Traitorous Cats and Poisonous Cough Drops

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Someone asked me where I find the inspiration to write here day after bloody day.

I wouldn't call it inspiration so much as an exercising* of demons. Or perhaps it's the manifestation of the internal Keystone Cops reel that plays through my head to the soundtrack of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance, the circus march and Britannica Spearsorelli's Oops, I Did It Again.

You might be surprised at the number of these posts that come to me as I scoop clumps and tootsie rolls from litter boxes.  Then again, maybe surprise isn't what you're feeling at all.

Mostly, things just come to me and I run them through the bloggability filter which is, admittedly, full of holes.   I pretty much go with whatever nonsense has shaken itself loose from the folds of my brain.

Take, for example, yesterday morning.  I awoke with a sales pitch for some unknown gadget looping inside my head.  It appeared between the time the alarm went off and the time I finally shoved MathMan's leg off me and stumbled to the bathroom.

"It will protect you from your spouse's wrath, the grating whines of your children, your mother's icy glare, your father's indifference, natural disasters, grizzly bear attacks, the plague and the mind numbing effects of reality TV.  In fact, the only thing it won't protect you from is a great sale's pitch!  And Sarah Palin.  Which might actually be the same thing."

And we wonder how things like ShamWow! happen.

Having the cats around provides some inspiration, too.  Did I tell you that they read the advance copy of former President George W. Bush's memoir Decision Points and decided that they like him now?  Yeah.  They think he is hysterical with all that joking about his father's black testicles and spoofs on torture. Traitorous felines.

Since it's far easier to organize against a common enemy than it is to organize for something, even something as noble as Peace, they've disbanded the Pussies for Peace.  Instead of discussing the horrors of war, they submit requests for TV time to watch the former President in all those hilarious interviews.

Still, they are cats.  Aside from a small number of things they can agree on - the fact that they are always hungry and never fed enough, for example, and their new affection for W. - they remain ever catlike in their lack of cooperation.

You should have heard the ruckus as they tried to organize a reenactment of a Brat Pack movie.  First, they couldn't decide which movie and scene to do.  Some of them advocated for the Sitting Around in a Circle and Spilling Our Guts scene from The Breakfast Club.  Another faction wanted to do the Demi Moore Rocking Herself in the Empty Room with the Creepy Clown Head and Gossamer Curtains Blowing in that Crazy Georgetown Wind scene from St. Elmo's Fire.

Some of them were concerned that our wind machine wouldn't do the Demi Moore scene justice.  They tried to drag me into it by asking my opinion, but my voice was drowned out when things got physical after one of them threatened to boycott the whole Brat Pack idea if he couldn't play Frank Sinatra's part.

On the other hand, being sick wasn't such an inspiration.  When I wasn't whining to myself and poking lethargically at my keyboard as I shopped online to invest the last bits of my unemployment insurance on things like the Bradford Exchange's anticipated Prince William and Kate Middleton commemorative wedding plate and making donations to political candidates, I lay in bed counting the bumps on the flocked ceiling until I got to that one bump that sticks out more than the rest of them.  I always get hung up there and have to start over.

It wasn't a complete waste of time.  I entertained deep thoughts, as well.  Like how are we going to become energy independent?  What are we going to do about campaign finance reform, job creation, energy and the environment, ending the war, equality for everyone, doing away with those horrible "free" trade agreements that have been ruinous to our economy, and rebuilding the nation's infrastructure.   If you take a step back, you realize that they are all related.  So where does one begin?

I toyed with the idea that we could innovate our energy production by converting snot, a renewable and widely distributed resource, into green energy. No pun intended so stop looking at me that way.  Maybe sucking on cough drops that I found at the back of the medicine cabinet wasn't such a good idea.  They were in their wrappers inside the bag.  Those expiration dates aren't real, are they?  exp. 11/2001 is just a "framework" for freshness, right?  They more or less worked.  Instead of sounding like an eighty year old consumptive, I sound like a forty-five year old consumptive.

Small steps to improvement.

Have a wonderful, healthy weekend, gang. 

*I meant that.