Friday, February 16, 2007

Excuses, Cat Drugs, Debates and Fiscal Tiger

Yeah, so it's been over a month since I last posted. My excuse is: I had a cold. One of those cold that affects your typing and mouse skills. Such a debilitating kind of cold, that. On behalf of the Guild of Internet Artisans, I offer my most humble and profuse apologies, and lay myself at your mercy.



Going to buy cat drugs from the vet's, I had to show the nurse the previous packet of cat drugs so she knew what cat drugs the cat wanted. The packet had Mog's old name on, the one that the cat home had given her, so I said to the nurse, 'Catrina was her old name.'

'We changed it to Mog,' I then said.

Then, adopting a conspiratorial whisper, I added, 'because Catrina is a shit name.'

There was then an awkward pause as I weighed up the odds that the nurse's name was Catrina. She looked like she might be Spanish, and everyone in Spain who isn't called Maria is called Catrina, so I thought it probably quite likely that she was called Catrina. Damn. I meant to say, 'Catrina is a shit name for a cat'. But I didn't, because that would just lead to me blathering on with things like, 'but it's not a shit name for a person. It's actually a good name for a person. I like you. Give me cat drugs.'

I got the cat drugs, but the cat scratched me to buggery when I gave them to her. I think the nurse switched the worming tablets for some kind of cat psychotic.
For reasons best left obscure, the other night I went to a debate (the kind where statements like 'The House considers flip-flops to be a modern blessing of convenience upon our benighted land and thinks that their invention should all be honoured with big cash rewards and sloppy kisses' are bandied about) that some schoolkids were having. In a debate about the merits of learning a foreign language, one of the kids came up with

'if it wasn't for languages, we wouldn't be able to use semi-colons. You know, the things you use when writing letters.'

Needless to say, he won his debate.
I've just found some drawings I did of Fiscal Tiger, of whom I had great hopes once. Fiscal Tiger (FT) is a cartoon tiger I wanted to make a cartoon strip about. He was going to represent rapacious capital in its rampant 1980s throwback form, while also being a tiger. The plan floundered on twofold reasons: I know nothing about finance and I can't draw. However, before plans were shelved, he was given a copyright-infringing catchphrase:

'Greed is grrrrrrrrrrrrreat!'

which he would use at the end of each cartoon, in the absence of a punchline (oh, did I mention the third reason: no punchlines? I couldn't think up any funny stories or punchlines. That was the third reason).
Is this post long enough now? I've got absolutely priceless thoughts about the merits of gatefold dining tables, but perhaps I'll save them for another occasion.