July 19, 2003 08:01 AM Rant # 3

Well, here we are again. I would like to say, for starters, that I am writing these in advance. Well, trying to anyway. The reason for this is because I am, ah, what's the word…let me consult my thesaurus…ah, lazy. I guess if I'm to stay in character, I shouldn't really care if I meet any self-imposed deadlines and definitely shouldn't worry about pleasing you sympathetic friends, stoners and the accidental visitor who might actually read this. However, after working a shitty wage for two years providing superior service to yuppie assholes who wanted something other than a burger, I'm finding old habits are hard to break. So yeah, with any luck, none of this shit will be all that current. I have little faith in myself, though, so I'm giving myself two months tops until I start frantically typing these out Sunday night and a month after that until the deadline is little more than a fleeting moment of optimism. Maybe I'll surprise myself. We'll see.

So, I was thinking that me just complaining constantly might, MIGHT get kinda old after a while. So to keep things fresh, I'll talk about something that actually DOESN'T bother me in some way. Imagine that.

Now, on to the topic at hand. I am, more or less, an animal lover. I say less because I am not and will never be a vegetarian. Some animals are just too damn tasty to give up. Especially cows. Other animals, particularly of the feline and canine variety, have an effect on me similar to that of heat and pressure on coal. I become like some other person. Some weird, well adjusted, not angry or brooding guy who kinda looks like me, except he smiles more.

To make what is already a long story a bit shorter, we adopted two kittens. For those not current on our domestic situation, that amounts to myself, the wifey (Laurie), one dog (Sam), five cats (in descending order: Smoky, Gracie,Chloe, Gibson and Jack/David/Charlie/Mike/Alobar/Robbins/Rupert, we really aren't sure about the last one's name yet), four misc tropical fish (I forgot most of their names, but I know one is Trinity, one is Neo), one goldfish (Little Richie), and last, but not least, a bottom sucking algae eater of unknown Asian descent (Kevin Spacy; specifically his character from LA Confidential or Sherrie, as in the wife from 24. It depends who you ask). I think with a few more fish, a bird for Laurie and some kind of lizard for me, we can finally call our home full. Maybe.

Now to talk about the kittens. I feel I should explain the names first. We were originally going to adopt one kitten to help socialize the dog (theother cats think of him as a plague on their house) and also to help socialize one of our more antisocial cats. We decided to get two because…well, I could certainly make a lengthy list of justifications, but I think it's really simple enough to say that we wanted to. The idea then would be that we'd each name one. We each had veto powers, which I think was mostly to keep me from naming one Muad'Dib or Shai'hulud or something. At the same time, we're in the middle of a little book exchange program, where I'm making her read William Gibson, who is my favorite author and she is making me read Tom Robbins, who is an insufferable prick, but hey, she seems to dig insufferable pricks, huh? Maybe I just dislike my own kind, same as spiders. ANYWAY, William Gibson doesn't really have a lot of character names that would transfer well to a cat, so I was thinking of just naming the little monkey Gibson. She would name hers Robbins or possibly Alobar, who is some guy that seems to have a lot of trouble finding a job where he isn't summarily executed after X amount of time has passed and one of the lead characters from Jitterbug Perfume, her favorite book by said prick. We ended up adopting a Siamese mix (whatever happened to Siam anyway?) and a three-legged Manx. We knew about the Manx, he was the reason we went there to that particular shelter to begin with. The woman bought the house she lives in so she can rescue cats. She's the sweetest woman you'll ever meet and I really wouldn't mind if she were my aunt. But maybe that's cause my aunts thought my potential wife was a man-hungry, kidney-stealing slave trader, but that is a rant for another time. So we're there and I see this Siamese mix and I normally hate Siamese cats. They look…evil. But this one didn't have the Siamese body type, just the coloring, so I picked him up and he started purring. I practically slammed the money down on the table and walked out with him. Back to the naming.

We figured the author names had pretty much flown out the window. Siamese cat, he should have an Asian name, right? Now even though I'm pretty sure Siam turned, more or less, into Thailand, we didn't know any Thai names and Asian seems to equate more or less with Japanese for us for some reason. So we were trying to find Japanese names and everything sucked. So then we're thinking Asian food. But the only stuff I tend to like is Teriyaki and General Tsao's Chicken and Laurie wouldn't let me name him General Tsao. So Gibson it is. I figure it's as good a name as any other. The three legged Manx is kind of the same thing. The Manx breed originated in England, so she was trying to think of distinctively English names, yet suitable for a cat. That didn't really work. The author name thing was out. So now it's just names she likes or names that she feels like calling him, such as Mike, Dave/David, Charlie and Jack, with Jack being the current favorite. That's pretty much it. Just something I was excited about and wanted to tell people. Consider yourselves informed.

Posted at 08:01 AM | Comments? (432)