The Forgotten Cat

I had a rough night last night. I went into my Mama's garage cleaning my miniature golf clubs. It was around 9:00ish. About 9:45 I heard the door to get back into the house lock. Oh, crap. She forgot about me. Surely my Dad would remember that I was in here and would come get me before they went to bed. Boy was I wrong. From inside the house I can hop on the kitchen counter, that is about the height of the doorknob and I can let my self into the garage. But getting back in is a different story. I can't reach the doorknob. On my way in I holler out "I'm going into the garage"! Then when I want to get back in, I scratch at the door and get let back in. Not tonight. They went to bed. I did a couple token scratches at the door around 10:15, nothing. 10:30 comes to pass, 10:45. I'm staring at the floor, board to death. Getting hungry, really thirsty. Come 11pm I already feel like Andy Dufrene from Shawshank Redemption had to spend a week in the hole. 11:15 I took matters into my paws, we'll sort of. I basically just started scratching the shit out the door and yelling at the top of my lungs. Something like this, "Hey!!! Hey!!!! It's me! Your freaking cat!!! Remember!!! Wake up you idiots!!! Open the freakin door!!! I'm hungry!!!!! I'm gonna piss on your cars if you don't open the door!!! Open the damn door!!!! F#@ken meooowwww!!!!! Finally, roughly 11:30 my Dad heard me. He was like was that you? I was like "No you freakin idiot, It was Santa Clause. Mama, wake up. Make me something to eat!!! So that was my lovely evening. Thanks for letting me vent.

Facebook: It's not just for pre-teens and pedofiles anymore.

I think that should be their new marketing slogan. It's true. Regular folks now have Facebook(or My Space) pages. I checked it out a couple years ago. It was chalk full of middle school kids and middle aged sickos pretending to be middle school kids. Now people that actually earn incomes have Facebook pages. Since I have blog, I can't really criticize. Like us bloggers they figured out its a great way to express you meaningless opinions and pretend you're more important than you really are. Girl's have figured out it's another medium in which they can make backhanded compliments to each other and have some spirited passive aggressive competition with each other. You know, like who can have their most friends in their network. Who can make them self look most like a Penthouse Pet in their photo. You ladies know that your Mom, co-workers, neighbors, pastor etc. can all access these photo's right? Please, I need a female that's on Facebook explain to me what it is about the site that makes you post a picture of yourself and two or three other friends giving weird signs with your hands while standing in front of a Chili's restaurant with your boobs pressed up to your chin. With all these females on the site, of course it's attracted plenty of males that see it as an optimal place to stalk..err, I mean network with their ex-girlfriends......This brings me to another thing. I'm hesitant to bring it up because it's a little embarrassing. This whole Twitter thing has just gotten really big. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but in short it's just people posting/texting everyone whatever they a doing at a given moment. When ever somebody does this this they call it "tweeting" or somebody will tell somebody else that they just sent a couple "tweets". I bring this up because when I was a baby the first nickname my Mama gave me was "Sweetpea". Saying the entire word "Sweetpea" quickly became too much of a task for her so she shortened it up to just "Sweets". Then not long after that, enunciating the S at the beginning for "Sweets" became to difficult and somehow got replace with a T. So since I've been about a year old my Mama's nickname for me has been "Tweets". Which was OK for till I was about two. But as I mentioned in my last blog I'm now 44 years old in cat years. Maybe 45 by now. Anyway, it's pretty embarrassing to have your Mom call you Tweets when you're 45 years old. She even does it in public. It's pretty humiliating. Now it's even worse. With all this Tweeting going on I'm constantly reminded of my childhood nickname that I somehow never shook. If you don't think it's that bad imagine your Mom still referring to you as your nickname from when you were 2 years old. Then you'll know how I feel.

Carty announces retirement. Effective immediately.

A couple weeks ago Carty came down with what I guess was a flu. He had the shits, was throwing up bile, it was pretty rough. He had a trip to the vet where they did a x-ray. The vet saw that his heart was a little enlarged. They said once he got better that he needed to have a follow up to have his heart looked at to make sure that he did not have heart disease. I guess it's genetic with cats of our breed. So the last couple of weeks it was kind of the elephant in the room between us. We knew it was there but we never really talked about. He didn't bring it up so I didn't bring it up. So this past Friday he had his follow up exam. Everything turned up OK, all things considered. They said he has some mild build up in his arteries but nothing that looks serious at this point. She told him just to cut back on red meat and cigars and we'll take a look in another year. This came as a huge surprise to me. I thought they would say it was at least bad enough to have to put him on some sort or expensive medications so the Vet could get a kick back from cat pharmaceutical company. I was wrong. I guess they have souls unlike human Doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Anyway, Carty has been pretty contemplative since then and in order to reduce stress he decided to retire. Yes, I asked the same question you are asking now. What the hell does Carty do? When he told me he was retiring early, I was like, retiring? Retiring from what? All you do is eat, sleep, shit and eat some more? Then he reminded me a couple year's ago my Mama named him Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of her company. Art Jewels and Treasures By Jen(AJATBJ). I somehow forgot Carty was making all the critical strategic decisions for her company. I don't know how I forgot. It clearly explains that state of AJATBJ. They haven't made a sale in months, my Mama hasn't has a blog post since last June. I asked what decisions he could possibly be making to cause stress in his life? When I brought this up Carty got pretty defensive. He said it was all part of a long term strategy. He started talking about how companies that grow too quickly lose direction and end up losing focus on their core business. He pointed out how in order to avoid bad PR he moved the annual shareholder meeting from the Cornell Hotel De France in San Francisco where a rack of lamb and champagne were on the menu to the coffee table in my Mama's living room, where everybody got a 3 piece meal from Popeye's Chicken and a Pepsi. He said the company has $432.65 in it's bank account which makes it more solvent than %90 of all American corporations. It also has no debt. He conned my Dad into financing the venture. I was about to counter back how none of this stuff should be causing stress in his life. But I never got that far. He started getting sentimental. Talking about he was going to miss the rush before a craft show. All the great people he's worked with over the year's. Seeing the company from it's birth and selling like one necklace in it's first year to the record breaking 2008, where sales were around $500 despite the worst economic down turn in decades. Then he started tearing up, I couldn't bring my self to talk shit to him like I usually would. I just gave him a pat on the shoulder and congratulated him. I asked him what he was going to do with all this free time now. He said was going to do some searching to find out who the "real Carty is" whatever the hell that means.....Anyway this got to thinking about aging. The cat book my Mama has says now that I'm 7 years old, that I'm 44 in cat years. Personally I don't feel a day older than 34. But anyway age does kind of creep up on you. You start to notice the small things. Like, I hate kids just a little more than I did just few months ago. I'm becoming more interested in RV's. I Tivo'ed 60 minutes. I complained that my Mama served me to much food at dinner a couple weeks ago. When I take a whiz it takes just a few seconds longer to start and few seconds longer to stop. When I go to the casino to bet football, I'm becoming more and more drawn to the bingo parlor. I might even go in one day. We'll maybe not. But my point is something you already know. Getting old sucks.

Bono VS. Mama....Part 2

You might remember back during football season myself and my Mama had a little competition/experiment where we would pick football games against the spread and whoever picked the most winners won. If you don't remember I kicked her ass. I got so far ahead that I stopped posting the results. I did the competition as a kind of experiment that will hopefully make me feel better. You know, I wanted some reassurance that my knowledge of the games actually help me win bets; that I'm not just at the mercy of dumb luck. Well it worked. At least in the short term. But for any good experiment you need to test and re-test to make sure the results are consistent. It's similar to how movie studios keep casting Sandra Bullock and Nicolas Cage in movies. They just really want to make sure that putting either one of them in a movie will guarantee that it will suck. So maybe five years from now they'll be comfortable not doing it. In this test I'm going to pick the NCAA Tournament Games against my Mama. If you don't have at least a little bit of an idea of what the NCAA Tournament(AKA March Madness) is, please click out of my blog now! No really, now! I don't want you reading my blog. Get the hell out of here!....Ok back to the contest. I'm going to use my in depth knowledge of college hoops for my picks. I'm assuming my Mama will use her same method of picking the team from the region where she likes the food more. She is going to have quite the dilemma in the 1st round of the tourney when Cal-Berkley(Bay area) squares off against Maryland. Dim-Sum VS Crab Cakes!! It's going to be tough call for her. But since I've already beat her head to head during football, Carty is also joining us. However, he agreed to make his picks based in what the result would be if the respective teams mascots would get into a conflict with each other. Example, the LSU Tigers are playing the Butler Butler Bulldogs. Clearly if they had a conflict a Tiger would not just beat up a Bulldog, it would probably eat the poor bastard. Hence Carty will pick LSU. There are some ground rules. Like if a human goes goes against and animal, they can't use a weapon in the conflict unless it's implicit in the name of the team that human would be armed. Examples would be the Xavier Muskateers, USC Trojans, Portland State Vikings. An example of an unarmed human team would be the Texas A&M Aggies. Dictionary.com defines an Aggie simply as a student at an Agricultural School. Texas A&M plays the Brigham Young Cougars in the 1st round of the tournament. So a Cougar would surely take some pansy College student. But you could argue that if the student joined the Church of Latter Day saints and tithed faithfully the BYU Cougar could let him off the hook. There are 63 games in the tournament. It starts Thursday. Me and Carty could have our paws full trying to figure this stuff out.

Start Your Engines!!!

It that time of year again! One week a year I become a Redneck Republican Southerner. This is the week. Why this week? NASCAR is town, that's why! If you can't get excited about watching good'ol boys driving in circles, we'll I reckon you need to move to Scandinavia or something. They have all sorts of festivities going on around town. I'll be at the race on Sunday. I'll be in section 103 row 14. Come by and shake my paw. You can't miss me. I'll be the cat sitting next to a 32oz. Budweiser tallboy with a straw in it and yelling at the drivers things like "put him in the wall!!", "you turn left you idiot, left!!", "Tony Stewart, you have bigger tits than my Mama!". I'm going all out on the Redneck thing too. I'll be wearing the snappy jacket above. I didn't think there were quite enough advertisements on the jacket, so being the enterprising feline that I am, I sold my own add space. It's at the tailor now getting decals added for Kitty Kaviar, IHOP, Glen Lerner & Associates, Albertson's Brand Vodka, Family Christian Bookstores, Cosmic Catnip and the Adult Video Superstore. Also when engaging in conversation with fellow honkies I'll openly question Jeff Gordon's sexuality. Conveniently blame the economy on Obama. Call Democrats socialist for the stimulus/bailing out the banks, but NEVER mention that the auto makers that sponsor all the cars we're watching were also bailed out or the fact we're perfectly OK with those bailouts. Best of all I'm thinking about packing heat....I hope to see you there.

I thought I was dreaming.

Unfortunately I was was not. I did see the Jonas Brothers "performing" with Stevie Wonder on the Grammys on Sunday night. I was kind of three quarters asleep while it was on and it really didn't register. Then I saw some news about it today. I can't believe it. The Jonas Brothers? I didn't know they were a real band. I thought they were a fictional band drummed up by the Disney Channel. Like Hannah Montana, who was also singing on the Grammys for some reason. I still think they might be fictional, I can't tell. I don't think they were really playing the guitars they were holding. They were strumming but there there was no corresponding sound coming out of the TV. Poor Stevie. He had know idea of the situation he was put in. I'm sure it was no coincidence they picked the blind guy to perform with these dweebs. The chance of a musical legend the stature of Stevie that has the ability see, performing with these jerk offs is zero. It's a cruel trick played by the Grammy people. They should be ashamed.

Speaking of crappy Disney programming, I just found out that High School Musical is set in a high school in Albuquerque. I went out my way to check out a couple scenes on You Tube. That place isn't anything like an Albuquerque high school. Did they do any research at all? If it's was like an ABQ high school the kids would have names like Yvette, Chuey and Ilene. They would also have kids with white surnames as first names mismatched with Hispanic last names, like Carson Jaramillo, McKenna Sanchez, Jordan Altamirano and Duncan Chavez. The tallest player on the basketball team would be 5'9". The student parking lot would be filled with dropped Honda Preludes and Chevy S-10's, with stereo systems that are worth more than the vehicle it self. The school would also be rife with gang violence and a third of the female students would be pregnant. To make the musical numbers authentic you would have to mix in phrases like "I know hah", "que no" and "a la modies". If you don't know what "a la modies" means, I can't really explain, but you can try this. Every time you want to say "wow!", "oh my god!", "holy shit!" or "that's amazing!", try saying "a la modies!!" then you'll figure you what it means. You'll also get weird looks, but you will figure out what it means.

Finally, with February being Black History Month, you see a bunch of tributes to influential African-Americans. They tend to be the same few people, you know. MLK, Jackie Robinson, George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, John Shaft, Samuel L. Jackson. All those people are great but we've all heard about their accomplishments over and over. So in honor of Black History Month I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going a list some not so obvious and overplayed things that I'm thankful for, that have been introduced to our world by African-Americans.

-the slam dunk

-cone bread(That's spelled right. White people make corn bread which is similar but not quite the same. Black people make cone bread. Cone bread is better)

-the word "beeeaaaach"

-mixing fried chicken and waffles

-the endzone celebration after touchdowns

-the need for 15 yard penalties for excessive endzone celebrations

-malt liquor

-for inventing the ability to use the word "motherf***er" as a noun, pronoun, superlative and punctuation. You can use it as an entire sentence really.

-creating the comedy that is white people trying to be cool by using black slang words and phrases that are either at least two years out of date or were never really used by the black community at all. Examples.."po-dunk-a-dunk","that's tight","you go girl","gettin jiggy wit it","what up dog" and "da bomb".

-for letting white people keep winning at winter sports. You can include other pussy white boy sports like skateboarding in here too.

-for loving hefty white girls that would otherwise be discarded.

-keeping Cadillac in business(at least for the time being)

-keeping Tommy Hilfiger in business.

-keeping whatever companies make car rims in business.

I'm sure I'm missing a few....Sorry black people you don't get credit for low riders, you stole those from Mexicans.

Happy Super Bowl!!

It Super Bowl Sunday! The most American Day of the year. A celebration of commercialism, drinking and eating in excess and the most American sport out there. Football!! Sure other Holiday's have these elements, but the cool part about the Super Bowl is that you get to spend it with people you like. Unlike Thanksgiving or Christmas where you are forced to listen to your drunk uncle, A-hole cousin etc. For me it's a bitter sweet day. It signifies the last day of football till Labor Day. Incredibly sad. Also, you all know I was pulling for Obama in the election. But I do disagree with him closing Guantanamo Bay. I think it should be kept open to detain people that don't watch the Super Bowl. I have utter contempt for those that do not at least go through the ritual of at least watching the commercials. I can think of few acts that are more un-American and treasonous than not at least attending a party. Anybody that goes out of there way to not watch it is threat to National security. They need to be locked up.......Super Bowl prediction....Steelers 27 Cardinals 13.