A Blog Staple: Cats With Hats

Here is my cat, Mana, dressed up in different hats!
She's so CUUUUUUTE!! ♥

Toque

Jester Hat

Party Hat

Baby Bonnet

Top Hat

Chef's Hat

and Sombrero!

Filomina Noir and the Case of the Posted Diary

March 17, 2008

Dear Diary,

I awoke in my bed with a Kool-Aid hangover you wouldn’t believe.

The glow-in-the-dark hearts on the ceiling were spinning about the pink room, and my head was swimming with the events of the previous night. I tried to make sense of them, but they were as fuzzy as the plush bear-princess wedged by my bedpost.

I sat up and brushed the powdered sugar from my face. The room was quiet, too quiet. With the amount of light shining through my Barbie-print curtains, I could scarcely see a trail of glitter leading underneath my rose colored sheets. Rummaging through the empty juice boxes, and Pixy Stix wrappers, I tossed the covers aside. There lay Bubble Cup, My Little Pony, at least the top half of her. Some one was trying to send me a message.

I got rid of the pony head, and cleaned up the glitter. I didn’t waste any time mourning. Bubble Cup had been a good friend of mine for many years, and I would never have wished any harm on her, but what can I say? She had it coming. Besides, I had bigger pom-poms to fluff. I had to figure out who was behind this before they struck again.

“Girl Guides!” I thought. The Girl Guides had been especially ornery lately, ever since the Brownie gang had taken hold of the West Mount territory. I had recently crossed the Guides after accidentally stumbling on to their cream-filled cookie racket. It had been a lean year for me and cookies don’t grow on trees, so what was a girl to do? I spied an opening, took a handful of goods and headed for the door. Now the guides were out for revenge.

But this wasn’t the work of the Guides. It’s not their style. Guides are many things, but ambiguous isn’t one of them. They don’t leave you guessing. No, this was someone else’s doing. But who’s was as big a mystery as Dora the Explorer’s sexual orientation.

My thoughts were hijacked by the rumbling of a bus engine. The mystery was going to have to wait. I downed some Fruit Loops, and headed out.

Ms. Phillips' elementary classroom was unusually gray and disorderly. My desk was in it’s usual place, nestled in the back between the hamster cage and Suzie Whitmore. I went straight to my chair, and settled in.

“Hi!” Suzie addressed me, her pig-tails jiggling.

I ignored her and turned towards the cage to my left. The hamster wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but it beat the sparkles out of talking with Suzie Whitmore. Suzie had been diagnosed with a kootie growth on her psyche as a young child, and her Doctors were forced to surgically remove her personality. That’s the only explanation for her that I could come up with.

Just then, the door swung open, and in stepped a curvy blond. She was a tall drink of water; her gams were three feet if they were an inch. Writing her name on the board, she introduced herself as “The Substitute”. She seemed harmless enough, but there was something about this dame I didn’t trust. Not wasting any time, she cut straight to the chase.

“I need your help.” She said to me. “I need you to tell me the answer to four plus three.”

“Sorry, Doll.” I muttered. “ But I know your type. Broads like you ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”

Unfazed, the hussy kept at it. She used every trick in the book to try and get her way, but I wouldn’t budge. I was one tough Dunkaroo. Finally she changed her tone, and caught me by surprise. I was blindsided by a detention and a trip to the office. The next thing I knew I was in front of the big man himself, Principal Peterson.

The office was hot, like an easy-bake oven, and the timer was just about to ding. Peterson interrogated me for hours, but I kept my cupcake hole shut. Eventually he let me off with a warning, and I was tossed onto the playground so hard that I almost lost a scrunchie.

The rest of the day was no picnic either, but by the time I got home, I managed to get a lead on Bubble Cup’s assassin. Popping a juice box, I read a note one of my sources had left in my lunch bag. He’d spied a blue pony hoof in the locker of a Jr. High kid. It was Donnie, my jackass brother. I should have known.

Finally it’s all starting to making sense. But bed time is coming, and it’s too late for me to do anything about it now. I will have to deal with Donnie, and his G.I. Joes tomorrow. Until then, all I can do is wait for morning, and hope that Polly Pocket and her friends will be safe.

What can I tell ya, Diary? Life ain't fair, especially around here. This is a tough town for a six year old.

Benedict XVI's not here, man! The Vatican Goes All Hippie-Like

There must have been something funny in the Eucharist last Sabbath. Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, "Oddjob" to Pope Benedict's "Goldfinger", has come out with a new list of modern sins that most would agree sounds pretty "groovy". The list includes a few of the old "greatest hits" such as: Thou shalt not sheath thine serpent in latex, and Thou shalt keepeth thine stem cells to thine self. But among the obligatory conservative dogma, a few progressive notes happened to slip in. Girotti rallied against big business, excessive wealth, polluters, and any who help widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Yes, he really stuck it to "The Man".

Girotti went on to say that, "You offend God...[by] carrying out morally debatable experiments that manipulate DNA..."

Hearing things like this is enough to make a left wing liberal spill his bong water in shock. It's amazing that it has taken so long for hippies and the Vatican to find some common ground, particularly since Jesus was the first hippie (not counting Adam and Steve). As nice as these events are, however, they do bring to light an issue I've had with the extreme left for quite some time.

First let me say this: I like hippies. They are open minded, friendly, and generous. I agree with most of what they stand for, enjoy their loose, hairy women, and believe they have done nothing but improve North America ever since they immigrated here from their native Amsterdam.

What is this problem I have with the hippies? Is it their 3:00 AM drum circles? Chronic, indiscriminate drug use? Ineffective deodorant? Dreadlocks? No, all those things are adorable. I am referring, of course, to the issue of genetic engineering.

Hippies and the cartoonishly religious shun anything to do with genetic modification (as it is defined today), and hippies are particularly wary of any genetic alteration in our food chain. I grant you that genetic experimentation should not be entered into lightly, and there is a great danger in allowing corporations too much control over the process. No one wants to see a 400 ton Ronald McDonald rampaging down the block. The man sized version is creepy enough. DNA manipulation is a powerful tool, and thus, could potentially be turned into a dangerous weapon, just like nuclear energy, or the paper clips I shoot at pedestrians, but I think the potential benefits far outweigh the possible problems, just like Ashley Olson far outweighs Mary-Kate.

Lets take a step back, for a moment, and discuss what genetic alteration actually is. Don't look now, but your DNA has already been manipulated. So has the DNA of your family, friends, the tree in your yard, the ladybug on its branch, and the rat in your lab that you do genetic experiments on. Your ancestors have been selectively bred for generations, changing the way you think, look and act, simply by virtue of the fact that they survived just long enough to pop out a kid. It's a completely natural process of evolution that has gone on ever since life began, at least 40 or so years ago.

"That's all well, and good!" you say. "But that's nature! (or Vishnu) Man shouldn't try to change it, himself!"

Well first, I'll kindly ask you to use gender non-specifics, you sexist bastard. Secondly, humans have been screwing with gene pools since before the invention of the outhouse. One example of this is the common dog, or Canis poopus couchstainius. We humans took domesticated wolves, and changed their DNA by breeding them based on the traits we wanted to see, until they eventually became every different kind of dog that exists today. Thats why they call those types a "breed", and that's also why deep in the heart of every toy poodle is a vicious killer lusting for your blood. The results are the same, the DNA is changed, and godless monsters are created. It's just the processes that are different.

If Pope Jr. is right, and this is the line between good and evil, then dog show participants are more hell bound than I thought, and that mullet-haired guy who drowns kittens in the park is doing God's work. I owe Donald an apology.

It's going to take a while, but once we've mastered playing genetic Plinko, it will spell the end of most of the worlds problems. Disease, famine, amputations, Victoria Beckham, even the energy crisis will all be things of the past. What's more is, despite whatever anyone might say or do, it's a-gonna happen. The genetic age is coming, and no amount of Bible quotes, or magic brownies will stop it. So don't waste your booze fueled passion (this applies to both groups) on halting genetic research. Use it, instead, to steer it in a safely democratic, anti-corporate direction, so as to keep it out of the hands of the Debbies of the world. (Sorry, Debbie's a woman that works at my office. She can be a real bitch.)