The Lost Twitter Log of Captain Ahab

UPDATE: Captain Ahab's Twitter Log will soon be run by the fine folks at Yankee Pot Roast. I'll update with a direct link as soon as they post it.
And here it is.

Great Moments in Film á la Xtranormal (Rocky, 1976)

      OK, Xtranormal.com owes me another 30 minutes of my life back. This time, in honor of risk-averse Hollywood, rather than create my own original idea I've simply rebooted a popular classic. This way, I don't have to do any original work to create goodwill in my audience; nostalgia will do it for me! If I just remember to include enough of the taglines and iconic images from the original, I'm guaranteed to at least break even at the box office. First up, the final scene of Sylvester Stallone's beloved chump-to-champ crowd-pleaser, Rocky.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

      Quite nicely, thank you. August will mark the beginning of our tenth year here in Fuquay, which means both Donna and I have lived here longer than either of us has lived in any other one place in our lives. Our house may be tiny, but we've got a great, roomy lot, full of trees and bordered by some thriving green spaces (our back yard descends to what used to be a farm pond, and what is now a lovely wetland with frogs, turtles, deer walk-throughs, and all manner of happy, chirpy wildlife).
      Slowly--one corner, one perennial, one fruit tree at a time--we've been building the yard (organically!) into the peaceful haven that head gardener Donna was able to envision when we first saw the place. It's been a lot of work, but the results are increasingly rewarding. Donna is the true gardener in the family; for her, the actual work in the dirt is an end in itself, green therapy for the daily pressures of her job. I'm not a gardener so much as the hired help, and my gratification is delayed. For me, the digging and planting and weeding are pretty much a chore. The real pleasure comes as the plants mature and fill in, and I finally get to see in front of me what Donna saw in her head all along. I highly recommend it.
      I've posted some pictures at Flickr, including a couple of "time lapse" shots that show how things have progressed over the years. It's pretty remarkable to see how far it's come when I look back at the older pics.
      We're not at all interested in having a "lawn," by the way, though that's what many homeowners seem to obsess over. Grass holds little interest for us, and the mowable bits of the property are probably 75% weeds. It's all green when you mow it. The plants are the thing!

How Did I Get Here? Only Ninja Kitty Knows.

      Well the BHOC (Black Hole of Cuteness) has been settling in quite nicely--she's getting along with her siblings, happily crunching dry kitten food, and primly making use of the low-rider litter box we've provided her. So far, so good. Right now we're leaning towards Donna's suggestion for her real name: Cricket. It seems to fit her little black bug appearance as well as her tiny chirping meow. Of course she won't be tiny forever (or even for long), but Cricket seems to suit.
      Or perhaps we should call her Enigma, the Ninja Cat of Secret Stealth. I left the critters alone together this morning to go get some strawberries and veggies at Hilltop Farms, the CSA we belong to. When I got home, Greta and Porter greeted me as usual, but Cricket was nowhere to be found. I looked into all the places to which she has gravitated in her first few days with us, but nothing. She can barely jump high enough to grab and pull herself up into a kitchen chair, she wasn't on the floor or any of the low furniture, and I was beginning to get worried. Had she somehow sneaked out the door behind me when I left? Finally, me eyes rose a little bit, and there she was.

















      How did she do it? As you can see in the picture, there's nothing next to that tall bookshelf to leap from, and as I said, she can't really leap yet anyway. Look at her peeking out from behind the day-by-day calendar, (you can see her little eyes glowing from the top shelf in the picture on the right) smug in the knowledge that she's blown my mind with her mad ninja kitty skills. Spooky.
      Except I'm pretty sure she's going to need me to get her down.

Do You Know What My Name Is?

      The day before yesterday was a beautiful Spring day here, so all the windows and the front door were open all day. And from time to time, I kept hearing the unmistakable "Help" cry of a tiny kitten. But every time I went out the front door to try to track down its whereabouts, the mewing stopped. When Donna got home from work and stepped out of the car, she heard it too, and the hunt was on. After a few minutes of intermittent cries, we were finally able to triangulate the signal and take a bearing. Broadcast origin--under the rosemary bush in our front garden.
      This is what we found:
      Do not attempt to look directly into the cuteness without goggles--you will go blind. The vet reckons she's about 4-5 weeks old and in good health. The vet also agreed with us that she's a veritable black hole of cuteness, in whom the cute matter is collapsed so densely into one 16 oz. point, that no cuteness can escape her gravitational pull. As of yet she has no name and is referred to only by her astronomical designation, Black Hole Cygnus X-1.
      We've been slowly introducing her to her step-siblings Porter and Greta (yes, of course we're keeping her), who are fortunately two of the most amiable animals on the planet. As you can see from the footage below, although Cygnus X-1 has yet to be in the house for a full 48 hours, Porter has decided that--as far as stepsisters go--she'll do.

Honoring Earth Day

      Hey fellow earthlings, today is Earth Day. You know, Mother Earth only gets this one special day every year, so how about honoring your one and only place to live by taking her out for a special dinner, or maybe picking up after yourself without being asked JUST THIS ONCE ALREADY?! Flowers are an entirely inappropriate gift for Earth Day, as they simply remind Mother Earth of her own mortality. Kind of like giving your mother a lovely bouquet of her own hair and nail clippings.
      And guys, don't get her lingerie; Mother Earth does not want lingerie for Earth Day. This is her special day, not yours.

The Broken Stove Recycles Actual Broken Stove (With Help from THE CLAW)

      A friend of The Broken Stove needed help--and my pickup truck--to get to the local metal scrap recycling center with her totally non-metaphorical broken stove. At first I thought it would be just a typical favor from a friend with a truck to a friend without one. Not a big chore, but not exactly a barrelful of monkeys. But then I saw THE CLAW (see picture).
      It turns out that at the center you can pull in with your bed full of scrap (just one stove in our case), get weighed, pull up to THE CLAW, and THE CLAW WILL REACH DOWN TO YOUR TRUCK like the Harvester in Terminator Salvation, and effortlessly lift your scrap away. It was very cool. Then you get weighed again on the way out and paid based on the difference in weight. My friend got four whole American dollars! OK, not much, but as she pointed out, it beats paying the county for the privilege of throwing it in their pile.
      Now I find myself looking around the house for stuff that I can break, just so I can OFFER IT TO THE CLAW. "[It] has been chosen, [it] must goooo!"