Into the Wild, Kitty Style
Current mood: triumphant
Category: Pets and Animals
Well, it's taken me a while to write this blog. Last week was a whirlwind of craziness---I got off a near month long stretch of working 7 days a week, I recorded part of my new album, and...
Sweet 200 proof liquid Jesus my wife found our cat Gypsy.
No Joke. That cat ran away and was gone for 3 1/2 weeks. Almost a full month.
I was visiting my Mom last Sunday for a belated Mother's Day (my brother was in San Francisco on business for Mother's Day so we rescheduled our usual family get together). On my way home I called my wife and, during our conversation, I heard her talking to someone in the background. She was using her cutesy-woosty voice that she only uses with children, pets, and her retarded husband we he wants an ice cream, so it caught my interest. Rebekah had been charged that weekend with the duty of taking care of our downstairs neighbor's cats (she was away for the weekend and we both agreed to the job despite my recent track record of losing pets), so I assumed Rebekah was talking to them.
But no, she was talking to Gypsy. Rebekah relayed the story to me---she had gone out to one of the local Chinese food restaurants to go grab herself some dinner when all of a sudden she spotted a black cat. The cat took off into the woods, to which Rebekah pursued, but to no avail. When Rebekah came back after picking up her dinner she called out again into the same spot of woods where the black cat ran off to. This time there was a response.
Gypsy stepped out from the woods and appeared to my wife as a ghost. Rebekah couldn't even tell if the cat was real or not---and then it clicked. This cat was Gypsy, and she was alive and well, nearly a month after she ran away. Our cat had finally come home. Rebekah scooped Gypsy up and ran back to the apartment.
My good neighbor and friend Jim Finitsis received a hysterical call from my wife that night---Jim later described it as a mixture of the phrase "OH MY GOD GYSPSY" and high pitched squeals of delight.
Jim and his wife Nicole came over to assist my wife in removing the myriad of ticks that Gypsy had accrued during her near month long stay in the woods. Our cat was skinny---Jim and Rebekah could feel every bone in her body as they searched for large, blood-engorged ticks to remove from her emaciated frame. Gypsy was so weak she could not fight the flee bath my wife gave her. Gypsy's exhaustion was so great that something which would have normally been an epic struggle merely ended up as a discontented look on Gypsy's face.
I came home from my parents and wept like a little girl/emo fan when I saw Gypsy---I felt like the careless act of leaving the balcony door open had somehow condemned her to some sort of horrible Kitty-Auschwitz. Gypsy, however, was immune to my feelings of guilt. Her love, being unconditional, was merely the contented sound of purring and the rubbing of her face against my hand as I petted her. I cried like Richard Simmons on a daytime talk show confession bender.
My wife and I took Gypsy to the vet shortly thereafter. Gypsy got a nearly clean bill of health---she's seriously underweight, but other than that she's fine. We got her a rabies shot on top of it all just to be safe. She not used to eating normal food, however, since she spent nearly a month eating whatever wildlife lives on Garrison Hill/shit out of the dumpster (during the last 3 1/2 weeks my wife and I received two calls from our neighbors regarding our missing cat poster---both calls place Gypsy next to the dumpster just 50 feet from our apartment, so that's where she must have gotten most of her food. She was so close to our apartment---why didn't she just come back?). Gypsy's digestive system has responded rather poorly to the lavish Canned Cat Food/Cat Treats/Dry Cat Food we give her now---she has had some rather explosive diarrhea/farts that can clear a packed dance hall over the past few days but my wife and I are not upset at all. We're happy to have Gypsy back.
So Gypsy's back and it's almost like she was never gone. It took a few days for her to get back her meow since it was very hoarse when we first picked her up. She's slowly regaining some weight---I am of the firm opinion that she would not have lasted much longer given how starved she looked when we took her back in. Gypsdy stills cuddles up to me and Rebekah, and she still loves curling up in her favorite spots. To her this whole mess was just some tiny kitty-cat adventure, but to my wife and I it was a depressing, 3 1/2 week ordeal that eventually had a happy ending.
This Summer has been quite eventful and it hasn't even started.
Currently
watching
:
Into the Wild Release date: 2008-03-04
I Feel So Low I Could Die
Current mood: sad
Category: Pets and Animals
Last night I accidentally left the door open to the balcony and the cat snuck out. She hasn't come back. She's an indoor cat and has never really known the outside. She's 14 years old, has lived a long happy life, and I'm responsible. My wife never had a problem. Not one. Always kept her indoors. Always kept her safe. Last night, for the first time in a long time, Rebekah and I didn't have her curled up at our feet. I couldn't sleep. I am so tired I could die.
I walked everywhere. I put flyers everywhere. I called her name, Gypsy, a million times. I feel sick. I went out at 2 AM, 4 AM, 6 AM, 8 AM, 10 AM, 12 PM, searching and calling, calling, calling. I called the local shelter. I called animal control. I have to work soon and I don't know how I can do it. That cat needs food and water. She can't go it alone here, it's too dangerous. Time is running out.
I need to come to terms with the fact that I am almost 30 and I have never been given a task that I haven't completely fucked up. I'm a failure and I need to admit it.
Oh sweet mother of mercy... I recently found the following clip on Youtube:
Can someone please tell me what movie this is from? It has to be something horrid like "American Ninja III" or "Hobgoblins: The Musical". Jesus--the mullet, the overacting, the oiled and waxed chests, the over-the-top dialogue... It all adds up to the most amazing thing I've seen on Youtube in quite a while.
Orson Welles's Later Career in Advertising
Current mood: dorky
Sure, we'll always remember Orson Welles in the prime of his career. Sure, he made Citizen Kane, which the American Film Institute named the greatest film of all time
Proving to be groundbreaking in two mediums, Welles was also a pioneer in radio as well. Long before color coded terror alerts frightened the living shit out of an the entire nation for no fucking apparent reason Welles's War of The Worlds broadcast terrified a nation into thinking it was under attack from little green men.
But so little is ever said of Orson Welles's later career towards the end of his life. Take this fantastic performance of Orson Welles in a wine ad:
Have you ever even tried Paul Masson wines? That brand competes on the same shelf with Riunite as "Best cheap wine to get hammered on if you're not homeless." My favorite feature of the wine is the ease by which you can chug that shit hard right out of the bottle. It comes with an extra wide mouth and a jelly jar-like twist off lid!
Perfect for the wino on the go. Evidently Orson himself discovered this unique feature to Paul Masson wines as well, as we can all see by the drunken outtakes he did for the aforementioned series of comercials:
Kind of reminds me of the fact that the famed Shakespearean actor, Raul Julia, died shortly after making the movie "Street Fighter" (which was based on the nintendo game of the same name). Maybe people shouldn't be so fascinated by our "last words"---it's the stuff we say in the middle that seems to count a whole lot more.
In case you missed it, here's a hilarious parody of those wine ads that appeared on the short lived but brilliant TV show "The Critic":
The Critic also spoofed Welles's spat over an ad he did for peas. Here's the original followed by the Critic spoof:
Need a Shortcut to Thinking? Get this Bumper Sticker!
Current mood: contemplative
I saw the greatest bumper sticker on a truck parked next to the Asia Fantasia in Dover today. Lucky for me I found an image of it online so all of you could behold its thoroughly researched and well reasoned point:
Yes, it says, "If Mary Was Pro-Choice, There Would Be No Christmas!"
I knew it! LIBERALS WANT TO KILL SANTA CLAUS!
I could identify at least three reasons why the person who put this on his vehicle lacks critical reasoning skills:
1.) Christmas is a pagan holiday, or at least it started out as such. Ever wonder why Jesus's birthday just happens to land on the Pagan Holiday for Winter Solstice? Or the fact that Easter, the day Jesus rose from the dead, just happens to coincide with the Pagan celebration of Spring Equinox?
2.) I don't think that the owner of this truck has ever actually read the bible. At no point does Jesus mention in the Gospels something to the effect of "After I die I still want you to celebrate my birthday, which just happens to be on Winter Solstice. This day will now be known as 'Christmas.' It will involve mall santas, egg nog, and rampant consumerism. Praise the Lord!" Jesus was also super keen on kissing strangers under a mistletoe. Yep, no pagan connections there---Jesus was behind it all.
3.) Just because you are pro-choice doesn't mean you HAVE to have an abortion. Mary could indeed have been pro-choice and decided to keep Jesus regardless. Sometimes I wonder if kooky Christian Conservatives think that being Pro-Choice means you can NEVER HAVE CHILDREN. That, by supporting a women's right to terminate a pregnancy, that means you believe in MANDATORY ABORTIONS FOR ALL. GATHER ALL THE FOETUSES AND FEED THEM TO SATAN!
Conversely, what about all the bad people throughout history? Would someone mind if they had been aborted? Would anyone have a bumper sticker that read: "If Hitler Had Been Aborted There Would Have Been No Holocaust!" Wow, the possibilities are endless with this one. "If Osama bin Laden Had Been Aborted..." "If Pol Pot Were Aborted..." "If Idi Amin Was Aborted..." "If Saddamn Hussein had been aborted..."
Wait, now I want to get a bumper sticker that says: "If the Wright Brothers Were Aborted They Would Have Never Made Snakes on a Plane!" That settles it, I'm Pro-Life now, because I like proving my point with meaningless hypotheticals that sidestep the issue. It's a shortcut to thinking!
Sweet hermaphroditic Christ, advertisers have it all wrong these days. Back when no one gave two shits about public safety or actually displaying the features of a particular product you had advertisers who really knew how to appeal to the base instincts of human nature.
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer 06/23/06
The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew Friday after insurgents set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.
U.S. and Iraqi forces also clashed with insurgents in southern Baghdad.
The prime minister ordered everyone off the streets of the capital from 2 p.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Saturday. The order came at around noon, when many residents were in prayer, and sent many rushing home to beat the curfew.
In other violence, a bomb struck a Sunni mosque in a town northeast of Baghdad, killing 10 worshippers and wounding 15 in the same town where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was slain earlier this month, police said.
The explosion occurred in front of the Grand Hibhib mosque in Diyala province, according to the provincial joint coordination center.
In the southern city of Basra, a car bomb ripped through a market and nearby gas station, killing at least five people and wounding 15, including two policemen police said.
At least 19 other deaths were reported in Baghdad.
Al-Zarqawi, the leader of Iraq's most feared terror group al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed June 7 in an airstrike in Hibhib, which is near Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Throughout the morning Friday, Iraqi and U.S. military forces clashed with attackers who were armed with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and rifles in busy Haifa Street that runs into the Green Zone, site of the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government.
Two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman were wounded in the fighting, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.
The region was sealed and Iraqi and U.S. forces conducted house-to-house searches.
Gunmen also attacked a group of worshippers marching from Sadr City, the Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad, to the Buratha mosque on the other side of the city to protest a suicide attack a week ago on the revered Shiite shrine. At least one marcher was killed and four were wounded, Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.
The U.S. military on Friday said a Marine had died in combat and a soldier was killed in an unspecified non-hostile incident three days earlier. Their deaths raise to at least 2,514 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The new security measures came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought to rein in unrelenting insurgent and sectarian violence. He launched a massive security operation in Baghdad 10 days ago, deploying tens of thousands of troops who flooded the city, snarling traffic with hundreds of checkpoints.
While violence had diminished somewhat, the outbreak of fighting on Haifa Street and in the Dora neighborhood apparently prompted al-Malaki to declare the state of emergency even as Friday prayer services were in progress, sending many residents scrambling homeward to beat the curfew.
Also Friday, police said they found the bodies of five men who apparently were victims of a mass kidnapping from a factory on Wednesday. The bodies, which showed signs of torture and had their hands and legs bound, were floating in a canal in northern Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it killed four foreign insurgents in a raid north of Fallujah. Two of the dead men had 15-pound suicide bombs strapped to their bodies. The military said an insurgent thought to be an Iraqi also was killed in the raid, which was launched on information from a suspected arrested in the region in previous days.
Separately, the military said, it detained a senior leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and three other suspected insurgents Monday during raids northeast of Baghdad, near where al-Qaida chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air raid earlier this month
U.S. forces killed two Iraqi women one of them about to give birth when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials and relatives said Wednesday. Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, was being raced to the maternity hospital in Samarra by her brother when the shooting occurred Tuesday.
Jassim, the mother of two children, and her 57-year-old cousin, Saliha Mohammed Hassan, were killed by the U.S. forces, according to police Capt. Laith Mohammed and witnesses.
The U.S. military said coalition troops fired at a car after it entered a clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post but failed to stop despite repeated visual and auditory warnings.
"Shots were fired to disable the vehicle," the military said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "Coalition forces later received reports from Iraqi police that two women had died from gunshot wounds ... and one of the females may have been pregnant."
Jassim's brother, who was wounded by broken glass, said he did not see any warnings as he sped his sister to the hospital. Her husband was waiting for her there.
"I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning from the Americans. It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin that I stopped," he said. "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives."
He said doctors tried but failed to save the baby after his sister was brought to the hospital.
The shooting deaths occurred in the wake of an investigation into allegations that U.S. Marines killed unarmed civilians in the western city of Haditha.
The U.S. military said the incident in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, was being investigated. The city is in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle and has in the past seen heavy insurgent activity.
"The loss of life is regrettable and coalition forces go to great lengths to prevent them," the military said.
The women's bodies were wrapped in sheets and lying on stretchers outside the Samarra General Hospital before being taken to the morgue, while residents pointed to bullet holes on the windshield of a car and a pool of blood on the seat.
Khalid Nisaif Jassim, the pregnant woman's brother, said American forces had blocked off the side road only two weeks ago and news about the observation post had been slow to filter out to rural areas.
He said the killings, like those in Haditha, were examples of random killings faced by Iraqis every day.
The killings at Haditha, a city that has been plagued by insurgents, came after a bomb rocked a military convoy on Nov. 19, killing a Marine. Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., a decorated war veteran who has been briefed by military officials, has said Marines shot and killed unarmed civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot others.
Military investigators have evidence that points toward unprovoked murders by Marines, a senior defense official said last week.
In his first public comments on the incident, President Bush said he was troubled by the allegations, and that, "If in fact laws were broken, there will be punishment."
Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi told the BBC that the allegations have "created a feeling of great shock and sadness and I believe that if what is alleged is true and I have no reason to believe it's not then I think something very drastic has to be done."
"There must be a level of discipline imposed on the American troops and change of mentality which seems to think that Iraqi lives are expendable," said Pachachi, a member of parliament.
If confirmed as unjustified killings, the episode could be the most serious case of criminal misconduct by U.S. troops during three years of combat in Iraq. Until now the most infamous occurrence was the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse involving Army soldiers, which came to light in April 2004 and which Bush said he considered to be the worst U.S. mistake of the entire war.
Once the military investigation is completed, perhaps in June, it will be up to a senior Marine commander in Iraq to decide whether to press charges of murder or other violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The incident has sparked two investigations one into the deadly encounter itself and another into whether it was the subject of a cover-up. The Marine Corps had initially attributed 15 civilian deaths to the car bombing and a firefight with insurgents, eight of whom the Marines reported had been killed.
"People in Samarra are very angry with the Americans not only because of Haditha case but because the Americans kill people randomly specially recently," Khalid Nisaif Jassim said.
triumphant
exhausted
sad
dorky
contemplative
