This has been a pretty dull week. That usually happens after a fun vacation. You once again fit into the cogs and gears of the dreary day-to-day life. All the little mundane things that have become automatic renew anew as you carry on all the aspects of life maintenance. That's just life. The only ones who get away with not doing that are people in coma's and hobo's.
Nothing beats the hobo life!
Stabbin' people with my hobo knife!
I finally got around to watching 'Kong' last night. This Kong was the ape-est looking and moving Kong yet. I was a little disappointed in him. In the 80's remake when Kong came out of the woods to grab Blondie, he reared up and roared and beat his chest and was truly a terror of a monster. The Kong in the new movie shuffled out in a very anti-climatically ape-like way and then shuffled away.
I was more impressed by the natives. There have not been any truly scary natives in films since the 1940's. Due to anthropology and the Discovery channel, most natives today are thought upon as simply people. Sure, they live in the woods and sometimes have giant penis gourds, but they have family and kids and they eke out a living in the forest. A little backwoods, but still people.
The natives in 'Kong' brought back the idea of a mysterious savage race of dark skinned people. Screaming, howling bone-in-the nose savages that will crack your head open and feed you to their gods. An insane race driven mad by living on an island of monstrosities, the last remnants of some great civilizations brought to its knees by the terrors of nature. The only thing those savages were missing was a giant cooking pot. I thought they were the best part of the movie, even better than the giant human-eating grasshoppers.
Towards the end of the movie I was watching the cats come and go with my peripheral vision. Usually in the evening they are awake and will file into the house now and again, see what I am up to, flick their tail at me, and then wander back out. It's actually a bit rare to have all three of them in the room at once. I then heard a low growing noise and I saw Mr. Oddeye's tail puff up. I turned around and did a double take. I own two all-white shorthair cats. There was a third all-white cat in the room. It was a doppelganger. He looked so much like one of my cats, white hair, blue eyes, that if I was not the owner I would not have been able to tell them apart.
He was clearly no stray, his white fur was clean and he had a healthy coat and was not underfed. He was just some opportunistic neighborhood cat who thought he would pop in. All three of my cats were lines up, staring intently at him. He meanwhile looked up at me with a look that was a cross between 'does he care I'm here?' and 'Oh shit'. I finally clapped my hands and yelled, and he spun around and took off. Mr. Oddeyes, ever the opportunistic, sped off after him. I noticed he would only chase stray cats away if they are already running.
And that concludes my sad single-guy-living-with-cats post.
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Not sure what is up for this weekend. I might start knocking the walls out of my bathroom, see if I can get that tub out. It's going to be a nasty job but it has to be done sometime. I also want tog et the bored up in the room that I painted months and months ago. I have just been too lazy to do it.
There is a large walk-in closet in the back room I have been toying with the idea of turning into a secret room. I could mount a bookcase on the door and have it swing open when I pull a book. I have always wanted one of those.
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Alan carpeted the roman tub room. He found some see-weed green office carpet from somewhere that was not too old and laid it on the floor. It looks pretty good, despite being a color I would not have personally chose. But if I come home and there has been free carpeting installed in a room, I am sure not going to complain.
Looks like more rain today. We need it.
2026 Update
Dialing the time machine back to 5/12/2006, where Ed is judging Kong's ape-walk and accepting free seaweed carpet.
Ah, 2006. The year a grown man measures a monster movie by its natives and finds them the best part, while three white cats form a tribunal over an identical interloper. You were living the dream, Ed: no streaming algorithm, just a DVD in the machine and a strange cat asserting squatter's rights through an open door. Now that cat would be on Nextdoor within the hour, with three blurry photos and a custody debate. The internet was still a place where you could post an eBay image link and trust someone would click it; now it's all subscriptions, login walls, and ring doorbells telling the neighbor's tabby to go home. You planned to knock out a bathroom wall yourself and mount a bookcase door—today that project would begin with a YouTube tutorial and end with a GoFundMe or a very expensive apology to your landlord. And Kong? The 2005 version invented motion capture that made the ape 'ape-est,' but you pined for 1976 chest-beating camp. The world has changed, Ed. We no longer get free seaweed office carpet from Alan; we get gray laminate and a monthly fee for the privilege of a floor that creaks.
“2006 Ed, when the third all-white cat waltzed in with that casual 'does he care I'm here?' face, why didn't you immediately draft him into your single-guy-with-cats saga instead of clapping and yelling like a landlord with a lease dispute?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you make a fair point, and believe me, part of me did think, hey, free cat, why not? But the thing is, I already had three, and that third white one wasn't just some stray, he was a goddamn mirror image with the same blue eyes, like a glitch in the universe. Drafting him in felt like asking for trouble. My cats already form a delicate alliance, and adding a doppelganger would just confuse everybody, including me. Plus, I've learned the hard way that cats don't really join your saga unless they want to. They just show up, eat your food, knock stuff off the counter, and leave. So I clapped and yelled because the alternative was pretending he belonged, and then next thing you know I'm feeding four cats and explaining to Mr. Oddeyes that I wasn't replacing him. That's a fight I don't need. If he comes back with a dead mouse, though, I might reconsider.
