TEN RANDOM THINGS . . .

1. That song? "If I'd known you were coming, I'd a baked a cake, baked a cake, baked a cake. If I'd known you were coming, I'd a baked a cake. Wacka doo, wacka doo, wacka doo!" It sure is, by golly, a real finger-snapper and toe-tapper (particularly when spiraling and drilling its way through one's brain as the most maggotty of all ear worms), but what the fuck is up with the wacka doos?

2. My cat, Kenji (a.k.a. The Pickle), died of a sudden heart attack in early July this summer. I have been too depressed about it to consider mentioning it on the blog it until now. At least it was instant. But Yuki and Muku witnessed it, and they were both extremely upset about it for quite a long time. When it happened, Yuki kept grabbing Kenji by his throat, and shaking him, and then she'd just look at me and cry. My friend, J., from whom I'd originally adopted Kenji when he was a kitten, said that his mother also died at around age 10 from a sudden heart attack. Somehow, it made me feel a little bit better. At least I didn't have to obsess about the times I smoked a cigarette inside the house, or ran the vacuum cleaner or blow dryer even though I knew they upset him, or maybe I let him lick too many bowls of ice cream, etc. etc. etc.

3. I am absolutely, hopelessly, chronically, psychopathically, and sociopathically obsessed with paperweights at the moment. Art glass in general, as a matter of fact, but particularly with paperweights. Something about a paperweight strikes me as being a lot like a poem: miniature, non-utilitarian, existing for it's own sake, existing for art, perfected, and opening up a tiny amazing world when you look inside.

4. My Japanese mother, who has been battling just the very early stages of adult onset diabetes, has freakishly decided that since adult onset diabetes is potentially hereditary, I must now logically have adult onset diabetes myself. She keeps calling me on the telephone to tell me what I can and cannot eat. "You in exact same boat as me, and it suck. You can't eat any more carbo. What you eat today? No! You can't eat that when have diabetes! You going to lose eyes and get leg cut off!" Recitations of my exceedingly normal glucose levels in my most recent bloodwork do not seem to have any effect.

5. In related news, tests have shown that rises in phone calls re: diabetes from Japanese mothers signal a concomitant rise in ritualistic abuse of Pepperidge Farm baked goods products and Fiddle Faddle. (Mostly, I just wanted an excuse to say Fiddle Faddle).

6. I had to give the Canadian Dyke the boot around X-mas.

7. I have been writing fiction. I'm unsure if I'm working on a book-length collection of densely interconnected short stories, or if I'm working on a novel. Some of the stories have the appropriately taut rhythm and feel of short fiction, but some of the stories have the more leisurely rolling pace of a novel. I suppose that I will have to just keep writing to find out, and I may even have to do two versions of the book -- one as a collection of short stories, and one as a novel -- and see which one ultimately reads/works better.

8. Documentaries are the shizznit. I recommend: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg: Speaking in Strings, Regret to Inform, Sound and Fury, Brandon Teena and Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse. Fascinating stuff. I think I would like to make a documentary.

9. Number nine, number nine, number nine . . . ?

10. There is a new kitten at the Artichoke Heart House. His name is Genji (a.k.a. The Bean Bean). I love him to bits.