An odd sequence of cats

First I had to get a CAT scan of my head (over 2 years now of faint and dizzy spells).

Then my wife came home from her job all upset (hours cut back to almost nothing), so we went to go for a walk.  Usually walking helps.  Barely 4 houses up the road was a dead kitten in the road -- once a perky thing owned by a neighbor friend (whose son is still in the hospital after a major motorcycle accident) -- so we got to call her and ask what she wanted us to do ... not happy.

Then on the very next block, an abandoned cat we've been taking care of comes running over to say hi with its eye all puffed up and infected.  This poor cat was found with her eye actually blown out after the owner's house was gutted by a fire.  Long story.   Owners moved out, left the cat behind.  Nice cat though, orange tabby, didn't seem to care about her eye, she'd always see us walking and come over for hugs, I'd pick her up, she'd purr like crazy.  We didn't have room for a 5th cat in our house, but we fed her when we could.  A concerned neighbor took her to a vet as was told it's roughly $1,200 to fix the eye socket properly (more than anyone would sanely pay for someone else's cat).  Still, she had some bowls and people fed her ...

Then we were a block from 7-11 and thirsty but had only a dime between us.  So, that was the least therapeutic walk ever.

I mention this now, because I have more cat items:

The owners of the orange cat were said to have come to get her (finally!), though trying their best to dodge responsibility.  One can only assume the cat has been euthanized now, because humans (and/or fate) are just that cruel.

Oh, the CAT scan came back negative ... the natural joke would be "no brains detected."  Everything normal in there.  Still feel funky a few random hours per week.

On the up side, we just saw "Coraline" - an all-around beautiful piece of work where a stray cat helps save the day.  Wow, some of the backdrops and scenery are amazing, and the story is fun, too.

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2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #36, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.

2009 resolved

Comically, after splitting up my blogs last year, trying to make more sense out of them, I ended up with no place to put my sci-fi/fantasy/weird clips and news. Sure, the dark stuff goes in Dark Windows (which has now posted over 70,000 words!), and the "weird news" goes into Unlikely Times. But there's this big gap. And I resolved to resolve it in 2009, so here it is ... while I may still add strange science notes here, I can put futuristic/odd story, dream and poem bits here as well.

I also decided to be bold and launch my blog of word lore ... WordFixx!

I hope this whole mash-up keeps you entertained.

Just a Cheezburger

Oh no, if there's one thing you don't want, it's to give me a tool where I can add smartass comments to photos ...


moar funny pictures

Just a light moment. More of my oddities can be found here.

Are you still there?

I was just out at a local screenwriters group.  The usual mix of nice people from widely different backgrounds and different levels of experience.  Trouble is, I've been having some deja vu on writing-related topics lately.  It's just the same advice over and over, and debunking the same misinformation time and again.  Someone at tonight's meeting talked about having read dozens of books about screenwriting, and hearing all kinds of conflicting stories.  At some point it becomes counterproductive.  People are looking for some answer other than "work hard and cross your fingers," but there ARE no shortcuts.  Work doesn't get done by wiggling our noses and wishing real hard.

It turns out that writing is the easy part.  Who knew that it would be so hard to get anyone to listen to our words?

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2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #35, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.