Catymology

Yo, cats and catted ones! Darcy here.

We're deep in the Year of the Pig, according to the Chinese calendar. So what did I do to celebrate? First, I flew to Amsterdam and booked a room at the Flying Pig Hostel. I know you're gonna ask me, "Why Amsterdam?" No good reason, except the distinguished airline that hubs in my fair city has daily flights there, and since they're operated by its European partner, you actually get something good to eat--like little sandwiches made with ham, and a bottle of Heineken.


The Flying Pig is the place to be if you love to party. The management boasts that it's

"the best place to meet other travelers, there are regular theme-parties and we sell the cheapest beer in town! Then move to the Leidseplein (square) where you can refuel at one of the many pubs or coffee shops. Move next-door to bring your evening to a climax in the so-called pop-temple the Paradiso or in the famous milk factory-club Melkweg!"

So, what cat doesn't like a milk factory? As it turned out, the milk factory is a club, a cinema, and a media center--but I'm getting ahead of myself.

First off, I was hungry, so I settled in at D'Vijeff Vlieghen,where I dined on fillet of suckling pig marinated in butter milk ! (You're beginning to sense a theme here, aren't you?)

After dinner, I overheard a bunch of young folks at the hostel who were going to the Melkweg to dance to Poptrash. It sounded intriguing:

Poptrash is een dansavond die volledig draait om leuke platen, gestoorde dj’s en de kater waarmee je de volgende ochtend op je werk komt. Gastheren The Punchout DJ’s presenteren je een opgefokte mix van rock, electro en hiphop. Platen die je dondersgoed kent, maar die nooit worden gedraaid door het maffiose volk in Hilversum. Want POPTRASH heeft schijt aan de afgezaagde hitjes die je op elke semi-alternatieve studentensoos naar je hoofd krijgt geslingerd!

But since I don't speak a word of Dutch, I rummaged through the web (free WIFI access at the hostel!) for a translation:

Poptrash are a dancing evening which twists entirely for leuke plates,
disturbed dj's and the tomcat with which you come the next morning on
your work. Hosts The Punchout DJ's present a bred mix of rock, electro
and hip-hop you. Plates which your dondersgoed know, but are never
twisted that by the maffiose people in hilversum. Because POPTRASH
have schijt to the afgezaagde hitjes which you swung on each
semi-alternatieve get studentensoos to your head!

So, I was in for disturbed dj's and the tomcat? What tomcat? If you go to a Poptrash event, you get up the next morning with a tomcat? What about those of us who prefer to come with the ladies? This was getting very confusing. But I chalked it all up to a translation program written by a drunken smoushund, possibly one who'd been listening to too much Duran Duran. But then I found this video on YouTube.

Or, hey, I could have gone to Tannhauser, but, I didn't fly all the way to Amsterdam to listen to opera. Suffice to say, those disturbed dj's sure know how to dish up the irony.

When my head stops ringing from the studentensoos, I'll fill you in on all that happened on my flight home. For now, I'm outta here!

Darcy X

Labels: travel

Yo, cats and catted ones,

Here are some more pictures of New York, the city that is catted 24/7.

First, my favorite restaurant: Il Gattopardo. Click on over to their web page to hear a big cat roar.

IL GATTOPARDO is named after the 1963 classic Italian film, “The Leopard”, starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale, and directed by the legendary auteur Luchino Visconti. The restaurant serves traditional southern Italian and Sicilian comfort food that has been adapted for the contemporary palate ....

Not far away, I was riveted by the enormous sculptures of headless, armless humans rearing up out of a fountain. And in the background, check out the big CAT machines.

Just for the heck of it, I brought home these big-cat chocolate bars. Yummy!

I gotta go now and empty out my spam box again. The offers for low-rate mortgages keep rollin' in, but so far, no credit card apps. What's up with that?

Labels: travel

Yo, cats and catted ones,

My buddy Jack and I went out on the town in the Big Apple, and this is what we saw:

First, we saw a whole lotta Dada at the place called MoMA. That's a big house full of people --and art! Here are some of the people milling around waiting to get in.


Dada turns out to be right up my alley. It took me a while to understand it, though. I had to give Professor Katz a call. Katz said: "Dada is art and not art at the same time."

What d'ya mean by that, Katz? I mean, how can something be and not be art?

Think of it in terms of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Okay. I'll bite. What's this Heisenberg dude uncertain about?

It's a scientific theory. You could look it up.

No, Katz. Not me. That looking stuff up is what you do on your thingpoddy. I'm here to get the gist of life, not look it up, you get me?

Dada strove to have no meaning — interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer.

Cool. What else?

So, Katz got on his thingpoddy and looked up some more about Dada.

A reviewer from the American Art News stated that "The Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man."

That's great, Katz. This Dada is right up my alley.

Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, "in reaction to what many of these artists saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide."

The Dada movement was a reaction to the First World War.

Not that there aren't a pile of wars going on right now. I mean, I can't help but see it on the television, even if I don't read the paper.

Katz agreed with me about that, and even Ol' One-eye Jack went "Merrow." I think he meant to say that Dada is right up his alley, too. But by this time, Ol' Jack was under the table.

Dada was "a revolt against a world that was capable of unspeakable horrors. Reason and logic had led people into the horrors of war; the only route to salvation was to reject logic and embrace anarchy and the irrational."

No, Katz, Dada ain't over. Dada lives. And a lot of the humans I saw looking at the Dada, most of them pretty young from the looks of them, seemed to agree with me. They were all over Dada like ants on honey.

I was really pumped about seeing all the Dada. In fact, after seeing that show, I couldn't stop seeing Dada. Dada is everywhere. Want a couple of examples?

One heck of a humongous Gato! Right on the sidewalk! Looks like Dada to me.


And here's a Dada souvenir I bought for Katz.


But I gotta let Katz have the last word here:

According to Tristan Tzara, "God and my toothbrush are Dada, and New Yorkers can be Dada too, if they are not already."

Ain't that the truth?





Tags: catymology cats Dada satire

Labels: guest cats, travel

Yo, cats and catted ones! Darcy here.

I thought when I heard that we were going to the Big Apple that we would be going to some kind of a spa. You know, a Trump thing. Instead, I get here and find out I've gotta share digs with old One-eyed Jack here.

You can imagine, I was a bit put out. But it turns out that Jack is kinda cool. As you can see, he really only does have one eye. He ain't a thoroughbred like me, either. Jack told me he was born on the street in Brooklyn, which is a part of New York City. He and his brother Jake ran wild until some human guy caught them. Then, after some adventures that I still haven't had time to figure out, a human woman who lives in the Chelsea part of Manhattan ended up giving Jack and Jake a home.

Well, but somehow Jack had got a bad blow to his eye, maybe from fighting with some other young cat. Since he was pretty much wild at the time, he wouldn't let his new human take care of his wound like it should have been. His eye got infected. After a while, sad to say, it had to be removed.

But Jack has recovered, and it seems like these days he's got a pretty good life. He doesn't go travelling like me and Zeus, but he seems pretty mellow. And when he sits in his window seat, there ain't no foreign cats messing with such a tough little guy as Jack.

Well, it's been a long day already, and I haven't even begun to tell you all that I did today in New York City. I gotta sign off now, though, cause at least my humans are here, and you know what they say, the family that sleeps together, stays together.

Labels: guest cats, travel

Since today is Aloysius' day to simply be a cat, I'm taking over to share this missive from our friend Darcy Xenophon.

--amanuensis

May 1, 2006

Yo, cats and catted ones: Yeowl!

We are blessed and we are cursed. Yeah, us cats and the catted. But I have been blessed.

In this life and my eight lives before, I 've bummed around a bunch of foreign lands. That's right. This life is my ninth, and I'm still beatin' the odds. Yeowl!

You heard? My partners and I spent our crappy honeymoon in the Yucatan, one of the great civilized cribs of the Jaguar, where that Shrubbie kept us out of Chichen Itza for a frickling four hours while he tried to snatch some of Jaguar's mojo.

But I am still beatin' the odds, and thanks to the wonders of cut-rate airflight I've shipped myself around the planet. I've become ubiquitous. All without a litter box.
Yeowl!

So I thought to myself--today is the first day of May! Let's see what's goin' on.

In Ireland, I reveled with the Celtic cats (hard to believe, they're descendents of the well-read Pangur Ban), lit fires, leaped over them and partied on through the night.

In the charmingly backward town of Padstow, Cornwall, it was "Obby-Oss" day. Padstow cats claimed that this is one of the oldest fertility parties in the world, and if the number of kittens mewling about the streets means anything, they've got something going on. Now for a town without an "h" to its name, Padstow cats sure know how to get down--or up. I climbed up on the "Obby-Oss" myself and galloped through streets and gardens.

Over in Germany's Hartz Mountains, it was Walpurgisnacht, and we lit more bonfires. Being a passel of gloomy pusses, the Katzen couldn't help inviting a pile of witches, but at least they brought their familiars. I polkaed the night away with the witches on Brocken Mountain--and, no, that's not Brokeback.

Some of the cats got a little rowdy. Down in Bavaria, a gang of first-life adolescent cats laid waste to fields of hops and held baby bunnies hostage, until the weary townspeople paid a ransom of weisswurst and schnitzel.

Meanwhile, up in Finland--which I'm told has the highest feline litteracy rate in Europe--studious cut-ups put out screeds on toilet paper and stuffed them into sardine cans. Who knows why? Yeowl! I gobbled up some sardines and decided to take a break.

Another tag for May Day is Beltane, a party that's been goin' on since pagan times, hyping the return of the sun. And so, with accordions still aggrevating my ears, I flew on to the island of Maui to catch a few rays.

It was Lei Day! A bewitching golden-eyed, dark-haired female placed a frangipani lei around my neck and playfully rubbed whiskers with me. "My name is Kiana," she purred. Later, we strolled together on the beach and joined some friendly folks at an old-time pig roast. She told me my Hawaiian name--Kane. Then things really got interesting: a Beach Boys tribute band rolled up and it was nothin' but "Good Vibrations" the rest of the night.

Yeowl! Don't wait up.





P.S. I'm gonna check into this B & B later!

Labels: travel

The Animal World Newswire columnist catches up with the world's most famous honeymooners near Chichen Itza.

March 30, Chichen Itza, Mexico. [Animal World Newswire]

By Angelique

At the gates of the 1,500-year-old Mayan ruins, a small group of disgruntled craft vendors and anti-globalization partisans brandished signs saying "Bush Go Home." George Bush, President of the USA, was scheduled to tour the ruins that morning with Mexican President Vincente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Armed soldiers kept the small crowd at bay. For the craft vendors, it would have been a day like any other: they expected to make a few pesos by selling their wares to tourists. But the tourists--all except the three leaders and a retinue of security people and photographers--were barred from the park.

Among the disappointed were three Americans on their honeymoon, Darcy Xenophon, Michele Duncan, and Michael Kern, who had driven from Cancun to Chichen Itza on a quest for the Balam--Mayan for jaguar. And the three were hissing mad.

Darcy (a red-point Siamese}, Michele (a feline interpreter), and Michael (a computer consultant) had married in Minneapolis on March 18, taking advantage of a new law allowing group interspecies unions.

The trio spent the night of March 29 at the historic Hacienda Chichen, just outside the Chichen Itza grounds. Early the next morning, they strolled over to the ruins, intending to visit the Temple of the Jaguar, among other famous artifacts of Mayan civilization.

"Missing the Temple of the Jaguar would be one of the greatest disappointments of my life," Darcy mourned. "The Mayans worshipped the jaguar and depicted the powerful felines in many places. Some of the most impressive are the relief carvings and statues at Chichen Itza. There's even a Jaguar Throne."

Michael added: "Given our relationship and our belief in the modern religion of Catymology, we wanted to spend our honeymoon communing with some of the ancestral depictions of feline divinity."

Fortunately, a local woman, Estelle Rose, who happened to be passing by, had a suggestion. "If you drive back to Valladolid and then proceed about 20 kilometers north, you'll come to Ek Balam. Ek Balam, she explained, means "black jaguar." Compared to Chichen Itza, this site is relatively unvisited. Rose advised the honeymooners that they could tour Ek Balam, then return to Chichen Itza another day.

Later that evening, after taking in Ek Balam, Darcy, Michael and Michele watched the world news. "I was quite amused to see those three guys--world leaders--give a photo-op at the Temple of the Jaguar," Darcy commented. [for a sample, go to the story in the Miami Herald and watch the slide show. ]

"It's pretty obvious what was going on there--some kind of male bonding ritual," Michael observed.

Michele, who majored in anthropology before becoming a feline interpreter, added some details. "Did you know that in the heyday of the Jaguar Cult, rulers were obsessed with the prowess of the jaguar? The Olmecs, who preceded the Mayans and lived around Veracruz, believed in a primordial woman-jaguar union that resulted in a divine were-jaguar. Some of the greatest Olmec rulers were depicted with jaguar features or wearing jaguar costumes. It's obvious that these people feared and revered the feline."

But it was Darcy who got the last word: "If these guys [Bush, Fox, and Harper] think they can steal some mojo from my jaguar cousins, it's not going to work."

Labels: travel