Crunchy Thoughts

I’ve written before about Renton’s recent habit of sleeping on my pillow at night. I guess it’s not so recent now; he’s been doing it for quite a few months. There’s never been a problem with it. If he takes up too much room I just head-butt him a bit. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, Renton never sleeps all curled up like a normal cat. He’ll roll over on his back or stretch out his legs at funny angles. He tosses and turns a lot at night as well. Add all this in with the fact that he is the clumsiest cat I have ever seen and you end up with the incident we had last Saturday night.

Sometime in the middle of that night I woke up to a searing pain on my forehead. My first waking memory is of me prying Renton’s paw, claws extended, off of my forehead. As I am doing this I realize that this paw is the only thing keeping him from falling over the bed — the rest of his body was dangling precariously off the edge. He must have rolled over too far in his sleep.

Now keep in mind this is no ordinary-sized cat. This is a big-butt, twelve pound applehead Siamese that eats too much and runs too little. And he was hanging off of my head.

Once I got him pried off he fell unceremoniously to the floor and I began gasping and sobbing uncontrollably. Hey, let’s face it: it hurt like a bitch and scared the shit out of me. It also didn’t help that I was half-asleep. By that time there was a very dazed Steven holding on to me, calming me down while trying to figure out what was wrong. Soon after, he threw the cats out of the room.

Thankfully I’ve no horrid scars; they are in my hairline anyway. And even though I was nervous, I let Renton back on my pillow again the next night. Not that I felt sorry for him, you understand, but because if you shut the door on him he will shake it back and forth with his paw.

All. Night. Long.

I guess we would rather have sleep with the possibility of a maiming than no sleep at all.

Sometimes I think we, as humans, tend to look back at the past through rose-colored glasses. We don’t see the wars and the crimes and the uncertainty. All we see is nostalgia. All we remember are the good times when we were safe and how our nation prevailed over Evil. We beat our chests and think, “Oh, if only the men today could be like that. They were men of honor. Why can’t today be like then?”

Then every once in a while someone gets the idea: maybe we can. Get rid of the bad stuff of today’s times and we will have honor again. Get rid of the cursing on television, the pornography, the homosexual lifestyle that many flaunt now, all those gangs on the streets. Rout them all out and it will be like before. “I’m not a bigot, I’m a man of honor,” they think. “It’s for the children; the future generations. I owe it to them.”

But I cannot seem to wrap my mind around this. Don’t they see that all that bad stuff was there back then; it has always been there right along with the good? Even in individual people the good could reside right along with the bad. We had brave, selfless men in the military — but many made sure to visit the foreign brothels. I had two sweet, caring grandfathers — but they could cuss with the best of them. We had a great governor — he just happened to fight for segregation.

I’m not saying that nobody is honorable; of course people are. But being so noble does not keep you from being dogmatist in other ways. In looking back at the past, we somehow shield our minds from seeing those past ideals that would be considered extremist now. We just see the honor and become despondent when we think now there is none left.

You can try, Mr. Sheriff, but you aren’t going to be able to turn our culture back fifty or sixty years. I seriously doubt we’re all headed to Hell in a handbasket. People have been voicing that opinion since the dawn of time, yet we’re still here happily forgetting about those past anxieties.

Yes, we lock our doors at night now. It’s a shame, but we do it now. Did you know many in Canada do not? Yet they have the same movies and television shows as us; eight of Canada’s regions even allow same-sex marriages. How can we pin the faults of our society on such issues as this? Why do you cast blame?

Times change. Ideals change. And looking back into yesteryear to pluck out those dated ideals just to thread them into today’s society will do nothing but piss some people off.

I read your letter, Mr. Sheriff. I laughed in disbelief. I debated with my peers. I yelled at the walls in frustration. Then I sat down to write. I’ve now said my piece.

The Christmas holidays are finally coming to a halt around here. Everyone is back in town and heading back to school and/or work. Glad to see my friends again.

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One of my childhood memories is of my parents playing Trivial Pursuit; sometimes with friends, other times by themselves. I imagine it in my mind to be the Original Edition — it was in a dark blue-green box and the board was quite elegant in it’s simplicity. Before I understood the game, I was always fascinated with the playing pieces and the pies that you got. It was very colorful, and I am usually attracted to colorful stuff. You know what they say about simple minds.

Later on, I got the gist of the game and enjoyed playing it myself. Steven and I got our own edition, the Millennium edition, a while back when I was still in college. It is an updated version with a shinier box and the board has pictures on it, but it’s the same game, more or less. It has been well-used.

Recently I spied the 90s Edition of Trivial Pursuit in the stores. I knew I would be superb at it. After all, that is my decade, the ten years I spent my teenage times and was becoming truly acquainted with the world. The news became fascinating — starting with the Gulf War — and my eyes drank it up off CNN’s channel. Movies became more than cartoons though I still could find time to read the comics. My reading material began to change from Beverly Cleary novels to bigger tomes. Fashion started to become important to my schoolmates, much to my horror. I know the 90s. It would be no sweat.

We got the opportunity to play the 90s edition game a few nights ago; Lisa got it for Christmas, lucky butt. My one gripe about the design were the player pieces — no longer simple pies but humongous plastic sculptures, each representing a bit of the decade. Ahh, but that is a trivial matter, really. I’m a purist when it comes to nostalgia. (The new My Little Ponies look like equine Barbie dolls, but that’s another story). Back to the game. All of us players had been teenagers in the 90s; I was ready for winning streaks of 14 right answers before something could trip any of us up. We were gonna rock, plastic pieces or no.

Apparently, I was asleep through the 90s and my mind tricked me into thinking I was actually paying attention. I could only answer the most basic of questions. I now realize I have no grasp of what was going on that decade and I wonder how I could have wasted ten years worrying about those silly things I know I fretted over.

When I was younger, I always wished I could hurry and grow up so I could see what was coming next, always waiting to see the bit of new that was approaching. Now I wish I could just go back in time a bit to catch up on my newspaper reading to see what I missed.

Just letting y’all know that I’ve got some new pictures up at Crunchy Images. They’re mostly of our New Year’s festivities. We had a blast with big-butt sparklers and huge fireworks.

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After the fireworks were over and we moved into the year 2005, we all sat down with Mom and Dad while Cathy surfed the television for something to watch.

She saw the South Park movie was showing and flipped to that — I don’t know what possessed her. As soon as the channel changed we were met with Terrence (or Philip) in mid-sentence retorting, “. . . shit-faced cockmaster!”

Boy, were Mom and Dad surprised.

They actually did stay in the room and watch it for about five minutes. They probably will deny it now, but they were amused. I heard them laughing.

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And for a side note of humor, Blogger’s spell-check wanted to replace ‘cockmaster’ with ‘geochemistry.’ Nuts, I always get those two words mixed up!