A song for the cat

To the tune of Navigator

The bands, and the boxes
The laptops and cords
He chewed and he spat them,
That feline of lords
He minded not noises
That rose through the nights
And the morning hours rang with
His Yowls and his Flights

[CHORUS]
Aggravator, Aggravator,
Rise up and be gone,
The morning is here,
I have not slept too long.
The sun in this wee hour has barely begun,
And off to your food bowl I see you do run.

Brought in by the hundreds,
Mice and birds beware
Presented as gifts
And left here and there
You pray he'll bring dead ones
Because they don't squeak
As the live ones he drops off
Wake you when you sleep

[CHORUS]

A cat owners' curse
Is still yet his joy
That furry behemoth
That lovely wee boy
You'll put up with yowling
And the signs of cat brains
For the chance of a snuggle
When outside it rains

[CHORUS]

Make Glad The Heart of Childhood

Well,  it seems that Christmas at the Gougère-Rombaur household has once again limped across the finish line, exhausted yet still victorious. At this hectic point in child rearing, Reg and I take our successes where we can find them. We woke a little around seven in the morning, the clarion call of greed in our ears as our children heralded the arrival of more bedroom clutter. Faster than you can say whatever strange mumbled curse my husband groaned out when he woke, our children were at our bedroom door, their eyes so bright that it even mollified my loathing of early morning rising. In their hands they clutched their stuffed stockings tight, eager to begin the august and inviolable rituals of Christmas morning.  Reg, whom I have selfishly molded into something resembling a morning person, clomped downstair to put on a pot of coffee. Will (at five our youngest) went with him, saying he needed to tell the pets about their stockings. Annie, seven, stayed with me, dancing around the bed in a flurry of grace and exuberance, extolling the virtues of the holy gentleman who filled our house with stuff for her. There's a Great Big Santa and an itty bitty Jesus, as a rather cynical priest of my acquaintance once said. In a sober whisper, Annie told me that she had made sure that she had gotten the most presents. I smiled wryly at this- Annie appears to have inherited my (in)ability with mathematics, because Reg and I had made very sure that the amount of presents was equal. Satisfied with her Christmas supremacy, Annie sat down with her stocking on the bed.

Reg, that stunning paragon of Yuletide virtue, came in at last with the blessed coffee, trailed by Will, who had chosen to eat a candy-cane for breakfast. It stuck out of his mouth at a jaunty angle. In his one arm he clutched his stocking, under the other he held Withnail (the cat-of-long-suffering), the arm looped around Withnail's rear, with his front half dangling, reaching desperately for the floor. With an amused look, I was informed by Reg that the dog, Sasha, had already opened her stocking, which explained the odd crunching noise coming from under our bed.

The Opening Of The Stockings is the first of several time-honored Christmas traditions, which started with watching the Muppet Christmas Carol the night before, the kids singing along to the songs and me quietly hiding my tears every few scenes. Christmas morning begins at an ungodly hour with the stockings on the bed, filled with candies and tiny toys, clementines and almonds. Annie is pure unfettered id, living only in the moment. She likes to pull everything out as fast as she can, spreading it in her corner of the bed, finding the thing she likes best and the fawning over it as much as possible. This year it was a pink sparkly cat comb that she immediately used on everyone but me- I was given a long, appraising look before she declared dramatically "I'm sorry, Father, but there is no hope for you. That hair... my comb is too late!" I took this pronouncement with as much dignity as I could. Will is very imaginative, living entirely in his own world, as grave and serious as a five year old can be. After handing the traumatized cat off to Reg, Will had pulled a Sleeply LaGoof, slowly taking out the candy cane and placing it beside him on the bed, leaving a pinkish stain on my duvet. Setting his Bolt toy over it as a guard, he carefully and slowly pulled out each item with a contemplative smile on his face. He likes to arrange them in some arcane order, occasionally showing something to Bolt for approval. Even when his sister tried to tame his unruly mop of brown hair, he kept to his task until he was satisfied.

By the time he was finished, Annie's attention had already switched tracks. She had first tried to open Sasha's stocking, but the dog could not be persuaded to climb out and relinquish her new bone, so she had turned her focus to Withnail, showing him his new catnip mouse and explaining to him in a rapid-fire stream of instructions about how he was to make sure this mouse lasted and stayed clean and so on. Withnail endured this with the same look of horrified panic and wounded pride with which he seems to go through life, the poor fellow. Soon enough, Annie's 'beans' and Will's attempt to use his wet candy cane to draw drove us out of the bedroom and downstairs, to commence the wrapping paper massacre once more. Soon the ground floor was littered with scraps of paper as Annie and Sasha struggled to outdo one another as agents of chaos. Annie feels that she has to emulate cartoon shows and reduce any wrapping paper to confetti, while all the revelry over-excites the dog, who is liable to grab wrapping paper debris and tear around the house, shredding it in the process. Eventually we end up on the couch, Reg and I side by side, Will on Reg's lap, Annie exerting her independence by curling up with some Barbies in the big armchair. As always, we sit down to watch Pee-Wee's Christmas Special, long on a dying VHS and recently and poorly transfered to DVD. We eat it with waffles, the only thing that Reg does better than I and, thus, the only time in which he is allowed to work in my hallowed kitchen unsupervised. We start later than usual- Will needs to make sure that both Bolt and his new teddy bear Ambrosias II (his predecessor having had an unfortunate encounter with Sasha six months ago) have a good view of the TV. As always, Reg and I argue over wether-or-not k.d. lang could have worn an uglier outfit, and I again declare it my life-long dream to have Frankie Avalon as my personal Christmas Card Slave. As always, watching this will make Reg throughout the day suddenly exclaim "Now all it needs is Charo!" to the general bewilderment of anyone around him. And again,  as always, the end of Pee-Wee heralds the oncoming cold- getting dressed, bundling up and setting out for Christmas Day at Nana Gougère's- or Red Nana, as the children insist on calling her, in order to distinguish her from Grey Nana, Reg's mother. I will not go into too much detail here, as mother's post-Christmas Column is inevitably devoted to her yearly Christmas menagerie of relatives. Like every year, my mother commanded the sea of people with Pattonesque flair, her wooden spoon a riding crop as she barked orders, directed people around and tried to make order out of madness. Cousin Arthur's drunken carols at the piano were inappropriate for everyone (Darlene left him again),  and Grandma Gougère has only gotten more cantankerous with age, until she espies her great-grandchildren, who seem to make her melt like hot butter.

The children are finally asleep, their fingers inexplicably still sticky from sweets. They were so buzzed from the sugar high that it took almost an hour of my sister reading them bedtime stories before they calmed down- thank God for Mairia Kalman. I hear the siren song of my childhood bed calling out to me, so I will draw this column to a close.

I hope you all had the most Merry of Christmases, and will have a very happy New Year.

I remain, as always,

W. Gougère

Christmas 2010

Some Random Thoughts on Christmas

Odd Visitors

Do you think that Joseph was at all weirded out by the three Magi showing up carrying some rather unusual gifts for a new born? Think about it- Mary had just given birth, which means she was probably pretty "out of i"t at that point in time. A traumatic, unexpected birth in a goat barn alone in the middle of the night with only a panicking husband and a donkey to help. Add in the euphoria of proud new-mothers anywhere, and I'll bet you that she sat though the whole evening with beatific smile and slightly glazed eyes, sitting upright only because she was too tired to lie down. So there's poor Joseph: He's got a new-born kid, an exhausted wife and he's probably wondering why the shelter he is in is being slowly surrounded by rural peasant folk with their faces suffused with awe when all of a sudden three Babylonian/Persian/Yemenis show up carrying incense perfume and gold, saying it is "for the baby".

Maybe it's just me, but I'd be confused.

The Three Magi, According To Western Theological Tradition

And Frith So Loved The Earth....

Hark the Hare, Auld Angels sing. I am convinced that this so-called "Christmas" carol is in fact a subversive coded message trumpeting the second coming of Hazel rich will banish are predators, and  that the flayrah will be uncountable, silfray without end.

Christ! The saviour is bored!

I mishear this lyric constantly. The word is either 'born' or 'bore', but I always hear it as "And Mary, she bored Jesus, our saviour for to be" and the like.

Terrible First Line Competition Entry 2

By the time the puddles of olive oil and poodle fat had stopped burning, Terrence found himself deeply annoyed- not so much because he was dead, but because he would now never be able to tell Tina how little the last three years worth of Friday Fish n' Fungus meals had meant to him.

I swear, the quest for completed content will be brought to conclusion, dear readers.

Sweet memory: For lo the bridges burneth

Attempting to play Dwarf Fortress puts me heavily in mind of my five-year old self's attempts to play Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards: It's colourful, very pixelated, and I have absolutely no idea about what I am doing or how to do it. Should my dwarves spontaneously be run-over by taxi's or mugged by someone dressed as a villain from Cigars of the Pharaohs, my heart will be warmed by nostaligic childhood memories. Should my dwarves suddenly drop dead of STD's, then it'll be the memory of a an older child who tried to track down his childhood game memories and learned, for the first time, that LSLLL was game that you win by having safe sex, something of which my five year old self was unaware of.


However, I'm pretty sure my memory is lying to me. Our first computer (that I can remember) was the Mac Classic, which had a nine-inch monochrome CRT screen (And, Wikipedia tells me, ran at the now quaintly bizarre 512x342 resolution, and had 4MBs of memory). And I am also sure that the LSLLL mugger was not dressed in the weird purple Cigar of the Pharaohs outfit, partially because that doesn't make any sense, and partially because as I said, our CRT screen was monochrome- black and white, which means no purple robes.


I remember Felix the Cat: The Movie being something I was obsessed about for a brief period, but when I tried to watch it again, I had to turn it off in disgust. "Terrible"... doesn't even come close to describing it. Since then, I can't revisit treasured childhood classics, like the Lost in Space remake or David Lynch's Dune (I was a strange child) for fear that they won't be deserving of the the shinning altars I laid them on as a small boy. I'm sure Jim Varney will no longer be funny (although the theme song from Ernest Rides Again remains totally kick-ass). Ghostbusters I and II were actually funnier when I saw them as an adult. I'm sure Alien³ isn't as good, although I am sure the lovely Ms. Weaver is as intense as always. Pee-Wee is also better as an adult than a child. 


Still, the bad outweighs the good. I used to watch Sonic Underground, which had Sonic and his siblings... fight evil villains by turning into nineties rock musicians.... who are hedgehogs. Yeah. Or the Caspar movie? It's really best not to think about that one. And the less said about Beyblade the better.

Better authentic mammon than a bogus god

When is passion forgivable? 


Gastrimargia, porneia, philargyria, lupē, orgē, akedia, kenodoxia, hyperephania. Working from Greek, the monk Evagrius Ponticus writes these down- to warn, to preach, to proselytize. Time and tide play with them, and these eight sins are later whetted down to the manageable seven, and as the language of scholarship becomes Latin, we get luxuria, gula, avaritia, acedia, ira, invidia and superbia. Socordia replaces acedia, but the intent remains the same, and we reach our modern Seven Deadly Sins, which most of us know- Lust and Gluttony, Greed and Sloth, Wrath and Envy, and ever ascendent, Pride. 


Theologians have always been partial to our friends the sins, that is when they aren't fighting over Arianism, Nestorianism or Chalcedonian doctrine, which is just as fun as it sounds. Saint Aquinas, the dear, felt the need to divide gluttony into six different subcategories, the sort of inane minutiæ so beloved of scholars when they run out of the truly ground breaking ideas. Some enterprising fellow chose to whittle it down to three groupings- the sins of lustful appetite, irascibility and intellect. But all of this is the splitting of hairs- our sins are all those of the passionate bent. We find that this extends into both the social and legal milieu- we have crimes of passion, we accuse others of getting heated or riled up, and we mean it pejoratively. While we may describe a speaker as passionate, we also apply it as a derogatory adjective- the passions of "Latin women"- a euphamism to affectionately describe the same attitudes one might find in an angry, toy-throwing toddler.


When is passion forgivable? As a culture, existing in the Western-European tradition of the Song of Roland, the Matter of Britain, Gallic romantics and Mediterranean Lotharios, we raise these passionate people up while at the same time we condemn their passions as our sins. We go so far as to lock ourselves into a catch twenty-two. While we decry those who fall victim to their passions, that killjoy Pope Gregory I felt the need to add Sloth to our little list and thus condemn those one might think we would consider our greatest compatriots- those who have handily rid themselves of any passion whatsoever. Perhaps it's an offshoot of the Catholic guilt that St. Peter bequeathed to Europe, that masochistic glee of the constantly guilty. We let ourselves be passionate, write our stories and then we prostate ourselves in the confessional, overwhelmed by guilt. Then with God's love and our penance we're off again to unleash our passions on the world. For many of us that embodiment of all the sins, Henry Tudor, managed to deprive us of even confession, leaving only heavily mounting guilt as our passions rise and fall and we sin and sin again. The joy of our modern world is that we're free to confess our sins in any number of ways, from psychologist to blog post, but we've utterly eliminated culturally approved redemption and penance, save for the few lucky celebrities who get time in rehab clinics for the very wealthy. You've sinned, shame on you, feel guilty. And then that's it.


If modern culture is going to continue on it's way- so vocally, so at odds with our own conservative morality, than we require a new set of sins. My personal set of even would be Boorishness, Lack of Charity, Overuse of Buzzwords or Academic Jargon, Poor Hygiene, Crudeness, Violence Towards One's Fellow Man and Not Understanding That One Can't Carry A Tune And Yet Singing Anyways.


Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your thoughts. Write in what you feel should be the new sins of our modern world. I'll make it a contest. The one with the best sins will be allowed forgiveness with only three Hail Mary's and a single act of contrition.


...Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia Tua, de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum par publius Karaoke.... 

What are we?

When they asked
And I knew
It was over, again,
Like before, and before
(What a time is has been!)
And I ask
Why it is
That they're going away-
When they asked
And I know
I have drove them away.

"I am sorry"
The words that I most hate to hear
"I'm am sorry"
Well frankly, my dear, I don't care
Because she said it, he said it, she said it again
And it's great that they're sorry
But they left all the same
They go off unburdened
They leave silence behind
To entreats and paens
They give no reply

And I ask
To my self
When the question is laid
What it is about me that makes it all seem
That absolute silence is preferably seen
As the option to take
Act as though I were dead
To never again hear the thoughts from my head
And I wonder
In anguish
Though detached, it is true
Because of the way that my thoughts are construed
I am always observing my every move
Critiquing myself, here on the outside
To myself I have never successfully lied

And I ask
As I watch it all crumble apart
Why in God's good name did I bother to start?

And yet, (in this moment, I'll unburdened my heart)
If the chance came again..... I'd still play my part.