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Just your reminder that my dog is literally the best.

Most of you have probably already heard, but today the White Stripes announced their official break-up as a band. They won't be doing any more live shows from here on out, nor will they be recording any new material. It's not exactly a surprise--the "Great White Northern Lights" tour plays like a farewell, and with the recent vinyl reissues of the first three albums, it's seemed like the end was in sight for a while now.

But it's still sad.

I first heard them in college, through my first boyfriend, who, in retrospect, had excellent taste that I never gave him credit for. He gave me a new vinyl copy of Elephant as a gift. I was baffled by it, but this was a period when I was baffled by the fact that vinyl records were still being manufactured at all, so maybe I can be pardoned for that. It's been a long time since I really thought about it, but I think he was really crazy about that album at the time. That was something he wanted to share with me, something he really wanted me to like. And I was so neutral about it for a long time. I didn't really know what to think of it.

And then, some time later, I heard "Hotel Yorba," and it tapped out the rhythms of my soul. And I heard a couple of their blues and jazz covers, and that's all it took to put me in love.

Really, the White Stripes represent a door of enlightenment opening for me. Before that, I didn't really realize there was good music. Or at least not good modern music. I listened to the radio, or my mom's old records, or whatever I could get from whichever program was the illegal download flavor of the week, and I had to be satisfied with it. And then here, all of a sudden, this music that's almost punk but also blues and rock and everything else, and it's bizarre but sincere, and it's like, "I didn't know people could still do this. Why didn't I know there was anything like this?"

It's a shame I'll never get a chance to see them perform live. I've seen the Dead Weather, and I reckon I'll see Jack White perform again anytime I get the chance, but it's not the same thing. The White Stripes was a weird project--a divorced couple, pretending to be brother and sister, making this excited, honest, nostalgic music but also creating this mythology, this fictional world of iconic symbols that is, in its own way, just as real as the tangible universe. That mythology is part of the appeal, even when--maybe especially when--you know that it's totally put on. You know they're playing make-believe, and yet you're completely willing to buy into it, to segue temporarily into this alternate universe. I'm not sure how they pulled that off, but the White Stripes did, and I don't think there will ever be anything quite like that again.

I think that's part of what makes the end of this project so sad. The music will live forever, but the mythology is only real as long as they feed it, and they're done feeding it, and now it's dried up and all that's left is the reality. Who knows what that reality is--if they've just moved beyond the kind of wild, youthful spirit of the Stripes, or if Jack and Meg have drifted apart to a point where the brother-sister game doesn't feel good to play anymore, or if they're out of ideas for what to do artistically with a two-piece blues garage rock ensemble, or if they just felt in their bones that it was over and they should let it go peacefully. Most likely a combination of factors. But the fiction is dead now, and it's a sad thing any time a fiction dies.

I'm an introvert. Some of my college friends don't believe it--I suspect that's in part because they spent nearly all their time around me after I had discovered the social benefits of alcohol--but it's true. I take a long time to warm up to people, and I require time alone. In high school I was puzzled at accusations that I was "stuck up" or (a comment I remember specifically) "a jerk." I was a little relieved, reading this blog post by Jennifer de Guzman, to find out that it's a common sort of accusation to direct at introverts: we don't immediately engage, so we must think we're "too good" for everyone else. That is absolutely not the case, but it's a common line of thought for extroverts, I guess.

My friends--introverts and extroverts alike--may also find this essay to be of interest. If you are an introvert, it will be resonant. If you are an extrovert, you may find it enlightening.

Behold, the hipster chicken. It's an obscure breed, you probably haven't heard of it.*

This was my costume for a little party at work earlier this week--I'm probably not going out tonight because I have to go to work tomorrow, alas.

* Blame jgarfink for this one.

So, on Wednesday I was supposed to go see the Godard film Breathless at the International Film Series on CU campus. I was really excited about it. But traffic was bad on the way down and I got to the movie a little late, so I decided to wait around on campus for a couple hours until the second showing.

This turned out to be a lot of fine coincidence, because while I was wandering around on the Hill, I noticed a line forming under the Fox Theatre marquee, which said, in large letters, "OK GO." It turns out they were in town to kick off their new tour, and having missed them last time they were in Colorado, I bought a ticket. After all, Breathless is on DVD, right?

I do not regret my decision.

I had heard OK Go puts on a great show, and they did not disappoint. And it was a special show that night, too, not only because it was the kickoff of their tour, but also because it was frontman Damian Kulash's birthday. The rest of the band had special plans for him. Creepy plans. Plans that involved us holding printouts of his photograph in front of our faces so it looked to him like a sea of grayscale clones was singing him happy birthday--which is perhaps the best gift one friend can give to another.

The crowd was a little obnoxious--I was fairly early in line, got into the pit and thought I had a good vantage point until a number of people taller than me took the liberty of squeezing in front of me and inviting their similarly tall friends to do likewise. Poor etiquette. Just so you know. If you're short, you might get away with it, maybe, if there is only one or two of you, but if you're tall? Never do that. I had to move around to get a good view, and I ended up dead center four or five rows back from the stage, which worked well enough.

The show itself was amazing. The opening bands ranged from decent to good, but OK Go was stunning. Those guys can rock a house. Even in this digital age, people will always go crazy for confetti cannons and awesome costumes.

Damian likes making the show seem personal, like he's our friend and he's only doing this for us. The dude has no fear of his audience. He waded through the crowd twice in the show--once to have a "hippy moment" playing a song in the middle of the crowd back behind the first railing, and once during "This Too Shall Pass," the last song in the encore, he came down into the pit and jumped up and down with us. This is the moment where I get to brag, because he was actually right next to me in the pit. Like he was physically pressed against me. Which was awesome.

So I went home with feet aching and coated with sweat, but very, very satisfied. If you ever get a chance to see these guys in concert, do it without question. And if you're not yet familiar with their excellent music, you should check out their YouTube channel, where you can experience the tunes along with some ace visuals. Their homemade videos are world famous.

I haven't really been to that many concerts over the course of my life, but since I find myself developing more of an interest in music nowadays, I figured I should remedy that. And what better way to start than by going to see the Dead Weather in Denver? I like the particular blend of rock, country and blues that follows Jack White to every band in which he plays a major role--the guy's music is positively energizing--so I figured this would be a cool show.

After buying the tickets, it occurred to me on a lark to join the Third Man Vault, which is a sort of fan club for Jack's record company, with perks like exclusive online content, receiving complimentary limited-run records and swag that can't be purchased in stores (this was the primary reason I joined), and at some shows, a chance for early admission. I entered the early admission drawing for Denver and, a couple days before the show, I got an e-mail saying I had won, with instructions on how to redeem it.

So I was positioned dead center, pressed against the stage right in front of the main vocal mic. And it was amazing.

Maisy regularly gives Sadie baths, and vice versa. I think they're confused about which one is the mother and which one is the baby. It's adorable.

It was with some difficulty that I made the decision last week to permanently delete my Facebook account.

It's not that I don't find the service useful. I really do. I've been using it to keep in casual contact with relatives and former high school classmates whom I otherwise would speak to rarely or not at all. It's social, but without the same kind of investment that comes from talking on the phone, or visiting in person, or writing a letter. In fact, that's one of the more common complaints about Facebook--"They're not your real friends! Facebook just creates the illusion of relationships!"--but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. There's a spectrum of closeness in relationships, and you will always know some people with whom you would have difficulty sustaining a real conversation, but you like to see what they're up to nowadays.

It really was a tough choice to kick all that to the curb. I have been using Facebook since I was in college and the service was still called "TheFacebook." Admittedly, back then it was useful in an entirely different way than it is now--I used it to look up lab partners whose names I didn't recognize and people who arranged to buy textbooks from me on campus. The voyeuristic angle to it was already there, too; browsing through the profiles of friends and their friends was addictive and time-consuming but very, very satisfying. Most people left their profiles open to their network (i.e. their entire university), because just knowing it was a closed community limited to people who were like us gave the site an illusion of safety and trust that was lacking from competitors like MySpace.

That was really the primary appeal of Facebook. Let's face it: there are things we're completely comfortable sharing with some people but not others. Facebook's privacy changes (most or all motivated by marketing potential) don't acknowledge that, and they fundamentally undermine the entire reason I had joined the site to begin with. That's why I'm quitting. I don't really want my boss, my parents and my high school acquaintances communicating with me in the same space as my college and online friends. Sure, there are granular privacy settings now, but after repeated snafus resulting in previously-private data being set public without the user's knowledge, I don't trust Facebook to keep those things separate.

Plus there's the fact that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's creator, has been kind of a scumbag from the beginning. The more I find out about the guy, the less I trust his website with managing my semi-private communications.

There aren't a lot of alternatives right now, unfortunately, but Diaspora looks very, very cool. If or when they get that up and running, maybe I'll join it. Until then, you'll have to contact me the old-fashioned way: by leaving a comment on my blog.

On my cats' latest routine vet visit, I had the contents of Betamax's bladder checked for mischief, as he's been getting less reliable about his litter box usage lately. I needed to rule out a medical issue. To be honest, I suspected it was behavioral, that he was just getting picky or something, because sometimes cats do that.

Nope! Betamax is in fact afflicted with a condition called struvite crystals, which form in the bladder when urine is too alkaline. (Henceforth I will refer to this condition as "piss crystals.") Piss crystals are not usually life-threatening, but they irritate the bladder and can cause cats to have strange urination habits. They are a relatively common medical issue for all cats, but especially neutered males. If left untreated, they sometimes form stones that cause blockages in the urethra, and this can be fatal. Since I do not want my cat to die of piss crystals, I opted to treat the condition with a special prescription cat food from the vet.

Now, I am one of those weirdos who reads the labels on things out of habit, and that includes on pet food. Any vet will tell you that you should feed your pet a food with a real meat as the first ingredient, which is why I was kind of surprised to find that both prescription cat food options (Hills Prescription c/d and Royal Canin Urinary SO) had weird mysterious by-products as first ingredients. The Royal Canin can actually had a lot of the codewords I read as "rendering plant soup," which means a mix of sick or DOA livestock, diseased organ meat, garbage, expired food, and euthanized pets from some veterinarians and animal shelters. If your pet food says "meat by-products," "meat and bone meal" or "animal fat" but gives no indication of the kind of animal it comes from, that means they actually do not know, because it's all cooked together in a big horrible vat at the plant.

Both foods sounded pretty horrible from the labels, but I was leaning toward the Hills c/d just because it was specific about the origin of the meat. The cat got to make the final call, though. Luckily, he prefers the Hills, too. Here's the nasty-sounding ingredient list, for the morbidly curious:

Pork by-products, water, pork liver, chicken, rice, corn starch, oat fiber, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), fish meal, corn gluten meal, chicken liver flavor, calcium sulfate, guar gum, fish oil, brewers dried yeast, glucose, DL-Methionine, choline chloride, potassium chloride, taurine, cysteine, calcium carbonate, dried egg yolk, glycine, vitamin E supplement, iodized salt, potassium citrate, thiamine mononitrate, zinc oxide, ferrous sulfate, niacin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, beta-carotene, manganous oxide, calcium pantothenate, vitamin B12 supplement, riboflavin, biotin, vitamin D3 supplement, folic acid, calcium iodate.

I had been feeding both cats Castor & Pollux Natural Ultramix Adult Feline dry kibble (boy, that's a mouthful), but Betamax has to eat solely wet food now. That's okay. I've been doing some reading online and finding a general consensus that dry cat food is often a contributing factor to piss crystals, and that many cats recover fine while simply being fed ordinary canned cat food. I guess the reason is because cats have a low thirst drive and tend to form crystals when the urine is more condensed (i.e. they are dehydrated). Eating a wet food just gets more water into them, which helps flush the bladder before bad stuff starts building up. I think Betamax will stay on the prescription food for a while, and perhaps once he's been healthy for a few months, he will get a different canned food, like Wellness, which costs the same but contains much higher-quality ingredients, is available from retail stores, and can be fed to both cats.

To be honest, I should have switched to a wet food sooner. Getting off the high-carb dry food can help fat cats (like Maisy) lose weight without making them feel too hungry. Once the last of the dry food is gone, it's all canned for these two.

I got some sad news on Wednesday. Buddy, a cat who has lived on my family's farm since 2002, has passed away.

Buddy showed up on our farm one afternoon while I was still in high school. Cats suddenly appearing on our property were not uncommon--people in that area dump their unwanted pets out in the country all the time, and we had a reputation for being animal lovers. So one afternoon I came home from school and found this scruffy brown tabbycat milling around near the barn. I half-heartedly called "kitty-kitty" to him, not expecting a response, and to my surprise he came trotting up just as natural as could be. It wasn't long before he was purring away in my lap and digging his claws contentedly into my thigh. We soon took to feeding him along with our other outdoor charity cases, and he stuck around to become the farm's official greeter. I don't think I've ever met a more amicable feline. He could be a little obnoxious (he didn't understand the idea of keeping his claws in), but it was hard not to like him.

He hadn't been well for months before he died; he became quite thin and his normally rapacious appetite was greatly diminished. My mother let me know earlier this week that she planned to take him to be put down soon. She thought he probably had cancer. On Wednesday, when she went out to take care of him, she found him peacefully dead in his bed. He died quietly in his sleep and probably didn't feel a thing. An easy death at the right time is such a rare thing, and for his sake I'm glad that's what he got, but I'll still miss the little guy next time I go home. He's been a fixture of the place for so long.