talking out my ass

(written under the influence of william faulkner.)

some time ago, we took in a stray cat, a declawed, neutered black and white male we named binx after the human boy/cursed cat in the kid's halloween movie, hocus pocus. clearly, he had been some coddled lap pet cum street thug after having been dumped prior to his old family's move.

my soft-hearted wife had to put out some food for him, and the rest, as they say, was history. he assimilated well, playing much too roughly with pele, the idiot, and not taking any shit from pepper, the queen bitch. he felt an undying need to prove his "street"-ness by going outside any time we opened the front door to roll around in the driveway, mad-eye the birds, and come back in with tales of, "see? i'm still fucking tough. i'm dirty and skinny and i don't take no shit from nobody."

once we put in an automatic cat feeder to prevent him from waking us up at four a.m. insisting loudly that he was starving to death, he had to quit adding the "skinny" part.

tonight, while i am enjoying some black cavendish in a decidely mid-2oth century american style pipe and reading william faulkner's "a rose for emily" so that my wife can pass her english composition ii class, i hear a very angry, enraged bird, or something similar. slowly dawning into my concentrating, and mildy gin-befuddled brain like daybreak over a swamp, this noise increases. a mad, frightened, unhappy chirping/squealing noise that builds and builds. i realize it is getting closer. i realize that it is probably being drug against its will by sharp teeth and clawless black front paws.

"oh, good boy, binx! good boy!" i say my bullshit line like some panama-shirt clad fifties dad in a straw fedora patting his son on the head after shooting all the neighborhood mockingbirds with the bb gun he received for his birthday. and then, through deft sleight-of-hand, i disengage the cat from shrieking--what is that, a mouse? fucking huge!

of course, binx bolts back after the escaped prey. by now, my wife has broke upon the scene. i am explaining that binx has just brought some live, decidedly overlarge mouse to the front door to present as his contribution to the family, when the repetitive shrieking begins again.

all with "good boy"'s punctuated with smoke stack blasts of light grey smoke, as we again create a diversion for our cat that seems bound to prove he has not, in fact, "gotten fat" as we claim, but is still 100% "street." and then we realize, it's not a large mouse, it is a baby bunny.

well, of course, my wife can't have this. off again (third time's the charm!) binx goes to track down his prey, and bring it, chirping in anger and embarrassment, by its hind leg to our front porch. i don't laugh until later that the clawless, overweight, dirty thug cat is all the while getting his face kicked in by the other, unfettered, hind leg. this time, we are successful in rounding up the cat and locking him in a downstairs bathroom, behind a constant litany of "good boy, good boy! good job, binx, good job, buddy." while the baby bunny rabbit beats feet for somewhere safe.

and, of course, as you, the beloved non-existent reader might imagine, the wife cannot let nature take its course; she goes out with a flashlight to make sure the bunny has made a clean getaway, while i insist that if she fucks with it too much its own mother will kill it for smelling like a human.

the bunny has gotten away, sans human smell, or a big black cat anklet. binx, judging by the look in his eye and the lashing of his tail, is not buying my bullshit empty praise.

all in a day's work at the sardonic household.

darth sardonic.

wildlife

(and no, i am not talking about some kinda crazy party i threw!)

in the course of my 39 years on this blue marble, i have been lucky enough to see/be near a plethera, a veritable cornucopia of animals in their natural habitat without fences or cages or a car window between us.

and now for your reading pleasure, the animals i have seen, any notes as to when/how/anecdotes regarding the situation that we found ourselves in, and relative distances between me and them:

elk-my most interesting encounter with a herd of elk was when i was about 16 at a scout winter camp out. winter camping in the cascades consists of building a fire, standing around stamping the snow with your hands in your armpits, having a brief and deadly snowball fight, and then proceeding to curse the cold and snow for the rest of the weekend. my friends and i decided to hike up into the mountains to have something to do, and hopefully generate some body heat. we crested a rise, and not 20 feet in front of us, a massive heard of elk had come down from the peaks to be fed by the park rangers. "amazing" or "incredible" is just too piddly a word.

peacock-not sure where it came from, or why it swung through our yard, but one summer day, a peacock pretty much just magically showed up in our backyard. it hung out for about an hour so that we could take pictures and watch it be narcissistic. then it headed off to other parts. i got within a few feet. apparently in some asian countries, they eat peacock like we eat turkey. good thing my poor white trash family didn't know that...

crow-they say that if a crow is hanging around, someone is going to die. or perhaps a dead relative or friend is trying to send you a message. again, one summer day in our backyard, someone from the great beyond was trying to tell us "i'm hungry, bring bread." it actually ate out of my hand, we were that close. again, lucky for him crow isn't something that had occured to my family as tasty...

llamas-llamas are indigenous to argentina, and while i never saw any just in the wild all willy nilly, they were definitely around. never got close enough to get spit on though. shame, that.

monkey-monkeys are not really indigenous to argentina, but they are in the amazon. and while the monkey i saw in buenos aires appeared to be wild (hanging out in a tree above the road we were walking down and dancing from limb to limb), it is more likely that it was someone's errant pet. for that matter, it is likely the peacock and crow were as well... hmm, so i am kinda breaking my own rules, but no matter. this rather largish creature was probably about 20 feet away. thank god, cause apparently simians can't throw their shit that far...

moose-i have no shit been within ten feet of moose on several occasions. when my ex and i separated and she moved to... wherever the fuck it was she went, i don't give a shit; i would go running for miles in the evenings. my favorite run was up to the ski hill that would have snow on it in the winter, and try to chug up it as far as i could and then back down. quite frequently i would turn a corner and be immediately confronted by bull moose, or a mama and calf. i generally moved to the middle of the road (they were usually grazing in the ditches) and run slowly past with my eyes on them until they were far behind. due to the isolated nature of the situation, i would frequently say out loud: "i mean you no harm, i am just running here, and want only to get past unmolested." if you have ever seen how massive a bull moose is, and if you knew (like i did) that moose are the only animal of that sort that can also kick with their forehooves, you woulda said something along those lines too.

caribou-same as the moose. they were just fucking everywhere in alaska, and you couldn't help but run into them at close quarters. slightly larger than elk but considerably smaller than a moose.

black bear-i was about 50 feet from a mama and her cub. i was there long enough to snap a couple pictures and just sort of watch them from afar as it were. they could completely give a rat's ass about my existence on this planet let alone my nearness to them. and i am quite thankful it was a black bear and not a grizzly.

wolf-i was about a quarter mile away, and only saw him for the briefest of moments, but it was a for real wolf. undeniably.

fox-see "wolf." pretty much the same story, except the fox didn't beat feet as fast. and my recollections seem to lead me to believe i might've been closer to it.

buffalo-this is actually twofold, and i think both cases they were domesticated. one of the farms a mile from my house growing up raised buffalo. i saw them again in alaska, but i think it was the same situation.

an assortment of waterfowl-pelicans, et al. you can't spit without hitting one at the golf course here in florida where i was employed.

alligator-i got within 5 feet of fred to snap his picture while he sunned himself and pretended to not give a shit. one of my coworkers (who i would've gladly sacrificed) was between fred and myself.

bald eagle-i have seen these camping in mt rainier, all over the place in alaska, but i had to come to florida to get within 100 feet of one. got to watch him eat his dinner of brook trout in the middle of the 11th fairway.

dolphins-no i have not swam with dolphins (unless you count the dolphins swimming a half-mile off the shore where i was body surfing; i sorta don't cause under that same idea you could say i have also swam with sharks, deadly jellyfish, and sea turtles), but i went fishing at the banana river, and as i stood on the shore, about ten feet away in the shallows a dolphin was eating our prey. we moved to a different fishing hole, but not until we had gotten our eyeful of this beautiful creature.

loggerhead turtles-i have actually held a baby one in my hand. turtle turkelson. saved his happy little ass. but today as well, i swam out to see what was floating several hundred yards offshore, and got within 50 feet of a few fully grown (and fucking huge!) loggerhead turtles that were trying to woo each other. briefly, one of their flippers looked like a dorsal fin, and i thought i was going to get to add "swimming with sharks" to this list.

corn snake and black racer-i have had to shoo both out of my driveway/garage. corn snakes are very docile. black racers, while not poisonous, will shake their tail like rattlesnakes (about which i have a different story that doesn't fall into this category but which would still be a fun tell, so maybe next post) and are fucking strike crazy. i don't like the idea of getting bit at all, so i chased him away with a broom, which got bit in the bristles numerous times, and had to be put down.

there are probably others, o beloved non-existent readers, that i have either forgotten or deem too mundane to include. if i remember, next post i will talk about the rattlesnakes.

darth sardonic

random thoughts like wounded butterflies...

i have been sick the last few days.

anytime i go through a big climate change or the weather plummets and then rises again, i get sinusy stuff that then drains down the back of my throat, coating it in sandpaper and lit petroleum and making me exhausted every few hours.

the other night as i was making sure no. 2 bathed properly (you have to be on him or he will just pat soap suds onto his hair, face, armpits and crotch) and no. 1 was waiting (naked already, for some inexplicable reason) to bathe next, i look over my shoulder and no. 1 is going potty behind me.

only he's not. he's is examining himself as if he has just discovered this dangly thing between his legs and can't for the life of him remember how it got there.

"what're you doing?"

his answer should be set to beautiful print on colored cardstock and framed, to be given to new parents at the birth of their first son for hanging on wall of their bathroom:

"sometimes i am curious about what it looks like."

as if it hasn't been with him, available, so to speak, for the last eight and a half years.

"well, don't pee in your face."

a few days later, the same boy is in the bathroom, with the door open. i thought the kids had, yet again left the light in the downstairs bathroom and went to shut it off. he didn't see me, but i saw him.

he was seated, with my wife's victoria's secret catalogue open across his lap. he turns a page and says to himself, "oh, i guess mom wouldn't want anything in here."

mainly, i am guessing, because all the ladies are lithe, tall, nordic-looking mannequins with oversized eyes and long flowing hair, and mom is a short, sexy spitfire with stout body n legs and boobs that push the larger edge of vs' rather limited size range. i dunno.

we have a new addition to our clan. over the christmas holiday, we brought home ponyo, my oldest's class fish, to care for.

and nearly killed it.

well, actually, it was sick before it ever entered our care, but we thought we were going to deprive no. 1's class of their mascot through our complete well-meaning ignorance of betta fish.

so we bought medicine, and a replacement.

good news is, ponyo survived. this means, however, that we now have our own lovely turquoise and blue betta.

we passed on the names mercury (mine) and nemo (no. 2's) and chose the name "7" (my wife's) because he is the seventh member of our family. i am number 1, wife is number 2, no. 1 is actually number 3 (confused?), no. 2 is number 4, pepper the demon cat is number 5, pele the helmet cat number 6, and 7 is, well, 7.

7 is fiesty. he'll be lazing at the bottom of his tank, but if you get near he perks up and swims around, dashing back and forth almost like a dog waiting for you to throw the stick. needless to say, we like him.

i am back in school, and enjoy my two autocad drawing classes, but am rapidly becoming not a fan of my pictorial drafting class. the teacher is disorganized, and half the class has absolutely no drafting experience whatsoever, but rather than spend a couple weeks catching us up on the basics of hand drafting, she is instead dumping our first project on us (a cardboard chair we are to build in groups of five) that is due in another week. like all the other classes with which i felt overwhelmed, my goal is to do my best, pass it with a c or better, and move on to something else.

little else is happening on the sardonic home front of late, o my beloved non-existent readers. i hope to be better about posting this semester, since my writing creativity won't be getting used up to write essays.

but as the song says, "if you don't expect too much from me you might not be let down."

darth sardonic

the numbers don't lie

but mainly due to the fact they are incapable of speech.

i wish the cat would hop down off the computer chair. i am currently performing some bastardization of a flying fellini gig because ever since we got a new computer chair, pepper has decided it's hers, and has been a real twat about relenting and letting me have it. as a result, i balance precariously on the front of it (on a unicycle and juggling chainsaws) and she curls herself up into an angry (and uncomfortable) little ball.

there are a couple guarantees about the holidays with my family. my aunt l will be there. my aunt l has hypochondria down to a science. and she is more than a bit of a whiner. she only half follows conversations and will then interject something from her personal experience that has little or nothing to do with what was being discussed in the first place. then, loudly, from the other room, my mom will jump her shit for something she has said. a short argument will ensue, with my mom playing the loud berater, and my aunt l playing the cowtowing apologizer. my mom's friend b and i will get into a heated discussion of the world's ills and i will get carried away, forget, and use the eff word loudly. she will wince and say, "god! i hate that word, please don't use it." and i will feel like an ass. my father, my brother (unless he is present, which completely negates and changes the current set of guarantees), and my ex will be discussed at least once. mom will bring up at least one dead relative that i have never met (most likely dead before i was even an itch, o my beloved non-existants) and drag aunt l into the conversation. this may or may not spark another argument.

cool, the cat has relinquished the chair. now i can type in my preferred writing posture, which i am sure every keyboarding teacher i ever had said was the worst possible posture for typing, that is to say: leaning back, feet up, wrists resting on the desk, and eyes at half-mast. the cat is, however, still hovering close by, alert, lest my ass lift itself a few inches off the seat and she might insinuate herself back into it, and thereby force me back out of the territory that she has apparently claimed as her own.

there are a couple guarantees about the holidays with my wife's family. food and drink will abound. if you go hungry or thirsty, it won't be for want of readily available (and extremely tasty) fare. there will be laughter. my wife's father and i will get into a heated discussion of the world's ills and i will get carried away, and forget, and say the eff word. repeatedly. without any kind of chastisement from him as long as the kids aren't too close. we will disagree. disagreeing won't change a fucking thing. familial issues are discussed in an open, matter-of-fact manner ("oh, so-and-so never comes to these things if i am here. we had a falling out years ago, and he has never quite forgiven me."). i am made to feel like i have been a part of their family since the dawn of time (in some ways, i feel more connected to her family than i do to my own). my stories are guaranteed to be laughed at. (well, except the whole "fut off" story. everyone seemed quite shocked that i would tell my kid to fuck off, and as a result, the story didn't go over very well.) maybe it's because they haven't heard many of them before.

in my mind, the holidays aren't over till after new year's eve, but as they stand to date, they have been good times, o my droogs and only friends, the very best of excellent times.

darth sardonic

o, that this too too solid flesh would melt...

i may have misquoted that a bit, just too lazy to do my research.

we've added another body to our house. we now have two cats slinking about, though i will be the first to say that pele is much more friendly and fun to be around than pepper.

he's finally quit taking her shit, and stalks and hunts and beats her, as opposed to the other way around. give it a few more days, and they will be adhesive mates.

little else going on in the world of the sardonics. some days just sort of blend, and we've had a string of those adjacently the past few weeks.

i have found other persons with which to jam, and we'll see how that goes, sposed to get together with one of em tomorrow evening.

hopefully soon, i will have something exciting, or a tidbit of witticism, or something more interesting than a couple lines about the new cat.

heh heh.

darth sardonic