About a week and a half ago we got a new cat from some county group or no-kill shelter type operation that has volunteer “foster families” that take these pets in until somebody adopts them.

So anyway. We went to one of their weekly adoption events fully intending to bring home a cat. After some deliberation, we chose “Loki”, a neutered, shorthaired, all-black male cat, about eight months old. His “foster parents” said he’d probably be a decent match for our household, though they seemed rather keen on foisting his littermate (a female) on us instead. Since we’ve noticed over the years that female cats are basically psychotic, whereas neutered males are mellow and pliant, we ignored their suggestions and brought Loki home.

Loki’s initial homecoming was pretty much what we expected, at least of him. Once out of his carrier, he sought out the nearest piece of furniture and promptly squeezed himself underneath it. Surprisingly, though, the other cats took little notice of the new arrival; even our aforementioned psychotic females, who normally make it abundantly clear that any new pets should follow the procedure of A: fucking off, and B: dying, ignored him. So far, so good, we thought.

The next day found Loki under our bed. He refused to budge from this quiet, dark location, and no amount of enticements could coax him from his bolthole. He eschewed food, water, and the litterbox in favor of perceived safety. The other cats continued to ignore him. Still, so far so good. It was a bit of a concern that he wasn’t interested in exploration yet, but we continued to leave him alone so that he could come to terms with his new surroundings on his own.

Day three saw marginal improvement. Loki was finally confident enough to leave his hiding place under the bed, but instead of exploring the house, he merely slunk from underneath one piece of furniture to the next, staring nervously at his strange new world. He still hadn’t eaten or drunk, as far as we could tell, nor used the litterbox. I called his former family to inquire as to whether he had a generally timid personality or not. They were surprised to hear of his behavior, but assured me that he was bound to come around soon.

Their words proved prophetic, as hunger overcame fear, and he finally ate, drank, and became more friendly with his new family. He also used the litterbox. Oh, God, did he use the litterbox.

Those bastards could have warned us.

This cat… stinks. You know the cliché "what died inside you"? Several thousand things must have died inside this cat. He is either undead, or his anus is an interdimensional gateway to the foulest charnel house in the ninth ring of Hell. With but a single visit to the litterbox, one is immediately aware of his doings. The voiding of his infernal bowels is an event of unparalleled horror. The stench is incredible. Keep in mind that we have been living with three cats for some time, and at one time had four. We maintain multiple litterboxes in the laundry room to accomodate our feline sanitary needs. It’s not like we’re squeamish about cat poop; we scoop the litterboxes every day, and you couldn’t normally detect their existence unless you tripped over one of them.

Now the litterboxes are a veritable olfactory beacon, a noisome odor that we are thus far powerless to inhibit, mask, or dispel. This is the sort of smell that does not just accost the nose, it assaults it. I’m surprised I haven’t been breaking out into nosebleeds. Clearly, something had to be done to combat this environmental menace. A liberal admixture of baking soda in the litterboxes had no effect whatsoever. An ad-hoc spray composed of lavender oil (which is a very strong fragrance), eucalyptus, and citrus was insufficient. One of those old-fashioned conical air fresheners, with a citrus scent, was put into the laundry room, and, combined with the powdery nature of all the baking soda, it smells like somebody took a dump into a container of Tang.

We took him to the vet (it turned out he had ear mites), and the vet recommended we put him on kitten food. Hopefully this will sort out whatever gastric abomination is causing the reek. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

The story of the Danish cartoons that blaspheme against Islam by depicting the prophet Muhammed is actually a few months old, but for some reason the situation took a little while to reach its current fever pitch . It’s sad how such a little thing as a set of cartoons, even blasphemous ones, can ignite such a furor, but since Islam is such a tinderbox these days, I suppose it’s not altogether surprising.

Yesterday, as news of riots, boycotts, and demonstrations throughout the Islamic world made its way into this infidel’s cubicle, I was momentarily heartened by the statement from Ayatollah al-Sistani, who basically called both sides out for being dickheads. Whenever there’s any kind of heated dispute, both parties are usually to blame, even if not in equal measure. Al-Sistani is a pretty evenly-keeled fellow; why the U.S. doesn’t try to work with him more, I don’t know (oh, wait, I do know?it’s because the White House is occupied by a particularly inflexible bunch of jerks). Unfortunately, such words of moderation and reason are always lost in the maelstrom of stupidity that we humans seem to enjoy whipping up so much.

Regardless of the relative level of culpability in this whole affair, I am getting less and less tolerant of the militant Islamists whose response to just about anything is to howl for blood and fire instead of exclusively pursuing more civilized measures. I am also increasingly irritated by the fact that while the radicals denounce the West as horibble crusading colonial powers, they conveniently ignore the fact that Islam is a vehicle for Arabic cultural imperialism. Furthermore, the actions of the Afghani poster-children the Taliban showed us a glimpse of the radical Wahhabi vision of earthly paradise: a cultural and intellectual wasteland decorated with the bones of dissenters. Multicultural tolerance is one thing, but it’s hard to be tolerant when a sizeable and vocal portion of Muhammed’s followers are convinced that the only workable solution to most problems is to lop off someone’s head.

Were the cartoons deliberately inflammatory? Yes, but is it anywhere near reasonable to demand death and destruction in retaliation? No. Fuck that. I refuse to join the ranks of the dhimmi. As my pathetic act of defiance against the bloodthirsty paynim hordes, after work on Friday I went out and bought a block of Havarti and a wedge of Fontina, both imported from the godless, evil dairies of Denmark. I’m eating it right now with some ham and a bottle of wine, for maximum un-Islamic value. Today, I am a Dane.

I was going through the closet in my den the other day when I unearthed my old carrying cases of audio cassettes, buried at the bottom of a box of hats. I’ve been spending the last couple of days listening to some old tunes during my commute. There’s some good stuff in there, or at least I’ve been enjoying it; Joe Jackson, Iggy Pop, Oingo Boingo—all that hopelessly ancient stuff from the 1980s. I was particularly pleased to find my old copy of Devo Live, and have been listening to a lot of Devo while I work. My colleagues may have noticed this influence in some of the internal documents I’ve written recently.

At any rate, my quondam interest in de-evolution was rekindled by the unexpected recovery of these dusty treasures. I’ve been squandering some of my precious time on this planet by visiting such Spud strongholds as the aptly-named Devo Obsesso. In my wanderings, I found some interesting trivia, namely, the origin of the song title and lyric Jocko Homo (link goes to the iTMS). I’ve always wondered where it came from, though of course Devo has always been a quasi-surrealist venture, so I never bothered to look very hard. It turns out it was culled from Dr. B. H. Shadduck’s 1925 pamphlet Jocko-Homo Heavenbound , a refutation of the theory of evolution.

It makes for some interesting reading. It’s not in the realm of the crackpot, though —unlike the bizarre, rambling theory of cataclysm predicted in my copy of "The Coming Disaster, worse than the H-bomb: Astronomically, geologically and scientifically proven" that I have in a drawer somewhere (it’s a real howler; the author included a mimeographed copy of a letter from a man claiming to be Jesus as "proof" that "religious people" believed in his theory. Skimming through more of Shadduck’s works like Puddle to Paradise or The Toadstool Among the Tombs is entirely optional for the Devotee, but gems of quotes like "If ape-like creatures helped God evolve a man, why not enlist their help when the produce backfires?" from Gee-Haw of the Modern Jehu sure sound like the basis of De-Evolution to me. Since Devo has always been something of a "performance art" group, it’s interesting to get ahold of some of their source material, a peek into the joke inside the inside joke that Devo fans have loved for years.