We recently featured an incredibly powerful post by ed_reality_check, about her struggle with eating disorders.  I thought it was a very important and moving post, and felt really good about featuring it.

After we featured it, I got a number of questions from users who claimed that the blogger's nipple was showing. Continue reading →

I wrote a post for Seedsower's "Mystery Blogger" series... I wasn't going to repost it, but somebody recently said that I don't reveal much of myself on my blog.  So I thought I'd share this personal post about how I became a cat person.

How I became a Cat Person

I grew up breeding dogs, and have always had a soft spot for man's best friend. Loyalty is one of the most important things in the world to me, so how could I not love dogs?

In a similar vein, I always thought of cats as the worst pet in the world. I would see movies where evil witches were surrounded by black cats and think, "That sounds about right." I'll sum up my impression of cats: they don't listen to a word you say, they are fickle and difficult, and if they get mad they hiss or scratch you.

Then I met my girlfriend's cat. Sparky was so wonderful: sweet, sincere, and with a heart of gold (I'm referring to the cat, although my girlfriend wife also fits the bill). I thought to myself, if I ever have a daughter... I would be so pleased if she was a good a person as this cat. I know that sounds a bit weird, but this cat is really something special.

Then earlier this year, we discovered our cat had cancer. Without treatment, our cat only had six months to live. We knew right away that we had to do whatever we could. We ran up $15k of credit card debt to pay for surgery, chemo, and radiation. I don't know who it was harder on: us or our cat. The cat didn't eat for days, which in cats can be fatal. We did nothing but shower her with love and food, and eventually she started eating again. She finished the treatments and came back with a clean bill of health.

The next month was one of the happiest of her life. She was so happy to not have to go the vet for treatment, and we were so happy that she was doing so well! She would sleep in bed with us every night, and curl up like a good cat near her master. She would never hiss or get angry, no matter what. If someone surprised or upset her, she would just go hide deep in the closet or behind the curtains. She was truly an angel.

Of course, it was too good to last. Two weeks ago, we found a cyst that was rapidly growing at exactly the site of her cancer. We had it tested and it came back negative. It seemed impossible. So we did a full biopsy last week, and the results just came back yesterday: cancer.

With the type of cancer she has, surgery/chemo/radiation won't be very effective. The cancer is on her face, so to remove it we would have to take out her cheek and maybe even some bone. She would be in terrible pain, and would almost definitely not eat — so we'd have to probably put a feeding tube in for a month or so. It's such a harsh course of treatment. I don't know if we can bear to put her through that when she probably doesn't have much time left.

Why would such a bad thing happen to such a wonderful cat? I don't know the answer to that. But she has taught me that all cats are not evil, and that in fact cats can be Good. Her sincerity and love have touched my heart, and I will always love her. She reminds me of the first dog I ever had: so sincere and kind that it's hard to believe she's not a person. I don't believe in souls, but if they exist then she definitely has one.

Now I have a soft place in my heart for cats. I know that they are not all this wonderful, and that I may never meet such an amazing cat again. But just knowing that cats can be this Good has forever made me a cat person.

I love this song:

It's nothing too fancy... and the lyrics make zero sense to me.  But as someone on VH1 just said, it sounds like fun, reminiscent of Bob Marley.  I especially love the chorus:

Plus he scats...   do do doo dooja do dodja do doo dooja want to come on.  Scatting is hard, and I respect anyone who tries it.

I went to songmeanings.net to see what the song meant.  Most people had no idea, but someone said this:

I'm glad someone was able to figure out the song.  I've been listening to it for an hour, and it still makes no sense to me... but it's such a happy summer song, it's hard not to bop your head to it.

I think it's just like the song lyrics say: there's no need to complicate, cause our time is short.   Listen to the music of the moment people, dance and sing. We're just one big family.  And it's our God-forsaken right to be loved loved loved loved loved...

George Clooney plays three roles over and over:

• Affable sophisticate and womanizer (women love him, and men want to be him): ER, Ocean's Eleven, The Peacemaker, Out of Sight
• Wide-eyed and naive simpleton: O Brother, Where Art Thou, Intolerable Cruelty, Leatherheads
• Overweight, unhappy and possibly amoral sell-out: Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, Michael Clayton

I was telling my wife how predictable he was, and she pointed out that these three roles actually show considerable range.  Dammit, I hate it when she demolishes my point with pure logic... like when she told me that Will Smith was super annoying and had never made any good movies (besides 6 Degree of Separation).

Anyway I haven't seen every George Clooney movie ever, so I can't say for sure that these three archetypes work for *every* George Clooney movie of all time.  What do you think... does Goerge Clooney have range beyond the three roles above?

I had a really bad headache tonight so I went to catch a movie: "The Wrestler", starring Mickey Rourke as a washed up wrestler and Marisa Tomei as an Academy Award winning stripper.  I never thought I'd say this, but Mickey Rourke blew me away.  I really related to this story about a lonely wrestler who abuses steroids and whose only friend is an aging stripper, because haven't we all been there?  The script was written by one of the writers from The Onion, which I would never have guessed.

Anyway over the closing credits, this powerful acoustic guitar song came on with amazing lyrics about a one trick pony.  I figured it was a classic song that I was just ignorant about (this happens fairly often), but I googled it tonight and it turned out that Bruce Springsteen wrote the song just for the movie!  He did the piano, guitar and vocals, because he is the Boss.

I especially love the opening lyrics (skip ahead to 1:10 to hear the lyrics):

I love how the lyrics touch on the fear that underneath it all, you're nothing:

Anyway the film wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it.  It's not a date movie (too much stripping, not enough romance).  But it gave me a lot to think about. I'm also a one trick pony, although I'm not gonna tell you what my one trick is.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being a one trick pony.  I'll be doing my one trick until I die.  How about you - if you had to name the one thing that you're best at, what would it be?  (Please don't be a cliche and say sex.)

Some of you didn't recognize my Rodney King quote, which caused me to realize (yet again) that I'm getting old.  The riots were in 1992!  How time flies... some of you were born in that year.

Anyway it got me thinking how I watched the riots on CNN (back when it was the only cable news network), and how much media has changed over the years.  With that in mind, I've pulled together a list of 20 old skool media experiences. 

Each one that you've experienced adds one point to your Old Skool score:

1. You had a TV with no remote control and had to walk up to the TV to change the channel (i.e. you WERE the remote control).
2. You had a rotary phone, and disliked calling people who had phone numbers with high numbers in them (because you had to wait for the rotary dial to come all the way around).
3. If you liked a song, you had to wait until it started playing on the radio and then record it onto a cassette.
4. You had a pager and can tell me what 143, 99 and 43770 mean.
5. You've made a mixtape for someone (burning it to a CD still counts, uploading a playlist to YouTube does not).
6. You had a subscription to TV Guide (can you believe they sold entire TV Guide magazine for one dollar?!)
7. You had a pager code number (your birthday, a nickname) so that other people could refer to you by name in pages.
8. You memorized the phone number of all of your friends, since you had to dial them by heart.
9. You've played games on an Atari or Commodore 64.
10. You've played a record on a "record player" (it doesn't count if you use it to DJ).
11. You've owned an 8-track (you get half a point if you know what an 8-track is).
12. Sometimes you couldn't get the TV antenna to work and your show wouldn't come up... so you would have to download it off the internet.  Just kidding - if you didn't watch it live, you were screwed.
13. You've played NES (Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!), Sega Genesis (Altered Beast!), or TurboGrafx 16 (Bonk's adventure!)
14. You've written a school paper on a typewriter (doesn't count if you're filling out a form).
15. You used to carry around change, in case you needed to use a payphone.
16. You've owned a dictionary or encyclopedia (ideally a paper one, although a CD-ROM will get you half a point).
17. You watched films on a projector in school (yes, they really did count down 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1)
18. You've had your newspaper delivered to you by a paperboy.
19. You would get doubleprints of your photos, and physically give them to people you wanted to share them with.
20. You would get phonecalls from people and if you wanted to know who it was, you had to pick up the phone (before Caller ID came along, and changed dating life forever).

My wife told me to take the questions about records and 8-tracks off my quiz.  "Nobody on Xanga has owned an 8-track!"  Sadly, we bought one at a garage sale growing up and the free tracks it came with were one of my primary sources of entertainment as a child.  We also owned many classical music records, as I grew up playing the piano.

I actually only got an 18/20, since I never owned a pager.

How Old Skool are you?

I didn't get this post the first time I read it:

• .Forever, My Girl

I thought it read a little stalker-y to me.  Then StewieIsMyHero explained it to me... and I finally got it.  It's actually a riddle.  It's so good, I had to feature the post.

I never ever would have gotten this on my own.  If you've read the post but can't figure out who the narrator is, just highlight the white text below (it's between the asterisks):

**The narrator of the story is God.  God is with the girl all of her life, although she never talks to him.  Then on the night she dies... they finally meet and she goes "home".

As an atheist, this explanation would never have occurred to me!  But even I knew I was missing something... so I asked around, and StewieIsMyHero cracked the case.

There is one more possible explanation for the identity of the narrator... but I will leave that one to you guys to figure out.**

Have you ever noticed that comments can reveal a lot about a Xangan?

Here are a few comment personality types, along with a few hypothetical comments I'll write to illustrate the style:

• Selfish Commenter: "Your post about having cancer reminded me of this one time that I gave blood.  I was light headed for 10 minutes and almost passed out!  It was the worst."
• Traffic Whore: "I just wrote a great post - come check it out and rec it!"
• Insulting Complimenter: "I usually disagree with your posts, but this is a great one!"
• Comment Replier: "RYC: I just wanted to thank you for the thoughtful comment you left on my site.  Now I am going to post a long comment reply on your blog that is completely random and out of context."
• Original Gangsta: "I wrote a post just like this a few years ago.  It's just like yours, but better and plus it was original. You probably saw it, but here is the link anyway."

EDIT: Some bonus comment personality types for you:

• Reverse Questioner: "Interesting post. Do you think that two comment personality types could co-exist?  I think I'm both both a Comment Replier and a Selfish Commenter - do you think that's possible???  Please reply."
• The Quibbler: "You make some good points, but you forgot about [insert obscure example here].  Therefore I am superior to you" (This last part is implied, and does not to be actually stated.)
• The Departed: "This post offends me. I'm totally unsubscribing." (thanks to steph843 for this one!)
• The Literalist: "I do not understand sarcasm or humor, so I will take everything you just said completely literally.  Now I will get unnecessarily outraged and brutally flame you, ignoring the fact that every other commenter doesn't seem very upset."

Ahh... so many different Comment Personalities.  What kind of comments do you usually leave?

I was reading someone's site, and they said that this question was geared to youngun's.

It's interesting, because I am 34 and I don't necessarily consider myself "grown up".  I'm married, but I still rent an apartment and have no kids.  Plus I read comic books and wear flipflops to work in the summer.

There was an interesting article in NY Magazine that touched on this:

Sadly, I am not nearly as cool as the example given.  But I think it's true that a whole generation of 30 and 40 year olds consider themselves to be much younger than they actually are.

Do you consider yourself a grownup?

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

I would like to go back in time and spend a few hours with my dad's mom (my grandma).  She was a wonderful woman, and I was pretty young when she died.  I would go over to her place and borrow her library card so I could check books out.  I probably could've gotten one on my own at some point, but she really loved the visits.

I think she'd get a kick out of talking to the current me.  The younger me wasn't very impressive: really quiet, fobby accent, and no fashion sense.  Now I can fake being chatty and have lost my accent.  Still no fashion sense though, sorry Grandma.

Anyway, I know the question was about reliving a moment in my past, but I don't really want to relive any part of my life.  I always look forward, and almost never look back.  I don't take pictures of myself and have no home videos.  When I go, this blog will be just about the only record of me.

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!