(My apologies for missing last week’s Feline Friday post. As penance, allow me to offer this link to a wonderful collection of photos of cats meditating in Buddhist temples.)
Good News: We’re on the final chapter of Part Two!
Bad News: There’s still an entire Part Three.
More Bad News: This is a really, really long chapter. Make popcorn. Oh, and the Frogurt is also cursed. Continue reading
I’ve been freelancing full-time for a little better than three years now, and there are things about it I love much more than I loved the 8-to-5 – but there are also things I hate much more than I hated the 8-to-5. Here’s a look at my top pros and cons of freelancing. Continue reading
by guest blogger Fizzgig, a Friendly Editor
Hi! Do you like children’s books? I like children’s books! I like them almost as much as I like my mousie! And I like them almost ALMOST as much as when Mom throws my mousie across the room and I runrunrun after it and then I kill it and then I present it to Mom and then she throws it again! RUNRUNRUN!
…Wait, what was I saying?
Oh, right! Children’s books! Here are Mom’s top five favorite children’s books featuring everyone’s favorite critters: us! I know these are her favorites because she keeps them on that bookshelf in the living room I’m not allowed to nap on. I haven’t napped there in, like, two whole days. Actually, a nap sounds fantastic. Here are the books I’m napping with:
1. THE BABY BLUE CAT AND THE DIRTY DOG BROTHERS, by Ainslie Pryor. Unlike his well-washed siblings, the Baby Blue Cat just can’t manage NOT to come home from a day of fun with his friends, the Dirty Dog Brothers, without being so covered in mud and dust that Mama Cat can’t even tell if he’s really hers!
Mom says if I ever come home this dirty, it’ll be straight into the tub for me, too. But I think she’s joking about that. Just like when she says that if I don’t stop chewing on the plants, she’ll turn me into stir fry. That’s silly! How could she make those gloves she’s always threatening to make out of my fur if she turned me into stir fry instead?
2. THE CHRISTMAS DAY KITTEN, by James Herriot. This is my personal favorite of all Mom’s favorite children’s books featuring cats. Debbie is a little black kitty, just like my mamma, who finds a nice warm home and a kindly human just in time to give birth to her big strong baby boy kitten – just like me! It’s during Catmas, which is the time of year when humans bring trees indoors for climbing and scratching, and then cover them in cat toys for stealing and chewing. Then they open boxes for hiding, and adorn them with ribbons for pouncing, and they finish up the day by leaving a big turkey dinner unattended on the dining room table. I wish Catmas came more than once a year! Mom also has a copy of JAMES HERRIOT’S CAT STORIES, which I guess are all also about cats, only not Catmas cats.
3. FOUR LITTLE KITTENS, by Kathleen Daly and Adriana Saviozzi. If there’s anything better in the world than a Little Golden Book for rubbing your face against until your teeth click, I don’t know what it is!
The Four Little Kittens are learning from their Mama Cat what kind of cats they can grow up to be. One becomes an Alley Cat, and one becomes a Ship’s Cat, and one becomes a Barn Cat (like my own mamma!), but the last one – well, I can proudly say just like the last one:
“I’m a cushion and cream cat, a purring cat, a cuddlesome cat, a playful cat, a little girl’s cat – I’m a House Cat!”
4. THE CAT IN THE HAT, by Dr. Seuss. Here is a TRUE STORY from just now: Dad said we should totally include this book in our list, but Mom scoffed. SHE said that the Cat in the Hat was a meddlesome jerk and just who did he think he is, anyway? I think Mom is taking lessons from the Fish in the Pot, because I think this book is kind of awesome. I definitely do not like to sit in the house when Mom is out. I like to have lots of fun that is funny! I like to chase things and balance on things and occasionally fall off of things or push things and watch THEM fall off of things and knock things over and shuffle things around and hide things under other things and chew things and scratch things and chase things and pounce on things and even eat things! (Mom says I should not eat things I find on the carpet. How silly! Eating the fuzzies on the carpet is what keeps kittens fuzzy! Sometimes I think Mom doesn’t know much about cats at all.)
5. CHESSIE, THE RAILROAD KITTEN by Thomas Dixon. Back in the 1930s, the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad had an ad campaign: “Sleep Like a Kitten and Wake Up Fresh as a Daisy.” (The Chesapeake and Ohio merged with some other railroads in 1972 to become the Chessie System. See, I know about lots more than just fetching mousies!) I don’t know what happened to the daisy bit, but people naturally LOVED the kitten, so pretty soon she was starring in all KINDS of railroad advertisements and even this book! Her name was Chessie, short for “Chesapeake.” She even had two kittens, Nip and Tuck! I bet we would have been best friends who pounced and chewed on each other’s tails all the time.
My favorite part of this book is that it’s Mom’s favorite children’s book that’s not a “children’s book” to her – she discovered it while hunting through the books in the farmhouse where I was born! I guess there’s also an awesome first edition of something called LITTLE WOMEN and A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN up there, whatever those are. They’re inside the glass bookshelves where that evil Looking-Glass Kitten lives. Someday I’m going to catch that cat, and then I’ll show him what’s what!
These are my favorite books on which to sleep. What are yours?
My whole morning, summed up in one Facebook post. I give up.
So pretty much this.
It’s been hard to get back to Atlas Shrugged, because I’m really starting to feel badly for it. Socially, I mean. It’s like that incredibly awkward acquaintance that you never really want to invite to parties, but he lives just down the street and he’s totally going to notice if you’re having a barbecue, and you know he doesn’t have any other real friends so it’s like what’s the harm, only when he does show up he’s wearing a beer hat and he spends two whole hours detailing the importance of wheat tariffs. This book is basically that dude, except it doesn’t even bring a six-pack.
Anyway! As Chapter 9 opens, Dagny Taggart, back in her apartment, composes a mental love letter to John Galt, even though she doesn’t yet know he exists. Everyone else in the entire universe does, though, and they’ve all stopped pretending they don’t, which makes this scene not so much “dramatic irony” as “a vaguely tasteless joke being played on the main character.”
Dagny then “turn[s] with indifferent astonishment” to open the door, whatever that means, and the ringer of her doorbell turns out to be Frisco, who’s come for a sexy, sexy two three-page conversation that is probably meant to sound deeply philosophical but that only sounds obtuse. So, basically, it’s Atlas Shrugged.
The philsobtuseversation pretty much boils down to this:
Frisco: I can’t believe you went back to work! You’re such a stupidhead!
Dagny: Well, I can’t believe you quit work! You’re the real stupidhead!
Frisco: Nuh-uh, you are!
Dagny: Nuh-uh, you are!
This masterpiece of dramatic dialogue is interrupted by the sudden entry of Hank Rearden, who apparently has a key to Dagny’s apartment.
Have you ever seen a soap opera? This is a soap opera. There’s a highly predictable love-triangle quarrel complete with obligatory slappings of faces, then somebody storms out. It’s so cliche I can’t even be bothered to remember who does the slapping and who the storming. At least when Gone With the Wind did it, we got some shattered porcelain and hoopskirts.
So after some inestimably boring Dagny/Hank ragesex, the doorman turns up with a letter from Quentin Daniels, Boy Genius. You may remember him from such projects as Trying to Rebuild the Perpetual Motion Machine that Dagny and Hank Looted Liberated from the Remains of the Twentieth Century Motor Company Back in Part One When It Was Still Possible to Give a Crap About This Travesty of a Novel. Quentin has decided to stop working on the perpetual motion machine, lest his honor be compromised by its falling into the wrong hands or some such nonsense. So Dagny, naturally, has to leave for Utah immediately, to slap some sense into the boy.
Skip to Dagny packing frantically while also giving Eddie Willers detailed instructions on how to contact her in a world that possesses only land-line telephones with unreliable long-distance connections monitored by indifferent operators. I’m terribly curious how Part Two: The Movie dealt with this scene, since it was supposed to be set in 2016 and the characters all obviously owned cell phones. Part Two: The Movie was in theatres for approximately three seconds, so I suppose I’ll have to wait.
Eddie Willers spots Hank’s robe hanging on the back of Dagny’s bedroom door and becomes the last person on Earth to realize they’re having an affair, a fact that forces him to vomit into his briefcase and then run off immediately to narc to his imaginary friend, John Galt. Fin.
Next time: the longest chapter in the history of chapters.
When people follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook, I frequently warn them that the feed they’re about to receive consists of way too much talking about my cats.
Here’s a sample platter. From my recent Facebooking:
“Training for the U.S. Olympic Napping team is serious business.”
Gracie: “Pills? Pills? Pills now, Mom. PILLS NOW MOM.”
Me: “Okay, cat. Just let me eat this toast and then I’ll take my pills.”
Gracie: “…This toast? Oh no, Mom. Kitty should eat THIS toast.”
I have a wonderful – and wonderfully opportunistic – service animal.
“ALL THE FEET.”
Fizzgig: OMG MOM YOU ARE HOME THROW THIS MOUSIE MOM MOM THROW IT MOM. *bats at my hands while I type* MOM MOM MOM MOM
Fizzgig, A Friendly Editor.
From the company that brought you “Opera Songs You Learned From Bugs Bunny Cartoons” and “Those Damn Dogs that Bark Jingle Bells” comes the quintessential collection of feline music, “Classic Cat Cantatas.” Listen as our classically-trained operatic masters perform such favorites as “I’m on the Wrong Side of This Door,” “I Barf Your Plants,” and “Mom My Food Bowl Is Empty Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom.” Bonus CD contains a live rendition of the beloved aria, “The Human Said No (That Means It’s a Toy).” Order now. Free shipping to Abu Dhabi.
“Pet me!”
Me: *grumblegrumbleMORNINGgrumbleEXPLETIVEgrumble*
Fizzgig: *offers mousie*
Me: ….D’awww.
Me: *working*
Gracie: *squirm*
Me: *working*
Gracie: *squirm squirm*
Me: *working*
Gracie: *squirm* “Eeh?” *squirm*
Me: “Do you need love?” *skritches*
Gracie: *purr*
Don’t pet the fluffy tummy! It’s a trap!
From the makers of Random Piles of Pocket Crap and Some Goo We Found in the Fridge comes the Fizzgig 5000: Complete Home Mousie Retrieval System. Have an insatiable urge to throw your mousies across the room, but hate having to go pick them up? Never fear! The Fizzgig 5000 will retrieve your mousies on command and return them to your lap, slippers, or outstretched hand. Caution: system goes haywire in the presence of catnip.
And from The Twitters:
The Kitten’s ability/will to fetch his toy mousie has exceeded my ability/will to throw it.
— Dani Alexis (@danialexis) January 13, 2013
Part of me is all “I must publish a memoir about books and cats RIGHT NOW!” Other part is all “it’s not like those ever lose an audience.”
— Dani Alexis (@danialexis) January 4, 2013
I’m surrounded by conked-out cats.#distractions #cuteness
— Dani Alexis (@danialexis) January 4, 2013
Dear Kitten: Have you considered a career in the exciting field of Behaving Yourself? Free information is available, so call today!
— Dani Alexis (@danialexis) January 2, 2013
“Are your cat’s eyes green or are they blue?” “Yes.”
No, the movie was no better.
A helpful local billboard has informed me that Les Miserables, the touring stage production, will be in town soon (or has already been in town – I forget).
My first thought: “Ugh, didn’t I just see that?”
I did. And whatever hopes I had that the new movie version would salvage the stage production for me were curiously moot, because the things I hate most about Boublil and Natel’s adaptation of Les Miserables are endemic to their adaptation. (Some, but not all, are mitigated in the novel, or at least in its English translation.)
The Top Five Things I Hate About the “Musical Phenomenon” Les Miserables: Continue reading
