As the proud owner of a pink calf, two alien cows, several clumsy reindeer, numerous elf gnomes and a horrifying number of holiday decorations, I can say that what my best friend pointed up the other day is sadly, all too true: I'm a Farmville hoarder.
The ASPCA or 4-H might come and do something to me for animal cruelty. Look how these poor animals are packed in next to Christmas decorations and a thicket of elf gnomes. I am rapidly collecting enough snowmen to make a snowman fence. My holiday tree exploded with presents several days ago. I'm waiting for some type of stern warning from the Farmville crew that I can't cram one single more thing onto my already-largest sized farm.
What is Farmville? An evil Facebook game is what is Farmville. I usually use my computer with the sound off. If I turn the sounds on, comfortingly folksy music plays and the animals make all their barnyard noises. With the number of animals I have - a LOT of barnyard squeals and honks and clucks and oinks. And baaa-baaaa's and mooos and neighs.
Here is just one small corner of the Amy Sterling Farmville Farm. It took me over an hour to harvest, plough, plant and place hoarded items this morning. Down there in the corner you can see the "lighted hedge posts" - those are a new addition, and that snowpile next to the sign? That's got an animated cow in it, and if you're actually on Farmville and visiting my farm, you can see his legs kick. That little brown sign reads "Hoarder!"
I really think I need some type of intervention. It's going to kill me to sell all this stuff off after the holidays. This is like my own holiday stuff. I made a vow two years ago to not buy any new holiday items.
I managed to keep that vow through one holiday season. I was shopping in Borders for Christmas gifts a couple of weeks ago. Their items were on sale! So therefore I brought home another garland, a plastic tree, and an aqua glittery reindeer. At least he's not a "clumsy" reindeer. I keep collecting those because . . . I . . . I'm a hoarder. That's right. My name is Amy . . . and I'm a Farmville Hoarder. I acknowledge that there is a higher power. So I'm right there, at the first step.
As soon as Taz locates another home or moves to the happy home in the sky, I don't think I'm going to re-experience the difficult task of Chihuahua rehabilitation.
Just one visit to an animal shelter in Southern California will show the out-of-control problem that is the unwanted Chihuahua. After the Taco Bell dog and Paris Hilton's chihuahua, everybody wanted one. Movies like Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008) didn't help.
A lot of people use this little guy or girl as an avatar or profile picture. Very cute! But chihuahuas aren't for everyone.
More than even other small breeds, they often suffer from serious health problems. Because they are bred to be so tiny, Chihuahuas are born with a soft fontanel on their skull, like a human baby, that they never completely lose. When extreme, this condition can even turn to hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. Seizures, breathing problems, extreme sensitivity to the cold and many hip and knee problems are also very common.
Chihuahuas are also very stubborn and the "human" or babylike manner in the way many are treated by their owners just exacerbates this problem. Treating the animal like a human baby just makes them an even bigger challenge to train and acclimate to the home under the best of circumstances. Look at this popular You Tube video - the owners and commenters find the dog's behavior cute. At 2-3 pounds, which is what these tiny teacup Chihuahuas weigh, the dog can growl and bite all it wants and it won't do damage except to a baby or toddler, and probably not even then.
But anyone who has trained dogs or knows anything about them knows that a growling dog is a biting dog. A growl is the dog's aggression warning. Dog growls aren't cute or funny - the dog will eventually lash out. A dog that bites a child may no longer be kept in the home, so owners that encourage their Chihuahuas to act like the crabby little stinkers they prefer to be, untrained and supervised, are just looking for heartbreak down the road.
So in this case, they are actually training "stinky" to snap and bite. The dog isn't happy, it's miserable and it's trying to protect its little "nest" or territory.
Those who take on these little dogs and provide them a healthy, loving home are truly taking on a big task for such a small pet. If you visit the Chihuahua Rescue right now, there is another "Taz" on the top of the page who was given up because he bit a child.
Chihuahuas are very social and loving, although they obviously experience strong feelings and can be very jealous of toys, favorite "nests" and their bonded humans. The older they get, the less likely it is they will bond with other, younger pets.
As with all animal rescue situations, it is human foolishness that causes this problem to continue to grow. According to the Chihuahua rescue, more than a million Chihuahuas and other small dogs will be euthanized in the U.S. this year, among more than 6 million total unwanted pets whose lives will end in shelters or abandoned on the streets, in open fields, alleys or parking lots. If you are considering a pet this holiday season, please do not buy your pet from a pet store. While reputable pet shops do exist, they are rare. Most pet stores buy their puppies from puppy mills. The two Chihuahuas I've known (my best friend Cathy previously rehabilitated another little Chihuahua) were both puppy mill puppies. Each experienced severe problems because of their backgrounds and went from bad to worse before they were rescued. Please be very wary and careful in obtaining a puppy from a breeder. Again, while reputable, high quality breeders exist for all breeds of dogs, it should go without saying that if the breeder is selling the animal over the internet and shipping him or her, it will be a puppy mill, with horrible conditions that you probably can't even imagine.
Instead, consider visiting your local Animal Rescue organization. In most areas, reputable organizations conduct adoption fairs every weekend at local stores like PetSmart and PetCo. They also often go to community fairs and events. Breed-specific animal rescues also exist, for every breed imaginable. However, I will caution that the volunteer-oriented nature of these organizations should be obvious. Some rescues are not operated very well - in fact, sometimes they can be associated with "hoarding." However, reasonable contact should let you know whether or not you are dealing with above-board animal lovers, or other types of people. Be prepared to pay for the animal to be spayed or neutered before you take them home. Although there are some people who cling to the mistaken belief that animals should be allowed to breed unchecked, don't be one of them. All of those millions of animals that will be euthanized this year are in that situation because of this dumb human attitude, and also because of unscrupulous, misguided, or just plain bad people who view pets as commodities, seeing them as ways to exploit the animals and make quick cash by selling puppies. When that doesn't work out? Sometimes the best the pets can hope for is to be dumped on the doorstep of the local shelter.
Please research the breed you are interested in and make sure that it will fit with your home and family environment. If you are seldom home, dogs like Chihuahuas or Jack Russell Terriers aren't the best choice as they are sociable and need regular attention. In fact, cats may be better pets for apartment-dwellers or those who may be gone for more than 8 hours at a time.
At this summer's SCBWI conference in Los Angeles, I was waiting for my car to be delivered by the valet, and they actually brought it just prior to Sherman Alexie's car, and he'd been waiting much longer than I had. Talking with him for a few moments, I was reminded of the fact that truly great people are always humble and warm. I won't retell the story, but suffice it to say that somebody didn't recognize Sherman as Sherman, and for him being confused with some guy off the sidewalk and "not the Conference keynote speaker," he handled it better than anybody I've ever seen. Which is to say, I realized that Sherman the man is as marvelous as Sherman the writer. Rare, true. But it exists. Most of the great writers I've known have been absolutely beautiful people.
Now, visiting Sherman's website, www.fallsapart.com, I found a long list of "how to contact Sherman" for virtually anything anyone could imagine. At the bottom of this page, which includes contact methods for kids in school (and I know that writers like Sherman that are assigned frequently in school are bombarded by requests for anything you can imagine, from 'Please write my report for me' to multipage requests for answers to highly specific questions about authors . . . who are not the authors they are writing, and may even be deceased, such as Mark Twain). All of the instructions and the long list are based upon the plural "we" and they are all about protecting Sherman. I support that cause.
This is all by way of saying, please, for five minutes, I would like to have somebody, sometime . . . protect me. Thank you. Here is a link to one of Sherman's new poems. It's about coffee, and it's cool.
First off, hats off to Wikipedia for a great English-language Bete d'Gevaudan article. After previously reading the reliable (not) "cryptid" information that the 18th century French "Beast of Gevaudan" attacks were potentially caused by miraculously late-surviving Eocene predators called mesonychids, such as Andrewsarchus, I featured this in July. I learned about the "Beast" after reading about wolf attacks as part of research for "To Love the Difficult," which will be in Panverse 2. The story is science fiction, by the way, although "wolf attack" might sound like fantasy.
Second, I'm getting all this incoming "Beast of Gevaudan" because of the History Channel MonsterQuest show about the "Beast of Gevaudan."
So . . . here is a WikiCommons picture of a happy tourist with a locally (Gevaudan, France) created sculpture of the beast.
Recognizing that there must be some type of show on about the "Beast," I was quick to TiVo the show and watched much of it last night. It featured a "cryptozoologist" and a retired police detective (homicide), I believe. The previous MonsterQuest I watched and liked was the undying classic "Hogzilla." Who wouldn't watch that? Hogzilla was probably somebody's former hog, grown way out of proportion and way fugly-hogly.
Anyway, together these two came up with the theory that the Beast was in fact, a two-part monster. The animal part was somebody's exotic pet hyena, somehow trained by the person who historically has been said to have shot the Beast to death with a silver bullet, Jean Chastel. They actually went to a zoological museum somewhere in France (Paris?) and saw stuffed animals from the period, among which were hyenas, which the curator said were basically hybrids and taxidermological fix-ups of several animals in one specimen. He seemed quite willing to say that the Beast was a hyena and showed them several choices, including a long-haired one that looked pretty nasty. They then spent 10 minutes showing how real hyenas crush and eat big bones and pointed up their general viciousness.
So guess what? Amy has a lousy working knowledge of several languages, which means, she can read the French Wikipedia article and compare it to the English version. First of all, the English Wikipedia states that the several beasts (more than one) were wolflike upon being shot and killed, and were thought by most at the time to be wolf-dog hybrids. How big were they? Hmn. The French Wiki says the animals that were killed, including the official Gevaudan Chastel-shot beast, were 140 and 110 pounds - really big for wolves.
Interestingly, the French Wiki also quotes Simon de Ballainvilliers, the superintendent of the province of Auvergne, where Gevaudan was located (I don't think it is a currently-used jurisdiction). M. Ballainvilliers wrote in his report, "Jean Chastel, a native, killed an animal which appeared to be a wolf, but a wolf extraordinary and quite different by his figure and his proportions from the wolves that one sees in this country." This fits - big wolf-dog hybrid. And, if one believes the curator of the museum where the hyenas were located, the hyena was well-known at the time, and there were exotic specimens brought in by various members of the nobility. He had the preserved, stuffed trophies to prove it. So, certainly m. Ballainvilliers would have known if the deceased beast was L'Hyenne - or a hyena. Religious figures at the time called the beast (in langue d'oc - "animal") a "plague" sent by God. But they, like, hadn't seen it. The first formal suggestion that the Beast was a hyena seems to have appeared in an 1819 booklet that also suggested several other exotic, or even extinct, animals. The official contemporary description of the beasts that were killed was "wolves," which we all know to be "loup," eh? Yes, "loup-garou" otherwise known as French-Canadian werewolf. That said, guess what else the French Wiki points up? No remains of the killed "wolves" or "betes" were kept. So, no, the hyena didn't have parts of the Beast. It was just a stuffed hyena. Abel Chevalley and Henri Pourrat are identified in the French Wiki as the originator of the theory that the Beast was an exotic animal that was trained by a person, and that the trainer was either Chastel (fingered in the MonsterQuest show) or Francois-Charles Morangies, the noble who employed Chastel and who supposedly had the deadly menagerie to begin with. The silver bullet, and the hyena, appear to have both been added later on.
There is no way to know if Chastel did train a wolf-dog hybrid, but he probably did not train a hyena. He also probably didn't use a silver bullet at all - something that was included in later fictionalizations, not in contemporary accounts. The beast also popped up many places, and over the course of almost 100 years, yet descriptions did vary, and at least two wolflike animals were killed, one very large, the other pretty darned good-sized. As someone who has seen coyote-dog hybrids and can attest to their substantial size (80-100 pounds), a wolf hybrid would look unusual, be large, and this is what these were. Several wolves, the product of several different large domestic dog, and wolf matings in this area. Let this be a warning: don't unquestioningly believe what you see on Monster Quest. None of them can speak or read a lick of French.
"If a train leaves St. Louis traveling at 60 mph, and another train leaves New York traveling at 45 mph, how far will each train travel before they collide in Cleveland?" Uh . . .
Thanks to fellow SCBWI member Michelle Markel, I've learned that math problems have a long, honorable, and maybe even interesting history. Michelle's adorable new book is called Tyrannosaurus Math. Michelle obviously does all these marvelous things that I do not do. Like: book signings, school visits, and . . .
I'm going to do one today, which is to provide delight.
Susan Boyle was a delightful child!
Out of something negative (people searching for Susan Boyle having Down Syndrome, which she does not have), something delightful:
MTV "How's Your News" with differently-abled reporters . . .
And the Elizabethan math word problem is: "A drunkard drinketh a barrel of beer in the space of 14 days, and when his wife drinks with him then they drink it out within ten days. In what space will his wife drink that barrel alone . . ."
Like everybody else, I saw the "Why Dogs Hate Halloween" internet meme . . . several times! My best friend Cathy was really impressed by the spider dog (I use the term "impressed" loosely). As an animal lover (Cathy is too), it's hard to say whether or not the tradition of dressing one's dog in a Halloween costume is extreme cruelty, or just a ridiculous idea.
I actually found the original photographer - it's true, I have seen this picture myself dozens of times and seen it used as an avatar or to tell a joke. CA from Colorado took the picture in 2005. Look for thousands of other great pictures she has taken on Flickr.
However, I can't find the original "owners" of the following amazing canine superheroes - or are they villains?
Count Dogula, and his "bride". Groom. Er. They're both chihuahuas.
Scareee!
Rambo the Terrier.
Dog Vader. (Another pug! Boy do they get the bulk of the costume action!).
Long Dog Silver . . .
Look at their little faces!
And doggone it - he's gone bananas (pumpkin - Halloween, get it)?
From what I can see, pugs are the most likely dog to be dressed up for Halloween, with chihuahuas running a close second.
This animal trainer indicates it's only cruel if the intention is to harm, bully or coerce the animal - but she admits - she has no idea what the animals are thinking (she has a few costumes and outfits for her chihuahua). Most of these PetCo pet owners don't seem to think it's cruel. These guys? Most think it's okay too, with a few vehement opponents.
This mom seems to have spread the fun - or pain? - around quite a bit.
The large Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest has burned more than 140,000 acres since it began six days ago. The fire is more than a frightening natural disaster. It is occurring under unusual weather conditions for such a large fire. Usually, in Southern California, fires begin and spread during "Santa Ana" weather conditions. I grew up with these winds, and they've been famously memorialized in literature by Raymond Chandler and other writers. The nature of the winds is such that they go naturally hand-in-hand with crime, unease and - well - I hate to give people ideas, but they could be associated with supernatural behavior, as the full moon goes with the werewolf.
Now, however? There is no wind. The air is still and dull. The fire has been burning steadily in the heavy vegetation of the backcountry in the Angeles National Forest. Countless animals have likely died in the conflagration, while others are fleeing the fire even as I type. Two firefighters lost their lives Saturday while trying to find an escape route for a fire camp that was threatened by the fire.
This is a good picture of how the fire looked during its early stages. The sky was still and blue with the smoke rising straight up. The smoke formed a pure white mushroom cloud, looking eerily like pictures of atomic blasts.
Much of the countryside that the fire is threatening is equestrian country. Just as with other big fires of recent years, Pierce College, where I used to teach, has been opened up for horses that need to be boarded until the fire is out. The "black sky" seen behind the horses is typical of what happens during the day when the fire is at its peak. Most of the animals that are being evacuated are terrified and must be carefully handled and kept as calm as possible.
This is a picture of mushroom cloud #1 looking northwest from Monterey Park - a distance of approximately 35 miles. Yesterday afternoon, there were two mushroom clouds, one from the Acton area off I-5 and the 14 Freeway, and the other closer to where the fire originated, in the Angeles National Forest above La Crescenta and Glendale.
This is super-heavy backcountry, despite its relative closeness to downtown Los Angeles. Unlike the San Bernardino mountains that are farther to the east, there are no settled communities of any size in the Angeles National Forest. The Angeles Crest Highway (2) that runs through the forest is narrow and difficult to drive, unlike the large highways that have been built going up from San Bernardino to the mountain resorts of Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear.
The reason that the fire is burning so strongly and is "out of control" at present, is that the backcountry in this area hasn't burned for 50 or 60 years. Brush is at least 50% comprised of dead plant material. When the big trees go up, they go up like torches, and a lot of the brush is "oily" and also goes up as if there is an accellerant in the fire. The brush is extremely dry and dead because of the severe drought that Southern California has been experiencing. With temperatures over 100 and zero humidity, the fire found an ideal condition and is nearly impossible to fight as long as it's in the rugged backcountry, and that is exactly where it is burning right now.
In researching what sorts of severe fires have been recorded, and what their causes were, I came across a piece of American history that I had never heard of. I had of course heard of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and "Mrs. O'Leary's cow" that started it all. On the very same day, an enormous fire broke out in Wisconsin that destroyed 2,400 square miles of countryside and killed thousands of people. The Peshtigo fire was apparently the worst fire disaster in recorded American history. It was ten times the size of the current Station Fire. In 2003 and 2007, fires burning 200,000 acres occurred in San Diego County, costing many homes and a number of lives. Each time, unique weather patterns are identified as contributing to the fires. The Peshtigo fire was apparently fed by a huge "cyclone storm" that appeared over the Great Plains, and it didn't go out until it reached the shore of Lake Michigan.
It's hard to believe that forest fires can be "good," but a series of smaller fires can indeed be good in preventing the type of giant conflagration that is now sweeping through the Angeles National Forest. With decades of old, dead growth that is bone-dry, this disaster was just waiting to happen. So far, the cause is unknown, but with weather being as hot and dry as it has been lately, anything could have started this fire, just as it is feeding itself on anything it comes across. I know the backcountry that the fire is sweeping through. One horrible effect of these recent fires is that Southern California's forests are truly being eliminated. Between the drought, poor air quality, and the fires - there will be few big trees left, if any. The big Peshtigo fire in Wisconsin was said to be contributed to by human activity, including poor logging practices, and leaving dry brush and branches behind in large areas. The same is true for this fire, although it's a combination of Smokey Bear's "no forest fires" warnings, and the drought that is surely a product of global climate change.
I know coconut crabs are real, because I remember Anthony Bourdain eating reasonably-sized coconut crabs during his Tahiti episode. Coconut crabs get bigger than the average-sized ones that his friends cooked for him and which he ate with relish.
A lot bigger.
This is a famously-emailed REAL picture of a giant coconut crab going for something yummy in the trash.
They get up to 3 feet in diameter and I'm not sure how much they can weigh. They are the largest terrestrial arthropod - i.e., the biggest thing with a soft body inside a hard shell on land today. The crab's size is probably about as big as any similar creature can get. Researchers have discovered that the great age of arthropods was the Carboniferous period, where higher concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere led to gigantic creatures that would give anybody today the very worst nightmares.
Today, with less oxygen, trashcan-size is about it.
So, here is another giant coconut crab eating what he likes best: a coconut. From what I hear, the flesh of these crabs is very sweet and does have a coconut flavor.
They range throughout the Pacific islands, but the best mentions I saw of them were from the Marianas. I am a very poor geographer, but I got curious enough to look up the Mariana islands, and learned a lot - and realized that this is where Saipan is - and not Japan! (Duh! - my sincere apologies to all the lucky residents of this beautiful place).
For an internet-popular animal (the trashcan picture has circumnavigated the globe many times), there isn't a lot of information about coconut crabs, except they aren't dangerous, they like coconut, and they get really big. I would be very remiss if I did not link to Giant Crab. That's all that website is - ads and dozens of pictures of enormous crabs.
Anyway, how big were giant arthropods "back in the day" that today, gives us Exxon Mobil, paraffin, Coleman lanterns, and axle grease? Well right now, the record is held by this 8-foot giant sea scorpion, Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, recently reported on by British scientists.
bookviewcafe.com - Home An ever-changing daily feast of fictional opportunities for your hearts and minds. Featuring Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff Brenda Clough Katie Daniel Laura Anne Gilman Christie Golden Anne Harris Sylvia Kelso Katharine Eliska Kimbriel Sue Lange Ursula K. Le Guin Rebecca Lickiss Vonda N. McIntyre Nancy Jane Moore Pati Nagle Darcy Pattison Irene Radford Madeleine Robins Amy Sterling Jennifer Stevenson Susan Wright Sarah Zettel
Virginia Baker Ginny Baker is a super writer and this is an exciting, original, extremely cool Jack the Ripper piece of mysterious Victoriana.
Algis Budrys: Hard Landing (Questar Science Fiction) My adored A.J. - passed away June 9, 2008. This is my personal favorite book of his, and is the novel most recently published (1993). You will need to order a used copy of this small Warner paperback. It is of the highest literary quality. I am so grateful that I told him that in hard, solid writing - as soon as I'd read it.
Amy Sterling Casil: Imago (Alan Rodgers Books) My first novel. Compared in reviews to "the best spirit of primo early Philip K. Dick" and "Amy writes like Ray Bradbury on real sci-fi."
Amy Sterling Casil: Without Absolution My first collection - short fiction and poetry - from 1998 to 2000. Does not include "To Kiss the Star," but does include "Jonny Punkinhead." With introduction by James P. Blaylock.
Book View Cafe Authors: Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls The mind tells the story--but the heart inspires it with dreams of what might be waiting Out There. With evocative stories of lost comrades, alien first contacts, and strange, often unexpected confrontations with evolving science, Rocket Boy And The Geek Girls embraces both our pulp-dream past and cutting-edge future.
Thirteen authors (fifteen if you count pseudonyms) from the Book View Café got together one rainy Saturday afternoon with a big bowl of popcorn and reruns of Buck Rogers. They started comparing short stories and a new anthology took form.
Rare reprints, hard-to-find favorites and new tales all combine in this one-of-a-kind story collection, available exclusively from Book View Press.
What happens when thirteen authors get to giggling over implausible titles for the collection? They choose the most illogical and then they have to write something to go with it. So, yes, there are three flash fiction versions of Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls.
Stories by: Vonda N. McIntyre, Brenda W. Clough, Katharine Kerr, Judith Tarr, P.R. Frost, Pati Nagle, Madeleine Robins, Nancy Jane Moore, Sarah Zettel, Amy Sterling Casil, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Stevenson, Sylvia Kelso, C.L. Anderson, and Irene Radford
