For the final task, some of the fired celebrities were brought back to help and, heaven help me, Aubrey O’Day was among them.  I cannot stand her and her selfish ways.  Couldn’t we have just one episode without Aubrey in it?  No, we couldn’t.  That red hair was in every episode.  Gah!

Now, please enjoy the duet by Clay Aiken and Arsenio Hall performed live on the finale.  It’s quite a good performance.

Mick Jagger hosting Saturday Night Live on May 19, 2012.
Who else could make that jacket look good?

I’ve never considered Mick a handsome man (same with Steven Tyler), but I think he’s aging very well.  If he’s had a facelift, I don’t see it.  His lips are no longer thick.  He just looks like a Mick Jagger that’s pushing 70 and I think that’s awesome!  Steven, on the other hand, not so much.  Although, big kudos to Mr. Tyler for his staying power and other awesomeness.  Lastly, to the youngsters…  this song isn’t what made Mick Jagger famous.

This is what did that.

Howard Stern on America’s Got Talent

Howard Stern is one of the icons of my generation.  He can be horribly rude, disrespectful, and sexist toward women when it suits him for ratings as part of a show.  But!  He is also incredibly talented and a genius among men.  Yeah, I’m a Howard Stern fan…  as long as he’s not doing the women thing.  I’m almost embarrassed to admit it because most people I know can’t get past the women thing and can’t stand him.

He’s got a brand new job as Judge on the television show America’s Got Talent.  As I expected he would be, Howard is totally awesome in that role.  He’s friendly, kind, compassionate, excited, supportive, and just fun to watch.  This is the side of Howard Stern that I love.  He’s 58 now (I remember his 40th birthday party) and looks his age.  His hair is shorter and he wears glasses because he needs them, not because they’re cool.  Like the rest of my generation, he’s getting old.  But he still kicks ass!

Just for the record, I tried the sample of Honest Kitchen and they wouldn’t even taste it.  It’s a powder that needs water added to make a paste thing and they just are not interested.  Can’t say I blame them.  So, no more Honest Kitchen.

Now that the food situation is settling down, I have a brand new problem.  Apollo displayed sudden aggression about 2 1/2 weeks ago that got him a trip to the vet to see if there was anything medically wrong with him.  Luke and his butt biting tendencies finally found the end of Apollo’s rope.  Best I can figure, Luke bit Apollo’s butt one time too many and Apollo turned around and bit Luke on the face.  Luke’s got a puncture wound above his left eye, which got HIM a trip to the vet.  They both that antibiotic shots.  The vet sold me some Feliway diffusers to put around the house to hopefully calm all the cats enough that they can be around each other without snarling, growling, and hissing.  Apollo is currently in seclusion in my master bedroom suite.  He loves it in there and the Feliway has helped calm his aggression.  He’s a very happy kitty now.  He loves having his own digs.

I’ll try to report more on this as it develops.  And sorry that all of my posts have been about cats lately.  This isn’t a cat blog, it’s just that the cats are a major issue right now.

The dry food of choice is Wysong Epigen.  It’s got meat in it, where other dry foods are made with mostly corn meal.  This isn’t the most ideal way I can feed them, but it’s working pretty well so far.  The fact is that the diet changing thing isn’t the most important cat situation at the moment.

There have been some aggression issues the last couple of weeks.  Apollo finally snapped and retaliated against Luke for all the times Luke bit him in the butt.  It took two trips to the vet to make sure Apollo is ok because sudden aggression can often have a medical cause.  Second trip was for Luke’s eye where Apollo bit Luke’s face.  Luke’s got a round about half an inch above his left eye.

Both cats got antibiotic shots and a Feliway diffuser.  Apollo is kept in our suite area, while the other three have the rest of the house.  Apollo has shown much improvement in his own room with his own stuff and the Feliway.  It has really calmed him a lot.  Three more of the Feliway diffusers are the way.  Once they arrive and get installed all over the house, I’ll give the other three a chance to experience its calming effects.  After that, we’ll get serious about reintroducing Apollo into the rest of the household.

He first refused to eat the Temptations treats, which is something I never thought I’d see.  Apparently, the freeze-dried chicken treats are his preference now.  I settled down with him, some treats, and a can of Fancy Feast chicken and liver classic cat food.  It’s the mush kind that they don’t always like.  I gave him a couple of treats, then started dipping them in the cat food.  It reminds me of bean dip.  He was happy to eat the treat with dip and I was even more happy to see him do it.  He even started eating just the cat food or eating it before the treat.  He ate a good bit of the food in the can…  enough to get full and walk away.  It was just so great to see him full and content on healthy food.  We did the same thing tonight and had good results again.  I’m more hopeful for my Baby Luke now.  We might pull this off after all.

The issue with freeze-dried treats is becoming more of a problem.  Luke and Leia love them with almost an obsessive fervor.  Luke is very strong willed and wants to eat only the treats.  He’s been snubbing everything I put down for him if it’s not freeze-dried chicken or turkey.  All three have lost weight and none were overweight to begin with.  Luke and Leia show the loss the most because they have short hair and it’s more visible on them.  They haven’t lost anything around the ribcage or on the back, but they’ve lost enough around their tummies that it has a sunken appearance.  Which I do not like.

It started reminding me of my cat, Cocoa.  She was part of my family during my first marriage in the 1980s.  My ex-husband had big issues with overweight females, which included me and Cocoa.  When we divorced, Cocoa stayed with him because she had always been his favorite cat.  He promptly put her on a strict diet to make her lose weight.  And she did, but the poor kitty was hungry all the time.  It broke my heart when I would see her because she would be crying for food.  I couldn’t understand why he was so cold hearted about it, but then he used to tell me to “just stop eating” to lose weight.  Yeah, a real supportive guy.  Cocoa died a few months later from heart problems that resulted from the drastic and fast weight loss.  I should have brought her with me when I moved out.  Since then I’ve felt that I would have preferred to have her overweight, happy, and alive instead of thinner, hungry, and dead.  Anyway, I started thinking about this in relation to my current kitties.  They aren’t happy and they’re hungry.  Not starving, of course, but they aren’t satisfied, either.  Luke doesn’t mean to be so bull headed about it.  He’s a cat and it’s his nature to be stubborn.

So.  I decided to bring back their dry food.  The ingredients of their Science Diet Adult Optimal Care are horrifying.

Chicken By-Product Meal, Whole Grain Corn, Brewers Rice Corn Gluten Meal, Animal Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), Chicken Liver Flavor, Lactic Acid, Choline Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Calcium Sulfate, DL-Methionine, Vitamin E Supplement, Iodized Salt, vitamins (L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Taurine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), preserved with Mixed Tocopherols and Citric Acid, Phosphoric Acid, Beta-Carotene, Rosemary Extract.

Whole grain corn is the second ingredient!  And I don’t really think chicken by-product meal is actual real meat.  Ugh.  But as soon as I put it down for them, Apollo and Leia went immediately to the bowl and started eating.  Immediately!  I don’t know if Luke is eating it or not.  He’s always been a treat eater and I think he’ll need some special effort on my part.  I’m not going to let the dry food be their main or only source of food.  But at least I don’t have to think of them going hungry all the time.  As crazy as it seems, it’s what they’ve had all their lives and it’s not easy to change their eating habits at this age.

My plan now is to supplement the dry food with meat and better quality cat food to make it healthier for them overall.  I’ve ordered samples from The Honest Kitchen , which is something that was recommended by my niece, Rachel.  I tried it once a few years ago and it was a big flop, but these are different cats and I know more about how to coax them into eating it.  I think I do, anyway.  Food from The Honest Kitchen would be reasonably priced, too, which is more than I can say for Stella & Chewy’s cat food.  I researched them on the internet and liked what I saw, so today I stopped by the nearest pet store dealer, Pet-O-Rama.  A 12 ounce bag of that stuff is $30!  And according to the feeding directions, I’d need two bags of it to feed my cats for three days.  Really??  $60 to feed them for three days?  *snort*  I don’t think so.

So, that’s the current plan and I’ll report back on my progress.

The Jedi Twins go absolutely nuts over the dehydrated chicken and turkey treats.  As soon as I say “treats” or take out the tub, they start getting excited.  More than excited, really.  They get obnoxious about it.  Pushy, too.  It’s great that they like these pure meat treats, but they can’t live on them and it’s expensive.  They still have to eat regular meals.  We got some fresh chicken and cooked it in the crock pot.  When it cooled, I tore some of it into bite sized pieces for them.  Nobody would eat it except Leia and that was only when I sprinkled some Forti Flora on it.  But she did eat it then.  She ate enough to get full and that  made me happy because she’s lost weight during this change and I don’t like that.  I think Luke and Apollo might be enticed to eat it eventually.  Silly cats.  Won’t eat fresh cooked chicken.  Good grief!

Some of you know that I work on Carl and Pam’s Sims 3 Forum.  For those of you who don’t know that, well…  now you do.  One of my duties is to maintain our Facebook page.  I was looking at some statistics tonight and saw something that is part funny and part horrifying.  (Click for a larger image.)

No. Just... no.

They have actually listed Leet Speak as a language.  As a LANGUAGE!  It was less than a year ago that it came up in a conversation with Carl himself and he had to explain to me what leet speak is.  I was bemused at the time, but now it’s more like horrified when I see it listed as a LANGUAGE!!

From Urbandictionary.com:

A form of writing whereby some letters in a word are replaced by a numerical likeness or other letters that create an identical or similar sound.

This style of writing was originally in use by hackers who were attempting to bypass word-filtering on mail servers. For instance, they would use the term ‘haxorz’ to replace ‘hackers’. Internet users new to hacking adopted the style in an attempt to emulate those more experienced, and usage became widely spread.

In recent times the method is almost never used to avoid word-filtering software, but rather to satirise script kiddies and 12 year olds, or to abbreviate for faster typing. It’s interesting to note that in most cases it takes more time to type in leetspeak (due to the constant swapping between numbers and letters) than it would take to just type the words properly.

When using leetspeak, you should be aware that you are almost definitely coming across as a moron.

Person A: ph34r my 1337 hax0rz ski11z
Person B: What?

Here, Person A appears to be of below average intellect, due to his/her liberal use of leetspeak.

I’m sorry, but no, leet is not a real language.  It’s just not.  I’ve been calling this “text speak” when I refer to it most of the time.  It annoys me a great deal.  I hate it.  This kind of nonsense makes me truly worry for my retirement years and the generations to come.  I’m not even kidding.