REASON #3872 WHY DOGS...

Reason #3872 why dogs are better than cats, why dee-ogs simply blow kiz-zats out of the water.

Here.

Cats, on the other hand? Shit, cats'd have left the scene the minute the hand got cold and/or stopped feeding them.

Just my too sense. =o)

A SIGN FROM ABOVE

You've heard of how people--often in Latin America, it seems--"see" images of deities in prosaic everyday items, right? You know, like a shadow of the crucified Christ in a tortilla? Or a silhouette of the kneeling Virgin Mary in a swirl of wedding cake icing? Well, it seems as though I too have been blessed by a beatific bonanza. It's true. Seriously.

My girl and I were driving on Saturday and I reached into the back seat to grab a napkin to blow my nose. Well, I grabbed two on accident. After I blew my nose and crumpled the first (and threw it away) I stuffed the second, unbesmirched, napkin in my mouth and started to chew it. I don't know why, just to be weird, I guess. Just to get a rise out of Meagan, something like, "Adam Christopher! What on earth are you doing?!" Something like that. Anyway, after I got the requisite reaction--"What the hell are you doing, Adam? God, you're weird." "Wha? No, you should try it sometime; chewing napkins is great fun."--Tiring of the game, I fished the paper out of my mouth and slam-dunked it on the dashboard. And did a double-take.

"Wow," I said, laughing. "That looks a little like Mary, doesn't it?"

"Oh, shit," she said. "You're right!"

"Do you see it?"

"Yeah, I do," she said, laughing. "She's kneeling, and she's, like, wearing a robe, right?"

Strange, strange days, indeed.

PFA AND FOUND STUFF AND BEAGLE BADNESS

I have to admit: I like pens. I'm thinking of founding a twelve-step program called PFA--Pen Fetishists Anonymous. Okay, maybe it's not a fetish per se, but I do like my pens. I like to doodle, to draw, to cartoon, so I've always liked the roller ball-style pens, preferably black, preferably medium-tipped. Art pens with the scritchy-scratchy needle-nosed tips don't do much for me. How to get a consistent line with them--to be thick when I want thick and to be thin when I want thin--is a mystery to me; my lines seem to be spider webby when I want bold and gummed up when I want fine. And when I'm trying to get an expression on a character's face and it comes out looking like a Rorschach reject, well, my goat has been gotten.

When it comes to writing words, don't insult me with a Bic or a Papermate (although Papermates aren't too bad, come to think of it). What I look for in a writing utensil is a smooth line--imagine using a knitting needle to write words on a stick of butter, soft--and a comfortable heft in the hand. I want the scribing experience to be like writing on a cloud: no herky-jerky motions, no tearing of the paper.

This need for smoothness extends to Cousin Pencil, too. Fine-point barbarians that, when used, lend an almost shivery mojo to the page are not allowed admittance to my digs. In fact, I may even call the boys in blue to roust them from my front porch. Like that old song says, "Freaky needle-nosed nuisances need not apply." No, what I'm looking for is, again, smoooooothness.

Just some background, the preceding drivel, to let you--my one or two reader(s)--know why I was pleased, earlier tonight, when I ventured into the back room, the cat room, to root around for the wireless router disk. I was pleased, yes, to not only find the disk but to also run across a few blasts from the past: a Cross mechanical pencil that writes like it's made out of silk, a black roller ball pen that is smooth and has, also, the added bonus of a laser pointer button and a blue LED light button, and the PC game No One Lives Forever, a first-person-shooter set in 1960s England, the protagonist a sexy brown-haired spy named Cate Archer. I hadn't been in that room for a while (I'm slightly allergic to felines) so it was nice to find some old friends. Oh. And I also discovered my Social Security Card, tucked safely away in the bosom of Cate Archer's CD jewel case. The SS Card: always a damned good thing to keep track of, eh?

***

I have a son who either cares not to listen to me, is deaf, is set in his ways, is stubborn, is untrainable, or is just plain stoooopid. I truly don't believe that he is the latter, so it must just be a conglomeration of the previous attributes that affects our poor Oliver, the cute dear little orphan. We got a new sofa and a new recliner about a month ago and I have been doing my damnedest to convey to the boys that they are not welcome on the furniture anymore, damn it. I've put gates and my guitar on the cushions and blocked off the recliner with a TV dinner serving tray and Louie seems to get it but Oliver? He seems to be totally oblivious if said guards are not in place. See, the couch that I had before, a nice newer piece of furniture from my passed uncle's estate, was virtually--hell, was--ruined by the dynamic duo o' dogs. Their smell, their dirt, their weight all served to age the sofa before its time and make it virtually unsittable. Oh, and dear Ollie had the penchant for pulling and prying with his little teeth the stuffing from the cushions and their backs. Great fun, huh? Dogs destroying. So, the rule was set: No dogs on the furniture no more. Well, Oliver hasn't seemed to have gotten the memo. I've caught him a few times on his favorite old perch atop the left back cushion at the window. This way, I presume, he can get his stink all over the new couch and ruin the cushion and gaze out the window at his whim. I caught him today, as I was walking up the stairs with my basket of freshly-laundered clothes and I let him know, in no uncertain terms, that it was his bad, his blow, his ill. Perhaps I was little forceful with the pear-plump dude, but, hell, between his mastication foibles and his overactive Inside bladder (though I let him and Lou out late at night, every night) and his cushion-destroying peccadilloes, he pushes my buttons in the wrong wrong wrong way, sometimes. I still love the little guy, though, perhaps because of his idiosyncrasies.

And Lou remains The. Best. Dog. Evah.

***

Michigan: You don't like the weather, wait five minutes. Yesterday it was 84 and sunny and today it is windy and damp and 50 degrees or so, making yesterday feel like summer and today feel like an early Fall. And it's only the 16th of April. Confused yet?

DISSEMBLE NO MORE

It is interesting where shit turns up, sometimes. Earlier this week (Monday, to be exact) I made a lunch of two corned beef sandwiches with pickles as their accomplices. I ate one for lunch and saved the other--and a couple of pickles--for later. On the way home from work, I stopped at Little Caesar's and jigged out of the store (like the commercials) with a Hot-n-Ready. I'd thought that I put the left-over sandwich and pickles in the fridge to take to work on Tuesday. Well, Tuesday rolled around and the sandwich was nowhere to be found. Huh, I thought, maybe did I throw it away? I mentally shrugged and took some cold pizza to work to eat for lunch.

I never thought about the sandwich again. It drifted out of my mind, out of my life, like so many gossamer clouds on a summer's day.

Until today. Egads, like the cat, the sandwich came back! Dissemble no more! For I hear the beating of its dyed-pink meat heart! It is there! There, I say! Beneath the wood planks of the floor, I hear the beating of its hideous heart! Yeah. Uh, either that...or in the freezer. And, yes, I hear the pickles chiming in, too.

And, so...it went like this:

Meagan [looks stage-right, honestly perplexed]: "Um, Adam? Did you mean to put your sandwich in the freezer? Oh, and the pickles, too?"

I think my brain is turning to Cream of Wheat. I think that, sometimes (often, lately) I'm kind of a moron.

Talk about a blackout! Shit, I don't even remember putting that foodstuff in the freezer! I'm doomed, doomed I say! Doomed to live out the rest of my life putting things in weird places. Next I'll be putting my clothes in the toilet and flushing. Next I'll be storing my cell phone in the microwave. Next I'll be--verily!--putting my bread and cereal in the refrigerator! Oy vey.

AHHHHHHHHH...

It is like having a new computer. The screen, which was cracked and suffering nontransparent brown-black spider slashes across the top and the bottom and somewhat diagonally down from right to left, is fixed. It cost a buck and a quarter, but it is definitely worth it. It had gotten to the point where I didn't even want to crack (no pun intended) the fucking thing. It was too much of a melancholy practice. ("Pwactice?! I know I'm supposed to be the leader of this team and I give my heart and soul during the game, but...but what are we talkin' about? Pwactice?!" Allen Iverson, circa 2006.)

Yes, it sucked to look upon the tragedy of the cracked laptop...when I happened to have it to myself. (I'm faaaaar too passive-aggressive when it comes to using my personal personal computer, the one that I bought for myself to use exclusively. I feel that I, when come off as a selfish prick when I say to whoever is using it, "Hey, I want to use my laptop. I don't know when I'll be off of it. My muse has trouble speaking up sometimes. Sometimes, it takes a while for her to talk to me." My muse is often silenced by my disinclination to speak up; she is damned-near cut off at the knees.)

Hell, it's a work in progress.

(You can see that I haven't been on here for a long while--the writing is stacatto, jumbled and jumpy. Meh, it is what it is.)

Here's something you don't see every day: On Friday, my partner and I were heading back to the headquarters when we came up to a construction zone. We saw red-and-blue bubbles up ahead at the intersection. "Uh-oh," she said, "looks like someone got popped." I nodded. As I trundled slowly past the orange barrels and past the crews laying and smoothing the cement, the scenario revealed itself: Some lady, older it seemed (I don't really know how old because the whole time we were stopped at the light, her face was turned to the empty passenger seat, and she was seeming to get something out of her purse--long time looking) some lady had driven her red Cadillac smack dab into a freshly-laid road-square of cement. And by "freshly-laid," I mean, like, laid an hour or two before. All four tires of her Caddy were sunk midway into the cement and some had splashed up on her quarter panels. That, uh, that would...suck. Not only the damge to the car and its tires, but, come on, the embarrasment of being stuck in virgin cement, while a lane of traffic has nothing else to do but slowly inch past, the great majority of the drivers muttering something along the lines of "you stupid ass," "nice going," or, my favorite, "where'd you get your license? a Cracker Jack box?" Eeeeesh. That airplane commercial comes to mind: Wanna get away?

And the lady says, "Hell, yes, please...please?!"

Well, as Phil Collins said before, "Hello, I must be going." Hi. Bye. It's good to be back. Maybe I'll post more of these thing-a-majigs. Meagan and I have Bad Lieutenant with Nic Cage. I've read good things about it. Hopefully it stands up to the talk.

Peef ow.