  But had they not been successful, the result would have been exactly what happened in the Star Trek movie; an altered future.

In using the actual mythology of TOS, the creators of the latest film have managed truly to stick with the Star Trek universe as it was created by Roddenberry and managed to clear the slate for new stories.  I think fans, if they believe in the mythology of TOS, must accept, logically if you will, that the events of the new movie are within the consistency of what has been possible all along.

It just so happens that each time the Enterprise and her crew have tinkered with time travel it's always gone right. Now, we've seen a story about what happens when time travel fails. Just as any story that glorifies warring/fighting, there is a price to pay.  We know what the ugly side of fighting and warring is: death and destruction.  But we've never been forced to face up to the reality of tinkering with time; until now.

Back in the 80's I was an avid fan of dial-up bulliten board systems (BBSs).  For those of you who don't remember or know what that was, it was a small system probably run from someone's basement that you could dial directly into to download software, or music, or information.  You could chat with others and post messages in threaded topics.  But this was all happening long before the widespread adoption of PCs and OSs such as Windows or Mac OS.  

I spent hours dialed into these various BBSs and had tons of "friends" whom I never actually met.  Time passed and by the time I left college and had started working, the Internet was well on its way and the old style, local dial-up BBSs faded away.  Some of them continue but are essentially Internet portals.  Much of the energy of the old BBSs went into developing the web.

Also back in the day was an extremely popular commercial BBS called CompuServe.  I worked for CompuServe briefly in 1990 at the peak of their heyday. Other online service providers were cropping up and arrogant CompuServe was unconcerned about the competition.  A short time later Prodigy and then AOL would topple CompuServe's long dominance as the leading commercial BBS system in the world.

All this thoughts about the history of the BBS have been rumbling through my head now, after having joined Facebook, a few months ago.  I am utterly uninterested in Facebook.  I tried, really I did.  But it feels like I've been through this before; like when I was sixteen using the little dial-up BBSs.  The non-geeks amongst us are just discovering 30 years later the pleasure and joy of an online community.  I think participation in such a community is a good thing.  But it does take energy, dedication and time.  I had more of those things when I was in my late teens / early 20's.

 It's hard to believe that 30 years have passed since I first logged into a BBS. But it's even harder to believe that idea of the BBS has finally blossomed for the masses; for people who seemed utterly unlikely to ever understand me and my interests in online communities all those years ago.  I think it's a good thing. 

I'm so bummed. We were supposed to leave for Tucson this Thursday, but alas, I'm ill and so we cancelled the trip. I canceled our hotel reservations and our evening of observing at Kitt Peak. Hopefully we'll return this fall. I think we are considering a trip to Albequerque, Santa Fe or Taos instead. It would be good to check out some different cities. I just love Tucson so much, it's hard not to keep going back there.

Our two black cats, Lois and Clark, both failed ECG tests last autumn. Clark's follow-up echocardiogram showed mild left-sided cardiomyopathy. Lois just went in for her echocariogram yesterday. I'm so happy. The results came back normal. So no more aspirin therapy for Lois.

Clark's therapy includes a 12.5mg dose of Atenelol dailiy and one enteric-coated baby aspirin twice a week, on Monday and Thursday. He'll continue to have followup echos to see if his disease process is stablizing or changing and getting worse.

In case you are wondering, aspirin can be toxic in cats, so don't give them any except under the advice of a vet. Apparently, they metabolize aspirin very slowly. One baby aspirin has a half-life of 72 hours in a cat. Hence the three day interval between dosing.

These pair of black cats, brother and sister, are approaching their 10th birthday in March. I adpoted them from the The Humane Society of St. Louis in May of 1997. Technology for animals has improved greatly in the last ten years.

A small piece of unsolicited advice: think about getting baseline ECGs for your little beasts. The test is inexpensive and it captures a baseline from which comparisons can be made if problems occur later. I think our vet charges seventeen bucks per cat. They do a great job prescreening for heart problems in cats.

I thought I stumbled into a genuine miracle with these Pill Pockets. But as of today, officially, Teep informed me that no matter how tasty the Pill Pockets are, she will not eat another as long as there is anti-biotic powder mixed in.

I can't say I blame her. Unfortunately, I can't explain that to her either. I have tried. But the little beasts are much better at communicating with me than I am with them. I tried to explain that I didn't choose the medicine, the vet did. Stil, I had to scruff her and pill her by hand with the wet, partially chewed, uneaten bits of antibiotic-laden Pill Pocket.

I respect and admire our vet. She's worked through some really difficult issues with our little beasts over the years. But, as with human doctors, vets don't always see beyond the treatment or the issues the treatments create. For example, sometimes we have to isolate one cat from the others, sometimes we have to feed them different food for long periods of time, sometimes we have to sprinkle noxious, horrible-tasting powder into their food and pretend it's a treat.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why these things are requested. I also understand, from a scientific, medical and troubleshooting perspective, why they are sometimes necessary. But sometimes, it's too much. Unlike, a vet, we don't get to practice veterinary procedures often enough to carry them out well. If I could give a cat a pill easily, I wouldn't have to trick her and hide it in her food.

These things create stress for us and stress for the animals. I would like veterinary schools to teach more about options and alternatives to create healing and wellness without creating new stress related issues. I would like all doctors, MDs and Vets, to remember that the patient's needs often go beyond that of the specific illness or treatment at hand.

In the case of Teep Teep, the risk of a bad outcome is non-compliance with an anti-biotic. Not such a good thing. I guess I'm going to have to call and have a chat to see what our options are. I've looked up Clindamycin in Clinical Pharmacology, and sure enough, it does not come in a pill (tablet) form, only in a capsule (with powder) or liquid. Maybe the vet is strapped with few options at this point as well.

One last bit to vent about. Where is the pharmacuetical industry in all of this? Surely there's a pretty penney to be made formulating tiny pet-mouthed sized pills? Granted some of the pills happen to be small enough. But right now, cutting an aspirin sized tablet into fourths accurately is quite a task.

Either I get it right or the pill crumbles and I've wasted a third of the prescription. I'd pay double to get four small pills in the correct dosage for a given weight. I'm practically throwing away that much now in wasted, crumbling tablets. We spend billions of dollars on our pets each year. Surely there's a market for pet pharmacueticals?

Hello Glaxo-Smith-Kline, you're in my freakin' back yard! Be a good capitalist, help me consume. I'm begging you.

I would be remiss if I posted only one message today and it was about my sick cat. Today is my Dad's 63rd birthday. Happy Birthday Dad!

I am notoriously bad for not sending birthday cards. My brain is simply not wired for date specific events. I think about my friends' and family's birthdays regularly, but not always on their actual birthdays. I generally am aware of an approaching birthday about two or three weeks in advance. Then I spend lots of energy trying to find ways to remember. I buy a card, I sign it, I seal it, I address it, I put a stamp on it, and then I carry it around for days and days until 1) I lose it or 2) it gets buried with all the other papers I carry around and I forget to send it.

This is not about excuses. What I wrote above hopefully simply explains why I have such a bad track record. I have a really sweet family who always send me cards. I am just kind of stupid about it and need, no, would like, to improve a bit. Maybe this is a start. I tried making an e-xmas card this year. I'm not sure how successful it was. I have to keep luring people here. I'm afraid they arrive here and read a bit, fall asleep, and never see the cards.

Maybe I should just keep my e-trap shut and simply wish my Dad Happy Birthday, eh?

Here's to you Dad! Happy 63rd and thanks for everything. I hope you have a great Birthday and many more to come.

love,

-mark

Teep-Teep received her diagnosis last night. Although we originally thought she had a bad case of feline acne, it was something else. Feline acne often shows up on the chin and looks like little crusty dirt; which is exactly what her chin looked like. When she began to exhibit malaise and lethargy, we realized something else was going on. The vet ordered blood work and took skin scrapings revealing a Malassezia infection, a kind of yeast infection. Unfortunately, the treatment for a fungal infection takes a long time to work.

The vet prescribed Clindamycin, an anti-biotic, and Ketoconazole, an anti-fungal. Teep has to take the anti-biotic for a month and the anti-fungal for three months. This presents a bit of a problem with travel plans spousy and I made months ago. Some good friends of ours participate in a little cat care co-op with us. We each watch each other's cats when we travel; except of course when we travel together, but that's a different problem and story. Anyway, as we learned with our recent trip to Tulsa, despite most parents' best efforts, it's probably easier for strangers to give candy to children than it is for friends to give cats treats.

Our male cat, Clark, affectionately known by family and friends as "Big Kitty," takes Atenelol for mild, left-sided cardiomyopathy. Because of a miracle product, Pill Pockets, it's been relatively easy to administer medication to the little beasts. As it turns out, even though Clark happily takes his pill when it's hidden in a Pill Pocket, he's only willing to take it from me.

When we were in Tulsa, our friends called us fretting because they couldn't get Big Kitty to take his medicine. They tried a number of sure-fire schemes; shaking the snack bag, calling out the words, "snack time," but nothing worked. We talked it over and decided on a far-fetched, last ditch effort using a speakerphone. They called me using our house speakerphone. They placed it in the center of the room with Big Kitty.� I was then supposed to talk to Big Kitty as though I were right there and entice him into eating his treat.

So there I was in the spare room of spousy's mom's house hundreds of miles away talking into my tiny cell phone using my best falsetto kitty voice trying to coax Big Kitty to eat one little gooey snack.

It worked. Actually it worked frighteningly well.

Although he resisted my friend's attempts to feed him for almost twenty minutes, it took less than two minutes of me screeching on a speakerphone tp convince him the snack was being genuinely offered.

I would be flattered but this adds another level of complexity to increasingly difficult cat care. Now Teep joins in the mix. Teep makes the issues with Big Kitty seem relatively simple. To illustrate, the statement, "Teep is a difficult cat to handle" would easily win a national understatement of the year competition. Teep can be difficult for most people to pet let alone feed or pill.

Spousy and I sometimes imagine moving to another city. One of those places is Tucson, Arizona. The last time we vacationed there, we heard stories of large predatory birds that swoop down, seemingly from out of nowhere, and steal beloved little desert-lawn pets for dessert. The mere idea horrifies me almost to the point of scratching Tucson off the "acceptable places to live" list - almost. But even so, I must admit, that if I had to bet on the outcome of a battle between Teep and a large predatory bird, I'd take odds on Teep any day. I might even feel a bit sorry for the bird. That would be one hell of a chicken dinner for Teep. And she doesn't even like chicken.

But once again, Pill Pockets comes to the rescue. I should point out that I do not work for Pill Pockets, own stock in Pill Pockets, or have any other special interest in Pill Pockets beyond the simple fact that they work. They are little soft treats with a hole in them. They feel like Play-Doh. You pop the pill in and squeeze the top of the pocket sealing the pill in.

They come in two flavors, well for me, smells; bad and bad. If they taste as strong as they smell, it probably explains why the cats like them so much. On a day when everyone gets medicine I end up handling them quite a lot which requires a little handwashing afterwards. It's not a smell you want lingering on your hands for long. Here's the Pill Pocket routine in action.

For Teep, the Ketoconazole is just a quarter of a tablet. That works great with the Pill Pockets. Plop the quarter pill in and squeeze. But the anti-biotic is a capsule filled with powder. Not so easy. The vet wanted me to "sprinkle" an opened capsule onto some wet food to entice her to take her medicine. Unfortunately, 1) Teep doesn't like wet food, and 2) She really doesn't like wet food that has anti-biotic powder sprinkled all over it. I never realized how much powder is in one of those capsules, by the way. But I think I've found a method to cope with this.

I opened one capsule to try to fill a pill pocket and there was no way all the powder would fit in a single pocket. Instead, I smashed two pockets together and flattened them into a little pancake in my hand. I sprinkled the powder over the pancake and then kneaded the pancake along with the medicine like I was making a tiny loaf of bread. Once the medicine was incorporated, I broke the dough into four little snack size pieces. Teep ate them, not without hesitation, but ate them nonetheless.

Now how to get all the beasts to take candy from strangers. Difficult.