Under The Pendulum, Over the Pit

Bloody typical. Just when I sit down to write my first posting in months, my stomach flips out. This year, par for the course.

This summer has been truly strange, a special brand of karmic brutality. Shouting "ew, ecky thump!" the way folks do (in northern England, apparently), and shouting it at the top of one's lungs (as we often with just about everything here in the US) seems like the only sensible response. Or just typing WTF?!?!? a lot... but where's the reading pleasure in that, y'know?

At the rate things have been going this year, I figured I ought to sit down and fill every last one of you out there on the innur-nets. Before something else happened.

Shortly after my last posting here, my wife and I had a sudden medical crisis. It had been building for a while. We'd been trying to have a baby. No success. That in itself hurts to admit, but only because I have the time to consider it. (Sometimes I wonder whether regret is a luxury, like pet peeves and celebrities.)

July didn't give us that option, not when it dropped Jamie on the floor of a restroom, knocked down by mortal pain. Sounds urgent, don't it? Hence her trip to Urgent Care. So you can probably appreciate the sheer incongruency of waiting for two weeks for a diagnosis, a clue, a recommended course of action, little things like that. The most we'd gotten was an effective 'scrip of pain-killers for Jamie. A way to dull the pain, not to end it.

We had to take the initiative ourselves, demanding to see someone about her condition, and managed to shake a referral for a specialist out of our HMO. Even seeing him involved some hurry up 'n' wait. And once we see him, it was instantaneous crisis (just add speech). Jamie's ovaries had to come out.

Four days later (I think), we were in the hospital with friends and fears in tow. I sat with Jamie during her prep in a tiny, tiny room. After hours of waiting, she was drugged up and rolled out. I was sent into a swanky waiting room.

I called friends and family, telling everyone surgery had finally begun. Flip the cellphone open. Dial. Talk. Focus on the words, not how to say them. Hide the crack in your voice. Close the line. Do all it again. And again. And again.

Sit down. Wait. Pretend you know how to get up again.

Two and a half hours later, I get the good news from the surgeon himself. The procedure went well and not a moment too soon. Jamie was doing fine. A half hour after that, the staff let me sneak upstairs to her room, so I could wait for her there. An odd sense of relief came over me. It simmered while I waited a bit longer for her to arrive. And it grew when the nurses rolled her into the room.

I didn't expect her to be awake. Then she looked over the railing of her bed, tape and tubes trailing over her face and arm, and croaked out a surprisingly energetic, "Hey."

I tried to conceal my stark horror when I saw the blood on her gown. On her thighs.

My God, what have we done.... No, think. She's alive. Responding well, blah blah, endo-mee-tree-something gone.

My brain was almost useless that week. I was in a state of near-panic the whole time, terrified and exhausted, fully expecting more grief from somewhere. I went on like that for days. I didn't think of calling a cab, only the cost and how the in-laws would love to pounce on me for it. Instead I took public transit -- stuffing coins into ticket machines, shambling, staring through the road ahead. I got more numb every day. A woman pulled me off a train track before a light rail train could flatten me. Didn't see it. Didn't care. Scattered on the inside, dead on the outside.

Fortunately friends and family stepped in, helped us get home and well situated with a BBQ party that weekend. They kept us going, no matter how much or how little we asked of them. When they heard I hadn't seen it yet, they even offered to take me to see "The Dark Knight." I said thanks, but no. My mind was on Jamie, not Gotham City.

And cats. I still had the radioactive cat to take care of. Kyouju was still locked up in a cage, not exactly glowing like Dr. Manhattan, but about as hard to avoid with his wailing for release. Curiously enough, his last day in the cage was also Jamie's last day in the hospital.

All that was months ago. Jamie is better. Jamie is home. Jamie is busy taking over the world again. I try not to give her a hard time, much more aware of what that time is worth.

So yeah. Weird-ass summer.

Why didn't I just say that in the first place? Beats the hell outta me.

No Enemies In Science

Snarky remarks have been made about my recent cat-related blog postings. Awfully sorry to whine about friends dying around me. And on my own personal blog. How selfish of me.

Here's a little change of pace. Let's talk about global warming.

A few months ago, I worked on a radio adaptation of John Campbell's classic short story "Who Goes There?" Most people remember it as The Thing From Another World and The Thing. I set the script in the modern day, which referred to a frozen island that was now a mile further away from the coast of Antarctica than it had been a year before the story began.

I was never sure how controversial that little snippet of backstory was -- within the cast or the audience. There were questions about some other science bits, but not that.

This afternoon I stumbled on a news item. Here are three articles:

Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread': European scientists

Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf eroding at an unforeseen pace

Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World

Here in the fact-based world, the Wilkins Ice Shelf didn't lose one or two measly square miles. It lost 160 square miles.

And the audience at the live show thought we were scary. Sleep tight, kiddies.

I Can Haz Raydioakitv Kat?

We interrupt the unexpected project that has become Lilith's biography to bring you this news bulletin.

There is a radioactive cat in my apartment.

No, really.

(I feel like the opening credits of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." A møøs once bit my sistur... no, realli!)

Anyway, so soon after losing Lilith, we have another feline with health problems, a precociously ingratiating Japanese Bobtail named Kyouju. He's the Welcome Wagon of our humble abode, worshipped by gorgeous females everywhere. Some of them are even cats.

Kyouju's problem these days has a hyperactive thyroid. It sent his metabolism into high gear, burning through calories faster than normal. He's been wasting away. And he's a little guy to begin with.

Our best option, whenever mentioned, makes most people nervous. A vet specialist injects radioactive iodine into the cat. The thyroid absorbs the iodine and the radiation right away. The iodine gets absorbed and processed by the thyroid. Meanwhile the radiation does the real work, killing the abnormal thyroid cells.

Hence the radioactive cat. We left him with the vet specialist for a few days, so the worst elements of the treatment are long gone, literally flushed away.

We have to take precautions. Kyouju isn't glowing, but we still have to keep a discreet distance. One foot away, slightly less than a meter. He stays in a cage at the far end of the living room. We have to flush his waste everyday, so he has to use his own litter box. We can touch him, but we must wash our hands before we touch anything else. And for the next two weeks, we must restrict our close contact with Kyouju for one hour a day.

Now Kyouju is a major love bug, demanding that he petted and hugged and snuggled. So imagine his enthusiasm. He can't bump our hands, slobber on us, sit on us, sleep on us, roll all over us, pounce on us, or hide in our bed.

Yesterday, he spent the afternoon wailing like a mourner. This morning I found him with his head propped up on a little pillow toy we gave him, silent and glum. Gloomy cat is gloomy.

The good news is that he's already better. The beauty of this radioactive iodine treatment is its effectiveness. Ninety percent effective. Feline bodies handle radiation much better than humans do, so we don't have to worry about his fur falling out or anything like that.

The vet said Kyouju was responding to the treatment beautifully. And we can already see an improvement. Kyouju is still skinny, but his fur is in better shape.

With luck, we will never have to do this again.

This will be a long four weeks, though.

Sympathy for the Chirping Hellbeast, Part 2

Continuing the tale of Lilith, in which a little black kitten rocked harder than any boy band.

May 1998. We adopted and took her home early on a Saturday. Lilith was tough, but in bad shape when we got her.

Her black fur was dry and brittle. Strands fell and broke like twigs. She had parasites, a wide array of them, so many that the thought makes me itch to this day.

The animal shelter folks suggested that we limit our exposure to her until she got a check-up. We had to keep Lilith isolated from the other cats in residence (more on them in a second), so we kept her in the bedroom with the door shut.

Limit our exposure? Were they talking about the same supposedly feral kitten who had just glommed onto me? Tiny Lilith pounced on me, purring and kneading her paws into my torso, at every opportunity without failure or mercy. I washed up a lot and brushed her fragile splinters of hair off me every chance I got, all the while thanking God for not making me a hemophiliac.

Our regular vet wasn't available till Monday. But she did do house calls. A little more pricey, but really convenient when you have temperamental kittens. Or just one with a hell of a right hook.

The vet ran a full battery of tests. Lilith was fairly cooperative until the very end. When the vet drew some blood, Lilith threw the hypodermic out of her leg, clear across the room, bounced it off a wall. Thump. The vet and her assistant scrambled for it. The vet found the hypo... with a 90-degree bend in the needle.

"Did we get enough?" the vet assistant asked.

The vet stared at the bent needle, either horrified or impressed. "I think we have enough."

Ph33r the kitteh.

Now if that wasn't funny enough, let's cut to the cats already in residence, Mina and Nita. Their first encounter with Lilith was priceless.

Mina was the blue-eyed mom cat, a stern and downright aloof Birman and self-appointed queen of the household.

Nita was her retiring daughter, a flashy-looking dilute tortie with a long, long tail and a shy personality which was in total contrast to her eye-catching paint job.

At first Jamie was looking forward to introducing them to one another. The more we talked about it, all the science and behavioral stuff, the more nervous we got. Cats that don't get along can respond two possible ways. They establish a pecking order and enforce it brutally, with one terrified weakling become the pariah of the litter. Or they could simply tear each other apart. Or both.

All through the weekend, little Nita kept howling and hissing at the bedroom door.

On the following Monday, the vet gave us the all-clear to introduce Lilith to the others. We shoved squirming Lilith in the pet carrier and let the other cats enter the bedroom, holding our collective breath.

The resident felines approached the strange new cat in the pet carrier. Nita came in slow and close to the box, chancing a sniff. A warning hiss. Then she walked out.

Don't mess with me. A typical cat greeting. Sort of Klingon, in a way. Nuqneh.

Mina sauntered to the carrier. She took a dainty sniff. Then shrugged. Her fluffy grey shoulders went up a fraction and went right back down, lacking any tension whatsoever. An actual shrug. Not impressed, still in charge. Mina usually didn't care about intruders anyway. I've seen cats full of confidence, but never like this. Regardless of the threat, she could take 'em. She was the queen and she knew it. So for Mina, after motherhood and her own adventures out in the mean streets, a new kitten was strictly small fry. Completing her aloof tour of the outer marches, Mina went on with her royal day.

Wow. Lilith was officially in.

And yes, they all got along very well. They were the Three Who Ruled. Mina, She Who Must Be Obeyed, had executive power. Nita was the heir apparent. And Lilith was in charge of security.

No, really. Lilith did regular patrols of the perimeter, namely the edges of our apartment. She took positions at every other window in the place, watching for intruders. Once in a while, she would make a quizzical squeak (presumable catspeak for "How long have you had these 'droids.") A rare facedown with an outdoor intruder (usually some other curious feline) ended in Lilith baring teeth and emitting an ominous hiss. Kids were welcome... though watching them play got Lilith riled up.

And she was tough. Can't be stressed enough. The strength of her "rejection" of the vet's hypo wasn't a fluke. Lilith was built like a tank, bearing a musculature that often made even professional cat show judges wonder about her gender. And she had grace as well as power.

She just didn't use it climbing on our shelves and counters, that's all. It became a running gag. She traveled through our place just like Godzilla stomping through Tokyo.... only not as many fires.

That was how she earned one of her many names. (Being a cat, obviously she had several.) I'm a little embarrassed by this one. But it's my fault. I started calling her "Godzilla-head." I'd pet her and talk to her, calling her names. And in my head, I heard the goofy baby-talk of Elmyra from "Tiny Toon Adventures." It sounded like the sort of thing Elmyra would've said.

But that wasn't the only reason. Through all her patrols and furniture stompings, she still liked to pounce into my lap and knead her front paws on me. Lilith and I often found ourselves face to face, especially when I was in bed. Hell of a wake-up, let me tell ya -- staring up at her dark feline countenance which was wrought with concentration, loudly purring, head low. Lying down and looking up at her like that -- often -- I noticed a resemblance to the 1970's Godzilla.

She had the tail too. I can feel her whacking me in the face with it, whenever she insisted on quality time with me, kneading her paws, turning around (whack) three (whack) or four (whack) times. Then she'd sit down in my lap, piling herself up my front until we were face to face again. Maybe she'd sit there and purr for a while. Sometimes she'd nap.

So yeah. Godzilla-head.

The other names? More on that later.

Sympathy for the Chirping Hellbeast, Part 1

I've been putting this posting off for a while, waiting for a better time that'll never come... for bite-sized memories that deserve more scope.

Thus begins the story of Lilith. Not the mythological figure, any of them. Or the uptight, but strangely cuddly psychiatrist from Cheers. Those things figure into the story, but the dark, warm enigmatic presence at the heart of it eclipses them all.

Lilith was a cat.

Let's set the Tardis flight computer for May 1998. My wife Jamie had been haunting a local animal shelter, pining away at the various cats in lock-up.

"Haunting?" Does that sounds bad? To be fair, we were both coping with a slight case of empty nest syndrome. We'd just given away a litter of kittens which we'd had for months. But we'd just moved into some new digs. A whole litter of bouncy, wacky kittens was more than we could manage, even in a two-bedroom apartment. So we found homes for them. But going from five kittens to one with one mom cat, sometimes the place felt empty. Most of the time, it felt like peace and quiet, but I understood the other feeling too.

Like I said, Jamie had taken to visiting the neighborhood animal shelter. One day, she came home with great things to say about a particular cat she found there. I tried talking her out of it. And if I had succeeded, we'd have never met Lilith.

We went down to the pet shelter to check out the other cat, but he'd already been adopted. Amused at the irony, we figured we might as well look around. The shelter had a lot of kittens that day.

One of them was a loud, squeaky-voiced black domestic shorthair. She couldn't have been more than five or six months old. I checked her out, reminded how I'd always thought black cats were cool, feeling sorry for the little one in the cage in front of me. I wanted to make that one feel better.

In cat body language, the right blink can be a friendly gesture. It could mean anything from "don't hurt me" to "lemme be yer pal." I met the kitten's gold-green eyes and gave it a careful blink.

The kitten freaked out. She started yowling, screaming bloody murder. Locked in a wall of cages full of noisy kittens, that kitten managed to outcry the rest. Jamie came over. I pointed the loud one out, telling her what happened. And I felt like a jerk. Duh, I thought I was helping.

Curious, Jamie got the story from the folks at the shelter. Apparently someone had skipped out on their rent weeks or even months earlier. The landlord went to the abandoned apartment and found the apartment full of cats -- an entire litter of over fifteen starved, half-feral, sickly kittens. By the time the shelter picked them up, five were DOA. The shelter took the surviving ten, who were now caged up in the wall before us, including the dark-haired little screamer.

We really felt for them. And Jamie could tell I was interested. We decided to take the screaming kitten into a visiting room. (Some room. It was a transparent walk-in closet made of Plexiglas.)

Anyway, the shelter folks sat us down in the visiting room. Then they put the kitten in with us. She scanned the room, gaping. The little thing crawled to Jamie's feet, sniffed with deliberation, and rubbed herself about her ankles. When the kitten was done, she turned around and looked at me.

Hm, pretty friendly reception. Maybe she wasn't so feral, I thought to my SHIT!!!!

I wasn't sure I still had a face. The kitten suddenly launched herself, running up my outstretched legs, bounding onto my left shoulder, and started kneading her paws -- hard like fuel-injected pistons -- into my upper chest. Purring. Loud. I tried not to move.

Jamie watched, clearly amused. "So what do you think?" she said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I peered at the black kitten loving me to death. "Well, I don't know about the cat. But I've been adopted."

When a pet shelter person came to check on us, she found the drowsy black kitten purring and resting inside the crook of my arm. She was about as stunned as I was. This cat was feral? Maybe someone said "furry" and misheard? Either way, the only damage I'd gotten from the kitten's attentions were minor perforations.

Gladly we filled out the forms and paid the fees. Then we took her home... before she could drag us there.

On the drive home, Jamie and I are asking each other what to call our new kitten. We were at a loss. Scary names didn't really fit her any more than cutesy names did. This little black cat was a mystery. Finally I suggested Lilith.

I was aware of the various mythological permutations. And the Lilith Fair concert tours were in high gear at the time, of course. But more than anything, I was struck by the figure in Jewish folklore.

Adam's apocryphal first wife wouldn't submit to him. Truth be told, she wasn't "bad" until she declared herself his equal. Well, that and she wanted to be on top once in a while. Uh oh. Suddenly she was storm demon, baby strangler, and part-time crank caller. I'd always felt that she wouldn't have been so bad in that legend if someone had given her a chance.

Now that fit our new cat. Fiercely independent. Loving, but clearly on her terms. Down on her luck, in need of a friend.

I addressed the silent black cat behind us, in a pet carrier nestled in the backseat of our car. "What do you think, Lilith?"

Instantly she let out a telltale squeak.

So her name was Lilith.

Ten years ago. And so help me, she's got a big piece of my heart even now. Even though she's gone.

More on that later.

Somebody Holds The Key

This weekend is a hard one. I don't want to dwell on it or drag anyone else through it, but.... Well, here goes.

One of our cats has passed away. We called her Nita. I knew we'd lose her one day, but this isn't at all the way I wanted it to happen.

Nita was a dilute tortie, basically a calico where all the colors in her coat came out in smears instead of patches. It was as if God had painted her in a fit of passion-- slapping handfuls of red, black, and white on her--and let the colors run. She was with us, demure and loving, for over 5 years.

She was born practically in my lap, on the floor of what was then my home office. Seeing it happen right in front of me changed my world. Dragged down in the drudgery of moving to a new place, I watched a kind of magic. Mina, her mother, chose to give birth close to me and Jamie when she could've run for cover. She shared that moment and her newborn children with us. I had never been invited to share a miracle before.

After several days, Jamie and I picked out names for Mina's kittens. Nita was named after Nita Van Sloan, the tough girlfriend of a pulp hero called the Spider. Like her namesake she was loyal and cautious, guarding her secrets very closely.

She didn't talk much, but when she did, oh man. What a wail. It sounded like she'd taken some lessons from Jimi Hendrix and got herself a twang bar. Her voice had range.

Unlike the Spider's main squeeze, she wasn't a social butterfly. At the first sight of strangers, she'd run for cover. Her siblings liked to scrap and play around, but not her. She'd have sooner slipped off to a far corner, sought out a warm lap, or snuggled close to someone she knew (often her mom, sometimes me or Jamie).

So you can imagine how thrilled she was to go to cat shows. We tried it for a while, but she was downright terrified. The slightest change in her lifestyle made her nervous. And when that happened, she got sick. She just couldn't handle stress.

It became a real problem when we brought Kyouju and the other Japanese bobtails into the mix. Before she knew it, she was a token introvert in a house of feline extroverts. They loved her. She hated getting picked on.

A year ago, Jamie and I decided to put her in my home office. As long as we kept the door shut, she could eat or sleep without getting pounced on. It did help her mood, but it triggered a new batch of problems. She couldn't get as much exercise in the office, so we got fat really quick. We switched her to diet kibble, and that worked a little. And if the smell of her litter box wasn't enough to put me off my work, Nita would sit on my hands. She wanted affection and lots of it. Maybe she got lonely in there.

Nita became more talkative, more demonstrative. If I leaned back too far in my chair, she'd jump onto my lap or my chest and sleep. (Bloody catnaps....) And when she wanted attention, she learned quickly that if she turned up the kcat talk, she'd get plenty.

That all changed Friday morning. I walked into the office and found her spitting up and drooling, tense and miserable, but not moving much. Jamie and I discussed it on the phone. We didn't have a lot of cash, but we had to take her to the vet. That was how we got the bad news. Fatty liver disease. She hadn't been eating, so her liver was going into overtime. Our vets kept her overnight to work on the problem, but they were upfront. Nita's condition was severe. They weren't sure if she'd even survive the night. Jamie and I sweated bullets. It took us a while to sleep.

Saturday morning, Jamie got the call from the vets. Nita had died in her sleep. There was another infection, possibly the reason why her liver failed. She was responding to preliminary treatment, but she just didn't have the strength to keep fighting. The vets reassured us we had done everything we could've done. Nita hid her ailment very well, as most cats do, so there were no warning signs for us to catch.

But I keep going over it in my head, even now. Did I do enough? Why didn't I see this coming? Maybe the warning signs were right in front of me the whole time. Or I could've found more time to spend with her--played with her, held her for just a minute--instead jumping right into work.

You can see how easy it is to button up the little things and tuck 'em away.

Jamie and I have decided to cremate her. I don't know if we'll keep her in a funeral urn (the thought of which feels a little weird for me) or bury her ashes in our garden.

Nita's death was completely the opposite of what I wanted. I had set my hopes on her dying fat, happy, and with us at her side. She had lost at least 5 pounds. In unspeakable pain. And alone.

Every time I walk into a room, part of me wants to tear it all down. Another part makes me weep when I don't want to. I want to move on. I don't want to carry this. But it's like a halo of sadness right above my head. Just when I think I've got a handle on my emotions, I shed some tears and feel some despair.

Jamie and I are coping with the loss. Or trying to. Every once in a while, we start to talking about it, comparing notes on what happened. Then we're back where we started.

On our way out to get some breakfast somewhere, a song came on the radio. I couldn't bear it. Jamie couldn't either. One day I'll hear again and it won't hurt as much.

One day, losing Nita won't hurt as much.

Come down on your own and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason I've been waiting all these years.
Somebody holds the key.

But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home.

Steve Winwood
"Can't Find My Way Home"

Flashfeed

Yeah, I know. It's been a while. I've been meaning to get back to the dreaded blog thing, only to be undermined by circumstance. The modem is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Anyway, I've been saving up several things to post here. I might rush through 'em a bit, so keep up:

Afterhell
We've made a lot of progress since we last met; some of it, of a dubious nature. (Ooh! Cryptic. That'll keep him in their seats for another second....)

All the roles were cast at the end of April, and we've had two rehearsal sessions. And at each one, we were short one actor. The first time, I guess one guy got tied up with work and schedules and things. I don't think he deliberately flaked. He was sufficiently apologetic when he joined the second rehearsal, so I didn't glare at him too hard. On that rehearsal, I knew we were going to be short one actress, so I was ready for that.

Either way, all our local actors haven't had a single rehearsal together, as a unit. A moment while I mumble and get the frustration out of my system....

On the bright side, the performances have been fantastic. The actors we got are wonderful. On the second rehearsal, we got yet another actress sign on to play a bit part and fill in, basically a glorified understudy and utility infielder. But the minute I heard her, I really wished I had a bigger role for her. She ran some lines for our missing Assistant DA who goes mad in this ep, and delivered an impish, bloodthirsty psychopathy. Man, she knocked everyone's socks off.

Frankly I was tempted to sack the lady I'd originally cast. But that actress put up with some of my rantings on things almost totally unrelated to AH during her audition, even as her allergies were kicking. If nothing else, I keep her in the role by way of thanks and politeness. I couldn't live with myself if I screwed someone over for my own profit.

Screwing someone over because they're jerks, I can do....

Anyway, AH now enters an awkward phase. Our studio date has gotten pushed back to June 28, so we have to sweat through the next five or six weeks. Jamie and I are trying to put together a few pick-up rehearsal sessions for any castmembers. She's combing through dates and e-mails, looking for times where more than two actors are going to be at the same place at the same time. It'll keep them focused and it'll give our sound engineer a chance to get a feel for the voices and performances.

Oh great, now he shows up. He never made it to any of the other rehearsals. We made damn sure he was in the loop for those, too.

I suppose now I'll have to show how adaptable and quick-thinking we are. If I knew there was gonna be a pop-quiz, I'd have cut to the chase and just flunked.



Monkey's Audio
Goofy name, amazing tech. Monkey's Audio is audio compression freeware. I tried it a while ago, wasn't thrilled with the results, but I think it's improved a lot.

It doesn't always compress audio as tightly as MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, but it has one advantage over them. It's loss-free compression. It doesn't shave data off the original sound to conserve space. You lose neither quality nor data. Not only is it great for archiving, but it sounds exactly the same compressed as uncompressed. You can save hard drive space and keep the original sound quality.

Anyone who knows me for more than a few days knows I'm a music junkie. I listen to MP3's made from my CD collection while I work, but if I know a certain song by heart, it doesn't sound right in that format. The music's been changed. That little bass thump at the start of the third chorus feels wrong. Stuff like that. Monkey's Audio has provided a handy compromise.

I just hope iPods can read it....

Beware of Trojans Bearing Crap
Lastly, I've had the ignominous pleasure of working all day yesterday to get a stupid virus off my computer. This time, there was no pimply-faced sex-starved script kiddie behind it. It was from a corporate entity. Yahoo/Geocities. You can find a brief description of it here: Boycott Yahoo/Geocities

On the bright side, I was able to beat the little bugger and get it off my system. I'd downloaded five or six different anti-trojan programs that day. Only one did the trick: The Cleaner by MooSoft.

Blogging tools
Well, can't get much more self-referential than that. For the last month or so, I've been using a blogging client that lets me access my hideous manifestation of net-presence with a double-click and nothing more. It's called w.bloggar. Very nice. And freeware.

Frequent readers of this blog (all four of you) will notice the changes I've made to the look of the ol' blog here. w.bloggar made it easier, but what made this change a real breeze was StrangeBanana. It's a webpage that randomly generates new styles suitable for any blog. Refresh the page and you get a whole new look. If you like it, copy it.

Hence, Dark Karma get a face lift and my lazy little teeny-weeny brain didn't have to crunch nearly as much code as it first a-feared. As for whether the new look sucks....

No Fur Flying, At Least...

Yesterday was Nita's Urinary Infection Day. Her problem was still going on after two days, and still no clue and no urine sample, so we turned to the experts. Jamie packed Nita off to the Allen Boulevard Vet Clinic for a few hours and let Dr. Mark Nielsen get it from the source. Of course they had to get off the exam counter before they got it into the specimen cup. After a few drinkee-poos, kitty-kat kut loose.

The diagnosis was a more confident one, but still had a tentative ring to it. Apparently the urinary tract is uncharted territory. (I guess I can't blame 'em. I sure couldn't fit in there.)

But at least every other possibility has been eliminated. It's urinary for sure. That's our number one suspect. We minded our P's and Q's, and that's what it all trickles down to.

In blog space, there is no pun tax.

Jamie and I used to host a local writer's group meeting thingie. I'm starting to wonder if this was ever meant to be. These meetings hardly ever happen anymore. I know everyone's busy and, since we're not exactly rich, these are basically trying times for all of us. All the same, something about people not showing up...it really brings me down. I mean, what's the point to the whole group anymore?

Maybe men really are allergic to rejection. The slightest whiff of it drives me up the wall. I'll stop there before I start sounding all weepy or something. "Oh, the world sucks, no one understands me! Rhubarb, rhubarb, martyr rhubarb...."

I wasn't sure, but I guess a few people have been reading this after all. Every once in a while, someone comes up to me and asks if I'm okay or something. I don't know why that's such a surprise for me. In the last entry, I practically hint at going postal the way most people might talk about going Democrat or Republican.

"And how are you voting this year?"

"Postal." Insert maniacal grin here.

I'm just used to writing and not getting any apparent effect out of an audience. When I write something, no one stands up and applauds. It's just me, a cat, and her tiny tiny bladder in the room. Looking for feedback is a waste of time. Someone says it's good. When I ask for more detail, the answer comes back, "It's really good." It's hard to tell if anyone's there at all. I'm not a TV set; I need to know someone is receiving. I've written things to shock or get people mad just to see if anyone's really listening. It's a waste of time. People don't turn into English lit. scholars when they're massively cheesed.

Dickens would've shot himself with help like that. "Do they say anything about Miss Havisham's wedding cake? A single word about the double irony about Pip, Estella, and Magwitch? No, no, it's just 'really good'! Forget it! I quit! I knew I should've gone into taxidermy...."

So anyway, I've gotten used to working in complete isolation. I didn't show anyone my work for years. I just did it. I couldn't stop. I had words and images in my head, and I had to get 'em out of there. I was convinced that being alone was the best I could hope for. If there was no audience, they couldn't ruin it for me. You don't get applause or cheers either, but after years of people laughing at the wrong parts and nitpicking even my choice in word processor, I stopped expecting any.

And frankly, most people can't see what's in front of them anyway. In high school, I was on self-destruct. For days I would walk around, at home, at school, with my hands coated in my own blood. I know of only five people who took a second glance. OJ gets off scot-free. Posers and corporate shills are lauded as artistes. My prez the Shrub argues with the debating skills of a mummified walrus, and even without evidence, he'll get his war.

And I expect people to wake up half a minute just for me?

So whenever I get a clear and positive response to something I've written or said, I'm stunned. Old habits die hard.

The Rush Hour of Our Discontent

I'm not quite as liberal as Jesus, but I'm not too thrilled with the election results. Locally it's pretty good for my li'l hobbit hole, but throughout the rest of the United States...well, I think the next six years are going to be a long, hard ride. I can only hope the music scene picks up during this Bush's administration as it did for Bush Senior. At least we'd have a cool soundtrack for the disaster movie to come.

Of course we had Kurt Cobain to kick everyone's butts into gear back then. Marilyn Manson (the goth answer to Sideshow Bob) and N*Stinc ain't gonna cut it.

And man, I need something to go my way here. Our cats--all fourteen of 'em--are rapidly turning into the Typhoid Mary brigade. Nita, a dilute tortie introvert/assault vehicle, has some kind of urinary infection. Jamie and I took her to the vet a day or so ago, and we're still puzzled as to why. She keeps bleeding all over the office, so I'm surrounded by puddles of watery blood even as I write. Visitors are going to think I'm a devil worshipper or something. ("See? I knew it! He wears black all the time, he's got heavy metal records! He even does blood sacrifices fergodsakes!!!") Meanwhile a couple of Jamie's Japanese Bobtail kittens, henceforth referred to as "JBTs," keep chunking charlies all over the rest of the house.

We're living in mortal dread that more than one cat might need professional medical attention at the same time. That'd take us instantly into three figures. Even if we weren't in the throes of bankruptcy, it would've hurt plenty.

Anyone who's kept up with Jamie (or her blog ) knows a lot of this BS already. For me, it's a different kind of pain. I never thought I'd ever have to file for bankruptcy, let alone spend enough money to go there. Technically it's not being filed in my name, but I'm about as screwed. All our efforts are being channeled to fix it. We're bleeding money. And frankly it's humiliating. A bunch of strangers show up at my door, demanding that I account for money I never saw. Yet I see all around me things bought with that money. And I didn't want even half of it. The whole situation is ridiculous, at least to me.

I've seen some strange things in my life, courtesy of very strange people, folks who were eager to believe anything, no matter how absurd or outrageous, as long as their consciences or perceptions got an easy out. For a long time I was surrounded by such humanoid creatures, subjected to more personal demons than Max von Sydow, forced to tangle with them just to free myself of them. And I learned, like any victim of brainwashing, that reality is liquid. It changes with the wind. People see what they want to see. Dysfunctional people, even more so. It's taken many years--after the efforts of so many to convince me 2+2=5; that there were five lights when I saw only four; that meddling with my life was their way of loving me; that I was a monster for not letting them get away with it; all because it suited their pathetic ends--for me to trust my perceptions again. So it takes a lot of thought and willpower to override the fear of retribution invading my flesh like an electrical shock when I speak my mind. Part of me wants to hide every time I feel anything. It might not be what someone else wants me to feel.

They say he who dares, wins. I look at all the horrors that happened in my life, at the ones plaguing the world at large, and the kinds of people who profit the most from them. I forget who was it who claimed that a barbarian has the upper hand in any battle because he's willing to do anything to win. Of late, I begin to wonder if that person was right.

And a horrible thought strikes me: Is this what it feels like when someone is about to go postal?