Things to note:

1) Similar mood, tone, subject matter.

2) DAYS between single tweets. Well that’s certainly changed.

3) The nascent 140-character gimmick already by the third tweet. 

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Half-remembered details of that feral brown cat who showed up on my porch on a chilly day: Even a dumbass such as me knew immediately that it was feral because it was crouched in a corner, as low to the ground as any proto-douche teenager’s car you’ve ever seen, rather than prancing about, fearlessly and fancifully, on the balustrade, the way that the socialized cats always did.

It quickly became apparent that shooing and/or wooing the cat down the stairs and out of my life was not going to work. So I took the surprisingly adult measure of putting on thick clothing, scooping it up, and striding off toward the apartment manager’s office, intending to transfer my problem to someone hyper-responsible enough to wear executive suits in the lowest of white-collar professions.

OF COURSE I made it as close as perhaps fifteen feet away from button-hooking through the office door and closing out my role in a dignified, humanitarian way, but, also OF COURSE, the cat sensed that our nascent bond was about to be severed, or a mouse needed mousin’, or only that things were moving too fast for it, and it bolted from my arms.

I snapped two pictures of it near the mailboxes, then left it to its own instinct.

I hope it all worked out.

An actual excerpt of an email someone took the time to clever-up for me nearly ten years ago. God this is brilliant:

“I spent a long time today trying to convince my parents that the Peace Corps 
failed in their introduction of turkeys as a domestic food species to
Indonesia because the tarsiers kept leaping on them and strangling them with
their own wattles (the turkeys, not the Peace Corps volunteers).

They would then be dragged into the undergrowth and neatly skeletonized.

Unfortunately, I think my family is finally getting suspicious of my natural 
history lectures. The other Indonesian story suggests that tarsiers
threat-display by dragging around sprigs of parsley, just as chimpanzees do
with tree limbs. Incessant parsley defoliation by the Denny’s corporation
is putting the kibosh on this, however. Down with The Man, man.”

Twitter Glossary, part 4: Cats I have known

For those of you just joining us, this is a new feature explaining some of the references I may make in tweets.

These are the cats I have had minor relationships with in recent years:

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Fun With Google Voice, part 1

This is the actual machine-generated transcript of a recent voice mail:

“Like To Know Which candidate you currently support for President in 2012. Please Enter. One from Morocco baba. 2. For MIT. Romney 3 for Rick santo room. 4 for Ron Paul. 5. For nuking bridge 404 other or undecided. Once again. Please answer one for Rocco baba. 2. For MIT. Romney 3 for Rick sense for us. 4 for Ron Paul. 5. For nuking bridge 404 other or undecided. Please Enter. One from Morocco baba. 2. For MIT. Romney 3 for Rick santo room. 4 for Ron Paul. 5. For nuking bridge 404 other or undecided. Once again. Please answer one for Rocco baba. 2. For MIT. Romney 3 for Rick sense for us. 4 for Ron Paul. 5. For nuking bridge 404 other or undecided.”

So the 2012 Presidential candidates are, according to the above, incumbent President Morocco Baba and challengers MIT Romney, Rick Senseforus, Ron Paul (guh), and, perhaps best of all, Nuking Bridge.

For those of you just joining us, this is a new feature explaining some of the references I may make in tweets.

Part 3: Wake ‘N’ Quakers

This one’s got some backstory. Bear with me.

I wrote this tweet on January 12th, 2011, when I had maybe 35 followers: “I’ve got enough followers for a cult, right? Drink this Kool-Aid. There’s no poison in it, but there’s no sugar, either. PROVE YOUR LOYALTY!”

It’s an okay idea, and it led to a better, though ridiculously overlong series of “Cult orientation, day <whatever>” tweets, which I stopped only upon realizing that the orientation thing had gone on longer than most cults.

While this shtick was cruising along, two of my uncles (mother’s side) died separately, weeks apart. I tweeted honestly (and badly) about them on the day I got the news. After awhile, though, it seemed more appropriate to work my memory of them into jokes because, fuck, I’d done it for everyone else gone from my life.

So I dubbed my cult the Wake ‘N’ Quakers, in honor of my older uncle, who had a laconic body but a loquacious mouth, a pothead ’70s hippie who was, indeed, epileptic, but not of the seizure sort. I cheated a bit there.

If you follow me, even for a short time, you are a Wake ‘N’ Quaker. Maybe I’ll make some lanyards or something. And remember: You can check out any time you like, but you can never—actually, you can leave any time you like, also. We’re nice that way.

For those of you just joining us, this is a new feature explaining some of the references I may make in tweets.

Part 2: Ovadrive

Ovadrive is often seen in the company of Gunts ‘N’ Roses. She is an alleged sexpot who trades on her voluminous daddy issues, voluminous breasts, and, because most everyone has one good quality, her luminous green eyes.

My original nickname for her was Tilt-a-Whirl, because, as I once told her, “pretty much everyone rides you, though you make some of them throw up.”

And then she hit a drought, from which I rechristened her “Teacups.” Because nobody rides the teacups at the fair.

Finally, she recently went into some period of hyper-estrus, to the point that I could have sued her for harassment for grinding on me. So, “Ovadrive.” Of course.

For those of you just joining us, this is a new feature explaining some of the references I may make in tweets.

Part 1: Gunts ‘N’ Roses

Gunts is often seen in the company of Ovadrive, who will be the subject of the next glossary term. Older, shorter, grayer, balding, and much more hangdog-looking than me, he is nonetheless a self-styled ladies’ man—if by ladies you mean 40-year-old grandmothers whose old men are in the joint and who are easily impressed by either one of motorcycles or drunken karaoke.