When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

30 April 2005

Dog Whistle Politics

Grant Barrett's Double-Tongued Word Wrester is one of my favorite sites. Grant, a hip lexicographer who works for Oxford University Press (as, among other things, the project editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang) uses his blog to "[record] undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English."

Each week I find at least one new gem. Here's a goodie:
dog whistle politics n. a concealed, coded, or unstated idea, usually divisive or politically dangerous, nevertheless understood by the intended voters. Also dog whistle issue.
(The expanded entry contains citations and source information.)

Toujours l'audace, et encore l'audace!

I've been playing around with Audacity.
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:
  • Record live audio.
  • Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
  • Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
  • Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.
  • Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
  • And more! See the complete list of features.
Here's an excellent tutorial on Audacity from the public radio site Transom.org.

Dose up with lizard spit

enrevanche reader and friend moonpath sends a link to this intriguing article from the Washington Post (free registration required; bugmenot works):
Type 2 diabetics got a new option to help control their blood sugar Friday, a drug derived from the saliva of the Gila monster--but one that must be injected twice a day.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Byetta, known chemically as exenatide, the first in a new class of medications for Type 2 diabetes-- but for now, it's supposed to be used together with older diabetes drugs, not alone.

Makers Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly & Co. said the prescription drug would begin selling by June 1, but wouldn't provide a price.

The mind reels. I need to do some further research and digging here. Who was the bright boy (or girl) who came up with the idea of shooting diabetics full of lizard spit? (And what was he or she smoking, and where can I get some?)

Was there an epidemic of Gila monsters biting Type II diabetics, who then noticed that their blood glucose readings went down? (The name "Byetta," reminiscent of "bite," suggests this origin.)

I also need to contact Amylin's public relations department, as I know the perfect location for their first Byetta promotion.

The Economist surveys oil

In this week's issue of The Economist, a very timely article on the economics of oil:

"THE time when we could count on cheap oil and even cheaper natural gas is clearly ending." That was the gloomy forecast delivered in February by Dave O'Reilly, the chairman of Chevron Texaco, to hundreds of oilmen gathered for a conference in Houston. The following month, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez gleefully echoed the sentiment: "The world should forget about cheap oil."

The surge in oil prices, from $10 a barrel in 1998 to above $50 in early 2005, has prompted talk of a new era of sustained higher prices. But whenever a "new era" in oil is hailed, scepticism is in order. After all, this is essentially a cyclical business in which prices habitually yo-yo. Even so, an unusually loud chorus is now joining Messrs O'Reilly and Chavez, pointing to intriguing evidence of a new "price floor" of $30 or perhaps even $40. Confusingly, though, there are also signs that high oil prices may be caused by a speculative bubble that could burst quite suddenly. To see which camp is right, two questions need answering: why did the oil price soar? And what could keep it high?

A key observation, buried deep in the article:
Supply constraints coincided with a huge boom in oil demand. Global oil consumption last year increased by 3.4% instead of the usual 1-2%. Nearly a third of that growth came from China, where oil consumption rocketed by perhaps 16%. One senior European oil executive claims that, in contrast with the embargoes and supply-driven price rises of the past, "This is the first demand-led oil shock."
The print edition of this week's Economist contains a 25-page "survey" on the topic of oil. All of this content is available at their website, but most of it (other than the article I've linked to above, which is free to all) is "premium" (or subscriber-only) content. If you're interested in the topic, but don't subscribe to the magazine and can't find it at a local newsstand, you can buy a PDF of the April 2005 Oil Survey for $4.95.

High-stakes Rock, Paper, Scissors - for $20 million plus

The New York Times reports:

Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation, an electronics company based outside of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art collection, which is worth more than $20 million, at next week's auctions in New York.

He did not split the collection - which includes an important Cézanne landscape, an early Picasso street scene and a rare van Gogh view from the artist's Paris apartment - between the two houses, as sometimes happens. Nor did he decide to abandon the auction process and sell the paintings through a private dealer.

Instead, he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world: rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock.

The results? Christie's defeats Sotheby's in the first round. The winning throw? Scissors cut paper. In what was probably a key element in their victory, the Christie's rep in Japan got strategic advice from the 11 year-old twin daughters of a Christie's executive.

The World Rock, Paper, Scissors Society has noticed this, of course, and registered their approval.

29 April 2005

enrevanche's book club

Coming soon to enrevanche: book reviews.

Look for some or all of the following to be reviewed in the near future.

Recently finished:
Now reading:
In the queue:

Spitzer sues over spyware

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer likes attention. For quite some time now, he's been flat-out openly running as the presumed Democratic candidate for Governor in 2008, and has been getting himself a lot of press lately by positioning himself as the "scourge of Wall Street."

(How attuned is the finance community to his doings? The Wall Street Journal doesn't bother to identify him by his title or even his full name in headlines... it's just "Spitzer does this" and "Spitzer says that.")

Even a politician on the make, however, is sometimes on the side of the angels:
A broad investigation into Internet abuses led the New York attorney general to file a lawsuit on Thursday accusing a California company of clogging computers across the nation with secretly installed spyware and adware, which can vex users and impede the flow of commerce on the Web.

The attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, sued Intermix Media, a large Internet marketing firm, accusing it of embedding "several types of invasive and annoying" programs on its Web domains that can pop up, route users to unwanted sites or link them to Intermix's services and clients. The accusations were in a complaint that was filed on Thursday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Go, Eliot. Go, baby, go.

28 April 2005

Conveniently packaged for mailing. Sort of.

Mister Gato makes a point of investigating any cardboard box that comes into the house, and usually "christens" new arrivals by sharpening his claws on them and sleeping in them for a little while.

He is, of course, a rather large cat.

We just got a UPS package from Kiehl's (time to resupply the Tea Tree Oil body wash and the essential Blue Astringent aftershave... it's the little luxuries that count in life.)

Unfortunately, the box wasn't really big enough for Mister G. to comfortably fit inside.

This did not turn out to be a problem.

conveniently packaged for mailing
Mister Gato, side view.


packaged for mailing front view
Mister Gato, front view.

(Photo credit: Carrie.)

(Earlier Mister Gato posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. See The Modulator and The Carnival of the Cats for more bloggers' cats from around the world. This week, the Carnival of the Cats is hosted at Running Scared.)

27 April 2005

Peak Oil

Given President Bush's proposed new energy policy, announced today, this would be an opportune time to blog about Peak Oil, a post that I've been mentally composing (and revising) for several weeks now.

Unfortunately, that's gonna have to wait until I'm not too tired to think straight (see below.) The "Peak Oil" link above is a very long but unusually lucid and well-written Wikipedia article; please put it on your "to-read" list immediately, gentle readers.

For a somewhat shrill and alarmist (but probably essentially accurate) take on the issue, read James Howard Kunstler's article "The Long Emergency" in a recent issue of Rolling Stone:

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life -- not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it.

The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.

The article is exceprted from a book, called The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, that just went on my Amazon order list.



Thank God for animals

I had one of those Inverse Midas Touch days at work today... everything I touched turned to shit.

The I.M.T. is a concept introduced to me by my father, who, probably not coincidentally, was also a lifelong 'knowledge worker' in the computer industry. My father long treasured a handwritten note sent to him by a favorite manager after the successful completion of a particularly grueling project, which said: "We are constantly presented with brilliant opportunities cleverly disguised as insoluble problems... and we solve them, one at a time."

Well, I faced many Brilliant Opportunities today, and am still in the process of solving them one-at-a-time. I was late getting out, felt like I had been stuffed in a sack and beaten with sticks by the end of the day, and staggered home from the bus.

I was greeted at the door by three furry quadrupeds who couldn't have been more delighted to see me if I had been bearing a ten-pound platter of paté de fois gras and a sack of fresh catnip. Honestly, it was like being the guy showing up with the beer at a freshman mixer. Chow Bella, Chow Fun, and Mister Gato showered me with love and attention, and are now dozing happily near me as we all wait for Carrie to come home (she's just leaving now; the phone rang as I was typing this entry.)

Animals are the best.

26 April 2005

I'm not the only one giving up the cookies

Alas, poor Cookie Monster:
Cookie Monster, the biscuit-eating puppet on US children's show Sesame Street, will cut down on his favourite food as part of an anti-obesity drive.

The blue-furred muppet who used to sing "C is for Cookie" will now tell viewers that "A Cookie is a Sometimes Food".

Each episode of the show's new series will begin with a "health tip" about healthy foods and physical activity.

A Sesame Street representative said the popular character would be "broadening his eating habits" in future.

What's next? Are they going to send Oscar the Grouch to charm school? Are Bert and Ernie finally going to come out of the closet and fly off to Vermont for a civil union ceremony? Will Grover go on lithium?

Donate your old cellphones

After I complained in an earlier post about my Graveyard of Obsolete Technology, including several no-longer-used cell phones, enrevanche friend prairiesong left a great observation in the comments:
Around here you can give those excess cell phones to the YW (not YM) CA and they will re-program them to dial 911 only. They distribute them to women in precarious situations (e.g. domestic violence). Perhaps your local YW does something similar.
New York City has such a program, and it's coordinated through Verizon Wireless. This weekend, I'm going to go down to the local Verizon Store with a box of old phones collected from our apartment building (I am sure that there are other folks in my building with old cells lying around.)

Your community probably has such a program.

Deconstructing Acela

I love trains, even poor old beleaguered Amtrak.

A great article appeared in Sunday's New York Times, analyzing the disaster-in-slow-motion that was the development and deployment of the "high-speed" Acela train.
It was called the American Flyer, and its goals were ambitious: to speed train travel between Northeastern cities, steal customers from air shuttles, provide the model for a nationwide fast rail system and help its deficit-prone parent, Amtrak, earn a profit. "These trains will enable Amtrak to carry its customers into the 21st century aboard 21st-century trains," said Thomas M. Downs, Amtrak's president, at a 1996 ceremony announcing a $611 million contract for the new trains.

Today that train is called the Acela, and instead of being Amtrak's savior, it has become a frustrating burden. On Wednesday, the company announced plans to sideline all 20 Acelas until summer to replace cracked brakes. It was the third major disruption of the high-speed service since it came on line in 2001.

The tale of the Acela is in many ways the story of Amtrak itself, where political pressures, tight budgets, contested regulations and design changes turned a high-speed train into something slower, more expensive and less reliable than what Amtrak had promised.

It's a long article, but well worth a read, especially if you're a railfan.

24 April 2005

Carnival of the Cats #57

Be sure to visit Carnival of the Cats #57 today at The Oubliette. (I'll update this post with the link once it goes live.)

Update, 9:10 PM - The Carnival of the Cats is now up at The Oubliette.

Skype Me

I used to suffer from Early Adopter Disorder (a condition that I am morally certain will be rigorously defined in a future revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders... according to Everett Rogers' definition, I would have been an Innovater, rather than an Early Adopter, but we'll let the psychologists sort the definitions out later.)

Anyway, I used to require the latest and greatest and newest of everything, and lived on out the technological bleeding edge. I have the scars, and the expensive graveyard of utterly useless hardware and software (dedicated eBook readers! worthless PDAs of every description! enough abandoned cellphones to outfit the posse of an up-and-coming rap artist!) to prove it.

I've calmed down considerably, and now I let other people do the product-testing as a general rule.

Well, I've been hearing about this Skype thing for quite some time now. It's a voice-over-IP application, meaning in plain language that you can make free "phone calls" over the Internet(s) to other Skype users, and can use Skype to call just about anyone in the developed world with a regular landline or cell phone for 1 Eurocent (about 2 cents U.S.) a minute. The software itself is free; their business model is to charge you for making calls to non-Skype users, and to offer extras like voicemail and a dialin number for an annual subscription fee.

As a Recovering Early Adopter, even though the software was free, I was dubious.

Now that they've hit a hundred million downloads, however, I felt safe to approach it.

It works pretty damned well. The audio quality is amazing.

My Skype ID is "enrevanche." If you're a Skype user, and notice me online, hit me up.

23 April 2005

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?



Your Linguistic Profile:



40% General American English

30% Dixie

15% Upper Midwestern

10% Yankee

5% Midwestern


Not surprising, as I was born and raised in the South, have lived in New York for about ten years, and married a nice girl from Kansas.

(Hat tip: Mira at The Oubliette. I was scared to take the "How Redneck Are You?" quiz.)

Ticketmaster is evil

Well, I blew out the entertainment budget this month (and then some), but on two consecutive weeknights in mid-July, Carrie and I will be taking off from work a little early and walking over to Central Park's Summerstage (2005 schedule not up yet) with picnic suppers and Army blankets in hand to hear Lyle Lovett and his Large Band and Elvis Costello (appearing with Emmylou Harris.)

So what am I bitching about? Well, just as after every online encounter with the monopolistic, suckful behemoth that is Ticketmaster.com, I'm muttering darkly to myself, "never again."

Let's break it down. Face prices on tickets for self and wife for two shows amounted to $190. Yikes, but okay, that's what concerts cost these days... and you can't fault the talent. A Lyle/Large Band show and Elvis & Emmylou the next night? No argument here.

Then Ticketbastards piles on $40.65 in "convenience charges" and "order processing fees." For those of you keeping score at home, that's a 21% premium over face value... and that doesn't count the revenue from the service fees that they're charging the artist and the venue.

To add insult to injury, if you pick "online delivery of tickets" (they e-mail you a link, you print out the tix on your own printer, an option that saves them printing and delivery charges) it costs extra! Utterly disgraceful. (God help you if you need overnight delivery.)

Hey, ordering online is pretty damned convenient, no question about it. But these are general admission tickets for an outdoor music festival; there's no seat selection logic required, no choices to make, just buy 'em or don't. For that, they make 21% on the transaction (plus whatever they can gouge out of the artist and promoter on the back end?)

Ticketmaster crossed my threshold of annoyance long ago, but they are perilously close to my personal threshold of economic pain.

So why don't I take my business somewhere else?

Simple. I can't. They have the venue all sewn up, just as they control ticket-based access to 90% of all large-scale live music venues in the United States. If I want tickets, I've gotta deal with them.

It's one of those "there ought to be a law" situations.

Well, actually, there is a law. It's called the Sherman Act, but so far, Ticketmaster has avoided investigation and prosecution under it (or the related Clayton Act.)

Free-market capitalism: good. (A credible, lower-cost alternative to Ticketmaster would either blow them out of the water or force them to cut their costs in short order.)

Monopoly/crony capitalism: bad.

Questions?

22 April 2005

Welcome aboard, Mountain Philosopher

The always interesting and provocative John deVille has a brand-spanking-new blog, Mountain Philosopher. John's politics, while of a liberal/progressive bent, are neither predictable nor easy to pin down, and while I often disagree with his conclusions, I have long admired his intellectual honesty and rigor.

(John and I go way back... we met in the mid-1980s when we were both staffers on The Phoenix, an "alternative" campus newspaper at the University of North Carolina. Remind me to blog about the time John and I visited "Heritage USA," the Christian theme park formerly owned and operated by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, before the first major wave of bimbo/financial mismanagement scandals broke. Hell, I think I still have the clip in my files somewhere.)

Anyway, I'm delighted to introduce you to John's new blog. He's added to the blogroll, and I urge you to check him out in his new home. (Hopefully he'll continue to pepper our comments section with his leftist tripe well-considered thoughts as well.)

Anybody who loves cats is probably an okay guy

So, the P.R. blitz designed to soften the new Pope's image begins in earnest...

He was John Paul II's theologian/enforcer for years, but according to friends back in Germany, Benedict XVI has a softer side: he's a cat-lover:
"I went with him once," said Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University. "Afterwards, he went into the old cemetery behind the church.

"It was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. He visited the cats whenever he visited the church. His love for cats is quite famous."
Mister Gato (who, long experience has taught us, is of the Chew-ish faith) heartily approves.

The story has a sad note, however. According to his old housekeeper, back in Germany:
"When we were on vacation, a cat, a little kitten, would come by, and he'd be giddy, almost giggling with joy," she said." Cats love him; they always go to him straight away. And he loves them back."

He doesn't have a cat, however. [The housekeeper] doesn't think he can have one living in the Vatican.

"He was always content to play with the street cats," she said. "I don't know much about Rome, but I know there's no shortage of cats there."
That's so wrong, I don't even know where to start. He's the Pope, which has got to be at least as stressful as being a CEO or a head of state, and he's an old, old man. Let the man have a cat in the Vatican if he wants one.

If you're worried about the furnishings, install a scratching post!

I think it would set a great example if the Pope were to adopt a Roman rescue cat and give it a good home. Being the Pope's Cat would be a good gig.

("Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Matthew 25:40.)

21 April 2005

Yeah, but what's his handle in the chat rooms?

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Got a prayer or a problem for the new pope? Now you can e-mail him. Showing that Pope Benedict XVI intends to follow in the footsteps of John Paul II's multimedia ministry, the Vatican on Thursday modified its Web site so that users who click on an icon on the home page automatically activate an e-mail composer with his address.

In English, the address is benedictxvi@vatican.va. In Italian: benedettoxvi@vatican.va.
I wonder what the Pope's spam filter looks like.

Bring back your favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor

Vote to bring back your favorite defunct Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream flavor.

I cast my vote for Fresh Georgia Peach.

(via Chowhound... and here's my pitch for the peach.)

I'd love to work as an architect, actually

A follow-up to an earlier post.

The headhunter come-ons continue apace, more signs of an improving economy.

Some of them are downright bizarre. Here's a feckless fellow who did a keyword search that turned up an ancient resume of mine containing the term "information architecture," didn't bother to, you know, actually read the resume, and proceeded to spam my inbox with a half-literate get-acquainted letter:
We are [company name] of [a really ghastly NYC suburb out on Long Island] with 25 years experience. If you are looking for an opportunity as an Architect, please send your e-mailed resume to [my equally clueless colleague/minion.] Call at [redacted.]
My response:
Hi, [clueless] (and [clueless's minion]),

Wow, I'd love to work as an architect. The trouble is, I have no training (formal or informal) as an architect, have never designed or built anything in my life unless you count a bird-feeder when I was a Boy Scout, and certainly have never worked as an architect.

But big buildings and cool houses absolutely fascinate me.

If you're still willing to consider me as a candidate for jobs in architecture on that basis, let's talk!

Best regards,

Barry Campbell

All the yarn in the world


All the yarn in the world
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.
My wife is an inveterate knitter. Her "stash," or stockpiled yarn supply, reaches to the ceiling in our bedroom.

Time for spring cleaning, and a major yarn donation to the Church of Craft's New York branch. So she piled up the yarn (for sorting) on the bed.

Yarn might be Mister Gato's favorite thing ever... or, at least, his favorite thing after slow, fat mice and beautiful lady cats. Naturally, he had to supervise the process.

(Earlier Mister Gato posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15. See The Modulator and The Carnival of the Cats for more bloggers' cats from around the world.)

18 April 2005

The best restaurant in the world

According to Restaurant magazine, it's The Fat Duck, in the village of Bray, Berkshire, England. (Link courtesy Toronto Globe and Mail.)

Fatigue, exhaustion. Other than that, things are great. Gah!

A quick medical update:

Blood sugar is coming down nicely. This morning, before breakfast, it was within twenty mg/dL of textbook-normal, which is nothing short of amazing (to me, anyway) in a month. (That's right, gentle readers: on the 18th of March, at roughly this time, I was whacked out on painkillers and flat on my back in a hospital bed at St. Vincent's, and my blood had more sugar in it than the iced tea at a barbecue joint.)

Just as the doctor promised, too, now that my blood glucose levels are down from the stratosphere, I am able to focus my eyes normally again. So I won't need to be fitted for wraparound shades and a German Shepherd just yet, which is good news.

I'm following my diet pretty rigorously, making an effort to get some extra exercise, (mostly) getting enough sleep, and in general trying to Do The Right Things to take care of myself.

So why am I so tired all the time? I have never been so exhausted in my life.

After six hours at work, I hit the wall. Trouble is, I work nine-hour days at the office and often bring work home besides (like tonight... I'm eating dinner and blogging simultaneously rather than finishing a report that has to be reviewed at 10 AM tomorrow.)

Fatigue is, apparently, a common symptom in newly diagnosed diabetics. I've been burning up the lines over at Medscape and have turned up some interesting complementary therapies with some seemingly sound science backing them up: going to be asking the doc (I see him tomorrow) about adding chromium picolinate and vitamin B-12 to the mix. Also omega-3 fatty acids.

And perhaps methamphetamine.

Thankfully, my doctor has steady nerves and is used to me looking up things on the Internet(s).

Now off to finish that report and collapse in a trembling heap.

17 April 2005

Carnival of the Cats #56

...is now up at Watermark, along with some terrific photographs of Spike and Boo.

Sunday in the Park with Chows

Today was one of those picture-perfect spring afternoons in New York City. The thermometer was flirting with a reading of 80 degrees, and there wasn't a cloud to be seen; everyone in Manhattan, it seemed, was staggering out of their apartments in shirtsleeves and sunglasses in search of sunlight and fresh air.

Carrie and I got our collective act together and headed out to the Washington Square Park dog run with Chow Bella and Chow Fun. We bought some bottled water at a newsstand on the way to the park, and settled in at the run for a lovely afternoon soaking up some rays.

In nice weather like this, Washington Square Park attracts buskers; a few of these guys even go to the trouble of getting permits for amplified music. As we approached the dog run, we noted that, right by the statue of Alexander Lyman Holley, one of these intrepid fellows had set up shop.

Now, I have tremendous respect and admiration for *anyone* who puts himself out there in front of the public as a performer, but I have to tell you that this guy was Not Making It for us in a deep and structural way... he seemed to be intent on proving that the entire Klassic Rock FM radio canon could be played by a rhythm guitarist (with a beatbox, no less) and as he segued from David Bowie's "Heroes" into "Sympathy for the Devil," complete with faux-Mick vocal tics, we edged to the far end of the dog run and tried to ignore it.

It was a nice day, and the music was a minor annoyance... though when he trotted out "Hotel California" and started improvising around it vocally in a minor key, I did entertain fantasies of asking him what his average hourly take was, then offering a 20% premium over that if he would just shut the fuck up and go home. Deeply uncharitable of me, but there you have it.

The afternoon wore on, and we got hungry. We moved out of the dog run to a bench in the shade, and while I sat with the dogs Carrie walked over to Mamoun's to get us falafel-and-hummus sandwiches and soft drinks.

Gradually, it penetrated my consciousness that Klassic Rock Guy had gone away, and been replaced by another hopeful busker. This new guy, however, was infinitely more interesting, musically speaking. He was performing a mix of covers and originals. The covers were tasteful (I heard him do a very credible version of Hendrix's "Little Wing") and as for the original stuff, his singer-songwriter chops were just impeccable. His delivery was soulful and jazz-inflected, his lyrics, confessional and sincere; he reminded me just a little bit (in a good way!) of Jeff Buckley.

The longer I listened, the more I liked it. The New Guy, as I thought of him in attitudes of blessed relief, was a damn sight better than acts that I'd paid good money to see in New York clubs, and he was giving it away... in the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, he was just playin' real good for free.

I mentally doubled the buck I had been planning to toss in his case on the way home, then upped it to five. Finally, as he was taking a brief breather between songs, I walked over and, noticing that he had self-produced EPs for sale, bought one and expressed my appreciation for what he was doing.

Naturally, in this Digital Era, the man has a web site. His name is dorian, and his site, in a clever musical allusion, is thedorianmode.com. If you'd like to hear some of his original music, he plays around NYC from time to time (notably at The Bitter End), and there are some tasty MP3 samples on his site.

Even though I don't know the man, "Pretending It's Not Happening" [MP3] has a definite autobiographical feel, and one of his songs, "New York Winter," [MP3] thoroughly kicked my ass, reminiscing as it does about
Walkin’ through the slush to catch an "A" train
Thinking back to those buildings before the planes
Like I said, it was a perfect spring afternoon. I got some sunshine (I'm mildly burned, actually; being one of the Whitest People Ever, that happens to me quickly) ate some good falafel, and heard some great new music.

Do yourself a favor - check dorian's site out.

Chowhound Guides to NYC and SF - coming April 26

As regular enrevanche readers know, I am a devotee of a food discussion board called Chowhound.

Chowhound has not only ensured that I eat well here at home, it has virtually guaranteed that I eat well when I travel, whether I'm going to major foodie destinations like Paris or San Francisco or more modest but stil chow-ful locales like Austin or Kansas City. (A Zagat Guide may be useful for rough planning and finding contact and location info for restaurants in major cities, but if you want the inside track on the best chow wherever you're going, go Chowhound.)

I am delighted to report, therefore, that on April 26, 2005, two new Chowhound Guides (published in paperback by Penguin Books) are hitting the street:

"The Chowhound's Guide to the New York Tristate Area" and "The Chowhound's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area." ($18 retail; Amazon is selling them at the deep-discount pre-order price of $12.24 each)

They should be considered essential reading for NYC and SF area residents who like to eat well, or anyone who visits these areas frequently.

Buy a copy for yourself. Buy two (one for home and one for the office); buy extras to give as birthday and holiday gifts for your favorite nosher. They represent the distilled wisdom of one of the sharpest online food communities in existence, and at roughly $12 a pop from Amazon they are an incredible bargain.

Here's how Alpha Hound Jim Leff describes the process of creating the guides:
I read through the manuscripts on my couch back when I was editing the things, and got so ravenously hungry I would have been sorely tempted to rip a candy apple out of the hands of any passing girl scout. Then the books' agent read through them, and called me up like a starving man in a desert - literally wheezing from hunger, his voice unrecognizable. The Penguin editors and proofreaders all underwent similar crises. These books are like diabolical hunger pills from the Twilight Zone. It's sick, eerie, and slightly scary. The web site makes people pretty hungry, and is kind of addictive, but these books appear to be pure crack for the hunger reflex. They should come with a warning label. I'm kind of hesitant to unleash them on an unsuspecting world.
Newsweek magazine has noticed, and this Monday's edition documents a chowhounding expedition to Newark, NJ led by Mr. Leff (lucky reporters!):
Jim Leff speaks in a breathless staccato: "Incredible barbecue. In a shack. In Newark." He's raving about his newest restaurant find, which he says serves some of the best South Carolina-style mustard sauce in the Northeast. You may not think of Newark, N.J., as a culinary capital, but Leff has a knack for sniffing out great food in unlikely places. He shares his discoveries with readers of Chowhound.com, where thousands of food lovers swap tips on everything from which Queens street cart sells the best Indian dosas to how to get a reservation at Napa Valley's The French Laundry. Next week Leff's wisdom, along with that of his site's most loyal contributors, will be published in two new guidebooks: "The Chowhound's Guide to the New York Tristate Area" and "The Chowhound's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area" ($18 each). We tagged along on a recent scouting trip to Newark to figure out how he can find a great meal anywhere.
(Read the whole thing.)

Full disclosure: in addition to being a happy and well-fed Chowhound user for years, for roughly the last year I've also been a volunteer at the site, contributing editorial and fact-checking support to the weekly ChowNews newsletters. Also, if you click the Amazon links above or below to purchase the NYC or SF Chowhound Guides, all commissions paid by Amazon will directly benefit the Chowhound.com site.



16 April 2005

A belated welcome...

...to our visitors from MSNBC.com.

Let me explain.

enrevanche is a modest little blog, but then (as Churchill famously remarked about Clement Attlee) we have much to be modest about.

When I started blogging in earnest in October 2004, the only readers were a few friends and relatives; we have grown slowly to a (clearly deeply disturbed) readership that averages roughly two hundred unique visitors on a weekday, somewhat less on weekends.

To an A-list blogger, our daily traffic wouldn't even be a blip. For a guy sitting in his little apartment in New York City thinking out loud about food and politics and posting rants about his health and photos of his kittycat, it's nothing short of amazing. I mean, I knew my wife (a real, actual professional writer) would read the blog because I could shame her into it, but people are choosing to come here voluntarily. Who'd a thunk it?

Imagine my surprise, then, when I looked at my site logs on Friday and noticed that four hundred visitors had come streaming through the virtual gates in the last few hours.

As I would say if I were twenty years younger and typing a Three-Keytap-Rumba text message to a friend on an ergonomically disastrous cellphone:

OMG, WTF?


It seems that Will Femia, at MSNBC, had linked to the latest installment of the Carnival of the Cats at enrevanche.

It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement. In fact, the entirety of the reference in Will's online column was:
"Carnival of the cats Ug."
But, as the old saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Just make sure you spell the URL right, even if you can't spell "Ugh."

As of this writing, Mr. Femia has sent us roughly 1400 new visitors (and they're still coming, albeit at a reduced rate as the link ages and the weekend is upon us.)

A-list blogger Laurence Simon, the originator of the Carnival of the Cats, points out in an e-mail that this is not a new phenomenon: "Bloggers Beg MSNBC: 'Smear Me Too'" (from Scrappleface, Oct. 2002.)

So thanks, Will. There's another Carnival of the Cats at Watermark tomorrow. Send them some link-love.

(Update: Somehow I missed Laurence's earlier post at isfullofcrap.com regarding Mr. Femia.)

15 April 2005

Mister Gato's "prevent defense"

As every sports fan knows, the best offense is a good defense.

Here, Mister Gato demonstrates his patented "prevent defense," as he body-blocks the keyboard and forces Barry to pay attention to him instead of working on the computer.

This isn't as good a "cat-and-mouse" picture as Sissy recently posted over at Sisu, but it'll do.

(Earlier Mister Gato posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14. See The Modulator and The Carnival of the Cats for more bloggers' cats from around the world.)

14 April 2005

Go, 'Topes!

If you're not a Simpsons fan, just skip this post.

Carrie and I were delighted, as I am sure you will be, to learn today that there is now actually a minor league baseball team called the "Albuquerque Isotopes." They play in the Pacific Coast League and are the AAA farm team for the Florida Marlins.

And yes, they named themselves after the "Hungry Hungry Homer" Simpsons episode in which the Springfield Isotopes, the local minor league club, threatened to leave for Albuquerque, and Homer went on a hunger strike in protest:
Duff: Well, Homer, your hunger strike lasted twelve amazing days.

Homer: Oh, me so hung-y.

Duff: Of course you are, Hungry Hungry Homer. So why not break your fast with our new Isotope Dog Supreme.

[Duffman presents a hot dog loaded with toppings]

Homer: [sniffing] Oh, oh, so hard to resist. Mesquite-grilled onions, jalapeño relish ... wait a minute, those are Southwestern ingredients. [the crowd gasps] Mango-lime salsa? That's the kind of bold flavor they enjoy in ... Albuquerque! [the crowd gasps again]

Lenny: [in the stands] He's right!

Moe: Yeah, and the wrapper says, "Albuquerque Isotopes."

Mel: Homer was right! They're planning to move the team!
T-shirts are available. (Hint: if you look in the "discontinued" section, there are some nifty and very cartoonish ones for nine bucks. Nine bucks!)

13 April 2005

Update: Don't Shoot the Cat

So what happened with Monday's vote in Wisconsin?

The Don't Shoot The Cat site has the details:
The total vote was 6,830 in favor of Q62 and 5,102 opposed. It was close, but the "Pro-62" crowd took the vote by a 14-point margin. With 5.4 million people in the state, roughly 0.2% of the state turned out to vote. We actually had more people sign our anti-62 petition (over 21,000 so far) than the total number of people that showed up to vote at the county hearings.
(Here's the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' official statement.)

So, will it become open season on cats in Wisconsin? Apparently not... the Governor, a man who, you can bet, doesn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, has just weighed in:
A proposal to legalize the killing of feral cats is not going to succeed, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.

"I don't think Wisconsin should become known as a state where we shoot cats," said Doyle, a Democrat who neither hunts nor owns a cat. "What it does is sort of hold us up as a state that everybody is kind of laughing at right now."

He told reporters his office had received calls from around the country denouncing a proposal adopted Monday at meetings of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, a public advisory group, that would classify wild, free-roaming cats as an unprotected species that kills song birds and other wildlife.

<...>

Doyle said he respects the Conservation Congress but "on this one I think everybody recognizes it's not going anywhere."
If you signed a petition, made a phone call, wrote a letter to the editor... thanks.

Oops.

Labs Race to Destroy Deadly Virus:
Health experts have begun to destroy samples of a potentially lethal flu strain sent to laboratories around the world by a US testing organisation.

The samples are of Asian flu, which killed between one and four million people in 1957 but disappeared by 1968.

Testing kits containing the virus were sent to more than 3,700 laboratories in 18 countries from Brazil to Lebanon.

The World Health Organization said the virus could "easily cause an influenza epidemic" if not handled properly.

As astute readers will have deduced from the "s" in the word "organisation" above, this story comes to us courtesy of the BBC. There's more coverage from the AP (via the New York Times) and a relatively calming statement from the WHO (are they still smashing guitars onstage?)

Gosh, I hope I can get good seats for the apocalypse.

12 April 2005

Who's bringing up our children?

enrevanche friend and agent provocateur John deVille writes in to tell us of a recent speech given by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the University of London. The topic is "formation," or how children grow into responsible, mature adults, and John comments, "I wish the Archbishop of Canterbury were the Secretary of Education."

Here's a short excerpt (but as we say in the blogosphere, read the whole thing):

The first exercise I want to offer this morning is an exercise in imagining what a human adult might be like. If you are asked what are the characteristics you would regard as marks of maturity, or having grown up as a human being, what would you say? Let me try a few suggestions. The human adult I imagine is someone who is aware of emotion but not enslaved by it. A human adult is someone who believes that change is possible in their own lives and the lives of those around them. A human adult is someone who is aware of fallibility and death, that is who knows they are not right about everything and that they won’t live forever. An adult is someone sensitive to the cost of the choices they make, for themselves and for the people around them. An adult is someone who is not afraid of difference, who is not threatened by difference. And I would add too, an adult is someone aware of being answerable to something more than just a cultural consensus – someone whose values, choices, priorities are shaped by something other than majority votes; which is why I add – in brackets, but you’d expect me to – that I think that an awareness of the holy is an important aspect of being an adult, however you want to phrase that.

Now I think that without a working definition of maturity, whether it is that one or something like it, we can’t even begin to understand the process of formation. I’ll say it once more because it is worth saying: if we don’t know what it is we are ‘inducting’ people into when we try and help them grow as humans, we cannot be surprised if chaos results.

Tact filters

Tact Filters: a very useful theory in understanding Nerd Communications, courtesy of Jeff Bigler. I was going to excerpt and link to this, but it's short and to the point, and Jeff's rules specifically allow quoting it in its entirety:
All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!"

"Nerds," on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "They're just saying those mean things because they're jealous. They don't really mean it."

When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one's feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one's feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people's feelings often get hurt because the nerds don't apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.

So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can't do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn't be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own.

Copyright © 1996 by Jeff Bigler. Permission is granted to redistribute this text in its entirety for non-commercial purposes, provided that this copyright notice and either the URL for the page (http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html) or a link to it is included. All other rights reserved.

11 April 2005

South Park avatars


Might I have a quiet word with you? Posted by Hello

Get your very own (via Laurence at IFOC.)

Greetings, Imprisoned Citizens of the United States!

The Unitarian Jihad has spoken! (Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 2005.)
We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.
Related: Get your Unitarian Jihad nom de guerre at the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator. (I will henceforth be known as "The Machine Gun of Sweet Reason.")

10 April 2005

Carnival of the Cats #55

Update, April 17, 2005: The 56th Carnival of the Cats is now up at Watermark. A belated greeting to our visitors from MSNBC... be sure to visit this week's Carnival at Watermark as well, and feel free to look around the place here. - Barry


Welcome, all friends new and old, to Chez Enrevanche, where we're hosting the 55th weekly Carnival of the Cats.

Come on in the house, take your shoes off, stay a while. There's coffee in the kitchen, and the bourbon's stashed in the cabinet over the fridge. We'll be passing a tray of hot hors d'oeuvres and tuna tartare in a few minutes...

Usage note: enrevanche house style specifies the inclusion of a number of not-strictly-necessary external links, so all of the actual Carnival Entry links below are
in bold type.


Welcome!
Pictured, left-to-right:
Chow Bella (red dog),
Mrs. Enrevanche (human), Chow Fun (yellow dog)
Front-and-center: Mister Gato (tabby cat, General Manager of household)
Posted by Hello

A couple of new participants in the Carnival get pride of place, and in one of those weird synchronicities, they're both U.S. Navy submariners.

Over at Unconsidered Trifles (we're digging the Shakespeare references), Willyshake's cat Gray demonstrates his new exercise regimen. (It has always been my theory that you derive *some* aerobic benefit from just sitting near one of those things, so sitting on one must be even better.)

And at Chapomatic, radioactive squid boy (nuclear submariner) Chap reviews the performance characteristics of Oscar, the North American Velvet Hamcat, and concludes that he is, in fact, a submarine cat.

(I'm not sure, but I think that the Carnival of the Cats just acquired a sea-based first-strike capability.)

Another newcomer, John at Living With Bengals (which is all cats, all the time!) offers us Gratuitous Cat Picture #7 and some logistical advice for hydrating your Bengal. This is a lovely blog with lots of nice cat pictures and commentary.

And yet another first-timer, SRP at Mélange, introduces us to Nickerdoodle, a beautiful Ragdoll cat.

Welcome to the Carnival, y'all!

Coffee with CrankyBeach sends along some close-up pictures of really, really big cats. Wow. Nice kitty! Nice kitty! (I'm still trying to work out a decent "click on the provided lynx" pun.)

Brendan, the Irish Trojan, has a cat named Buttercup who thought she could climb the vertical blinds. The expression on her face as she realizes that this isn't going to happen as planned is, well, kinda priceless. (Buttercup evidently gets up to all kinds of mischief.)

Elisson's feline "nephew" (that's your brother-in-law's cat, right?) Ringo asks, "Can you do this?"

There's more catblogging than you can shake a stick at over at Sisu, where Baby catches a mouse (and an Instalanche); Tiny demonstrates why Superballs are better than mice; and we find out that Baby likes it al dente.

MJ Cat (of nycbabylon fame) poses with friend Pepe on a warm spring day in New York City. Bleecker Street, clearly, is the place to be!

Your Moosey Fate showcases a rare moment of affectionate interaction between Hi and Mischief.

Martin at Ego writes this week about cats in art; there are some nice pictures of Morris and good links to a couple of artists in whose work cats figure prominently.

At Mind of Mog, the bad kitties are customizing the coaxial cables and "loving" the furniture. "I shred... I shred because I love." We also get a nice snapshot of Krissie, sitting still for once, and Jezzie in the sweet spot: on the sofa, in a sunbeam. (For a cat, it just doesn't get any better than that.)

Catherine from CathColl.net sends along a picture of Emily, who is sleeping like a little angel, and says "Go ahead. Resist this face. I dare you."

Bootstrap Analysis performs an important public service by offering translations of many things cats commonly say (along with an adorable picture of Kady acting invisible.)

Mira at The Oubliette asks the rhetorical question, "What do you get when you combine a cat hopped up on catnip, a riding crop, and a camera at 11:30 at night?" (I'm sure I don't know, but it sounds like a workable concept for a pay-to-view website. Live webcam kitties with riding crops!) Also from Mira, some lovely shots of Noah in an attitude of deep repose.

Over at Running Scared, Jazz's cat Colin is sitting on the deck and soaking up some rays.

Romeocat at CatHouse Chat declares All your legs are belong to ME!!!

At LabKat, Pica wants love and attention but Pixel can't be bothered.

SFP at Pages Turned brings us a lovely picture of Claudius Rex, who is, I believe, a Russian Blue. He is certainly an aptly named cat, as "regal" was the adjective that immediately came to mind on viewing his photograph.

At Curiouser and Curiouser, Harley and Tinker sit in the kitchen window and enjoy some fresh air after a long winter of closed windows.

Josh at Josh's Weblog introduces us to Makiko, an aficionado of cardboard.

Ferdinand, the Conservative Cat, observes that there's a downside to everything, even scented candle-wax.

In this week's "Ask The Cat" feature at This Blog Is Full Of Crap, Laurence interviews the kitties about the proposed increase in postal rates.

(Be sure to tune in next week, when Edloe and Piper weigh in on the continuing decline in the value of the dollar compared to the euro, pound and yen, and Frisky and Nardo discuss various options for Social Security reform.)

This lucky, sleepy cat (named "Chocolate Chip") at Striving for Average has his very own blanket. Considering his posture (the paw over the eyes... classic!) I think Tommy might want to consider getting C.C. his very own fainting couch.

Ady a.k.a. "dr. fly killa" at Ripe Bananas introduces us to Omni, her Anti-Muse. (The only way I've ever been able to keep cats from sleeping atop my monitor: I switched to an LCD flat screen.)

As always, friend-to-all-cats Steve of HockeyCat is featuring some beautiful cats who are candidates for adoption at the Orange County Animal Shelter in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (home of the 2005 NCAA Men's Basketball Champions, the UNC Tarheels.)

I was very glad to learn from Steve that Critter, a featured cat this month whose owner was killed in Iraq, has found a new human to care for him. Fabulous news: somebody just got themselves a lovely feline companion and did a wonderful thing; I hope that good karma flows their way. (If you're in the Triangle area of NC and you're looking for a cat-buddy, the folks at OCAS do wonderful work.)


In what I believe may be a first for the Carnival of the Cats, Shelly at Shelly's Podcast offers us our first "Friday Pod Cat" [here's the actual podcast link in MP3 format.]

For the two or three of you who have been wearing your Hype-Impermeable Tinfoil Hats and might need more information, here's some background on what a podcast is and how to listen to one... by the way, you don't need an iPod or other portable MP3 player; you can use any MP3-playing software, such as iTunes or RealPlayer (or about a gazillion others) to listen in.

Cassie at Scribblings sends us pictures of another cat finding new uses for exercise equipment. (Maybe we can get all these exercise-loving cats together and start a gym!)

Triticale mourns the passing of Cream Soda, a.k.a. Mr. Bluebird, who died at the ripe old age of twenty. Our condolences. That's never, ever easy.

Matt, the MartiniPundit, announces the triumphant return of Chloe and Daphne to catblogging. There's some serious cat-wrestling going on in this photo series.

LissaKay's two cats, Dakota and Faith, have a little morning ritual that involves formally inviting Mama to get their breakfasts.

Jan's cat Spectra (at Cascade Exposures) is enjoying the beautiful weather and the green grass and catmint.

Roxie the Cat, who makes her home at DedSpace, has some definite egghead tendencies. Of course, even dedicated intellectuals sometimes need to take a break and enjoy some light reading.

Maggie at Maggie's Meanderings and Shameless Plugs shows us a pair of cute felines, nose-to-nose, in extreme closeup.

BJ at Quite Early One Morning sends a veritable portfolio of photographs of Basil the Abyssinian, who unfortunately is no longer with us. He is lovingly remembered in this series of pictures, however. (Basil the Cat was named after this Basil, due to what BJ describes as his clownish nature.)

Melanie at the wonderful photoblog Concrete Crop Circles (love that name!) gives us a dramatic black and white photograph of Taylor, quite a handsome fellow.

More artistic black-and-white work over at Sugarfused, where Deb demonstrates conclusively that Elvis is still among us (and has not left the building [.WAV, 30k].)

At Yourish, we find Tig the Cat deep in thought, possibly about quantum physics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

(Here in New York City, we often have to deal with Eisenberg's Uncertainty Principle... do I get a Reuben or a tuna melt?)

There's some definite feline confraternity going on over at Sundappled Wood. When a cat bites your ear, you know he likes you.

At The People's Republic of Seabrook, Mack is so relaxed, it might be a good idea to check for a pulse.

But there's plenty of activity at Music and Cats, where Lyra, Sasha and Sergei are playing "catch the birdie." (Don't worry, bird lovers, it's not a real bird.)

And last but not least, SB at Watermark (host of next week's Carnival of the Cats) offers us Mrowyal Hellowr, some beautiful closeups of Spike and Boo.

As our farewell note, please remember: Don't Shoot the Cat! Some yahoos in Wisconsin are trying to change local law and policy to make "feral cats" (any cat roaming free without a collar... pretty broad definition) fair game for hunters and trappers. The initial vote is tomorrow (April 11, 2005) - go here to find out how you can help. Thanks to my compatriots and fellow travelers in the blogosphere for helping get the word out about this.

Thanks for visiting! And thanks to Laurence Simon, organizer and administrator of the Carnival of the Cats, for letting us host this week; we had a blast.

Be sure to mark your calendars for next Sunday, when the Carnival of the Cats moves to the wonderful blog Watermark. Submitting your entries couldn't be easier: drop an e-mail with your entry's permalink (and trackback, if desired) to cats@isfullofcrap.com or use Ferdinand T. Cat's excellent multi-Carnival online submission form.

(And don't forget the Friday Ark at The Modulator, always an excellent source of blog posts about furry quadrupeds as well as other members of the animal kingdom.)


Whew, that was exhausting. I need a little alone time.Posted by Hello

Credits

Mister Gato and the Chow Sisters eat only IAMS pet foods (and occasional table scraps)
Kibble, catnip and toys cheerfully delivered by Beasty Feast
Well-loved cardboard grocery box/cat bed/scratching post by FreshDirect
Cheap, scratchy wool blanket made to U.S. Navy specifications, via Weiss and Mahoney.

Additional research and not-strictly-necessary external linkage by the
Enrevanche Catblogging Support Outsourcing Center in Bangalore, India.

No animals were harmed in the making of this blog entry.

09 April 2005

Carnival of the Cats tomorrow - keep those cards and letters coming in!


Don't bother Papa! He's working on the Carnival! Posted by Hello

There's still time to submit your entries for Sunday's Carnival of the Cats (hosted here at enrevanche.)
The Carnival goes live at enrevanche on Sunday, April 10 at 7PM Eastern/6PM Central (that's 23:00 Greenwich Mean Time, and 4:30 AM Monday, April 11 for those of you in the Enrevanche Catblogging Support Outsourcing Center in Bangalore, India.)