Speaking as someone with plantar fasciitis who can’t walk ten feet without inserts: you sleep on a different floor from your bathroom?

I always say: when Life gives you lemons, jam them up Life’s tailpipe.

American homes…cheap AF.

One reason for this, believe it or not, is slavery. One very under-appreciated aspect of cotton plantations is that cotton (in the days before artificial fertilizers) very quickly exhausted the soil of the American South, leaving behind land that was mostly only suitable for growing pine trees. This left pine wood as a cheap and plentiful resource for building houses. Southern US pine is now so plentiful that it’s even the source of most of the chopsticks in China.

One of my cats vanished on New Year’s Eve one year, because my idiot friend who came to pick me up left the door open for ten minutes when he showed up. I was distraught and spent New Year’s Day driving around the neighborhood and calling for her. Turned out she was just hiding under the house and she came running back in that night and never went near the door ever again.

Emdashes are used by real humans who write, too.

I had actually never heard of emdashes until the whole AI thing and I just used hyphens instead. Now I’m embarrassed by my earlier ignorance and use emdashes – and people think I’m an AI. I do put spaces on each side of them which I think is incorrect, at least.

“Kitty, here’s what’s wrong with the hyperloop concept …”

If you’re the same age as me you might have watched the Roots miniseries. I recommend not rewatching that one. It had a huge impact on me as a kid as far as awakening me to some of the horrors of my country’s past. I tried rewatching it and couldn’t make it past OJ Simpson wearing some sort of pseudo-African clown costume.

I’m immune to all the new Star Wars stuff

I was 10 when the original Star Wars came out. I remember being emotionally crushed when I learned that Lucas intended to make nine movies altogether and realizing how long it would take for all of them to come out. Fortunately I stopped giving a fuck entirely after Empire Strikes Back. I only watched Return of the Jedi on rented VHS and the cackling muppet made me shut it off. I’m pretty sure I returned it without rewinding.

My childhood shows were The Incredible Hulk, Emergency, Hill Street Blues, Dallas, M*A*S*H, Cheers, The Dukes of Hazzard etc. I guess M*A*S*H was sort of OK but it’s not especially hilarious in retrospect (the movie still holds up, at least). The rest are all not that great.

Istanbul?

This has to be Istanbul. It’s a stray in the best possible city in the world to be a stray cat in.

Ancients of Mu Mu!

“It is aardvark makin’ you look this bad.”

My cats were both the result of girlfriends tricking me into them (“we’ll just go to the shelter to look at cats” and “just come over and see her, you don’t have to adopt her”). 18 years with each of them (the cats, not the girlfriends) and I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. I’ll have cats again some day but right now I can’t.

Concealed Cat Carry

Being single and childless is the best decision I ever made in life.

I am single and childless. A few years ago I started driving a school bus - it has made me simultaneously regret never having kids and thrilled to the fucking core that I never had kids.

Castlemates.

I used to take my cat to an old horse vet out in the country. Like, he had literal horse stables for when horses would come in, and I’m pretty sure the dude was in his 90s because he’d opened his practice in the 1950s. He had to give her some medicine one time and I said he wouldn’t be able to give it to her in pill form because she was very resistant to being given pills, like bite-your-brain-off resistant. He said “son, I’ve been pilling cats for decades; I won’t have any problem giving her a pill.”

He ended up needing multiple bandaids and had to give her an injection, and she was only a six pound cat. I was never more proud of her than that day.

I used to hang out with behavioral psychology grad students (BF Skinner types) who did a lot of research with pigeons. They transported the birds head-down in juice pitchers with air holes punched at the bottom; they just held the pitcher up to the cage and the bird would jump into it, sometimes so hard they would knock themselves out. They loved that lever-pressing shit - it helped that they were kept at 80% of their normal food intake to maximize the reinforcing effect of the pellets.

Republicans? Whigs!