A Farewell to my Stevie Cat (and an important PSA)

After five and a half years of being my best friend, our kitty, Señor Stevie Nicks, succumbed to heart disease*.

If I had known it was coming I would have taken the time to have a few more days with him to do all the lovey things people do:

Chasing butterflies

Spinning in a field of flowers

 

Drinking milkshakes together

Going for boat rides in Central Park

Snuggling at home

   

But he was sick... and scared, and we lost him so suddenly. He was barely showing any signs of illness, still eating and playful, sleeping with his butt in our faces, drinking milkshakes, and rowing boats, but then he was gone just moments after getting him to the vet, leaving me and Mike shocked and devastated. I don't know how I have managed my whole life to avoid the up-close death of a pet with as many as I've had. It's a really horrible concept and I don't know who came up with it but I would like to unsubscribe, RIGHT NOW.  In the end, I am glad he chose us and we did everything we could to give him the best life possible. I love him so much and I will never forget my sweet Stevie cat.

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*Stevie died of cardiac arrest from an enlarged heart. He had a grain allergy, to the point that he couldn't even eat poultry that was fed grain or he would itch terribly and barf/poop/gain lots of weight. We found him a grain-free food that had all the nutrition he needed to keep him healthy, in theory. Unfortunately, I am finding now, much too late, that grain-free pet food currently on the market seems to contain some ingredient that might interfere with taurine uptake, which cats (and dogs) need to avoid heart damage. The FDA is investigating this, but there are things you can do in the meantime.

Please, if you are feeding your pet a grain-free diet have their taurine levels tested IMMEDIATELY (or as soon as you can afford to).

If they don't have allergies, stop feeding them a commercial grain-free diet. If they do, please, get their taurine tested and consult with a vet on how best to proceed. Once they have symptoms, which, in Stevie's case was only abdominal breathing, it is often too late, but the damage can be reversed if it is caught early enough with taurine supplementation. No one should go through what we're going through now, losing our pet so young, so please, share this information so every cat lives long enough to replace us as the dominant species on the planet.

Lessons Learned

I've learned a couple things in the past few days that I thought I should probably share with you all.

I've talked about the first one in the past, but apparently, it is still a lesson I need to learn as I lay here in buttloads of pain because my brain still hasn't learned the lesson that catching yourself when you're falling is often nearly as painful as just letting yourself fall.
This time, I was freezing so I very gracefully stepped out of my shower for a second to turn off the light which I forgot to turn off (see my last post), but the floor mat wasn't where it was supposed to be so I tried to scoot my foot over to it and pull it towards me so I didn't make as much of a puddly mess, but when I did that, I slid on the pool of water that was forming under my foot. I tried to catch myself with the towel bar, which wasn't happy with my antics and pulled completely off the wall.
At this point, I was doing a naked wet split, half in and half out of my bathtub, and I was falling forward with a pointy metal stick in my hand. Flailing, I tipped forward and was saved by a giant package of Costco toilet paper that was sitting underneath the towel rack, and I ended up planking on the toilet paper, to keep from breaking my leg on the edge of the bathtub. It was all pretty humiliating, and my husband slept through the entire ordeal, including me repairing the towel bar.
I keep having to remind myself when I am in awe of my pain levels that my shower acrobatics are entirely to blame.

I'm not gonna draw it. Feel free to submit your own artist's rendering.




And then I learned that sometimes, it's best to make a comment aloud into your empty house instead of commenting on the internet.
Usually, I keep my political commentary on my own Twitter page. I like to couple humor with fair points, but lately, I've been getting way too bold and when comments on safer accounts didn't blow up in my face, I branched out, and guys, I flew way too close to the sun.

I should have known better. It was a Bernie tweet. It's like MAGA jerkholes are just trolling his tweets all hours of the day and night waiting for some poor sap to comment so they can tell them that they're an asshole who needs to read a book and who has no idea of anything that has ever happened in the history of the world.  In fact, I'm kinda sure that that is exactly what they do.
When you see a comment section with absolutely NO comments that agree with the original post's point, THERE IS A REASON. Other people who agree already know this lesson, that's why they're not commenting. They know that these people will take any semi-valid point you make and purposefully misunderstand it so they can berate you because they need more love and understanding in their life and their moms should have hugged them more.

I just have to say, thank all the fluffy kittens in the world for Twitter's conversation mute option. There was just one guy trying to school me when I muted it, on the ridiculous notion that the current administration might consider cutting safety net provisions and that rich people might not want to just donate money to the government willy-nilly until some of those programs are enhanced. A masochistic curiosity brought me back to find that at least 15 people had joined in after I left to tell me that I was the stupidest person who ever existed and I should be ashamed to use words. I have no idea how many more people are going to join in, but it inspired me to take details about myself and my location off of the page, in case people decide to harass me for my humorously made point.
But lesson learned. Don't comment on Bernie Sander's twitter unless I have some sort of deep desire to be verbally abused.
I wish I had had something like that paper clip dude in Word that had stopped me in the first place.

I should have looked at kittens instead.

Cheeseblarg's Anti-Upskirt Undies!

I came up with the perfect solution to Massachusetts' "Upskirt" problem.

Cheeseblarg's Anti-upskirt Undies feature a copyrighted image on the crotch of your panties and comes in
many different designs. Anytime these images are uploaded to the internet, Cheeseblarg will sue the upskirt uploader on your behalf to keep your undies off the internet!

* Two Can Play At This Game can be fitted in a tiny spy cam to see who is spying on your stuff.

If your government won't protect your undies from perverts, Cheeseblarg will protect them from copyright violations!

New Things I Learned This Week - Episode 1

I wanted to share with you, each Thursday, new things I learned during the week. I thought it might be fun, and according to my long ago Facebook poll, some of you agree, but thankfully I am in charge of what gets posted here, so even if you were all, " NO WAY! That sounds boring!" I would probably still post it if it made me laugh.

So here are a few new things I learned this week:

Despite thinking I was completely useless at first person shooters, because of that one time that I turned on my roommate's Xbox to try playing Halo while he wasn't home and was shot repeatedly in the head within seconds of spawning, I learned, playing Bioshock Infinite, (because my husband was tired of me nagging him to check garbage cans while he was playing and handed over the controller) that I am actually pretty good at video games... unless there are 8 people shooting me from different directions, and one of them seems to be Fire Marshal Bill who is throwing large lava rocks at me. Then I just do a lot of yelling of "OMG STOP SHOOTING ME!" and cry while getting killed a lot.

Also, it is totally acceptable to eat cotton candy that has been in a dead man's pocket.

I highly recommend Bioshock Infinite though. It stands alone well, so you don't HAVE to have played the other two games (though they are awesome also, so you should), and it is just stunning, visually, and so much fun... though the last battle took me a million tries, since it goes from relatively easy -- on the easiest setting-- to WELL THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY in the last battle. If you utilize your many different powers correctly, it is completely doable... demonstrated by the fact that I did it, finally (after looking up helpful hints).

This is the trailer, where you can see how beautiful it is, but be warned, there is a slight amount of gore in it... and know that I chose the trailer with the least spoilery stuff in it:

On to the next thing I learned:

Spiders pee-poop. Also, spider pee, not flammable.

Also, I was reminded that without the aid of spell check, I am apparently unable to spell the word flammable.


New thing trice:

We now have to worry about an epidemic of kitten perpetrated nipple maulings. So much so that I was able to use this card I made for Jen Yates for my friend, comedian Jen Kober, only a few days later.

Feel free to use it, should you know someone who is impacted by this horrifying kitten trend.

And finally:

Despite a hidden desire to kick/punch a punching bag, which was realized when watching some stupid banking commercial, it would make me feel bad for abusing an inanimate object; this feels like it would be much more likely:

Extra points if you recognize the room I am reading to the punching bag in... extra extra points if you verify your knowledge by "shouting" quotes.

To My Doctor...

So... okay, my colonoscopy was awful, and it was an anomaly*, I know, because I have a super liver (still) that filters medications out of my body at high speeds, so uh, I may have traumatized some people.

They also might not have taken me completely seriously when I told them that I ALWAYS wake up during the procedure. So, I woke up during the procedure...

And I feel it necessary, now, to make this card for my doctor because I am going to have to continue to see him, and I am fairly embarrassed that in my semi-unconscious state I couldn't stop myself my screaming like a crazed weasel and crying hysterically, like someone had just been cutting chunks out of my intestines while filling them full of air.

All I really know about my doctor is that he REALLY likes working out. And he seems not to be a serial killer, so I can safely assume that he likes kittens and rainbows and unicorns and mini Godzilla.

So, yeah. Sorry 'bout that.



*Please don't let this scare you off from getting life-saving diagnostic tests. Most people don't have this problem, and a few minutes of screaming while they run off to get you more meds is worth making sure your guts are okay, believe me. This is my fifth and it won't be my last, no matter how many times it traumatizes me.

Down low, too slow!

I hate high fiving. A lot.

High fiving humans...
I will high five the shit out of animals.
Except birds, fuck birds, but I will high five any hamster that puts its creepy little alien paw up for me to gently tap with my palm (because it is a tiny cute hamster and full on high five might hurt it).

High fiving humans holds no interest for me because they judge you when you are awkward and your hand isn't a fucking physics major, so you kinda miss their hand on the forward trajectory, not hitting it right on, and then they know you have spacial issues, and they don't say anything but you can see it in the way that they avoid your eyes.

Or you go for the high five and they do the mercy hand position and there you are, slightly horrified, looking like you are defending yourself again a bully who wants to break your wrists and they are clutching at your hands, jumping up and down, excited, and you are just receding to your happy place until this stranger danger is over.

And it is stranger danger, because anyone who really knows me knows I don't want to touch their hands. They also probably know that they don't want to touch my hands (see the post about my activities on road trips). I'd rather most people put their genitals on me than their grubby dirty hands.


That job I had, the one that I got fired from, they were staunch believers in high fives.  My soul died a little every time I was forced to partake in their bizarre hand touching ritual. Thankfully they fired me though, so I didn't have to come up with bizarre reasons to dodge being touched.  I had already considered "leprosy from an armadillo bite" and "mail order ebola that accidentally got shipped to me instead of my terrorist next door neighbors."  They probably would have just gotten hazmat suits for everyone and upped the "up highs" to boost my morale.

ANIMAL HIGH FIVE CHALLENGE! 

The best ones will be posted later this week with a link to your blog. Draw them up and send them to my email (cheeseblarg at live dot com). You have until Wednesday, 11:59pm my time.

 p.s. Your drawings don't have to be drawings if you'd like to work in another medium, but it has to be self made.

                                     

I selected this post to be featured on my blog’s page at Humor Blogs.

Occupy the Holidays

It's getting closer to the holidays and after spending all night watching live feeds from Occupy Wall Street, I have some great gift ideas for your favorite Occupier!

Tired of hearing your occupying loved one complaining of being gassed and pepper sprayed?

How about this Festive Holiday Gas Mask?

It sure is getting cold up North and BOY, do those non-lethal projectiles sting! 

The Civil Disobedient Kitten Sweater is the perfect solution.

Cops raided your Occupier's camp and threw away all their food!? That won't happen again with the Patented Food Survival Suit- Holiday Edition!  Holds all your favorite Holiday Dinner leftovers in a place you are sure not to lose.

Choose from Holly Green, Jew Blue, Harvest Kwanzaa (red, black, and green), and Peppermint Stick!

Why we laugh- with kittens.

It bothers me, as a humor writer and funny person, that people, for the most part, seem to have absolutely no clue why we, as humans, laugh.

People will often say "HE WAS LAUGHING AT IT, HE OBVIOUSLY THINKS IT ISN'T SERIOUS OR IMPORTANT," which is often the case in jokes about rape or cancer.  And to that I think... you're dumb. People don't laugh at things that they like or advocate, ever... or mostly ever.  People laugh because they are taken by surprise and/or made uncomfortable. That is why knock knock jokes are almost entirely unfunny. We laugh at things that break a regular pattern that we are used to, which is why what is funny to me may not be funny to you. This is also probably why people unsubscribe from me every time I make a new post, but that is besides the point.

In order for something to be funny, it has to be unexpected... and generally negative/dangerous/scary/wrong.

For example:

A fuzzy gray kitten.

Not funny at all. 

A kitten that looks like Hitler. 

Fairly funny.  

Jedi Kittens

... hilarious.