Process of removing a cat from a location, such as your lap, shoulder or chair.
The Curmudgeon’s Stream
My age is showing. As opinions and expectations calcify with age, I complain and whine about the changes, irritated with myself for doing it but unable to stem the tide. Writing about them might help ameliorate their frequency.
- Why the hell do smoke alarm batteries chirp and squeal at night to tell us we need to replace the battery? We need a smart detector that does not awake us at dark AM to tell us the batteries need replaced. I’m fortunate that I had a new one on hand and could immediately hunt down the offending detector and mollify the device.
- Reminder: stop by the store and buy a nine volt battery to have on hand. Just in case.
- Does anyone curb their wheels any longer? My information guesstimate puts the percentage of those curbing their wheels at less than ten percent. The observation and math process is simple, basically the product of scanning a line of ten cars and noting that none or one is curbed. Most have pulled over to one side and are rarely within two feet of the curb. It’s like they just pulled to one side, stopped, and left, and are not ‘parked’. That really annoys the curmudgeon.
- Sling TV irks the curmudgeon. I pay the most for it, twenty dollars a month. It’s by far the most expensive of my streaming subscriptions. Yet, its controls and layouts smack me as the worse, and it’s the one most likely to freeze and fail to stream. When I press the button to do something on Sling, I count to ten while waiting for it to respond. That doesn’t happen with Fandango, Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, and didn’t happen with HBO or Showtime. The second worse behind Sling is Acorn, but its reaction time is half of Sling’s. Sling easily wins the ‘worst of’ award.
- BBC America on Sling is really strange. It’s all about Star Trek. Seriously.
- Snow has found us again in southern Oregon. A winter storm warning has been issued. It’s a fly on my nose kind of problem for me. I worry about the homeless and poor. Churches have formed an alliance to provide shelter on cold nights. Shelter is just a fraction of the problem. Food, hygiene, health, employment…sigh. Some I meet seem violently, defiantly insane. Others are struggling against poor decisions or fates’ whims. So many roam the streets, sit on benches and huddle beside buildings, and we keep asking, “What can we do? What can we do?”
- Why can’t our cats get along? Meep and Boo both seem territorial and leery of each other, like the other is the instigator, and they’re only protecting themselves. Tucker is another matter, a cat bred by the stars to fight. He doesn’t posture; he stalks, ambushes and attacks. It’s exhausting dealing with separating and segregating them. The situation does not seem to be improving.
- I’m pleased that our neighbors adopted Princess. A young gray and white cat, Princess began keeping on eye out for me. Whenever I left the house, she raced to me and begged for food. This, I was told, was because of her experiences as a kitten. I didn’t see her for most of the winter and wondered about her status. But when it warmed and dried, here she was again, alive and healthy, begging for food.
- Our neighbors have now adopted Princess. They had a dog and cat when we moved in ten years ago. Each died. They replaced the cat, and when a car hit and killed him within six months, they swore, enough. And even though I’m a curmudgeon, I understand. Enduring the emotional loss is daunting. But I’m pleased that they decided Princess should move in with them, and that Princess’ original people agreed.
- Princess certainly seemed happy. On the day I was told of her new arrangement, Princess was sitting in the neighbor’s yard a short distance from the neighbor. Princess didn’t race to me this day. After a few minutes, she wandered over for a visit but didn’t beg to eat. And when the neighbor retreated to her house, Princess headed in there with her. Seems like a good match, which pleases the curmudgeon.
Today’s Theme Music
I know I’ve posted this song before. I’m being indulgent. It’s a song I enjoy, a product of talented people who I admire. A couple of them have passed away so the song returns with a patina of bittersweet nostalgia.
‘Under Pressure’, created by David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Queen, came out in 1981. I was stationed on Okinawa, Japan, when it did. Armed Forces Radio and Television Services provided us with our television and radio entertainment while providing time for the Armed Forces Network Okinawa to provide us with news and weather. Air time was divided among multiple needs and demands as the outlet strove to provide everything to everyone.
I didn’t hear much of ‘Under Pressure’ on the radio because of all this, but I liked it. Most of my friends had no idea what song I was talking about whenever I mentioned it. Years later, it was included in the movie, ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’. GPB, starring Minnie Driver, John Cusack and his sister, Joan, Alan Arkin and Dan Ackroyd, only receives 79% on Rotten Tomatoes. But it’s one of those movies that I stay to watch when I encounter it, one of my secret vices.
‘Under Pressure’ has been used in other movies, sports events, commercials and trailers. Others have covered it, so most people know it, even if this isn’t their style of music or if they were born decades after 1981.
I believe the last time I posted this, I may have used the Annie Lennox and David Bowie cover. I’m going with the originals recorded performing live this time.
Those Exciting Moments
when you achieve a goal
reach a destination
or the day has come
AT LAST
Or when you sit down to write the next piece, a section that’s been growing in your head like a burst of spring on a time-elapsed film.
Reading, observing others, walking, thinking and watching television, scenes keep building. Small details are added to earlier chapters as the novel expands to fullness and nears its end. Epiphanies strike about cause and effect, action and reaction, directions and decisions, and revelations and choices.I didn’t know some of it. My inner writer has been waiting to spring it on me. His cleverness astonishes me once again.
Bring on the mocha. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Cat-second
The immeasurable amount of time between when a cat notices you doing something (especially eating) and when they arrive on the scene to help.
Catension
The feeling you experience when you realize you’ve done something stupid and everyone is looking at you. The only really neat thing to do after that is maintain your cool, and be like, oh, yeah, I meant to do that.
For a cat, they usually recover by coolly washing their face. You can try the same. I attempt to strike a pose, myself.
Authors Answer 122 – Should You Write Every Day?
The eternal question. Writing is as individual and personal as other activities so you figure out what works best for you. For me, it’s writing every day. Writing in my head or phantom writing doesn’t count, either; it needs to be something I can read and edit later. Sometimes my will wilts and I don’t write every day. I’m traveling, I’m sick, or the time and stars don’t align for it. Then I feel depressed, frustrated and a little angry. It probably isn’t healthy. From this, I sometimes think I’m addicted to writing every day, and that I need my daily fix.
This month, we return to regular questions and answers, but we have a theme for the month. We’re looking at common advice that may be considered either bad or good advice. We’re starting off with how often we should write.
Question 122 – Write every day. Do you agree or disagree, and why?
Although I might possibly be the worst person in the world at actually adhering to this advice, I do actually agree. In order to be a writer, you have to write, and write a lot, so the best way of accomplishing that is to write something – anything – every day. In that way it becomes a habit, something that you do automatically. Additionally, if you’re writing daily – even if it’s not anything that goes toward your current WIP – you’re getting lots of practice in, and that is never a bad thing…
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Today’s Theme Music
I often sing the blues. My version is the first world blues. I’m blue about the state of the world, environmental concerns, human rights. I’m also blue ’bout computer issues and awful television shows while simultaneously, hypocritically decrying our consumer society. I’m blue because I love auto racing and hate its economic and environmental impact. I’m blue because while I have plenty to eat, my metabolism has slowed and I can’t eat all the foods I want all the time. I’m blue because my hair is thinning and graying even while I know I’m in a pretty damn good place. I’m blue because I’m a basket of contradictions and because my cats don’t get along better. And the blues strike, too, because I’m pretty healthy while so many friends and loved ones suffer from health issues. I sing the blues because there are too many people who seem evil for the sake of being evil and care about no one but themselves.
That’s why I sing the blues. That’s why I’m thankful for an era where we had folks like B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Etta James, Albert King, Doctor John, Phil Collins, Robert Cray, Paul Butterfield and more to lift me out of the blues via that terrible technology that I love and hate.
Here they are, strong of voice, at the top of their skills, performing ‘Why I Sing the Blues’.
Writing Like Crazy
It all worked like it’s supposed to work today, that is, how it’s supposed to synchronize and develop when I sit down to write fiction. I threw off worries and seized the chapter that began stewing in me when I finished yesterday’s session. Just let it flow, tune out myself, tune out the world and write, write, write.
Forty-five minutes, more or less, as far as I could discern, I’d typed twelve hundred new words in the novel. I can look at it as, not a great amount but I’m still moving forward, or I can look at it as, woo-hoo, twelve hundred more words! Most floods begin with small drops coming together, pooling and flowing, I told myself, seeking to be the optimist.
After writing that chapter – for that’s what this is, the skeleton of the next chapter – I edited and revised it, correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and sometimes making a pacing change or clarifying.
Then, as I read the final lines written, I cackled with quiet delight about what I’d written, because it was just so much fun. The chapter brought everything together as I’d hoped, expected, planned and tried to achieve, but those final lines, they came from somewhere more devious.
Good day of writing like crazy. I hope you all have the same.
Newsgate
Surfing the net, scanning the news, I come across the tending news on Bing:
Stories you may have missed: “EnvelopeGate”
Really?
First, will we ever discard the fucking ‘gate’ suffix? They probably posted it as a joke but it’s worn out as a joke.
And this is your trending news? Something that happened last Sunday night is your trending news on Friday? Something of little significance, too.
Oh, Bing, how do your algorithms work? In a world of change, conflict and strife, where political and historic norms are being challenged and social advances are being re-examined, where the very intent of many governments and their structures are being questioned, in an era when people’s freedoms and lives are being proscribed by civil war and violence, and earthquakes caused by human activity are on the rise in America’s heartland and the polar ice caps are melting with Antarctica hitting record highs – sixty-three degrees F – is this really what America is investigating, searching and following?
Good God, I hope not.
No, it’ll probably lose out soon to a new song, a new phone, a NASCAR race, or the NFL combine. There’s the scandal.
Michael Seidel, writer 