Eredien's Journal

No video from yesterday, except about two uninteresting seconds of the world's fattest groundhog. The weather's been rather rainy here, and then my dad just had to mow the lawn at prime fox-gamboling time, and then by the time I got outside at dusk it was so dark the camera was having a really hard time focusing.

But I did see a little head peep out from around the den.

And I sat in the grass for an hour. I am beginning to think I have the makings of a naturalist.

So, I normally like ThinkGeek's products (honestly, who can't like a company that sells things like lightsabers?) But I can't imagine what possessed them (or how legal it is) for them to sell live animals.

They say that these animals are a responsibly-bred offshoot of the Munchkin Cat, but the creation of the Munchkin Cat itself as a new breed has itself been surrounded by so much controversy that I really think it would be irresponsible for ThinkGeek to offer even regular Munchkins, much less a genetically engineered version of the same. If you want a cheap, easy-to-care for item that fits neatly inside your Ikea bookshelf and matches your pillows, you should get a plant, not a cat. Its enclosure isn't even recyclable!
I debated with myself about linking to this product page [warning: disturbing image], because I didn't want to legitimize this by linking to it, but I think it's important to see what we're up against.

How to call ThinkGeek out on their inhumane treatment of cats: I've written ThinkGeek's customer-service email letting them know that I plan on reporting them to the Humane Society, and am posting this so you can, too. Please feel free to copy and paste to your own site.

I am slowly beginning to start reading my lj friends list again, for those of you who were wondering when/if I would start to do this again. It's more of an experiment as to "do I really want to spend time on this?" than anything else, but since it's also one of the main ways my friends and I keep up with each other, keeping up with that is important to me. I just need to get better at skimming, I think.

In other news, I'm sick. I woke up at 6 am today after getting 6 hours of sleep, and then slept until 4 pm with no break. This usually means I'm really sick. I've also been having absolutely horrible headaches, but have remembered to take ibuprofen and they mostly seem to be gone now, as does the ear infection I was working on on Saturday. I *hate* getting my period, which also explains why I cried randomly on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and had trouble sleeping Wednesday evening, without knowing why.

( rant on reproductive health )

For my birthday, I treated myself to a movie Saturday afternoon, Rango [edit: Rango is rated PG], and realized two things:
- I didn't really like Rango. I thought the character design was interesting, and the commentary on water supply and control in urban desert areas was interesting (groundwater policy), and the end-credits had a fun design, but it had a lot of really problematic stereotypes (hicks, Native Americans) which it bought into because it was a movie in the mold of a traditional American Western, and that made the whole movie not really worth it.
- Lots of children's movies that are made with anthro animal characters now are the same movies that would have been made (or were made) with live human actors in the past, and if they were made with live human actors today, they would not get a G rating (I dunno if they'd get a PG rating, either, but in any case Rango was obviously aimed at children). Computer-generated animals can get hurt and have the bad guy fire at them and be trapped in a cell slowly filling with water and almost drown, and computer-generated animal women can be assaulted and threatened by the bad guys with sexual undertones, and computer-generated animals can be stereotypically wise Native Americans or stereotypically uneducated hicks, and it can be funny, and or/dramatic and full of action and shootouts, etc. Whereas if this same movie had been made with human live actors, people would have been more clearly able to see the problematic stereotypes and the violence for what they were, and this movie would have been rated PG-13 at the least. It's really interesting, actually--I found the movie to be a really compelling example of a genre that usually has to be marketed to adult viewers when human actors are used, but can be easily shown to children if all the problematic issues of having humans shoot and assault each other are glossed over by having geckos and snakes and rabbits replace human actors. I realized for the first time that the movie studios are able to market adult plots to children in the guise of anthromoporphic CGI, so they're able to tell stories that they couldn't with human actors in the same roles. (This realization was the reason I kept watching this movie after being disappointed in the stereotyping; indeed it was the stereotyping that led me to this realization). This is good, on one level--kids' movies can have humorous, complicated plots with a lot of drama and quick wit. But on the other hand, why is it so easy for adults and children alike to overlook stereotyping when the actors are groundhogs, as opposed to humans? Then I realized that almost *all* the children's movies I see are about anthro characters. Part of this is the CGI uncanny valley and the long tradition of anthro animals in childrens' fare and the expense of live actors vs CGI, of course, but I think the studios are telling stories with animals in place of humans partly because they can get away with doing things with animals they could never in a million years do with human characters, and still get that G rating and do a lot of merchandising besides.

I am pretty sick today, so I just finished watching some QI episode about animals with lutriss. We started researching strange Madagascar mammals, and from there we were talking about otter shrews, and then fossas, and now I know a lot more about the mechanics of temporary gender switching in female fossas than I ever knew before.