Category: Pets

Paging Jack Byrnes.

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Sonny pinning Michael for the 3-count

I like cats. A lot of people don’t. I feel sorry for those people.

See, cats by and large are introverts. They’re quiet, they keep to themselves and they don’t shower people with attention the way that dogs (extroverts, to be sure) do. They have a few people for whom they feel genuine affection; the rest are looked on with more or less genial indifference. Extroverts look at introverts, whether in human or cat form, and think they’re broken. They misread introversion as shyness, antisocial behaviour or rudeness. In my experience extroverts have a hard time recognizing affection or happiness if it’s not delivered in an extroverted (read: obvious) way. That’s why people think that cats (and, um, me a lot of the time) are cranky or stuck-up.

Don’t get me wrong, I like extroverts just fine. Especially dogs…if I had the space for one to live with me, and I could just let it outside to shit, I’d have one…but I don’t have it, and I can’t do that, so no puppy. It’s just that as an introvert I can identify with cats a little better, and a lifetime of chuckling at perplexed extroverts has given me some insight on why cats get a bad rap.

Now if I could just toilet-train them…

Things I've learned in the past 24 hours

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  • I’m getting sick. Not enough to make me feel like I need to stay in bed, but enough to drain me of all energy and motivation to, you know, move.
  • The Rob Zombie remake of Halloween (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off better than I expected, in that it gave us a Michael Myers preview, but the remake part was just standard slasher fare. The only thing I liked better about it than the original was that Myers moved like a normal guy…fast sometimes, normal speed the rest of the time, instead of at a slow zombie pace.
  • Sometimes our cats will sleep quietly through the night. Other times they will stage a Bob Fosse revival on our bed at 3AM. Last night was the latter.
  • We need a new coffee table and over-sized (but not too over-sized) chair, but aren’t having much luck finding them. Lo and behold, I read this in Thursday’s issue of Now, and figure we should give it a try.
  • Even when the Canadiens are down 4-1 going into the third period, I should still finish watching the game, especially when it’s against a soft team like the Islanders. The Habs scored 4 goals in the third period and won. They’re playing .850 hockey so far this season, the best of any team in the NHL.
  • The Raptors look pretty good, having won their third in a row to remain perfect in this young season. Bosh looks better with O’Neal there to take the pressure off, Bargnani looks better coming off the bench than he does starting, Calderon looks better without the T.J. Ford of Damocles hanging over his head, and Kapono just looks better. But the defense is what seemed different last night…not all the time, but a lot of the time. Players like Michael Redd and Richard Jefferson have carved through the Raptors like butter in recent years, but last night, the Raps seemed to challenge more. Anyway, we’ll see how they fare against real competition like the Celtics or Lakers.
  • John McCain isn’t funny.

I realized two minutes later that it was "balcon"

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The warm (and by warm I mean screaming hot) weather has made for a very fun 18 hours. After leaving work yesterday I arrived home to a barbeque in progress with Nellie and CBGB. We made veggie burgers and drank (among others) Bavarian Weissbier and took solace in the cool breeze on our balcony. Sometimes that breeze was almost too much; at one point it blew some Tostitos out of the bowl and sent them skittering across the balcony. After our guests left we cleaned up (barely) and watched Battlestar Galactica. Getting! So! Good!

Nellie had to get up early for a hair appointment, so I used the morning to clean up (read: recycle the beer bottles), catch up on my news addiction, run some errands, buy more of that weissbier and take some pictures of all the puppies down the street at Woofstock.

Playing with dogs is good for the soul, even if my cats did look at me askance when I got home. Now I’ve finished off the list of little things that I need to get done before settling in for a long afternoon of MBA and Euro. Life could certainly be worse.

[tags]weihenstephaner hefeweissbier, battlestar galactica, woofstock, euro 2008[/tags]

With my feet in the air and my head on the ground

Dan Dickinson3 Comments

Sorry internet, I’ve been too busy to blog lately. Work is devouring most of my time, so it’s probably a good thing I’ve dropped any pretense of putting effort into the MBA. Also, daylight saving time is wreaking havoc on my brain-clock, making it hard to keep up with my usual distractions.  Thus, you shall get brief notes instead of piercing insights.*

  • I don’t really know how two Kara Keith songs ended up in my inbox, but I like the songs I’ve heard so far. I suspect I downloaded them via Chromewaves.
  • The last time Montreal was first in their conference this late in the season was 1993, which was also the last year they won the cup. I’m just sayin’. Weird thing about that year, though; they wound up finishing third in their division (let alone conference) behind Quebec and Boston, both of whom were powerhouses, and then won the cup.
  • Last night we took the cats to the vet (which I kind of enjoyed, ’cause it gave me an excuse to leave work at 5) and found out that Sonny, the one we refer to as “fatty”, “fat boy”, “sir fatness”, etc. has lost weight. He’s now a sleek, slim 17 lbs. I guess all those nights of threatening to kill him as he howled for food have paid off.
  • Thanks to ModernMod for sending me the Frames‘ cover of “Where Is My Mind.” I’ve been listening to it constantly.
  • My toe is…well, weird. It’s still the color of violent rage, but it’s not hurting. I ran two miles on it this morning, in brand new shoes, and hardly felt anything. This is my first broken pinky toe so I’m not really sure whether this is standard, and just ask me if I can be arsed to look anything up on WebMD.

* as if you ever get piercing insights here.

[tags]kara keith, montreal canadiens, fat cats, the frames, where is my mind, broken pinky toe[/tags]

The hairball unto death

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I’m in the den watching hockey and working on my finance assignment. I can hear Nellie in the other room trying to explain mortality to the cats:

“If you keep meowing, I will kill you. Then you will be dead.”

Hard to say whether they’ve processed the weight of those words. I know that Sonny reads some Kierkegaard so he probably has a pretty good grasp on the ramifications of death, but Michael prefers to spend his time eating piles of his own hair, so he’s not as likely to comprehend the limits of his own existence.

Sigh…I need sleep. Clearly.

[tags]cats, mortality, kierkegaard[/tags]

Sonny, je t'aime…even if you do wake me up in the middle of the &%@# night

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I’m much too tired to function. My cat woke me up twice last night because he wanted to play. It’s a long story. He’s a very demanding cat. Anyway, I wasn’t functioning well enough to run today but the plan’s on for tomorrow. Just to be on the safe side I may build myself one of those Hannibal Lecter carts that fits an 18-pound wookiee.

.:.

We haven’t been to a theatre in months, and it shows. The movies are piling up again. The following movies are in the theatre right now:

  • Into The Wild
  • King Of California
  • Michael Clayton
  • Paris, Je T’aime
  • The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
  • The Brave One
  • The Darjeeling Limited
  • The Kingdom
  • We Own The Night

And then there’re these, which come out in the next two weeks:

  • Gone, Baby, Gone
  • Rendition
  • Reservation Road
  • Dan In Real Life
  • Control
  • Fugitive Pieces
  • Rails & Ties
  • Run, Fat Boy, Run

I especially want to see Paris, Je T’aime now that we’ve been to…well, Paris.

[tags]into the wild, king of california, michael clayton, paris je t’aime, the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford, the brave one, the darjeeling limited, the kingdom, we own the night, gone baby gone, rendition, reservation road, dan in real life, control, fugitive pieces, rails & ties, run fat boy run[/tags]

Like the ghost of Jacob Marley, but with a tail

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This morning, as the fog and haze lifted, all the buildings seemed to be breathing strangely.

.:.

Listen, I’m all for supporting our troops, and I have no problem with a stretch of the 401 being renamed to honor them. But really, can we not come up with something a little less cheesy than Highway Of Heroes? That sounds like a fucking Hallmark movie. Please, Ontario government, I’m begging you: give the highway a name that doesn’t sound like a Valerie Bertinelli vehicle.

.:.

My mother just sent me this email. For context: Stryder is my parents dog (a very big rough collie with a snout like an anteater), Tigger is my cat who died five years (who, for some reason, Stryder always idolized) and my mother is deathly afraid of mice and the like.

“I’m still shuddering. Someone had come for maple and we were talking in the yard when I see Stryder coming with something in his mouth. He drops it at my feet and it is a mouse! Still alive! The humans are trying to get away from him and he keeps bringing the mouse closer, trying to pick it up in his mouth. He must have had memories of his teachings from Tigger on how to catch and torture a mouse! I finally got him to drop it and come in the house. It might be playing ‘possum’ but right now it is lying belly-up. Stryder wants back outdoors but I’ll keep him here until it revives or your father comes to remove it.

I can see Tigger’s spirit watching, ‘That’s my boy!'”

I feel bad for the mouse, but I have to say, that made me smile.

[tags]401 highway, highway of heroes, collie[/tags]

Going out with a very big bang

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Is it cruel to rename your animals after several years? Granted, they’re cats so it’s not as if they give a shit what we call them, but today Nellie floated the idea of naming them Ryan and Cyril instead of Sonny and Michael. Ryan was smart and scheming, whereas Cyril was mentally challenged, so it fits. And we could name the Roomba McManus or something.

If you didn’t watch Oz, you likely have no idea what I’m talking about.

.:.

Wow…while poking through IMDB there I noticed that John Cazale — Fredo — acted in only five feature films before his death: The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter. All five were nominated for the best picture Oscar. That’s a pretty impressive body of work for the final six years of one’s life.

.:.

OK, back to my [yawn] corporate strategy paper.

[tags]ryan o’reilly, cyril o’reilly, sonny corleone, michael corleone, pet names, john cazale[/tags]