A Thousand Times No

Several years ago, the short scratching post that had absorbed years of Food Lady-approved clawing from Alpha Cat and Cat the Second was reaching the end of its rope. Literally. The thick sisal cord that had been wrapped around its central wooden post was beginning to detach itself.

Thinking that the cats might appreciate an upgrade, I sunk many pennies into purchasing something called The Ultimate Scratching Post. As I once mentioned, it won a split decision from the cats. In the role of Gene Siskel, the wiry and insistent Alpha Cat give the post an immediate and enthusiastic paws up. Unfortunately, Cat the Second (the pudgy Ebert of the household) could not be persuaded to even touch the contraption, making the post the equivalent of a snotty art house film that with narrow audience appeal. Cat the Second continued to sink his claws into the blue velvet of his favorite armchair with impunity.

We bifurcated into a two-post household, with each cat maintaining its own scratching territory. I rotated and retied the sisal rope on the original post until it sported a frayed, fibrous halo that had developed its own shedding issues. As I searched for a replacement post, I kept finding items that were too big, too small, too flimsy, too ugly, a process akin to dating the Seven Dwarves in turn.

Last weekend, I finally spotted an equivalent product while making a food run for the cats. I brought it home and set it in front of Cat the Second, holding a squirming Alpha Cat in my arms and waiting for a verdict.

Cat the Second inched up towards the post and began circling it slowly, cautiously. He leaned his head down towards the carpeted base and took in a few investigative sniffs. Then he inched his nose towards the ropy portion of the post and inhaled. Bingo! Just like that, he sat back on his haunches and started clawing, giving the new post a rave review.

Finally, we have a sequel that isn’t a flop.

Question:  Does the phrase “Son of a Preacher Man” apply if your dad’s a rabbi?

Well folks, we just had a mysterious site outage here for several hours. A network admin at my web host suspects it’s because of something in my WordPress plugins. He renamed my old plugin folder in order to get the site to reappear, but I was a little flipped out by how everything looked without the use of several widgets that I’ve come to rely upon. At this point, things are mostly back to normal.

People of the intertubes, you can come back now.

I was talking to my sister about some issues that I’m facing at work. She reminded me that I was the person who had trained my two cats (each one plucked off the street as a stray kitten) to sit, shake, come to me when I whistle, and literally jump through hoops on cue.

“You told me the trick was to clearly communicate what you want them to do, and to reinforce them when they do it,” she said. “So think of the stuff at work as more of the same. You already know how to herd cats.”

Okay, but if someone coughs up a hairball in the conference room, don’t blame me.

I entered the world of RSS aggregators relatively late for someone who spends a lot of time consuming and producing Internet content. It was Megan at LibraryGrrrl who tipped me off to how useful they could be. When I first started checking my statistics for this blog, I noticed that one of my most consistent readers was someone up in the Boston area who seemed to always be visiting from “google.com/reader/view”.

When I finally set up my own account, I was astonished at how much easier it became for me to keep up with everything new and groovy from my favorite sites. I just open up Google Reader and the latest entries from my favorite places are all served up fresh. It’s been particularly valuable in helping me stay current with sites that update only on a sporadic basis. When Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog wends its way back from its pilgrimages, I’ll be right there.

Google Reader now includes a link that displays the number of Google subscribers to a particular RSS feed. It’s been very revealing to comb through the numbers and see the subscription rate for the blogs and newspaper columns that I read on a regular basis. While Google Reader is not the only RSS aggregator in cyberspace, it’s one of the most dominant players, and sometimes the low numbers can be a bit of a surprise.

For example, it seems that at the moment, I am the sole person on the planet who reads Charles Jaffe’s syndicated mutual funds column via the Philadelphia Inquirer RSS feed on Google. The Inquirer’s Pulitzer-nominated architecture columnist Inga Saffron has less than two dozen Google subscribers. To their credit, at least the Inquirer permits readers to subscribe to feeds for individual columnists. (My kingdom for some horsepower: would that the LA Times had a feed for Dan Neil’s whipsmart automotive column, Rumble Seat.) But one look at those dismal numbers confirms that when it comes to Web 2.0, the news organizations fronted by Philly.com are still fated to be always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

After a hiatus of several months brought on by a sprained ankle and prolonged by sheer inertia, I began commuting to work by bike again back in March. I remember feeling a little distressed when I hopped on my bike and felt as though I were riding through molasses. At the time, I chalked it up to being away from the bike for too long, and within a short time, I seemed to be doing well enough back in the saddle.

Yesterday during my bike repair class, I replaced the cable for my rear derailleur and adjusted all my brake cables. As I spun the back wheel of my bike while it hung in midair from a trusty bike stand, one of my classmates furrowed his brow and frowned. “It’s not spinning freely,” he said. Sure enough, my back wheel would only rotate a few times before coming to a halt. One Torx wrench plus a few twists and turns later, I had adjusted a brake pad that had been rubbing the rear brake disc for the last few months. The ride home felt like one long cruise downhill.

There are other areas of my life that feel a great deal like that rear wheel these days. A few subtle, virtually invisible refinements will probably set everything right, but they require patience, a steady hand and a specialized toolkit. Getting everything together is going to be a bit of a hassle, but I’m already all over it, because the alternative is just a big drag.

I’ve been seeing them for years now. At first it was a bit jarring, but after a while I grew accustomed to it. With the advent of warm weather, the season is upon us: bring on the brown bridesmaid dresses!

That’s right, somewhere along the way the marital-industrial complex decided that decking young women in hideously unflattering, dowdy shades of brown satin was the height of sophistication. Brown (or “chocolate” or “deep cocoa” or “mahogany” or whatever other euphemism was handy) became the new black, the anti-pastel that telegraphed a bride’s chic and worldly tastes. I knew the trend had exploded when I saw two different wedding parties jockeying for turf while being photographed in Rittenhouse Square in their dirt-colored gear.

“That’s very clever,” the man sitting next to me commented. “The brides definitely look better than everyone else.” Truly, one could say the brides at these affairs left everyone else in the dust.

However, these invidious impulses fail to explain the new design for Philly.com, the portal for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.  Can someone please enlighten me on how the choice of leftover bridesmaids colors is supposed to support and enhance the “Web 2.0″ aspects of the site?  How the shameless jumping of the About.com logo is a step towards brand equity, and not just a regrettable move fueled by excess spirits and inadequate self-control?  Do I really need to stick around for the garter toss?

Yesterday afternoon, I accompanied a friend to see the traveling exhibit “Baseball as America” at the National Constitution Center. Despite passing the Constitution Center countless times since it opened here in town nearly five years ago, I had never actually set foot inside. We spent our entire visit absorbed in the baseball exhibit. Among the tethered bats they put out for display, one model fit effortlessly and felt perfectly balanced in my hands: the Louisville Slugger emblazoned with Rod Carew’s signature. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that, at least as far as getting a grip, I was someone’s Minnesota twin.

We stayed until the building was closed to the public. As we made our way out towards the front entrance, we saw that the central atrium had been set up for a wedding. Programs were already placed upon on the seats, laid out on rich, colorful papers, each embossed with a glittering “om” symbol. When we stepped outside, we saw a small crowd of men in suits and women in dazzling, elegant saris gathered on the broad, open lawn in front of the building. A drummer began to play, and dozens of pairs of hands went up in the air, swaying and pulsing with the drummer’s call.

That’s when we spotted the groom. He literally rode in, sitting atop large white draft horse that was decked in a glittering, embroidered and mirrored costume. A young boy sat with him under an elaborately decorated umbrella, their faces lit with happiness. We were awestruck.

We took heart in the fusion of families and cultures before us, there at the site where we pay witness to this nation’s civic covenant. People shared their joy by upholding traditions rooted in a completely different continent. Some might call doing that a knock; I call it a grand slam. It was, is, and will continue to be, the American way.

The problem has been looming in the background for months, but it finally came to a head this week. I’ve been in denial for so long that I scarcely knew where to begin. When I read a blog entry this past Monday that outlined the concrete steps I would need to take, I finally took the plunge. I declared bankruptcy — laundry bankruptcy.

This morning, I opened up the doors to a row of high-efficiency washing machines and started up load after load of wash. Cold-water items with cold-water items, like colors with like, socks waltzing in, two-by-two. Several hours later, after much tumbling, a little bleeding, and copious amounts of folding, I’m mostly caught up with my machine washing.

There’s still some dry cleaning and hand washing that casts a gimlet-eyed glance my way, but that’s another chapter (13?), for another day.

God save the BBC:  Putting the ‘Great‘ in ‘Great Britain’.