I’ve been quiet lately because I’ve been busy with some changes we’ve made around Casa Mizgala. Guess I’ll just go down the list, but first, we got tweeted by Dog Eat Doug today. SQUEEE!!! He retweets many comics, but it’s still an honour to get noticed! Here’s the Twitter window:
And here’s a new fan because of DeD’s RT:
Continue reading “Weasely updates”
So now they are taking away our clove ciggies all together. Fuckin’ A. Because “flavoured cigarettes are marketed to children”. RIGHT. And what is menthol, then? I think that’s a flavour, too, last time I checked. I’d like to see them ban menthol! There’d be riots in the streets. But since there are so few of us who choose to smoke cloves, we have no political power to stop this silly legislation. And it really pisses me off.
No, it’s not about flavour or marketing, it’s about the $1 billion or so that is made here by the Kretek cigarette industry based in Indonesia. The US cigarette makers are suffering losses from the gains made by the anti-smoking lobbies so the easiest thing to do is ban “flavoured” cigarettes which just happen to be imported. Same thing with Sampoerna. They are still available everywhere else but here, but they cut into Philip Morris’ profit margin, so they had to go.
I want to say for the record:
I did not know cloves existed until I was almost 30 years old.
Much less where to find them. The propaganda that cloves and other imports are aimed at “children” is 100% bullshit. I’ll tell you what every teenager starts smoking with: MENTHOL. My first smoke was a Virginia Slims Light Menthol. All the girls smoked them in the 80s. Then it was Benson & Hedges Light Menthol. We’d smoke anything as long as it was FLAVOURED with MENTHOL. So the US cigarette lobby telling us that they are doing it “for the children” is simply a lie. If anything, MENTHOL is the teen bait, NOT CLOVES.
Clove cigarettes are sought out by those of us who are already smokers but want a more exotic flavour. They are expensive and hard to find and the notion that teenagers will go to the trouble is stupid.
This is just more power grabbing by the federal government. More power to dictate what you do with your life. Remember that movie Demolition Man with Sandra Bullock and Sly Stallone? If you don’t, it was in the future where everything was regulated: speech, food, sex, reproduction, everything. Everything was government run and government approved. Salt was not allowed because “it is bad for you”. Cursing was not allowed because it is bad. You might want to rent it just for the critique of too much government. It’s also pretty funny.
I don’t want the government regulating my life. It offends me to think that this is how far away from our roots we’ve drifted. You want to put sin taxes on smokes and booze? Fine. Do it. But don’t dictate to me what brands I’m allowed to buy. It’s WRONG.
What awesome weather! That means that we’ll be 100º and 100% humidity into October, no doubt. Wah!
It’s been a lovely weekend all round. Caroline and Xia visited yesterday then we just had a quiet night. Today has been futzing around here for me and Nick pressure washed the front porch then washed the cars. Such a sweet boi! I think we’ll order pizza and camp out on the deck for a bit tonite. We *could* go out, but why? Our deck is pretty dang awesome if you ask me!
Tomorrow will be comics and The Porter. Kate needs to measure the bathrooms for the art she’s gonna paint in there. Hopefully it will keep the ghetto assed taggers from tagging all over them like they’ve been doing. I can’t wait to see Kate’s work! It’s gonna be COOL!
I’ve boxed up the old Crescent Moon site and am fixin’ to do the same for IndigoDragon. We are officially changing the name (IndigoDragon Studios) and the direction of our company. The direction will be, of course, COMICS. After the clusterfuck with the Harpies on this last web gig, I’m DONE. No more. I’m retiring from web design.
I am very excited to officially be changing this stuff over. It’s been in the works for a couple of years and it feels good to get rid of the old energy and replace it with new energy. Working on the new logo is SO FUN!
So, that’s where we are. I’m off to order that pizza and crack open a beer. It *is* 5pm, after all! :-)
We got the ultrasound and Doppler (how cool is that?) done yesterday and here is the diagnosis:
DJ does have thickening of the left atria and heart walls and this is causing the blood to squirt into the chamber rather than flow. This causes churn within the heart and the murmur you can hear. It also mixes the venous and arterial blood a little. But it is not heart failure and his prognosis is good.
Here is a nice explanation of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy if you want to know more.
There is no indication of heart failure at this time nor is there any sort of mass in there. What the other vet saw was the severe thickening of the walls of DJ’s heart making the xray obscure. Dr Smallwood put him on a beta blocker to slow his heartbeat a little bit in an effort to allow the heart to relax more and thus reduce the churn of blood in the chamber. It’s an old beta blocker that’s gone generic, so it won’t cost anything. They do not treat for heart murmurs any more unless there are signs of heart failure; this treatment is to reduce how hard the heart is working but does nothing for the murmur. They did studies that showed no improvement at all when a murmur was treated, so they basically just keep a close eye on it until (or IF) cardiac failure starts to show, then they treat it just as you do in humans.
His blood pressure is borderline high but we’re not treating it at the moment. They also drew blood (from his TAIL!!) to check his thyroid and such. The thyroid function is linked to his hypertension but the beta blocker is more for slowing his heart rate than the hypertension.
So, all in all, he’s doing OK. He’s taking a bunch of stuff right now, but it’s mostly supplements, so it’s no biggie.
DJ made quite an impression on the girls at St Francis. They looooved him and fawned over him all day. He flirted with a cute redheaded Dr who said that he can come visit anytime! LOL He’s such a lover, that boy! Everybody loves a squishy orange stripey cat!
We are $577 poorer and will have to do the ultrasound again in Oct ($390) but it’s worth it to know that he’s not showing signs of cardiac failure, just a severe murmur.
I love my DJ and he’s worth every penny. He’s got a bare spot on his chest and his tail and his polka dots are showing, but he seemed blasé about the experience – as usual. He’s doing fine and all’s well for now. :-)
My DJ is not any better. His heart murmur is worse and he is still battling some sort of infection that causes him to stay stuffed up. We waited for almost 2 hours today to see a vet at Dearborn – and she spotted a mass of some kind near his heart in the xrays from last time. The other vet totally missed it. Well, she either totally missed it or didn’t want to say anything. I just want to KNOW so I can keep my emotions in check until I get to the root of the issue. I’m barely hanging onto my shit today… My heart is VERY heavy.
After the thorough exam and looking over the films from 10 wks ago, the vet told me that DJ was definitely throwing “red flags” and she’s very concerned. She said his murmur is the worst she’s EVER heard in a cat – it’s more like a good sized poodle. NOT GOOD. She’s also concerned about the mass… She’s thinking cancer, I know she is. Gods, I hope it’s not that. There’s no coming back from that for a 11.5 year old cat.
So, next week we’re off to St Francis over on Dekalb Ind for his full thorax ultrasound. That will tell us exactly what’s going on with him and if that mass is lymph nodes or cancer or what.
All I know is that DJ is not in pain (other than arthritis) and he’d be a lot happier if he could breathe. We’ve got him on another run of antibiotics to try and beat back the nasal infection and we’ll continue his other meds. He’s always been a lazy boy, but I think the heart murmur has really taken what little zip he had. He sleeps and/or lays down about 95% of the time now. Poor baby!
If everyone would send my sweet old cat some good health vibes, I’d appreciate it.
