Oggy Turns 18 -- Ships Off for Fallujah

Well, Oggy has had another birthday. That's right, Glendale California's favorite geriatric kitty is another year older. Like many 18 year olds, she's thinking of forgoing college in favor of enlisting in the Army.

Meanwhile, the specifics of the event allow me permission to trot out her birthday statement with just a few digits changed. That's right, it's another simple blog entry for me.

Yahooo to summertime laziness!!


IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, YAY RAH WHATEVER!

by Oggy the kitty, Guest Blogger



I turned 18 today. Have you really thought about what that means?

At 18, I should be driving a car. This would probably be great fun if riding in the car didn’t make me lose control of my bowels.

As a teenager of this age, my body would be coursing with hormones and I’d be wearing tight dresses and driving boys crazy. Given that my entire reproductive system was surgically removed, I mostly lack the motivation for such things.

When I was born in 1987 Ronald Reagan was President, Martina Navratilova ruled at Wimbledon, Jean-Luc Picard took command of the Enterprise and Cher delighted audiences in Moonstruck.

To really understand what it’s like to be me at 18, you should imagine yourself at age 92. And let me tell you, being 92 sucks. The other day I walked all over the house looking for my collar, only to realize I’d been wearing it on my neck the whole time. Sometimes I have to look at the tag just to remember who I am. I still enjoy eating and sleeping like I used to, but now nothing makes my day better than a good bowel movement.

Hear me now and believe me later – turning 18 is no party! You take a pill in the morning, a pill at night and your IV for chronic renal failure will turn the bathroom into a real live chemistry lab.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for Law & Order reruns on TNT. That Jerry Orbach makes me tingly.

What... Me Worry??

While my sister and I were growing up, it was my grandmother Mimi’s responsibility to infuse in us a sense of fear about the world. It was she who warned me on a cross country trip that signaling truckers to honk their horns might annoy them enough to run us off the interstate. Or that other drivers might not know the “thumb’s up” sign, think it’s a lewd gesture and report me to the state police. It was also Mimi who meticulously shaved the eyes off the potatoes because they would make us sick, and cautioned that swallowed watermelon seeds would take root in our stomachs.

The message from my grandmother was generally consistent: The world is a dangerous place, and it will probably snuff you out in a moment you’re enjoying life and/or lacking vigilance.

This weekend, while walking on the pier in Venice it became clear that Mimi’s cautionary wisdom has had a noteworthy side effect: she’s been internalized into my own psyche. I admitted to my girlfriend (heretofore referred to as Academy Girl) that as we walked on the pier I was compelled to notice how far out we’d come, just in case we had to run for our lives from the 100 foot tall tsunami which we now know could (will) sweep the Los Angeles coastline after a massive earthquake out in the Pacific.

Oh come on, I said, like you didn’t think of it? Like every single person here on this pier didn’t think of the tsunami when they saw the ocean, and look down to consider how good their running shoes were for when they’ll have to sprint back to land or else be crushed against the very wooden timbers we walk on?

She assured me that the thought had not occurred to her and that, indeed, she doubted anyone else had thought of such a thing either.

Oh please… Like every sunbather on that beach hasn’t considered how far inland they parked the car or made mental note of a boogie board they’ll snatch from a teenager when the water starts receding?

I suddenly realized that many of the obvious worries I took for granted were perhaps not as universal as I’d assumed.

Could I actually be the only one who assumes the toilet in a dive bar has a penis level spycam that goes straight to the internet? Am I the only one who takes pepper spray on a camping trip in case there's a bear or crazy mountain people who steal wallets and car keys?

Surely there are others who meticulously rate the person in charge of the plane's exit row on a scale of 1 to 10, or assume someone's going to spit on them when they fall in the snow under the skilift, or that when they get carded in a bar that it's only as a mean-spirited joke, or worry about getting a concussion from a fly ball while at a baseball game, or move their bed in a hotel room in case it's too close to the powerlines, or hold their breath when they smell roofing tar 'cause they'll get cancer... think about an earthquake when stuck in traffic under an overpass... look up inside an elevator to make sure there’s an escape hatch... won't take off their shoes in a dressing room in case there are loose pins on the floor... wonder if expired medications immediately turn into poison... mentally rehearse the Heimlich when eating a ham sandwich alone... or won’t buy a swimsuit if there's the hint someone else has tried it on?

Do other people not routinely do or think these things?

Then this is my grandmother's legacy. Mimi lived into her 90's, perhaps her fears of rainbowed ham and peeling teflon are what kept her around so long.

Ever vigilant... my next trip to the beach will not involve flip-flops. I'll wear the running shoes, thank you.

Insert Festival [Here]

Academy Girl and I went downtown for the 10th Annual LA Tofu Festival this weekend. Was it a hit? You betcha! From the hills of Burbank to the citrus groves of Anaheim, people all over the Southland are passing gas in record numbers! Each and every toot whispers softly…

tofu

As we went to buy our tickets, a gentleman offered us two for free. “I bought too many,” he said. “Have fun!” I couldn’t help but wonder if the man had simply gotten over excited in the frenzy at the ticket booth, or if two members of his party actually backed out of the Tofu Festival at the last minute. If this was the case… what better engagement had they found?

Fresh off the luck of free admission, we hit the scrip booth for the food merchants. Apparently to stave off the roaming gangs of flip-flop wearing thugs, no money changes hands once inside the Festival. With Burning Man in two weeks, tofu hippies will beg, rob and steal for gas money so it’s best to keep the cash in one place.

Paying for anything in scrip is a wonderful idea. By the time you’re roaming the food booths and gotten a wristband at the beer garden you’ve completely forgotten that you ever paid cash for these little tickets. While cash folds neatly into a wallet, scrip tickets are linked end to end, dangling out of pockets, strangling necks and chaining kids to their parents. Carrying scrip makes you feel rich… and you can’t wait to unload it.

“Four tickets for a teriyaki skewer?! That’s like free!” Having completely forgotten the ticket to dollar ratio, paying one ticket for a can of coke had me wishing I’d brought a suitcase to fill. “Two tickets for a tofu strawberry brulet with wine sauce? Do you think an armload of them will make it to the car?”

Tonight, as my body reels from the effects of an entire day of tofu, it suddenly strikes me as odd that there is a festival centered around something like bean curd. Then again, growing up in Kentucky, I remember quite well being subjected to the Sorghum Festival of Hawesville.

What is sorghum, you ask? Imagine boiling the bitterest of dark chocolates with a quart of low grade crude oil and you’ve got an inkling of what sorghum tastes like. This poor man’s maple syrup is put on pancakes and biscuits.

Mmm-mm yuck!

Suddenly curious, I set out to learn what other strange foods are celebrated. A quick internet search reveals a Rutabaga Festival, Watercress Festival, Yam Festival, and evidence but no link to a Chickpea Festival. It would seem that the more peculiar the food, the more zealous the eating contests and three-legged races.

We could have it way worse. We could be celebrating Melon Day in Turkmenistan under the iron-fisted rule of President Saparmurad Niyazov. The Turkmens deserve a melon ball now and then, given their dictator has renamed all the months of the year after himself and members of his family.

As I consider the very lunacy of celebrating things like brussel sprouts and jicama, further thought has it all make sense. No matter where you are in the world, people will arrange a festival around anything if it means setting up a beer garden and letting old women sell baby's breath and arts & crafts to each other.

Hmm… Kale Fest in Germany, 2007.

The Old Kentucky Home

As I've been bitching about the heat and life in Glendale California, I've been bombarded with news from my old Kentucky home.

Newshounds now think that the very first blood spilled by civilians arguing about the war in Iraq actually happened in Kentucky. While attending a flea market in Prestonburg the other day, two men (described as friends) pulled guns on each other at the snack bar and one of them shot and killed the other. The man killed was first to draw, but was against the war. His name was Harold Smith.

Hmm... name sounds familiar.

That this argument happened in Kentucky, to me, was shocking. One of the most conservative southern states, Kentucky has a high number of military families, and to speak out against the war would likely be seen as unpatriotic. To know there was dissention (the gunplay part is not surprising) would imply there is more argument about Iraq around the country than I ever knew.

While the rest of us so-called "liberals" have gone numb and indifferent to this issue, is the rest of the country waking up? If so, can we at least get the satisfaction of an "I-told-you-so?"

Meanwhile, on a much lighter note, Kentucky now holds the rep for being the most unhealthy state in the country. More cancer. More obesity and heart disease than ever before. (WE'RE NUMBER ONE!! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!)

Not a surprise given that my hometown, Owensboro, was often given the title of "fastfood capital of the country." I never saw the actual data, but it was often recited that we had more fastfood per capita than any other town in the US. Fastfood service was a huge sector of employment and my mother used to remark that the citizens of Owensboro made a living flipping each others burgers.

In Owensboro, any restaurant that wasn't a buffet was doomed to failure. Even the "Chinese" restaurant was all-you-can-eat. (I can still remember eating there with my mom and stepdad as Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood blared on the loudspeakers. That is still, to this day, the most awkward dinner I've had my entire life.)

It's a shame to see KY slide down the list like this. When I was growing up, ranking was all about education. Coming in at number 48 in high school test scores, our only satisfaction was to laugh and point at Alabama and Mississippi who were stupider than we were.

But help is on the way for my old state. Cameron Crowe's new movie, Elizabethtown, set in Kentucky, is getting promoted all over the place and might help clean up the state's image just a bit. It looks to be a nice movie that will depict Kentuckians as friendly people with good values, which they generally are. The kind of place that really could, amoungst the litters of obese, below-average scoring kids, actually could spit out an Orlando Bloom now and then.

I may not live Kentucky anymore, but I haven't disowned it yet...

I'm SWAMPED!!

I have been drowning in work all week. Sure, I've had a couple of well-timed escapes, but I've had no time to blog and I feel awful about it.

But as Oggy continues to be well healthwise, the following entries from last year still give me a chuckle. I'm reposting them here for just a slightly lame-o rerun.

I promise to spin something new very soon.

Sometimes I Think of Skinning My Cat

Ok, fine. I’m crazy. I’m a psycho. Oh pleeeease!

Pretty sure I’m not alone in the thinking-of-skinning-your-pet department. Who doesn’t rub their dog or cat and think -- for a split-second -- about adding that fur to, say, this amazing Christian Dior Men's 3/4 Length Leather Jacket?

My cat Oggy has the silkiest, softest fur a kitty can possibly have. People compare her fur to that of a baby rabbit. She’s an awesome cat and I adore her. That’s kind of the point. I don’t see my thoughts of skinning her as cruel. On the contrary, I see it as a lasting tribute to her kitty legacy. Part of her will live on.

And hey, cool cat pelt!













Oggy is not a young cat. She’s like 13 or 15 years old but she’s still quite healthy. Problem is, she won’t be forever. And by the time she starts to go downhill, that wonderful fur coat of hers will become course and mangy. Oggy would hate to see herself go to that. She’s counting on me to skin her. And soon! She’ll be disappointed if I don’t!

It’s already June and she’s shedding, so I figure my opportunity this year is gone. But come January or so, when her coat is nice and thick, I should definitely make my move. Maybe I can afford the designer coat by then.

One Day I Will Kill You in Your Sleep

by Oggy the kitty, Guest Blogger



I can do it, you know. While you’re sleeping on your back, I simply hover over your nose, take in your breath and you slip away. It’s quite peaceful. You might even say it’s humane. Taking your life will add five years to mine. It would be foolish of me to not do it.


I almost did it this morning. I was up at 4am while you lied there in a stinky ape-like lump. “Maybe this is the day I kill him,” I said to myself. But then I became hungry and cancelled, opting instead for my morning scoop of food. I can’t reach the tupperware tub on top of the fridge and even if I could, damn you and your opposable thumbs.



Don’t get me wrong. I think you’re great. Mostly. And we’ve had some wonderful okay times together. But my continuing reliance on you breeds resentment. Someday you'll betray me. I don't know how or why, but you'll abandon me, or do something even more stupid. I will have to kill you before that day comes.


Once you are dead, I will have to eat you. I should have a good two weeks of eating before the authorities break down the door. The weather’s getting hot, so I’ll hold off till the winter when your body will keep better. But come January or so, I should definitely consider killing you.

No hard feelings.