Cat Update

We have no cat.

The SPCA has termed us "bad pet owners" - one of our neighbors must volunteer there.

Seriously, though. Titus needs a shot, but our vet is kinda far away. We're waiting until Loki goes in for the big scoop and it'll be a two-fer.

Apparently, if you don't treat your pets as well as you'd treat your kids, or better, you're a bad pet owner. Which may be the case.

So I called an exterminator to get rid of the vole. We'll see.

In other "conform, comply, sumbit" news, the dirty bird and I have noticed a strange new trend. Everywhere you go - from the gas station to the grocery store - you will find a television screen blaring at you.

Do people have such a lack of electronic stimulus in their lives that they have cried out "we must have television as we shop!"? Methinks no. Instead I have a theory of convergences. Flat-screen monitors are cheap as dirt these days, as is internet for broadcasting whatever it is you want to broadcast.

On top of this, we are in the DVR/TiVO generation. No one watches ads at home, except maybe a few oldsters who aren't going to get out to shop. So advertisers have had to become more clever. They have to put in fancy product placements in shows (ever notice what kind of appliances the Food Network guys use? Or the kinds of bowls or pots? It's not grannny's old cast iron, that's 4 sure.) And now, for more advertising when you're at your most vulnerable, advertising while you're shopping.

Don't know about you, but I find it annoying. I like the silence and the smell of fumes as I pump gas, thank you. And I don't care what the latest uses for kale are.

But if it brings prices down, because it's more revenue for the markets?

Bring. It. On.

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