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Like Catheterizing a Housecat
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7/26/2005
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Stupid cat update- Queaseldean's problem with expelling the contents of her bladder around my house (scroll down to previous entry for complete story) has been solved. It was a process of ideas, though. I finally took away her water. Problem solved. But then someone told me she'd die (which is basically the same level of activity she usually exhibits), and then she'd start to stink and there'd be flies. So I decided to catheterize her and permanently attach the tube to the litterbox. That way she could think she was peeing wherever she wanted to, but it wouldn't matter.
I think "catheterizing a housecat" is going to be the new "trying to nail jell-o to a tree" saying. It would be easier and safer to dry-shave a badger in a hurricane.
The answer? As many of you fine loyal readers suggested, she was upset with the brand of litter I bought. In case you care, she prefers "mountain breeze fresh" to "happy berry meadow" scented fresh step premium scooping litter.
Just seems awfully picky for a creature that licks its own asshole.
In other news, I am sporting a very extreme hairstyle today. I know this because I found a tube of DEP XTREME HOLD hair gel in my bathroom (I think it came with my all-in-one toiletry travel kit, so I can only assume that this travel kit was specifically designed for Navy Seals and stunt pilots). It even says that it is for XTREME hairstyles. So my assumption is that any hairstyle becomes XTREME with the addition of this magical gel. Another rad thing was that it has a scale of XTREMITY right on the tube. Get this- the scale starts at 6 and goes to 10.
Yeah, fuck the numbers 1 through 5. Those numbers don't even exist when you are XTREME. This tube of gel was rated at 10, making it illegal in seven states and exactly what I needed. I'd post a picture of my hair, but I have been told by the management of Atlanta Illustrated that we would have to put a health warning on the site because women could become pregnant just by looking at it.
I have a new favorite ad campaign. That's right. Move over Snuggles the fabric softener bear. Your loveable cuddliness has been replaced by a beer ad.
Namely, Milwaukee's Best. The new ads where "men should act like men, light beer should taste like light beer". The message? Pansy ass men should be crushed by giant cans of cheap beer.
They have one where this big construction worker guy is being chased by a bee while freaking out like a little girl (beer falls on man, making him stop sucking), another one where a guy and his girlfriend show up at a barbecue dressed identically (also crushed by beer while girlfriend looks on), and so on.
The reason it rules so very deeply is not that it will be effective in changing the face of their beer- we all know that the nickname "The Beast" is something Miller Brewing Company should learn to embrace and stop fighting against. We also know that in order to be accurate they should change their slogan to "men should act like men, light beer should taste like baboon piss."
Seriously. In parts of Uganda they splash Milwaukee's Best on the trees around their villages to keep tigers away. I saw it on the Discovery channel.
The campaign's effectiveness is purely in its entertainment value. Every male in America can recount situations in which they thought a friend needed to be beaten back into manhood.
Recently I saw one of my friends rollerblading down the street. Wait. It gets worse. He and his girlfriend were wearing matching helmets and blue ipods. I instantly launched into the questions...
"So...does she take your balls out of her purse and let you play with them sometimes?" "Did your parents have any male children?" His girlfriend laughed politely in a way that assured me that I won't be seeing this friend again until they break up next week. Then he actually tried to explain himself to me instead of holding his finger over his lip to look like a moustache, adopting a thick accent and pretending he was someone else.
We all know the saying- "The most difficult thing about rollerblading is telling your parents you're gay", but the matching helmet thing and his need to justify being such a complete nozzle really made me wish I had a thousand pounds of something to drop on him. Maybe 500 gallons (or $4.31 worth) of Milwaukee's Best.
What about when your friend tells you that his girlfriend cheated on him but he wants to try to work it out with her? I have threatened people's lives for saying stuff like that.
"Hey Dusty, You have to try this- I've been going to yoga classes with my girlfr-" (crushed by beer)
"Come check out my new Scooter/mini cooper/hybrid ecofuel car. It's so much sportier than my old car..." (bring on the crushing)
"There's a wine tasting tonight at Alejandro's house of tannins. A bunch of us guys are-" (crush)
I have so many ideas for that campaign that Miller should hire me right now.
While I'm there, we could work on the part about making their beer taste a little less like something that was poured out of the dumpster behind the abortion clinic and a little more like beer.
 Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 6:28 AM |
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Dear Queasy...
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7/19/2005
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Dear Queasy,
That picture was taken the day I was suckered into...er...voluntarily adopted you eight years ago. You had been doused with diesel fuel by some heartless stinkpot who doesn't love the lord and your fur fell out. When the vet said it might not grow back I was all excited to have a half-bald cat to show my friends. I was going to let them make fun of you and then tell them of your abusive past or maybe that you had cancer just to make them feel bad. As if to punish me for my twisted sense of humor, it grew back and now you shed between nine and twelve cubic yards of fur every six hours. Everything in my house is wearing a white sweater because of you.
You also occasionally hack up furballs the size of corndogs, and that's how it's going to be until you are gone.
The possibility of your being gone brings me to my next point. I know you can't help having lots of fur. It insulated your ancestors in the untamed Nepalese mountain wilderness as they roamed in search of moths, crickets, and Eukanuba bushes. If I brushed you more often, you probably wouldn't shed as much, nor would you make that "huk...huk...kaaaaaiieeek" sound that wakes me up in the wee hours. Yes, I would brush you more, but you are a cat and you wig out when the brushing gets intense and you try to bite me and get all hitty with your declawed front paws. Brushing pisses both of us off.
But the fur is not the issue here. The problem I am having with you of late is your bathroom habits, and it may very well terminate this relationship with a trip to the nearest Chinese restaurant, the intersection of North Avenue and North Highland (where you will be flung in front of a bus), or maybe even the garbage disposal if you EVER pee on anything I wear again.
We've been through this before, Queasy. You were unhappy with something and you showed it by urinating everywhere but your litter box. After three months and $1000 worth of carpet cleaning supplies, I figured out you didn't like the liners in your box. You may not know this as a cat, but there are lots of ways to show you aren't happy that do not involve urine. You could launch yourself at my face and chew my flesh, Meow loudly, or just frigging tell me what the problem is. Why do you have to be so damned passive aggressive? Do you have any idea how much trouble I got into when I responded to the new dress code at work by leaving a steamer on the boss's desk? A lot of trouble. That behavior is not acceptable and you can get sued. Be glad you're not human, or I'd own you.
I don't know what you are mad about. I bought you that fancy $200 self- cleaning litterbox last year so you'd never have to step on your own feces. You loved it for so long. Has it forsaken you? Now that I have concrete floors, I'm not quite as enraged by the puddles I find in the morning, but if I should ever step in one when I get out of bed you'd better hope you can run faster than I can, because I will snap your fuzzy neck with my bare hands.
That being said, I do feel I owe you an apology for what happened at three this morning. You were trying to bury a puddle next to the stove in the kitchen by pretending that everything in the room was made of sand, scratching away at the refrigerator, waking me up...you didn't even see me coming, and all of a sudden your nose was all up in your own waste.
I failed to consider the geography of your flat Himalayan face, so when I rubbed your nose in it, I guess it pretty much covered most of your head. I also forgot how you get yourself clean, so that's pretty gross and I apologize.
So let's make the following deal- You stop pissing on the floor, and I won't kill you.
Love,
Dusty
Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 3:45 PM |
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Adopt-a-disaster
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7/11/2005
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I love benefit concerts. A bunch of people pooling their talents to help the impoverished. This year they all decided to do it along with the G8 summit so anyone who would rather listen to music than a bunch of world leaders could do so. Their focus? Poverty.
Their goal?
Oh no. Not what one would think.
The concert was only to raise awareness. They don't want your money. They want your awareness. Because awareness cures poverty and feeds hungry people.
Having been informed that awareness is now a legal form of currency, I decided to call t-mobile and tell them that although I enjoy paying $150 a month for my phone, I would like to switch to the awareness plan. Since I am aware of the bill they sent me, I explained, it should be considered paid. If my own awareness wasn't enough, I offered to take my bill and show it to my neighbors while playing a catchy tune on a juice harp in hopes that the added awareness would take care of it.
I then decided to try another experiment. I made what I thought would be a delicious bowl of macaroni and awareness. I figured that with the success of live 8, the lush green awareness fields would stretch for miles across the African planes and be harvested to feed all who live there, so we might as well start including it in our recipes.
As ridiculous as it may seem on the surface, I am glad that people are doing stuff to fix things and whatever. The big answer to everything as usual is to send more money to them. You know, since the $85 trillion a year we're sending now is doing so much to help matters. Warlords need to put gas in their helicopters just like everyone else, and making sure your citizens are starving can actually cost more than feeding them.
Once again, we are at that time of year where a hurricane destroys Florida once a week. I love the way they scramble to rebuild and clean up and then brace for the next one. Like wiping one's ass before shitting. Just let it sit there and wait until October to clean it up. Save everybody a lot of time and money.
What about the tourist industry? Well, assuming that some people's idea of tourism is being skewered by a flag pole in 120 mph winds, they shouldn't have a problem. Just make the entire panhandle into a macabre amusement park. Head to the beach and enjoy the maze of caustic chemicals. Wade through solvents and paint products until your skin burns, and then hit the haunted boat graveyard for some precariously balanced hulls that will surely lead to blunt force trauma fun for the whole family! See and contract exciting diseases that you never knew existed in the biohazard funhouse in beautiful Pensacola!
See? All they need is the right marketing strategy.
Speaking of which, why has no one stepped up to offer corporate sponsorship of a hurricane? If hurricane Best Buy were to devastate Palm Beach next week, we could see yellow toe tags on the victims and corporate branded plywood over shop windows. Come on people. Am I the only one who is thinking around here? For a building supply company, it's practically a no-brainer. For a musician with an upcoming album, it makes sense on another level entirely. Tropical storm Jamiroquai making landfall at the exact time his new album hits shelves will sell some frigging CD's and everyone knows it.
So let's get on this. I don't know who is in charge, but I'd better see more stuff like this during the next natural disaster.
I'm glad being awesome isn't painful. Because oh seriously the agony I'd be in.
Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 10:47 AM |
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Destiny's (bastard) Child
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7/5/2005
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On the 4th of July I had the task of dropping my girlfriend off at the starting line of the Peachtree Road Race. She enjoys running. Some people enjoy macrame, some are serial killers or librarians. Who am I to criticize?
I drove to the finish line at Piedmont Park to meet her, and was sort of interested to see my first Peachtree Road Race in person. By the time I walked up to the finish line, the first runner was finishing, having just run 10k in 26 minutes...also known as 4 minutes faster than it took me to get to the same point in my car, and I took a shortcut. As the elite runners crossed the line, I thought, "Holy crap, do they even let white people run in this race?" It turns out that they do, but white people are much slower. I could not believe the shape these folks were in, either. They just ran for almost thirty minutes at what amounts to a full sprint and they were barely even breathing hard.
I sweat more than that when I grate cheese. Maybe it's time to get into shape.
If you enjoy watching people, the finish of the Road Race is a good place to do it. 50,000 people of all shapes and sizes ran that race. Some were athletes, and some were not. One guy crossed the finish line with his girlfriend and they had no fewer than 27 perfectly chiseled abdominal muscles between them. I know it's not possible, but I saw it.
Three guys crossed the line wearing a veil and google eyed glasses a'la runaway bride, and I thought it was sort of funny. Then I saw about a dozen more people who had the same idea and it lost its charm. I think these races should be more theme based to attract more people like me- you know, every road race needs more non-runner jackasses to gum up the works.
I'd have one of those runner escorts run in front of me with "dusty's dreams" printed on their shirt and I'd chase them. For the sake of realism, my dreams would have to leave me in a moist fleshy heap at the finish line and keep on running, never to be seen again. Then "destiny" would catch up with me and kick the crap out of me right in front of everyone.
It would almost be like a Road Race tragic comedy, but without all of that tragedy and comedy getting in the way.
Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 6:05 PM |
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