That Old Black Magic
Hello World,
Well, we've all learned already that any month that starts on a Sunday is going to have a Friday the 13th in it, and August no different, so that's just about where we find ourselves, more or less and like it or not. For the superstitious among us, this would be a good time for being especially vigilant, and keep away from ladders and broken mirrors and the like. This is actually a good year for anyone with a fear of Friday the 13th, since August is the only month that has one during the entire year, so if you already made it through Friday, you can face the rest of 2010 with impunity, or whatever is your "Dutch courage" of choice. And it's also a good thing that "Friday the 12th" doesn't bother anybody, because there are three of them this year, due to the three months that start on a Monday. Speaking of Monday, anyone who was up early on Monday would have experienced a unique moment in time, at 05:06:07 08/09/10, and we certainly won't be seeing that again for quite a while, that's for sure. Of course, the dinosaurs and I have seen them come and go, heaven knows, but back in the good old days of the primordial ooze and unformed land masses, our categories were more like "Twig:Rock:Bone Fire/Cave/Sun" so it really wasn't the same in a lot of ways. Lucky thing the ancient aliens came along when they did and built Stonehenge so the Druids could tell what time it was, or who knows what might have happened, and we wouldn't know where we were at. By now, we'd still be telling time with hourglasses, and just imagine what all that sand would do to our Blackberry's and laptops.
Of course, it's finally August, so it's not too early for giant newspaper ads selling tickets for the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, because heaven forbid that people would wait until the last minute - for instance, October - for a holiday that is still four months in the future. Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not one to rain on anybody's parade, but I do think that while kids are still away at camp, and haven't even gone back to school yet, throwing the Christmas Rockettes in our faces is just a little too much to take. Meanwhile at CVS, they've apparently decided that we've already lost interest in the whole concept of Back-to-School, so they've dragged out their Halloween displays in an effort to tempt our hard-earned cash out of our beleaguered wallets. This is the time of year - when it's still 90 degrees in these parts, and millions of people are still on vacation - that I like to go to the department stores and try to buy a swimsuit or sandals, while the racks are bursting with winter coats, wool pants, velour dresses and flannel nightgowns, and the sales clerks are wearing turtleneck sweaters and suede boots. Talk about a time warp, this is like Stonehenge on steroids.
While we're on the subject of Halloween, the strangest thing has happened, or rather, it was the strangest time for the strangest thing to happen. We all miss our beloved MoJo, our exquisite black princess who died suddenly when I was on vacation. She only lasted eight months after the chief of our Invisible Cats, Captain Midnight, also shuffled off this mortal coil, and we went from having two solid black cats, to suddenly having none at all. We had picked them both up as strays around our property, but until then, we had never seen black cats in this area, and never saw any after we took them in either. It seemed the neighborhood was full of mostly gray or orange cats, and we took in a string of them - Tootsie, Little Spot, PapaCat, FiddleSticks, Smudge, GingerSnap, Zanzibar - while the only black ones - TomTom and Pinto - were instead black and white, not solid black. But four days after I came back from vacation, I was standing by the front steps, and suddenly out of the back yard came a solid black cat who just walked right into the front yard and right up to me. I was astonished. It was like our dear little princess was sending us a messenger from the great beyond, and this nice friendly black cat just materialized right before my eyes, where none had been before. We gave the visitor some food, and took pictures, mostly to convince ourselves that we weren't hallucinating this apparition in our grief. It seemed like a large and older cat, so we assumed it belonged to someone, but the timing of it was what really caught our attention. We didn't see it after that, but when I related this story to a coworker a few days later, he said, "Oh yeah, we just had a little black kitten show up in our yard this week too." At that point, I was dumbfounded and wondered what tricks The Fates were playing on us, taking away our MoJo and then dangling these inky black strangers in front of us. It was at exactly this same time that I received an email from a relative (thanks, Arlene!) with a picture of yet another solid black cat who, incredibly, had just wandered into her neighbor's yard and was looking for a home. I admit that I am not now, nor have I ever been superstitious, but having these three black cats all turn up within a week of losing our precious black pearl, well, it certainly seems just way too coincidental for my tastes.
On the subject of scary things, we've been through this before, so we were less than delirious with joy when we got a notice stuck in our door that there would be a commercial filming in our neighborhood during the week. Our whole neighborhood is two nesting semi-circles, and as a result there's only two ways in and out of the entire place, so any disruption to the normal flow of activity can easily turn into a nightmare of epic proportions, that would make "The Nightmare on Elm Street" look like Sesame Street instead. Bill left for work before they got started, but I was still here when the first trucks and buses pulled up from Sweet Genius, the photo production company (please feel free to visit their website at www.sweetgenius.net and see for yourself) and began unloading the dozens of people and tons of equipment that would go into taking the shoot from the glimmer of an idea, into the reality that we would someday see on our very own TV sets. It turned out to be for some product that I had never heard of called Vimovo, which seems to be some new medication that is being introduced for the treatment of arthritis. It was invented by our friends at the pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca, and you're also welcome to go visit their website at www.vimovo.com to find out more about it. As for myself, I got out while the getting was good, and also went to work, on the theory that a bad day at work was still better than being at home while "The Nightmare on Elm Street" was shooting across the street, which for me, is in the "been there, done that" category that I don't need to revisit, and thank you so very much not. But I'm afraid the joke was on them this time, because as everyone else fled the neighborhood to avoid the hullabaloo, there remained one intrepid soul who has never been afraid of anything in her life, and wasn't about to start now. Yes, it was the neighbor's cat, whose name is Cinnamon, but we call her Cinna-mooch because she would eat us out of house and home if we would let her, not to mention, all of the other neighbors who succumb to her entreaties for hand-outs when we're not there. (We believe that her ostensible "owners" are in the Federal Witness Protection Program, and have been given a cat as part of their cover, because they seem to have no more understanding of cats, than someone who had been given a unicycle as a gift would know how to ride one.) Cinnamon is not a bit shy when it comes to hunting down a meal ticket, so she trotted right into the thick of the action as the shoot was getting underway, and if she didn't wind up getting a star part in the commercial itself, I'd be willing to bet that there wasn't a donut, candy bar, box lunch, creamer, cookie, trail mix or Tic-Tac left standing when it was all over. I was going to write myself a note to be on the lookout for the Vimovo commercial when it finally comes out, but my hourglass leaked and got sand all over my Blackberry, and now all it does is blink "Twig:Rock:Bone Fire/Cave/Sun" all day long. By golly, where are those ancient aliens when you need them?
Elle
Well, we've all learned already that any month that starts on a Sunday is going to have a Friday the 13th in it, and August no different, so that's just about where we find ourselves, more or less and like it or not. For the superstitious among us, this would be a good time for being especially vigilant, and keep away from ladders and broken mirrors and the like. This is actually a good year for anyone with a fear of Friday the 13th, since August is the only month that has one during the entire year, so if you already made it through Friday, you can face the rest of 2010 with impunity, or whatever is your "Dutch courage" of choice. And it's also a good thing that "Friday the 12th" doesn't bother anybody, because there are three of them this year, due to the three months that start on a Monday. Speaking of Monday, anyone who was up early on Monday would have experienced a unique moment in time, at 05:06:07 08/09/10, and we certainly won't be seeing that again for quite a while, that's for sure. Of course, the dinosaurs and I have seen them come and go, heaven knows, but back in the good old days of the primordial ooze and unformed land masses, our categories were more like "Twig:Rock:Bone Fire/Cave/Sun" so it really wasn't the same in a lot of ways. Lucky thing the ancient aliens came along when they did and built Stonehenge so the Druids could tell what time it was, or who knows what might have happened, and we wouldn't know where we were at. By now, we'd still be telling time with hourglasses, and just imagine what all that sand would do to our Blackberry's and laptops.
Of course, it's finally August, so it's not too early for giant newspaper ads selling tickets for the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, because heaven forbid that people would wait until the last minute - for instance, October - for a holiday that is still four months in the future. Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not one to rain on anybody's parade, but I do think that while kids are still away at camp, and haven't even gone back to school yet, throwing the Christmas Rockettes in our faces is just a little too much to take. Meanwhile at CVS, they've apparently decided that we've already lost interest in the whole concept of Back-to-School, so they've dragged out their Halloween displays in an effort to tempt our hard-earned cash out of our beleaguered wallets. This is the time of year - when it's still 90 degrees in these parts, and millions of people are still on vacation - that I like to go to the department stores and try to buy a swimsuit or sandals, while the racks are bursting with winter coats, wool pants, velour dresses and flannel nightgowns, and the sales clerks are wearing turtleneck sweaters and suede boots. Talk about a time warp, this is like Stonehenge on steroids.
While we're on the subject of Halloween, the strangest thing has happened, or rather, it was the strangest time for the strangest thing to happen. We all miss our beloved MoJo, our exquisite black princess who died suddenly when I was on vacation. She only lasted eight months after the chief of our Invisible Cats, Captain Midnight, also shuffled off this mortal coil, and we went from having two solid black cats, to suddenly having none at all. We had picked them both up as strays around our property, but until then, we had never seen black cats in this area, and never saw any after we took them in either. It seemed the neighborhood was full of mostly gray or orange cats, and we took in a string of them - Tootsie, Little Spot, PapaCat, FiddleSticks, Smudge, GingerSnap, Zanzibar - while the only black ones - TomTom and Pinto - were instead black and white, not solid black. But four days after I came back from vacation, I was standing by the front steps, and suddenly out of the back yard came a solid black cat who just walked right into the front yard and right up to me. I was astonished. It was like our dear little princess was sending us a messenger from the great beyond, and this nice friendly black cat just materialized right before my eyes, where none had been before. We gave the visitor some food, and took pictures, mostly to convince ourselves that we weren't hallucinating this apparition in our grief. It seemed like a large and older cat, so we assumed it belonged to someone, but the timing of it was what really caught our attention. We didn't see it after that, but when I related this story to a coworker a few days later, he said, "Oh yeah, we just had a little black kitten show up in our yard this week too." At that point, I was dumbfounded and wondered what tricks The Fates were playing on us, taking away our MoJo and then dangling these inky black strangers in front of us. It was at exactly this same time that I received an email from a relative (thanks, Arlene!) with a picture of yet another solid black cat who, incredibly, had just wandered into her neighbor's yard and was looking for a home. I admit that I am not now, nor have I ever been superstitious, but having these three black cats all turn up within a week of losing our precious black pearl, well, it certainly seems just way too coincidental for my tastes.
On the subject of scary things, we've been through this before, so we were less than delirious with joy when we got a notice stuck in our door that there would be a commercial filming in our neighborhood during the week. Our whole neighborhood is two nesting semi-circles, and as a result there's only two ways in and out of the entire place, so any disruption to the normal flow of activity can easily turn into a nightmare of epic proportions, that would make "The Nightmare on Elm Street" look like Sesame Street instead. Bill left for work before they got started, but I was still here when the first trucks and buses pulled up from Sweet Genius, the photo production company (please feel free to visit their website at www.sweetgenius.net and see for yourself) and began unloading the dozens of people and tons of equipment that would go into taking the shoot from the glimmer of an idea, into the reality that we would someday see on our very own TV sets. It turned out to be for some product that I had never heard of called Vimovo, which seems to be some new medication that is being introduced for the treatment of arthritis. It was invented by our friends at the pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca, and you're also welcome to go visit their website at www.vimovo.com to find out more about it. As for myself, I got out while the getting was good, and also went to work, on the theory that a bad day at work was still better than being at home while "The Nightmare on Elm Street" was shooting across the street, which for me, is in the "been there, done that" category that I don't need to revisit, and thank you so very much not. But I'm afraid the joke was on them this time, because as everyone else fled the neighborhood to avoid the hullabaloo, there remained one intrepid soul who has never been afraid of anything in her life, and wasn't about to start now. Yes, it was the neighbor's cat, whose name is Cinnamon, but we call her Cinna-mooch because she would eat us out of house and home if we would let her, not to mention, all of the other neighbors who succumb to her entreaties for hand-outs when we're not there. (We believe that her ostensible "owners" are in the Federal Witness Protection Program, and have been given a cat as part of their cover, because they seem to have no more understanding of cats, than someone who had been given a unicycle as a gift would know how to ride one.) Cinnamon is not a bit shy when it comes to hunting down a meal ticket, so she trotted right into the thick of the action as the shoot was getting underway, and if she didn't wind up getting a star part in the commercial itself, I'd be willing to bet that there wasn't a donut, candy bar, box lunch, creamer, cookie, trail mix or Tic-Tac left standing when it was all over. I was going to write myself a note to be on the lookout for the Vimovo commercial when it finally comes out, but my hourglass leaked and got sand all over my Blackberry, and now all it does is blink "Twig:Rock:Bone Fire/Cave/Sun" all day long. By golly, where are those ancient aliens when you need them?
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:59 PM
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