Lost at sea, found at CafePress: Quick, hold my hair while I puke.

Katrina wear

Check out the clever copy:
"If you Survived Hurricane Katrina, let everyone know with these unique one of a kind products!"

But IF YOU DIDN'T, BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME, BONES!!

And news-flash to the creator of this shirt: This is neither unique nor is it one of a kind. Sorry to break it to you like that. Because:

Oh look, boys and girls, there are so many to choose from, like this teddy bear.

"...With T-shirts and Party Gear for College and Back To School!"

UNLESS YOU HAVE NO SCHOOL TO GO BACK TO.
GET IT, DUDE?! PARTY!!!

Neat. Can I bleed on it?

Here's a great little Category 5 bookbag. Say, that's a great idea! I'd like to give one to my grandma...if I could find her. She was last seen wandering alone in the Superdome among strangers.

My favorite, besides the irreverant Teddy Bear of Death, is the unfortunate assumed alcoholic and homeless blue man hanging on for dear life.

Bravo, you idiot. Actually, I think most people drowned. Back to the drawing board for you.

Ah, good times...good times. If anyone ever wonders, this is why I don't like most people very much at all. I don't get the jokes, and it seems like they're just so many of them. Look, donate the profits you make to the relief fund, and I'll take it all back. But really, I need some Pepto and a Gatorade now. Back later.

But hey, I do like a few people, like you. And you. And you, and you, and of course you, and you way back there by the solar panels and the hybrid car. I'll make you a t-shirt that says "I survived reality. But just barely."

Son of a bitch.

I have to stop taking these tests.


The last thing I want to do is live to be a ripe old 89.48 years old.

What's my problem? How long do you have?

This morning, I was watching CNN's superbowl coverage of Hurricane Katrina. As of then, they didn't have much footage to show, so they kept rolling the same loop over and over of the people evacuated into the Superdome. So, right after I see two little kids slugging it out for the third time, I see this one old lady walking, quickly and deliberately. I bet she's good at it because, clearly, she doesn't have a car and has to walk everywhere. So it broke my heart because why was she there, walking alone? None of her family evacuated her, I guess? I'm assuming she was alone. She's either really mean or too nice, or she outlived everybody, there is no in between.

And she was picking her way through a football field of strangers, and all she had was two plastic grocery sacks that she was struggling to keep from dragging the ground. And in the usual outburst, I said, "There you go, Ron, you see that? That is my future. There she is, walking with the few possessions she could carry, and a couple of cans of catfood to snack on later...that's me alone (implying from a previous conversation that Ron is now dearly departed out-of-the-picture because of junk food I warned him about, and there's my biggest fear: I've outlived everyone I know or meet in the next 6 or so decades, and I've spent all the pennies I saved along the way. No longer implied --). That's me living longer than I want to, running out of saved money and kicking myself because I didn't invest in that Google Cloning service they talked up back in 2012, and now I'm scurrying around the Superdome by myself in a stadium full of strangers that I'm too scared to even look at on the street. AND they made me leave my only heir, my cat Mr. JingleBoots, back home to blow away...more cat food for me!"

I get worked up.

Anyway. That's it. No more fruits or vegetables. No more sushi, just motor oil smoothies from now on and make 'em dirty. Better get a pack of Camel Unfiltereds on the way home and feast on a handful of sand to speed myself outta here.

So, now that I've made it sound like so much fun, do you really want to know how long will you live?

Ok, so admit it: You've missed me and my craptastic attitude these past few weeks. Ok ok, here's me, changing my attitude and accepting my fate. I'm going to embrace the grave fact that I am going to live longer than a chemically preserved hotdog in a landfill.

Guess I'd better stop off and get some micro dermabrasion kits and start the process now. This is actually right up my alley. All 12 of the Apostles in the big blue sky know I've seen every documentary on mummification by now, even that one where the Japanese monks mummified themselves to death. Have you seen that? Fascinating. They ate bark and jogged around for, I don't know, 3 years maybe and toward the end, drank resin tea with a splash of arsenic. Close enough. It was insane, I tell ya. Just clinically insane or really devout, it is so hard to tell the difference. Still, it's fascinating.

Well, it is.

Oh, ignore me, I just need some Cheez-Its. I'm starving.

Ooo. Gotta go, the lights just flickered. Better go get the bird feeders out of the trees before Katrina blows them right outta The Yarden.

By the way, I never found those dang flip flops.

(...just something for you to look at whilst I try to find some "soft-foam rubber flip flops"...)












(...they're for my mom...)

(...you know you care...)

(...go figure, I went to Target to buy her a cheapie pair and for once, they got no damn cheapie flip flops...they got Barbie ones, they got Corona beer ones, they got Winnie the Pooh ones, they got the pink ones with beads and fringe...they got the ones that should be illegal because they are so toxic-looking, they got some made out of something that probably in used to insulate the outside of the space shuttle...they got plenty of Halloween candy, and I swear I saw a Santa, but no flips flops...not the ones I need anyway...

(...this can't be the real South without Made-in-China-4-dollar-on-sale-flip-flops galore...)

What I Have Learned in the Last Two Weeks:

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

But thank you for checking in though, the nicest person in the universe, you.

But I have this game for you. Surely, that's better than nothing. And if you get the high score, this guy will come over and have a barbecue in your backyard. I'd just take the cash. No offense to him, he's good. I just have no backyard.

Robert Post game from Ladytron newsletter sign ups, I think.

God only knows when I'll be back. And, the devil may care, but I seriously doubt that.

Enjoy!

What I've Learned This Week:

How to poke pills down a cat's throat.


What My Cat Learned This Week:

Muscle relaxers are groooooOOOOooOoOOoOOooooOoooooooovyyy.



Much love, marshmallow treaties and a splendid weekend to you. I'll check back in tomorrow with a podcast link featuring Honorable Husband No. 1 Ron calling into Air America. Ron needs his own show. I'd listen. I wouldn't understand a word of it, but I'd listen. But I don't recommend ignorance though. It's not bliss, lemme tell you. And it makes it harder to drive.
















enjoy

motherlondon.com

and

bbdo.com by wefail.com

I bet Carl Sowerby scribbles in meetings, too.

He is my new hero today.

More on cats.

Literally.

stuffonmycat.com

(Thank you, Tara!)

(Cat haters: Look away now.)
My cat's doodle cost me one thousand American dollars.

It's news. You know it is. What, you'd rather talk about the war? Not me. So anyway...

"Do I have pet insurance?" asked the blank form. Pet insurance? No...no, I don't. Then everything went black. Then green. Somebody took my gold card and ran. Help. Police. Anyone.

Feline Urinary Syndrome or FUS to you, me and Googie.

Googie's the fat expensive toy on the left.

So far, I estimate my cat's dingly-dangly will cost me 1 Large K, but I haven't picked him up from the vet, I'm unsure. But already we're halfway there since Monday morning. Ching-ching.

How can you put a pricetag on the unconditional love of a good pet? Easy. You feed him dry, fat-boy cat food everytime he looks at you with Those Eyes, tripping you the entire waltz to the catfood dish, and then he quietly builds a tiny sandcastle in the dark nether regions of his privates where Mr. Zippy lives. And when Fate decides to kick that sandcastle over, you go with the flow. Or, in this case, you go with the non-flow.

Stop making that face. You know you care, and this story is just mesmerizing.

A word to the wise (to all the rest of the idiots out there like me, "Carry on!"):
Never never never ever never let your cat get fat if they are (1) male and (2) neutered. "Obstructions can kill a cat in 48 hours." See? The internet is not just for porn sites after all. People talk more freely about cat obstructions and than they do about racoon feces.

So. How've you been? Good, good. Me? Eh, it's best to just talk about the weather. Damn, it's hot. And look, it's humid. Ok so nevermind the weather until November, I'm in denial. About a lot of things at once. Which is good in a way. It gets it all over at one time. Either that or you realize you're permanently blocked-up tighter than an overweight, neutered cat's wang.

Worrying really takes a big chunk out of your *free time* plus a big wad of your hair apparently. Instead of taking the time to stop and smell the roses, some people insist that you deadhead your beautiful blooms. Then while you're snipping, you have time to think about everybody's else's problems like they were your own. Why? Because if you're a nice person, your problem is always everybody else's problem. You have time to think about why people do things the same way again and again and get confused with the same results, wondering why mental people even have a favorite color or a favorite food since nothing makes them happy anyway. Wondering if they realize how cracked their nuts are, wondering if they are allergic to nuts, hoping they might be. The worst part about other people's problems is not the problems but usually, it's just the people themselves.

"Life. It's a gas, man." -- God

Remember when I used to be that sunny, bubbly, can-do, happy-go-lucky me? Yeah, me neither. So no big loss, huh? See, there's that silver lining I was looking for -- familiarity.

Oh stop it. I am a sunny, bubbly, can-do person. No, really. I'm just not lucky.

But for you, I have scratched up a few links of interest for obviously one of the nicest people in the world if you are still reading this. It's like being 7 years old again. It's the little treasure chest of toys you got to choose from after you made it through your dental appointment. Your dentist didn't give you toys after your appointment to take the edge off? They don't do that anymore? Well, that explains the biggest problem of modern society today, doesn't it...

Enjoy.


gel.tv

forums.pirated-sites.com

strangeco.com

phreeque show

what happened to the Chappelle Show




This post is dedicated to the memory of Butch, the best and oldest cat in the entire universe.

He's so old I don't have any pictures of him. Just cave paintings. Since those are too hard to scan, too dark to photo, just picture a striped yellow tomcat with a soft, white throat and wise, yellow eyes.

My dad always had an orange tabby cat. One was named Tommy and the other Butch. Tommy was rumored to have been poisoned by the mean old man next door, Mr. McNeil. Or as my sister and I called him. Mack-o. He hated that. He's a long story, involving his creepy grandson who visited in the summers and caught up all the "green lithurdthz". I had no idea what a lisp was until I met Willem. I also had no idea why someone would name a kid Willem. It made no sense to me to leave the "yuh" part out, and just make him normal, make him "William." Normal was good. Lizards were good. Good was normal.

Butch was found on the side of the road by my sister. Said she barely saw him there with his eyes closed and his forehead lying down on the edge of the road. To me he looked like a wet sock full of marbles as we tried to bathe all the fleas off his belly. That was the scariest moment in that cat's life, being bathed in an apartment sink. It scared him so bad that he went catatonic and I had to hold him in a towel until he came to again. I have never seen a cat faint before, but I guess he did. Needless to say, we never got all the fleas off of him after that. I feel like a killer.

He made up for it though, for the rest of his life. He was a badass but honorable. He never started a fight, but by God, he'd finish them. He always reminded me of my dad. I never wanted to see that cat die because I knew when he did, a part of my dad would go with him, and I wasn't sure how big that part would be.

Butch honestly looked just like my dad if my dad were a cat. Except for the eye coloring, they both had the exact same look, the exact same face. And the same demeanor. I don't think my dad likes tuna that much, and I never saw Butch drink a beer, so each had his own personal identity. However...

Butch just died about 2 weeks ago at the very ripe old age of 22, beginning the end of the story. My parents are looking for a new house the past few months because the neighborhood has finally gone unfriendly. So I know my dad saw Butch's death as an omen. My family is strange and discerning like that. So they figured they'd bury him in the front flowerbed where he liked to stay.

I told them no. Some drooler will accidentally dig him up when they buy the house and decide to personalize this house my parents have kept up for the last 35 years because "they don't like pink azaleas" or "I saw a lizard in the bushes" or "cheap white rock gardens are easier to keep up than a flowerbed", something tacky and disturbing like that.

Butch's Achievements in Life:
(besides living 22 years on a somewhat busy street)

That cat could eat the "ass end out of a bird"* in no time. Pounce, business, death.

(*The poetic words of my father, booming across the backyard as he inspected the mangled, dead bird -- dangling it by one tiny leg between his fingers to view the damage as they made the journey to The Promised Land, the garbage can. Or maybe tossed into Macko's yard.)

In my mother's experience, it's best to let Butch eat the ass end and not try to interfere. Once she stepped in before he finished with the mourning dove. Big mistake as we watched the dove fly away with no legs. I can only imagine what went through that bird's mind when he tried to land on a branch, over and over again until his untimely twilight...

Another achievement, he outlived 3 black house dogs of varying shapes and sizes. He was most proud of that, you could tell. Much like the apple that fell from the tree, my mother could overfeed a pet rock faster than I can feel sorry for a crack in the sidewalk. She turns her dogs into walking sausages. But what happy sausages they are. With a side of pancreatitis.


So I suggested the workshop. The workshop was like a giant clubhouse for my dad and Butch. My dad has all his stuff out there. We don't know what one-tenth of it is, but he knows where every, tiny screw is in there, and he could lay his hands on it it the dark if he had to. "Smart people are weird like that," my sister said once. She used to be smart once, too, at least once or twice a year.

So my dad, an ex-Army man, buried him out by the workshop. He found a cool, flat, dusty spot right under a bush where Butch liked to hang out as my dad sawed or drilled or tuned around on his broadband radio on a cloudy summer night. My dad placed flat stones over the top of it so it would remain undisturbed now in my father's abscence. If that doesn't break your heart, my mom walked by Butch's gave the other day and my dad had stuck a tiny American flag between the rocks.

Doesn't that just make you wanna cry? Especially since that flag was probably made in China.

Life is hard to describe, but I try.