Wave-particle Duality

The landlord painted the backyard sewer cap and all of the stray cats are rolling on the fresh white coat and getting high. I'm trying to get the drunky ladies out for end-of-the-work-week Friday cocktails and they sound like the temperance league. My nephew is fevered, my dad is tubed and my son is steadfastly working his way into the 1%. I'm getting unspecific orders via text, PJ Harvey is coming through me and I'm skimming the quantum theory of mechanics on the internet for shiggles.

Seasonal shifts bring out the strange.

Photo by Ted Nelson

Life Imitates Art

Once upon a time, I met a man at Scenes. Scenes was a coffee house/ dramatist bookshop/ zine headquarters on Clark Street where you could smoke, drink a bottomless cup of strong brew all day for about $1.35 and tip and talk to strangers about interesting things. Their zine was called Strong Coffee. My friend Sergio had a regular editorial which seemed to focus on wandering around the city in altered states of mind. There was a naughty horoscope column called Madame Zosostris' Wicked Pack of Cards. Once, they were slapped with a cease-and-desist order for their parody of the glurgey comic Love Is... Once I met a guy who had spent a year in Germany and helped tear the Berlin Wall down. He coached me on Bertoldt Brecht which I believe led to me getting cast in Three Penny Opera. He was also a good kisser. But he isn't the man from the first part of this paragraph.

Once I met a man at Scenes. He and I were both in the midst of bad break-ups, as well as aspiring playwrites. We decided to co-author a piece illustrating the arc of the relationship. (This idea was every bit as bad as it sounds.) So when we wrote the meet & courtship scenes he invited me over for dinner. We had a lovely fortnight stand while we tried to outline the plot and when it came time to write the scenes for the break up we had a giant, public fight and didn't talk for a year and so we never finished the play.

I re-read it several months later. It really, really sucked so I tossed it in the recycling bin.

Circular Thinking

It is estimated that the occupation of Iraq has cost US taxpayers about $536 billion by the end of today, Wednesday, May 21st.

But today the Executive Idiot vetoed a farm bill because farmers "are making too much money" because the cost of food has gone up so much.

Of course, the cost of food has gone up because the cost of oil has gone up -- and the only people making money off that are Bush's friends, like the bigwigs at Halliburton and the Al Saud family.

I'm not friends with the Halliburton board of directors, or the Al Saud family (rumored to be supporting the insurgency in Iraq). I do have friends who are farmers and they are having a tough year because the price of oil is so high and frankly a disproportionate amount of people from rural areas are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan -- their kids are fighting the insurgents who are subject to and financially supported by the Al Saud family.

And meanwhile, our surplus food reserves are drying up. The food pantries and soup kitchens are receiving less food, just as more people are forced by the economy to use them.

So the Executive Idiot thinks the answer is to deny funding to farmers -- most of whom work another full time job to "support their farming habit" as my friend Jaybird says.

So more family farmers are forced out of business trying to pay for diesel fuel...

further depleting food reserves...

which more Americans need because everything is so expensive because of the high cost of oil and the weak dollar....

which was weakened by Bush's policies favoring his big business alliances...

which is why we are spending $750 million dollars a day to occupy Iraq...

which is why the Al Saud family sends so-called insurgents into Iraq to fight US military...

which is why Cheney and Bush threaten to attack Iran...

which is why hundreds of thousands of human beings die for oil...

which is reaping record profits for big business, Bush and his cronies...

....which worried the cat that chased the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Bush built.

Watch your back, Crazy Cat Lady...

I had to get Mama Kitty spayed today -- 2 litters in one year is unsane and she and I are both getting nutty from the fruit of her fecund womb.

I'd better sleep with one eye open, though. I'd probably claw someone's eyes out if they removed all of my feminine plumbing for mere convenience.

I'm way too drained from the business of living my life right now to drum up anything creative. Deal with it, pussywillows.



Love, Lalalalalalalalalalalala

Smelly Cat

I'm sorry to cat blog all over you, but I am slowly turning into a crazy cat lady.

Nearly 2 months ago, I told you that Lena the cat had 4 kittens. What I didn't tell you occured one very warm Thursday a week later. I had a headache, I was pm-essy, and another kitten never-before-seen by this writer was laid out stiff on my kitchen floor next to the trash. So I said a prayer to Bast, scooped it up in a plastic grocery bag and tossed it in one of the cans in the alley.

Then, I went to my bedroom, where Lena had the rest stashed way back in the furthest corner under the bed where I couldn't reach. I listened very closely. I heard my headache and the upstairs neighbor clumping around and the vatos in the street outside flirting with some passing girls. I did not, however, hear the teeny mewling that had been emanating from that scary underbelly of my bedroom. So in a very distressed tone I asked Lena, "Where are your kittens???!!!??"

She dragged out the tuxedo kitten that looks just like my boy cat and made a big show of nursing it in the middle of the floor and I was getting a bit freaked out -- "Lena, where are THE REST of your kittens???!!!???" So she carried the tuxedo kitten back under the bed and popped back out with a disturbingly limp kitten in her jaws and then brought that one back under the bed.

So now had a pretty good idea. Did I mention I had a headache and was pm-essy? I commenced freaking out. I called my mother and my girlfriend Christine about 3 times each and finally the kid took mercy on my soul and held up the bed so I could get under there and see.

Yep.

It was kitten carnage. There were 3 more kitten corpses strewn about Lena and the tuxedo kitty, snuggled up and nursing. So I said a few more prayers to Bast, scooped them all up in plastic grocery bags and made Donovan carry them down to the alley. Then I washed my hands, got weepy watching the season finale of "The Office", ate popcorn and cursed myself for being such a wuss.

BUT -- today Lena decided it was a grand time to wean the surviving kitten and start getting busy while I was helping the new roomie move his stuff in -- Lena has a tremendous sense of timing. So I just spent the last hour trying to keep her and Kiddo the tom cat seperated with a spray bottle until the kid was able to snatch him up and maneuver him out the door with only one minor scratch.

Now they are both howling at each other through the door. He is SO getting his nuts cut off -- even if I do find the whole gelding thing to be cruel and unusual. I can not go through the whole kitten drama again.

Kittens!

Friday night, Lena the cat had 4 kittens -- 2 on my feet. The kitties are healthy and living under the bed and generally mewling loudly except when they have a nipple in their mouth. The morning after they were born Lena brought them out one-by-one in a sort of show off the kittens parade. They are: a tuxedo who looks just like Kiddo, a grey/black tabby, an offbeat calico like her, and the runt is white with a copper tail.

I'll post pictures when their eyes open. Back to your regulary scheduled Sirena tomorrow.

Here kitty, kitty, kitty...

I've spent the last 2 hours in my spaceship/lazyboy in a very sexy ensemble consisting of a sweatshirt and mismatched athletic socks, reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time ever and eating lunchmeat and a popsicle for dinner.

A couple of weeks ago, my cat brought home his pregnant girlfriend. She was hungry and cold and moved right in without so much as a meow. This means I should have at least 5 felines in residence by Valentine's Day.

Soon my conversion to Crazy Cat Lady will be complete!!!

(...excellent....)