Every New Yorker without a car should force themselves to rent a car at least once a year, if only to reiterate the inherent smartness of living the rest of the year without one. Sure there is the initial joy of feeling like you can go anywhere! do anything! You feel possessed of the heady sense of self-determination that no-doubt drove our forefathers to wagon-train into the Great Unknown of the Louisiana Purchase only to settle in what is now Utah. Then you realize that all the assholes who get in your way on the subway are now in front of you, each in their own metal exoskeleton, and each of them with as little clue as to where they're going or how much room they're taking up than on the L train platform.
I just returned a rental car (from Image on Empire Blvd, cheapest Sentras in town!) and despite how useful it has been over the past four days, I am relieved to not have to drive one for the foreseeable future (at least, not in a major metropolitan area). We got the car to drive to Baltimore to surprise Jeannie's mom, who turned 80 recently. We snuck down and stayed at a friend's house for the night, then emerged while the Moms was at what she thought was a casual dinner at her friends' house. The surprise worked (video to follow, I left my camera in Jeannie's purse), and a lovely time was had by all. We got to spend some time with her and I got to see the many faces of Baltimore, something I had wanted to do since Female Trouble. A misreading of the map landed us in West Baltimore, which indeed does have that Wire feeling, although to me it looked a lot like Bushwick in places. Our friend lives in Hampden which is like a flower-filled and silent Williamsburg, with better architecture. In between we saw sweeping mansions and blasted out hovels, historically-significant buildings and an influx of skinny jeans.
The rest of the time we were driving, to Baltimore, to Bel Air, back to Brooklyn. I know Robert Moses didn't invent the superhighway but I still like to curse him every time I'm in traffic. There was a lot of traffic to and from Baltimore, mostly severe jams that lasted hours and seemed to have no cause whatsoever. Also there are like a bazillion tolls between Brooklyn and Baltimore, whose costs were only slightly less annoying than how the constant stopping and paying affected traffic. It's impossible to relax while driving, and relaxing isn't something I'm that good at anyway, so I'm still a bit frazzled from the trip.
One shining light was the fact that Costco is right off the BQE, and we got back into town just in time to duck and grab more cat food and dish soap. Our car was minuscule but it held all the crap we got there, as well as all the crap we bought at the Bel Air Target (I know we have one in Brooklyn but it's always so picked over). The Costco trip was something we needed to do anyway so it was a nice perk to get that out of the way. We dragged the stuff home and thankfully got a decent parking spot in front of the house. Despite the positives, I still can't see how people can live like this every day.
I took the car back in the morning, thinking the trip would be a nice cruise over to Crown Heights, but once again the Impossibly Stupid Drivers of Brooklyn were out in force. It should have taken 20 minutes, tops, to get over there but it took twice as long, due to bad drivers, a plethora of red lights, and perhaps a bit of my own poor driving skills. With the car dropped off, I walked around the corner and got on a 5 train taking me almost directly to my office halfway up Manhattan in less time than it took me to drive a few miles in the car. Now that's transportation.
Now that I'm in my new office, I am surrounded by people I don't know. I suspect they worked at the same company as I before we were bought out, but who knows? I worked from home most of my career and then worked for a couple years in a satellite office. So I don't know most of em.
There's a guy one cubicle-group over from me, he's middle-aged, salt-and-pepper hair, wire-frame glasses. He is showing all the signs of Mid-life Crisis Syndrome. He's in his late 40s, works in finance, BUT: he drives a kickass motorcycle. See, ladies? He's still cool! He's still cool.
How do I know he drives a kickass motorcycle? Because he wears a leather jacket and carries a helmet in every day. I suppose it's possible he just walks around with the jacket and helmet on, but I have to hope there is a kickass motorbike in there somewhere. It saddened me for a while, he was just like the guy in Weeds who tries to capture some modicum of machismo by getting a Harley and growing a handlebar mustache (played by Andy Milder, pictured above in all of his badassery). But he runs afoul some REAL bikers and gets knocked off a guardrail and winds up in a wheelchair for most of season 3.
The other day I was walking past Mid-life Crisis guy's cubicle and I overheard him on his phone. He was speaking German. Then it dawned on me: This guy's not having a mid-life crisis, he's just German. Somehow that makes his behavior completely acceptable, I don't know why. What do Germans do when they want to remind themselves how cool they are? Buy another pair of leather pants? No one knows.
We went to our polling place this morning, fearing long lines and difficult-to-grok voting apparatus. But not only were the machines working fine and easy to understand, there was no line. Like, at all.
As you may know, your average polling location is split up into a number of "election districts" which determine how many actual voting booths there are. Your address somehow determines which election district you are in. So we're in front of our booth, with no one else. All around us, every other district had fairly long lines, some prohibitively long. Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we voted and got the hell out of there. But I gotta say, it looked a little weird.
Not to put too fine a point on it, we were pretty much the whitest people in the room. The only other white guy was filling out a provisional ballot ... for our election district. It would not be hard to look at this scene and assume the palefaces had some kind of elevated status (like how first class passengers get to go through airport security faster). In short, on this historic day, we looked like the poster kids for White Privilege.
Now, I know that couldn't really be the case, but try looking up 'election district maps' and see what you find: Dick. What the hell is an election district? Anyway I eventually found them on some of the maps of other districts. Here (with a little inference) you can see that election districts are very small subdistricts, in my case 3 consecutive blocks. But more tellingly, my district is actually part of a larger Assembly district whose borders make me a part of Ocean Hill; we're just over the line by one block. Odd then, that my voting location is squarely in Bushwick, since many other designations include us with other neighborhoods. Who knows, but what it means is me and my 3-block radius vote in our own special bubble. Still, 3 blocks in this neighborhood is still a whole lot of people. (I'm sure they're all planning to vote when they get home from work.)
And it doesn't stop there, take a look at the Congressional District maps as well, it gives gerrymandering a bad name. You'd think that districts would be more or less blob-shaped, a circle or influence, or a square. But no, my district is a weird multi-pronged affair, covering several neighborhoods and spanning ridiculously-varied socioeconomic strata. Seems suspect, in any case. Forgive me if I seem cynical and paranoid, it's just been a long time since I voted and it felt like it mattered.
And I know you like the feeling going up, going down
Does anybody remember the mall-store Merry-Go-Round? When I think of it, I still see green spandex, mesh-front shirts and headbands. To me, it was the apogee of 80s fashion, jumping on every ridiculous leg-warming trend and running it directly into the ground. But nobody seems to remember it now. I can't even remember if my local mall had one; I don't remember shopping there, but I do remember how much I associated it with my pubescent days. You don't see stores like that anymore; but what happened to it?
My theory: like so many icons of the 80's, I think Merry-Go-Round was killed by grunge rock. It killed a lot of things: hair-metal, knit ties, Kurt Cobain. And Merry-Go-Round (not to mention pretenders to the throne like Chess King, who, it may interest you to know, was bought out by MGR at some point. I don't know why I feel bad about this, but considering how ingrained 80's nostalgia is in our stupid culture (largely now by people who were not even remotely in existence during the aforementioned decade), you'd think there'd be some kind of monument to it. Surely, if it weren't for Merry-Go-Round, 80's culture as we currently regard it would not exist.
Info on the store is a bit scant, but I did find this bizarre, press-release style company history, that oddly doesn't mention that the company went bankrupt (had to find that elsewhere). But it notes the kind of forward-thinking that should have given it immortal icon status:
When pop star Michael Jackson appeared on MTV wearing a red leather jacket with 27 zippers, Merry-Go-Round sold more than 50,000 similar jackets at $29 each. Similarly, when the lead singer in the rock band Def Leppard performed in a video sporting a Union Jack sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves, a new fad was born. Merry-Go-Round sold over 40,000 copies of the sweatshirt at $15 each.
Merry-Go-Round managed to eke into the 1990's, but by 94 it was pretty much over. I'm not exactly sad about it, but I guess I feel the company doesn't get its due in pop-culture history. I'm also hopeful that I won't be spending any more time in malls so these admittedly dorky notions don't obsess me further. Though I do have some lingering questions about Orange Julius ...
Your mouth is writing checks the bank won't accept
A couple of months ago, somebody stole my credit card info and charged a bunch of stuff with it. It was only because I obsessively check my online statement that I noticed it, and at first it didn't even register. This was about the time we booked our tickets to lovely sunny Cleveland, and I noticed there were charges that looked like airfare; at first I didn't think anything of it. But then I saw there were 3 charges, not two. Plus, each was for in excess of $500, way more than one should spend to go to The Heart of It All. There was also a charge for some stupid VoIP company, but that $20 charge paled in comparison. I canceled the card and was refunded the fraudulent charges.
Now, this is what irks me: a few weeks before this happened, my creidt card company had shut my card down; it discovered suspicious charges and stopped my account from working pending my approval. What sort of charges tip off the credit industry? For me it was Century 21, Netflix and cat food ... stuff I buy all the time. So I buy some stuff form stores I have bought from for many years, alarms go off and the security details suspends my account until I call into their lame automated call center. I verbally approve every charge and my account is back.
Cut to a month later: I notice airfare charges (from a company based in ROME, no less) and now it's up to me to convince them I didn't make these charges. What, are hackers so talented nowadays they can make stolen work seem more legit than the real stuff? Anyway, I will say the credit card company was rapidly compliant, closing the account and getting me a new card quickly. Among other things, we went out to Ikea with the new card and spent tons of dough on some new furniture and other crap we may regret in a couple of months. Then I tried to buy something with the card and it says it's not working again. Here we go again ...
I call in to find out what's up and they lame automated system tells me they have reason to believe (again) that fraudulent activity has taken place. They recite the list of suspicious charges, all legitimate, all mine, all for companies I buy stuff from all the time. But in all of this, they didn't mention the Ikea purchase at all; I asked about it and they said it wasn't suspicious. So my 20-dollar charge to a pet supply company I buy from almost every other month is more suspect that the enormous purchase from Ikea, from whom I've never bought from before? I just don't get it.
Anyway, it's all settled now at least and as far as I can tell, my account is safe for now. But one ironic outcome: I checked with the VoIP company to find out who used my card and they gave me the email address associated with the charge. It was my email with my first and last name reversed. Clever! So I emailed it:
From: jimmylegs To: legsjimmy Subject: having a good time
hey are you using my credit card?
I didn't expect a reply, but the other day I got one:
From: legsjimmy To: jimmylegs Subject: RE:having a good time
yes. i have ur info when i hacked one shop. im sorry
I wanted to find out how he got it, so I wrote
From: jimmylegs To: legsjimmy Subject: RE:having a good time
ha! wow i didn't expect a reply. can you tell me what shop you hacked? i'm trying to figure out where it got out.
From: legsjimmy To: jimmylegs Subject: RE:having a good time
becos im úing thí mail for búyome thing :D that reply u man hehe i dont remember shop was hacked i have many many
I'm not sure why his spelling got so bad at the end there, but it momentarily spooked me that he still uses the email address to buy stuff. But he doesn't have my card info any more, and as his email is a gmail account, there doesn't seem to be anything to do about it. It feels like that episode of Seinfeld when Jerry's car gets stolen and he calls the thief on the car phone:
How to Get Something Done in a Big Company the Requires Intra-departmental Funding in 13 EZ Steps:
Decide that your project cannot go any further until another department is brought in to do work because they own some back-end services they don't let anybody else touch. Sigh heavily at the prospect of getting them to do anything for you.
Approach them, pleasantly and gingerly, like approaching a young squirrel.
Ask them if they wouldn't mind doing the work that is, after all, their job to do in the first place.
They respond: Please have a funding number set up. Secured funding is a must before they can even consider the scope of work.
Ask how much money should be assigned to the funding number.
They respond they won't know how much it will cost until they begin the project.
But to begin the project, they will need that funding number.
Which, of course, will need to be set up with a certain amount of money. Spend about an hour trying to wrap your head around this, then pick a huge amount of dough to apply funding.
Ask the folks in the Finance Department to set up funding number with this funding. They won't return your emails or calls for one week. When you finally get a hold of them you are fuming and irrational, to which they will respond with insulted shock. Funding number will be created with less money than requested, even though the money 'belongs' to your department.
Return to 1st department armed with funding number. They respond with polite frustration, explaining that your funding number is not compatible with their billing system. You try to ask "Why didn't you tell me this in the first place?" but suddenly they no longer understand English.
After begging them to complete the work which is now weeks past due, they will finally admit they can do it once one of their Finance Department contacts alters the funding number to match their system.
With the money in place, the department can finally get to work. Immediately the entire department goes on vacation. Meanwhile, somebody else finds out about the funding number and, rather than go through all the trouble of setting one up themselves, uses it for their own project. Funding runs out; the project is now 3 months behind schedule and the boss is starting to notice.
Send frantic emails to every single person you dealt with during the course of this ordeal and wire some 'emergency' money into the account. The work is done by the next morning, perfectly. Except "American" is misspelled. Which is your fault. Blame it on the contractor in India.
The other day I got to work with a musician whose skill far surpassed my own. He could play piano and guitar (and reportedly many other instruments) with the great ease, and as if that weren't enough, had perfect pitch, listening a couple of times to a song and immediately knowing all the root chords and whatnot. Meanwhile I was struggling along on a bass guitar, trying to figure out the chord progressions, asking him incessantly to remind me of the note order (there were like 4 chords in the whole song). By this time he was improving and soloing over the song, while I continued to trip over my 4 notes.
It always frustrates me that I can't do everything as well as I'd like, but I wonder what it's like to be really good at something like that. I've known lots of people who have these innate talents. Of course, this guy may have been schooled for years at various instruments, and one could argue that's why he's so good now. But then I reflect, I have received lessons on no fewer than 3 musical instruments during my formative years, and now I'm lucky if I can get my pinky finger to go where I tell it. I'd say the ability to actually learn the discipline and stick with it is a talent in its own right, maybe even more impressive than the guy who just naturally has a talent for something. But of course, even that's pretty impressive.
So what does it feel like to be super good at something? Like the kid I met when I was in junior high, he was able to use the rudimentary drawing program on my Apple IIe computer and, using only the chunky mouse available, freehand an elaborate scene of a man on a surfboard (imagine what he could do with an Etch-a-Sketch.) I wonder if really talented people even have a capacity to appreciate how far beyond normal folks they are; maybe they can't even tell they're talented, because it comes so easily to them. That would kind of suck, but I suppose the really talented among us who actually realize the disparity become intolerably arrogant.
This of course makes me think of all the supremely UNtalented people I've known who still manage to be insufferably arrogant anyway. I could theoretically create a false sense of great ability by simply acting like a dick all the time. But sooner or later somebody would hand me a guitar and tell me to play a Billy Joel or Carole King song on sight, and the ugly truth would be revealed.
Okay, I have a lot of cats, but I maintain that I haven't lost all touch with reality. However, should I ever find that my cat obsession overwhelms all other aspects of my life, losing me my girlfriend, job and acquaintances, at least I can still meet other like-minded shut-ins:
PURRsonals.com appears to be less of a dating service for cat lovers as it is a beard service for closeted gay men. At any rate, what a ridiculous, sure-to-fail concept. Unlike, say, jedidating.com.
You remember that Kurt Vonnegut story, "Harrison Bergeron"? It's the overly-pointed tale of life in the not-too-distant-future when the government makes every equal, not just legally but physically. So everybody has actual devices implanted on their bodies to reign in their innate abilities so everyone is no better than the weakest link in the chain. In this case, it's the mom character, who has no devices at all. Anyway the story is like junior high-grade pedantry about how conformity is bad and how we shouldn't let our leaders legislate too much of our lives, yahyah yah.
I bring this story up because of the father character, he has a little radio embedded in his brain that sends out a piercing tone every so often, "to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains." The noise is just distracting enough to make him lose his train of thought. You see, for the past few weeks they have been demolishing the building next door to our office. There is much drilling, much hammering, some exploding. I'm supposed to be working on Important Business Work here, but the constant pounding is making it hard to think straight.
So I'm thinking of the dad in the story, how he can't remember what he's thinking out after a few minutes; that's what it's like in here. I am frustrated and antsy, but have no idea what to do about it. The simplest tasks are hard to bring to fruition, and I find myself looking forward to the lunch hour, if only to have a reason to get outside the building for a few minutes.
Yet I also feel oddly elated. Outside of the annoyance of the noise, nothing phases me too much. I can't remember the things that are supposed to be worrying me for more than a minute at a time, so consequently I don't feel burdened by them. I am dimly aware that this is an artificial state and that once away from the sound of the piledrivers all my daily worries will come home to roost (most likely as I try to fall asleep). But for the moment I take comfort in the fact that all this noise is dumbing me down enough to feel rather happy.
Maybe it's the rain bringing me down, but I am done with this lame weather. I was watching an episode of Law & Order last night and there was a shot in the Village in which you could see that red brick church in the background (you know the one I'm talking about) and it was obviously a mild day in the late-spring/summer. How I long for those days. I want to get up from the couch and walk outside without having to think twice about my outer vestments. I want to have the freedom of movement that comes from not having to wear a big coat all the time. Plus, apparently, it's a woman's coat.
A few weeks ago when the J train was skipping our stop due to track work, our car was assailed by Ralphie, some homeless nut who was asking for money. When he didn't get much response he started yelling at everybody on his way to the next car, "God sees through you!!" We got off at Broadway Junction to wait for a shuttle bus home, and he emerged from the station, all nerves and crazy-eyes.
Now, on the plus side, he did say "Hey beautiful" to Jeannie, but there ended his good judgment. He then looked at me and cried out, "Why you wearin' a woman's coat?!"
My winter jacket is a parka purchased from Uncle Sam's Army-Navy store (coincidentally right around the corner from the aforementioned church). Unlike your standard coat, it's full-length, cuz my legs get cold, dammit. I've always felt it was squarely nondenominational but I certainly don't think it looks feminine.
Ralphie ranted on, "That's a woman's coat. Why are you wearing that, man?" Finally he huffed, "It's embarrassing!" and turned away in disgust.
There you have it, I have embarrassed a man not above scrounging on the subway for money. Will spring never come?
When I was a lad I loved the comic strip Garfield. It used to be sort of funny. Nowadays it's just stupid. I don't think it's because I've grown up, I think the old ones are still funny. But the new stuff isn't funny. anyway, somebody had the idea to remove Garfield's namesake from a bunch of the strips, and suddenly it's not only hilarious again, it's thoughtful, sad, something like a Beckett play. You might have to read a few of them to get into it, but slowly you'll start to see the character of Jon quietly go insane. Interesting to think that the only difference is there's no cat for him to talk to. I talk to cats all the time. Would I talk as much if they weren't there. Yes. Yes, I would.
In an effort to prove I do sometimes leave the house for things other than work and feral cats, here's some photos from Matt & Sylvia's party the other night. they live in Greenpoint, and managed to find a place that doesn't yet appear to be played out in the Williamsburg way. And yet, it can boast stuff like nearby bars, bodegas on literally every corner, plus it's on the far side of town from the bulk of the oil spill.
My neighborhood still shuts down too early, and the bodegas that are open 24 hours are not exactly the type of places you want to spend lots of time. Then again, you don't actually get to go in, you boss some schmoe around behind three inches of bulletproof lucite.
The only real drawback to the neighborhood is you're pretty much stuck with the G train. And let's face it, it won't wash. I don't blame the train, I blame the MTA for being fully 5 years behind the times. Every single neighborhood that is serviced by the G has become real estate gold (more or less). Look at this list of areas the G runs through, tell me it doesn't read like the last several editions of NY Magazine's "Next Hottest Neighborhood Our Cool Interns Say are Hot Hot Hot":
Red Hook, Carrol Gardens, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bed-Stuy, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City. The G connects to the F, A/C, L (Brooklyn), and the E, 7, and V trains in Queens. Not bad, right? So why does the train still suck so much?
I know they're extending the run further into Brooklyn, but that sounds to me like it will take just that much longer for the train to get anywhere. It's pretty impressive that it's been able to handle these ever-more-populous neighborhoods with its dinky 4-car load. I dunno, maybe the folks who live in these neighborhoods learn a kind of zen-like patience I can't begin to imagine. I mean, I used to live off the Classon station for years and somehow survived it, but now that I live on a train line that keeps a pretty tight schedule, it drives me nuts when I find myself standing around that bizarrely run-down Broadway station.
The cats and I managed to survive standing around in zero-degree wind chill for two hours Monday morning and are now spayed. Roxy was crazed from the anesthetic, when i released her from her carrier, she ran around the room like it was electrified, variously falling down or slamming her head into the walls. I should have left her in the carrier, but she had been in there several hours and was supposed to be well past the point that she could come out. But she is small for her age and is normally really energetic, so maybe they gave her too much kitty chloroform. She eventually ran out of steam and laid down, but not without injury. She had a big red welt under her eye from running into the door. I felt really bad for her, but she seems to be okay now and is coming around. She even seems to be a little more tame than pre-surgery, hopping onto the couch with me and allowing us to pet her.
The other cat we took in is doing fine, sans histrionics. She has been sleeping a lot on the top floor of the house, where nobody will bug her. We've been trying to think of a name and wanted to continue the recent trend of antiquated proper nouns we've been ascribing to the other cats we've taken in. So far the calico cats we've had have been named: Gladys, Lucy, Flossie and Roxy. I like these old lady names (though Roxy has a slatternly bent to it) and the new cat has a similar deportment as Gladys, making her a prime target of some doily-fringed moniker of old.
With a little googling, we found lists of the most popular baby names by decade. Focusing on the names of the 1910's, I was surprised to find not only every one of the above cat names, but countless others that were downright bizarre. You know how people like to poke fun at nontraditional "black" baby names? This list proves how there really is nothing new under the sun.
The list is taken from some kind of database that lists each name by actual number of babies born that decade. Of our already-named cats, Gladys leads the pack with 4,778, Lucy has 1,564, Flossie has 328, and Roxie (close enough!) with 166. There's a lot of good old-lady cat names that we'd heard of on the list, but a whole slew of them were unknown to me. A sampling:
Those are just some that caught my eye, there's a lot more on that list. And these aren't individual examples, either; the list excludes names with less than 29 instances. My personal favorites are Elfrieda and Floy, though neither seems applicable to this cat. We've been rotating a series of names off the list, since she wouldn't know her name from a hole in the ground anyway.
I haven't posted much here lately, but there are lots of pictures on my Flickr site. Besides the obligatory cat photos, there's some photos of the baby shower we attended on Saturday. I feel so grown up.
The shower finally gave us a reason to go into the Kidz & Co. store that opened up on the corner of our street. When the place opened several months ago, our dim hopes for a bar or bakery or even a Conway were dashed, and we just learned to live with yet another store that we had no use for on the block.
But our friends breeding gave us shopping rites, and man, baby clothes are cheap! Especially at this south Bushwick outlet. We chose a dark-blue hoodie with a printed pattern of gold dollar signs and diamonds. It's meant for a 12-month old, but clothes like that are meant to be worn large. Even though the baby will live in Chelsea, in case she comes to Brooklyn, she'll know just what to wear.
Somehow in all my years living in this city, I don't think I've ever gotten coffee served to me in one of those "We are happy to serve you," Greek-Styley paper coffee cups. I am of course familiar with them, as an icon of New York City, and have been known to buy coffee on the go from time to time. But somehow I never happen upon a vendor who uses the famous design.
I read up on the cup, it was designed by a Leslie Buck in 1963, who named it "The Anthora." This was an apparent misspelling of the Greek word, "Amphora," which refers to a vessel meant for carrying wine or oil (note such vessel on the cup, nice!). Though a Czech immigrant himself, Buck's inspiration for the design was in the fact that most diners in those days were owned and operated by folks of Greek descent. A research topic for another day: Why did so many Greeks open diners in America and where did they all go?
Anyway, cool cup; I never get one. Until the other day! Or so I thought. On my way to work, I stopped off at a coffee cart, mostly because the coffee in my office sucks and I was hankering for something at least diner-quality. The guy handed me my coffee, I saw a flash of navy blue and beige lettering and got excited. Finally! I got one!
Not so much: Now, there have been several variations on the original theme, but this is pretty lame. It's just sad, isn't it? Not only is the design a pale pretender to the original, with its pitiful grouped squares, 'sketch-style' coffee cups, and mirthless sans-serif font, but these guys aren't even happy to serve me, merely "pleased." And frankly, I don't think I even buy that.
To their credit, they do give you coffee and a bagel for one dollar, not bad for 2007, I guess.
So Tumbleweed the kitten went to the vet and after a lot of poking and prodding, he was deemed disease and parasite-free. I guess this is one of those situations where I will be glad to get this confirmation form the vet, and not focus on the money I just blew to have this guy tell me he's fine. In fact, form the moment we brought him home, he started acting better, playing and eating more regularly.
He still lacks the vigor of some of the other kittens, but he's getting better. All the other cats like him, especially Rudy (pictured) and Jefe, who groom him and play with him without getting too violent. His personality is already perfect, as soon as he puts on some more weight, he'll be ready to go.
Speaking of going, Gladys and Ira departed this weekend to their new homes. Rudy was supposed to go but his owner had to reschedule for next weekend. Fine with me, he's a lovely little cat. This week I'm focusing on finding Chester the Russian Blue a new home, and working on his sister Monkey to get her better socialized. She had taken to hiding in the basement a lot, so we're trying to force her to deal with us more directly. Meanwhile our other hard case, Baby Bones, has been letting us pet him under the right situations, which is a huge step in his development. If things keep up at this pace, we'll be all out of kittens in a couple of weeks. The house already feels empty but it will be good to have fewer felines running around: my allergies have been going nuts lately.
I haven't considered myself allergic since I was a kid, but with the dander of so many different cats present these days, my fragile system can't keep up. The upside is it forces me to clean house way more often than I would otherwise, but it's never enough. I keep thinking about getting one of those little air sanitizers that you wear around your neck, but I'm walking a pretty thin line already. If I become the Crazy Cat Guy Who Wears an Air Conditioner Around his Neck, I'll never be able to leave the house again.
Instead, I'll stick with being That Guy Who Looks Like Moby To Drunk People. While out the other night these people came up to me and asked for my autograph. I explained I was not in fact Moby, but then they said they didn't care and wanted the autograph anyway. I thought they were joking, but then another guy came up and excitedly asked, "Did he sign??" So I signed on the condition that they give Mark a cigarette. Would the real Moby do that?
Taking a break from kittens for a moment, let's look at the evolution of guinea pigs over the past years. Maybe these breeds were around when I was growing up, but I sure don't remember them. I had plain guinea pigs, my favorite being an agouti (like the one pictured on the left), whose markings kind of resemble what wild guinea pigs look like. Sorta looks like a groundhog.
Besides that, I knew of a couple of odd breeds, such as the Peruvian, whose hair grows long and straight and basically turns them into a living toupee. Then there's the Abyssinians, with the cowlicks all over, permanent bed-head. I thought that was pretty much it, but science has been working to increase guinea pig exoticness to unheard-of degrees.
For instance, you can now get a "sphinx" guinea pig, a mostly-hairless pig that reveals just how hippo-like they really are. Some also like sharpeis, all wrinkled and rubbery looking. There are several other newish breeds, some are cute, some less so.
What in god's name were they thinking when they came up with the "Coronet" breed? It's basically a long-hair bred with a crested pig so you end up with an embarrassing rodent sporting a mullet. Is this animal cruelty at its worst?
If I may step away from kittens for a moment (okay I forgot to bring in the newest pictures), I want to do something actually blog-related for once, namely link to a couple sites that merit attention.
First up is Vice Magazine's blog. Vice's main site is blocked when I'm at work and generally I'm pretty sick of the magazine and the way its record label automatically ruins any band it touches. But its blog, which is just on a Typepad subdomain, often has good stuff. Case in point, brief interviews with Indians representing each caste of its society. The Indian Caste system is something that's always fascinated me, especially since in the US, we're not supposed to have such delineations. But of course, we totally do but we're not supposed to speak of it. Capitalism is supposed to smooth all of it over, but all it does is build resentment in my estimation. But India, with its rigidly defined classes (and many subclasses), whenever you ask somebody there how they feel about it, they're always like "Oh, it's great! Everybody loves it!"
Secondly is Cracked Magazine. You may know this magazine from your youth as mostly-lame ripoff of Mad Magazine (which was itself a lame ripoff of the Kurtzman-era Mad Magazine). But the web version (I dunno if there is a print version anymore) is replete with mildly amusing articles that appeal to the Baby-Bust generation. At least males from this generation. Some hit that pointless ranking gene that seems to be present in guys, ie, "The 7 Most Underrated Movie Henchmen" (including that "Kill Frogs" guy from The Muppet Movie). Some are actually pretty astute, despite their sophomoric inspiration, such as "The 5 Biggest Pricks in Congress."
"...kill frogs..."
For sheer day-wasting, Cracked is doing its darnedest to please (see Hateful Stereotypes Behind 5 Lovable Cereal Mascots). I prefer this to the reading-the-headline-only Onion. The content on Cracked is much more in line with my type of mind-wandering, where I'll be doing some vaguely work-related, say, editing PDF file names to match my arcane filing techniques and it'll occur to me, "I wonder how many other famous people are Scientologists that I don't even know about." Voila! The Top 10 Secret Celebrity Scientologists to the rescue!
Freddy the Formerly Stray Cat scared us the other night when she climbed over the back fence and into the church yard behind it. She wouldn't come back, bedding down in an old milk crate and staring at me critically when I tried to convince her to come back inside. I feared we'd have to start all over with her, slowly luring her back to the house, but the next day she ran into the kitchen like nothing had changed. But it had ...
On a previous night, she got into a growling match with a big male cat that had traipsed into the yard. Now it seems she and this cat were pals; they slept next to each other in the church yard and hung out together on the patio. Not only that, but her ambassadorship seems to be attracting others. The other night we were sitting in the living room when I noticed a cat sitting on the kitchen counter. This is not unusual, but it wasn't one of our cats. It was a Russian Blue, looking pretty much show-quality, if a little on the thin side. He had come through the open window that sits above the counter. And Freddy's original friend kept lookout on the window sill. It then occurred to me that I had left that window open the night before in case Freddy decided to return, so they'd probably already done a dry run for this infiltration.
I don't know if these cats are strays (gently used) or feral (Born Free), but they bolted when we inched over towards them. The Blue cat really was a lot better-looking than pretty much any of our cats, it makes me wonder if I can trade some of them in. But we haven't seen it since. Meanwhile, the parade of neighborhood cats continues unabated.
Out on the street there are tons of street cats that appear to go from stoop to stoop looking for handouts. We keep getting visited by a calico kitten who momentarily garnered my sympathies because I thought she was covered in her own blood. I carried her out to the back yard and stuffed her full of cat food. Then I noticed the 'blood' splashed on her side much more closely resembled Kool-aid. I guess that's 'street smarts.'
You know how sometimes when you drink you end up doing things you later regret? Well, this happened to me the other night. I awoke on Sunday with a pounding head and the sobering realization that at 3:30 the night before I was singing "Captain Jack" because Alex knew how to play it on the piano. Sure it could be construed as an amusing party-type moment, but the more I thought about it, the worse it seemed. Now I keep thinking, "What if the neighbors were trying to sleep? What if their bed is right on the other side of the piano-room wall? Oh god I was singing Billy Joel. I mean, please. Billy Joel."
Luckily, my body shut itself down soon after. My only solace is that I think the neighbors know I live in the lower part of the house, and will blame it on Buzz. They think he's trouble anyway.
Look what you missed out on. Actually, I'm not sure who made more a spectacle of themselves: Johnny, whose job it is to be drunk and obnoxious onstage, or Mark (L), who managed a rare feat, getting cut off at an illegal bar in a semi-legal performance room. He was better-behaved the second night, though there was some hollering observed.
I just realized I'm hitting the stride of the longest holiday drought for the whole year. After a run of holidays that gives me a day off at least once a month for 6 months, the next holiday I get is Memorial Day. That's like 2 months away! And it's at the END of the month too! Of course, some people don't get all these days off (even I feel politically unsure of Columbus Day, but I'll take the day off, sure). These are my holidays:
UNITED STATES
2007 Holidays
Date
Holiday
01/01/2007
New Year's Day
01/15/2007
Martin Luther King's Birthday
02/19/2007
Presidents Day
05/28/2007
Memorial Day
07/04/2007
Independence Day
09/03/2007
Labor Day
10/08/2007
Columbus Day
11/12/2007
Veterans Day
11/22/2007
Thanksgiving Day
12/25/2007
Christmas Day
The way I see it, this dearth of holidays reminds me that we have several months for which we should be nominating for new holidays. Here's my suggestions for the months I'm not currently getting long weekends:
March 21: Jimmy Legs Memorial Day. To commemorate those few days last March when the nation held its breath and I wasn't allowed to leave the hospital until they ran me through every expensive piece of machinery in the place (including the machine that goes "Pinnng!")
April 14: Birthday/Unbirthday Day. It's a real birthday for Buzz, Abby, and Janice, and probably some other people. So let's all pretend it's our birthday too (this will also mean 50 Cent will always be able to find work in the future).
June 15: June Appreciation Day. I always looked forward to June, but it seems to go by too quickly. Before I know it, it's the 4th of July, it's hot and humid, and I have the sneaking suspicion I've just wasted a whole month. This won't stop that, but at least I won't waste this day redesigning the background image for a PowerPoint presentation.
August 7: Throw Bottles in Your Neighbor's Yard Day. This holiday, celebrated weekly by my neighbors, gets the solemn, national attention it deserves.
Too bad that you're not as smart as you thought you were in the first place
I was trying to come up with a follow-up post for the animal longevity post to list the relative intelligence of pets, which is my other major issue. You sit there and watch your cat running around and you wonder "Why is he doing that? Does he understand he can't fit under that? Is he a moron?" But alas, there is no helpful list on the web for this that I was able to fine. I have read that cats basically have the intelligence of a 2-year old human. Pigs supposedly are even smarter, at the level of a 3-year old. And of course, cockatiels are on par with 75-year old Mensa members.
I went to the pet store yesterday and saw a cockatiel playing with this rope/wood-block/fuzzy thing, so I thought the birds would like it. I've read that, whatever their intelligence, cockatiels are smart enough to get bored, like teenagers. And what teenager wouldn't be enchanted by a ropy, woody, fuzzy toy? When I showed it to Cheeks, he recoiled in horror, hissing at it like it was a ferret dipped in poison. Giggles flew up onto his perch in the window and threatened to bite if I came near him with it (I did not name these birds). I guess they weren't bored, for those moments. But my dream of getting them to ride a tiny tricycle is probably over.
Not that anybody cares, but here's a list of how long some animals are supposed to live. One thinks of such things from time to time, thoughts like "If this cat dies, maybe then I can get another, better one." Now that I see the average life span for a cat is 25 years, I guess I must learn to table these thoughts for a while. Also, since this is my first time living with exotic birds, I am fascinated by the fact that they can live for much longer than seem necessary. In cockatiel years, I should already be dead, but if I was a bird I bet I would have packed a lotta living into those years. But since I have another 30-40 years to fool around with, I feel no need to rush.
I excerpted the full list to just some animals that caught my eye. I think it's amazing that a Great Horned Owl can live to be 68. Of course, hamsters and gerbils again prove their merit as children's pets since they only live 4 or 5 years. But any of the larger birds seem to live forever. Even the lobster rates pretty high on the list. Poor little fella, I can picture it living 48 years only to have its last two years snuffed out when it gets thrown in a pot of boiling water.
African Grey Parrot 50 Cat 25 Chinchilla 20 Cockatiel 32 Conure 25 Dog 22 Domestic Pigeon 26 Gerbil 5 Golden Hamster 4 Great Horned Owl 68 Guinea Pig 8 House Mouse 4 Human 70-80 Lobster 15 (they can live into their 50's!) Macaw 50 Parrot 80 Pigeon 11 Pionus Parrot 15 Rabbit 9 Sulphur Crested Cockatoo 40 Superb Parrot 36
For a brief time I wrote band previews for the NY Press. Some of the articles appeared largely unretouched, but as time went on, I noticed they were really going through the wringer. Somebody was hacking my tiny blurbs, not to shorten so much as add nonsensical stuff to somehow jazz up my writing. I talked to the shmoe who was doing this and he blamed me for not writing "tight enough." Somehow, adding "Spraying the audience with vomit and cheese" to my write-up of the Ex-Models didn't seem to be tightening anything up, yet he had the final cut. Anyway we were both unceremoniously let go a couple months later.
I was reminded of this heady time in my life today as I read JoshB's latest article in the Press, concerning the reticence of his livery cab driver to take him to my adopted neighborhood of Bushwick Brooklyn. It's a pretty funny read, which I read previously on his own blog. Now, I don't know if his writing is subject to the same dubious knife of editorial re-education, but there are some amusing discrepancies. In describing our house and its occupants' desires, the Press article states
My friends wanted to buy an apartment in Park Slope, sure. Who wouldn’t? Historic brownstones, lush trees, schools without metal detectors. Yet their bank accounts would only let them buy in Bushwick, two minutes from the jackhammer-loud overhead train.
Oh, the indignity of it all! Like I would ever want, of all things, an apartment in Park Slope. I know, none of it matters, it's just filler for the real meat of the story. I just hope it was the work of some anonymous editor and not Mr B Himself. He knows better anyway; we lived for years on the same longitudinal path in Clinton Hill and Crown Heights, respectively (he's still there). Truth be known, I had wanted to buy in Clinton Hill, but even that neighborhood had priced us out long ago, not to mention it is getting progressively full of the kind of reprehensible people I used to think would never cross Flatbush Ave (let alone come into Brooklyn).
But I suppose in terms of dramatic illustration, establishing the dichotomy of The Slope and The 'Shwick makes for a palpably wide spectrum of experience. Still, none of you Slopers better come out here or, you know, we'll beat you with a bat. For an hour!
There's a Pay-O-Matic Check Cashing shop near my house (there's one in every fine neighborhood, don't you know). Is it just me, or does their logo remind anyone else of the old Mr Yuk logos people put on poison containers? When you see it out of the corner of your eye, it looks like this sour frowny face. It makes me feel sorry for the people who patronize the establishment. Then I realize if I had gone to Pay-O-Matic right when I got my deposit check back from my landlady, she wouldn't have been able to stop payment and proceed to take back two-thirds of said deposit for dubious 'repairs' to the apartment. Then I console myself that it was worth it just to never have to deal with her and her flaky behavior again. Then I realize I too am sporting a sour frowny face, just like the Pay-O-Matic logo. Then I play some Sudoku and forget all my problems.
The other day I got to work with a musician whose skill far surpassed my own. He could play piano and guitar (and reportedly many other instruments) with the great ease, and as if that weren't enough, had perfect pitch, listening a couple of times to a song and immediately knowing all the root chords and whatnot. Meanwhile I was struggling along on a bass guitar, trying to figure out the chord progressions, asking him incessantly to remind me of the note order (there were like 4 chords in the whole song). By this time he was improving and soloing over the song, while I continued to trip over my 4 notes.
It always frustrates me that I can't do everything as well as I'd like, but I wonder what it's like to be really good at something like that. I've known lots of people who have these innate talents. Of course, this guy may have been schooled for years at various instruments, and one could argue that's why he's so good now. But then I reflect, I have received lessons on no fewer than 3 musical instruments during my formative years, and now I'm lucky if I can get my pinky finger to go where I tell it. I'd say the ability to actually learn the discipline and stick with it is a talent in its own right, maybe even more impressive than the guy who just naturally has a talent for something. But of course, even that's pretty impressive.
So what does it feel like to be super good at something? Like the kid I met when I was in junior high, he was able to use the rudimentary drawing program on my Apple IIe computer and, using only the chunky mouse available, freehand an elaborate scene of a man on a surfboard (imagine what he could do with an 
