Yowling Cats and CELL

Outside I can hear the cat yowling. It is a butterscotch yellow and white like a soft chew candy. I wish I could do something for it. It doesn’t seem hungry really, just kind of lonely. The yowl is that low hurtful one that rips through the rest of the sound of the night. It’s been raining and when I looked out at him earlier he was soaked, but ran from the front porch lights. The problem is that I can’t really do anything. If I feed him, he’ll become dependent. I’m sure there is plenty of food, within almost any cat’s ability to catch, here in the woods. The sound of its yowl just kills me though. Sometimes you can hear two of them fighting with those high-pitched yells and screams. I’ve often thought that people should be tortured by listening to the sound of cats fighting.

Currently reading Stephen King’s CELL, which is really relentless in the tension. I’m not sure how good it is yet, but it has put me on edge and made everything around me seem potentially threatening. That’s a good thing, but being a Zombie story by nature, it will need to pull a few more punches than just gore and tension. The first 60 pages are really nice, but the meat, no pun intended, is definitely yet to come. You do have to respect him for just starting right at ground zero of the story and moving from there. There is mayhem by page 5. This is of course the way of the ZOMBIE mythos, although 28 DAYS LATER did have a nice slow start after an incredibly vicious Prologue. I think in the end it will be pretty standard 70s-80s King; scare and gore in equal parts strung together with a plot like severed ears on a string.

Storm Stories

Anyone interested in seeing the video of the storm that almost killed my parents a year ago can tune into The Weather Channel tonight at 11:00 PM for "Storm Stories.' I actually think the bit about Semester At Sea is 11:30PM. It showed earlier tonight at 8:30 PM, but by the time I got the message from my mom, it was too late to notify. I'm sure they'll show it again. They don't give all the credit they should to the crew of the ship, especially the captain, but they play it for high drama, which I'm sure it was at the time. I'm not sure if anyone will see this in time, but there it is none the same.

Prepare Yourselves

I'll be in town this weekend starting around 5:00 PM today. Make sacrifices and enact the appropriate tribal chants. Bring slaves to place before me and make sure there is plenty of beer.

MP Smackdown

Congrats to Michael-Paul, who is now the proud father of Adeline Grace, who came in at 5lbs. 7oz. and 18 1/4”. All of which makes her sound a bit like a large mouth bass, but she is in fact a baby. This is Michael-Paul’s first foray into fatherhood, which he finds to be confusing and possibly life altering. There is little doubt that even at the tender age of two days, that young Adeline has daddy firmly wrapped around her little finger. Good-luck MP, cause man you’re going to need it. Oh, by the way, it’s too late to run now.

WB and UPN give birth to CW

So, Time Warner and CBS have joined forces to eradicate the two fetal networks spawned in the 90s to compete with the burgeoning FOX, WB and UPN respectively. Their great idea, split 50/50, will be a new network called CW. No one seems to know what CW stands for yet, but I have a few concepts I’m working on; Can’t Watch, Could Work, Can’t Wait, and Crappy Waste. The thing is, that their going to move the best of the shows from the two networks and combine them onto one. These shows luckily include some the best TV on today such as Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. But it will also include the ever popular, for many reasons that escape me, SMACKDOWN. There was a reason these Channels were formed in the first place and that was to compete with the big three and eventually the big fourth networks, to drive all of them to produce more creative content in an effort to not go the way of the Dodo, and it worked for a while. By combining two into one, they’ve just lessened the amount of content non-cable subscribers have access to. Each of the stations that subscribed to WB and UPN still have to choose if they want to join the CW network. In larger markets such as NY and LA, some poor channel is going to go out of business or redefine its model as a all day Paid Programming channel.
Now granted, neither of these networks has really been turning a profit over the years, but minus a few really good shows, a lot of that had to do with the decisions of the programming directors who didn’t know a good show from a piece of flotsam after their morning constitutional. Now, what we’re going to get is another network, that starts off strong and then grows a set of, what it thinks are mighty, testicles and then it will start choosing shows again and canceling the ones that made it work in the first place, and the whole thing will start all over again. Obviously I’m going to give it a chance, as soon as I have access to this kind of broadcast TV again, because it will come fully formed with two of my favorite shows already in it. However, I will be the first to grin madly and shake my head at it in an arrogant, “I told you so,” manner as soon as I see it Jump the shark. Well, as soon as I see it jump-the-shark the next time. Hey, I wonder if they’re already looking for new content. I think I have a few things lying around I could show them.

I need a Cigarette

It really is important to hook-em early. Studies show that the older you get the less likely you are to pick-up the habit. Of course, for this three year old, there's nothing like a good stress reliever after a hard day. It's too bad his cigarettes are substandard.



In an unrelated story, here is Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui doing what some believe should be outlawed in most Southern states. I believe it is known as the reverse cowgirl.

Tonto

I met my first raccoon here last night, or more specifically this morning. I was out on the screened-in porch enjoying a smoke at 2:00 AM. I only had the porch light on. I heard a thump just beyond the screen door, so I reached back in and turned on the back deck lights. There, peering just around the corner, with his paws firmly on the first step, was the little bandit. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I then realized he had probably been attracted by my fish rag, which I let dry over a chair on the porch. I use it to help hold the fish while I remove the hook. We stood this way for a moment more and he took one furtive step toward me. I flicked my right wrist twice in his direction as a sort of Shoo maneuver and said, “You really should be on your way, there is nothing here for you.” He looked at me a moment more, then slightly beyond me with longing and turned back and ambled off. I really wished he wasn’t wild. I would have enjoyed a bit of company. I also had an almost uncontrollable desire to scratch him behind the ears like a cat, but I do like my fingers and had no desire to have him scamper off with one of them before washing it in the pond and having a nosh. I shall call him Tonto.

[Editor's note: Here is Tonto upon his return visit. Evidently bird feeders aren't just for birds anymore. Little does he know it, but he is now a superstar, and this paparazzi for one is going to blind him with my flash every chance I get. Although I don't think I'll open the screen door. You never know, he could have the Russell Crowe reaction to my attention.]

Weekends Where His

OK, not that anyone really cares, but from this point on, all single panel idiocies produced by me will only occur on a Monday-Friday basis. I'm taking the weekend off from this day forward. It's become too difficult to produce daily, especially now that I've increased the number to three pieces of stupidity a day. It shouldn't affect many if any since the blog readership drops by over half on the weekend, which is expected since most of you do your surfing while at work. Cheers.

Sanitize Before You Send

It would seem that The NSA would like for you, well actually it's really just internal, to sanitize your WORD documents before you turn them into .pdf files and send them across the nefarious internet. So, they've created this nice little document to simplify the process. I don't know what disturbs me more, the fact that the general NSA person creating sensitive .pdf documents doesn't know how to properly scrub them or the fact that the creator of this document left the cute Microsoft kitten in the screen grabs. Someone should let them know that Acrobat 7 has better encryption tools and other properties that are useful. Of course version 7 has only been out for over a year and it really is hard to keep everything up-to-date. This does not inspire confidence in me for the maintaining of sensitive information. I hear they're good listeners though.

Down from the mountain

Things I've seen when I come down from the mountain for a few beers.


I’m sitting across from an Elvis impersonator. He’s changed his cloths into a t-shirt and jeans with a black leather jacket and a baseball cap on his head. His sideburns are unfortunately too real as is the remnants of the gel he used to get his hair into character. He’s drinking a light red or zinfandel wine from a small wine glass. Minus the overall package of sideburns and black hair, his face is quite faithful to the transformation. But what finally gives him away as n impersonator over a fan is that he’s left two of the rings on. If he’d been a fan he would have left them all. He talks to no one but the bartender and seems lost here in this place that isn’t a stage.

A coaster thrown across the bar hits me in my left tit. It’s meant for someone else. I guess I’ve been initiated now. The thrower apologizes and I yell back at him that there had better be a twenty attached to the coaster. I tell them I only allow things to be throw at me if there is a twenty attached. One of the women with the group tells me I could get a good whore with a twenty around here. I tell her I’d rather collect more so I can go somewhere else.

Sitting across from me a man orders a small can of tomato juice from the bartender. There is already a small empty bottle of V-8 in front of him. He cracks the can and pours it into his three-quarter full glass of a “red” beer. He then hits it with some Tabasco. After he’s left I tell the bartender that I’ve heard of this practice before, but had never seen it. She tells me he was using the wrong kind of beer. I agree except I don’t think he should have been using beer at all.

There are three large biker types sitting across from me. They’re wearing what could be described as false colors since I don’t think they belong to a gang of bikers of the pulp movie variety. However, they are large and press against and stretch the very limits of their cloths. One of them is Bald and has an extended goatee that’s more of a beard without the mustache or any facial hair above the lower lip. He’s sipping a white wine, which either makes him braver and more dangerous or shows something that his clothing hides. It makes him seem thoughtful somehow and I wonder if he quotes surrealist poets while he starts a barroom brawl.

I watch a man pick-up a saltshaker and think he’s going to apply a small bit to his coaster to keep it from clinging to the bottom of his glass. Instead he salts his beer.

There is a man here with a turned-up cowboy hat that’s seen more life than me. He’s skinny and his jean jacket folds over his shoulders. He has an eye patch and Willie Nelson hair that folds it’s blonde/brown/white length across his back and stops six inches over his chest. It turns out he’s the pinch hitting singer for tonight. As he starts to play his voice betrays his exterior. His rendition of “Piano Man” is pitch perfect and harmonic and somehow more dignified and sad than Billy Joel could ever hope for. It’s like watching a cowboy from the 1870s on display in a museum, except he gets it. He knows how to dissolve and disappear. It’s all in his voice.

An older woman with her crippled husband try to come up to get seats at the bar while they wait for a table. Just before they make it, three feet away, but her husbands movements are hitched and delay their approach, two guys in their (20s) blow past them and take the seats. She quips to her husband that Chivalry is dead. I can’t stand this and tell her that’s the most vulgar thing I’ve ever heard and offer her my seat. I tell her that it will never be dead as long as people don’t allow it die. She takes the seat and thanks me. Later as she and her husband are leaving she tells me that between the time their table was called and the waitress got them to it, the same two boys had taken it without being seated. I know she’d right because I had watched it happen. I tell her they’ll get what’s coming to them one day. She smiles and says that she knows they will.