By Belynda, October 7th, 2011 in Other | 2 Comments
Tags: cats, disaster, Indiana, Jaws, patience, That used to be my yarn, yarn
We went to a movie tonight. Fortunately, Jaws kept herself entertained during our absence.
I’d like to point out that I had put this yarn away. I mean, I didn’t freeze it in carbonite, but out of sight out of mind, right? Well… see for yourself.
We begin our tour at the coffee table. It’s a storage coffee table. Unfortunately, I thought it was secure. It was not secure. In a former life, this was a skein of really nice Cascade Yarn Co. “Indulge” in a pretty green. It was a lovely mix of 70% alpaca, 30% angora. Now, it’s a mess.
Slightly to the left of the coffee table, we find our first satellite of yarn. Over the carpet and through the wheels. We’re not going to Grandmother’s house though. We’re going to a place where, after four hours of impotent untangling, we’ll use the bezoar of yarn to dry our bitter tears.
After decorating the Casa Cianci headquarters of industry (it’s not all porn. Ed actually does write code at that desk) we move on to the Kitty National Monument. You see a tourist in the background, assessing the success of the mission. That’s Indiana - the one still in the will. She doesn’t do stuff like this. Let’s be realistic, most of the time, you throw her a toy and she drags herself towards it without actually getting up and walking. She doesn’t have the ambition for a caper of this scope.
Next it’s off to restaurant row, a place where all of your champagne dreams and caviar wishes go to die. If you want hot dogs or $50-a-bag veterinary-supplied kibble, we’ve got you covered. Notice that the yarn here is not simply strewn about; the yarn is actually wrapped around the legs of not one but TWO chairs. It’s almost as if the artist were trying to convey something. Perhaps a commentary on the dichotomy between the table that unites us spiritually and condemns us physically to awkward conversation and plate-scratching noises. It could also be she just likes hucking herself over the chair leg supports.
From here we remain in the kitchen, but move on to highlighting the inviting space of the open-concept kitchen. Having done this, we continue on…
We end the tour back at the bound chair rails, evocative of the continual return to the communal table, regardless of the strictures and conventional obstacles this setting engenders. Maybe we were just going for the water dish (slightly out of frame at the top). Both cats enjoy a rousing game of “Put Useless Things in Water.” I made them a knitted catnip ball not too long ago. Five minutes, and into the dunk tank it went. First and last knitted cat toy of their extremely overprivileged lives.
It is of interest that, while typing this, we heard a large clack that turned out to be Jaws once again venturing into the coffee table storage.
It never ends.
By Belynda, May 22nd, 2009 in Other | 2 Comments
Tags: anthropomorphizing, cats, crazy cat lady Tom, jason scott, Jaws, obama, pennycat, reality, sockington, tweeting
I should have known that nothing reasonable ever comes out of lunch at Eddie’s work.
Ed and I have been giddy all week about new kitten Jawsie, who comes home tomorrow at noon after a very long wait (a whole 6 days). We were jawing about the Jawsmeister while in the kitchen at ILink, and Tom (who is very awesome) started joking about how he’s a crazy cat lady at heart, that his three cats are his kids, and he refers to them as such. Ed, who is still making transition from growing up as a “pet owner” to being married to a “pet mommy” gives Tom an emphatic “Nooooope! No! No.” He expects that will end the conversation (as if it ever does.) He despises the idea that people would call themselves “pet parents”. Of course, my take is, if I’m cleaning up your shit, feeding you, loving you, and not being earth-endingly pissed when you destroy my house, all for gratis? There’s little chance I’m anything else BUT a mom. Just sayin’.
So anyway, I got a little silly and said I was going to torture Ed by tweeting and blogging as Jaws, a trend which has become all the rage ever since Jason Scott started tweeting as his two cats Penny and Sockington. Socks has somewhere in the range of 575,000 followers. To give this some perspective, President Obama had about 300,000 devout web-worshippers during his campaign. Of course, President Obama didn’t joke about funny shit like chasing shakymice and fighting with Penny. Maybe if he threw in a dig about Michelle here and there, he would have bridged the gap. He just had to settle for being President of the free world.
So I get back to the office, and decide that yes indeed, Jawsie has to have some time in the tweety spotlight. She is our technorati kitten-kid after all. So I created a tweetstream for her. She immediately followed Ed, annnddd all of his co-workers who had been in on the conversation. She’s a very outgoing girl. Ed was suitably embarrassed. My work was done.
Here’s the thing about tweeting as your cat: It’s funny and all, and it’s cool I guess to jump on the Sockington gravy train, but there are some people who are obviously really into it. Perhaps… a little too into it. This can’t have been what the great democratic medium was meant to produce. Tweeting as your cat/dog/horse in any serious, continuous way, let’s not even mention building a network of OTHER fake pets, is… hmm. Well, I mean, I don’t want to burn any bridges with potential readership.. but I guess the term that springs to mind is “sad”.
Actually… tweeting as your pet - or tweeting as a fictional character from a TV series for instance - it’s a little like larping. What’s larping, you ask? Actually, it will be more effective if I show you.
Now… in the interest of full disclosure. I have larped… but let’s qualify this. I was seventeen years old. Around eighteen, I graduated from high school, stopped working at a video game store, and started fucking someone who eventually went on to move out of his parents house and put a ring on my finger. There. Consider my deep dark past disclosed.
Anyway.. tweeting about your cat licking its own ass and breaking Great Grandma Bessie’s bone china as any sort of actual pass-time, for any sustained length of time sort of leads me to assume that being yourself (or even :::gasp:::: being human!) is just too taxing or conversely too depressing. This generalization of course does not apply to Jason Scott, who is going to make a dirty-fisted fortune selling the book “written” by Pennycat and Sockington to the probably-by-then million fans who light their incense at the altar of Socks and Mrs. P.
I’ll admit, if karma kicks in and my next go around is in a different form, sign me up for being a cat. I’d be a natural. My two favorite activities are A) Sleeping and B) Thinking everyone else in my vicinity is an asshole who lives to serve my whims. The cat’s life would be a perfect fit. I’m just not willing to use my five-pound brain and two opposable thumbs to imitate that life 140 characters at a time.
