The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Lemony Snicket �A Series of Unfortunate Events� (Multiple titles)

Started March 23 � Finished March 28, 2005; 683 pages. Posted 13 May 2005

Ok, new review means work-related haiku!

Psycho customers
but I can�t comment on it
�cause I�m at home, bitch!

Yes, that�s right, after a recent trip to the doctor who told me I�m using my arm too much (dirty), and that it�s not healing (dirty), I�ve stopped working as I really want my collarbone to heal, and heal soon. And so I�ve spent the last three days rigid in bed...

And ok, can we move past the one-handed innuendoes? Thank you. My god, it�s like you�re all twelve years old.

Dirty.

So, three days of vicodin, Monster Rancher 4, and using my recent birthday gift of a DVD recorder to transfer all my MST3K episodes.

And I am so fucking bored.

Technically, I shouldn�t be typing either, but what the hell. I�m trying to be careful. We�ll see if I can keep this short.

I didn�t get a chance to mention this previously but at the first show of the recent punk rock extravaganza, a guy who reads this site approached me. We were standing near the back bar, when he leaned in close.

�You know,� he said, �I bet you get so much pussy from that site of yours.�

As much as I like Newcastle beer, I�ve discovered that it is not fun to shoot it out of your nose.

I told another friend about this comment in an e-mail the next day.

�I have a hard time even beginning to grasp the line of thought that could possibly lead from �book review website� to �lots of pussy,�� she wrote. �Perhaps it was the man's standard response to anything: �You must get SO much pussy from your �fill in the blank.�� One day someone might agree with him (�Oh, yeah! My collection of empty bic lighters gets me laid *all* the time...�), and bingo � he�ll have an instant method of obtaining women.�

�What,� I said, �you mean I�ve been keeping all my empty lighters for nothing?�

But actually, he�s right � I have had a lot of pussy around lately. Let me tell you about it.

My cat is named Chairman Meow. I call her Chairman for short. Chairman is the third generation of cats from my old apartment and at this point, I�d say I�ve had her for the longest. She�s a calico, and has the softest fur that I�ve ever seen on a cat that wasn�t bred for those purposes.

When we moved out of the famed apartment into a new place, I stayed for three days then tromped off to Buffalo for a week. The house I moved into had a cat as well, a psychotic calico named Lucky that had two different colored eyes who would spend twenty minutes being friendly and affectionate, and with no warning or provocation would turn into a raving lunatic full of teeth and claws. When I returned, my roommates informed me that two of my cats had escaped.

I guess I can�t blame them, as they must have been thinking, �Holy crap, we�re in a new place, there�s this psycho cat, and Dean�s gone! This sucks! We need freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!� They found it by clawing through the screen on the window. This marked the first instance where I regretted my creative naming of my feline pets, as I wandered the barrio yelling �Scabies! Come here Scabies!�

I never found them. But Chairman stayed, presumably because she was too busy cowering in my closet to see the escape route. Then again, Chairman has always been a little weird.

Most cats have a common personality � aloof and indifferent to your person, unless you have food. Chairman acts more like a dog. More than one person has remarked how she�d be sleeping contently, only to bolt up and run toward the front door, where I would walk through a minute later. She then spends the next fifteen minutes mewling at me, only her voice has been wrecked from too many nights of being trapped in a small, unventilated room as I typed and smoked, and she now sounds remarkably like Tom Waits.

Now that I think of it, perhaps that�s why she freaks out so much when I get home � she�s having a nicotine fit.

But her odd behavior started early on. Back when she was a tiny kitten I wandered into the front room to see a friend holding her under her haunches and stretching her out length-wise. He then raised her over his head and started windmilling, her body contorting with the movement.

�Hey,� I said sternly, �don�t do that to my fucking cat!�

�She likes it,� the guy responded, holding her out toward me. �Listen.�

I could hear her purring from across the room.

It soon became obvious that Chairman had confused love with abuse, and my roommates were happy to oblige. Try to pet her gently, and she�d get up and leave. Smack her on the butt and she loved you. She even upped the potential for injury on her own, jumping into the ball return on our pool table without our knowing, only to stick her head out of the corner pocket just as we were trying to sink the eight ball. More than a few times found me leaping across the table to try and stop her from getting creamed by a combo shot.

Now that the pool table is gone, she compensates by purposely banging her head on any hard surface. In fact, unlike most cats who will slide their face slowly across corners, Chairman will walk up slowly and purposely and headbutt you when she wants attention. I�ve seen other cats that have figured out how to work doorknobs, but she has a habit of bumping her head against my door, which doesn�t close solidly. Since it doesn�t get her anywhere, I�m assuming that she doesn�t really want out, she�s just doing daily exercises to keep her skull solid.

But the crowd-pleaser is her malleability. Grab her under her front haunches and turn her on her back and you can run her across the floor, with her arching her head so it will catch the friction as she slides. The floor soon proved to be too tame, and soon we were running her up and down the side of the walls, her never minding being upside-down. I don�t know if Letterman still does Stupid Pet Tricks, but I know I would be a hit running Chairman across the floor, up and back down the sofa and then finally up Letterman�s leg and over his shoulders, her purring all the while.

My normal workweek has me working every day except Tuesday and Friday. Most of the time I leave the house early to read before starting work and return home late after the bars close. Often I simply don�t have the time to give her the abuse that she craves. That�s probably why she yells at me whenever I do get home. It�s like trying to figure out what Sunny is saying in this book series.

�Meow!� she says in her scratchy voice that probably means, �Where the hell have you been?�

�Meow!� she repeats. Which probably means, �I�ve been bumping my head repeatedly against the door keeping myself fit! Go on, give it a knock!�

�Rrrrrrow!� which in this case, probably means, �Hey, you got an extra cigarette?�

I�ve had the last three days off doing nothing but sitting in my room, occasionally picking her up to softly knock her head into the wall as she purrs away. Normally, she looks a little wild-eyed and crazy, like when she had her first and only litter, whereupon she squirted the first one out, only to run up and jump on my chest with a look that could only mean �OH MY GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!? HELP ME!!! THE FUCKING COMPANY USED ME!!!�

But now she just looks content.

I�m really going to miss Chairman when I move to Hawaii.


Rating: Worth used.

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