Deep Catological Questions

What happens when your two kitties have been sent to the doghouse?

The Birds Have Been Bought

 

The Orioles have new owners.

They're coming off a pretty miraculous regular season, then couldn't win a single game in the playoffs.

Change is good.  But they're still the Orioles until they make some substantial progress in the playoffs.

Interesting to watch at least.

Magnificent Mandu

 

Meet Mandu, AKA Mandurita, Little Hunter, Little Tiger, Princess Mandu.

A few nights ago I went to my back patio to lift up some furniture that had blown down during a pretty heavy wind / snow storm.  Mandu and her brother are indoor cats, so going outside for them is a big no-no.  So I closed the patio door behind me and picked the furniture up all in about 45 seconds.  As I returned to the door and tried to re-open it I realized it wouldn't budge.  This furball had managed to lean on the locking door handle and pushed it "down" into the lock position.

I was locked out.  In the snow.  With no shoes.

I managed to get back in after actually going to a very friendly neighbor and calling a locksmith.  In the end I managed to get back inside my house without the locksmith's help, but it was all a saga nonetheless.

Mandu has always been pretty well behaved compared to her brother Chingu, but lessons have been learned.

Cute kitties are dangerous.

For The Dogs

South Korea has banned the consumption of dog meat, and it's welcome news:

"Despite the horrors highlighted by campaigners, few politicians appeared willing to act. Consumption has been in decline for decades and is now largely confined to older South Koreans who want a fix of culinary nostalgia. But the industry is no financial minnow. There are about 1,150 farms, while 1,600 restaurants sell dog meat dishes, according to the agriculture ministry. Activists say as many as 1 million dogs a year are slaughtered."

No doubt an underground trade will remain, but it took South Korean activists to accomplish this locally and organically.

Good news!

"curled zinc sheets with their puddles of rainwater"

"There is a time of day immediately before dusk when the outlie of every object becomes sharply delineated.  It was just that moment.  The lacerated edges of wooden beams in the wreckage, the freshness of the rents in the shredded trees, and the curled zinc sheets with their puddles of rainwater -- everything appeared almost unpleasantly vivid.  In the extreme west only a horizontal line of scarlet was to be seen in the sky between two or three towering black burned-out buildings.  Flecks of scarlet were also visible through the windows of the ruined structures.  It was as if someone had turned on a red light in a deserted and uninhabited house."

Yuko Mishima, The Temple of Dawn

"Erasing every mark you make"

 

Fugazi, "Guilford Fall"

For no particular reason I listened to Fugazi's End Hits all the way through for the first time in about 20 years.  I remember being disappointed at the time with a few great songs, but also some experimental stuff that just didn't work for me.  I wouldn't say it's grown on me, but it holds together as an album better than it used to.  I can't tell if the band was running out of ideas or had too many of them.

So, a good album but I'm glad it was their second-to-last and not their last one.

Belated New Year!

Happy New Year to one and all!  This blog remains slower than it should, but things are warming up.  Days are getting longer.  Still no snow in Maryland, but fingers crossed.

I've been going to the movies a lot, obviously, and that's not the worst way to enjoy 2024 so far.

The Iron Claw: Wut I Thunk Of It (Minor Spoilers)

Greek Tragedy by was of wrestlin' and rural Texas.  It works.  It's actually kind of incredible.

I did double-takes throughout seeing Zac Efron at 250 pounds of muscle, and a seriously wizened face.  A cruel but sometimes likeable Dad, a helpless but strangely empowered mom.  Professional wrestling as fake and so real at the same time.

Definitely worth seeing.

Poor Things: Wut I Thunk Of It (Minor Spoilers)

The performances were great.  (Emma Stone has impeccable comedic timing, even as a zombie.)  But the whole thing just didn't cohere for me.  The nudity wasn't shocking, and the sex scenes, while vigorous, also didn't strike me as all that interesting or transgressive.  And the prostitute with a heart of gold thing seemed downright lazy.

I'm glad that Lanthimos is getting the attention he well deserves as a director, but I thought The Rival was much more effective.  The Lobster even more so.

Also, the final act is a bit of a mess.  Are we supposed to like Bella or not?

Endings And Beginnings

Trip Shakespeare, "Snow Days," although Maryland looks like it won't get a White Christmas this year

I lost my mom when I was 17, one month before I graduated from high school.  Ovarian cancer was the final cause, but there were some complicating and complicated factors leading up to it including a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis.  She was 51.

Losing my dad at 94 this past November, it really feels like the other end of the telescope.  My mom was far too young and had far too much left to do, professionally speaking.  My sister and I needed her, like all children need their parents, and it probably made her feel guilty that she couldn't give more from her own deathbed, to somehow reach out and protect us from life, from ourselves, forever.

Maybe Dad was ready to go.  He died not long after I went to work that morning, and my sister had been spending a lot of time here but needed to go home for a bit.  One of the nurses says that's why he went when he did, he wouldn't leave if his children were around him, wouldn't want to trouble them.  Again, even in death, how can I make things easier for my kids?  Just pass as quietly as possible, make the rockiest of mountains a little bit smoother for them, for others.

So many parts of his body and mind were failing him.  Every trip to the bathroom became a potential drama.  There were days me and my sister or one of our wonderful nurses could hold his hand and watch a classic Western movie and laugh.  There were days were he would lash out at anyone around him.  Partly it was dementia.  Partly it was frustration with a body and a brain, almost a hundred years on Earth, that wouldn't work properly any longer, that wouldn't take direction as intended.

I'm having Christmas Eve dinner with my sister and her boyfriend.  We have plans for New Year's as well.  Tomorrow, Christmas Day, I'll take a long walk then come home and play with my cats, maybe watch a movie, maybe read a book.  If I'm being honest, a bit of laundry and kitchen cleaning would probably be a good idea as well, the simple acts of keeping things going in my own life.

I've been talking to my mom more than usual lately.  She was much more of a holiday person than my dad.  Even she thinks Christmas decorations going up right after Halloween are tacky, water down the whole thing a bit.  I'm talking to my dad a lot, almost daily.  I'll see a news story that I think he'd like to hear and make a mental note to tell him when I get home, where I'll sit down with him for his lunch or dinner and we'll just talk, or I'll just talk, and we'll have all the time in the world to share a joke.

I miss them both so much.  It hurts.  Talking to them helps a bit.  Thinking of them too, at their strongest and best.  We'll go forward together into a kinder year, I'm sure of it.

"just another bloody rainy day"

 

The Pogues, "White City"

R.I.P. Shane MacGowan, and very hard to pick my favorite Pogues tune but this is likely it.