I’m feeling a bit random today, and luckily the random absurdity has been piling up. I saw the sign pictured above during a recent visit to UNC Hospitals. I thought it was a bit zen for a traditional western medicine establishment. (Actually, I first noticed “Remember 3C” and thought, “There must be a ‘Remember 2B,’” and drove around until I found it. My apologies to anyone who had recently had a major organ removed who might have been waiting on the sidewalk in a wheelchair.)
At the hospital, I also saw this, on a Mustang. I will make no further comment other than to direct your attention to the handcuffs hanging from the rearview mirror.
There’s a banner ad that keeps popping up on Yahoo aimed at people who suffer from acid reflux (or GERD, which will always sound like an East German weightlifter to me). It reads, “Bowl of pasta, or bowl of pain?” Bowl of Pain needs to be the name of a band right now. Get on it, people.
The Hardback Café used to put a chalkboard out front with the specials on it. One day it read, “Gazpacho – the cold soup of Spain,” a quote from the Pepper’s Pizza menu. Later in the day someone changed it to “the cold soup of pain,” and still later it read, “the cold soup of space.” I can never hear gazpacho mentioned without thinking of that and telling the story, often to people who have heard it four or five times.
Finally, randomly, I got an email from a friend the other day who is a highly-accomplished professional in his field. He was mortified to notice that he had let the Microsoft Word autocorrect feature get a bit away from him. In a proposal to a client, he meant to say he would “provide coaching and feedback to others.” What he actually proposed was that he would “provide coaching and feedback to otters.”
If that’s a real job, I want it.
After five years I have come to the conclusion that, as sweet as he is, Hastings is not the sharpest flea comb in the drawer. Let’s just say it’s a good thing he’s domesticated. As with most cats, he is primarily concerned with eating, napping, parasitically sucking up body heat, and chasing imaginary rodents. He used to be really good about eating. I would put a small bowl of dry food down in the morning and he would stand there until he finished it, and that was that. Then, during last year’s ice storm, I really screwed up. I felt bad for making him stay in a cold house all day while I decamped to places restored of power, so I started giving him a snack at night. The first time I did it, he looked at me with an incredulous expression that seemed to say, “What?! You mean you can feed my anytime you want?!” And from then on I was doomed.
For the past year he has followed me around relentlessly, and meows plaintively whenever I walk into the kitchen. Any time I stand up, he is on me like a cheap furry suit. And of course, he greets the dawn by jumping on my bed and putting his nose in my mouth. (“Oh, you’re awake? Well then you might as well feed me.”) I finally got tired of it and inaugurated the Full Bowl Policy two weeks ago. Many of my cat-owning friends keep a bowl of dry food constantly replenished and their cats eat whenever they feel like it. Sure, some of them are a bit, er… zaftig, but they also aren’t leaping around like Chinese acrobats on the Ed Sullivan show every time you get up to go to the bathroom.
On Day One of the FBP when I filled his bowl to the brim, Hastings thought it was Kitty Christmas. Since then he’s gotten used to it, but whenever I top up the bowl he looks at me as if to say, “I’ve never loved you more.” I think he’s gained maybe a pound, and for him that probably isn’t a bad thing.
But has it changed his behavior? Has it my eye. He still meows at me when I walk past the cabinet where his cat food is kept. When I point to his full bowl, he kind of shrugs and goes, “Oh, right.” And he still wakes me up in the morning and tries to herd me downstairs when I head for the bathroom. I realize he’s an animal, but like some kind of pathetic parent with a child vying for a spot in a magnet school, I want him to be exceptional. (Then again, as far as intelligence goes, I’m the one trying to reason with a cat here.)
Maybe he needs a tutor, or some flashcards.
