| Current mood: |  anxious |
| Current music: | Some weird-ass Hindi film song on TV |
upheavals in the rodent world
One of my mice gave birth, apparently to only one baby. This is unusual, but I couldn't find any little half-eaten baby mice in the cage or other such evidence. Another of my mice, a fairly old one, died. The other of the elderly ones is sitting immobile and occasionally shaking; she was walking in wobbly circles yesterday. I put her in quarantine in case this is something contagious. The rats are OK, thank goodness. I'm going to do a little research and see if what's going on with the elderly mice is age-linked or contagious or what.
In slightly more cheering news, last night I saw an interesting movie on the International Channel, called Amanisahan. It's a historical biopic about a medieval Uighur woodcutter's daughter who became the concubine of the Khan of Yerchiang (Yarkand?) and helps compile the Mukam system of Uighur music. Since East Turkestan is currently under Chinese rule, even though the actors are all Uighur the film is in Mandarin. This was kind of amusing; I missed the first few minutes and didn't know what I was watching at first, and wondered why in the hell some sort of Afghan movie had been dubbed into Chinese. Even the Islamic names were sinicised; Wumaer and Abudureshiti instead of Omar and Abdulrashid. Also the acting was not great (possibly because the Uighur actors were not speaking in their native language), which combined with the crappy film stock they used makes it look like it's from 1953 rather than 1993. But it was about someone that I'd heard of before, and I love Central Asian music, with its fascinating blend of Arab, Indian, and Chinese elements. The music was great; they seem to have found some of the best Uighur instrumentalists available. If I had known about this beforehand, I'd have taped it.
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