In celebration of nothing in particular, except maybe having a better week than last, here are some of my favorite cat gifs, most of which I made myself. Oh, I know this blog gets silly sometimes. Once in a while it gets frightfully serious. I had three or four followers flee all at once after I wrote about climate change. It stunned me. So I don't write about climate change. I don't even know all the facts about it, and for the most part I can't even think about it. Sometimes I just want to post funny gifs of cats.
Thanksgiving Dinner… and then the peaceful feeling that comes from good digestion and smoking Camels!
OFF TO A GOOD START — with hot spiced tomato soup. And then–for digestion’s sake–smoke a Camel right after the soup.
THE MAIN EVENT — The time-honoured turkey of our forefathers–done to a crisp and golden brown–and flanked by a mountain of ruby cranberry jelly. By all means enjoy a second helping. But before you do–smoke another Camel. Camels ease tension. Speed up the flow of digestive fluids. Increase alkalinity. Help your digestion to run smoothly.
DOUBLE PAUSE — First–for the crisp refreshment of a Waldorf Salad–then–once again, for the sheer pleasure of Camel’s costlier tobaccos. This double pause clears the palate–and sets the stage for desert.
WHAT WILL YOU HAVE FOR DESSERT? Reading in a circle, there’s luscious Pumpkin Pie… Mince Pie a la mode… layer cake with inch-deep icing… a piping-hot Plum Pudding… and Camels to add the final touch of comfort and good cheer. For when digestion proceeds smoothly, you experience a sense of ease and well-being.
SO TO A HAPPY ENDING — over coffee and your after-dinner Camels. Enjoy Camels–every mealtime–between courses and after eating–and you can lean back in your chair feeling on top of the world.
FOOD EDITOR — Miss Dorothy Malone says: “It’s smart to have Camels on the table. My own personal experience is that smoking Camels with my meals and afterwards builds up a sense of digestive well-being.”
“THE BEST MEAL I ever ate would be a disappointment if I coldn’t enjoy Camels,” says William H. Ferguson, salesman. “I smoke Camels as an aid to digestion. There’s nothing like Camel’s to set you right.”
Good food and good tobacco go together naturally!
Right down the line–from explorers living on “iron rations” to the millions of men and women who’ll heartily enjoy a big Thanksgiving dinner–it is agreed that Camels set you right! You enjoy more food more and have a feeling of greater ease after eating when you smoke Camels between courses and after meals.
Enjoy Camels all you wish–all through the day. Camel’s costlier tobaccos as supremely mild. Steady smokers say that Camel’s never tire the taste or get on the nerves. And when you’re tired, try this: get a “lift” with a Camel!
COSTLIER TOBACCOS
Camels are made from finer, MORE EXPENSIVE TOBACCOS . . . Turkish and Domestic . . . than any other popular brand.
FOR DIGESTION’S SAKE — SMOKE CAMELS
Blogger's note. Damn. As usual, I am late for Thanksgiving, but this one (complete with full text) is too good not to post, even a few days late. It's one of the most astonishing cigarette ads I've ever seen. In the bad old days, nothing was more horrible than sitting next to a smoker at a banquet, or even in the same room with smokers in a restaurant. Never mind if they were corralled in the "smoking area" (ha ha). Smoke like, uh, er, drifts in the air, see? (Why didn't they know that then? They didn't want to offend smoking customers.) It doesn't matter if you blow it in the opposite direction. It migrates freely all over the room, the sulphurous stink of it ending up in your face, and there's nothing you can do to get away from it.
It had to be scientifically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could drop dead from cancer even from a small exposure to second-hand smoke - that it was, in fact, more deadly than the stuff you sucked in with your lips like an infant with a bottle of formula - before "smoking sections" were finally relegated to the past, along with the socially-acceptable and even expected habit of sucking on cigarettes before, after and even during a festive dinner.
According to this yummy description, the average person sitting at the groaning board should consume FIVE cigarettes to achieve the desired "ease and well-being", not to mention improved digestion (WTF???). I just don't know where to start here. The purported effect on mood - calming you down and/or giving you a lift, presumably at the same time - is even more alarming, as if cigarettes were just an early form of antidepressant. When I saw just the bottom corner of this ad, on Pinterest or somewhere, I thought, no. It's a parody. It just COULDN'T be real. But oh yes. It's a time machine of attitudes that I am profoundly grateful are dead. But it makes me wonder how many other horrible things we're still doing that one day will be seen as totally barbaric. Back then, if you'd pointed out to a hostess that smoking at the table makes people die in horrible agony, she'd probably claim you were spreading nasty lies.
This will be my last vintage cigarette ad for a while, because it's getting old now. I have to stop running curiosities and start actually writing again, which is torture sometimes, but somebody might actually read it, and I must be prepared. I almost never look at my views, but today I did, and I got well over a thousand views for a piece I wrote a couple of years ago about Elmer the Safety Elephant. You never know what people might find interesting.
May as well enter the fray, as most other writers have in this country. But how to deal with the maelstrom of "issues" that have jumped out of the closet? Why is this strange jack-in-the-box suddenly exploding out of the container, if everything is going so well (as the more privileged writers insist)? Why are you so upset all of a sudden, why are "all you survivor people out there" in such a snit? God's in his heaven, all's right with CanLit: isn't it? Hey, MY paycheque is OK, how about yours? Gone to any signings lately? And let's not get into all the other issues. Better yet: let's. It's my video and I'll kvetch if I want to. But after all these years, I believe I have a right.
There are certain cats - for some reason, almost all of them are white - which have a special genetic quirk called heterochromia iridum: meaning, they have two different eye colours, one blue and one green or yellow. But there are a few here who have something even more rare: sectoral heterochromia, which means. . . really pretty eyes! It means they have two colours in EACH eye. In some cases it's just a spot, and a little hard to see, but sometimes the division is quite dramatic.
What is it about white cats? I've also heard that many of them are deaf. But they more than make up for that difficulty with eyes so beautiful, it transports them into the realm of the mystical.
One of these photos looks photoshopped. I doubt if there is such a thing as a heterochromia rainbowia. But you never know, so I included it.
No, really! And it's only because I found this cool picture of her. I didn't really need to do much to it. I have no artistic talent whatsoever, but I have never let that stop me. (If I could only do things I was good at, I'd be six feet under by now.) The animation is the usual semi-shitty PicMix, but it's still better than the wretched Blingee which would always lose your finished piece.
I want to be done with the CanLit kerfuffle, but when I saw this picture I had to do something with it. You can put whatever interpretation you want on it. Project on it all you want. What I settled on was quite simple: Vancouver rain; cat's eye. The rest, she did herself.
No one swings more weight than this gal in the literary world - the tight, stifling, incestuous Canadian literary world. She is one of the few who "broke out" (? Funny expression - when I reviewed books, every new title would be called the writer's "breakout novel"). I never broke out, which means - what? That I am still imprisoned? "Out" seems to mean bursting out of captivity, or revealing one's true sexual orientation.
Oh, but it's just words! I've been hearing that a lot lately. Break out. Thrown into. Incarcerated, with its echo of something cancerous. Witch hunt, McCarthy trials, etc. Perhaps, just perhaps there are echoes of that, but I have not yet heard of anyone being burned at the stake.
It's provocative language, and we all use it. Thing is, this is a whole bunch of pissed-off writers with the capability of ripping into each other in a nanosecond (and not in some private paper letter, but IN PUBLIC, sometimes in front of a huge audience. Whatever else it is, it is most definitely a performance.) I wonder if humankind can be trusted with such a capacity.
All right, so I did two portraits. I wasn't even going to do ONE. It's pure serendipity which animations will work, and I like how the gaudy Gothic rose flashes on and off and sort of wraps around her, while the rose on fire on the other side is fanned by a bat. What does it say: don't mess with me? It was never my intention to stick my tongue out. I just wanted to see where this would take me.
