There Is No Cat

Why, yes, Mr. Brandi, that is a fascinating navel

There Is No Cat is now a toddler, turning three years old today. As I’ve done the previous two years, I went looking through my archives of the past year to see what I wrote that I thought was any good. I only came up with two posts, and one of those was from four days ago:

• Profanity Therapy
• Losing His Cookies

Still, the year wasn’t a total waste. My favorite thing I wrote all year was closely entwined with the sort of post I made that did work well this year: photographs. My travelogue of our trip to St. Augustine, Florida, at Thanksgiving isn’t strictly speaking part of There Is No Cat. But I did excerpt each entry here as I wrote it over the month or two it took me to post my photographs. And I’m really quite happy with many of the photos; some of them are among my favorites I’ve ever taken. I probably should put together an edited version of just the really good ones. Maybe another evening. Other photo posts I like:

• Lighting the way
• Blurry photos
• Things Nineteen through Twenty-six (the last of my entries for July’s 26 Things photographic scavenger hunt)
• Vacation snapshots from Mars
• Neon (the disappearing Doo Wop architecture of Wildwood, NJ)
• Blue
• Beach houses, November 2003

I also posted a piece of music that won a contest. I never got the prize, but that’s okay, I didn’t really need it.

I made 111 posts this year. That’s down from 179 last year and 442 the first year. Going on current trends, that means you can probably expect 93 posts from me in the coming year. But, as the stock brokers say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. I may post a lot less, and have trouble coming up with even two posts I like at this time next year....

Posted at 9:56 PM
Link to this entry || 5 comments

Losing His Cookies

So Cookie Monster is being forced to cut back on his cookies. Children’s Television Workshop is apparently worried about the message that having a monster getting orgasmic over cookies sends to its young viewers. However, as any armchair psychoanalyst could tell you, CM is clearly suffering from an obsessive personality. With cookies no longer allowed to be a focus for this ingrained behavior, we here at There Is No Cat would like to offer the following suggestions for alternative behaviors where this tendency might be allowed to come to the fore:

• Bookie Monster: CM starts playing the lottery, and this results in trips to Las Vegas, an addiction to craps, furtive calls on his cell phone during college football season, and ultimately, bankruptcy and ruin.
• Hooky Monster: CM learns the joys of skipping out on class. Much detention results.
• Lookie Monster: CM becomes an obsessive voyeur, peeking in the windows of the residents of Sesame Street, trying to catch them in the act. He is eventually convicted, forced to register as a sex offender, and enjoined from any contact with children.
• Nookie Monster: CM becomes a sex addict. See Lookie Monster.
• Wookie Monster: CM realizes his close kinship to Chewbacca. He becomes obsessed with Star Wars, attending conventions dressed up as Chewbacca and writing filk songs. Unable to integrate with straight society, he winds up homeless until Oscar the Grouch takes pity on him and lets him move into his garbage can.

Posted at 4:43 AM
Link to this entry || 4 comments

The MINI Pullman

As I’m sure regular readers are aware, we recently purchased a MINI Cooper S, Laura’s midlife crisis car. Maybe we should have waited a little longer. I’ve been impressed since we’ve had the car with its ability to negotiate tight corners, something that comes in handy in our driveway. MINI refers to this as "cornering as if it were on rails". Now, according to the independent MINI fan site Motoring File, BMW is today announcing an option for the MINI that allows it to actually run on rails:

In light of the growing problem of gridlock and rush hour traffic, this special model is adapted to ride on all domestic gauge rail lines throughout North America.

The MINI Pullman can access the railway at any major crossing gate provided care is taken not to enter into the opposing direction of prevailing rail traffic. A new feature in the onboard computer allows the MINI ’motorman’ or woman to access individual rail line schedules to plan their travels while on the rails.

They expect to start testing on, er, April 1 of next year....

Posted at 10:35 AM
Link to this entry || 2 comments