I Do Things

photo credit: ben pollard

Jessica from Seattle asked me an oddly subversive question:

So, in the cartoons, cats and mice hate each other but they both love cheese. Oh, and dogs hate cats in the cartoons, what’s with that?

Well, I have been told that in every lie there is a seed of truth, cartoons largely being lies (convenient lies meant to lull children into a sense of false comfort that life offers something more than disappointment), and this particular TV meme offers a seed of truth. The truth is that cats hate mice in real life. They hate them so much that they will actually torment a mouse to death and then leave the severed halves on my pillow for when I get home. Also, mice do like cheese (but not as much as cookies) that is a second seed of truth, so the cat mouse lie is like a grape — it has two seeds. No, but wait… there is more a third seed of truth in your cartoon web of lies — if you fill a cat with cheese it will die. However, if you fill a mouse with cheese it will just get fat. And that Jessica is how mice and cats are like rock, paper, scissors — mouse beats cheese, cat beats mouse and cheese causes congestive heart failure.

Also since you are probably referencing Tom and Jerry I should point out that it is an elaborate allegory for the cold war era chest-beating, and the dog represents the dormant beast of China sleeping in the backyard. Tom & Jerry is just pseudo-patriotism thinly white washed with a veneer of childish violence to indoctrinate kids into being ruthless cat beaters and consumers of sugary cereals, and some junk.

photo credit: zimpenfish

Seriously, Carlos, why does your dog insist on eating her poop?

-Krystal

Well, ever since I moved into the new house she has been eating a lot of grass. A very large quantity of grass, like she’s a cow. She even looks like a cow, frankly. Supposedly dogs eat grass when they have some variety of stomach issue.

It isn’t like she doesn’t eat enough. She eats dog food, several ounces of paper, as much string as she can find, occasional balls of fluff, leaves, grass, and this afternoon I caught her licking the cabinets in the bathroom. So I don’t think she is hungry.

She is pretty sneaky and will actually pretend that she is eating grass until she gets right next to a poo. Then, suddenly, she strikes (like some coprophagic jungle cat).

At first I thought she was trying to clean up after herself, but now I clean the backyard every couple of days, so that probably isn’t it. I am left with one of two conclusions: either she likes the taste OR she is dumb.

photo credit: gogogadgetscott

Today is a special day in the del Rio house. Dita Lily “Pickle” del Rio turns two today. As my gift to her, and you, I am allowing her to answer a question I overheard at the Sasquatch Festival.

How the f*ck was cheese invented?

-Overheard

When asked Dita responds like this:

So like 10,000 years ago someone looked at a cow [ed. note: more likely a goat or sheep] and said “Self, we should squeeze this creature and drink what comes out.” So this is step one in the process and probably disgusting until they figured out which part of the cow to squeeze. I like the pink bits of the cow. [ed note: the pink bits? Ha!]

She continues:

Back in the olden times they didn’t have plastic containers so they had to store their cow squeezings in other things, like bamboo or animal bellies. One day some person forgot they had cow squeezings and left it for a really long time. When they came back they smelled the chunky stuff in the animal belly and said “This smells horrible, I’m going to put some in my mouth,” and cheese was discovered.

Seriously, cheese smells disgusting. You heard it here first, cheese was the unholy intersection of someone who liked squeezing livestock, someone with a bad memory, and, finally, someone who was willing to stick a chunky substance that smells like feet in their mouth.

Obviously the world is better for cheese, but I can only imagine that the traits that allowed for its discovery also lead to the participants dieing in writhing painful ways (e.g. poisoning or being kicked in the head by a proto-sheep)