In this piece at Salon, someone else beats us to the punch. It’s about “Alice, Off the Page”, from last week’s New Yorker. It’s not online, but it’s worth seeking out. It’s beautiful and wonderful and (yes) heartbreaking. Find it and read it.

(Found here, by Mike.)

We are profoundly uncomfortable with invertebrates eating vertebrates under any circumstances. It’s just wrong.

Even if they suspect they can’t give you anything to actually fix the probably-viral chest cold that’s been making you miserable and keeping you from sleeping, they CAN give you stuff to ensure you won’t care. All hail narcotic cough syrup.

That is all.

Not that I expect you to be able to tell, mind you. The top cat is Hudson. The bottom cat is Bob.

I can tell because the desk in the top picture was in a duplex I rented (1114 15th Ct., Tuscaloosa) from 1991 to 1992; that cat was the issue of a friend’s girlfriend’s cat. Said friend’s girlfriend was too irresponsible to (a) spay her cat or (b) vaccinate mama or the kittens, so unfortunately that little cat — Hudson — was born with feline leukemia and had to be put down in fall, 1992.

Hudson most truly belonged to a Former Heathen Companion, who visited the duplex often and fell hard for the not-so-bright-yet-very-cute cat; Hudson decided she hung the moon, and that was that. Before we knew she was ill, F.H.C. had managed to adopt her. We all moved to two apartments in Northport in summer 1992, but it wasn’t long before we realized Hudson’s condition.

Hudson had a little while, we were told, before she’d be really ill, but she couldn’t be around other cats. We set her up in F.H.C.’s apartment and kept her happy, but we knew it was a matter of time. Crafty bastard that I am, it was also during this time that I started trying to find another cat, which was oddly harder than it sounds. Tuscaloosa County Human Society had no kittens at all for several weeks. Finally, they called me back. They had one. I left my office immediately and drove out to TCHS, where I met a very scraggley, rat-looking, frankly ugly little kitten who was nevertheless VERY VERY VERY VERY HAPPY to be touched, held, etc. She came home with me, and for a little while we had a cat in each apartment (and a rigorous hand-and-clothes-washing plan). Eventually, Hudson had to be gently promoted to the Choir Invisible, and we consolidated Cat Operations in my apartment. We missed Hudson, but Bob’s healthy-kitten antics made it easier.

The bottom picture is Bob, asleep under the sheets on my old waterbed in that Northport apartment, sometime between summer 1992 and summer 1993; since the shots are from the same roll of film (film! What the hell is that?), I’m inclined to say earlier rather than later. I can tell by the bed placement, F.H.C.’s laundry basket in the background, the closet door, and the dresser thing on the right.

It was just a happy coincidence that Bob ended up being a dead ringer for Hudson once she put on a few pounds, but I’ve never minded. It certainly made F.H.C. happy, especially since Bob was quickly just as much her cat as Hudson had been. Amusingly, the only other H.C. that Bob has truly liked is, of course, Mrs. Heathen, whose lap she is loathe to leave even for cheese. The cat’s got taste.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Slashdot alerts us that scientists have discovered that capsaicin, the chemical that makes chilis hot, kills prostate cancer cells.

“The good news is that we can cure your cancer. The bad news is that you’re going to have to put this habanero up your ass.”

So our Razr went tits-up on Monday, but with an inventive and new failure, not, apparently, the one that’s going around. (Go figure.) We called Cingular, explained the situation, and they agreed to send us out a new phone. The options were “wait a week” or “wait 1-2 days,” but the latter costs $7. Whatever; we needed a phone. It’s just another example of the pure unadulterated suck provided by wireless companies.

Anyway, as part of the conversation, they needed to know what color Razr was involved. “It’s black,” we said, “but at long as you don’t send us a pink one, we don’t really care.”

Imagine our surprise when the phone arrived the next day. It’s a silver one, which was fine. We found in the box nothing but the main phone body itself wrapped in plastic in a no-frills inner box. There was no battery or SIM card, just as we expected — but also missing was the back panel of the phone. Fifteen minutes later, when we got a human on the phone, we were told “oh, yes, we only send out the phone, not the accessories.” The back is an accessory? “Yes, sir.” Whatever (once again). Please send us a black one, then, so we don’t have Houston’s only two-tone Razr. This time, at least, they waived the $7 fee.

So the black phone just arrived. In the box was a more or less complete Razr kit, including (a) a black Razr; (b) a battery; (c) a black back panel; (d) a charger; and (e) a new manual. So much for not sending out “accessories.”

Now we’re going out, so we can send these goons their other two phones.

From one of our far-flung correspondents:

So, [a coworker] bought a little Toyota three years ago for about 5m pesos ($7500 at the time) and the going price used is now about 4m pesos ($8000 now). So the dollar has sunk faster than the depreciation on the car, and he’s going to make money (in dollar terms) by selling his car after driving it every day for three years. I think it says something about the quality of your currency if you can make money by going to South American and investing in cars.

Go read this; the following excerpt sets the scene:

These [tanks] are usually equipped with pressure relief fittings, since nitrogen does tend to want to be a gas, and gases do tend to want to expand quite a bit. This tank, though, which seems to have been kicking around since 1980, had been retrofitted by a real buckaroo. Both the pressure relief and rupture disks had failed for some reason in the past, so they’d been removed and sealed off with metal plugs. You may commence shivering now.

Today is my birthday. Celebrate accordingly.