Humor

September 22, 2010September 22, 2010

Dance hall days

One of our favorite TV programs here, and to be honest I can count them on one hand, is Classic Arts Showcase. This is a really varied and quality selection of music and dance programs, for the most part, in segments of maybe 3 minutes to the occasional bit of 20 minutes, well worth looking into.

Maybe because I have two left feet, I really enjoy the dance segments. Particularly the Paso Doble, Fandango, and oh yes, Flamenco. Thankfully, I also have three laser pointers.

Better yet, Tito loves chasing the red dot across the floor (hardwood floor, no less, as in a dance studio).

Butt up in the air, hunched forward, he chases the elusive dot by slapping his forelegs down on it, as fast as any dancer I’ve seen. Pour a glass of Sangria, turn the pointer on and watch the spectacle begin. He even taught Kitsy-Mazuzu how to do it, except I don’t think the pupil’s very apt: way too violent. He’s got the moves, but he doesn’t “dance” so much as try to “obliterate” the dot.

Oh but, with TWO pointers going, we have quite a performance going. With the occasional collision, naturally… Which of course is followed by Mazuzu exclaiming “HMWAH!!!” loudly. If I read Tito’s expression correctly, I believe we agree the naked brute doesn’t get the spirit of the dance.

Once again, from the top, then!

September 21, 2010December 15, 2012

“welcome to the jungle”

Okay, so it can go either way with Kitsune a.k.a Mazuzu Whang: tuna will either make him sleepy, or turn him into a crack monster.
After feeding him maybe a spoonful in hopes of calming him down and going back to sleep, nature called and I had to get up again.
Outside the bathroom, something sat in a crouch, waiting for poor, unsuspecting me in the doorway: the hunched back, the basket ball sized eyes, the ears, big enough to outfit the Mayflower.
Right: Mazuzu Whang, the Benjamin Button of catdom.
The unsettling part? He was making this weird clacking sound he usually makes when staring at birds, like the Predator.

Klak-klak-klak-klak!

After maybe half a minute, he trotted away back to bed. Neither rhyme nor reason.

You gotta respect something about a tenth your size, standing in your way and looking up at you as though it could just as soon kill you. Christ, even Schwarzenegger might have to check his drawers…

September 20, 2010September 20, 2010

What’s in a cat’s name? Listen to what they say…

I’ve often (and unfairly) complained about the way cats get named in shelters. Not that my method of naming them after dictators is much better, Kitsune being the exception.
Originally, Tito had been named Capri, and Soza (short for Somoza), our Burmese we lost to lymphoma, had been Kobe.
Truth is, it’d probably be best to wait until you know your cat before you settle on a name.
Going by physical characteristics can work, I guess, but then in Kitsy’s case, that might have meant calling him Sydney: as he lays down in the padded basket we have atop the computer tower, the only visible part of him are the huge flappers he has for ears:

… And from the side, they really look like the Sydney opera house. But in fact, he has come up with his own name.
See, he yammers.
He flaps his jaws.
The only time he ever shuts up is when he’s asleep, otherwise we have conversations all day, every day. He announces himself as he leaves the room, when he returns, when he goes to the litter box, sometimes as he uses it, and it’s when he trots away that he makes a modulated “HMRAOW” sound, followed by what sounds like a question.

He is therefore known as… Mazuzu Whang.

He and Tito coo at each other, but when Tito addresses us it is with a high pitched “MEE”, usually ending with a yawn. My more limited conversations with Tito usually go like this:
-“MEE! [yawn]
– I’m sorry, am I boring you?”
Maybe we should have called him Sluggo…

September 6, 2010December 13, 2012

Sued for sexual harrassment, Dracula gets charge reduced to tailgating!

Might as well start with a joke… I was going to do a review of “Nosferatu” for Wednesday’s Midnight Movie Madness, but then realized I’d not only done a write up on “Daughters of Darkness” last week, but we also brought in Dan Simmons’ “carrion comfort” from the library. Enough suckers for a week…
That being said, in his introduction of the 20th anniversary of his book, Simmons has interesting things to say about what he calls the mind-vampire.

In real life, this mind-vampire appears to be abusive, immature, governed by compulsion and survival needs, with a keen understanding of others but unable to care about them. He is perhaps cunning rather than intelligent and skilled in the uses of suggestion. In short, a manipulative bully, a hybrid of vampire and serial killer.

What makes the serial killer perhaps scarier is that he’s not bound by rules. No garlic, running water, sunlight or crucifix, no requirement to even be invited in! This frankly makes the vampire seem, well, civilized by comparison, as though the vampire represented waning aristocracy. And in Murnau’s “Nosferatu”, the count is pretty mangy indeed, filthy even, with his rodent features and traveling as he does with coffins filled with dirt and plague-carrying rats.

“This vampire killed many rats… In the litter box, mostly…”

Today’s vampires are merely grungy, probably listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana, driving their black Euro SUVs at night.
Back in real life, the old saying of treating others the way you’d like to be treated has another side: don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. The thing is that much of human interaction boils down to rape, the imposition of one upon another, and hard times show that most people are unfortunately not bound by any moral or ethical restraint. The mind-vampire could most likely be a boss, such as the infamous Richard C. Woollam (formerly of BP) but perhaps a spouse, a relative, anyone really, who can detect vulnerabilities and inflict damaging words or words conveying some threat.

No man or woman is an island as they say, and so if you can’t be bullied or cajoled into acting against your own interest, the mind-vampire will influence others and turn them against you.
Human nature being what it is, manipulation readily crosses into coercion or worse. I think that’s been shown in part by Stanley Milgram’s (Yale, 1961) and Philip Zimbardo’s experiments (Stanford, 1971).
Well then, how’s about a good ole ghost story…?

August 20, 2010August 29, 2010

A bit of poetry

THE LUGUBRIOUS WHING-WHANG

James Whitcomb Riley 1849-1916

The rhyme o’ The Raggedy Man’s ‘at’s best
Is Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs,–
‘Cause that-un’s the strangest of all o’ the rest,
An’ the worst to learn, an’ the last one guessed,
An’ the funniest one, an’ the foolishest.–
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!

I don’t know what in the world it means–
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!–
An’ nen when I _tell_ him I don’t, he leans
Like he was a-grindin’ on some machines
An’ says: Ef I _don’t_, w’y, I don’t know _beans!_
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!–

Out on the margin of Moonshine Land,
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!
Out where the Whing-Whang loves to stand,
Writing his name with his tail in the sand,
And swiping it out with his oogerish hand;
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!

Is it the gibber of Gungs or Keeks?
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!
Or what _is_ the sound that the Whing-Whang seeks?–
Crouching low by the winding creeks
And holding his breath for weeks and weeks!
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!

Aroint him the wraithest of wraithly things!
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!
‘Tis a fair Whing-Whangess, with phosphor rings
And bridal-jewels of fangs and stings;
And she sits and as sadly and softly sings
As the mildewed whir of her own dead wings,–
Tickle me, Dear,
Tickle me here,
Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs!

This poem is part of the public domain, thus, there is no copyright infringement.