Yo, cats and catted ones! Darcy here.

I tailed the humans to a Halloween party! Well, so to speak, cause, you realize, as a virtual cat, I don't technically have a tail. (Therefore no tail trash.)

Ahem. Where was I?

Here are some pictures of the Halloween party.














I'm outta here!

Darcy X


P.S. This week's Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is a riot!

Labels: darcy, halloween

Yo, cats and catted ones! Darcy here again.

Just gotta gloat over the squirrel-themed Carnival that Mark Rayner put together this week. (Nice graphic, Mark!)

the skwib » The Carnival of Satire (#82):

in the coming squirrel apocalypse, the safe word is “walnut cluster.”

Oh, my Bob! It's raining squirrels.

I'm outa here!

Darcy X

Labels: darcy, satire, squirrels

Labels: darcy, satire, squirrels

Yo, cats and catted ones! Darcy here.

Anastasia at The Cat Realm challenged us to put on a --what?

Here's my impression of Katz as the pink-wigged one.

When are these cheapskate humans gonna spring for Photoshop?

I'm outta here!

Darcy X

Labels: darcy, fun and games

Yo, cats and catted ones! Darcy here.

Let me tell you, I can't believe I've been gone so long. That feline spa I checked into was sure relaxing.

What got me to come home is reading about the new edition of Krazy Kat comics over at Fantagraphics. Krazy Kat, if you ask me, was some smart cat, a cat after my own heart.




There's some confusion about whether Krazy Kat was male or female. The poet e e cummings wrote a famous essay to introduce an earlier edition of Krazy Kat, in which he assumed that Krazy Kat was female--maybe because Krazy kept getting bopped on the head by Ignatz Mouse. But the Kat's creator, George Herriman, referred to Krazy as both he and she, and many times the other characters seemed genuinely confused about Krazy's gender. Krazy said once:


If Krazy were living today, s/he would have done what I did: marry both a man and a woman.

Some humans have either complained about or praised the fact that Krazy Kat's plots kept repeating themselves. It's always Krazy in love with Ignatz, who ignores and abuses him/her. Then Offisa Pupp (yeah, there's a dog here) arrests Ignatz. The way I see it,

Labels: books, darcy

International playcat Darcy Xenophon recently celebrated the first anniversary of his wedding.

Darcy is said to still be enjoying the exclusive services of the feline spa to which he repaired several weeks ago.

For a blast from the past about Darcy's wedding, see this story.

Labels: April Fools' Day, darcy, wedding

Yo, cats and catted ones!

You may have thought from last week's scurrilous journalistic travesty about my "rehab" that I wouldn't be posting much more for a while. Well, you were wrong. Actually, I am at a wonderful resort, the Feline Association Recreation Center (FARC), and NOT as previously reported, the Factual Recovery Analysis Center (FRAC). (Human journalists are so easily duped by acronyms.)

Some of the greatest cats and catted ones frequent Feline Association Recreation Center. Already I've met the great bluesman, Ry Cooder, who is currently touring Europe. Cooder stopped by to play a set from his hot new album, My Name is Buddy, which has just been released on Nonesuch Records.

Cooder’s an oldtime hot bluesman. He's the guy who wrote soundtracks for movies like Paris, Texas, and got together the music for The Buena Vista Social Club. Just when you think this cat has been everywhere, done everything, well, I gotta tell you, in My Name is Buddy, Cooder goes where no bluesman has gone before. His hero, Buddy, is a Red Cat. Literally. (As a Redpoint Siamese, I feel a natural kinship.)

In between songs, Cooder explained that Buddy was inspired by a mysterious photo sent to him of a cat's head grafted onto Lead Belly's body. The album tells the story of a cat who travels and sees the world in the bygone era of miner’s strikes, big, bad bosses, and farm failures. Buddy, the Red Cat, is every working man. Cooder says "He's a red cat - not just red colored - but he's a union man. He becomes Red." Or as Buddy sings, "I'm a red cat til I die..."


Buddy stands up for other species too, not just downtrodden humans, but a mouse named Lefty and the Reverend Tom Toad. Now that's a program I can get behind. Make no mistake, Buddy's story may be set in the past, but it's really about stuff that's going on today. And if that's not enough, the album includes a booklet with Cooder’s backstories about Buddy, with illustrations by Victor Valdez.

You can get a taste of Cooder's style over at the I-Tunes Store, or wherever else you preview your music. Be sure to check out this tune: “One Cat, One Vote, One Beer.” Or this one: "There's a Bright Side Somewhere." Cause after all these years, Ry Cooder still hopes that maybe humans can dig themselves out of the hole they've made for themselves. And if Buddy Red Cat ain't our hero, who is?

Yours in felinity,

Darcy X

Labels: cats, catymology, darcy, music reviews

Animal World Newswire

By Angelique

International playcat Darcy Xenophon, last seen partying at a Poptrash event at Amsterdam's premiere club, Melkweg, has entered a secluded retreat near The Hague, Netherlands. The retreat, known as the Factual Recovery Analysis Center (FRAC), specializes in re-orienting individuals who suffer from a little-known disorder, apophenia.

According to Dr. Melanie Fox of The Institute for Apopheniac Research (IAR) at the University of California in San Diego, apophenia is "the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the 'unmotivated seeing of connections' accompanied by a 'specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness.'"

Darcy's bizarre behavior was reported by a Swedish student, Bruno Andersen, who was also at the Melkweg bash:

Around three in the morning, this cat, Darcy, begins bobbing his head up and down excessively, yowling about the number ninety nine. Maybe it was the music that was playing that set him off: "99 Luftballoons" by the German band, Nena. You know: [sings]

99 Duesenjaeger
Jeder war ein grosser Krieger
Hielten sich fuer Captain Kirk
Das gab ein grosses Feuerwerk
Die Nachbarn haben nichts gerafft
Und fuehlten sich gleich angemacht
Dabei schoss man am Horizont
Auf 99 Luftballons

Oof, man, it was getting to all of us, what with the substances we were exposed to, but this cat, he was just unable to stop. After about forty minutes, the bouncer came and ejected him.

For those who need an English translation:

99 Decision Street.
99 ministers meet.
To worry, worry, super-scurry.
Call the troops out in a hurry.
This is what we've waited for.
This is it boys, this is war.
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.

Another witness, Wanda Kurtz, had been dancing near Darcy when his outburst began:

Actually, with all the noise in the room, Darcy was just doing what we all were there for--letting off some steam. There he was, bouncing and chanting "99,99,99,99" and I'm going, "Yo, cat, you'll never get to 100." And he goes, "99,99,99,99 . . . ." I thought it was pretty appropriate, given that he's from the US, and what with his government rattling sabers about going into Iran.

I was sorry to see Darcy ejected. He's a great hero, in my mind.

Outside Melkweg, Darcy wandered up and down, continuing his disphoric rants. Bystanders reported the following utterances:

If I had a Star Wars figure, I'd thump it in the marrow, I'd do a bit of work on it in the frock...

I'm a lump! I'm a duvet cover! I'm giant! Get a bad feeling about the dove, get a bad feeling about the dove!

I can't request ghosts without my koi carp.

Thou shalt not act as backing vocals to important triffids.

According to Dr. Fox of the IAR,

the number most commonly associated with apophenia is 23. But a fixation on other numbers is not unknown. The phenomenon also has a lot in common with some common pitfalls of logic and with narrative fallacies such as hindsight bias, the tendency to look back and see a prophecy predicting events that have occurred more recently. For example, becoming convinced that a pop song from the 1980s predicted the US intention to invade another country in 2007 would be an example of hindsight bias.

Researchers from diverse fields--including statistics, linguistics, literary criticism, and psychology--have noted the pervasiveness of apophenia in contemporary thought. Wikipedia says,

In statistics, apophenia would be classed as a Type I error (false positive, false alarm, caused by an excess in sensitivity). Apophenia is often used as an explanation of some paranormal and religious claims. It has been suggested that apophenia is a link between psychosis and creativity.

Although FRAC shuns publicity, this reporter was able to determine that it has hosted many prominent world leaders, rock stars, and Hollywood personalities. According to a former employee of FARC who spoke on condition of anonymity, George W. Bush himself may have been a guest. "I'm not saying he was, but it was definitely a possibility. Obviously, I would not say that, in the case of Bush, that our treatment was entirely successful." Calls to FRAC headquarters went unanswered.

Labels: apophenia, darcy, poptrash