Meow House Theatre

Thank goodness there’s that opening for my ear to stick out!

Otherwise I’d be very uncomfortable sleeping in here.

Last weekend in New York I went to this Thai/Vietnamese place down 8th Ave., near W. 20th, and this is the sign that was in the bathroom:

(Sorry it’s a little blurry. I was taking a picture in a public bathroom, with my pants off. Not exactly optimal circumstances for artistic maximization.)

I saw it when I went in and could barely breathe through the cloud of cigarette smoke. I guess they’re not fans of the NYC Smoke-Free Air Act at that place.

Then on Monday I had to take the train to work as there was an ice storm here and my car was encased in a thick layer of it. Rather than spend 45 minutes scraping, I just thought I’d walk to the train. So I did, and the first thing I saw when I got there was two women (I use the term loosely), with a baby carriage (and baby) belonging to one of them. And one was smoking. And she was probably 14. I bet she thought she was sexy and alluring. But she wasn’t. She looked like a stupid uneducated streetwalker. Where do girls get the idea that smoking is attractive? I mean now, in 2007. I know it was “cool” until the 80s, at least, but how can anyone think it’s cool anymore?

And THEN, I had to wait nearly an hour for the goddamn train and there is no shelter and it was fucking freezing out, so I went to stand underneath this plastic thing to at least cut the wind off a little and after 30 seconds I had to leave because some goddamn fool was smoking his repulsive cancer sticks right next to it. The smell was making me gag. I left, preferring to stand in the sleet rather than breathe those noxious fumes.

Smoking is so incredibly gross. Everyone who does it, please stop. For yourselves and for everyone else. You reek. And you’re gonna die.

This is what we do all day while the humans go to work to make the money to buy the food, so that we may refuse it disdainfully.

We prefer freshly roasted chicken, thank you very much.

Shop cat, W. 31st Street, New York City

You want to stick that needle where??

It’s warmer this way.

20 textures: some are 400×400; some are 100×100. It’s easy to resize down. Also there are some larger banners designed primarily for LiveJournal but are applicable to other sites as well.

Download them at deviantART.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. If downloading, a comment is appreciated; and in any case, please acknowledge credit to me if you are using the images contained therein.

Photoshop textures.Capri.07

I name my Photoshop texture sets. No plain-old numbering system for me. That’s so dull and the-same-as-everyone-else. I like to give them names, either before I make them, and then I create something that evokes that name; or I create them first and whatever they turn into tells me what the name is. Usually they have a name inside them, which comes out when the piece is all finished.

Yes I’m weird. No, I don’t drink absinthe.

I is too not have wisdom teeths!

Arnold was a kitty from a couple of years ago at the shelter where I am on the board. He was a super-lovey boy and everyone just adored him.

Arnold was very concerned that we not just haul him willy-nilly off to the dentist.

(Editor’s note: I love seeing the site stats go up whenever I post something with a famous person’s name in it. Well, I love it, and it makes me sad and disgusted in a way. Nothing against the celebrity personally, but why doesn’t anyone jump to this site when I write about the 4,000 men and women killed in the war so far? -End editor’s note)

At the risk of appearing like a (fill in the blank), here are a few photographs that I took when seeing Stephen Colbert at his recent appearance for the New York Times “TimesTalks” series, held in New York on November 16. It was really fun: I had thought this would be mainly a publicity spot for the book but actually he talked about it very little. It was really a regular interview, and he did it nearly entirely out of character. There were a few “Stephen” cracks in there but it was mostly all him. Lots of good questions from the audience too, as contrasted with the tiresome repeats he always gets.

I like the way these came out even more because I did various forms of editing in Photoshop. It’s amazing what just cropping and lighting can do. The originals were much less nice, to my mind, even as photogenic as Stephen is, and it’s pretty dang hard to get a bad shot of him. There’s one or two where part of him was covered by by someone standing in front of him, but a little pixel magic can replace missing arms. Point being: don’t trust what you see in magazines. If you think those models really look like that, trust me, you are WRONG. I might do a little before-and-after tutorial to show just what it’s possible to do and how you can make even bad photographs pop. (Not that these were “bad” to begin with. If you want to see a bad one and how it came out after PSing it, I have plenty of those of myself!)

Anyway, enough about Photoshop. I know you all just want to see the pictures of our favorite former shortest-campaign-ever presidential candidate. Don’t lie.

Stephen at the Times Center, Nov. 16, 2007:

Hmmm, I should have edited that phantom hand out in the last one. It didn’t look so odd to me before. Live and learn I suppose.

Photo credits:
Stephen Colbert at TimesTalks (four images): © Meow House Media 2007. All rights reserved.

Today’s photograph:

Kahtia

Found nearly dead; her nose was completely sealed up with mucus. It took a while but she turned out to be a real sweet girl. She always seems to look a little ticked off in photographs though. Not sure why since her real-life face is very babyish and timid.

I was in New York the other day and while walking down W. 26th, I saw the enormous sign advertising the Martha Stewart show. I’ve seen it a million times before but I guess I never really noticed one very important, very puzzling thing:

Whose idea was it to put Pole-Dancin’ Stripper shoes on Martha?

I thought I’d start a new thing and see how it goes: a Cat Photograph of the Day.

The name of this site notwithstanding, this place isn’t really about cats. It’s got almost nothing to do with cats, but I do have cats, and I do love cats, so why the hell not?

Here’s one of my Hector Pagoda. He enjoys sleeping in unusual places.

Hector is 10 years old. I got him as a feral kitten, back when I lived in Dorchester, MA. There was a feral colony across the street and I guess he wandered over one day to our garden and got himself separated from the mama cat. My housemate actually caught him (after I had tried and was unsuccessful) and I ended up keeping him. At that time he had one of his canine teeth growing into his lip; it was all infected and really gross. When I (TMI alert!) was able to get all the pus out, there was a visible hole in his lip where the tooth had been. The vet got him ship-shape, he took about a week to tame up, and he’s been with me ever since.  He’s a very good boy.

“Feathergrass” by Shreve Stockton. © Shreve Stockton 2007.

A friend who knows I’m crazy about animals introduced me to a site: The Daily Coyote.

Shreve Stockton, the site creator, writes:

“Charlie is a wild-born coyote who was unexpectedly delivered to my doorstep this past April after both his parents were shot for killing sheep. Whatever reservations I had about raising a wild animal simply didn’t matter - couldn’t matter - when I realized his survival, at least in the short term, depended on me.

At the time I write this, Charlie is nearly six months old. I don’t think of him as “my pet,” even though he sleeps curled against me every night … I don’t wish to own him, just to live together in harmony. And that we do.”

The blog is the unfolding story of Charlie, his life, and what is going to happen to him living in Wyoming, where most people hate coyotes and consider them vermin, and shoot them on site. I’m somewhat conflicted about the Charlie situation, because it really is the best thing for wild animals to remain wild. On the other hand, he was going to be drowned in a water tank if Stockton hadn’t taken him in. On the other other hand, that is nature—it’s what happens to orphaned animals; he’d probably have been eaten if he weren’t drowned–and there have probably been a thousand coyotes eaten or drowned in water tanks since then.

It appears that Stockton hasn’t yet completely decided what’s going to happen with him, but in my opinion I have a feeling that he would not last long “on the outside.” Besides getting shot, which is the most likely thing that’s going to happen, I wonder if he would have the necessary skills to catch his own prey. I tend to think that as much as instinct is a great teacher, all prey animals are taught by their parents the mechanics of capture. Charlie so far doesn’t seem to have that skill down, unless we are just not being told about it. He’s clearly very comfortable with and even submissive to Eli the cat. I can tell you from experience, coyotes usually love cats, and not in the cuddly let’s-be-friends way. More like in the “heeeeeeere’s dinner!” way. That he does not consider the cat his next snack makes me think he might not ever, which is a problem. Not for the cat, but for the coyote.

It’s a beautiful site. I think one day I’m going to be very upset at that day’s entry. If it were me–although I don’t think this is the ideal solution either—but I think I’d neuter him and make him a pet. I’d usually never recommend someone to do that but sometimes things get dropped into your lap and the ideal is not the optimal.

You must check out Stockton’s absolutely stunning photography. I’m especially bowled over by the one at the top, “Feathergrass.”

Video of Charlie and Eli is here: