Pets are an essential part of many people’s lives and every furry friend comes with a love story.

Holidays like Christmas and Valentines Day are especially popular times for people to gift a pet. But before you go picking out a pup, it’s crucial to analyze your life conditions and situation. Is your life stable enough to care for a pet? What is your home space like? How much time do you have to care for this animal?

Justin Gallick, the live release manager at Pima Animal Care Center, says “it’s not uncommon to have someone come into the shelter thinking they want a large breed puppy, only to find out they don’t have time and live in an apartment. Then they realize they need a 14-pound Chihuahua.”

Another thing to consider: It’s common in these gift-giving times to go through a breeder or a pet store—but a shelter might be holding the pet of your dreams.

Shelters sometimes have a stigma of the “unwanted” pet—one that looks like it walked straight out of Pet Sematary or even off of Alice In Chains’ album Tripod—but the times have changed and shelters have mutts, purebreds and everything in-between.

Not to mention, many of these animals have already been trained and gotten past the beginning stages, they’re just waiting in for a new home—no training required.

Valentine's weekend also happens to be National Adoption Weekend. So, if you're considering making a Valentine's addition to your family, stop by PACC because they'll be holding free adoptions for National Adoption Weekend. Some fees may apply.

· Friday, Feb. 12: Noon-7 p.m.
· Saturday, Feb. 13: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
· Sunday, Feb. 14: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

By now, you're knee-deep in Beer Week preparation. You've read about the latest additions to the Tucson beer scene, you've mapped our your Beer Week itinerary—but have you picked up your tickets to the Tucson Craft Beer Crawl? Because you're probably going to want to be there.

Take it from Brenna Bailey's round-up:

CRAWL FOR BEER

Hotel Congress, Ermanos, Thunder Canyon Brewery, Playground, Reilly, Pueblo Vida, Borderlands and a mysterious, unidentified downtown beer garden will all host local craft brewers' hoppy creations on Saturday, Feb. 20 for the second annual Tucson Craft Beer Crawl. Laura Adams Reese, Beer Crawl's PR rep, said the crawl "has a strong sense of place and downtown pride" that anyone can dig. Crawl starts at 1 p.m. Grab your tickets now at www.TucsonCraftBeerCrawl.com. Bonus: online ticket purchases are discounted.

You can get your tickets online before the prices go up day of, or you can try your luck and maybe let us get you in for free. We are giving away a single pair of tickets. Want 'em? Fill out our form (make sure you know the name of the person you want to bring with you) and we'll be in touch if you win. 

Tucson sonic ambassadors Calexico recently made several short episodes with Colorado's E-Town Hall Sessions. You can watch them all here.

It's basketball time! Friday at 7 p.m. our own UA Wildcats will be taking on the UCLA Bruins—and you could be there! We're giving away two pairs of tickets.

We'll get in touch with the winners by noon on Friday, so enter now—but only if you can pick up the tickets from our Northwest office between noon and 5 p.m. on Friday.

It's a big day for physics as the existence of Albert Einstein's long-predicted gravitational waves has been confirmed.

The waves, first postulated by Einstein a century ago, are ripples in the fabric of space-time created by the collision of super-massive objects such as black holes.

Gizmodo has a primer on why this is a BFD in the world of physics:

The discovery of gravitational waves confirms an important aspect of the theory of relativity, but it does much more than that. Quite literally, it opens up a new chapter in our exploration of the cosmos, one where electromagnetic radiation is no longer our only tool for “seeing” the universe. As MIT astrophysicist Scott Hughes told Gizmodo in a phone interview, we can use gravitational waves to probe mysterious celestial objects like black holes and neutron stars, which typically no light.

“There’s a lot of rich information encoded in gravitational waves,” he said, noting that the shape of a spacetime ripple can tell us about the size and motion of the object that produced it. “As an astronomer, I try to think about how to go from the ‘sound’ of the waveform that LIGO measures, to the parameters that produce that waveform.”

ASU physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss played a big role in the discovery. ASU has a briefing on why it's a big deal:

Everything shifted this morning.

In the 100th-anniversary year of Einstein’s theory of relativity, scientists announced they have proved it.

Using a stunning display of technological prowess, a group of physicists measured gravitational waves, a ripple in the fabric of space caused by the collision of two immense objects far out in the universe.

The discovery is on par with the invention of the telescope, said Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University.

“It heralds what I think is the beginning of the new astronomy for the 21st century,” Krauss said. “Gravitational-wave astronomy will be the astronomy of the 21st century. It’s opened a new window on the universe, just like the telescope in some sense or when we first used radio waves to explore the universe.”

So. Republicans yanked $30 million in JTED funds from last year's budget, and now they've had second thoughts and want to restore the money. And by "second thoughts," I mean the business community climbed on their backs for cutting one of the best educational programs in Arizona for creating skilled workers who can come out of high school ready to fill needed positions in the private sector. Republicans joined with Democrats who voted against the cuts last year and agreed to restore, well, not the whole $30 million, but close: $28 million.

I'd say good for the Republican legislators, except they're the bastards who voted to effectively kill JTED in the first place, and all they're doing is giving back 93 percent of what they took away. That's no more praiseworthy than the decision by Ducey and the Republicans to restore $300 million a year in education funding, 70 percent of the money they illegally stole in 2009. It's the deadbeat dads scenario all over again, where they're agreeing to start paying part of the child support they withheld from their kids. I guess you can say with JTED, they're not taking the money from the kids' trust fund like they are with the Proposition 123 deal they want the voters to pass, but that sure as hell doesn't make them heroes.

Yet, apparently, they want to be proclaimed as heroes, according to the last line in Howard Fischer's article on the subject. Lately, I've found that the literary critical skills I learned in college to analyze works of literature are valuable in understanding the commentary Howie lays between the lines in some of his reporting about the wheeling and dealing at the state capitol. Sometimes what Howie leaves unsaid, hinted at, is the most interesting part of the article. Here's that last line.

The Senate president [Andy Biggs] also insisted that the Republican majority should get credit for restoring the funds even though it was a GOP budget last year that first cut the dollars. 

Did you catch Howie's transitional phrase, "even though"? It's a skillful segue from the Republicans wanting credit for restoring JTED funds to reminding the reader that they're the ones who made the cuts in the first place.

The way Republicans deal with education funding is stunning. It's the rough equivalent of dad giving his kid a spanking, then asking for a "Thank you" when he stops.

Last year was a banner year for the horror genre (It Follows, Bone Tomahawk, We are Still Here) and 2016 gets off to a good and creepy genre start with this anthology offering.

From the producers of the uneven V/H/S series, this consists of 4 short films tied together with themes of guilt and dread. It’s remarkable how well the work of four different directors binds together in one dread-inducing piece.

The film starts with two blood covered men driving in the desert as they notice floating death skeletons observing their actions. This segment ends badly for the duo, and things just get stranger and nastier as the film progresses to a story about a girl rock band that ingests strange meat served by a weird guy (Dana Gould) who is more than likely a Satanist. This is followed by a dude looking for his sister in an eerie town, and it’s the stuff of nightmares (Oh, that ending!). Then there’s the story of a home invasion where a family is targeted for reasons unknown.

The whole thing wraps up with a tasty twist that caught me by surprise. This is a low budget affair, but that works in its favor because the special effects feel very old school. The score is reminiscent of, yes, John Carpenter (many directors go for that vibe, and I have no problem with that) and the performances are solid throughout.

There were many moments in this movie where I was legitimately scared and uncomfortable while watching it. Bravo!

Bernie Sanders got an astounding 85 percent of the vote from 18 to 29 year olds in the New Hampshire primary. By any accounting, that's an amazing stat. People have bemoaned the apathy of today's college students, but for some reason, they're Feeling the Bern, big time. Does it mean we're at the beginning of a new period of student activism and engagement? Very possibly. Look at the inroads the Black Lives Matter movement is making on college campuses, which is part of a larger surge of minority activism involving gender and sexual issues along with race. But I think there's something more. I think college students have been dragged into the political fight because of their personal concerns about their economic futures, and Bernie is talking to their concerns far more directly than Hillary.

I was at a University of California campus in the Sixties. The Civil Rights struggle had come to nationwide prominence during my high school years, and it remained a big issue for college students on the left, but it didn't lead white students like me to direct activism. If a race-based issue came up on campus, we supported the rights of black and other minority students, and we didn't eat grapes to show our support for the United Farm Workers of America, but only a few white students and young adults were directly involved in either struggle. The issues may have tugged at our hearts, but they didn't hit us where we lived.

By contrast, the escalation of the Vietnam War created a massive protest movement on campus. People marched, chanted and stopped education as usual for days and weeks at a time. Privileged white college students literally put their bodies in danger in confrontations with police during demonstrations. Why the difference? Part of it was, unlike the other issues, Vietnam put our asses on the line. We could be drafted and sent onto the battlefield. We rightly condemned the killing and environmental devastation our country was raining down on the people of Vietnam, but if we weren't in danger of being thrown in the middle of the horror, our reactions would have been quieter.

We don't have a draft today. The decision to invade Iraq was at least as outrageous and damaging as our decision to escalate our involvement in Vietnam, but college students aren't in danger of being sent to the Middle East. College students are often criticized by older people on the left for not putting themselves in the forefront of protests condemning our involvement in Iraq like we did back in the Vietnam War days. But there's an existential difference. Their asses aren't on the line like ours were.

With the headline, "A Racist, Sexist, Demagogue Just Won the New Hampshire Primary," The Huffington Post announced Donald Trump won the Republican primary in the state by a landslide. 

The billionaire reality TV star, and "all Mexican immigrants are rapists" believer got 98,309, or roughly 35 percent, of the votes. Surprisingly, Ohio Gov. John Kasich came in second, but considerably lagged behind Trump with 43,878 votes, of 16 percent, the HuffPost reported. 

New Hampshire Republican primary voters on Tuesday made official their choice for president of the United States: real estate mogul and reality television star Donald J. Trump.

The businessman's resounding victory amid a crowded field of more experienced and accomplished candidates is a stunning turn of events for a party that vowed just four years ago to be more inclusive to minorities after failing to unseat President Barack Obama in the bitter 2012 election. What the GOP got instead is a xenophobic demagogue who's insulted pretty much everyone and even earned the endorsement of white supremacists. Trump's victory in New Hampshire likely points to a drawn-out slog between Trump and at least one of his rivals as they battle to secure enough delegates in hopes of winning their party's nomination this summer.

Last night, Politico wrote that the HuffPost had gone "nuclear" at news Trump declared victory, and reminded us that the publication had refused for months to cover anything Trump-related on the politics section.

Recently, the site started appending an editor’s note to the bottom of posts about the Republican presidential contender, calling him a "racist," a "liar" and a "xenophobe" and reminding readers of his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

HuffPost, you have balls.

In other news, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders took the Democratic primary win last night, beating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton with 60 percent of votes. Clinton got merely 38 percent.

The zombie movie craze hits what I hope to be its low point with this crap attempt at horror comedy featuring a fairly faithful take on the Jane Austen classic mixed with the undead.

Lily James, so delightful in Cinderella, plays Elizabeth Bennet, one of the esteemed Bennet sisters and zombie hunter. She sets her sight on Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley), who thinks she’s pretty and all that but must refrain from serious courtship in order to behead some ghouls.

For starters, director Burr Steers shoots for a PG-13 rating, which results in much of the action taking place off screen, via incomprehensible editing, or in the dark so as to reduce the bloodletting. The movie features so much carnage that it feels incomplete for soft-shoeing the yucky stuff. As for the balance of period romance and comedic bloodletting, Steers never finds a comfortable place. The movie feels uneven and sloppy, with lousy special effects and players that look lost.

Like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter before it, a perhaps clever idea gets lost in messy direction and lousy scripting. It’s a shame, because Riley and James are much better than this.