Not a great picture, but here is the beginning of my new tattoo. It's my left arm, if that's not clear.
Why a cat pegacorn (pegacornicat), you ask? Because of that old tattoo axiom: forearms are for appliances, upper arms for iconic animals.
The dude who is doing it had this drawing up for his next appointment. It is a Gummi Bear diving off of a pizza diving board into a swimming pool full of Gummi Bear parts. (He included spines which I think is a nice touch.) I wanted to get it.
Achewood poses a dialectic. Let it be noted that Roast Beef here describes my next tattoo.
Cats are sleeping a lot these days. It's as if they're cold-blooded but the opposite.
You know you're getting old when you're genuinely saddened by the death of a journalist. For me, it's the second one I've gotten sad about, so maybe I'm getting really old.
R Kelly acquitted. As if this were a question. One good thing to come from all this: six or eight albums-worth of trial-based songs from Kels.
First, my brother and his girlfriend were in town this week, enjoying the rain, and we went to the Quarry House for some more pickles
then down the street to AFI for the Robert Mitchum retrospective, which was playing Thunder Road. If you haven't seen it, Mitchum plays a moonshine runner through the hills of Tennessee in the 50s. He is easily the toughest, most smooth-talking Tennessee moonshine runner I've ever seen on film, with nary a hint of a southern accent. Verdict: rent it, then go to DollyWood and ride Thunder Road: the Ride.
So. The other day at the grocery store I looked at the cereal aisle, which I never do because I never eat cereal. What I learned there was that the nation's cereal manufacturers have lost their damned minds. For serious, look: Froot Loops with Darkberries? What, did they run out of types of berries to add, so they just made up Darkberries? Or was it the fact that they're not berries at all, so you had to make up a new word that connotes berries but isn't tied to the idea that there is actually fruit in the cereal? Why not Goozleberries or Flibbleberries? Either of those names would be cooler and less ominous-sounding than Darkberries.
In other Froot Loops-makes-up-words-news, here is this thing called Froot Loops Smoothie, which includes "Yogurty-covered pieces," which might be the grossest thing I've ever heard about.
And Frosted Flakes has entered the small-but-growing energy drink/cereal crossover world.
And now the magazines in the grocery stores, they tell you what you think before you even think it. Like here where they tell me that I don't think Hilary Duff is edgy.
I got bored yesterday and played a free poker tournament online. I won a ticket to another tournament which if I win will give me a seat to this year's World Series of Poker. I predict that should be easy enough.
The big thing for the cats about the new apartment is the sleeping. For Pedro, this means his vampiric tendencies are even more prominent:
Punk is the opposite, whether out of spite or not:
She is also being very supportive of my new quest
They like sleeping so much that they will even do it with each other.
Also, the MC at the comedy show Sunday gave me a card for his blog, NotHatingJustSaying, which is pretty funny and was simultaneously linked on Gawker. Blogrolled!
As new residents of Columbia Heights, I'm going to use the made-up term "CoHa" as much as possible to describe our new neighborhood. FYI.
Moving was fairly painless, except for the pain that still lingers from carrying things, and Punk has really taken to the new place.
She likes looking out windows. She also likes houses with no dogs. She also loves America's Best Dance Crew.
She also loves sleeping in the bed. NOT FOR LONG PUNK
Pedro, on the other hand, is a crybaby who is scared and hides all the time like a total baby
Soon we will be having cookout times on the front porch.
This guy at work on Tuesday asked me four or five times for a glass of milk, which we don't have, because, he said, "it would be funny." I disagreed. He stayed strong until the end:
Have you seen the new five dollar bills? When did the treasury hire the Teletubbies to design our money?
When Murph gets sleepy, he sleeps: But one can never accuse him of keeping us from the party.
BONUSBONUSBONUS Pedro was caught lounging in a compromising position:
BONUSBONUSBONUS #2 Ana on eating blood: "The thing about blood is that you can only eat so much of it." Truer words have only been spoken periodically.
At breakfast/lunch/dinner today at 2Amys (a restaurant which we've largely abandoned since becoming completely addicted to pho), a particular local entrepreneur/chef turned up behind us as we were finishing.
This particular EC has been a patron of establishments Ana has worked at in the past, and was --to put it kindly--not someone you'd like to wait on. So it was funny when we overheard him discussing the prices of numerous bottles of wine, each of which he found too expensive. But whatever! It's a person's right to do what they want with the money they reap from the cakes they sell for $60, right? Right.
Anyway, maybe overhead is really high these days.
But the whole point of the story is that when we left, this Maserati was parked illegally in front of us:
We were both hoping desperately that it was his, but on a little bit of hunting, turns out it isn't . (College stickers don't match up.) I was really hoping that he drove a red car named "Rocket." Because that particular moniker connotes lots of funny, gross things.
BONUSBONUSBONUS Pedro, after 6+ months of not being allowed in the bedroom (he's a danger), still thinks he's getting in:
So New Cat, aka PJ Winkleman, aka Funky Winkerbean, aka Steven Seagal: The Cat, shockingly didn't fare too well here at the house full of other cats and a dog. So after months of fear and depression, we found her a new home. I told her new owner, Riff Raff, that she could have New Cat if she paid me $40,000 in unmarked bills.
We made the exchange tonight, and Riff Raff promptly injected New Cat with horse tranquilizer.
"No," I exclaimed! "You need to use cat tranquilizer!"
Riff Raff thought for a moment and then said indignantly, "What do I look like, some sort of cat tranquilizer factory?"
So that's that. I'll make Riff Raff send periodic updates for our enjoyment.
When booking flights, it always seems like the best idea to leave early and come back late, so as to maximize the amount of vacation time. In practice, though, it's probably the worst idea ever. Working all night before having to catch a 6am flight is brutal. Especially now that I'm old. The wrinkles on my forehead? Not even a month old.
Luckily, the hotel we checked into when I got to town was underwater. Granted, the dolphins were really small, but it's great for the complexion to sleep completely submerged.
Murals are really big in San Francisco. You can't see, but at the far left there is a depiction of Jerry Garcia walking into the ether. This place is on Haight Street. Self-consciousness apparently hasn't made its way over there yet.
I was going to concoct an entire narrative for the trip, including fake events and people, but I have to be at work in an hour so that idea will have to wait. In its place are real events and people like Ana and her little brother at the corner store that sells pre-packaged cocktail-making kits for those who need a little help:
Then there's her nephew, who likes to spin around and act like a Power Ranger. Here he is utilizing his patented stay-awake method:
Ana and I had a very special vacation staring contest, which I won.
Then she posed for possibly the best portrait ever taken:
Next are two montages. First, Ana with brother and sister doing some dancing and posing:
Next is Clarissa with Ana at dinner (for those in the Bay area the restaurant is Weird Fish on Mission. Delicious). They move alot when they talk.
I bought an animatronic frog for the nephew's Christmas present. The box included some amazing slogans:
Ana learned to shapeshift:
Then we ate steak:
There was this cat that hangs out at the corner store and looked at me funny, so I gave it the what-for:
So all in all it was a pretty good holiday, obvs.
BONUSBONUSBONUS
Teeners is back!
Also, what is wrong with celebrities and why can't they laugh like regular people? Is stuff really that funny to them?
Hey, Gang! I'm 30! The big 3-0! Over the hill! The new 20! For the festivities, all I asked for was what every red-blooded 30-year old would want: ice cream cake, candy, stuffed animals, t-shirts, DVDs, comic books and sneakers. Guess what? Mofos came through.
First, Noms got her friend who owns a Baskin-Robbins (we know people) to make an ice cream cake with a picture of me eating a frozen banana on it.
It was delicious.
Corrie and Jordan got me candy. M&Ms make dark chocolate peanut candy now. Game over.
Next, Wendy and Mikey got me a stuffed wildcat, which is the product of an extended inside joke that is much too bad to be shared here. Luckily, the stuffed wildcat can talk, which is just awesome enough to share here:
Joe got me T-Shirts from the show that he attended before the party; they're pretty awesome, but not nearly as awesome as the gift he gave me the next day.
Naomi got me this one:
Greg and Kyle gave me this picture:
Brian, who came as Michael's emissary (for some reason he couldn't make it--something about being "stranded" in "Japan"), gave me a "Lady Catchin' Sac." This means that he doesn't like Ana. Don't tell.
First part of the Lady Catchin' Sac is a DVD wherein Lyn teaches me some magic tricks:
Next is some sounds of puppies, kittens and more, with which to melt the hearts of the ladies:
And finally, fireside reflections with which to bed the ladies. I haven't tried the system yet, but I'm pretty sure it's failproof.
Other Brian gave me what looks to be the best family-friendly DVD of all time, starring Rupert Grant of Harry Potter fame:
That's right! It's about a youngster who can't stop farting and goes into space!
Kyle gave me fancy comicbooks. Perfect for eating candy with.
Joe got me some Atlanta-themed sneakers, which he thought I'd be interested in for some reason. Look! Atlanta likes sports cars!
Finally, Murph got me Windows XP so I could use my new phone. I decided, however, that it would be cooler to just wipe out my entire hard drive instead. How am I supposed to understand these directions?
I'm not, I say.
So I call Murph and tell him that compruter no work, and he proceeds to roll by and spend the next ten hours typing in "commands" into "interfaces" that in the end allow him to find most of the stuff that I erased. Thank God: a year's worth of pictures of my drunk friends have not been lost to the ether.
One of the perks of being American is that when you have something, and it works fine, you get still get something else that serves the same purpose only because it's prettier. Case in point:
New camera is everything I dreamed it would be: it takes photos and allows me to seamlessly transfer them to my personal computer. In short, what people used to dream about. Today I took it out for a spin.
First, I took a bad picture of Ana stretching in preparation for eating pho:
Which may sound weird unless you knew that she was going to fill her belly with cow tendons and raw steak:
After that we went to see Senior at Rusticles, where she is "cocktailing". Since she was lolligagging around southeast Asia a month ago, she sees this development as a bummer. We see it as funny. Ha, ha! Dana, you're bummed!
When we got home, my copy of Mac OSX 10.5 LEOPARD was waiting for me. Of the 300 new features, the only one I am likely to use: new backgrounds for PhotoBooth! Look! Four pictures of me as if I were underwater!
Then I remembered that there's this new cat in the house. I was pretty sure she was still alive, but I thought I should take some pictures to convince her former owner. Look, former owner! She's even eating!
She loves being photographed. I've heard that's the case with kidnap victims.
Such a pretty cat. Aren't you! AREN'T YOU?!!
Oh yeah, there's other, older, fatter cats still in the house.
Also, there are also dudes ready to go out on the town.
BONUSBONUSBONUS A drawing of Ana and me (in my best Don Martin style) from a long time ago that I just re-found:
Achewood poses a dialectic. Let it be noted that Roast Beef here describes my next tattoo.
