COCK-OH-ROO-DOO-ROO!

Two snippets from my day:

Sometimes, when I step outside, The Bean Bean likes to make himself useful by launching himself out the front door onto the porch, where his modus operandi is to roll about in birdseed and poke around for suspicious goings-on. He's a facilitator, that one.

Well, he slipped out today while I was on my way to water the pots on the front porch, and so I decided to let him sniff about for a little while as I watered. This is when the next door neighbor came out and began snapping away at her hedges with a large pair of metal hedge clippers.

The Bean Bean took one look at those hedge clippers, registered their massive snapping sounds, and then proceeded to freak the fuck out. He dropped low to the ground, ran back and forth along the porch in a dead panic, and then launched himself at the living room windows several times--frantically scrabbling at the slippery glass, and then falling back down on the porch where he scuttled around some more. It was apparent that he wanted back inside the house, so I opened the door and he skittered inside, then immediately went skidding under the bed.

It was at this moment that I realized he'd been frightened by the horrid abomination of what he perceived to be an enormously oversized and freakishly sharp pair of the dreaded cat toenail clippers.

Then, later on in the afternoon, during a phone conversation with my Japanese Mother:

JM: I find such nice cannister for kitchen. So nice elegant tulip (she pronounces it Two-Lip) pattern. You can put coffee, sugar, flour inside. Made in Japan! Do you want it?

AH: Actually, I have kitchen cannisters.

JM: I not talking about cheap-oh plastic kind. Stupid waste-of-money kind. This is very elegant kind. Made in Japan!

AH: My cannisters aren't plastic . . .

JM: [interruping me] No, not that lousy metal tin kind, either!

AH: Thanks, but I already have a set of ceramic cannisters. They have roosters on them. Don't you remember? I showed you pictures of my apartment on my computer when we were in Billings.

JM: [getting mad] Yeah, I see it all right! Make me shock! So lousy cock-oh-roo-doo-roo! Who going to get such stupid bad-taste thing like that? Such tacky and low-class! Everybody think you some kind of no-education French farmer. You can't invite your department over for formal dinner party when look like that. You should have get Two-Lip instead. Good kind. Made in Japan!