Cat Poems - A Break From Our Usual Programming

Today, I saw a poem getting passed around the internet.  It is heartbreaking... and a total lie.  My dog feels exactly that way, but neither of the cats do.

So, here is what it's actually like.

Bess Wants To Eat Your Face

My cat is angry.

one other cat is in the family

who eats the food and is friendly

she hates that cat.

she wants cuddles

why aren't you cuddling

she hates cuddles

why are you trying to cuddle

she tastes our skin

preparing for our deaths

fuck off she says i am a cat i hate you

what is that / why haven't i destroyed it yet / i will put it on the floor for you your anger makes me catlaugh

i will drink your water and leave fur in it all my water already has fur in it

leave me alone

why are you sleeping? give me pets

oh, you're awake, i was hoping you were dead

I Live Here Monday

My awesome and less profane friend has an awesome and less profane blog, Stowaway.  She has a weekly feature called "My Kind of Town Monday," which made me want to do something similar.  I don't really take nice pictures, though, or really love the city I'm living in.¹

Also, I don't think I can commit to another weekly update, with the other two crappy weekly features I have and the wine club wines that I have to drink every month and waking up every day...  I'm a busy person, basically.

On the other hand, sometimes shit gets hilarious here in Eugene.  So, I will have a whenever-I-feel-like-it Monday feature called "I live here" Monday, and I'll talk about a funny sight that I saw or how a crazy transient² greeted me or how I bought a snobby Eugene ten dollar beer and then spilled half of it down my shirt, making my shirt worth twice its former value.

Here's the first thing you need to know about Eugene:

People here love college football.  Really, really love it.  In a survey that I just conducted³, 72% of respondents said they loved Ducks Football more than their first born children, 14% didn't have any children because they had traded them for season tickets, 11% just screamed "GO DUCKS," and 3% were total NPR-listening nerds who are about to get beat up and have their gluten-free tempeh sandwiches stolen.

So, if you visit the place I live, I suggest you learn how to do the Oregon "O," which is a totally innocent suggestion and absolutely does not mean vagina in sign language.

¹How many Eugenians did I just offend?  It's not terrible, it's just... uh, not my kind of town.

²We don't call them homeless or hobos or bums here... we call them transients.  This is because we assume they are transitioning between homes or maybe between cities.  This is wishful thinking.  At best, they are transitioning between hits of meth.

³I did not conduct a survey.

Vennsday is the new Thursday

Last week, much time with my family was spent discussing how we would all be classified.  Can nerds be cool?  What separates a "cool" nerd from Sheldon on "Big Bang Theory"?  What do bros and nerds have in common?

These questions are all answered.  This time in ovals!

Bros and nerds don't agree on much... but they can both get behind a good pair of khakis and a polo shirt.  My coworker calls it the "engineer's uniform."  I call it "dress code at the prep school I attended."  We are finding common ground here, people.

Similarly, if you're a hipster, it's not cool to act like you like knowledge.  That's not ironic at all, dude.  Not like that mullet and molester 'stache.  An exception can be made if you're a student... then rock the nerdiness!  Just don't act like you care.

Engineers?  Not very cool.  They don't make eye contact and constantly correct you.  Accuracy, not human connections, is what's important.  They will talk at you and wonder why you look lost after thirty minutes on the molecular details of stormwater treatment.  Smart people, though?  Super cool.  Especially when they are self-proclaimed nerds who can still hold a conversation.  Those people are the best.  Once I finish this exercise in visual representations of elementary set theory, maybe I'll go be cool.

Wondering why you don't have any friends, my engineering peers?  It's because you're awkward.  That would be fine, except that you don't realize you're awkward.  You have conquered handshakes and taught your mouth to smile, but you're standing too close with your horrible coffee breath, and I'm pretty sure you just called that girl fat and stupid.  It is horribly uncomfortable to be around you.  Learn to recognize the signs of other people's discomfort and make a joke about yourself, and then you can join the ranks of stand-up comedians.  Once you do that, it will be your job to call that girl fat and stupid.  Uh, you still might have no friends, though.  Just fans.

It looks as though I am going for the world record in longest caption.  Wish me luck with that!  Also, where do YOU fit on the circles?  If you don't know, the answer is awkward and not self aware.  Just FYI.

Pipe dreams... coming true?

I.  Love.  Books.  Can't get enough of 'em (e-reader, you say?  No way, I keep it real, mothafucka).  I like to read while I walk, while I cook, while I listen to radio, while I watch TV, while I read other things, while I attempt to converse, while I'm falling asleep, while I play with my dog, while I write blog posts, pretty much while I do everything except drive.  Turns out reading while driving is a terrible idea, even if the book is Operating Motor Vehicles for Dummies.

Since I moved, my books have been in two four-foot high stacks of boxes.  In retrospect, it's an old house and maybe leaving several hundred pounds of books in a small area was a bad plan, but the floor still appears to be unbowed and solid.

Last Sunday, I decided I wanted to be able to look at all my books, which meant taking them out of boxes.  Some time ago, I had made the totally ridiculous statement "When I unpack all my books, I should organize them, too!"  Stupid.  When I packed my books up, I was like a headless chicken on speed, so they were not put in boxes with rhyme or reason or neatness.

But, there I was, just having watched a season of Breaking Bad, hanging out in my underwear, and staring at a pile of books on my floor.  I mean, at the very least, I wanted all the books by one author to be grouped together, right?  And maybe all my books on the rise and fall of colonialism in Africa should be grouped together, so that they don't start all kinds of pretentious conversations around my young adult sci-fi books and make them feel inferior?

Next thing I knew, I had stacks of books, by the first letter of the author's last name (fiction only), YA books, then non-fiction and graphic novels.  Halfway through, it looked like this:

Ryder: These stacks of books look unstable.  Wait, oh god, am I my own genre?  Will have I have to sleep  on the book shelf?  Am I just here so there can be some kind of black and white and read all over joke?