The Daily Adventures of Mercat

LJ just ate my whole post.

Dammit.


I was already Not Giving enough Fucks to care, so, sorry. I was working on a nice little almost-carefree and certainly fucksgiven-free* not-exactly-a rant about the stereotypical genderized joke commentary and some strange assumptions and possibly dive into a little of the mysterious dark world of omg me and relationships** but I currently don't have the desire to retype it (no fucks given currently), so. I don't even have the energy to let this paragraph trawl off (that's like trail off, right?) in an ellipsis because there is far too much implied subtlety in an ellipsis and I am not implying anything right now. There is not enough depth in my stream of consciousness, I am that much in not-giving-a-fuck-mode. (I'll probably explain tomorrow.) Critical depth has not been reached. (Ha, hydraulics joke.)

Au contraire, the material may still be ripe for publishing tomorrow, as I try to scrape together a traditional Thanksgiving post because I am really not feeling it this year. I am just... out of food references.

Also let it be known that my cat's breath smells like asshole and I can smell it from 3 feet away. This could be an issue.

*Is that like Thanksgiving? New thing: it is. Happy Fucksgiven! I imagine this is because of the similarity to "turducken" as well.

**Accidentally typed relationshops. I don't know what that is but it sounds like something that exists in a hilarious alternate-reality version of Diagon Alley. [EDIT: It also might be like photoshops. Still hilarious.]



Problem: I think I am a better (read: funnier) writer when I am tired/out-of-it. I think this is because I just stream-of-consciousness better. I don't know how to control this letting-go-ness though.

Have I been busy. Moving things. Cleaning rooms. Trying to get rid of ant infestations.

Learned a new word: formication, which is the feeling you have ants crawling all over you.

Trying to get everything arranged for Outer Banks and Savannah. Trying to get everything arranged for Raiders 30th. Visiting Gramps in the hospital, hoping they will get him out. I hope he can get his heart a little stronger and last more than a few months. I keep thinking about him reading The Walrus and the Carpenter to my fourth grade class, and "faire to Midland", and I want him to get out of the hospital so I can show him my senior presentation. And I keep thinking about ragtime and Hitchhiker's Guide and Ernie Kovacs... Oh, Gramps. Get better, please.

Anyway. Awesomesauce on a stick:



Carrots are orange because of politics!

Like any Cracked article, six "insane coincidences". Sadly, #6 and #5 are the best, because they really are odd coincidences. #1, a little bit, but also data manipulating; there are 365 days each year (except for leap years), and TONS OF SHIT HAPPENS EVERY DAY. Not to mention since our country's founding there have been 234 4th's of July. (Not 4ths of July... they were still 24 hours long, har har) I been I could find you ~even more! strange and unusual~ coincidences out of those 234 days. Shit, son.

Um, and also. #3 bothers me a lot. Why, you may ask? Because it is NOT COINCIDENCE. IT IS CAUSATION. This is the first time I've had to paraphrase this phrase to say "correlation =/= coincidence". The Wright brothers... who lived and worked in Dayton... invented heavier-than-air, powered flight. And they kept doing research here. So when the Air Force got created in 1947, we eventually ended up with *le gasp* an Air Force Base in Dayton. Which encouraged more flight technology and research in the city and the state! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you end up with a state that has produced SO MANY ASTRONAUTS. We fucking invented flight, now gtfo.

P.S. I do find that article fascinating, my engineer brain just jumped at this annoyance and also I've noticed my writer's voice, a.k.a. my blogging tone, a.k.a. my making comments on the internet voice, has gotten more and more hyperbolic as I have. I don't have a problem with that except where I still do it when talking serious business and since it's text, I'm afraid people will take me literally.

Here's the truth, I am pretty damn shy "IRL". I just enjoy being ridiculous and over the top (...sometimes).

HEY, DID YOU SEE WHERE THEY FUCKING FOUND TANIS?! A little on the technology behind that.

I made a lot of Raiders references the day that was all over. I don't think many people got it, BUT, perfect timing for the 30th, non?! I can't wait to see what happens with the digs. Although I'm sure it will be quiiiiite a while coming.

In case you are still having a terrible day (as I did), here is a MacGuyver intro a guy did of his cat, Steve McQueen. It's beyond awesome.

I am a graduate (assuming I didn't fail my grad-level tech elective, that was awful). I have no idea what I'm doing except for this summer, lots of projects and trips and relaxation planned because this year was a bitch.

I miss UD already, although I do not miss engineering.

I can't recall if I posted already, but Friday was a crazy day. We did TOSRV backwards, sort of, so we rode Sunday's part (up from Portsmouth to C-bus) on Friday to be able to go to graduation Sunday. I got 2.5 hours of sleep because I turned in my last take-home exam at 2:30 am Friday, and I did the whole ride both days (on the tandem with dad), somehow. Anyway we got two flats Friday morning but when we were getting into Chillicothe we saw a kitten on the side of the road that had been hit. It was maybe eight weeks old and its right arm had been snapped in two and was hanging on by some skin, and it was trying to crawl away. It was so, so, so sad. We took an extra plastic bag we had and picked it up and tried to look up an animal hospital on my phone, but we couldn't get anything, and, of course, we were on our bikes anyway. So we rode into town with me holding the tiny kitten in the bag in my hands on the back of the tandem and we took it into the sheriff. He called the dog warden but the dog warden wouldn't take it. My mom and I were in the lobby with him and he just looked at us and said, "I don't know what to do." My mom and I, I'm sure, were thinking, "are you for real? You're THE LOCAL AUTHORITY, you are local and we are from out of town and you don't have any ideas?" So we asked if he knew anyone who would or could take it and he asked around and found a lady in the office who called a vet's office who said they would take it. I felt so bad for it but I had high hopes because he was barely bleeding and he would sit curled up in my hands (which I made sure were not putting stress on his broken arm, not that that stopped him from trying to use it) and look up energetically whenever something caught his attention. We named him Lieutenant Dan because he was obviously going to need an amputation and we talked about adopting him.

However we just called and although he was doing okay earlier, he died in surgery Friday because of the massive trauma. The vet said he was probably either hit by a car or was hiding in an engine and was injured that way. :'C

Hopefully he had a calm, relaxed death and was feeling better with fluids and such (they gave him an IV and I'm assuming put him under for surgery). Most likely better than wandering on the side of the highway to die in pain or be eaten by a wild animal, but still sad. :C

On the lighter side of things, I thought it was a little funny that when we saw it both my mom and my first thoughts were "don't let it bite/scratch you, it might have rabies!" which was why I was looking for something to pick it up with. The reason being that a few years ago there was a story in a bunch of medical journals about a bunch of people who got rabies from a kitten that was being passed around at a softball tournament. =( And also my worries about bats, although bats apparently have rabies less commonly than thought. Not that that means you should treat them as if they don't, because if they do, and you get bitten or scratched or get fluids in your eye or a cut or something, you are basically screwed. If you think an animal with rabies has infected you, you can get a shot, but if you don't catch it until the onset of symptoms... Only one person has survived that. Ever. A 6-year-old girl with probably a lucky immune system and lucky circumstances.

But I digress... R.I.P. Lieutenant Dan, the cutest little pegleg kitten ever.

Mom called me yesterday in the middle of the day to tell me that Spats was "not doing well" and she had taken him to the vet. Well not only was he not doing well, they thought he was in the advanced stages of renal failure, was suffering greatly and we should put him down as he would only last days to weeks, but most of it pain-filled. He apparently had lost 3 pounds (about a quarter of his body weight) since his last annual checkup, was dehydrated, lethargic, and had been puking all over the house for the better part of a week. The vet gave him subcutaneous fluids and took a blood sample, and mom took him home to see how he did and wait for the blood test to come back. The vet said if it wasn't renal failure it may be a tumor, but other than that she had no idea. Regardless, Spats was not doing well. (Not to mention, I started worrying about Jack, how he was handling having a sick buddy and how he would deal with being an only cat if we had to put spats down...)

So I was sniffling all through trying to finish up some of my work and sat antsily through my class, decided to skip my evening class, and went home to spend the evening with Spats in the event we would have to put him down Saturday. Anyway I pretty much teared up constantly all evening yesterday and I'm just completely exhausted today, but that's beside the point.

When I went home Spats was still rather lethargic and I let him out on the porch. He wasn't moving very quickly and was only barely nudging his face up on a box he usually would have jumped up on. So I put him up on it and he sat there for a bit, then moved over onto the bench where it was sunnier, and eventually as the sun kept moving he moved back to the box. Finally once the sun was completely gone from the porch he came and sat on my lap, and I couldn't help but notice how light he was and how surprisingly bony he felt. I don't know how long he's been sick or how rapid any of his weight loss or dehydration was, but this seems rather sudden. And we can't really tell how long he has been under-eating because there's a really good chance that Jack has been making up for that.

At any rate. I cuddled with him as much as he would allow but it was very sad. When he would go to clean himself or shake his head or anything, he would get about a half second into it and then stop. It is very odd to see a cat that hasn't cleaned themselves well, you can tell something is wrong. Finally when I was struggling to keep my eyes open but was sitting on the stairs petting him, he walked upstairs all the way to my room and hopped up on my bed. I should mention that it's not uncommon when I go home for him to sleep on my feet. So I followed him upstairs and went to bed and made sure to snuggle up with him, although he wanted to sleep on my feet and eventually made his way down there.

So. Yesterday was a rough day. Although by the end of it he seemed mildly perkier than he was when I first came home, which I think was a result of getting some fluids in him. He wasn't eating much at all though.

But! This morning I woke up to a call from mom that the vet had called and it wasn't renal failure. So. We don't know what it is or if it will be treatable, but I am hopeful and I think if we can clear out whatever the system problem is and get food and fluids back in him... Whew. I drove him to the vet this morning and when we were close he crawled out of his carrier to sit on my lap and look out the window. It was rather adorable (and unexpected--when I first moved the cats to the house they would not stop crying) and I told him if he gets himself well at the vet I will start taking him for drives, if he would like that. Like he can talk, right? Anyway.

He is at the vet and I am still rather worried, while I'm not breaking into tears like I was yesterday, I'm still finding it hard to focus. I hope he's not too lonely in there :C And I hope whatever it is, it's treatable. He's only 6, so... yeah. Anyway.

Yeah so I go from no posting to overload! Woo. I'm gonna pass out now.

(On the other side of things, have you ever seen the Idiot Box episode of Spongebob? It is the episode where Squidward gets a new tv and gives Spongebob and Patrick the box... I realized that the look they give him when he opens the box on them is the same look you get from Jack most of the time when you find him crunched up into a box. I got new tap shoes and that is of course immediately what he did.)

On the just-plain-odd side of things, I found out that when things get depressing I apparently switch straight to Robert Frost quoting.

I don't know when to say to expect a "real" post from me. I have a lot to post and... not lots of time. This is a crazy semester =/

[EDIT] Update as of (later) this morning: Mom called, the vet's got Spats on lots of fluids, and he's up and purring and seemingly back to normal. So she thinks it's nothing fatal. C=

Because I'm on break, dammit. You can find it here.

Day 1: Ten Things You Wanted/Want to Be When You're Older

1. Indiana Jones
2. Indiana Jones
3. Indiana Jones
4. Indiana Jones
5. Indiana Jones
6. Indiana Jones
7. Indiana Jones
8. Indiana Jones
9. Indiana Jones
10. Indiana Jones


...Wait. I don't think that counts as a real list. (It should, though.)

1. When I was younger I used to say I would be a different thing every day of the week. This involved ballet, figure skating, possibly being a fireman (can't quite remember), and definitely "historical bridge repainter". Because covered bridges get defaced a lot =/

2. An architect... sort of. I've always designed strange places in my mind, like a Radio Flyer fort (my sense of scale was horrible when I was little), a tree fort, several more tree forts, etc. And now that I'm older it's lots of strange things like zombie defenses and hidden rooms and things like that. Not to mention I legitimately am interested in sustainable design but I also really, really want to design things like theme parks or movie sets. IMAGINEERING FUCK YEAH.

3. A detective/spy. Always liked that piecing clues together, don't think I'll ever give that up.

4. A Total Badass

No, seriously, there's a reason I like action movies.

5. A pirate. Part of this involves dressing up (textural layers, lots of jewelry, awesome boots and fantastical hats), part of this involves me loving the island life. And Jimmy Buffett songs.

6. A bartender. Or possibly, a restaurant owner. How sweet would it be to own a tiki bar restaurant?! The answer: very. Because it would be like a theme park but also food and drinks. And tiki mugs. And I could serve delicious Hawaiian foods. om nom imu pork

7. A musician. I already miss playing my trumpet and we already know I miss drum corps. Who knows where this will go, I like my uke, maybe I'll get better at piano again, maybe I'll find some new instruments. I'd take up accordion. Maybe I'll just get more involved in dance, if I enjoy this tap class next semester. (Not really "musician", but still musical performance, so idgaf.)

8. The Proud Owner of a Personal Library. No seriously, I love books. I'm going to have a fucking fabulous library some day. FABULOUS.

9. A cat owner :3

10. Indiana Jones. This is a perfectly legitimate response.

Crap, I missed three days, didn't I. Ugh. Well, at least I'm trying.

First of all, RIP Leslie Nielsen. :( Although I used to confuse him with Steve Martin a lot when I was little... Anyway. Airplane! is hilarious if you don't watch it a million times.

Uh, three favorite girls/boys names? Idk. I honestly think about pet names more than people names, and even then, I kind of ascribe that a pet determines their own names based on their personality. I tried to name my fish Nessie, but he ended up being Captain Nemo. Just like it was probably better that Tippy ended up as Tippy and not as Dipstick. Although I rather love Spats and Jack, as far as nomenclature is concerned. ANYWAY. I do hope I have a cat that would fit the name "Throgmorten" some day, as the cats from the Chronicles of Chrestomanci. There is a bright orange cat that hangs out in our back yard sometimes, with waaaaay yellow eyes. We call him Jacque Nouveau because he looks kinda like Jack and drives Jack crazy. But he is exactly the sort of cat I would name Throgmorten, if I actually owned him and he wasn't just a neighborhood cat. Or maybe it's appropriate that he's a neighborhood cat? I don't know. Either way I don't think mom or laura or dad would go for calling him Throgmorten.

Also, there's the T.S. Eliot method of cat-naming, which is appropriate in a semi-regal-semi-cats-are-90%-of-the-internet-cute manner.

Celebrity crushes... I don't really understand them. I mean, I do, I guess? Characters are cool, but celebrity crushes have always kinda creeped me out. I just... don't... get them. I can't really explain it... I guess because I don't understand it? I'M NOT REALLY SURE. I'm kinda weird that way, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I've been that way my whole life. I recall people crushing on the Backstreet Boys in, uuuuh, fifth grade? Anyway, I seem to recall a number of lunch conversations (or at least one that stuck pretty well in there) revolving around AJ who I think was getting married at that point and the whole thing weirded me out. Why would you crush on someone who you don't know and not only that is not single? Still mystified to this day. Fact: I'm weird.

MY OPINIONS ON GLEE, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM: First of all I kind of can't stand the way the performers sing. Secondly, when I found out it was set in Lima... I can't even... what? It's a very poor representation of this region, that's for sure. THIRDLY, the whole thing comes off to me as, as it came up in a discussion, "nerd culture appropriation". Basically, OH, IF WE TURN THIS INTO A MUSICAL WE CAN SELL IT TO MUSIC NERDS! Because... there's not much quality there? Although at least they have the respect to get some cool people involved sometimes, like Kristin Chenowith and Idina Menzel. Anyway. Basically I can't stand the show despite my love of musicals. I find it extremely grating to listen to/watch.

Hey, so you know Jason Segel's Muppets movie he's been working on? (astrid087, you're going to want to see this) Jack Black, Paul Rudd, and Lady Gaga may be involved. I WILL BE THERE IN THREE SECONDS PLEASETHANKYOU

Science cheerleaders!

A good comic with a certain movie poster in the background.

Dick van Dyke saved by porpoises, although I have no idea of the date of said incident and I find that... strange.

New Winnie the Pooh movie next year! (Nothing says classic Winnie the Pooh like pop music.) Well I know what I'm doing next summer. Also, Craig Ferguson and John Cleese are in it! OHMYGOD.


Check out this crazy owl:



I find this comic both hilarious and depressing. And fascinating.



OH HEY INDY EXHIBITION. Here's an article on the exhibition. Official website. Post with the tour poster. Unsurprisingly, it's just a conceptual design copy of the classic Temple of Doom poster, however, I am really loving the detail of the walls-covered-in-hieroglyphics. (It reminds me of that damn Egyptian cat mystery puzzle I still haven't finished after... uh... ten years.) (can you tell I'm sick of ripoffs of the ToD poster? I'd honestly love to see the Indy franchise get some other colors besides BROWN TONES. Same problem as steampunk, goddamn. THE JUNGLE EXISTS YOU KNOW. IT'S VERY GREEN. I DO BELIEVE INDY HAS VISITED JUNGLES IN AT LEAST THREE OF THE MOVIES AND IN LC THERE'S STILL A CHASE THROUGH THE GERMAN FOREST-SIDE. [IDK, WHAT IS THE "COUNTRYSIDE" EQUIVALENT OF "FOREST"?]) CAPSRAGE IN CASE YOU COULDN'T TELL I'M A LITTLE BIT OBSESSED. (Also-also, the proportions on that poster are a little...off... those legs/hips look cartoonishly unrealistic. Or the pose does. Or something.)


ANYWAY who wants to road trip to Montreal?!



Prompts time! Initials of my crushes: don't really have any at the moment. But that is also a completely different discussion.

I do not wear glasses. But when my eyes are old enough to need them, I will rock some fashionable ones, that's for sure. Or maybe get LASIK, since I've heard they don't have to cut your cornea anymore. But, sadly, I will probably never be able to wear contacts. My eyes are just too sensitive for me to be putting things in them. I really wanted to get some all-black or all-white or cat/snake-eye contacts for my halloween costume this year, but instead I ended up drawing pupils on my eyelids, which worked okay, but I'm not totally satisfied with how my makeup ended up. It bled A LOT.

Scientists used high-speed video to determine how cats actually drink. I had always been taught (read?) that cats curled their tongues under, which someone had discovered way-back-when with a hi-speed camera. So apparently that was "not quite", though. Rather than curl their tongues under to scoop, they curl them under to "pull" a column of fluid towards their own mouth, which they then catch and swallow.

Science is fascinating!

ATTENION. Submit your name for this contest to spend the night in COSI's Adventure. And then if you win, BRING ME. PLEASE, I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! (Well, some of you do, I'm sure.)

But seriously... do it.


I do not drink soda more often than milk. I LOVE MILK. I have it every morning for breakfast, and with a lot of meals. If we go out to eat and it's a Coke place, I get milk. And in terms of pop, I drink Mountain Dew. I'm not really a cola person. Every once in a while, root beer.

An all-cat production of Hamlet. I... how?

Quick post for the prompt before midnight (I'm actually writing essays right now):

I have two boy cats, Spats (black with white belly and toes and whiskers) and Jack (a light orange). Previously we had Tippy (black and white with a white tail tip) and Topaz/Fuzzy (brown longhair). (All our cats were shelter cats.) I had a betta named Captain Nemo freshman year, until I left for drum corps and my mom killed him. (This may have been partly my fault as I was kind of slacking on changing his water, and bettas make A LOT of bad-smelling ammonia-filled fecal matter. [Is urine fecal matter? idk.]) I am a cat person at heart so I definitely will have cats in the future. (Currently I give Tinkerbell, the cat that lives behind the engineering building, all my kitty-pets that I don't get to give Jack and Spats on a daily basis.) I like animals in general and used to want a chameleon, so I definitely forsee myself having a variety of pets. Maybe ferrets? A parrot? A goldfish, Nessie. Lots of adorable animals.

Happy belated Halloween, everyone! You'd think with it being my favorite holiday and everything, that I would have a fantastic holiday post ready, but alas, I do not. I am too overwhelmed with school right now, and grad applications, and the fact that one of my friends has decided to be a drama queen and start stirring the shit. So. I will get some pics up of my costume eventually, but possibly not until I get some pro photos taken for my portfolio.

Oooof course I can't seem to celebrate a big Halloween without things going awry, so. I don't know, I'm so tired of all this shit, I need something different to come my way. Bleh.

In defense of free material boosting your sales, an interesting article on Monty Python's sales after posting videos on youtube. SALES INCREASED 23,000 PERCENT. TWENTY-THREE THOUSAND. (This guy had his comic posted to 4chan and it got him some good sales, too.)

Bomb squad diffuses box full of kittens. BEST BOMB EVER.

Anyway. Not doing NaNoWriMo, because, I think, I am not cut out to be a writer. I can write with other people, but I think I'm more of a 3d-design person. I try to write stories but they come out rather derivative. HOWEVER, I am going to do this 30 day challenge instead:

My middle name is Margaret. It is my mom's middle name and her mother's oldest sister, who died when she was only 20ish. I don't use it very much, because I rather like Diane. So, I don't really love or hate it. I considered taking Ursula as my confirmation name in 8th grade though so that my initials would be D.U.M.B. (Yet another example of why I was a strange kid.)

Also... I'm kind of ready for Christmas. Kind of. It got freezing this week, and I determined that I am of the opinion that the months of November and October should be switched. Something about Thanksgiving just seems like it should come before Halloween--it's about harvesting and all that, and the colors are so much warmer than Halloween; so it's odd that it comes first, almost.