ask no questions tell just a few lies
FLAME ON
I own a kitchen torch but have never used it. This is a lowdown dirty shame. If I am not going to use it for cooking I need to at least use it for mayhem. I can picture myself snarling many a witty supervillain aside as I singe people's clothing with my Williams-Sonoma torch. I MAKE LITTLE BURNY HOLES IN YOUR SWEATER! [Is English my supervillain's second language or something? Note: come up with better torch-wielding catchphrases.]
The kitchen torch came with a crème brûlÉe cookbook, which I also have never used, although yesterday all of my cookbooks fell off of their kitchen-window-ledge shelf (more on this in a minute) and as I labored to set things right I noticed that under the large title CRèME BRûLÉE the tagline read, “America's Favorite Dessert.” Which I think is stretching the truth an awful lot, because nothing with three different diacritical marks is ever going to be America's Favorite anything.
REASON FOR COOKBOOK MAYHEM: FELINE MENTAL ILLNESS
Previously I have talked about my odd cat Rocko, and about how he loves me (particularly the lower half of me) with a creepy passion. Rocko's neurosis seems to be worsening. Is he just a giant weirdo, amusing and tolerable, providing us all with a source of crazy-pet anecdotes? Or does Rocko need actual veterinary/psychological help? I love the nutter and I don't want him to go changin' just to please me, but if the consensus is that he's actually in distress I'd be happy to go talk to a cat professional.
SYMPTOMS
1. Inability to be alone, ever. If I am sitting down, Rocko is next to me. If I'm walking around the house doing stuff, he may settle for LT, or go bother his sister (the much more well-adjusted Lola). (If you see Rocko and Lola sitting together, it is a safe bet that Lola was there first.) If Rocko were a human boyfriend, he would be texting me every five minutes. He sits in the window as I walk up the street after work and screams at me all WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, WOMAN?
2. He hates Nora, but for the most part he keeps his hate confined and lashes out only very rarely, mostly because I bring the wrath (Big Scary Voice) whenever he does. Kid before Cat, sorry Rocko.
3. Likes pressure on the top of his skull. He reminds me of those sensory-spectrum kids who feel better wearing a weighted vest. At every opportunity he will curl up and press the top of his head into my hip quite firmly.
4. Does this weird tail-shivering thing. Some cat articles I Googled up say this is an expression of love and excitement, others say nervousness and anxiety. Maybe he's nervous because he wants to ask me out? Maybe Rocko's life is one long first date?
5. Also tail-related: will sometimes be cleaning himself and then be like “Holy shit! Tail!” And then start attacking his tail like it is a cat toy. Usually during the battle he falls off the couch, or else takes off running around the house and jumping on stuff, including (yesterday) the kitchen window's sill, which caused him to tumble to the ground in a rain of vegetarian cookbooks. Psychosis? Or just unfortunate lack of brains?
6. This is the thing that is currently driving me most bananas. I have no pantry and thus my 12-pack of Diet Pepsi sits out in the kitchen, right under the window actually, in an area where we store things like the stepstool and cases of beer. Rocko has taken to obsessively licking the flaps of the box. It is the grossest sound ever, somehow simultaneously wet and raspy at the same time, and I usually try to fling a beer coaster or something similarly light and non-injury-causing to get him to snap out of it. Usually he slinks back and continues anyway and I give up.
I ripped the flaps of the box off, thinking that maybe Rocko was eating the glue (dude, we'll get you some catnip, I promise), but he just started licking the sides of the box. Is it the ink? Is it the particular soda-pop cardboard? (He does not do this to any other box.) All Rocko wanted was a Pepsi. Just one Pepsi. And I wouldn't give it to him!
Rocko is a great cat and I love him, even if he is insane in the membrane. I am just starting to see why he was a “get one free” deal with his sister Lola, and why the shelter was so insistent that they be adopted together. He is barely functional as is, even with me as his girlfriend and Lola for emotional support.
NOT MY SON
Somehow I have “Billie Jean” on my iPod and I can't remember why—maybe a drunken download binge. Have you ever listened to that song with headphones? I mean post-1983, with proper earbud headphones and not the giant foam ones that came with your Walkman? That song has something like 17 vocal tracks and there is all kinds of weird shit in the background. Wikipedia claims that “[Quincy] Jones had Jackson sing his vocal overdubs through a six-foot-long cardboard tube.” That image is going to give me nightmares, seriously.
I just realized that my typing has come full circle with the fire, the Billie Jean, and the Pepsi. Does someone smell burning hair?
—mimi smartypants is special effects gone wrong.