Bieber Hamster-Gate

FURRY RODENTS IN MUSIC (NON-WEASEL EDITION): If the world doesn't end tomorrow, you can be assured that the Justin Bieber hamster scandal will dominate the world's headlines. Oh, you hadn't heard? It seems that the pop megastar gave his pet hamster, PAC, to a fan at the Atlanta Jingle Ball. In a sane world this would qualify as "a cute, nice thing a famous performer did," but you know very well what kind of world we occupy. So it should come as no surprise that young Bieber is being accused of animal cruelty by the apparently for-real California Hamster Association. The group complained to TMZ that “sudden environmental change" such as the handover to JB's fan could prove harmful to the tiny critter, despite evidence that PAC is perfectly fine in his new home in Alabama. How long before Nancy Grace jumps into the fray? And will PAC's Twitter page be cited in evidence? Oh, and speaking of the CHA, it's worth noting that their About Us page features the following syntactically wonderful sentence: "We are a non-profit hamster club in Southern California dedicated to educating Syrian and Dwarf hamster owners and to raising the quality of hamsters in California and North America." We're not sure why hamster owners who are Syrians or dwarves should be educated separately, but we're not really hamster experts. Now, gerbils ... that's another story. (12/20p)