Pussy Cat

Have I mentioned how much of a 'fraidy cat my cat is before? Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that my cat is a pussy, but that's a little vulgar. We'll leave it at 'fraidy.

Not sure how it happened. Maybe my five year old daughter was too mean to the thing when it was a kitten. I don't know. I like to call it Cringer, like He-Man's cat before it becomes the mighty Battle Cat. The thing cringes away from me every time I walk past it. Especially if I happen to be carrying something. It's like it expects me to hurl whatever I'm holding at it, or something. I guess I must have yelled at it too many times when I caught it on my table eating food off our dishes. But I sure as hell wasn't going to let that continue.

Anyway, yesterday, I was in the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator trying to figure out what to make for dinner, when I hear the cat scratching desperately on the sliding glass door. It wanted in badly. I looked out there, to see what was the cause of the desperation, and I couldn't help but laugh.

On the porch, was a rabbit. And my cat desperately wanted to get away from it. I ran and got my camera to prove it. By the time I could snap the picture, the rabbit had hopped down from the porch, but the cat was no less desperate to get inside. Rabbits, being the fierce kings of the wilderness that they are, frighten my cat to the bones. 

I remember the first time my cat encountered this rabbit. The rabbit belongs to a family down the street. They are not very good keepers of pets, however, and the thing is always out of its cage and roaming the streets. I'm surprised that the coyotes haven't made a meal of it yet, really. The rabbit is becoming comfortable in my yard though. It's here pretty much every day. It's comfortable enough to lay a bunch of rabbit pellets on my lawn. I hope the kids don't confuse them for chocolate covered raisins, that would be bad. Wow, I'm digressing a lot here today. I sound like my friend who can never get to the point of any story that he's telling, always bogged down in inconsequential details, to the point that hearing him tell a story is comical not because the story is funny but the story telling is so bad. Oh, crap, I did it again.

Anyway, I remember when this rabbit first met my cat. It was sitting there on our lawn harmlessly twitching its nose, and my cat spied it. The cat was very interested in this new beast. It went toward it, stalking slowly, stealthily. Then, without warning, the rabbit hopped forward a pace. My cat ran for the hills as though the rabbit had released a piercing, deep-throated pitbull-like bark when it hopped. I don't know if I've ever seen the cat move so fast. It was unbelievably comical.

Now today the rabbit was back. I looked outside, and there's Cringer, quivering atop our picnic table. There were no trees big enough nearby to climb up and escape, so the cat chose the next best option. This picture is much more demonstrative of the fear that my cat feels toward this frigging rabbit. 

I love that nervous look downward. But I can't blame the cat, because the rabbit could leap from its place there in the grass and gnaw the cat's head off with its nasty, big pointy teeth.

The rabbit doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So maybe there will be more stories in their saga. Ones that I can tell poorly with lots of pointless digressions. Stay tuned!

My F@#%ed Up Life

I just wanted to apologize to you all for not posting a thing for the past several weeks. I've been working the worst shift available to me. From 3:00 AM to 11:30 AM each day. I covered for one of the guys for a week. On top of that, they've needed me to work weekend mornings as well. And just when I thought I'd paid my dues, and was done with the terrible shift, another one of the guys who works the shift normally calls me to say that his wife just went into labor. He'd saved up six days of vacation for this event. So I was back again. Several more days to go still.

It's really wiped me out. It's made me very unproductive. Rish was spitting mad at me when I told him I was behind on the editing of the podcast for this week. All I could do was pledge to get better. I've tried hard, and I think the show will come out on time this week. So that'll be unusual. We'll have three shows out in three weeks. That's like our entire output for the summer.

Anyway, I'll try to not leave you guys in the dark for so long again. I've got a real great story about a rabbit coming up for you tomorrow. Well, not that great, but considering the rest of this blog, it's a cracking good story!

Welcome To The Night Machine

If you're a long time listener, you've probably heard Rish say something along the lines of, "I don't think I could be intimate with a girl who didn't love that song," or, "that movie," or, "that Bachelor Pad show on ABC," or something like that. He hasn't been intimate with anyone that wasn't a pixel generated image on a computer screen for a long, long, long, long time, and that may be because of the high standards he has set for those with whom he could be intimate. Maybe not, I don't know. He did read The Lord of the Rings in high school instead of...well, you know.

Anyway, one of the first things I heard him use that phrase with was Night Ranger's 1984 power ballad "Sister Christian" (you'll notice the trend at some point, it's almost always 80s songs and movies that are included in the, "I don't think I could be intimate with a girl who didn't love..." phrase). I was just looking on Wikipedia, and I discovered that "Sister Christian" peaked at number five on the billboard charts. I find that incredible. That song was freaking huge! It must have been released at the same time as Michael Jackson's "Beat It," Madonna's "Like a Virgin," Prince's "When Doves Cry," and Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," or something. 1984 was a good year, after all, that's why that guy in "This Must Be The Place" picked it as his year after all.

Anyway, despite Rish's sick fixation on the song, he's never even considered listening to another Night Ranger song. Weird how that works with music. I know there must be tons of songs that are the same way for me. I love them, yet have never given the band another chance to reel me in. Why would that be?

Recently, the radio took it upon itself to amend that problem for Rish. Just the other day, I got an IM from Rish that said, "Who sings the song that goes, 'when you close your eyes, do you dream dream about me." I have been a fan of Night Ranger since the release of "Sister Christian," but unlike Rish, I'd been exposed to many of their other songs. So I knew immediately that the answer was Night Ranger.

Later that same day, Rish and I met for our podcasting session, and Rish said, "that song was on the radio again on the way over. Isn't that weird?"

Then the next day, again I get an IM, "Guess what song's on the radio right now?"

Maybe Glee did a performance of that song this week or something. They did that with "Ice Ice Baby," and it was suddenly all over the radio for a week or so. Otherwise, there's no freaking explaining it.

It is, however, a really good song. I know that 80s rock music has received a really bad reputation ever since Nirvana denounced it to a generation of young folks. It never has recovered in the theater of public opinion. It's seen as cheesy and awful. It's been given derogatory nicknames like hair bands or butt rock, but for an old guy like me, it has come back into favor. So, if you're like Rish, a fan of butt rock and, especially, 80's power ballads but you have never given Night Ranger a chance beyond "Sister Christian," I offer this playlist to you. It's got some of Night Ranger's best songs on it. Listen to it through with an open mind, and you may find that you like Night Ranger more than you expected you could.

As a bonus, there's an acoustic version of "Sister Christian" on the end of the playlist. However, I have a suspicion that it's not actually performed by the guys from Night Ranger. I think it's actually a cover, but it's a good cover, so enjoy that too.

Can It Be?

Rish told me about a new flash fiction website that Bosley Gravel has started up called the Cavalcade of Terror. I checked it out, and read the two stories he had up so far. I remember the days when we first started up, and no one knew who we were (except people submitting to us) and how excited we were for our ten listeners, or one listener. It would certainly take a while, but I was sure his site would get there some day, and what a long strange trip it will be. It was almost a nostalgic moment for me.

Then, a few days later, I was trying to force myself to write something, and moving through my folders with my stories in them, I came across the second story that I wrote while I was on vacation last summer in Canada. I'd really liked the story, but it was well over a hundred words, so it wouldn't be going to the Drabblecast, and for most anywhere else it was way too short. But wait! Wasn't Bosley Gravel's site a flash fiction one? Indeed it was, so I thought I'd give the story a chance, and sent it along to Mr. Gravel.

I expected to get rejected, because that's what happens to my writing, but wonder of wonders, Mr. Gravel liked the story, and decided to run it. And now it is available for all to read. So, if you'd like to check it out, swing over to Bosley Gravel's Cavalcade of Terror and give it a read. It's really short, so you can read the whole thing in about two maybe three minutes. Leave a comment there about it, if you like. You can leave one here as well. As long as they're not too critical. Be constructive. Remember, I am a real person, despite the silly name.

And, if you like the story, I may have another one that is similar coming soon. It's percolating in my brain right now, and soon I will start writing it out. It'll be a lot different, but it'll have a similar idea...er...I don't know, whatever.

Joss's Memorable Line

I started buying DVDs way back in the early part of the last decade. At first I had no aim or goal in mind, I just bought whatever touched my fancy. Soon, I realized that I would quickly waste any and all money that I had on these things if I kept this strategy up. So I made the rule that I would only buy a movie if I expected that I would watch it at least once every two years. That way, I would get my money's worth out of buying it versus renting it.

Of course, I still bought way more DVDs than I ever watched once every two years or at all for that matter. Recently, I looked at my DVD collection, and wondered why the hell I had bought most of them. I could count on one hand the discs that I'd ever watched even once. What was I thinking? Then I remembered, I was thinking that it would be cool to sit down and watch these movies with my son when he finally got old enough to handle them.

Well, he's ten years old now, and I think he's made it to the age of being able to understand and enjoy all the movies I've been saving up. So we've started watching them together. In fact I watch them with all my kids. My eight-year-old daughter and my six-year-old daughter as well.

We started with the Spiderman movies, and the kids loved them. I tried to make it a weekly event, but the kids would have none of it. As soon as we finished one, they wanted to see the sequel. If I didn't let them watch it right away, they would start asking again the next morning, and not stop pestering me until I relented and let them finally watch it.

This week, I watched 2000's X-Men. This movie, along with the even better X2: X-Men United are singlehandedly responsible for my interest in comic books today. I picked up my first graphic novel from the library because of a desire to know more about the plotlines that I had been introduced to in those films.

The movie is a really good one. My eight-year-old initially didn't want to watch it, but she was won over pretty quickly.

I have to admit, though, that I'm glad that the kids don't get all the jokes in these movies just yet. For example, there's that great exchange near the end of the film where Wolverine has been fighting Mystique disguised as Wolverine. The other X-Men are confused as to who is who. When Wolverine reappears after the fight, Cyclops insists that he prove that he's the real Wolverine.

"You're a dick," Wolverine says, and Cyclops merely nods. This is enough proof for him. It's a great sequence. Rish told me once that it was the only thing in the script that remained from Joss Whedon's time working on the script, and I believe it, because it sounds like one of Joss's clever lines.

However, I always feel a little squeamish exposing my kids to language like that. They'll learn to be foul-mouthed, pieces of crap someday, but I don't think they need my help to get there. In this particular case it seems that I didn't help them at all, because, as soon as the exchange was over, my eight-year-old chuckled and repeated the lines.

"It's me!" she said, repeating Wolverine's line.

Then, "Prove it," she said, repeating Cyclops's part.

"You're a tick!" she said, finishing off what she thought Wolverine's last line in the exchange was. She paused and then asked, "Daddy, what's a tick?"

I smiled, struggling not to laugh out loud, and said, "It's a little bug."

My eight-year-old smiled, and my ten-year-old son laughed and said, "they don't like each other."

I'm glad I didn't have to explain to my eight-year-old daughter what a dick was. And, while nowhere near as good, a tick is a passable line in that exchange. Someday the kids will see that again, and see that they were wrong in what they heard, and know that I led them astray. But I think they'll understand and forgive me.

Flower Power

I figured I'd throw in one more picture of flowers here. The rest of our sunflowers have bloomed now, so here's a picture of the whole sunflower patch. It's not as good of a picture as the others, but oh well. It's what I've got. 

Cat Tails 2

So, this weekend, a friend of my wife asked us to watch her dog for her while she spent the evening out of town. We thought that, since we are considering getting our own dog, that it would be a good dry run kind of thing. We could see how well the kids would do with a dog and all that.

Well, the kids did great. The dog was a very well behaved and fun animal. The cat, however, did not like the idea at all.

At one point, after the cat had been hiding in the basement for most of the day, I took it outside to give it the chance to move around and not have to live in fear of that crazy canine. However, it didn't seem to want to be outside. It just sat at the door and stared longingly in. So, a few minutes later, when we brought the dog out to pee, I thought I'd take the chance to get the cat safely back inside.

The cat was beside itself with worry, however, with that dog being nearby. So, when I picked the cat up and tried to take it in, the wretched beast turned on me, and savaged my hand brutally.

Believe me, that picture doesn't do the deed justice. That'll teach me to try to ever show care for that @$%#ing cat.