I'm currently in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, soaking up the hospitality of the octogenarian grandparents of The Great Organiser. They're a kindly couple who seem determined to feed me every last scrap of food contained within the house.
"Would you look at that corn! Have yourself some more. Go on, have another one."
If there's one thing I've learned about ingratiating oneself to one's hosts, it's that one should always accede to the demands of said hosts to consume more of their food. I've been dutifully obeying the rule and so far my methods seem to be working.
Just as I was about to depart from work on Tuesday afternoon one of the people who reports to me decided he'd start kicking up a fuss. He's been known to do it in the past. Personnel issues arising on the afternoon before a red-eye to JFK airport demand one course of action—pass it along to your immediate superior.
I've kept track of the email threads and it looks like it's getting nasty. I can't wait to return to the office on Monday. Woot.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
New Tunes - Van She and The Field
The music collection has swelled by a whopping two discs. Here are the initial impressions...
The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
The proverbial punching bag of the electronic music scene is trance. Produce music that vaguely approximates a drone set to a steady yet subterranean beat and it is likely to attract heaping mounds of derision from the loftier and more cultured minds of the house and breaks set. And in most cases it's well deserved. There's a lot of shit out there and there's a lot of shit trance out there. Rightly stated, The Field is undeserving of being saddled with the trance albatross. Skirting close to the minimalist school of bleep, The Field—apparently a one man act from Sweden—deliberately toys with repetition, paving an aural pathway that seems to promise a lively journey towards a clearly defined location, only to loop back on itself a few metres from where it all started. It's mildly infuriating but oddly enough it works. A week or two into the purchase it's found its way into regular rotation.
Van She - Van She
What are we to make of the eighties? At the time they seemed like an improvement over the cultural missteps of the seventies, but now that we're a generation clear of the era, the status of the decade is looking kind of shaky. The cinema was kind of naff, the clothes actually got worse, but at least we got The Smiths. So why is everyone trying their gosh-darned hardest to evoke the crappest parts of the ten years that gave us Bros., Milli Vanilli and Martika? Van She, in their defence, seem to be taking the piss—sort of. On one hand they're winking at the audience while they belt out a few thinly veiled retreads of early Depeche Mode, but on the other hand their blatant channelling of old synthesiser sounds from 1982 hints at a belief that they're transcending something more than musical; to them it's an ironic fashion statement. Played within the framework of kitsch, Van She get away with it, but they're seriously deluded if their high school variety of irony is anything more than a flash in the pan. But I'm listening to it right now and it ain't half bad.
The Field - From Here We Go SublimeThe proverbial punching bag of the electronic music scene is trance. Produce music that vaguely approximates a drone set to a steady yet subterranean beat and it is likely to attract heaping mounds of derision from the loftier and more cultured minds of the house and breaks set. And in most cases it's well deserved. There's a lot of shit out there and there's a lot of shit trance out there. Rightly stated, The Field is undeserving of being saddled with the trance albatross. Skirting close to the minimalist school of bleep, The Field—apparently a one man act from Sweden—deliberately toys with repetition, paving an aural pathway that seems to promise a lively journey towards a clearly defined location, only to loop back on itself a few metres from where it all started. It's mildly infuriating but oddly enough it works. A week or two into the purchase it's found its way into regular rotation.
Van She - Van SheWhat are we to make of the eighties? At the time they seemed like an improvement over the cultural missteps of the seventies, but now that we're a generation clear of the era, the status of the decade is looking kind of shaky. The cinema was kind of naff, the clothes actually got worse, but at least we got The Smiths. So why is everyone trying their gosh-darned hardest to evoke the crappest parts of the ten years that gave us Bros., Milli Vanilli and Martika? Van She, in their defence, seem to be taking the piss—sort of. On one hand they're winking at the audience while they belt out a few thinly veiled retreads of early Depeche Mode, but on the other hand their blatant channelling of old synthesiser sounds from 1982 hints at a belief that they're transcending something more than musical; to them it's an ironic fashion statement. Played within the framework of kitsch, Van She get away with it, but they're seriously deluded if their high school variety of irony is anything more than a flash in the pan. But I'm listening to it right now and it ain't half bad.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Still Childless - There Are Reasons
My thirty fifth year of walking this earth is bearing down upon me and thus far I've managed to dodge the whole breeding, spawning, fatherhood thing. Of course I'm now of an age when more than just a handful of my friends are impregnating one another and ushering in their own private bundles of joy into the world. I'm simply not one of them and neither is The Great Organiser. That's not to intimate that such an eventuality has been forever stricken from the cards for us, it's just that we've got, well, other priorities. And if what I've seen of parenting so far is to be believed as the norm, I might wait a while longer.
Take The Big Gay Wiggle (not his real name) for example. Whilst he's somewhat biggish he's neither gay nor one of the Wiggles. He and his wife—coming up with an appropriate name for her has been tough; we'll call her The Counsellor—had their first child about two years ago and it all went well; from The Counsellor's womb emerged a happy little bub and The Big Gay Wiggle could be found at parties demonstrating his ability to cradle an infant in his left hand while he counter balanced with a beer in the right. Parenthood seemed grand. It was possible to take the baby to a barbecue and still chug a shitload of booze.
The Counsellor herself had been taking more than her fair share of swigs from the baby Kool-Aid bottle. Judging her attitude towards motherhood, you'd think that their newborn was shitting lumps of opium into her nappies and her parents had been eagerly scooping it up and smoking it. They were that high on parenthood.
"So when do you think you and The Polished Turd will become parents," she imploringly asked The Great Organiser on one of our return visits to Australia.
"Um, it's not really part of any plan we've got right now. Besides, there are plenty of adoption-worthy kids out there who need good homes."
That kind of response brings the blast door slamming down extra hard on any further conversation with a new mother. In one fell swoop the mother's entire life for the past year has been rendered inconsequential. A well orchestrated recover is possible, but it takes a conversation genius to execute it. Moreover neither the The Great Organiser nor I could be bothered.
Compare the parental disposition one year later. When The Counsellor's attitude towards motherhood the year prior gets taken into account it should come as little surprise that she and The Big Gay Wiggle decided to throw themselves at the mercies of procreation once again. The weird part was the circumstance. The Counsellor hadn't had her first period since the birth of her first child and she was waiting for it to come around. And she waited. And she waited. And she waited.
She got bigger.
She got fatter.
The Big Gay Wiggle placed his hand on her nascent bulge whilst out at nature park and remarked, "Shit Love, I felt a kick."
She was five months pregnant.
Just after The Great Organiser and I lobbed into Australia their second child was born. The attitude was completely different and we'd have been forgiven for thinking that the Kool-Aid had been replaced with vinegar.
"We're done with that one. We didn't see it coming and we've got a few things to sort out now."
Yeah, I bet you have.
Then take last Saturday night. Whitey and his lady and daughter are doing what so many people who fall pregnant whilst living in San Francisco: they have their baby and then promptly flee for the 'burbs. It's a sad state of affairs for new parents in this city and the parents can't be really held to blame entirely. The school system is in disarray, the housing is cramped and it costs a boatload of cash to live here. All's well when you're pulling a fat wallet salary, but when that baby's mouth starts to beg for food why not do a bunk for Oregon?
The Great Organiser and I put on a spread for them on Saturday night. Things were going along just fine when the shorty decided the coffee table would be a great thing to headbutt. In the words of The Big Gay Wiggle's mum, "babies are really hard to kill. I mean really, REALLY hard to kill. You can pretty much drop them on their heads and they'll bounce right back up into your arms." She's probably right you know, although I'm hardly one to judge. None the less the baby was by now a writhing, bellowing mess, and the ice pack, despite arresting the swelling, made her irritation even more pronounced, thereby bringing Whitey's dinner to a close. He'd barely made it a third of his way through the plate.
The rest of the guests—there were two others visiting, one of whom supplied more bottles of awesome wine than were really needed—sat back, enjoyed our childless state of being and proceeded to polish off as much of the vino as possible.
We slept well that night, awoken not by crying children hungry for attention, but instead by warring cats.
Take The Big Gay Wiggle (not his real name) for example. Whilst he's somewhat biggish he's neither gay nor one of the Wiggles. He and his wife—coming up with an appropriate name for her has been tough; we'll call her The Counsellor—had their first child about two years ago and it all went well; from The Counsellor's womb emerged a happy little bub and The Big Gay Wiggle could be found at parties demonstrating his ability to cradle an infant in his left hand while he counter balanced with a beer in the right. Parenthood seemed grand. It was possible to take the baby to a barbecue and still chug a shitload of booze.
The Counsellor herself had been taking more than her fair share of swigs from the baby Kool-Aid bottle. Judging her attitude towards motherhood, you'd think that their newborn was shitting lumps of opium into her nappies and her parents had been eagerly scooping it up and smoking it. They were that high on parenthood.
"So when do you think you and The Polished Turd will become parents," she imploringly asked The Great Organiser on one of our return visits to Australia.
"Um, it's not really part of any plan we've got right now. Besides, there are plenty of adoption-worthy kids out there who need good homes."
That kind of response brings the blast door slamming down extra hard on any further conversation with a new mother. In one fell swoop the mother's entire life for the past year has been rendered inconsequential. A well orchestrated recover is possible, but it takes a conversation genius to execute it. Moreover neither the The Great Organiser nor I could be bothered.
Compare the parental disposition one year later. When The Counsellor's attitude towards motherhood the year prior gets taken into account it should come as little surprise that she and The Big Gay Wiggle decided to throw themselves at the mercies of procreation once again. The weird part was the circumstance. The Counsellor hadn't had her first period since the birth of her first child and she was waiting for it to come around. And she waited. And she waited. And she waited.
She got bigger.
She got fatter.
The Big Gay Wiggle placed his hand on her nascent bulge whilst out at nature park and remarked, "Shit Love, I felt a kick."
She was five months pregnant.
Just after The Great Organiser and I lobbed into Australia their second child was born. The attitude was completely different and we'd have been forgiven for thinking that the Kool-Aid had been replaced with vinegar.
"We're done with that one. We didn't see it coming and we've got a few things to sort out now."
Yeah, I bet you have.
Then take last Saturday night. Whitey and his lady and daughter are doing what so many people who fall pregnant whilst living in San Francisco: they have their baby and then promptly flee for the 'burbs. It's a sad state of affairs for new parents in this city and the parents can't be really held to blame entirely. The school system is in disarray, the housing is cramped and it costs a boatload of cash to live here. All's well when you're pulling a fat wallet salary, but when that baby's mouth starts to beg for food why not do a bunk for Oregon?
The Great Organiser and I put on a spread for them on Saturday night. Things were going along just fine when the shorty decided the coffee table would be a great thing to headbutt. In the words of The Big Gay Wiggle's mum, "babies are really hard to kill. I mean really, REALLY hard to kill. You can pretty much drop them on their heads and they'll bounce right back up into your arms." She's probably right you know, although I'm hardly one to judge. None the less the baby was by now a writhing, bellowing mess, and the ice pack, despite arresting the swelling, made her irritation even more pronounced, thereby bringing Whitey's dinner to a close. He'd barely made it a third of his way through the plate.
The rest of the guests—there were two others visiting, one of whom supplied more bottles of awesome wine than were really needed—sat back, enjoyed our childless state of being and proceeded to polish off as much of the vino as possible.
We slept well that night, awoken not by crying children hungry for attention, but instead by warring cats.
Friday, July 20, 2007
It Came from Japan - Thanko
There's a lot to love about Japan: Godzilla, Gatchaman, really big robots duking it out, really big monsters duking it out, and perfectly sized food portions. Over the course of years, Japan has done a marvellous job of gauging the paranoias of society at large and repackaging them as adolescent entertainment with a not-too-slight dose of smut thrown in for good measure.
What then should we make of Thanko? If you're not familiar with the company, their catalog of products rest upon a fascination with the USB port that more than borders on sexual; it's a downright fetish.
Clock a few of these gems.
First up is the Visomate—a device that goes "Pee! Pee!" all over your face whenever your posture slips and your glazzballs stray too close to the monitor. You could probably sell that to the Germans just on the porn factor alone.
Next in line is a device tailored especially for the needs of a certain Cubana Gringa. The USB ass cooler seeks to, well, cool one's ass through the magic of the USB port.
I'm hardly short on for a bit of fleshiness hanging off my lower spine, and when you consider the rampant miasmas that emerge from bowels of my being, I for one would be the first in line to give one of these devices a spin. I'd probably fork over double if it came with a sachet of baking powder to neutralise my noxious anal fumes. The issue here for all of us with some junk in the trunk is that all that junk tends to hold a lot of energy. Screw directing a fan to the face on a hot day, it's the tush that demands all the attention. Maybe the eggheads at Thanko aren't as insane as they seem.
Rounding out the trio is perhaps my favourite of all Thanko products: the USB ashtray. Extended, four-days-without-a-break sessions of World of Warcraft demand the consumption of ridiculous numbers of ciggies, or so I'm told—I'm neither a World of Warcraft play nor a smoker—and that's where this nifty device comes into play. It plugs into your USB port, sucks in your cancer-ridden smoke and emits slightly less cancer-ridden smoke. Genius. It might be worth becoming a dirt stick addict just to justify owning one of these things.
To be honest what I really want, and it's not made by Thanko (for shame!), is the Robotech Sex Thruster. Slap the name "Robotech" onto anything and there's a good chance that the nerd inside me will be drawn to the product like a cat to a fresh litter box.
Yeah, bolt that thing to the table top, get your lube tube in hand and slam the throttle forward. Apparently flesh is now obsolete in Japan.
What then should we make of Thanko? If you're not familiar with the company, their catalog of products rest upon a fascination with the USB port that more than borders on sexual; it's a downright fetish.
Clock a few of these gems.
First up is the Visomate—a device that goes "Pee! Pee!" all over your face whenever your posture slips and your glazzballs stray too close to the monitor. You could probably sell that to the Germans just on the porn factor alone.
Next in line is a device tailored especially for the needs of a certain Cubana Gringa. The USB ass cooler seeks to, well, cool one's ass through the magic of the USB port.
I'm hardly short on for a bit of fleshiness hanging off my lower spine, and when you consider the rampant miasmas that emerge from bowels of my being, I for one would be the first in line to give one of these devices a spin. I'd probably fork over double if it came with a sachet of baking powder to neutralise my noxious anal fumes. The issue here for all of us with some junk in the trunk is that all that junk tends to hold a lot of energy. Screw directing a fan to the face on a hot day, it's the tush that demands all the attention. Maybe the eggheads at Thanko aren't as insane as they seem.Rounding out the trio is perhaps my favourite of all Thanko products: the USB ashtray. Extended, four-days-without-a-break sessions of World of Warcraft demand the consumption of ridiculous numbers of ciggies, or so I'm told—I'm neither a World of Warcraft play nor a smoker—and that's where this nifty device comes into play. It plugs into your USB port, sucks in your cancer-ridden smoke and emits slightly less cancer-ridden smoke. Genius. It might be worth becoming a dirt stick addict just to justify owning one of these things.
To be honest what I really want, and it's not made by Thanko (for shame!), is the Robotech Sex Thruster. Slap the name "Robotech" onto anything and there's a good chance that the nerd inside me will be drawn to the product like a cat to a fresh litter box.
Yeah, bolt that thing to the table top, get your lube tube in hand and slam the throttle forward. Apparently flesh is now obsolete in Japan.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
We're Apparently Full
All of that custom licence plate stuff from the other day helped me cast my mind back a few years to when I paid a visit to Townsville, Queensland. Amongst Australians, Queenslanders are second only to Tasmanians in the national objects of derision standings. This photo should help you understand why.
You see that orange/yellow map of Australia just above the naked woman? Let's get a closer look at it.
"Fuck off we're full"!?! If there's any country in the world that could stand to absorb a couple of million people it has to be Australia. German tourists routinely disappear without a trace after embarking on "short walks" in and around Coober Pedy. It's possible to literally drive for days on highways in Australia without passing another car. Nut-job religious types flock to the great Australian expanse in order to escape the human world and discover "God" somewhere out there in the Outback.
Check the list of countries ordered by population density. At the top is Monaco, with a density of 23,660 people per square kilometre. Australia is six shy of the bottom at number 224, supporting a density of 2.6 people per square kilometre and rubbing shoulders with such people-packed nations as Mongolia (1.7 people per square kilometre), Western Sahara (1.3 people per square kilometre) and Greenland (0.026).
This should make it abundantly clear to everyone on the whole freakin' planet that there is absolutely NOTHING full about Australia—nothing! Walk in and take up some space, please. There's loads to share.
And real Aussies do indeed drive utes. Just ask my brother.
"Fuck off we're full"!?! If there's any country in the world that could stand to absorb a couple of million people it has to be Australia. German tourists routinely disappear without a trace after embarking on "short walks" in and around Coober Pedy. It's possible to literally drive for days on highways in Australia without passing another car. Nut-job religious types flock to the great Australian expanse in order to escape the human world and discover "God" somewhere out there in the Outback.Check the list of countries ordered by population density. At the top is Monaco, with a density of 23,660 people per square kilometre. Australia is six shy of the bottom at number 224, supporting a density of 2.6 people per square kilometre and rubbing shoulders with such people-packed nations as Mongolia (1.7 people per square kilometre), Western Sahara (1.3 people per square kilometre) and Greenland (0.026).
This should make it abundantly clear to everyone on the whole freakin' planet that there is absolutely NOTHING full about Australia—nothing! Walk in and take up some space, please. There's loads to share.
And real Aussies do indeed drive utes. Just ask my brother.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
For My Mum
Yesterday was my mum's birthday, God bless her.
A few years ago I was at a party where everyone was crowded around just outside the back door of place while they took turns at slagging off their parents. Either the mum, dad or both of each person was in some way a retard, asshole or directly or indirectly responsible for a critical flaw in the person's personality. Their parents either made them bitter by withholding necessary affection or made them gay by smothering them with too much. They either held them back by not providing them with sufficient resources to get a leg up in life or broke their spirit by cracking the whip too hard. Maybe they just sent mixed signals about what it meant to be a good parent.
I couldn't take part in any of it. The fact of the matter is that I'm not a mental case. Don't read me incorrectly, I'm hardly perfect, but when it comes to all things parental I haven't got too much to complain about. I kind of like my parents, and when taking a retrospective view of the decisions they made in rearing three kids in Australia, I can't fault too many of their choices. They managed to churn out three more or less stable, successful adults. We'll overlook for now the little part about none of us being married or with children, despite all three of us kids now being in our mid-thirties. That's a separate post.
More than anything else, my mum helped mold my expectations about women in society, and she did it for the better. Coming from a working class background, my mum wasn't really expected to do much with her life other than hold down a job as menial as, say, a receptionist or typist, and that was if she opted to work at all. A quick inspection of my grandmother's life reveals that she was content to spit out a few kiddies and call it quits right there. Instead Mum opted to become a senior chemistry teacher at high school. So there you have it, Mum was the science-type person of my house and Dad, also a teacher but in his case of such "soft" stuff as geography and history, was—and kind of still is—the comparative luddite. Want to know something about maths? Ask Mum. Need help with fractions? Ask Mum. Want to see something really cool done with magnesium? Ask Mum. That's not to say that Dad was crap, but compared with Mum it just wasn't his bag.
One of my favourite stories of her was from when she was teaching at Cabra College, a Catholic high school in Adelaide. At the start of the day she gave her students a cup of beetroot juice to drink. The students were then informed to pay close attention to the colour of their bodily secretions as the day wore on. The kids loved it. Each time they took a piss they'd check the shade of what was emanating from their urethrae. That mum of mine has a great insight into the minds of teenagers. I think the kids really respected her after that whole beetroot juice episode.
The ramifications of being imprinted by such a woman at an early stage live on. The reversal of society's established gender roles seemed more like the rule to me than the exception, and putting an enjoyable spin on science probably had a lot to do with me winding up working in that arena. The older I get the more I appreciate the things my parents did for my brother, sister and me. I hope you had a happy birthday, Mum. I hope you'll have a lot more.
A few years ago I was at a party where everyone was crowded around just outside the back door of place while they took turns at slagging off their parents. Either the mum, dad or both of each person was in some way a retard, asshole or directly or indirectly responsible for a critical flaw in the person's personality. Their parents either made them bitter by withholding necessary affection or made them gay by smothering them with too much. They either held them back by not providing them with sufficient resources to get a leg up in life or broke their spirit by cracking the whip too hard. Maybe they just sent mixed signals about what it meant to be a good parent.
I couldn't take part in any of it. The fact of the matter is that I'm not a mental case. Don't read me incorrectly, I'm hardly perfect, but when it comes to all things parental I haven't got too much to complain about. I kind of like my parents, and when taking a retrospective view of the decisions they made in rearing three kids in Australia, I can't fault too many of their choices. They managed to churn out three more or less stable, successful adults. We'll overlook for now the little part about none of us being married or with children, despite all three of us kids now being in our mid-thirties. That's a separate post.
More than anything else, my mum helped mold my expectations about women in society, and she did it for the better. Coming from a working class background, my mum wasn't really expected to do much with her life other than hold down a job as menial as, say, a receptionist or typist, and that was if she opted to work at all. A quick inspection of my grandmother's life reveals that she was content to spit out a few kiddies and call it quits right there. Instead Mum opted to become a senior chemistry teacher at high school. So there you have it, Mum was the science-type person of my house and Dad, also a teacher but in his case of such "soft" stuff as geography and history, was—and kind of still is—the comparative luddite. Want to know something about maths? Ask Mum. Need help with fractions? Ask Mum. Want to see something really cool done with magnesium? Ask Mum. That's not to say that Dad was crap, but compared with Mum it just wasn't his bag.
One of my favourite stories of her was from when she was teaching at Cabra College, a Catholic high school in Adelaide. At the start of the day she gave her students a cup of beetroot juice to drink. The students were then informed to pay close attention to the colour of their bodily secretions as the day wore on. The kids loved it. Each time they took a piss they'd check the shade of what was emanating from their urethrae. That mum of mine has a great insight into the minds of teenagers. I think the kids really respected her after that whole beetroot juice episode.
The ramifications of being imprinted by such a woman at an early stage live on. The reversal of society's established gender roles seemed more like the rule to me than the exception, and putting an enjoyable spin on science probably had a lot to do with me winding up working in that arena. The older I get the more I appreciate the things my parents did for my brother, sister and me. I hope you had a happy birthday, Mum. I hope you'll have a lot more.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Cat Wars - Are They Really Over?
I called the official end to the cat wars a week or so ago, but I think the armistice declaration might have been somewhat premature. There have been a series of border skirmishes and flare-ups, usually centered around Chumbles' inherent skittishness and 'fraidiness, that have caused us to reinstate the forced time-outs, separations and sin bin sessions in the hope that Chumbles' anxieties will finally subside.
For a while there it seemed like we were on a complete reversion back to open hostilities, but the photo says otherwise.
There's hope for us yet.
For a while there it seemed like we were on a complete reversion back to open hostilities, but the photo says otherwise.
There's hope for us yet.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
The Alleys of San Francisco - Juri Street
Let's give the pet peeves a rest for a while. There are plenty more of them hanging out in the eaves, waiting for their turn to shine on stage, but they can stay there a little bit longer. Their time will come.
Something that I love about San Francisco, aside from the restaurants, weirdos, odd weather and architecture, is the number of tiny alleys and side streets. There must be hundreds of these little-known byways dotting the city, each one a secretive nook with private tales to tell that get overshadowed by the much-storied Valencias, Polks, Gearys and Markets.
San Francisco is second only to New York City in terms of its urban density, and that's what lends it so much of its charm. Stacked on top of each other are the homeless, the urban yuppies, the Mission hipsters and the migrant Latinos. It's noisy, boisterous, overwhelming and invigorating. By taking a turn down one of the narrow alleyways you're abruptly wrenched free of all of that overpopulated mess. Everything seems suddenly quieter. You can hear the plastic food wrapper buckle and bend as a fog-propelled breeze pushes it along the gutter. The voice of an angry mother as she chastises her infant son is borne aloft the scent of homemade enchiladas, lifted out of her kitchen window and left to waft into the tiny street. Much more of an opportunity presents itself to pause, look up, and watch the tendrils of fog twist and dissipate overhead. The big, depersonalised city slows down for a few moments, ceases to be an assault from every angle and miraculously becomes personal.
Take Juri Street for example. Located right around the corner from where The Great Organiser and I live, it's a pokey little path that rests right alongside the equally pokey Juri Commons.
It's small, quaint and a welcome oasis. I expect everyone on the street knows everyone else, and in my mind I can picture all the residents getting together on every third Sunday of the month for a Scrabble tournament, or something equally as dorky, while they sip cups of tea and discuss their improvement plans for their slice of San Francisco. Truth be told they're probably swapping sex partners, doing lines of coke every other night and filing restraining orders against one another, but I'm allowed my idealised fantasy. There's something reassuring about imagining that in this weird city there's a place or two where some measure of normalcy reigns. But that's a fantasy, isn't it?
Something that I love about San Francisco, aside from the restaurants, weirdos, odd weather and architecture, is the number of tiny alleys and side streets. There must be hundreds of these little-known byways dotting the city, each one a secretive nook with private tales to tell that get overshadowed by the much-storied Valencias, Polks, Gearys and Markets.
San Francisco is second only to New York City in terms of its urban density, and that's what lends it so much of its charm. Stacked on top of each other are the homeless, the urban yuppies, the Mission hipsters and the migrant Latinos. It's noisy, boisterous, overwhelming and invigorating. By taking a turn down one of the narrow alleyways you're abruptly wrenched free of all of that overpopulated mess. Everything seems suddenly quieter. You can hear the plastic food wrapper buckle and bend as a fog-propelled breeze pushes it along the gutter. The voice of an angry mother as she chastises her infant son is borne aloft the scent of homemade enchiladas, lifted out of her kitchen window and left to waft into the tiny street. Much more of an opportunity presents itself to pause, look up, and watch the tendrils of fog twist and dissipate overhead. The big, depersonalised city slows down for a few moments, ceases to be an assault from every angle and miraculously becomes personal.
Take Juri Street for example. Located right around the corner from where The Great Organiser and I live, it's a pokey little path that rests right alongside the equally pokey Juri Commons.
It's small, quaint and a welcome oasis. I expect everyone on the street knows everyone else, and in my mind I can picture all the residents getting together on every third Sunday of the month for a Scrabble tournament, or something equally as dorky, while they sip cups of tea and discuss their improvement plans for their slice of San Francisco. Truth be told they're probably swapping sex partners, doing lines of coke every other night and filing restraining orders against one another, but I'm allowed my idealised fantasy. There's something reassuring about imagining that in this weird city there's a place or two where some measure of normalcy reigns. But that's a fantasy, isn't it?
Friday, July 13, 2007
Pet Peeves - Custom Licence Plates
Still feeling curmudgeonly and peevish? I am. Despite being Australian—we're supposed to be the most laid-back people on the planet—there's a lot out there in the world that grabs my goat. That goat can be kind of gruff and angry sometimes.
On the chopping block this time around are custom licence plates. I hate them for a number of reasons. Firstly, they're a crap form of expression. You're constrained to a set of seven characters, of which most combinations have already been snagged, so you're going to have to fight the laws of the English language pretty freakin' hard to come up with something vaguely original. Most of those "original" end products are so bastardised as to bear little resemblance to the word or concept they were initially supposed to represent. I'd kill to have a good example at my fingertips right now, but I don't.
What I do have is this, and it brings me to my second point.
It would seem he or she—let's be real, it's a "he" isn't it?—has his 450 HP, and I don't think he's referring to a Hewlett Packard computer. It couldn't be made any more obvious unless the plate was bordered in pink neon, and that's been known to happen.
What we're asked to assume here is that the car is capable of spewing forth around 450 horse power. That's a lot of horses. He's evidently very proud of it, and why wouldn't he be? He's probably blown untold sums of money jamming an air-forced filter here and a muffler expansion there just to extract a handful of extra horsies out of the motor. And he wants you to know it too. As he hits the 280 during rush hour and starts dropping the foot on the pedal as he weaves through the banks of traffic, he wants you to look on in in amazement as he streaks past in a blaze of red. He wants you to clock the licence plate as it disappears into the vanishing point and think, Jebus, those were a whole lotta horses that just flew past and it seems like that red Supra is the car that's got 'em—all 450 of them. The licence plate tells me so.
This is the part that disturbs me the most. When did our cars become such an extension of our personalities that we feel obligated to customise what is perhaps the least customisable part of the car in order to advertise to the world at large an inconsequential aspect of our lives? Nobody but the driver cares how many horses are in that car. Nobody else is impressed. You forked over $100 extra or whatever to the DMV so that you could engage in perhaps the lowest form of self expression. The money would have been better used had it been donated to charity.
Coming up soon: Mini Cooper drivers and the vehicular extension of personality.
On the chopping block this time around are custom licence plates. I hate them for a number of reasons. Firstly, they're a crap form of expression. You're constrained to a set of seven characters, of which most combinations have already been snagged, so you're going to have to fight the laws of the English language pretty freakin' hard to come up with something vaguely original. Most of those "original" end products are so bastardised as to bear little resemblance to the word or concept they were initially supposed to represent. I'd kill to have a good example at my fingertips right now, but I don't.
What I do have is this, and it brings me to my second point.
It would seem he or she—let's be real, it's a "he" isn't it?—has his 450 HP, and I don't think he's referring to a Hewlett Packard computer. It couldn't be made any more obvious unless the plate was bordered in pink neon, and that's been known to happen.What we're asked to assume here is that the car is capable of spewing forth around 450 horse power. That's a lot of horses. He's evidently very proud of it, and why wouldn't he be? He's probably blown untold sums of money jamming an air-forced filter here and a muffler expansion there just to extract a handful of extra horsies out of the motor. And he wants you to know it too. As he hits the 280 during rush hour and starts dropping the foot on the pedal as he weaves through the banks of traffic, he wants you to look on in in amazement as he streaks past in a blaze of red. He wants you to clock the licence plate as it disappears into the vanishing point and think, Jebus, those were a whole lotta horses that just flew past and it seems like that red Supra is the car that's got 'em—all 450 of them. The licence plate tells me so.
This is the part that disturbs me the most. When did our cars become such an extension of our personalities that we feel obligated to customise what is perhaps the least customisable part of the car in order to advertise to the world at large an inconsequential aspect of our lives? Nobody but the driver cares how many horses are in that car. Nobody else is impressed. You forked over $100 extra or whatever to the DMV so that you could engage in perhaps the lowest form of self expression. The money would have been better used had it been donated to charity.
Coming up soon: Mini Cooper drivers and the vehicular extension of personality.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Pet Peeves - Fixie Bikes
You've seen a fixie before. They're those bikes ridden primarily by hipsters around the Mission District. They have no brakes and run via a direct drive mechanism—no slack-legged freewheelin' for our well-heeled trendy types, just a lot of arse-over-tit skid stops and plenty of more-fashionable-than-thou looks at the stop lights, assuming they bother to stop at the lights. And that's kind of rare. Stopping is kind of difficult on a fixie. But everyone cool is riding a fixie these days. Why aren't you?
This is a fixie. No brakes. No gears. Only hipsters ride them.
Well, if you're like me then you're avoiding them on account of the fact that they're the hipster analog of the oversized jeans worn by would-be gangsters that belt loosely around their mid-thigh region. Okay, the analog falls apart when you consider that fixie bikes are a mode of transport whereas half-mast gangster jeans are a, erm, um, I'm not sure what they're supposed to achieve. But they're a fad, just like the current eighties revival that's compelling far too many young women to wear leg warmers and inflict a kind of Flock of Seagulls attack on their hair.
Roll into the haughty arrogance that comes with being hipper than anyone else on the street the kind of sanctimony expressed by far too many bicyclists. You're both pushing the limits of fashion AND kidding yourself that you're saving the planet. It's a great mix. The end result is perhaps the most obnoxious group of riders on the road, SUV drivers included. With all that in mind you can imagine the kind of laugh that came blurting out of my mouth when I noticed the following bumper sticker on a car as I belted my way down Page on my single gear clunker bike. It's not a fixie. There is a difference. The sight was enough to make me use my brakes (yeah, brakes, fixie riders, they're handy things), turn about and take a snap.
If driving a beaten up black Jetta around San Francisco means there's one less fixie on the road then I'm with you, whoever you are. Keep fighting the good fight.
This is a fixie. No brakes. No gears. Only hipsters ride them.
Well, if you're like me then you're avoiding them on account of the fact that they're the hipster analog of the oversized jeans worn by would-be gangsters that belt loosely around their mid-thigh region. Okay, the analog falls apart when you consider that fixie bikes are a mode of transport whereas half-mast gangster jeans are a, erm, um, I'm not sure what they're supposed to achieve. But they're a fad, just like the current eighties revival that's compelling far too many young women to wear leg warmers and inflict a kind of Flock of Seagulls attack on their hair.
Roll into the haughty arrogance that comes with being hipper than anyone else on the street the kind of sanctimony expressed by far too many bicyclists. You're both pushing the limits of fashion AND kidding yourself that you're saving the planet. It's a great mix. The end result is perhaps the most obnoxious group of riders on the road, SUV drivers included. With all that in mind you can imagine the kind of laugh that came blurting out of my mouth when I noticed the following bumper sticker on a car as I belted my way down Page on my single gear clunker bike. It's not a fixie. There is a difference. The sight was enough to make me use my brakes (yeah, brakes, fixie riders, they're handy things), turn about and take a snap.
If driving a beaten up black Jetta around San Francisco means there's one less fixie on the road then I'm with you, whoever you are. Keep fighting the good fight.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Farewell Whitey — Farewell Good Night's Sleep
Whitey is running for the hills—or maybe from the hills since he lives in Bernal Heights. I'm kind of confused right now. Like a lot of people who get knocked up and spawn in San Francisco, Whitey and his partner have come to the conclusion that this charming, compact, urban outpost of the weird, wonderful, strange and sometimes dangerous ain't no place to raise a bub. They're doing a bunk for a rural sector of Oregon, about one full bladder's ride outside of Portland.
Saturday night was my send-off for him. He and I shared a house down by 25th and Hampshire Street for the better part of five years. We witnessed our neighbour, Francisco, scream "chupe mi dick!" at the top of his lungs at his estranged girlfriend in the wee small hours. We witnessed the very same Francisco's car leap into flames as a result of what he maintained was a mysterious vendetta. Whitey and I concluded the sudden torching came about due to the dodgy wiring he'd used as part of his homespun custom stereo installation. We'd staggered back home drunk after a solid session of boozing it up at Treat Street Cocktails, shoving each other into trash cans and shop screens as we stumbled our way back down 24th Street. He deserved a decent farewell.
And that's what we had. Our attempt to get a table for two at Suppenkuche was abortive—apparently the place does a roaring trade even up to 9:15pm, whence the waitress stopped taking any further names for tables—so we made our way down the road to Absinthe. To cut a long story short we imbibed sufficiently, eventually closing out the bar at Zeitgeist. With the bar now closed Whitey managed to zip over the road to the convenience store to snag a sneaky pint bottle of Jim Beam. It went down a treat.
So of course I came home a little on the sloppy side. The Great Organiser was very much The Great Expression of Tolerance this time around, and she even humoured me as I crawled under the covers. I didn't wake until 11:30am the next day.
And that was my undoing. Remember the sleep-debt payoff cycle? Well, it clobbered me with full force last night. With the clock striking 10:30pm and the movie finished I did my best to get some sleep. The remnants of the hangover will lull me off nicely, I thought. I was wrong. The clock kept ticking past midnight and beyond. Then it was 1am. Somewhere in between I drifted off into a hypnagogic half-sleep, coming fully alert sometime around 5:30am. The damage was done and I battled my way off to work.
Now it's 7:30pm on Monday night and my brain is mush. The higher order functions have fled me and I'm going to retire to a bowl of whatever The Great Organiser is cooking and senseless episode of Gatchaman. I'll see you in the dreamworld.
Saturday night was my send-off for him. He and I shared a house down by 25th and Hampshire Street for the better part of five years. We witnessed our neighbour, Francisco, scream "chupe mi dick!" at the top of his lungs at his estranged girlfriend in the wee small hours. We witnessed the very same Francisco's car leap into flames as a result of what he maintained was a mysterious vendetta. Whitey and I concluded the sudden torching came about due to the dodgy wiring he'd used as part of his homespun custom stereo installation. We'd staggered back home drunk after a solid session of boozing it up at Treat Street Cocktails, shoving each other into trash cans and shop screens as we stumbled our way back down 24th Street. He deserved a decent farewell.
And that's what we had. Our attempt to get a table for two at Suppenkuche was abortive—apparently the place does a roaring trade even up to 9:15pm, whence the waitress stopped taking any further names for tables—so we made our way down the road to Absinthe. To cut a long story short we imbibed sufficiently, eventually closing out the bar at Zeitgeist. With the bar now closed Whitey managed to zip over the road to the convenience store to snag a sneaky pint bottle of Jim Beam. It went down a treat.
So of course I came home a little on the sloppy side. The Great Organiser was very much The Great Expression of Tolerance this time around, and she even humoured me as I crawled under the covers. I didn't wake until 11:30am the next day.
And that was my undoing. Remember the sleep-debt payoff cycle? Well, it clobbered me with full force last night. With the clock striking 10:30pm and the movie finished I did my best to get some sleep. The remnants of the hangover will lull me off nicely, I thought. I was wrong. The clock kept ticking past midnight and beyond. Then it was 1am. Somewhere in between I drifted off into a hypnagogic half-sleep, coming fully alert sometime around 5:30am. The damage was done and I battled my way off to work.
Now it's 7:30pm on Monday night and my brain is mush. The higher order functions have fled me and I'm going to retire to a bowl of whatever The Great Organiser is cooking and senseless episode of Gatchaman. I'll see you in the dreamworld.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Yet Another Movie - Transformers
I'm going to come charging out of the gate with my commentary on this film; its awesomeness is matched only by its astonishing stupidity. Make no mistake, Transformers is a Michael Bay film, and if your memory of schlocky summer blockbusters needs any refreshing a few of his towering contributions to the cinematic art form include Armageddon, Bad Boys and Pearl Harbor. Yes, Pearl Harbor—the film that, despite sexing up what was a lightning strike on a dormant fleet into a drawn-out 45 minute bullets & bombs slugfest, managed to shit all over the legacy of the thousands who died via perhaps the sluttiest love story ever to grace the screen.
Señor Bay's oeuvre is pretty much defined by variations on the concoction outlined above: hot chicks in slutty romances, really huge explosions and no regard for story, plot, character development or—God forbid—causality. Transformers is in no way a departure from Mr. Bay's established aesthetic; the special effects signal a milestone achievement, the audio engineering is completely immersive and none of it makes a lick of sense.
Here are some of the points that made me feel like I left fifty or so IQ points in the movie theater.
Why does freezing the robots immobilise them when they're apparently capable of functioning in the cold depths of space?
Why is the network breaker locked when it is needed the most? Shouldn't it be readily accessible in the event of an emergency?
Why is Soundwave so adept at taking out secret service agents on Airforce One but really struggles when in combat with a small group of cryptographers?
Why are Sam's parents so oblivious to the presence of four 40 foot tall robots in their back yard?
Why does shoving the cube into a robot's chest kill it? Why shouldn't it miraculously transform the robot into something new since it was established that the cube can bring machinery to life? For that matter why shouldn't the cube imbue the robot with so much power that it becomes a super robot?
How can a 75 metre tall cube transform down into a cube about the size of a computer monitor? What happens to all the extra mass?
How does Bumblebee know how to activate the cube's transformation when an army of scientists who have been working on the problem for nearly a hundred years have no idea?
What purpose did the blond Australian woman serve aside from providing window dressing?
I've barely scratched the tip of the iceberg that represents all of the plot holes and gaffes that riddle the film. They're manifold and overwhelming. Oddly enough Michael Bay has been engaged in a war of words of sorts with the producer of the film, Tom DeSanto, over writing credits. Considering the ridiculousness of the story, one would expect them to be fighting over who gets to distance himself most from the mess, but no, they're each trying to hog their share of the glory.
And glorious it no doubt will be once the receipts have been counted. Transformers is the kind of silly summer junk that packs the seats at megaplexes, and I'm counted amongst them. Calculated, profit-maximising entertainment targeted at delivering the highest spectacle to intellectual engagement ratio will always sell, and as the weeks progress expect the coffers of Hasbro and Paramount to balloon. The kids are putting mustard on it and eating it up. Watching really big robots beat the living shit out of each other is going to be fun no matter what, but does it really have to be so stultifying?
The sequel is slated for a 2009 release.
Señor Bay's oeuvre is pretty much defined by variations on the concoction outlined above: hot chicks in slutty romances, really huge explosions and no regard for story, plot, character development or—God forbid—causality. Transformers is in no way a departure from Mr. Bay's established aesthetic; the special effects signal a milestone achievement, the audio engineering is completely immersive and none of it makes a lick of sense.
Here are some of the points that made me feel like I left fifty or so IQ points in the movie theater.
Why does freezing the robots immobilise them when they're apparently capable of functioning in the cold depths of space?
Why is the network breaker locked when it is needed the most? Shouldn't it be readily accessible in the event of an emergency?
Why is Soundwave so adept at taking out secret service agents on Airforce One but really struggles when in combat with a small group of cryptographers?
Why are Sam's parents so oblivious to the presence of four 40 foot tall robots in their back yard?
Why does shoving the cube into a robot's chest kill it? Why shouldn't it miraculously transform the robot into something new since it was established that the cube can bring machinery to life? For that matter why shouldn't the cube imbue the robot with so much power that it becomes a super robot?
How can a 75 metre tall cube transform down into a cube about the size of a computer monitor? What happens to all the extra mass?
How does Bumblebee know how to activate the cube's transformation when an army of scientists who have been working on the problem for nearly a hundred years have no idea?
What purpose did the blond Australian woman serve aside from providing window dressing?
I've barely scratched the tip of the iceberg that represents all of the plot holes and gaffes that riddle the film. They're manifold and overwhelming. Oddly enough Michael Bay has been engaged in a war of words of sorts with the producer of the film, Tom DeSanto, over writing credits. Considering the ridiculousness of the story, one would expect them to be fighting over who gets to distance himself most from the mess, but no, they're each trying to hog their share of the glory.
And glorious it no doubt will be once the receipts have been counted. Transformers is the kind of silly summer junk that packs the seats at megaplexes, and I'm counted amongst them. Calculated, profit-maximising entertainment targeted at delivering the highest spectacle to intellectual engagement ratio will always sell, and as the weeks progress expect the coffers of Hasbro and Paramount to balloon. The kids are putting mustard on it and eating it up. Watching really big robots beat the living shit out of each other is going to be fun no matter what, but does it really have to be so stultifying?
The sequel is slated for a 2009 release.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Pet Peeves - The Upside Down Eight
I'm a man of many opinions, some might say too many, and stashed away in that peanut brain of mine is a litany of pet peeves. One of my favourites is the gas station upside down eight. By the way, I gave up clinging to referring to gas stations as petrol stations a few years ago. Some battles are futile and when it comes to how one refers to the location where one procures fuel for one's vehicle it's best to adopt the "when in Rome" approach. For the record I still call aluminium "aluminium". The fact that America persists in referring to that particular metal as "aluminum" hints at a cockup as vast and as far reaching as the one that instituted the use of the word "entre" as an umbrella term for the main course instead of the starters. You'd think that the translation of the word from the French would have given the progenitor of that mistake a decent idea about its intended use.
Anyway, so I hate upside down eights on gas station pricing signs. The little loop goes on the top, the big loop goes on the bottom. It's not hard to sort out. Just take a look at the number: little loop top; big loop bottom. If you can't work something as simple as that out then there's probably a whole raft of other aspects of your life that are seemingly simple to most but confound you at every turn.
And I won't hear any of those "we're free to be creative with our use of language" arguments either. Those sorts of arguments usually come from people who can't muddle their way through the use of such newly dispensable stuff as, um, grammar and punctuation. Hey, if it's too tough to work out just jettison it wholesale and write the exercise off as an act of creativity. Guess what, folks, you have to know the rules before you break 'em. James Joyce knew how to handle direct quotes before he resorted to that whole hyphen thing.
Anyway, so I hate upside down eights on gas station pricing signs. The little loop goes on the top, the big loop goes on the bottom. It's not hard to sort out. Just take a look at the number: little loop top; big loop bottom. If you can't work something as simple as that out then there's probably a whole raft of other aspects of your life that are seemingly simple to most but confound you at every turn.
And I won't hear any of those "we're free to be creative with our use of language" arguments either. Those sorts of arguments usually come from people who can't muddle their way through the use of such newly dispensable stuff as, um, grammar and punctuation. Hey, if it's too tough to work out just jettison it wholesale and write the exercise off as an act of creativity. Guess what, folks, you have to know the rules before you break 'em. James Joyce knew how to handle direct quotes before he resorted to that whole hyphen thing.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Ratatouille - Good Viewing
I took in Ratatouille on Sunday night and left the theatre a very satisfied movie goer.
Last year's Cars was the first Pixar movie I'd decided to dodge at the cinema—it looked a little too trite for my tastes, but I've since been told that it held up pretty well. Ratatouille, on the other hand, was not going to slip past me. The main reason for that is the director: Brad Bird.
The Incredibles was a masterful achievement, doing what Pixar does best by embedding relatively complex subtexts beneath a visually stunning layer of computer wizardry and well paced action. Moreover the script was polished to a gleam, and the characters evoked a genuine visceral engagement. It touched upon themes of exceptionalism—about how when everybody's special then nobody's special. It's a theme that Brad Bird has further built upon in Ratatouille, and much like The Incredibles he's done it with a deft hand that skillfully avoids the kind of violent message bludgeoning so often found in almost any other big budget animated film.
The choice of a rat as the protagonist is an interesting one. Rats are nearly universally reviled as the harbingers of death and disease (thank you, Black Death), so the use of a rat as both the main character and as an aspiring haute cuisine chef throws a prejudicial gauntlet down squarely in front of the audience. It's a direct challenge to the viewer's preconceptions of assigned stations and roles. Rats are horrible, pestilent creatures. Rats should never come near food or else they'll riddle it with their disease. Rats are borderline demonic and kept as pets by creeps and weirdos. To plonk one down in the middle of the kitchen of a schmicko restaurant is the ultimate heresy. We're just not culturally trained to readily accept a rat as a suitable subject for the kind of heartwarming anthropomorphism found in Ratatouille. And that's the film's primary genius. In order to accept Remy as a chef, so many of our other preconceived notions about how hereditary elements factor into our development in life are called into question. One of the main theses of film is that ultimately one's pedigree counts for nothing, and when all is said, done and counted it's the merits of the individual that really spell the difference between one who can cook and one who can be a celebrated chef. Linguini, despite being Gasteau's son, is an awful cook. Remy, despite being a rat, is an outstanding chef.
I'm digging too deep, I know.
There's an awful lot to say about this film—wet fur is evidently the latest effect that impressed the animators at Pixar the most; the character acting, especially by Skinner, is better than most living, breathing people; the commentary on the tension between personal limitations and aspirations is powerful yet not forceful—but it's more than space will allow. Just as with The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, Brad Bird and Pixar have delivered another near-perfect kids film that's more than suitable for the shorties, but serves up a whole lot more for the older set as well.
Update: Brad Bird and Patton Oswalt appeared on NPR's Fresh Air on 28 June. I was grateful to hear them discuss some of what I crapped on about in my post. It's also worth it for Patton's routine about Black Angus commercials. Check it out.
Last year's Cars was the first Pixar movie I'd decided to dodge at the cinema—it looked a little too trite for my tastes, but I've since been told that it held up pretty well. Ratatouille, on the other hand, was not going to slip past me. The main reason for that is the director: Brad Bird.
The Incredibles was a masterful achievement, doing what Pixar does best by embedding relatively complex subtexts beneath a visually stunning layer of computer wizardry and well paced action. Moreover the script was polished to a gleam, and the characters evoked a genuine visceral engagement. It touched upon themes of exceptionalism—about how when everybody's special then nobody's special. It's a theme that Brad Bird has further built upon in Ratatouille, and much like The Incredibles he's done it with a deft hand that skillfully avoids the kind of violent message bludgeoning so often found in almost any other big budget animated film.
The choice of a rat as the protagonist is an interesting one. Rats are nearly universally reviled as the harbingers of death and disease (thank you, Black Death), so the use of a rat as both the main character and as an aspiring haute cuisine chef throws a prejudicial gauntlet down squarely in front of the audience. It's a direct challenge to the viewer's preconceptions of assigned stations and roles. Rats are horrible, pestilent creatures. Rats should never come near food or else they'll riddle it with their disease. Rats are borderline demonic and kept as pets by creeps and weirdos. To plonk one down in the middle of the kitchen of a schmicko restaurant is the ultimate heresy. We're just not culturally trained to readily accept a rat as a suitable subject for the kind of heartwarming anthropomorphism found in Ratatouille. And that's the film's primary genius. In order to accept Remy as a chef, so many of our other preconceived notions about how hereditary elements factor into our development in life are called into question. One of the main theses of film is that ultimately one's pedigree counts for nothing, and when all is said, done and counted it's the merits of the individual that really spell the difference between one who can cook and one who can be a celebrated chef. Linguini, despite being Gasteau's son, is an awful cook. Remy, despite being a rat, is an outstanding chef.
I'm digging too deep, I know.
There's an awful lot to say about this film—wet fur is evidently the latest effect that impressed the animators at Pixar the most; the character acting, especially by Skinner, is better than most living, breathing people; the commentary on the tension between personal limitations and aspirations is powerful yet not forceful—but it's more than space will allow. Just as with The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, Brad Bird and Pixar have delivered another near-perfect kids film that's more than suitable for the shorties, but serves up a whole lot more for the older set as well.
Update: Brad Bird and Patton Oswalt appeared on NPR's Fresh Air on 28 June. I was grateful to hear them discuss some of what I crapped on about in my post. It's also worth it for Patton's routine about Black Angus commercials. Check it out.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Death of Punctuation (and Intelligence)
The intertubes have done many wonderful things for us. They've given us Mahir, lolcats, and lots of lovely, beautiful women. They've piped works of musical genius into our homes and offices and allowed us to shop for pretty much anything we like whenever we want.
But perhaps the most endearing aspect of the hyper-democratisation of the now-technified masses is the way in which the interwebs have given voice to those who previously had none. Sullen, semi-educated malcontents across the globe now have more outlets for their partially formed opinions than they can possibly address in one long, slow afternoon of unemployment. And it all comes wrapped up in some of the most elegant prose ever to grace either paper or pixel.
Take for example these nuggets of excellence from YouTube, which now serves as the primary opened spigot for butchered rants and hateful abuse hurled by anonymous cranks at faceless others from behind the comfort of a Windows firewall. It's all just a bit too easy for anyone at all to inflict themselves on YouTube, and the end result is the most dumbed down version of toilet wall taunts available to the species. At least with the toilet wall you were limited to a few brief lines; YouTube lets you write and write and write.
In this instance the topic of conversation is Gatchaman, which probably requires some explanation, but it's a nerdy path we're not going to walk down right now. Maybe I'll get into that some other time. For now keep your focus on the voice of the masses, not on the nerdiness of Gatchaman.
dude stop kissin ramosnef ass its not about us bein rude its about u not lookin at the show for what it is a good show its to many people in the world they always put dumb ways of thinkin in the mix its always got to be about race of she or he is fat or the sex of the person thats dumb its just people need to carin about dumb shit like that this world wil die out people carin so must about money looks race
Where do we start with this little literary marvel? Is it the total lack of punctuation that lets the writer's inner voice shine so brightly? Perhaps it's the complete neglect afforded the letter G at the end of any verb operating in the continuous tense. Best of all I like the obligatory newspeak substitution of "u" for "you". When you do that everyone knows you're hip. I'm mean ur hip.
i forgot to put stop in between to - carin in the last comment sorry but im not mad at u its just why care about that theres a big guy in g-force hell when power rangers came out did u know alot of black people was mad became the black ranger was a black guy that was dumb of them to think like that its was just a tv show people hid to make its about race
I was really, really tempted to shift the case of the block of text to upper case in order to lend it more oomph, you know? Anything in upper case is by definition more readable and packs more oomph.
What I like here is that our writer is attempting to make some kind of racial/social commentary vis-a-vis the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. For my liking the Power Rangers was just a stupid kids' show about stupid kids making stupid hand gestures while wearing stupid coloured tights in a stupid big robot. That's stupid stuff. But our comment poster has gone spelunking in the cultural depths of the Power Rangers and surfaced with a trophy. If he's so sharp when it comes to the Power Rangers imagine the social analogs he'd draw with the Ferengi and Romulans from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Our friend isn't done yet either. All the lack of capitalisation and talk of racial issues has gone and punched his buttons enough to get him to shift his razor-sharp intellect to the topic of obesity and weight issues. My personal favourite is the bit about the jumping jacks.
and dude just because a persons slim dont make them better i know alot of slim people who are very weak cant even do 100 jumpin jack how sad and the bad thing about it know some bigger people who can do 200 jumpin jack size means nothin its heart gatchman 5 got heart hes the best one like in voltron the yellow loin is a big guy he can take care of his self i like this cartoon because they show all people can do the job no matter of u slim fat a girl old or young its ass kickin time
Creeping into his screed is a version of the old "believe in yourself and you can do anything" maxim that Hollywood is so fond of milking, but the whole "Voltron's yellow loin" thing has me miffed. Since he's described as being a "big guy" does that mean his loin is ample and yellow? Perhaps he's jaundiced. Then he caps it all off with a spin on the "we're all awesome and capable in our own special way" cliche that gets wheeled out for an airing on just about any given Saturday morning cartoon. Exactly what he's getting at with "girl old" has me at a loss. It seems like an oxymoron but I'm almost certainly missing something, just like I'm confused about how anyone can be "slim fat". Maybe that's similar to when people say "bad" when they really mean "good". "Hey man ur lookin totally slim fat today." It's got a ring to it. At any rate I couldn't really care less 'cause it's ass kickin time and that's all I need to know.
The weird thing is that there's actually a kind of consistency to the spelling and grammar that's being employed. The rule states that if you're going to get it wrong, at least get it wrong consistently. Anything in the continuous tense gets no terminating G, caps are irrelevant and most words—we'll discount his "you" substitutions—are spelled surprisingly correctly. What blows my mind the most is that he's comfortable passing off this type of writing as legitimate communication. Somewhere since the advent of the Mosaic browser in 1993 and the introduction of txt msgs, the standards of acceptable written communication have dropped to the point where a 31 year old can wantonly jettison a few hundred years worth of established convention for the sake of expediency. From what I've seen and been told, this phenomenon is hardly unique to YouTube. Check just about any online forum. Moreover around 50% of the emails you receive from professional adults—we'll leave the current crop of teenagers out of this for now; that's a whole separate bag—almost certainly exhibit some of these traits. Commas? Fuck 'em. Full stops? Never needed them. Colons and semi-colons? Let's drop the anal fixation.
The more I think about it the more I'm inclined to give the man a medal for his interpretive use of the English language. He's riding a tide here. Through what amounts to abject laziness, he's found a way to subvert written English into an almost entirely new form, specially tailored to meet the needs of the write-now, press-submit, think-later demands of personal exchanges over da web. George Orwell would be proud.
But perhaps the most endearing aspect of the hyper-democratisation of the now-technified masses is the way in which the interwebs have given voice to those who previously had none. Sullen, semi-educated malcontents across the globe now have more outlets for their partially formed opinions than they can possibly address in one long, slow afternoon of unemployment. And it all comes wrapped up in some of the most elegant prose ever to grace either paper or pixel.
Take for example these nuggets of excellence from YouTube, which now serves as the primary opened spigot for butchered rants and hateful abuse hurled by anonymous cranks at faceless others from behind the comfort of a Windows firewall. It's all just a bit too easy for anyone at all to inflict themselves on YouTube, and the end result is the most dumbed down version of toilet wall taunts available to the species. At least with the toilet wall you were limited to a few brief lines; YouTube lets you write and write and write.
In this instance the topic of conversation is Gatchaman, which probably requires some explanation, but it's a nerdy path we're not going to walk down right now. Maybe I'll get into that some other time. For now keep your focus on the voice of the masses, not on the nerdiness of Gatchaman.
dude stop kissin ramosnef ass its not about us bein rude its about u not lookin at the show for what it is a good show its to many people in the world they always put dumb ways of thinkin in the mix its always got to be about race of she or he is fat or the sex of the person thats dumb its just people need to carin about dumb shit like that this world wil die out people carin so must about money looks race
Where do we start with this little literary marvel? Is it the total lack of punctuation that lets the writer's inner voice shine so brightly? Perhaps it's the complete neglect afforded the letter G at the end of any verb operating in the continuous tense. Best of all I like the obligatory newspeak substitution of "u" for "you". When you do that everyone knows you're hip. I'm mean ur hip.
i forgot to put stop in between to - carin in the last comment sorry but im not mad at u its just why care about that theres a big guy in g-force hell when power rangers came out did u know alot of black people was mad became the black ranger was a black guy that was dumb of them to think like that its was just a tv show people hid to make its about race
I was really, really tempted to shift the case of the block of text to upper case in order to lend it more oomph, you know? Anything in upper case is by definition more readable and packs more oomph.
What I like here is that our writer is attempting to make some kind of racial/social commentary vis-a-vis the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. For my liking the Power Rangers was just a stupid kids' show about stupid kids making stupid hand gestures while wearing stupid coloured tights in a stupid big robot. That's stupid stuff. But our comment poster has gone spelunking in the cultural depths of the Power Rangers and surfaced with a trophy. If he's so sharp when it comes to the Power Rangers imagine the social analogs he'd draw with the Ferengi and Romulans from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Our friend isn't done yet either. All the lack of capitalisation and talk of racial issues has gone and punched his buttons enough to get him to shift his razor-sharp intellect to the topic of obesity and weight issues. My personal favourite is the bit about the jumping jacks.
and dude just because a persons slim dont make them better i know alot of slim people who are very weak cant even do 100 jumpin jack how sad and the bad thing about it know some bigger people who can do 200 jumpin jack size means nothin its heart gatchman 5 got heart hes the best one like in voltron the yellow loin is a big guy he can take care of his self i like this cartoon because they show all people can do the job no matter of u slim fat a girl old or young its ass kickin time
Creeping into his screed is a version of the old "believe in yourself and you can do anything" maxim that Hollywood is so fond of milking, but the whole "Voltron's yellow loin" thing has me miffed. Since he's described as being a "big guy" does that mean his loin is ample and yellow? Perhaps he's jaundiced. Then he caps it all off with a spin on the "we're all awesome and capable in our own special way" cliche that gets wheeled out for an airing on just about any given Saturday morning cartoon. Exactly what he's getting at with "girl old" has me at a loss. It seems like an oxymoron but I'm almost certainly missing something, just like I'm confused about how anyone can be "slim fat". Maybe that's similar to when people say "bad" when they really mean "good". "Hey man ur lookin totally slim fat today." It's got a ring to it. At any rate I couldn't really care less 'cause it's ass kickin time and that's all I need to know.
The weird thing is that there's actually a kind of consistency to the spelling and grammar that's being employed. The rule states that if you're going to get it wrong, at least get it wrong consistently. Anything in the continuous tense gets no terminating G, caps are irrelevant and most words—we'll discount his "you" substitutions—are spelled surprisingly correctly. What blows my mind the most is that he's comfortable passing off this type of writing as legitimate communication. Somewhere since the advent of the Mosaic browser in 1993 and the introduction of txt msgs, the standards of acceptable written communication have dropped to the point where a 31 year old can wantonly jettison a few hundred years worth of established convention for the sake of expediency. From what I've seen and been told, this phenomenon is hardly unique to YouTube. Check just about any online forum. Moreover around 50% of the emails you receive from professional adults—we'll leave the current crop of teenagers out of this for now; that's a whole separate bag—almost certainly exhibit some of these traits. Commas? Fuck 'em. Full stops? Never needed them. Colons and semi-colons? Let's drop the anal fixation.
The more I think about it the more I'm inclined to give the man a medal for his interpretive use of the English language. He's riding a tide here. Through what amounts to abject laziness, he's found a way to subvert written English into an almost entirely new form, specially tailored to meet the needs of the write-now, press-submit, think-later demands of personal exchanges over da web. George Orwell would be proud.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Cat Wars Part 3
Fucko the Clown is back from a day trip to the pet hospital to have three teeth yanked out of his skull. Put in the context of the recent cat wars, how does that affect the cat versus cat power equation? It's generally positive. A day after Fucko the Clown—also known as El Pinche Payaso—returned from the pet hospital, the arbiters of the house have declared a cat wars armistice. Despite a few flat ears and hissy-breath from Chumbles upon Fucko's immediate return, the ensuing 24 hours or so have allowed each feline to decide that the tiny apartment is no Kashmir, and that the other cat is neither Pakistan nor India—you take your pick which.
Let's not overlook the fact that Fucko the Clown is getting a twice a day hit of some kind of pain reliever that's officially a controlled substance. Yes, when I fronted up at the pharmacy counter at the pet hospital I was confronted with a conversation that went something like this.
"And I'm going to give you these pre-measured pain killers for him. Do we have a copy of your driver's licence on file?"
"I don't think so. Why do you need that?" This is a pet hospital. What do they need with my DMV credentials?
"The pain killers are actually a controlled substance and we're required by law to precisely track who gets it."
Bizarre, huh? But when the stuff ends in "orphine" it's probably the source of a much better high than the shitty heroin sold on the corner of 24th and Folsom. Or at least that's what I'm guessing.
With the cat wars officially over I'm going to roll the dice of sleep and do my utmost to sleep as much of the night through as I can without being rudely interrupted at 4am by a blob of fur stomping across my chest, or by an ear-splitting cat screech baying for the feline on the other side of the bedroom door. May the force be with me.
Let's not overlook the fact that Fucko the Clown is getting a twice a day hit of some kind of pain reliever that's officially a controlled substance. Yes, when I fronted up at the pharmacy counter at the pet hospital I was confronted with a conversation that went something like this.
"And I'm going to give you these pre-measured pain killers for him. Do we have a copy of your driver's licence on file?"
"I don't think so. Why do you need that?" This is a pet hospital. What do they need with my DMV credentials?
"The pain killers are actually a controlled substance and we're required by law to precisely track who gets it."
Bizarre, huh? But when the stuff ends in "orphine" it's probably the source of a much better high than the shitty heroin sold on the corner of 24th and Folsom. Or at least that's what I'm guessing.
With the cat wars officially over I'm going to roll the dice of sleep and do my utmost to sleep as much of the night through as I can without being rudely interrupted at 4am by a blob of fur stomping across my chest, or by an ear-splitting cat screech baying for the feline on the other side of the bedroom door. May the force be with me.
Monday, June 25, 2007
What Could Be vs What Is
Gay Pride, Dykes on Bikes, lazy beers at Zeitgeist on a sunny afternoon—I skipped the lot. The weekend is always marked at the beginning by the list of things one wants to do and ultimately modulated at the end by the list of things one wound up doing. The differential is often enough to draw a tear.
Check the past weekend...
What I Wanted to Do
group of four presumptively Italian tourists decided to make their presence felt in the crowd. One was a sweat pants-wearing dood of around 19 years of age who'd forgone the bongs in favour of a lot of liquor. He made for a restless drunk, and after a painful twenty or so minutes of interruptions he vacated for the restrooms, perhaps to evacuate his belly. His two companions of about equal age and their older "chaperon" remained. Time wore on and when he didn't return the venue staff played a short game of Hunt the Drunk. It was over quickly. After discovering a slumped body in the men's restroom the erstwhile chaperon was called upon to cart the incapacitated body out of the venue. The chaperon didn't exactly rate highly on the responsibility scale. Good looks, curly locks and a gives-the-girls-a-moisty Italian accent can't substitute for a dose of resolute action, but to his misplaced credit the chaperon tried. After dumping the drunken teenager out on the sidewalk with all the other bums who inhabit the 16th and Capp crack zone, the Italian Stallion attempted to smooth-talk his way back inside. He had the misfortune of attempting to charm The Great Organiser. Her shields were up.
"You can let me back in, of course. You are an American woman, yes?"
His tone implied that there was some kind of difference between them, him being Italian and all, that would allow him to grease his tongue with a slick layer of persuasive misogyny that his experience in female conquest had told him no American woman could resist.
"Yes, and you're an asshole. You need to leave."
The Great Organiser, when confronted with a situation that demands corrective action, can be ferocious. Without further remonstrations the Stallion was unceremoniously manhandled out of the venue by a burly female member of the staff while another one got to work on calling the police dispatch.
The rest of the performance concluded without incident.
Check the past weekend...
What I Wanted to Do
- Get a few beers at Zeitgeist on a sunny afternoon, either Saturday or Sunday; I'm not fussy.
- Head downtown and do some shopping
- Check out some of the Pride festivities
- Play plenty of Oblivion
- Catch a movie
- Wash my car
- Separated the cats from one another and gradually reintroduced them, many times over
- Went to Trader Joe's and bought food for the week
- Rented a wet vacuum and cleaned the couch and arm chairs
- Played a modest amount of Oblivion
- Stripped those wretched doors of more paint
- Lamented the differential between the list of things I wanted to do and what was now looking realistic as of Sunday afternoon
group of four presumptively Italian tourists decided to make their presence felt in the crowd. One was a sweat pants-wearing dood of around 19 years of age who'd forgone the bongs in favour of a lot of liquor. He made for a restless drunk, and after a painful twenty or so minutes of interruptions he vacated for the restrooms, perhaps to evacuate his belly. His two companions of about equal age and their older "chaperon" remained. Time wore on and when he didn't return the venue staff played a short game of Hunt the Drunk. It was over quickly. After discovering a slumped body in the men's restroom the erstwhile chaperon was called upon to cart the incapacitated body out of the venue. The chaperon didn't exactly rate highly on the responsibility scale. Good looks, curly locks and a gives-the-girls-a-moisty Italian accent can't substitute for a dose of resolute action, but to his misplaced credit the chaperon tried. After dumping the drunken teenager out on the sidewalk with all the other bums who inhabit the 16th and Capp crack zone, the Italian Stallion attempted to smooth-talk his way back inside. He had the misfortune of attempting to charm The Great Organiser. Her shields were up."You can let me back in, of course. You are an American woman, yes?"
His tone implied that there was some kind of difference between them, him being Italian and all, that would allow him to grease his tongue with a slick layer of persuasive misogyny that his experience in female conquest had told him no American woman could resist.
"Yes, and you're an asshole. You need to leave."
The Great Organiser, when confronted with a situation that demands corrective action, can be ferocious. Without further remonstrations the Stallion was unceremoniously manhandled out of the venue by a burly female member of the staff while another one got to work on calling the police dispatch.
The rest of the performance concluded without incident.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Cat Wars Part 2
The battle rages. Five days after the brown bag incident, Chumbles and Fucko the Clown can still barely stand to share the same air. Fucko the Clown remains sequestered in the bedroom, bawling his lungs out, while Chumbles has taken up post out in the living area of the apartment. Any brief incursions into their makeshift DMZ (otherwise called the hallway), be they intentional or mistaken, are met with bushy tails, tense feline muscles and a lot of prickling back hair, not to mention the growling and hissing.
The Great Organiser has put in considerable hours of research into their behaviour. The internet, ever the source of unbiased opinion, has identified the cats' problem as fear-induced aggression. We're following the prescription. Keeping the cats separated and hopped up on a cocktail of soothing pheromones has done a lot to mollify their temperament, but when one acts in a sudden manner during their scheduled re-socialising sessions it's as if somebody just announced that missile silos had been discovered in Cuba.
The soundtrack for all of this: The Offspring's Come Out and Play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a horrible song—Chumbawamba's Tubthumping rates up there with it as two of the most annoying pop songs of the past 30 years—but when "you've gotta keep them separated" what else is likely to run through your head? It's almost annoying as the cats themselves.
The Great Organiser has put in considerable hours of research into their behaviour. The internet, ever the source of unbiased opinion, has identified the cats' problem as fear-induced aggression. We're following the prescription. Keeping the cats separated and hopped up on a cocktail of soothing pheromones has done a lot to mollify their temperament, but when one acts in a sudden manner during their scheduled re-socialising sessions it's as if somebody just announced that missile silos had been discovered in Cuba.
The soundtrack for all of this: The Offspring's Come Out and Play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a horrible song—Chumbawamba's Tubthumping rates up there with it as two of the most annoying pop songs of the past 30 years—but when "you've gotta keep them separated" what else is likely to run through your head? It's almost annoying as the cats themselves.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
A Poet Who Didn't Know It
This dates back a number of years to when I lived in Santa Clara (don't get me started). Whitey and I were sipping coffee at a café in downtown San Jose. Whitey, a smoker, was sucking on a Camel Light. We were minding our own business when a dishevelled and evidently homeless woman walked up to our street side table. Without any prompting or warning she stared directly at Whitey and proceeded to state the following...
I'm Tiger Woods' golf instructor.
I'm Hollywood in San Jose.
You smoke lights,
I smoke crack,
Up in smoke,
Like Cheech and Chong,
Straight from the dumpster.
Once spoken she ambled away down the street. Whitey and I looked at each other in amazement. I hastily wrote down her words and made a point of memorising them.
Sometimes genius lurks where you least expect it.
I'm Tiger Woods' golf instructor.
I'm Hollywood in San Jose.
You smoke lights,
I smoke crack,
Up in smoke,
Like Cheech and Chong,
Straight from the dumpster.
Once spoken she ambled away down the street. Whitey and I looked at each other in amazement. I hastily wrote down her words and made a point of memorising them.
Sometimes genius lurks where you least expect it.
Cat Wars
When the two cats that inhabit my house finally die I'll probably wonder how I ever managed to put up with the torment.
My apartment is small—barely 700 square feet. Crammed inside that confined space are four living, breathing, farting, shitting lifeforms: The Great Organizer, myself and two cats. With all that close contact and exchange of matter between us—dander, skin flakes, bodily gases—you'd better hope we get along. Guess what? We don't. Well, two of us generally do—The Great Organiser and I are known to create some noise on occasion but we're still officially "lovers"—but the other two are a different story right now.
Those two are the cats, and for now we'll label them Fucko the Clown, the graceless larger of the two and sometimes the surliest, and Chumbles, the runt of the litter with an attitude completely out of whack with her compact size.
On Sunday afternoon I returned from a round of clothes shopping, bag in hand. The Great Organiser was sitting on the couch while I displayed my recent purchases for her. Nothing I bought managed to illicit too much of a response from her either in the negative or the positive. What did get a response out of her was the way in which the cats reacted to the bag. Made of brown paper, the bag was a little larger than the kind of bag you'd find at a grocery store. The handles were made of loops of twisted brown paper, lending them sufficient strength to support the spoils of a significant outlay of cash at the store.
"Check this out," called The Great Organiser while I was down the hallway putting the clothes in the closet. I shuffled my way back towards the entrance to our small dwelling.
Anyone with a cat can tell you that while it's possible to throw down no small chunk of change for cat toys, by far the cheapest and most enjoyable playthings for felines are boxes and bags. When anything arrives at the doorstep from Amazon, pluck the product free of its shipping container and leave the box open for the cats. It's as if the next four generations of video game consoles had been released at once and delivered directly to the pets. The amusement is seemingly endless.
The Great Organiser was motioning towards the formerly empty bag, situated close to the front door and lying on its side. The contents were no longer new clothes; it now contained Chumbles having the time of her life. Fucko the Clown hates to be left out of any fun that's being had by any other living being in the apartment, so he crept up on the bag, invisible to Chumbles, who had by now buried herself deep inside.
"That's pretty funny," remarked The Great Organiser and I had to agree. For whatever reason it always amuses me to see the cats get a kick out of something as mundane and ordinary as a box or a brown paper bag. Fucko the Clown was by now upon the bag, Chumbles inside.
With Fucko the Clown perched on top of the bag, pressing down on the trapped cat inside, Chumbles contorted herself in an effort to escape. She didn't get far. In her efforts to extricate herself from the enclosure she managed to ensnare herself in one of the bag's loops, effectively hooking the bag around her torso.
That's when the panic struck.
What had moments ago been a playful cat on mission of exploration into a brown paper cave turned into a writhing, screaming tempest of fur, claws and paper. I was dumbstruck.
"Get over here and help!"
The Great Organizer reacts much better to stressful situations than I do. She'd already leaped into action, lunging towards the blur of fur and paper that was spinning in front of her like the Tasmanian Devil from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. I couldn't do much but stand there and watch.
Before The Great Organiser could get a firm grip on her, Chumbles' violent thrashings had ripped the handle free of its attachment to the bag. The stress of her entrapment had caused her to lose control of her bladder, and with a spray of cat urine Chumbles darted off towards the opposite end of the apartment, paper bag loop still encircling her midriff.
At the time it all seemed hilarious, and even now it cracks me up to recall the image of Chumbles, completely engulfed in panic while she attempts to free herself of the bag. But it doesn't end there. After Chumbles had recovered and emerged from her hiding place, the loop now gone, it became apparent that Fucko the Clown had completely changed his disposition towards her. Whereas minutes earlier they'd been able to get along just fine, now he was growling at her and stalking her, treating her like an interloper in her own home.
That was on Sunday. It's now Wednesday and the animosity between the two felines has barely subsided. Suspecting the liberal showering of panicked cat urine around the living area as the culprit, The Great Organiser and I have removed the couch seats and bought an enzyme cleaner to rid the scent. Pheromones designed to assuage the anxieties of stressed cats have been sprinkled around to minimum effect and the two have also been separated. It's like reintroducing them to each other for a second time. Moreover they won't stop howling at one another, regardless of the hour. We're now three days into this routine, all because of a brown paper bag. They're at each other all the time. Sleep has become a relative concept and rude awakenings at three, four or five AM on account of hissing and growling are now par for the course. I'd do strange, strange things to remove the cats from my life and get a full eight hours of uninterrupted rest. Strange things. This morning, at around 4:35, I pondered a future in which both cats died a horrible and vicious death, and no pets were around to bug me for food or stomp on my head while I slept or howl at full volume at that other cat on the the other side of the door. It's a distant future, I know, but right now, with my eyes drooping from lack of rest, I'm clinging to that vision dearly.
My apartment is small—barely 700 square feet. Crammed inside that confined space are four living, breathing, farting, shitting lifeforms: The Great Organizer, myself and two cats. With all that close contact and exchange of matter between us—dander, skin flakes, bodily gases—you'd better hope we get along. Guess what? We don't. Well, two of us generally do—The Great Organiser and I are known to create some noise on occasion but we're still officially "lovers"—but the other two are a different story right now.
Those two are the cats, and for now we'll label them Fucko the Clown, the graceless larger of the two and sometimes the surliest, and Chumbles, the runt of the litter with an attitude completely out of whack with her compact size.
On Sunday afternoon I returned from a round of clothes shopping, bag in hand. The Great Organiser was sitting on the couch while I displayed my recent purchases for her. Nothing I bought managed to illicit too much of a response from her either in the negative or the positive. What did get a response out of her was the way in which the cats reacted to the bag. Made of brown paper, the bag was a little larger than the kind of bag you'd find at a grocery store. The handles were made of loops of twisted brown paper, lending them sufficient strength to support the spoils of a significant outlay of cash at the store.
"Check this out," called The Great Organiser while I was down the hallway putting the clothes in the closet. I shuffled my way back towards the entrance to our small dwelling.
Anyone with a cat can tell you that while it's possible to throw down no small chunk of change for cat toys, by far the cheapest and most enjoyable playthings for felines are boxes and bags. When anything arrives at the doorstep from Amazon, pluck the product free of its shipping container and leave the box open for the cats. It's as if the next four generations of video game consoles had been released at once and delivered directly to the pets. The amusement is seemingly endless.
The Great Organiser was motioning towards the formerly empty bag, situated close to the front door and lying on its side. The contents were no longer new clothes; it now contained Chumbles having the time of her life. Fucko the Clown hates to be left out of any fun that's being had by any other living being in the apartment, so he crept up on the bag, invisible to Chumbles, who had by now buried herself deep inside.
"That's pretty funny," remarked The Great Organiser and I had to agree. For whatever reason it always amuses me to see the cats get a kick out of something as mundane and ordinary as a box or a brown paper bag. Fucko the Clown was by now upon the bag, Chumbles inside.
With Fucko the Clown perched on top of the bag, pressing down on the trapped cat inside, Chumbles contorted herself in an effort to escape. She didn't get far. In her efforts to extricate herself from the enclosure she managed to ensnare herself in one of the bag's loops, effectively hooking the bag around her torso.
That's when the panic struck.
What had moments ago been a playful cat on mission of exploration into a brown paper cave turned into a writhing, screaming tempest of fur, claws and paper. I was dumbstruck.
"Get over here and help!"
The Great Organizer reacts much better to stressful situations than I do. She'd already leaped into action, lunging towards the blur of fur and paper that was spinning in front of her like the Tasmanian Devil from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. I couldn't do much but stand there and watch.
Before The Great Organiser could get a firm grip on her, Chumbles' violent thrashings had ripped the handle free of its attachment to the bag. The stress of her entrapment had caused her to lose control of her bladder, and with a spray of cat urine Chumbles darted off towards the opposite end of the apartment, paper bag loop still encircling her midriff.
At the time it all seemed hilarious, and even now it cracks me up to recall the image of Chumbles, completely engulfed in panic while she attempts to free herself of the bag. But it doesn't end there. After Chumbles had recovered and emerged from her hiding place, the loop now gone, it became apparent that Fucko the Clown had completely changed his disposition towards her. Whereas minutes earlier they'd been able to get along just fine, now he was growling at her and stalking her, treating her like an interloper in her own home.
That was on Sunday. It's now Wednesday and the animosity between the two felines has barely subsided. Suspecting the liberal showering of panicked cat urine around the living area as the culprit, The Great Organiser and I have removed the couch seats and bought an enzyme cleaner to rid the scent. Pheromones designed to assuage the anxieties of stressed cats have been sprinkled around to minimum effect and the two have also been separated. It's like reintroducing them to each other for a second time. Moreover they won't stop howling at one another, regardless of the hour. We're now three days into this routine, all because of a brown paper bag. They're at each other all the time. Sleep has become a relative concept and rude awakenings at three, four or five AM on account of hissing and growling are now par for the course. I'd do strange, strange things to remove the cats from my life and get a full eight hours of uninterrupted rest. Strange things. This morning, at around 4:35, I pondered a future in which both cats died a horrible and vicious death, and no pets were around to bug me for food or stomp on my head while I slept or howl at full volume at that other cat on the the other side of the door. It's a distant future, I know, but right now, with my eyes drooping from lack of rest, I'm clinging to that vision dearly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
