New poem up on the poetry page. It’s been a while since I’ve written one. This one is a sailing metaphor. Every guy writer, if he writes long enough, will eventually use a sailing metaphor. This is fact.

I won’t try to hide that this is about Janelle. She’s really a balancing force in my life, and I don’t admit that nearly enough. She’s a great source of strength for me, and I find myself leaning on her a lot more than I originally thought I would.

So here’s to Janelle, and many nautical references to come! Cheers!

I haven’t blogged about this because I’ve been MIA for about a month, but there have been some recent developments with Zoey. We found out about a year ago that he has some problems with his gums. Not even problems that we can fix or prevent—he has some genetic form of gingivitis. The resulting inflammation will eventually cause his teeth to hurt, meaning it will hurt for him to eat. The pain can get quite severe. When it gets to that point, there’s usually no choice but to pull the bad teeth.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I looked down at Zoey and saw a shape a little different than the roly-poly one I was used to. I weighed him and found that he had lost a pound and a half. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you consider that it’s 12% of his total body weight, which is the equivalent of me losing 21.6 pounds, it gets a little more serious.

It wasn’t until then that we connected the dots in our head. Zoey had started sitting by the food bowl and meowing. We assumed it was because he was spoiled and wanted the canned food that we feed him on the weekends. We realized that it’s because he was hungry, but had to choose between putting up with severe pain or going hungry.

Needless to say, we felt really bad for the poor little buddy. We took him into the vet the very next day, and they thought they could save the teeth with an antibiotic and a steroid. Yes, we got a cat steroid. This will not help us if we need to barricade him out of a bedroom. The vet also prescribed a special, high-calorie canned food for us to feed him twice a day. Yes, we’re actually giving Zoey a special high-calorie food. You can guess how much he loved that.

Anyway, after a few weeks on all three, everything seems to be back to normal. We’ve stopped giving him the steroid, and we have about one dose left of the antibiotic. (We cleared all of this with the vet on a second trip.)

Well, everything is back to normal, except for one thing: Zoey is now accustomed to being spoon-fed high-calorie cat food while the other cats are locked out of the room. He’s eating normal food again, and quite often, so we decided last night that it was time to stop giving him the special food. We split the contents of the last can into three equal portions and fed them to all three cats.

We’d been giving Zoey his medicine and food in the downstairs bathroom, so that’s where he’s used to being spoon-fed. We were cleaning it tonight, and Zoey hopped up on the toilet seat cover and started crying. If you don’t know, Zoey’s crying is pathetic. We ignored him and cleaned the bathroom. We cleaned it, and then we went elsewhere to clean. Five or ten minutes later, we walked by and we saw this. He was there for about fifteen more minutes before he gave up.

So, while I’m sad that he had to go through all of that in the first place, we also now have to put up with a rather spoiled cat.

Is it weird that I followed up a long post about Existentialism with a long post about my cat’s dental problems?

I picked up a book, An Introduction to Existentialism at the used book store down the street (best $3.98 I ever spent). I’m really impressed with it so far. I read a few chapters in the airport and on the plane ride back, and kept thinking, “Man, I need to blog about this.” By the time we landed, there were too many of those thoughts to blog about, so I had to settle on just one.

Long-time readers and friends probably know about my disdain for Idealist philosophy. That same conviction is actually the binding force of Existentialism—rather than a comprehensive system, it is a reaction against another system of irresponsible optimism.

Idealism gave birth to the concept of Utopianism. Those who knew me in college know how much I was into books like 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451—books that were literary reactions against Utopianism. That was actually a precursor to my Existential tendencies. I just didn’t see utopia as the answer to man’s problems. I didn’t see it as a very realistic or even desirable goal.

This quote, taken from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, sums up pretty neatly why I fall into this camp:

Read the rest of this entry »

For those who don’t know, Janelle and I are big Over the Rhine fans. We actually met while attending an OtR show in Cincinnati back in December, 2004, along with other fans of the band from all over the country. Well, this past weekend, Janelle and I made the trek back to Cincinnati to attend the same show we met at, with a lot of the same people that were there the first time around. The weekend was amazing, to say the least.

For anyone who’s seen OtR in the past three years or anyone who’s heard Trumpet Child, you should also know that Mickey, their drummer, is officially retired now (from Over the Rhine, anyway). His last two shows with them were this past weekend.

Fans should know that Over the Rhine will be considering releasing an album of the covers they’ve done throughout the years. Some songs include “Fever,” “Hallelujah” (as made famous by Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright), “Moondance,” and “Orphan Girl” (Gillian Welch cover). There are tons more, but those are all I can think of off the top of my head.

Janelle took some pictures, so I’ll link to those when they go up.