Falalalala and all that sort of carryon.....

Guess what time of year it is...

Oh you noticed.

So what gave it away? Was it the sudden influx of tinsel strangled trees that began loitering in every lounge room and business across the nation? Maybe it was the endless round of bell jangling Christmas songs on the radio....or perhaps it was the TV commercials.....the many, many, many TV commercials designed to guilt every parent alive into buying their children even more crap they don’t need.

The endless countdowns on Facebook don't exactly keep it a secret either

It's like a month of pure insanity and cortisol producing mayhem

All that fighting off of millions of other shoppers for bargains and car parks; that extra cool (not) dwindling of the bank account right before your very eyes; not to mention the planning of who’s going to be where and when and what the hell they will be fed....it’s not like that’s stressful at all.

Sheesh

But it’s not all bad news. I felt, as Tigress, it was my duty to my, possibly stressed out, readers to put a more positive spin on things, So here they are, The Tigress's 12 positives of a modern Christmas.

1, Ageism takes a break (sexism doesn’t, but ageism does), I mean when else is it cool to be old, fat and unshaven! Some guys must wait all year for this.

2, If you’re an Atheist, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist or other Non standard Christian in the West you get a free holiday for no reason at all (shame we can’t pay for everyone’s religious hols but that would kinda screw the economy – though feel free to swipe December 25^th to celebrate whatever you like ....apparently the Christians did ;-))

3, Leftovers: ham and trifle for days, it’s fabulous.

4, No one expects you to diet. If you’re gonna fall off the wagon in a food consuming capacity, today is the day to do it, not a frown will be cast....they'll be too busy stuffing food in it.

5, Christmas lights (oh come on, who doesn't like Christmas lights?? GTFO à)

6, If you propose at Christmas, you'll never forget the date....well played.

7, You get a chance to buy small tokens of appreciation for people you kinda fancy without coming off as weird or intense.

8, Family dramas can be the inspiration for a book or movie plot

9, You can be thankful for having a small house: nowhere to put relatives, good excuse not to host the whole shebang, less space to clean up if you do.

10, If you live in a place where Christmas is in summer you get to point and laugh at all your northern friends freezing their asses off.

11, If the cat destroys your Christmas tree, at least it makes for an amusing Facebook video....not to mention the revenge of dressing said cat up as a reindeer and circulating that pic too.

12, Mistletoe.....whether over your head or in your back pocket, may it achieve the desired results ;-)

Happy holidays everyone <3 Bring on 2015!

The cat's got my tongue...

Good evening minions.

This is your ever omnipotent dark lord of the universe, Maximus, speaking.

I feel the time has come for me to voice my concern over recent events in the household and since no one in seems to be listening to a damn word I meow around here, I felt it was time to go public, vent my outrage and frustration as it were at the atrocities occurring within my very own domestic sphere.

But I have limited time. One of the humans may enter at any moment as the bindings were not that tight (there is only so much one can achieve with no thumbs).

It appears we have rodents, in fact we are positively INFESTED with the damn things (well there are at least two of them), but no one is lifting a single finger to do anything about them! I know I know, the health risks of vermin are terrible (preaching to the converted here) but it seems my humans care not a jot. In fact I feel they are even encouraging the little perpetrators’ presence!

I'll give them credit, the invasion did appear sudden (and hell only knows they scared the bejesus out of me when I first saw them) but it’s been over three weeks now for Cleo’s sake and they’re not even trying.

No traps have been set, nothing.

At first I thought perhaps the humans were simply afraid of the newcomers and did not know how to approach the situation. But the more I observe through the flywire the less I like what I see.

They’re into everything, including everything of MINE. They were on my climbing frame yesterday (the fact I rarely even acknowledge its presence is irrelevant, it’s still MINE). Armchairs: MINE, table chairs: MINE, table in the bedroom all MINE, MINE, MINE!

And they’re infesting the lot of it.

Even my own human ponged of the rank midgets the other day.

It seems all three infidels have succumbed to the intruders’ mind melding techniques, even the tallest one (he appears to be the Tom of the house) has been spotted cooing over the little whiskered wormballs. Though he has been somewhat of a suck up at the moment, he is simply not doing his job. He is just not home enough to instil the discipline and pest control this place so obviously needs.

It’s just not on.

And the little thugs are clearly illiterate, they cannot even understand basic hiss! I bare fangs and voice my staunch disgruntlement and all they do is look at me like I'm speaking dog. I would have thought “Sod off you flea ridden, daughters of Hades” would have been comprehendible in any language, but apparently not....

Argh, I all just too much....I feel I may need my smelling salts

*from elsewhere in the house*: “Max?”

Curses, the thumbed ones have escaped.

“MAX?! Where ARE you?!.....Oh My God! Get off there!!”

Shit...now I really gotta argh..aflqqawfsfbnv,n,m, *publish* ljkadjasbv!

To be continued.....

...........

It's all in the getting there

I thought I would give my computer a thrill last night and actually turn it off (I am a chronic ‘hibernator’ of my laptop you see), but I got rather a lot more than I bargained for when 15 windows updates later it finally allowed its fan to halt into silence.

Forgetting all of this I come leaping with joy and enthusiasm (well walking earnestly anyway) into the office room this morning to settle down to a hard write when I note that a wiggle of the mouse does not awaken my bear of a computer from its slumber.

“Oh that’s right I turned the damn thing off”, I mutter and immediately press the go switch.

Half an hour later (oh all right, it was only about 8 minutes, but it seemed like half an hour) my computer had finally finished updating, installing, testing, opening files, unpacking its toys, making its coffee and whatever the hell else it felt it needed to do before it would let me use it.

In the interim, I got to thinking....

Not so very long ago, this was standard practice....starting your computer and dialling up the Internet took ages and it was often a hit and miss affair at best. Merely sending an email was quite the achievement and as for downloading them...well...if someone sent all their wedding photos or something, it was very much your turn to make the coffee, drink it and go back for a second cup before the process was even halfway done.

But at the time we thought it was just brilliant. It is all, of course, relative.

When the Internet and email were new, we were fascinated with the concept of rocketing information across the ether and having it reach another person in a far off location within minutes, sometimes seconds. It was all most clever, except really we had been doing this for years via the old school methods of phone and fax.

And this is where stuff gets a bit interesting. While it is obvious that the Internet (developed in the 1950s and used successfully by the US Department of Defence under the name ARPANET in the 1960s) is the most recent of the technologies here, one would be forgiven for thinking that fax (facsimile) machines are a relatively new concept compared to the phone.

However...

According to the youngest sibling: the aforementioned Internet, Alexander Bain obtained a patent for his ‘Electric Printing Telegraph’ in 1843, Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain's design and produced a telefax machine a little later, and by 1865, a dude called Giovanni Caselli had introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon. 

Some 11 years before Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone. 

Well who'da thunkit? 

Though the predecessor to all this carryon was of course the telegraph and while Samuel Morse patented his version of the invention in 1837 (inspired by hearing too late of his wife’s illness and death to be able to make it home in time for anything other than a visit to her gravestone), others around the globe had had their ears to the grindstone on various telegraphic devices since 1804.

And, while we’re at, it was Morse’s assistant, Alfred Vail, not Morse himself, who actually developed what became known as Morse Code.

Samuel Morse is also credited with saying, upon the opening of the telegraph line between Baltimore and the U.S. Capitol building: “What hath God wrought?” And that’s fine, coz he actually did that one.

So what were the options before that?

Pony Express?

Well that was actually around at the same time as the telegraph (in 1859 – 60 to be precise) but because the telegraph system was not yet widespread in America people were still in need of a way to transmit information fast and these guys got your message from one coast to the other in as little as 10 days. Which was mighty jolly quick in those days. 

Previous to that?

Well it’s been the same story for thousands of year....good old snail mail (though delivery methods have varied). Since almost the birth of writing, delivering information via ‘mail’, as it would come to be known, has been the most efficient way of letting those at a distance know what’s up. The first organized system of doing such is believed to have been in Egypt back when the Pharaohs needed to sling their weight around on frequent occasion and keep the plebs in line with a decree or three.

Prior to that of course, some poor sod had to either ride or walk to the neighbouring village/tribe and tell them personally what was happening on their end of the trail.

Primitive and painfully slow you may think, but at times I can see the merit in this method. Only really, really important information was transmitted. I really doubt someone would have wandered several miles merely to share a drawing of their dinner, or acquire an audience in order to recount the latest antics of the village idiot.

*stares blankly at her 50,000 unread emails....flicks to Facebook......scrolls through the day's posts*

And God knows what the Pharaohs would have made of all this malarkey

Though on the upside, I bet they would have got quite a kick out of the cat videos. :)

A clowder of cats

It is very difficult to be angry at a kitten.

Well unless you are a big white cat called Max, then you can be highly pissed off with no trouble at all. But on the assumption that you are humanoid....kittens are very hard to be miffed at and I should know because I now have two.

Yes, that’s right, the Kevman and I are now the proud adoptive parents of two wee tabbies that are just the most darling balls of fluff you ever did see. Borderline psycho, but darling nonetheless.

Though it was a somewhat unexpected adoption.

It all started some weeks back when we visited our mates’ place and couldn't help but comment on the plaintive wailing emanating from the neighbour’s property. Our friends were at their wits end with it and on that particular night (the third of the racket) decided to investigate. Thus the adventure began. What started as a date night with Jack Daniels turned into an assault course of roof climbing, fence dismantling and tunnelling under the edge of a neighbour’s junk shed to extract four abandoned kittens.

And cute little felines they were too, but after much cajoling on the part of our friends the Kevman remained steadfast that no new mogs were entering our house; especially ones that needed round the clock feeding and care.

Fast forward several weeks and whaddya know, someone has been having a wee cogitate and decides that some more feline presence is just what that household needs (and they reckon women are changeable!)

“I think I’ll give them a text so they can bring the kittens round and we can pick one.”

I took his forehead temperature with the back of my hand.

“Sure” I said evenly, careful not to intrude into his deep thought and message composition. I felt it unwise at this juncture to point out I'd be the poor shmuck left cleaning up after them most of the time as I had to admit I had become rather fond of the thought of a new kitty or two and didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the mission.

Sure enough, an hour later, around our friends came and then it was my turn to cajole: “But sweetie, they can keep each other company if we get two”

“Two!”

*sweetest smile*

*stern eyebrow*

*look that suggests he is the love of my life and I would never wish for anything ever again*

*defeated sigh*

And thus Merlot and Shiraz came into our lives.

And it’s been a smooth week all up. All the hard work has been done: they’re litter trained, healthy, playful and eat and drink like champions

Unfortunately Max (who belongs to the Kevman’s resident Gypsy Niece) is not nearly so enchanted. Upon sighting the new occupants of the house, his face contorted into a severe frown and he looked at us much like we had pooped in his food bowl. If a cat could say “What the f**k?!” that would have been about the time we would have heard it.

We have attempted a gentle introduction, but in a blur of fangs and fur he scarpered like a...well like a scalded cat really. He was not having a bar of it. The concept of sharing his bachelor pad with two juniors of the species is apparently not something that is coming naturally to him. In fact he gives the strong impression that he would rather peel his ears off with a blunt instrument than have anything further to do with them.

We could be up for some challenging times here (and no doubt a few more blogs), but in the meantime we are enjoying the pitter patter of tiny paws and the fact that they aren't heavy enough to break anything.

Yet.