Leap this post

It’s February 29, 2008. I think we all know what that means. Today is the day we celebrate leap year by looking at pictures of my sister’s kittens. It’s a Shuck N Jive tradition that goes back as far as the beginning of this post.

I feel a strong need to protect the anonymity of these kittens because they would not sign a release waiver allowing me to use their images and likenesses in any Shuck N Jive promotions, so I won’t be using their actual names. But for the sake of my readers, we will be addressing the dark one as E, and the lighter one as O.

There are a few things you should know about these two up front. First, O and E are brother and sister, and from what I can tell, O seems to be in charge. Neither of them ever tires. I think they only fall asleep occasionally out of boredom.

Without further ado, I present to you O and E.

As you can see from this first picture, O is enjoying a nice piece of cake. I don’t know what the rules are on feeding kittens cake, but I can assure you they didn’t die, so that could probably be listed under the “Pro’s” section of feeding kittens cake. What you might not be able to tell from this picture is that O is not only eating the cake, he is also growling at E. She has gotten too close to the cake for O’s liking. Not close enough for him to stop eating, but close enough for him to be audibly annoyed. E has the look of a starving orphan on her face, but O has a heart of stone. In the end, E got a few bites of the cake, and I think it greatly upset O. As you’ll see in the next photo, O has a long way to go in his maturity.

This was taken shortly after the cake eating had finished. E was minding her own business and primarily focusing on digesting the cake. O, still quite irked by the fact that he had to give up a few bites of his cake, set about his revenge. In this photo, he is in the midst of tying E’s tail around her back two legs. Sure, it seems like an innocent prank, but E was hopping around tied up like that for almost an hour. We couldn’t help her because with all the fur, we couldn’t tell how exactly to pull the knot apart. O has apparently been spending a lot of time online learning how to tie some extremely complex tail knots. I have to give him credit for that. He doesn’t do anything half way.

Once E finally got her back legs untied, she was pretty worked up and decided to take her aggression out on O. They battled for what seemed like an eternity, neither one willing to back down. Has anyone seen the movie Beowulf? It was just like that, only with kittens and no CG and a much more compelling storyline. The fight ended rather abruptly.

As you can see in this picture, right at the height of their fight, they both landed a knockout blow, simultaneously knocking each other out and ending the fight. They both lay there unconscious for nearly three days. When they woke up, they both went to the bathroom because seriously, it had been three days. After that, they just left each other alone. I think O has a newfound respect for E. He’s leaving her alone and he’s moved on to bugging anyone that wants to use the laptop.
In contrast to my sister’s kittens, this is one of the cats I live with.

This is Spencer, and he simply doesn’t give a crap about anything, but I think that’s pretty obvious.

Well, another leap year, come and gone. I hope you enjoyed looking at photos of my sister’s kittens. See you next leap year (a.k.a., my next post)!

Beefy Lost

Before I begin, I just want to let everyone know that there are no spoilers located within this post. At least not that I am aware of. I realize that ABC gave us some pretty short notice, so I’m sure there’s a lot of Lost fans out there that forgot the show was even on tonight. After all, it’s been what, just shy of a decade since the last episode was aired? Something like that. But if we’re being brutally honest with ourselves, when has Lost ever answered a question without raising at least fifty more? So even if I do slip up and spoil something, I’m sure there are about a thousand other questions ready and willing to fill the new void.

I’m really not here to talk about the many beefs I have with Lost. No, that should be broken up into a weeklong rant consisting of anywhere from two to 14 paragraphs posted on an hourly basis. Instead, I’d like to focus on just one of those beefs. As a smattering of you probably know, the season premier was tonight (or last night, or last week, or three months ago depending on when you get around to reading this.). Because of the inconsistencies in the broadcast schedule for this show, ABC has attempted to help us get back into the grove by airing last season’s finale last night, as well as a one-hour special in front of tonight’s premier, detailing the story up to this point. Basically, we’ve been given two hours of old story to help us prepare for the new one hour.

I’m ok with all of this so far. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve pretty much forgotten everything that has happened up to this point. My mind can only juggle so many unanswered questions for so long. 37 months seems to be my limit. Two hours of recap was just about enough to remind me why I love the show AND why I loathe the show.

This is where things get ugly. This is where my beef comes into play. I’ve just been watching an hour of recap. I’ve been watching that little counter on the bottom right hand corner of the screen count down the last few minutes before the premier of the new season. Prior to this moment, I’ve been entirely unenthusiastic about the premier because I’ve been fooled by this show too many times (remember when we thought Jin was going to speak English? Yeah, I lit my pillow on fire and put it out with a combination of my tears and screams after that one.), but for a brief second, during the commercial break between the recap and the premier, I started to get a little excited. Then the premier started and the first three words I heard were, “Previously, on Lost…”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! You are seriously going to waste more of my time telling me what has already happened? I waited for THIS??? I just watched a whole hour telling me about “previously on Lost.” No more time need be wasted on this! I’ve had enough time since last season to watch every episode with commentary, without commentary, once with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon playing in the background and once with an old German guy that, oddly enough, only speaks broken French. I don’t need any more recap! And if there’s anyone just tuning into the show for the very first time, they don’t deserve to know what has happened previously. They haven’t suffered like the rest of us. In fact, they will probably have much fewer questions than those of us that do watch the show. They’re already winners like that!

It took awhile for the tears to dry, so I missed some of the opening. I recorded the show, and I’ve tried to watch the beginning 3 times already, but the tears just keep coming back. It’s an open wound right now, I need to let it scab over first, then maybe I’ll find out all the answers. Right? They answer everything right at the top of the show, right? Right?