June 06, 2006
I Think I'm Winning
I'm currently engaged in a war with my upstairs neighbor. I was wakened (at noon) by heavy metal. I watched Law & Order: CI at the highest volume possible. Her music was down by the time it ended. Now, more throbbing metal. Really, wall pounding stuff. My response: blast back Pet Sounds.
Posted by hissycat at 02:58 PM | Comments (36)
March 09, 2006
I Thought I Was Reading The Headline Wrong
"New York Asks Help From Poor in Housing Crisis." Shouldn't that be for poor? Apparently not. The NYT reports that the New York City Housing Authority "has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged."
That's insane. Subsidized housing is what makes it possible for non-wealthy people, and working-class families in particular, to live in the city. Now the housing authority is scrambling to cover make up for "'a steady divestment' in public housing at the federal level" by charging restupidulous fees. The fees are really steep:
So it has proposed charging tenants $5.75 a month to run a washing machine, $5 a month to operate a dishwasher, $10 a month for a separate freezer. Parking fees will rise to $75 from $5 a year on April 1.
Apparently, some fees for services "like fixing damage to apartments beyond normal wear and tear" actually have been on the books for a long time but, de facto, were never imposed except in "extreme cases where a door was bullet riddled or somebody kicked the front entrance door and it was not based on wear and tear." You hear that? Bullet holes. That's extreme, people. That's extreme. Not like today, when it's one bad enchilada and you're being charged an arm and a leg to have your toilet plunged. Or whatever they do to make the shit go away. 'Cause call me crazy, but if there's one thing I like to think I, as a tenant, should not have to pay extra for-- that I am, in fact, entitled to-- it's fecalmania all over my floor. I'm crazy that way.
Posted by hissycat at 10:37 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 20, 2006
My Cat Quotes Joyce. Perfectly.
In the kitchen, I am standing in front of the cupboard, holding a can of beans or something. As I start opening the can, Gerty the cat bounds over to my legs as well as a three-legged cat can bound and starts mewling to be fed
Gerty: Mkgnao!
Me: No, Gerty. Your food is in your bowl. This is my food.
Gerty: Mrkgnao!
Gerty: Mrkrgnao!
Me: For god's sake, Gerty cat, I don't care how well you can quote James Joyce, you still can't have any of my dinner!
Posted by hissycat at 10:17 PM | Comments (8)
October 26, 2005
How To Be A Pyschotic Ex
with apologies to Lorrie Moore
First, get dumped. This step is essential. If you can manage to get fired the following day, score!
Getting fired will provide you with the unoccupied daytime hours you will need to destroy property, not to mention the aimless daytime hours to sleep through, which you will come to appreciate more and more with every passing weekday night on which you decide to get plastered and do something stupid.
Remain friends with your ex, even if it breaks your heart. Especially if it breaks your heart. Be so adamant about friendship that when he forgets to return a phone call on an evening he said he "might be up for hanging out," freak the fuck out like you've never freaked out before. Don't be put off by the fact that, when you were his girlfriend, you did not whip yourself up like a banshee on account of one little missed call. You now have permission to blow meaning out of all proportion. Of course this means he was lying when he said he wanted to remain friends! Of course this means he hates you! Of course this means you are unloveable and he is trying to destroy your life! Don't hold back when making assumptions. Think Medea. Remember, the more extravagant your assumptions are the farther along you are on your way to becoming a psychotic ex.
Swear you will not call but will maintain the silent dignity of a martyr. Then, fuck martyrdom. Fuck not calling. You have no dignity! You are the psychotic ex!
Harass and accuse. He won't actually pick up, as he'll be busy, or his phone will be out of battery, or he will be sleeping, but, in a way, this is even better than if he did, as it enables you to leave strings of messages of increasing hysteria. Don't be discouraged if harassment and accusation were not your style before. You are a psychotic ex, and they are now, so shriek like the harpy you are.
The next day, tear up with self-pity and self-loathing as you read the email he wrote from work that morning, after he finally got all your emails and messages. Nobly decline the offer to get dinner tonight and go to the concert with his and your friends. Five minutes later, give in.
Behave admirably, if unattractively, throughout dinner. It will be easy. You will be depressed and deflated anyway. Then, smoke drugs, and, at the concert, drink until you can't not dance, shameless as Sheela Na Gig. Just be sure to point your eyes away from couples. Do not see people dancing close, do not see people kissing.
Oh, while at the concert, see some dumb celebrity. In your state of drunken moroninity, decide what you must do is blog this, which, since you do not have internet in your apartment, requires you to go home with ex. This is acceptable, as his roommates are your friends, and they stay up, too, so, really, you are hanging out with them while he just happens, through no fault of yours, to be sleeping in his room down the hall.
However, you will stay up long after your friends have turned in (you've had insomnia all week). Around four in the morning become genuinely, suddenly exhausted. Just worn out. Done in. Outside it is dark and undoubtedly even colder than inside, though that hardly seems possible.
Gently pry open the door to his room, where he is sleeping and naked. Whisper his name till he wakes, startled. Yes, this is creepy, but, on the other hand, you are psychotic. When he asks what's wrong, look down and say something about the cold outside and the exhaustion that's taken hold and meekly ask if you can crash here, in this apartment. When he asks where you would stay, blurt out in one unpunctuated rush that could you please, please sleep in the bed, you promise you will keep all your clothes on and sleep head-to-toe and you are sorry and you are awful but it is so cold and you are so tired, and please? Of course he lets you. He is nice and decent and kind like that, even though you have behaved abominably. And even though he would not mind if you made use of the pillow he is not using and even though he would not mind if you took off your belt or unlatched your bra, keep everything on and hunch, pillowless and upside down, at the far edge, just to be extra pathetic.
You wake up, rattled by dreams, long after everyone else has left for work. Make some coffee. Step out to smoke. Use the internet. Nod off in an arm chair. Wake up. Make more coffee. Grab roommate's copy of Allure and step out the kitchen door onto the back stairwell to smoke.
Pull the door all the way shut because you are being extra-courteous and will not allow even a hint of your smoke to waft in. Immedeately realize your mistake, but smoke, page through the Allure as it becomes increasingly impossible to stifle the panic.
You are locked out, without your shoes, without your phone, without even a book or another goddamned cigarette, and it will be hours before anyone is home, and all you have is that Allure, which is not all that good, even as Allures go.
Consider your options. There is a kitchen window you consider shimmying through, but quickly realize that not only is the window about four feet from the edge of the staircase and two stories high but also is the kind of window that does not open, like a square porthole on the side of the buidling, which suddenly strikes you as especially stupid.
Remember the way in middle school, when you forgot your apartment key, you would get a neighbor to buzz you in, decline their offer to watch TV in their apartment until your parents returned, assuring them that your mother was already home and probably just in the shower and would no doubt hear you now and let you in. Remember how you'd use your plastic library card to jimmy the lock; you'd shoulder your weight against the door and it would give and you were in.
You don't have a plastic library card now or anything like one. What you do have is panic, psychosis and, you notice, a pile of wood chips. Wood chips. Damn you're psychotic. You try slipping wood chips between the door and the frame, as though they were plastic library cards, which they are not.
Now, press on the door. Press harder. Slam your weight into it. Something heaves, cracks and sighs. You see that you've torn part of door frame off of the wall. Consider stopping. Consider your stupidity. Consider how truly, awfully boring that copy of Allure is and throw yourself against it again. Again. Until, on the fourth or fifth try, the door suddenly gives in, at last becoming as unhinged as you are. You stagger back to survey the damage.
Ah, behold! The work of the psychotic ex-girlfriend!
Posted by hissycat at 11:03 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 19, 2005
Letter To My Cat
Dear Gerty,
I love you. You know that. Living with you is the best decision I ever made. You know that, too. But you also know, and I know, too, and you know that I know, and you know that I know you know, that of late some concerns have arisen, as is bound to happen whenever two individuals, no matter how much they love one another, decide to live in a small place together. The conventional wisdom on such matters dictates an open line of honest communication. That, Gerty, is why I am writing this letter to you. I want us to live harmoniously and happily together.
One thing I've been meaning to talk to you about, Gerty, is this business about your new friend. I may never understand myself what it is about that strange, massive, and-- if I may say so-- none too bright, yeti of a cat that attacked my arm that one time that has won your heart after you so ferociously and, yes, callously chased sweet, orange Leo, who wanted nothing more than to peacably observe the pigeons and make lovey eyes at you, out of the courtyard.
But I understand that the heart is a wild thing we choose not the paths it takes. I'm happy for you, Gerty. You've found a creature to be fond of, a creature that is fond of you, someone to lie beside you in the grass, someone to cuddle and spoon you to sleep, someone to bathe you with her tongue, someone to gnaw the dingleberries off of your rump. Good for you. I ask only that you and your friend stop making those god-awful lowing noises at one another for tens of minutes on end. Seriously, what are you doing? It is sweet, if unusual, the way the two hunch down, nose-to-nose and low soulfully at one another. But, please. The sound is less than fetching to human ears. You sound like a drowning peacock, and, frankly, it is embarrassing. Think of the neighbors.
So often does the bathroom become a matter of contention between people who live together, that what I am about to say should not surprise you. Gerty, please stop pooping in the garden. And if you so love the thrill of pooping in the outdoors that to ask you to stop would be asking the impossible, then at least try not to poop right within three feet of the door and directly in front of the chair where I sit when I smoke. It occurs to me as I write this that your poop spot in the garden is the same spot where you like to gift me with dead rats. I don't care for the rats, either, but I understand that because there is no present you would like so much as a rat you presume that I feel the same way. You are wrong. But I understand the sentiment that motivates you. But Gerty, the poop? What's with the poop?
I know that when you howl at the garden door it means you want me to let you out. Believe me, I know, and there is no need to jump all over the coffee table once you see me opening the door. I'd had a hard enough week before you slapped the beer bottle with your tail, sending waterlogged cigarette butts and foul, foul liquid all over the room, that only made it that much worse. And when I tell you it's not time for you to go out, please respect that. Do not, for instance, howl at the door at five in the morning when sleep is at long last tentatively extending her mercies. And please don't jump on my desk and try to shove yourself between the window and the venetian blinds. Not only does that cause a terrible racket but also breaks the blinds.
And while we are on the subject of the great outdoors, there is something else I've been wondering. When you run towards the pigeons that perch on the windowsill of the crazy neighbor that feeds them, you might consider not meowing as you hurtle towards them. That's how they know you're coming. That's why they fly away. I think you know that, too. After all, you do not meow at the rats as you catch them. I might think you were trying to be the pigeons' friend except for that gleam in your eye, that gleam that says, "I want to eat you." Oh, and next time you are considering jumping up towards the windowsill, do try and keep in mind you are missing a leg. You will not make the jump. You will, instead, come crashing down through the shrubbery with a panic stricken look in your eye, and the pigeons will blink down at you mockingly and not even ruffle their feathers.
In fact, it would mean a lot to me if you would make a general rule of calculating your lack of leg when planning your jumps. I know that when you fail to clear a jump to the desk and go sliding back down the side, hooking with desperation whatever you little claws can, you don't mean to bring down the foot high stack of papers with you, splaying them all over my floor, but with a little more forethought, we could avoid these situations altogether.
Love,
Joanna
Posted by hissycat at 12:03 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 03, 2005
Sunday Night Blues
Sunday night and I'm in a crothety mood. Brett threatened to never come over again if I didn't clean my apartment (it had, apparently, a "funny smell"), so I cleaned, for his sake, but he didn't come over because he was "tired" and "not feeling well" and "going to sleep."
I hate cleaning. Zuzka said today that I should be rich on account that I would make I fantastic rich person as I really know how to spend it. I wholeheartedly agree. I would make a fantastic rich person. I would spend my days consorting with my muse and I would never wash a dish again.
In the meantime, however, I'm thinking of switching to paper plates and disposable cutlery. I know that is not the most environmentally friendly thing, but on the other hand, neither is the festering wasteland that is my unclean apartment.
Posted by hissycat at 09:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 30, 2005
Elephant And Cat
A Thai elephant who had lost half a leg to a land mine was recently fitted with a prosthetic leg.
Perhaps the same scientists would rig up something similair for Gerty?
Posted by hissycat at 10:25 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 13, 2005
I Go To Seattle For Three Puny Days and This Happens
Posted by hissycat at 03:03 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack