Hey Kitty, What's Your Name?

I am on record as being a steadfast non-lover of cats. Not a hater, mind you, just a definite, allergic, non-lover. So unless something um, cataclysmic occurs, I will never possess a cat or have to name one. And yet, I like a good challenge. So when I came across this quote from the English writer Samuel Butler--"The severest test of the imagination--is to name a cat"--on the same day--yesterday--when my horoscope said, "Tonight: Let your imagination rock and roll," I just had to take the plunge.

Now I'm not exactly sure why Butler finds naming a cat such a profound test of one's imagination, I mean, "Scat" seems to work fine for me for all cats, but in the interest of playing along, I pushed my imagination a bit and I think I've come up with some pretty imaginative, and, depending on the specific cat's look and personality, pretty apt cat names. So, please, feel free to use any of these suggestions when naming your next cat.

• Allergen
• Sneeze
• Hives
• Galore
• Hep
• T.S. Lloyd Webber
• Newmar
• GladIdon'tliveinChina
• Felix Fermin
• Harry Brecheen
• O'Clysmic
• Go Away
• Lazy
• Catullus
• Chicago Fog
• Bobo
• Curiosity's Prey
• 'skills
• Tim
• Canary Eater
• Mandu
• apult
• Kibbles'n'Bits
• Gene Hackman

All good names, I think you and Samuel Butler will agree. But after much deliberation and rocking and rolling my imagination to three encores, I've decided that if I ever do come into possession of a cat that needs a name, I'm going to name it

• Dog

Dr. Horse-Jack, That Cat Was Clean

Let's Kill Jane Austen

Can't say I've ever contemplated murder before, but then again I never contemplated the dangers of a "sivilized" life until I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and now it seems Mark Twain has got me thinking again. I recently came upon this quote by Twain: "It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death." The "her" here is none other than Jane Austen.

Now I am no Twain scholar, and I can't say if this is a context quote, spoken by a character in one of his novels or stories, but I'd like to think it came from the heart. Not because I despise Austen or truly wish her dead (an easy enough statement, I guess, seeing that she has indeed been [naturally] dead for nearly two centuries), but because I love Twain's candor and I find this particular sentence so wonderful. "It seems a great pity" sets you up perfectly for the wham bam at the end of the sentence. Understatement perfection.

As I said, I have nothing really against Jane. I've read and taught Pride and Prejudice several times, and it's a fine book and a delight to teach, especially to girls. Fine book, not the be all and end all as some people seem to claim. I've vented my rage before at the proliferation of P&P sequels and spinoffs and other Austen-themed "literature." Enough already. But brace yourself: the 200th anniversary of the publication of her great novels and of her death are coming up in the next few years. Something tells me the Austen flood is not even close to cresting anytime soon. Now there are even zombie and vampire books concerning Mr. Darcy et al. So, not so much because of Jane the person (by all accounts a fine woman) but because of Jane the Influence, I hereby mark, with the obvious blessing of Mark Twain, Jane Austen for death, by murder.

The textbooks all say that a true murder requires three things: motive, opportunity, and means. I believe the motive is clear (Jane Austen must die for the sins of her Influence on the unimaginative, push-button world of 21st Century popular fiction; hell, with the proper non-uptown jury, I just might be acquited), the opportunity is now within my reach (after years of secreting vats of elbow grease, the girls in the R&D wing of spitouyourgum assure me they're tweaked out--the time machine is ready; though I have made the decision to bring Jane here rather than for me to go back to early 19th Century England--mainly because britches and me don't mix), and after careful consideration, I've decided on the means. I am not a violent man; I realize that coming from somebody confessing his murderous intents before the deed is done, this sounds doubly absurd, but it's true. No gruesome death for Jane, I can assure you. At first I mulled the possibility of using George Carlin's recipe for the perfect murder: lift one person up by the ankles and use that person to clobber another person ("two dead bodies, no murder weapon; police sift for clues") and while the thought of clobbering Jane Austen with, oh, for example, Gertrude Stein, Rush Limbaugh, Henry James, or Martha Stewart certainly gets the old endorphins high-fiving each other, I worry about my chronically bad back. Then I came up with the even more perfect--and certainly more literary apt--means: death by induced/provoked suicide, or, um suicide by persuasion.

It's really quite simple, I think. Fire up the time machine for a quick jaunt to England circa 1810 (just before Jane begins her amazing run of churning out literary masterpieces fine novels, thus eliminating all of her horrible influence) and whisk Jane back to 2010 with the promise of a world without chamber pots and with a seemingly unlimited supply of pasteurized milk (Google "Jane Austen, bovine tuberculosis" for the connection). I believe that with the proper "touring guide" she'll be writing one of her heartfelt letters to one Dr. Jack Kevorkian within a fortnight.

I'll begin our tour with a tea party, as in a Tea Party, a thronging gathering of blood-thirsty rabid anti-government refuseniks. That should roil Ms. Austen's apolitical sense and sensibilities a bit. Then, while plying her with a steady diet of pasteurized milk and microwaveable scones, I'll take her to any dance club in any major American city. Next we'll plop down in front of the television for a marathon session of channel surfing through episodes of Wife Swap, MTV Teen Cribs, The Bachelor, Deal or No Deal, various Housewives reality shows, Everybody Loves Raymond, and VH1 Classic's That Metal Show, to name a few. After a couple days zoning out in front of the boob tube, I'll take her to a chain bookstore where first I'll have her peruse People, US, In Touch Weekly, and OK!, then I'll turn her loose on the inevitable table of all things Austen-ized. Then we'll repair back to my manse, via some public transportation, for a night of video games and cooking up some yummo Rachel Ray meals. By morning, I am sure, if she doesn't coo softly in my ear, "You'd look great in britches, Mr. Spitoutyourgum. Let's ditch this world for mine. Um, bring some of that milk along, though, will you?" then she'll be holding a salad fork to my face and demanding where I keep the valium. At which time, it's time for the coup de grace: I throw her my dog-eared copy of the P&P Cliff Notes and ask her if she could clarify a few things for me. Then I just step back and await the results from the morgue. If 2010 America doesn't do in Jane Austen, she's a more amazing woman than I've ever given her credit for. In which case, I'm hunting Twain down.

Self-Promotion 4.20.10

Despite the vehement protests of the Tea Party set, grumblings from the DAR, warnings from the CIA, and chilly quiverings from the UFC, the intrepid folks at the Shaker Heights Public Library have invited me to read poetry at 7 p.m. on the auspicious date of Tuesday, April 20, 2010, along with my good friend Joe Toner and a guy named Max Stark (along with his son), who I vaguely remember from when Joe and I started reading poetry nearly twenty years ago. Go here and scroll down to 4/20 for the details.

While I realize that reading my verbiage via digital media is a pleasure ancient Romans would have killed for, I can humbly say that seeing and hearing me live is truly priceless (btw, Ticketmaster is handling the ticket sales, though I'm sure if you show up at the Bertram Woods branch [map below] at 7 the night of the reading, the nice people there will let you in gratis). I am sure the night will be filled with guffaws, knee-slaps, choked back tears, wonder, amazement, obfuscation, titillation, profundity, borderline plagiarism, recognition of self in at least one of many extended metaphors, dizzying revisitations of childhood, a hailed taxi, and paeans to high cholesterol foodstuffs. And that will be just my introductory remarks.

Hope to see you there.


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It Might Have Been 24 Years Ago Today

Recently I was talking to one of my former students who is currently enduring her first year of teaching. She was regaling me with the usual tales of first-year teachers: 95% madness mixed with a couple doses of sheer bliss. When I made the statement, which I truly believe, that although the first year of teaching may be the worst, it is also, in some ways, the best, she nearly fainted. "Why?" she managed to ramble in about fourteen syllables. I really couldn't explain; there's just something really exciting about it that can't be replicated or explained, I guess.

But I remember...

I know it was second semester, maybe around this time of year. I was teaching seniors at an all-boys high school, and I'm sure at least half of my students looked, maybe even acted, older than I was. It was a composition class and the boys were writing argumentative essays. As I was also expected to make the boys give a speech (yes, you can use audio/visual aids), I combined the two. We came up with a list of debatable (in both senses, as you'll see) topics and split them down the middle: one student would write and give a speech about the pro side, another student the con side. Abortion, drinking age, death penalty--we covered them all. Including the pros and cons of censorsing pornography. Naturally, you can see where this is heading; unfortunately, a certain naive 22-year-old first-year teacher didn't.

So they've written their essays and we're spending a couple days listening to speeches. Nothing major, a quick five-minute speech. I think it was a Friday. Spring break had to be looming. For about the tenth time in the year I thought I was completely burned out. In my mind, I was coasting. I didn't really have to teach--just sit in one of the desks at the back of the room, listen to the speeches, fill out the speech evaluation form rather leniently, and stumble into another life-saving weekend.

Then it was Marvin's turn. After all these years I remember Marvin. One of the happiest, most smiling kids ever. Not a great student, but a true pleasure. It always amazed me how giving out grades is one of the truest examples of the fact that everything is indeed relative. You call the kids up to your desk individually and show them their grade. One kid practically hugs you in supreme relief when he sees B-, another kid acts as if the recipe for chocolate just disappeared for all time when he sees an A- (true story, that first year, I had a kid kneeling at my desk, hands folded in supplication, begging, yes, begging me to change his grade from an A- to an A). You got the feeling that Marvin was happy as along as the grade wasn't an F. His C+ or whatever was cause for rapture.

Anyway, Marvin had been assigned to write and speak in favor of censoring all pornography. I ho-hummed in the back of the room, wrote Marvin's name on the half-page evaluation form, looked at the clock and calculated to the minute how soon I'd be napping. Marvin sets up behind the podium I had managed to secure for the speeches, opens his folder, and with the most infectious, Marvin-patented smile of all time, and in his happy-go-lucky "Hey Dude" voice begins his speech with this grabber: "Would you like to see your loved ones in pictures like these?" At which point he starts slapping already-masking-taped full color glossy photos of the most graphic, raunchy concupiscent dalliances this side of Larry Flynt's darkroom. His fifteen male classmates erupt in howls of laughter as Marvin works his way across the blackboard (did I mention this is a Catholic boys school, where there's always the possibility that the priest/president of the school is showing some big would-be donor through the halls?) slapping up the smut. I was never a sprinter, but I think I reached my all-time speed clambering out of the desk, hopping over bookbags and stretched out legs, to get to the blackboard where I followed in Marvin's filthy footsteps ripping down the smut from the left side of the blackboard as he was still pasting more of it up toward the right. It's all a blur, but I think I ripped up as I ripped off the pictures, praying--more fervently, I must admit, than the usual Hail Mary I commenced class with--that Fr. President would not choose to invite his guest to "drop in on the boys" just then. Oh for videotape.

When I reached the end of the blackboard, with a mountain of shredded porn in my hands, Marvin was there waiting for me, with that glorious, angelic devilish grin of his. What could I do? It was Marvin. After the laughter finally subsided, and Marvin was given his scraps back to dispose of anywhere but in my classroom, he gave the rest of his speech, of which I can't recall a single thing. I'm sure I docked him a couple points on the "made appropriate use of audio/visuals" section on the evaluation sheet.

I'm sure I told the story to every subsequent class that ever had to make a presentation, with the stern warning that any use of inappropriate material would warrant a no-questions-asked trip to the principal's office.

That's as close of an explanation as to why the first year of teaching is both the worst and the best that I can provide.

I Was Counting On Something A Bit More Exciting

I live for the years that end in zero (0). Not only do I get to engage in arguments with cranks about when the new decade starts (I don't give a damn; whatever the person says, I argue the opposite), but I also catch a helluva case of Census Fever. I've always been partial to counting, and from my earliest days I was fascinated with the idea of counting everybody in the USA. I used to picture everybody lined up single file like first graders heading to the bathroom and some stern authority figure with a long finger very studiously ticking off the entire population: seventy-nine million four-hundred-thirty-six thousand seven hundred forty-two, seventy-nine million, four-hun--get back in line mister--dred thirty-six...

And, like most people (I assume) with nothing better to do than blog regularly, I revel in arcane and meaningless statistics. I anxiously look forward to years of census data trickling out from Big Brother's counting houses, telling US who we are. Little surprise then, that I was rabid with excitement about this year's count. I managed to convince my landlord to allow me to tend to the census form for this domicile when it arrived; he shrugged and said sure, and even gave me a $.38 discount on next month's rent for the effort. Well, sad to say, I think he overspent by about $.37--the effort to fill out the census form was minimal, and quite disappointing to boot.

What a let down. How in the hell is anyone going to get a detailed, accurate view of the citizens of this great country from a census form that asks little more than name, age, and race (I don't want to cry reverse discrimination, but how come Filipinos, Japanese, and Chamorros [hunh?]--fine people all, I have no doubt--among other races get their own individual boxes, while I'm forced to check the box that says White? If nothing more, I would think in these times Uncle Sam would want a headcount of all the Irish-Italians like me out there, just so he knows who the really tempermental bastards in this country are and where they live. I was tempted to check the box that says "other race" and in the space provided write, "the one held somewhere in these great United States where guys run two miles down hill and stop for a beer every half mile or so.")?

Also, I don't get the logic of sending out the form in early March, telling me to fill it out "immediately" and then a week later--like today--sending a postcard reminding me to fill that form out already--when the form states that "The Census must count every person living in the United States on April 1, 2010" (italics mine). What, am I, along with 300 million or so fellow Americans, supposed to be clairvoyant? Does this give me the right to go to wakes on April 1, bend over the body in the casket and whisper, "You lied on your Census form"? And what fool came up with April 1 as the be all end all date for this count?  Question 2 asks me if there were any additional people staying at this residence on April 1 (italics theirs). How do I know now if I'm going to get lucky on April Fools Day or if some long lost gypsy relatives are going to show up or Bob Dylan decides to hang out for a few days or if the "your shipment will arrive in four to six weeks" promise I received on the mail order bride application I submitted last week is just an outside guess to cover their asses and my Chamorroan spouse shows up on March 31?

But enough grousing about what is on the census form. What about what isn't? Here are just a few of the questions I suggest would spice up the census form and enable all of us to get a much more detailed, accurate picture of our nation circa 2010:

• How many paranormal entities currently reside in your abode?
• If you could choose any three, assumed living, as of 4/1/10, Americans to reside with you, who would they be?
• On April 1, 2010, how many distinct voices did you hear inside your head?
• How many separate food, beverage, and medicinal products that are past their expiration dates still take up shelf space in your domicile?
• You don't still listen to cassettes, do you?
• Assuming you do use a Q-Tip daily, on April 1, 2010, which of your ears was waxier?
• Essay question: Tell us something embarrassing about your next door neighbors.
• If you're not a Jehovah's Witness, how do deal with them when they come a-knocking?
• Draw a map of the world. Put an X where Chamorro is.
• If you live in the Cleveland Metropolitan area, tell us how miserable you are.
• Since O.J. has been incarcerated, have you done anything to find the real killers?
• Paper, plastic, or inside your coat?
• If Twitter had a different name, would you be more open to using it?
• How many dust bunnies were present in your house on March 31, 2010?
• Are you going to eat that whatever it is in the styrofoam container in your fridge?
• Can you count past 300 million? If so, call us at 1-866-872-6868.

Quickies

...just one more reason to spitoutyourgum regularly. Check this out to see some more funny "motivational" posters.

Now the question is, as far as I'm concerned, did George himself protest and request the correction/apology, or did one, some, or all of the 15 women notice, belatedly, the error of their initial thanks? I mean, was George walking around proud as a peacock, "That's right, I am the man!"? Can't claim I'm perfect, but it does show the need for some thinking when proofreading. Some more funny corrections can be found here.

My decaf-despising/fearing friend Johnny came up with another one the other day, which leads me to believe he might be one of the greatest spontaneous poets alive. While describing to me a beautiful woman he had seen, he said, "And she had hips that wouldn't..." and here my mind sat on the word "quit" like it was a hanging fastball, but Johnny, not messing with the cliched, said, "wait." Hips that won't wait. Quite a thought. You're on your own finding a link for a site with hips that won't wait.

Feeble Attempts At Writing A Caption For The Uncaptionable

1. Riding in Frank's back seat is cool, way cool.
2. Get out and help me back up. I gotta couple of blind spots here.
3. 350 miles per can of freon. Beat that, Toyota.
4. Turn what where?
5. Honey, why are you always so cold?
6. Just put it on your lap. The last time I opened the trunk it cost me a whole rear windshield.
7. My other car's got a jacuzzi.
8. Hybrid? I got your hybrid right here.
9. Marmaduke, not again!
10. That's not funny. Don't even joke about moving to Alaska.