The Inbox Crowd

Much thanks to the weirdo who thought he would repay me for the suggestion of the album cover to name matching game yesterday with a link to Puzzlefarter. Yes, I've been playing it. No, I am not very good at it. That should come as a relief, but it does not. I like to win!

I am about to go record the airbreaks for the Trash show. I have a special guest, a person who writes books about the garbage of famous people. Do you think he'll smell nice? I hope so. It's a smallish place where we record. One unpleasant aroma could ruin the whole session. But the show will be great. Trust me on this. Much, much better than the imaginary one I did in my head four years ago. That one sucked.

Do feel free to send me links to ridiculous online games that are a complete waste of time. Otherwise I'll do work, & no one - not even my boss! - wants to see my do that.

& do find me tomorrow afternoon at selfhelpradio.net for this week's show - all about trash. I haven't heard it yet, but I think it'll be awesome.

Not Any Longer Confessive Obpulsive

Ack! I can't stop playing this game! It's a game where you have like twenty seconds to match nine album (or CD) covers with the names of the record. I'm not very good at it, though. The category I most find myself in is "alternative" although if they had a category called "records Gary's brothers had that he rifled through continually when he was a young kid" I'd be awesome at it.

There were certain records I would never have listened to, not in a million years, but whose sleeves I found amazing, like a panel of a long comic book the rest of which existed entirely in my head. For example, the cover to Queen's News Of The World (the image doesn't show you how the record folded out), which I would never, even as a kid, have listened to of my own free will, although, of course, I've heard the songs "We Will Rock You" & "We Are The Champions" more times than my mother ever told me she loved me. But the cover! An alien made of stone killing all those hippies! The stories that album cover brought into my head!

There were other memorable ones, but I can't find images of them online - I guess they were not as famouss, or maybe I'm remembering the names wrong - but games like this do make me miss vinyl & the attention lavished on album covers. Maybe I suck at the game because most of the records in the "alternative" category are from CDs & who the fuck pays attention to a CD cover?

Record collecting friends back in the day often would distinguish between a "great package" - the music & the presentation were both great - & great records that had shitty sleeves & great sleeves hiding awful records. Middle- to late-period 4AD records often got that last complaint - 23 Envelope did a smashing job with the sleeve but the record is unfuckinglistenable. Do you hear me Ultra Vivid Scene? Do you?

(That's not really my opinion. I was in character! Plus, that first Ultra Vivid Scene record, the one with the toothbrush on the cover - that's not a very good presentation for a decent pop record.)

I do miss vinyl, but not enough to actually buy it. Ack! What a pain in the ass! It's so much easier to be digital. & maybe I'm a philistine, but it sounds fine to me. But perhaps the vinyl-o-philes are winning. Which is great. There'll be more records whose sleeves I don't recognize in work-habit-destroying games like this one.

No worries! My iPod will tell me what the sleeve looks like!

Whither Trash?

If there's anything you must take away from a cursory glance at post-ideological America in the twenty-first of all possible centuries, it's this: the fucking place is a mess. What the hell went on here? Your father & I were just gone for the weekend & we come back & - I mean, just look at Wyoming. Look at it.

I am completely ripping off a Kids In The Hall sketch right now. I can't remember much of it, so I can't find it in their episode guides or on YouTube, but I know a Kids In The Hall sketch when I rip it off. & that's one of them. Maybe.

I would also like to point out that it's the second time this week I have used some sort of construction involving "the 21st century." I believe on Monday I used the phrase "the twenty-first of all human centuries" & just above I noted that this was "the twenty-first of all possible centuries." I would like you to incorporate this sort of talk in your everyday language. & not just about centuries. It helps to imagine that you're addressing a large audience. A large, nude audience.

You know what? I was totally not ripping off a Kids In The Hall sketch up there. It was an homage. Which reminds me. I once used the word "homage" in a phone call to someone who probably never called me back, but I pronounced it "hommedge." A friend who was sitting next to me corrected me when I got off the phone. He asked me where I heard the word & why I was pronouncing it wrong, & I said (which was true) that I had read it & never heard it spoken. That happened with the word "ascertain" too. & "metropolis," which I used to pronounce met-ro-pol-is, not muh-trop-o-lis. Oh shit! Maybe that dude didn't call me back because I mispronounced homage! What a judgmental fuck.

It might not be a Kids In The Hall sketch, but I'm pretty sure it is. I seem to remember Dave Foley in it. They throw a party & they trash the country & they have to clean it up before their parents get home. Who else could it be? That sketch freaked me out the first time I saw it, in a similar way to how I felt the first time I saw the Monty Python Olympic Hide & Seek. That gave me nightmares.

I wasn't writing in this blog in 2004, but since I did an imaginary radio show about trash then, you can go back & read my imaginary blog where I imaginarily discussed why I chose that theme. I can't imagine I ripped off the Kids In The Hall at that time - but I probably did.

Preface To Trash: Wait! Didn't You Do A Trash Show Before?

I got this email from the little voice that lives inside my head:

Dear fuckface,
I know you pride yourself on being "original" & "edgy" & "heterosexual," but I am writing to inform you that you are totally re-doing one of your old themes this week. Ha! This is hubris, my friend! Your pride goeth & then you fucking fall! Because you're all like "I never do the same theme except when it's a special event because I am that good a deejay & I am also a girl waah! waah!" But ha ha! You did a "trash" show back in the summer of 2004! What do you say to that?
love,
your inner voice

I wish I could tell you how kind it was of my inner voice to write me an email. Normally it just engenders in me tremendous guilt & shame that I can only forget about with massive amounts of alcohol. This may mean that our relationship is getting better.

What my little voice tells you is true, & you can see it on my website on the page of 2004 playlists. According to this page, on June 30, 2004, I did a show about "Trash." But wait! Look what it says next to it: "Imaginary Radio Show # 3"! What could that mean?

It means that, in the summer of 2004, I was not doing my radio show. The reason for it had to do with internal KOOP politics - I had offended the regime in power at the time, & they used their cronies to accuse me of stuff, which resulted in me not doing a radio show for a couple of months. In the interval, I pretended to do radio shows - if it happened now, I'd be doing podcasts - but then, I just posted playlists. I probably also burned myself some CDs to listen to, or to send to my girlfriend, who was in New York that summer. I just didn't want to get out of practice. The point is, I never really did a radio show with the theme of "trash" - I just made a playlist. Is all.

Hey! I just got another email from the little voice that lives in my head:

Dear douchebag,
You win - but only on a technicality. Next time, though, I bury you. I fucking obliterate you.
can't wait for dinner,
your inner voice

If my inner voice ever figures out how to text, I will be in all thirty-two kinds of hell.

A Punishment Of Britches

Let it never be said, in the annals of all humankind, in this choked & stinkish blog-o-sphere, where altitude & attitude trump rectitude & pulchritude, where each voice is equal in theory but unreadable in practice, where one is judged by content management systems, network & web page affiliations, ad clicks & crossover marketing potential, as we hunker down in this, the twenty-first of all human centuries, where challenges are affirmations & every diagnosis is also a prognosis, where the last of labels shall set us all free, where the digital boundaries are drawn by RAM & CPU, not by surveyor & natural landmark, where the slowly disappearing highway on the emptying American terrain reappears in our mind, unbounded, in leaps & bounds, at the outset on its last legs, fetid, fertile, fanciful, false, the whole slew of this & that not to replace those & them, but to render them neutral & neutered, to placate power while posing as populist, where... In this... Let it not be said... As we in this century are... Uh... Fuck!

I lost my train of thought.

Oh, well, why not just go listen to the "Pale Show," this past week's episode of Self Help Radio, which is available for your listerine pleasure at selfhelpradio.net. It's free of harmful ultraviolet rays, although it may have dangerous musics.

Seriously, though, I was going to say something meaningful up there. It's just, fuck! I lost my train of thought.

What To Do When Your Teeth Disagree

Have you ever had a friend talk to you at length about a book, including telling you the basic plot & also about some of the more interesting stories & characters within, usually commenting on each person or event & telling you exactly how it made them feel or what they thought it meant, & then, after this moderately tolerable dialogue, smiling at you & saying, "Do you wanna read it?" How do you tell your friend that they did for the book what most movie trailers do for movies? Which is to say, ruined it for me.

My girlfriend regularly wears clothes without pockets (I am told this is a woman thing) & sometimes uses it as an excuses to bum money off of me. This doesn't bother me, as I like to pretend I can provide something to her, & I usually have more cash on hand than she does, but she almost never remembers, once she's taken, say, a twenty, to go buy ice or something, she never remembers to bring me the change. Here's my worry: if she has no pockets, where is my change?

I am now an avid flosser. This shouldn't surprise you. But there was a time - not very long ago, I will shamefully admit - that flossing seemed incorrect to me for one reason: I wasn't really convinced there ought to be spaces in between teeth. Hear me out. It struck me that perhaps our teeth should be close enough together that even a something threadlike couldn't get between them - & worse yet, that if you tried to get something between them, you'd crack the teeth. I can't think what disabused me of that notion. Oh, yeah. Regular flossing.

While listening to lots of Bill Hicks trying to find a bit he did about how pale he is (for this week's show, & no, I didn't find it on any of his recorded released stuff, so I suppose it's from a videotape or television special), I was struck by how little I laughed. I did think it was excruciatingly funny, but I've listened to the records so much that I don't laugh any more - I anticipate the humor. Much like the way when I listen to stuff that I've been listening to my entire life I now listen to the instruments more - say, the bass, if I've never paid any attention to it - I found myself listening to the audience. Sometimes you can even make out conversations. The reason I mention this is not only to segue to talking about this week's show but also to note that I don't have the same experience with comedy on television or film - Monty Python or Marx Brothers. Just recorded comedy.

Speaking of things you might not think are funny, the new show is being prepared this afternoon. Look for it tomorrow afternoon. Listen to it Sunday afternoon. Reflect on it Monday afternoon. Tell your friends about itTuesday afternoon. Call in sick to work so you can be drunk Wednesday afternoon. Who care what you do Thursday afternoon? I'll be recording another podcast next Friday afternoon. Let's continue in this vein. For ever.

I'm Sometimes A Punk

Though I don't have a mohawk. Nor do I know any Mohawks. I might ask them if they like punk rock music.

I like a lot of it, but of course not all of it. Some of the stuff that I like that I think of as punk is probably not punk, & lots of the stuff that is thought of as punk I can't really stand. What sort of punk do I like? I'm glad I'm pretending that you ask.

You can have a listen to a mix I sort of made for my nephew's college graduation party (it's edited) last month here on the Self Help Radio Extra page. It's without any interruption & it's about seventy-four minutes long.

No mohawk required! From me to you! Now, if you're excuse me, I'm going to daydream & listen to Bill Moyers talk.

Whither A Show About Paleness?

Is paleness even a word?

Ack! I am late for today's blog entry! I have no compelling explanations! I don't need to defend myself to you! You got more explaining to do than me! Judge not lest ye be judged!

Yeah, it's a weird idea, a show about a lack of color. I confess there aren't a lot of songs about that. There are more songs about pale things. So it'll mainly be a show about pale things, more than paleness. Sue me. It's just a podcast.

I myself am quite pale. Always have been. Some people's skin ripens like fruit in the sun & stays golden over the summer. I resort to a zombie-esque hue mere moments after non-sunburn exposure. Here's a funny story: I went to a dermatologist a while back to get a third eye removed (long story) & the dermatologist wanted to look at my back which, truth be told, is as white as vanilla ice cream. Not french vanilla - I'm talking soft serve vanilla. Anyway, she said, "You've got some sun damaged back here." She meant freckles. That's a bad way to talk about freckles. Freckles may be caused by sun damage, but it's evil to take something as adorable as freckles & make them seem evil. I won't have it.

Plus, she wouldn't remove the third eye. Referred me to an evil optometrist. Long story.

The experience of the pale is certainly one we shall explore. Or else I will say "Ack!" once more, & collapse on the floor.

Preface To The Pale Show: Ode On A Plastic Spoon

Hey! Who put this ode on this plastic spoon? I was gonna use this spoon! Do you know how hard it is to get ode off a plastic spoon? Cleaners can melt the freakin' plastic! You! Yeah, you, with the beret! Are you the dirty dog poet who put this ode on my plastic spoon? What the fuck? Do I go over to your house & write a limerick on your butter knife? Hanh? Do I wander by your work & write a sestina on your spork? Oh Christ, look, you've got me rhyming now. Just get away from me! & don't mess with my non-biodegradable cutlery ever again!

This particular Self Help Radio blog entry was supposed to be enjoyed - prepared just for you - with a small cup of some sweet pale yogurt. The place was set & you were to come here, make yourself comfortable, & read an amusing preface to a show about a lack of color while eating something that not only lacks color, but also taste. All prepared for you by Self Help Radio. Because Self Help Radio wants to be hospitable.

Instead, some itinerant wannabe bard stops by, sees something that no sane person could possibly see in a plastic spoon sitting next to the yogurt, & just can't help WRITING AN ODE on the plastic spoon. That's all thirteen kinds of crazy! Hey! You should be ashamed of yourself!

What the...? Oh great. Well, the good news is, the ode is gone. The bad news is, so is the yogurt. Yes, the poet ate his ode with the food. He literally ate his own words. Har har. He thinks he's so clever.

Get out of here! I gotta blog to write! Stupid poets!

Braise, Whimper & Fold

One more story about Bill before too long:

Bill never met a musical instrument he didn't want to put his mouth on. He could play them all tolerably well, if your definition of "tolerable" is the same definition John Ashcroft uses for testicular electrocution at Gitmo. Man I hated when he picked up an oboe - for example - & just started tooting on it. You did not want to go to any sort of store with him, nor church, but that was because he loved Satan.

How I found myself in a dried goods store last weekend I am not sure. I didn't even know there were such entities as "dried goods stores" outside of those infernal Hobbit books. Blast them! Yet there Bill & I stood, chewing on gunpowder & talking about tamarind when, out of nowhere he said, "I hear someone calling my name!"

You have to have regular responses to Bill, otherwise you won't make much sense, but my regular response to him was to the exclamation, "I hear [Jesus/God/The Virgin Mary/Albert Einstein] calling my name!" I had never heard him be vague. I listened, too. I heard it!

"Songs about me!" said Bill. It was true. The lunatic dried good store owner with the painted-on hard-on was playing songs about Bill. Bill was apoplectic. He accused the shopkeeper of adding cayenne pepper to the no-MSG sugar cane. But I told him, "Bill, that fellow isn't playing songs about you. He's listening to a radio show playing songs about you!"

It was true! The man behind the counter had gone to selfhelpradio.net & downloaded this week's show. Bill was astonished. He couldn't leave. He didn't leave.

For all I know, he's there still.

Make This Blog Your Only Best Blog!

Now I know for a fact that literally a couple or more people read the Self Help Radio blog with awesome regularity. (Far more than listen to my podcasts!) (Hey, could my blog readers think the podcast is simply me reading the blog? Well, it's not!) But I would love if maybe thousands more would read it. (I'd love it more, though, if thousands listened to Self Help Radio. That's problematic, though - the show really isn't all that good.)

I absorbed with interest the Wired article Secrets of the 7 Basic Blog Posts & realized that I fail on most accounts. I hereby promise to follow these secrets until at least ten people read this blog every day. Then I'll really pump up the volume.

Here, in case you don't want to read the linked article above, is a summary of the seven points:

1. Be upset!
It's really hard to be so angry when I'm mainly confused. I'll try, though. Oh! That Hillary!
Does that work? Hanh?

2. Buy a thing!
I encourage you to buy into my dreams of independent media. But you can't find that in stores. Rats. Maybe I should try to find something to support - maybe a website to help me & my friends after all the Christians disappear?

3. Animals are cute!
Right. I must stop posting pictures of animals that have recently died.

4. People are dumb!
Right. That's why they're not listening to Self Help Radio.

5. Something I like, only different!
Oh, I got this down. That's what Self Help Radio is!

6. Weird science!
Wouldn't you rather see a sunset on Mars? I thought so.

7. Me, the blogger!
Whew, I got this one cold.

In any event, I promise to remember you all when I get too big for the blogsosphere & have to get ghost writers to write these posts. Let's circle our wagons now & enjoy our own intimate relationship before it gets ruined by the paparazzi & Entertainment Tonight.

Your task: tomorrow, in the afternoon, visit selfhelpradio.net & listen to a show about people named Bill. You do NOT have to be named Bill, or William, or Billy, or Will, etc., to enjoy the show. But you'll like it more. I betcha.

Yet Lagged

Our cheap little motel room in Durham sat right above the window where late-night guests (who talk loud because they're talking to hotel clerks behind a plexiglass divider, despite the fact that they could be heard all through the whole motor court) got rooms - or didn't get rooms, as the case may be. One fellow walked back & forth to his car muttering about "eight lousy bucks" until he finally relented (paying with a credit card!), & another yelled on a cell phone about the cost then walked over to another nearby motel, as if the person on the other line was William Shatner trying to get him a better deal. I heard all this over the weird watery gurgle of the air conditioner because I am prone to listen to the night as I sleep.

I went out last night to find the late-night clerk playing with a radio-operated car in the parking lot, & that same fellow freaked me out when we were coming home that evening because he was apparently escorting some visitor to a room a few doors down from ours. They went in, they came out, the visitor went away. You bet I thought it was drugs!

But Magda & I drove through the blackness of the Durham highway to the airport at four this morning &, a little over fourteen hours later, I am back at home in my lovely little house feeling it had been nothing more than a dream. A dream with trees. During the three days we were in Durham, I struggled to get some sense of where everything was - you know that weird feeling when you see a street that you know you were on some part of, but it seems to you that this one is perpendicular to the one you were on earlier - I consulted a map afterwards to show up my failed human sensors - & I wonder now if it'll come back to me when next I'm there. Durham is rather small, you know. & in a forest. Forests are made to be lost in.

Big decisions were made there but I woke up from a nap just now & want to return to some more sleeping while my dogs & cats are still a little sluggish from sleep too. Plus there's a storm brewing! I'm sure I'll talk more about things of overdramatic import at another time. I have a postscript for this which ties it to this week's Self Help Radio: the night clerk? His name was Billy!*

* I don't really know if this is true. But it seemed a nice ending for an otherwise meaningless ramble.

Whither Bill?

Dispatch from Durham:

My friend Bill (or Billy, when he's drunk; or William, when he's in court; or Wilhelm, when he's drunk in court in Germany; but never Will) doesn't really exist. He is a fingerprint of my imagination. He lives on the peripheries, on the side of our mind where nothing is ever put straight, as the poet said. Yet he is insistent! & much like the monkeys that paint the clothes that we wear when the weather is about to get worse, I can't not listen to it. Not even with ear muffs & cotton candy breath.

Did you know you can buy fireworks in supermarkets in Durham? I don't know if they're good fireworks, but I can find out. I don't believe they'll let me take them home, though. "They" meaning "supermarkets in Durham."

Bill doesn't believe in fireworks that aren't generated by romance. Nor Hollywood. Nor his latest Hollywood romance. But he does understand that he possesses a naive curiosity which, as the poet says, forces two strangers to talk, & so he would like to be forced to talk to the weird people who, he believes because I told him, have written songs about him. I said I would gather them. I would buy some new shoes. I would gather the songs around the shoes. & I would let him in!

Did you know it's not legal to fire fireworks off outside the door to your second story motel room at the so-called traffic on I-85? Some nice police officers gave me a stern talking-to. They're very butch in North Carolina.

Bill is nearly always sober. Me not so much. Self Help Radio is a very serious thing & it helps out all manner of folks, especially, this week, those called "Bill." I hope my friend Bill, even though he does not exist, can appreciate that.

I hope you, even though you probably don't exist, can understand that.

Preface To Bill: What? No blog today?

Yeah, been hanging out in Durham all day, with lemurs mostly, & nowhere near a computer. Sorry. Maybe more tomorrow?

Also, I didn't meet one person named Bill today.

& Then There's North Carolina...

Yes, sports fans, I'll be spending three of the seven days of this week - or is it four? - I think the fourth will be spent getting through airports - in the area of North Carolina where I'll be living in two short months. So the posts may be shorter, though no pithier, & certainly not any more interesting than normal. But if I take pictures of anything astonishing, I might just share them with you.

No, it's early but it's still Monday so I must be the first to tell you that this past week's podcast, appropriately or inappropriately about beauty pageants, is now available where you always knew it would be at selfhelpradio.net. It features ninety minutes of songs, discussion, facts & lies about contests for beauty. How could you not want to listen to it? Oh come on!

Maybe you'll hear from me sooner than later - but if not, look for me in the "triangle" area of North Carolina. I'm sure you'll know me by sight. I'll be the one who is embarrassed saying the name "Carrboro."

Also, this week's show is about people named Bill. William. Billy. Wilhelm. Willy. Etc. So if you want to tell me a story about your favorite Bill, send me an email & I'll dedicate a song to them. You can encourage those haters who don't listen to Self Help Radio to write in, too. Because! The show will not just be about a particular Bill. It's about all Bills. Whomever they may be. It's true!

The Last Repetitive Stress Injury Ever

I am proud at the beginning of this 2008-2009 pageant season to announce that, despite comments from critics calling it "sexist," "degrading," "unappealing" & "imaginary," Miss Self Help Radio 2009 is accepting entries! Yes, before I & the show depart for the comforting wilds of Durham, North Carolina, we'll have one last Miss Self Help Radio pageant in Austin, Texas.

Rules are the same as always: contestants must have listened to at least ten (10) Self Help Radio shows during the previous year. Packets for each show will be handed out. A score of 60% or better will need to be achieved or the contestant is liable to be condescended to. Contestants must also be of the relatively female persuasion or otherwise not object to being called "Miss." The entry fee will be waived for most everyone who makes a fuss. No one under eighteen is allowed to enter, & don't blame me, blame the sponsors of the Junior Miss Self Help Radio contest, who refused to let me drink while I was judging. Christ! It's not like I was giving it to the kids!

More details on the contest can be found on tomorrow's podcast of Self Help Radio, available some time in the mid-afternoon at selfhelpradio.net. Do listen for lots of songs about beauty pageants & their contestants as well as an interview with someone who knows more than I do about less than it seems.

The Miss Self Help Radio Pageant is sponsored, as always, by Bloat. Bloat, since 1972, America's original & only.

At The End Of May, A Mix Is Born

Hey! That's right! I managed despite my grief to put together a mix for you what I call "Self Help Radio Extra"! You can find it for downloading on the Self Help Radio Extra page. Where it always is. Once a month.

I'll try to make the next one in a more timely fashion. I am a bit of a procrastinator. Once a month shouldn't mean "at the end of every month." Perhaps I should do two a month. It would keep me on my toes.

You can see what's on this uninterrupted seventy-six minute mix (suitable for burning onto a CD & then crushing under a stiletto heel) by visiting the Self Help Radio Extra page. Do have a listen. I enjoy the putting together of music, although I fear I am not very good at it.

Have fun!

Whither Beauty Pageants?

Confession time: I've never sat through any televised (or live) beauty pageant, & that includes ones that I might have been present for. I have seen a few movies about them - "Little Miss Sunshine" probably being the best - how many movies have been made about them, you might wonder - well, here's a list - but in general, I haven't had a whole lot of interest in what seemed a weirdly staged - lots of standing around for the "contestants" - & mostly formal exercise in shallowness.

I probably conceived of the notion of the show around the time the video for the Miss Teen USA pageant started making the rounds - you know, this one - because it most likely started a process in my brain that could have gone something like this:

1) This is sad. She's nervous but she's also kinda stupid.
2) It's also sad that people think this is funny.
3) I guess people think it's funny because they probably hate the idea of a competition for "the prettiest."
4) It's natural to want to think the most generically beautiful people are the dumbest.
5) That sure is a big stage she's standing on.
6) If it's Miss Teen USA, does that mean there are fifty contestants?
7) Maybe more, with Guam & Puerto Rico & Iraq & all our other provinces?
8) This is a weird idea.
9) I bet beauty contests started in America.
10) Do you think there are a lot of songs about beauty contests?

That all happened within a few seconds, most likely while I was drunk, & I probably created a folder on my computer & noticed it some time later. Because chances are I put the folder not in the place where I keep show ideas (that would be a folder called "show_ideas"), but in something completely irrelevant, like "taxes" or "embarrassing photographs of monkeys" or "recipes that are mainly excuses for eating lots of cheese."

Now the chickens have come home to roost. But they are beauty chickens.

Preface To Beauty Pageant: What Horrible Memories This Show Will Bring Back

I actually thought instead of trying to be funny & talking about the show today, I'd post some more pictures of Buster. I hope you don't mind.

I have tried to arrange them like so: Buster alone, a snap of Buster & Blue Boy, then pictures of Buster with Beatrice & with Bolan. They're not chronological. They're just some of the few snapshots I & Magda, neither of whom are really picture takers, have collected over the years.

Buster

I lost a dear friend, my child, on Friday. My cat Buster, at the very young feline age of ten, died very suddenly from a viral infection called FIP. You can read about it at the Wikipedia link there. It was treacherous & awful & my girlfriend Magda & I did everything in our power to try to help him. But it came too fast & now he's no longer with us. It's been a horrible weekend, with feelings of anger & regret, torturous dreams & sad awakenings, & of course the fear of it happening to our other two cats. Mostly, though, I miss him being around. I loved him so.

I adopted Buster when he was a kitten about ten years ago. He was part of the litter of a cat that lived around my sister's house in Garland. He would probably have been a feral cat & lived only a few years (if that) had I not fallen in love with his gray tabbiness & that round, stone face. I brought him back to Austin & named him Buster, after Buster Keaton, someone else I love dearly. (Buster Kitten, get it?) I brought him home to be with me & my cat Blue Boy, who had feline leukemia. I don't know why I decided to adopt him - there were great fears that he could contract Blue Boy's disease - but I brought him into my life thoughtlessly, because he was affectionate in a bull-headed, oafish way, the opposite of Blue Boy's delicate grace.

Buster had a singular charm as a kitten - a leaky anus. Many a guest would find him on their lap & he'd leave them a small round surprise when he got up. He outgrew that (thank god) but there were several weeks there where I was cleaning up little brown rings on the carpet every damn day. He also discovered my roommate's weird collection of plastic bags & we found out soon enough by following the overpowering smell that he liked to urinate in plastic bags. Buster was a charmer.

Blue Boy was in good health that summer, but as he deteriorated, I had to separate him & Buster. The last month of Blue Boy's life, I kept Buster in a different room, & now, although I have been guilty about it for a long time, I do treasure the memory of the hour or hours I spent in that room to feed Buster & play with him & try to make up for confining him while Blue Boy was starting to fade. Buster was young & loved to fight & steal food - Blue Boy was dying.

Blue Boy died at a weird time in my life. I had changed focus at work, I had left KVRX, & I was about to move from the place where I had lived for almost six years - a place I lived in longer than any other place in my life. I had Buster tested again for feline leukemia a month or so after Blue Boy's death, but despite all the grooming & fighting & sharing (& stealing) of food, he didn't have the disease. I was very grateful - I wanted Buster to be with me for a long, long time.

I moved into a smaller place that December, & it was just Buster & me. I remember he would inexplicably hide from me, & I worried he had sneaked out of the screen door & out to the busy street nearby. I also remember, in those smoking days, in those smoking in the house days, I'd have the door open to the night & just be staring out into the backyard & Buster & I would marvel at the giant moths which would bat upon against the porch light. Buster was a very expressive cat, & he had a lot of things to say to anything outside, be it another cat, a bird, an insect, or a person, all through his life. He would often wake me up with shrieks at passing cats. As annoyed as I always was, it would be like beautiful music to hear it now.

I have one very strong memory of that time. The first time I tried e, I was alone at home, & he came up to me, purring, & I started petting him. It must've last a half-hour, the sensation of his fur was astonishing. It was a mutually beneficial heavy petting session on drugs. Subsequent times on e after that always included some touch-time with the kittens. Buster's fur was always best of all.

That summer I adopted another kitten, named Beatrice, & that was when Buster came into his own. For all his oafishness, for all his slight slowness of mind (I think now he wasn't so much stupid as deliberate, & he stolidly kept his own pace), he was a great big brother. Beatrice was (& is) a peevish cat, skittish & quick to defense, but Buster impressed me with his patience, his love, his inexplicable tolerance & care of this obviously irrational little white girl cat. He & Beatrice were closer than I was ever able to be to either of them, & Beatrice has let virtually no one but him & me touch her her entire life. The two of them wouldn't share the same space often, but they did come together & groom one another, & Buster hardly ever was at the claw end of one of Beatrice's hissy fits. When he was, though, he understood. He raised her!

I can't imagine how she misses him - but she surely must.

When Magda & I got together, she brought a dog into our life, & Buster made it perfectly clear that he ran the house. George the beagle was followed by Ringo the beagle who was followed by many fostered dogs (over ten, who rarely stayed longer than a month) & finally by Winston, & while there have been occasions when they've gone all doggie & chased Beatrice way, I have the image in my head of three hungry hounds wanting desperately to get into the kitchen to eat their dinner but whining instead because this tiny tabby - weighing at most twelve pounds - was standing in their way. Buster would often just mosey up to one of them - for some reason, Ringo particularly interested him - & swat him with a quick ninja cat paw. Just to make sure everyone his role was understood.

With a woman living with us, Buster revealed another endearing trait - he liked women's shoes. Not wearing them (that would have been freaky), but what Magda has called "making love" with them. If they were stranger's shoes, even better. It was always slightly embarrassing to see Buster roll himself over a shoe, like watching a dog hump a pillow.

Two years ago Magda brought home a black cat we call Bolan & Buster also raised him. They were fast friends, & Buster was just as patient with this child as he was with Beatrice, & this child grew to be twice his size.

Buster accepted all the changes because he was Buster. A more centered cat I have yet to meet. He loved food, he loved to sit in the window & watch the world go by, he loved to be next to humans (but not in their lap - maybe being shoved away because he was leaving poo stains conditioned him as a kit), he loved to be petted, &, as he got older, he loved to drool. Buster had a very sensitive head - rubbing him the wrong way always caused him to rattle his head - so if you were petting him, & if he started to drool, you had to be extra careful about scratching the head the wrong way, or else he'd bathe you in his drooly happiness.

It's ridiculous all the ridiculous things you miss when your pet's gone.

Buster was the patriarch of this house. We'd find him in the oddest places - on top of things or under things or in things like drawers - & we had no idea how he got there. He knew the place like no one else. Him being gone is not only like a part of me being gone - like a heart attack kills a part of your heart, the death of Buster has killed a part of what makes me me, what makes me love - but also like something's been stolen from this place, like some part of it has disappeared & it seems incomplete. This house is broken & can't be fixed any more.

So this motherfucking virus came & Buster stopped eating & despite everything - despite Magda reading about European treatments, our friendly neighbor forcing him (because we couldn't, we always felt we were hurting) to take steroids & antivirals & interferon, arguments with the vet about a feeding tube (we felt he might be able to live with the virus if we kept his weight up) - despite all our attempts to feed him all kinds of crazy meats & cat treats - despite long conversations I had with him, as he got more shaky & his meows became strained & his purr sounded like it had pitch-shifted, these long discussions we had with me telling him how much he meant to us & how he was supposed to live much longer - it just happened so fucking fast! - he succumbed to that bastard virus & now he's gone.

It's Memorial Day & this is also blog entry four hundred, & it certainly wasn't planned, but I am glad I have a place & time to honor Buster with some small remembrances. There's a poem Kinky Friedman quotes when he talks about the death of his cat which I thought about when Blue Boy died, & I think about now, nearly nine years later: "We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle..." Kinky Friedman adds, "People may surprise you with unexpected kindness. Dogs have a depth of loyalty that we often seem unworthy of. But the love of a cat is a blessing, a privilege in this world."

I probably didn't deserve Buster's love, but I am glad I was able to know him & love him & let him live a lot longer on this planet than he would have if he had been feral. I'm glad he was able to interact with so many people & be a big brother to Beatrice & Bolan. & I'm glad he got to be the first cat to soil so many clean new litter boxes. & I'm glad he got to live in more than one place, to escape outside occasionally, to eat lots of really stinky food, to play with & sometimes kill lots of bugs, to be alive, in my life, asleep next to me on the bed at night, drooling on me in happiness, reminding me sometimes hours before when it was time to eat.

I love you & miss you Buster. If there's a place beautiful pets go when they die, I'll visit you when I have left this world. If there's not, then I just want to thank you for sharing your life with me. It was a blessing & a privilege & as long as I'm able, I'll never forget how you honored me with your life.