Two of my “pals” from Montana must have raced to see which one of them could send me this story first.

Hint: It deals with an Ohio jackass and his interesting choice of pets and how one of his pets surprised one of his neighbors.

Thanks, guys … NOT.

Ralph Peters writes in the New York Post, “If you’re sleeping safely in your own bed tonight, thank those Marines from ‘Joisey.’”

I salute them. Thanks, guys.

Via Right, Wing-Nut!

I continue to break my ass trying to avoid labor of any kind today. I’m off to a bad start, because I got to experience the absolute joy of cleaning behind the clothes dryer, including cleaning the inside of that slinky-looking thing that vents the dryer to the outside. Have you ever seen what accumulates in there? Ack!

I suspect that I’ll be sneezing that crap for a few days.

Now my immediate plan now is to bust my ass with a cup o’ coffee and a page-turner.

Later.

Alas, I was only partially able to avoid labor today, having been drafted for a couple hours into moving stuff from one place to another as part of the dreaded “Clean the Basement” Project. More on that at another time.

Abruptly switching topics, let me say that I think that Elisson is a seriously smart guy — scary smart, sometimes, maybe even the stuff of genius going on there. The thing is that “genius” often manifests itself in very strange ways.

Yeef!

I am off to hang with the Usuals (minus a few who are travelin’) and to continue to do my best to avoid anything this weekend that resembles labor.

Be safe and, for God’s sake, do anything to avoid finding yourself on the northbound side of the Garden State Parkway on Monday night.

I hve been a subscriber to Time Magazine since I was sixteen years old. Yeah, yeah, I know — The Man of the Year back then was Galileo. (I figure I’d beat the Wiseass Jooette to the punch.)

Anyway, for the past few years, each issue has managed to increasingly piss me off, because what is being offered up as objective news reporting would be redlined by a high school journalism teacher as rank advocacy (in Time’s case, for the Democrat Party). I meant to cancel my long-time subscription at its last renewal, but it somehow “auto-renewed.” Obviously either I or Mrs. Parkway must have checked a box in one of the prior renewal forms. At the time I thought that I would give it one more year rather than go through the hassle of canceling.

Since my last “renewal,” reading the Democrat House Organ that poses as a new magazine results in my talking back to the pages, not unlike shouting at the television when Meet the Press or Chris Matthews is on. Who needs this shit?

Today, I received my issue of Time on which was a special cover stapeled over the real cover. It was a message to “Our Valued Automatic Renewal Customers.” I frankly had forgotten that I had become a “Valued Automatic Reneal Customer.” The message informed me:

We’ll renew your subscription at the guaranteed saving indicated below, and you will be billed or charged before your next term begins unless you cancel within 2 weeks after receiving this notice.

Thank you for reminding me. Two weeks? How about two farookin’ minutes.

I immediately went to the customer service website and clicked “Cancel my Subscription.” It gave me two alternatives:

1. Cancel my subscription at the end of my current term.

2. Cancel my subscription immediately.

I chose Door Number 2.

It felt great.

Farookin’ cat.

Let me begin by saying that he’s not our cat … sort of.

Very shortly after Junior ceased being a little kitten, but still not a cat, he would show up out of nowhere, block the front door and flip over on his back, legs akimbo, just begging for a tummy scratch. I have since learned from a friend of TJ’s, who is an owner of more than one cat, that this is called the “Cute Trap.”

Let me say at this point that we are not Cat Peeps. We had a dog for many years until he had to be put to sleep about eight years ago (Don’t ask. It was awful.), and while neither of us would harm a cat, we know zip about cats and really didn’t care to learn.

I was better at ignoring the Cute Trap than was Mrs. Parkway, but after only a few of Junior’s performances Mrs. Parkway decided that “The poor thing must be hungry.”

Oy, here we go.

For a few days it was a saucer of milk outside on the deck, which Junior eagerly lapped up. Then one day I opened up one of the cabinets in the kitchen and found an ample supply of gourmet cat food, both wet and dry. WTF?

Given the availability of Five Star Dining, it is not surprising that Junior began showing up for breakfast and dinner served on the deck.

I said, “I really don’t want this damned cat in the house.”

Ha!

Once Junior learned how well the Cute Trap worked, he also learned how to run into the house at warp speed, where he did his “Rub Against Every-Friggin’ Thing, Including Us” trick. Within days, Junior was now taking his breakfast and dinner in the kitchen in the House by the Parkway.

He then began staking out a comfortable chair for long post-prandial naps. After these naps, he would try the “Scratch the Couch” routine. This invariably got him the immediate Bum’s Rush, which didn’t seem to bother him at all, as he would show up for the next meal at the appointed time. His thing is to sit on the railing of the deck, stare into the kitchen window and “Meow.” He is a handsome devil, and I believe he knows it.

One day, as Junior was getting the Post-Couch-Scratching Bum’s Rush out the front door, when one of my neighbor’s grown children said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Jim. Is he bothering you? ’Come here, Corrado!’”

“Is this your cat?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” she replied.

“What did you say his name was?” I asked.

“Corrado.”

“You mean, like in the Sopranos? Corrado Soprano? Uncle Junior?”

“Yes, that’s his name.”

Note: Prior to this time, he answered (sort of) to the name “Pain in the Ass” or “Douchebag,” but from that moment on, he became “Junior.”

The problem with this is that two of the indicia of ownership of personal property (and, alas, cats, like dogs, are personal property – a special kind of personal property, but personal property nonetheless) are the exercise dominion and control over the property by the owners. My neighbors, nice folks though they may be, exercise neither. Claiming ownership of something without exercising dominion and control over it is not unlike claiming ownership of a distant star.

So, that’s why I say that Junior is not our cat … sort of, because, while we don’t own him, he regularly takes his meals and periodic snoozes here. I have heard people say that no one owns cats, but rather cats own people. I’m beginning to get it now.

To this day, Junior has not spent the night in the House by the Parkway, but as the summer is coming to an end, and as I think about the oncoming single digit temperatures and snow drifts several feet deep, I have a feeling that, even though we don’t “own” Junior, he will show up outside the window freezing his stindeens off, and I will hear, “We can’t leave him out there.”

In short, I have a feeling that a litter box (blechhhh) is in my future, and I’m not thrilled.

Having said that, this week, for forty-eight hours or so, Junior didn’t show up. I began to think, “Did the sorry ass get himself run over? Maybe his ‘owners’ gave him away? Where is he?” When I would come home from work, I’d ask, “Any sign of Junior?”

The answer was, “No.”

Last night I decided that if he didn’t show up for another day, I was going to ask my neighbors if they had given him away.

I realized that I missed his sorry, aloof, come-around-when-he-feels-like-it ass.

When I came home from work tonight, I saw Junior’s bowl in the kitchen, and asked (happier than I care to admit), “Did Junior surface?”

“Yep, after you left for work, he came for breakfast,” and while we were outside having a pre-dinner cocktail, ol’ Junior showed up for dinner.

Farookin’ cat.

That’s right. All will soon be well. The problems that exist in the Middle East, for which no one has come up with a foolproof solution, will all be sorted out, or, at a minimum, they will all be explained with absolute objectivity.

You see, Katie Couric will be going to Iraq and Syria. The country will be fine. Maybe she will even write her own stuff!

My very favorite Katie Couric Moment occurred early in 2004 on the Today Show. Time Magazine had just named “The American Soldier” as Person of the Year (See magazine cover above).

The Today Show audience was primed for Ms. Couric’s interview with the two gentlemen who were responsible for the cover story. The audience did not know that Ms. Couric was laying in wait, ready to spring.

Immediately after introducing the two men, Ms. Couric angrily confronted them with, “WHY ARE THERE NO WOMEN ON THE COVER?”

The two men looked at each other, then looked at Ms. Couric and said, “The soldier in the front IS A WOMAN!” (Her name is Marquette Whiteside** Spc. Billie Grimes. See also here.)

The “Six P’s” come to mind: Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

I can only imagine the bloody flailing of her staff that took place after the broadcast.

Katie should stick to “perky.”

** Thanks to Jerry for the correction (see comments). The Six P’s strike again. Maybe I could get a gig with Katie Couric.

I worked later than expected, and I’m too tired to write what I sort of had in mind. That said, I am not sufficiently tired to say (and to do so with some woids stolen from the Late, Great Rob Smith), Whoever released this beast into a Westfield, New Jersey pond ought to be dragged off and shot.

Don’t give me any of that “Yo, Jimbo, it’s just a baaaaaaaaby, and it wouldn’t have lived through the winter” crap. Remember, little ones have a habit of becoming big ones, and this is one of a species known for surviving just fine, thank you, since pre-farookin’-historic times.

Like I said, da poipetrator ought to dragged off and shot and the baaaaaaaaby ought to be shipped off to Florida, where they have a strange affection for these loathsome creatures.

I call this one ………….

MY DECK

Since I have learned to take pictures with Mr. Cell Phone (a bit of very comical trial and error), I have been taking pictures of goofy shit. Then it occurred to me, Yo, Jimbo, lots of people think goofy shit is art. Maybe you’re a farookin’ arteest?

Hell, last time I thought I was an arteest, I flung a bunch of paint all over a queen size bedsheet, you know – just like Jackson Pollock. Problem was, everyone said that it looked like a drop cloth (shhhhhh).

There may be something to this photography thing, though. I’m thinking about buying a fancy schmancy digital camera with lots of bigass lenses so I would need one of those really cool carrying around cases and then quitting my day gig to go around with my fancy schmancy camera and my cool-as-a-moose carrying case taking pictures of goofy shit and making zillions of dollars.

Then again, maybe I ought to just take some pictures of drop cloths and keep my day gig.