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don't mess with an agitated cat
Thursday, March 14 2002
I haven't figured out where these are coming from yet, but there's a new breed of browser pop-up advertisement that, get this, lacks a close button or a drag bar. That's right - it pops up and you have to live with it wherever it appears! It's like Britney Spears barging into your living room and spray painting a pro-Pepsi graffito above your fireplace. Since these new popup ads lack an address bar and refuse to allow dragging or right-clicks, I can't tell where they're being served from. In the Task Manager (the only way to kill them!) they bear the title "Seamless Wonder." Evidently it's a new technology called "Seamless Wonder," but searching the web has turned up nothing. I'd really like to take a cheese grater to the faces of the people who brought us this new form of annoyance, so if anyone knows anything about it, kindly send me an email that doesn't contain the string "Blackjack, Roulette, Slot Machines, Craps" or "Find Out Anything About Anyone" (otherwise your mail will automatically be deleted by my unpaid robots).
This afternoon was a sacrifice of hours to the demanding gods of Flash programming. At 5:00pm I had to call it quits, take Sally for a quick walk, and then hustle into Manhattan to meet up with Gretchen for another of her poetry readings. I know I can be terribly neglectful at times, but when I put my mind to it I really can be a good boyfriend. Going to poetry readings is what one does when one is a good boyfriend, particularly when one's girlfriend is a poet.
Unfortunately, despite my best intentions, I was 40 minutes late. The Green Line trains were running slow and then I didn't really know my way around the Northeast Lower East Side. Finding Ludlow Street was a time consuming undertaking, especially since my method involved walking first west and then east down Houston from Bowery. The good thing about Manhattan is that it is so thin that one can quickly get a sense when one is headed in the wrong direction longitudinally.
The poetry reading was taking place at a restaurant called the Pink Pony. We'd arranged to eat dinner there, so there was plenty of time before the actual reading, despite my tardiness. Adding to the excitement was Mikila of Fiery Furnaces fame, whom Gretchen had invited during the Hank's Saloon show.
I have to say that the Pink Pony menu had perhaps the fewest items of interest I'd seen on a menu in recent memory. I'm sorry, I'm in Manhattan now and I just don't cop out and order the turkey sandwich like I used to back in the bad old days. So I ordered the chicken and couscous. But, Jesus, what a laugh! It was amounted to a single miserable chicken leg (not even a thigh!) situated atop a pile of couscous, decorated with a few limp cooked vegetables that I don't particularly like. It did so little to satisfy my appetite that I found myself cracking open the chicken bones and eating the brick-hued marrow. That's when I made a somewhat disturbing discovery. Chicken marrow tastes exactly like Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup! Where does the chicken stock come from in Campbell's soup? Crushed chicken bones, evidently.
The poems read tonight were from a chapbook called 7 Carmine. They were of uniformly excellent quality and I found myself even liking some that Gretchen didn't read. Unfortunately, though, the venue was not conducive to this sort of event; plenty of noise was bubbling in from the bar area and the ever-noisy kitchen despite the complex green nested matryoshka doors. The similarly-complex fans pivoting overhead also contributed a distracting din.
After the poetry had all been read, Mikila and I were exchanging stories about various strange physical maladies ranging from eyelid sties to uncomfortably swollen tongue polyps. The human body, particularly when suffering from minor insults, never ceases to amaze. Even medieval doctors had a few things figured out; just getting in there and ripping out whatever is causing trouble is often the surest ticket to relief.
Gretchen and I rode back to Park Slope with her poet friend (Michelle?). Towards the end of our walk to drop her off at her place I was regaling them with the incredible tales of excess and waste from the days of the height of the dotcom boom. I'm so glad I was a part of that and not, say, a poet, artist, or musician when that shitstorm blew through.
Tonight after we came home, Gretchen immediately started suffering intestinal ramifications from the red wine she'd been drinking. Meanwhile Noah the cat had managed to find another random cat in the backyard and had, as evidenced by the loud yowling, decided to take a "line in the dirt" territorial stand. I think the other cat had the upper hand until I ran out to see what the commotion was. There was Noah, holding his ground atop the spiral staircase from the backporch down to the ground. He was all puffed up and making all sorts of unusual noises and sub-noises in bizarre sonic mandelbrot patterns.
Sally came running out and, not equipped with the sort of life wisdom that says, "never get anywhere near an agitated cat," she ran right up to Noah as she always does. Noah immediately flipped around and set upon Sally with all the ferocious cruelty a 16 pound cat can deliver. She let out a terrible squeal before managing to get away, but the damage had been done. Noah had severely grated a part of her left ear, and now there was doggy blood to contend with.
Meanwhile the other cat, frightened by me and Sally, had retreated to the western limits of Noah's normal range, several yards towards John Turturro's house. Noah, seizing on this sudden weakness, had pursued him as far as he could. I went after him, and after talking some calm into him, carried him back home.
Sally wasn't really the same dog after that experience. She moped around the house in sadness and pain, looking sidelong over at Noah whenever he was in sight with a puzzled new suspicion. She didn't seem to know whether he was to blame or whether he'd even been responsible; it was so out of his character. Perhaps, she thought, the attack had been situational - a combination of the backporch and Noah somehow. For his part, Noah didn't understand why everyone was looking at him funny. He wore an expression of "What'd I do?" - the closest thing to guilty a cat will ever be.
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