Tuesday, 22 December 2009

  • save the kitty!

    i have a new cat. it's an older female tabby type cat, probably about 8 or 10 years old from what i can tell. with cats, i look at their teeth, and for some reason, i can usually tell. i have no idea how veterinarians do it. sweet cat, really. quite fat. big, actually. big and fat. a big, fat, ornery female cat.

    my brother sean went to the humane society on black friday. apparently, they were giving away free black animals to good homes. he saw this fat fucker and stuck his hand in the cage. the cat rubbed its face against my brother's hand. so he decided to take it home.

    he tells the lady working the counter, and she goes back into the room with all the cages, and my brother points out the one he wants. there is a big sign on the cage that says, "DO NOT TOUCH." the lady from the counter says, "you can't have that one. it's mean. it's going in 'the back."

    "THE BACK" is where our city's humane society takes animals to be euthanized. "THE BACK" is a very bad place when you love cats as much as i do. and sean doesn't particularly care to see them killed, either. so he pleads with this lady, and she says, "fuck no."

    so he does what every kid learns from a very young age: he goes and asks the other parent. there was another lady working up there, so he waited until the first one wasn't within earshot and said, "i'd like to take this cat home." the second lady was rather uncertain and said, "this cat is not friendly. it would not make a good companion. it's going in 'the back.'"

    sean is a rather cute kid. he has huge blue eyes, and he knows how to use them. after some wheedling, the second lady relented: "if you can get her out of that cage, you can have her." so sean scooped her up and took her home. he named her kung fu kitty, and got a big kick out of inviting his houseguests to rub her belly. petting her in any form was sure to elicit a laugh from him. this cat was meeeaaaannn.

    it tore him up. it tore up his girlfriend, mylee. it tore his mother up. it tore his friends up. i thought this was rather funny, because i am a fucked up person. also, i love cats. probably more than humans. so i told him, "if you ever decide you don't want this cat, i'll take her."

    about a week ago, i woke up to find a strange fat female tabbycat lounging around my house. apparently she had bitten a little girl over at my brother's, and since he and mylee are about seven days from having a daughter of their own, they decided this cat was not right for them.

    i did not particularly want another fat cat. i had one pass away in may. his name was rockwell. norman rockwell. big, fat orange and white cat. i'd had this cat for years. he was somewhere around 15 or 17 when he died, i think. it was heart failure that killed him, and i did not want a replacement.

    but man, this cat was cool. so now i have one big fat female tabby with a nasty attitude. her name is scratchmaster tricky, and i love her. she lets me pet her and pick her up, and she loves when i scratch her under her chin. she sleeps in my chair, and on the foot of my bed, and in my dirty laundry. i don't see what everyone's issue with this cat was, but i'm sure glad she gets to live.

    i wish i could save all the cats in the world. i love them all, and they all belong to me. they just don't know it yet.

Friday, 30 October 2009

  • kuntz and other really shitty surnames

    i worked as a telemarketer for a long while, back when i was too young to get a decent job anywhere else. telemarketing sucks, both for the person who's being annoyed during dinner or sex, and the person calling. if you work at a telemarketing firm, you spend eight hours a day on your ass, calling people all over the country to either sell something you wouldn't use yourself, or ask for money toward a cause you don't believe in. you repetitively piss off hundreds of thousands of people while they're in the middle of something entirely more important than talking to you. i could have flipped burgers instead, but telemarketing firms in this area pay their employees nearly $5 more an hour above minimum wage. what can i say, i whored myself out for a larger paycheck.

    i've called a few people whose names i couldn't pronounce, but they all escape me at the moment. there was, however, this one woman whose name doesn't escape me. her first name? i have no fucking clue. her last name? kuntz.

    the first thing that went through my head when her named popped up on my computer screen was, uhh... "cunts." there was NO WAY i was going to pronounce her name that way. so this woman answers the phone, "hello?"
    "hello, mrs., uhh, ...coontz?"
    "no, ma'am, it's what you thought it was."
    "pardon?"
    "it's what it looks like. go ahead and say it."

    this woman knew i was a telemarketer, and thus governed by the FCC rules; and she was gonna make me say it. it wasn't really the FCC that bothered me, i mean, i had an excuse... it was her name. what got me was the uncomfortable factor, and i think she knew that.

    "mrs., uhmm... cunts?" oh dear god.

    the awkward factor for a teenage girl who had never used that word was off the fucking charts.

    in my life, i've met a few people whose last names i would not care to have as my own. some of the more unfortunate ones? (some of them, you just have to say out loud to understand.)
    slutsky. boyles. hyman. belcher. pribbernow. fuchs. whaley. butt. kockabich. dyke. bolenbaugh. balls. hairl. lipscomb. hamburger. neogra. getzhoff. bonar. schmuck. wanker.
    ...and i could come up with hundreds more if i went through my school or military yearbooks. i even have a few friends whose last names are not necessarily bad, but more along the lines of difficult. wietrzykowski. omelyanenko. walentukonis. ...and yes, i can pronounce this name, although i have to add it to the list to be an asshole: nguyen.

    shit, i hope none of my non-xanga friends read this post.

    would you change your last name if it was something really shitty?

Sunday, 25 October 2009