This means I can more comfortably point out that my cats are adorable. Surely this is an observation unique to the internet.

On to other, freakier topics: last night I was going around the house locking up and such prior to going out to eat when I heard a muffled thud outside near the front of the house. I didn’t see anything and the sound in question could come from a million innocent sources and the cats did not run and hide so I didn’t think much of it but I kept my eyes peeled when I went out the back door, through our super-clangy gate (made of purest audium, guaranteed to wake the dead) and around the side of the house to get in the car. What did I espy? A dude in a jogging suit or something like it with a hat or a hood that shaded his face completely standing across the street looking in my direction. When I stepped out of the shadows and into the relative light of the driveway he took off running. I do not mean that he began to jog, I mean that he burst into full-bore pedestrian flight complete with frequent glances back over his shoulder at me.

Nothing seemed amiss with the house so I leapt into the car and tried to chase him but by the time I was in, had it started, got up the drive and was down the street he was nowhere to be seen. Aha, I thought, My coincidental timing has scared him away.

Then I got to thinking, what if he comes back while I’m at dinner?

The way I figured, if it were a harmless misunderstanding – say, a vigorous and perhaps slightly skittish jogger – then I could sup without concern. Were he a would-be opportunistic burglar or thief of some sort and I’d simply surprised him with my gate-clangings as he, for instance, considered breaking into the car of the neighbor across the street, then I’d probably scared him so badly that he was long gone and I could, again, sup without concern. The third option was that he was the sort who would be back in moments and in that case, you know what? Fuck that, I was going to dinner and getting out of his damned way.

I did call 911, though, and they sent a prowl car out to do a couple of laps and see if they could spot someone matching the description, such as it was. Weird. When I got home I went through yard and around house and inside and all the closets and rooms with a flashlight but nothing turned up. Bizarre.

A couple of weeks ago I caught the cats snuggled together for a nap and got a picture of them. The flash woke and annoyed Didi, however, leaving him looking freaky.

So cute.

Of late they’ve been getting intensely curious about door knobs. No, “curious” isn’t the right word. They know what door knobs do. They’ve no curiosity to satisfy on that front, I’m afraid. Rather, they’ve been working like the devil to try and figure out how to operate door knobs without human intervention. More than once I’ve turned a corner to find them stretched up, paws wrapped around a doorknob, doing their very best to turn it. I know that sounds like it’s fiction, like I’ve made it up to have a cute catblog to tell, but it’s absolutely 100% true. As a former co-worker used to say, here is my hand. I swear it is true. They have sought for weeks now to figure out how to operate doors.

To digress seemingly further, we tend to enter and leave the house through the laundry room in the back. One of the primary reasons for this is also what has given the laundry room its name: the Cat Lock, much like an air lock on a spacecraft. We can walk into the laundry room, shut the door firmly behind us, then leave through the outer door without having to ward off the cats should they try to check out the Big Blue Room on the other side of the house’s exterior walls. Now, the laundry room door doesn’t like to close all the way but we early on learned the simple trick of pushing it shut until we hear the click. As a matter of habit I tend to push the door, lift the knob slightly, hear the click and then tug on the door to make sure it’s entirely shut. I do this every time I walk through that door. I know I’ve done it for the last two days running.

And yet, when I’ve gotten home from work on both the last two days I’ve found said inner door, from the kitchen into the Cat Lock, just barely open and a furry face or two peeking at me through the crack.

One or the other of the cats – or both, gods help us – has learned to open a door with a regular, round door knob. No thumbs, people. No thumbs, but I swear they’ve learned to open doors.

I’m sorry, archaeologists of the future. Once you’ve translated this blog post you’ll know what happened to my kind. A terrible future is staring me in the face every night when I get home from work.

The grass is cut, the kittens have been to the vet for their annual checkup and boosters and such. We are under orders to change their feeding habits immediately. I can’t even really talk about how fat the cats are. Oh my sweet heavens. Otherwise, they’re in perfect health and the assistant was extremely impressed with their teeth. We even got a tutorial on claw-trimming and picked up some legit trimmers while we were there. Though the boys yelled the whole way there and the whole way back, they’ve long since forgotten the ordeal entirely. As I write this they are piled up in the sunny spot on the kitchen floor. Life is pretty good today.

Also, the whole Fortuny thing. That link goes to a Wired blog, from there you can get to the (ahem) raw data if you want. In other words, the link in this post, the one you’re reading right now, is work-safe, but anything past there is totally uncharted territory. My take? Fortuny’s a tool and I don’t wish actual physical retribution on him but I do expect he’ll spend a while hiding behind someone or another’s couch every time he happens to see some huge ‘roid-hound looking his direction at the mall, and he deserves every ounce of fear he suffers for it. I mean, seriously, pick a better target if you’re going to play stupid bullying pranks, kid. I thought RandroidsObjectivists were supposed to be all rational and shit, but he couldn’t work that one out for himself? Really? That maybe it wouldn’t be smart to piss off a couple hundred guys who derive sexual gratification from inflicting physical and verbal abuse? Oy! Ayn should have gotten a smarter batch of disciples.

Now, a few notes for people whose Google searches lead them here:

• Please, for fuck’s sake, I’ll say it again: Just buy The American Astronaut if you want to watch it, there’s even a “Buy Now!” link right there on the goddamn page, I cannot believe you would rip off an indie movie by trying to download it. Jerks.
• Are you ready for one giant skate for derbykind? This weekend sees The Carolina Rollergirls take on the Sin City Rollergirls (of Vegas, naturally) in their first ever bout at Dorton Arena.
• No, really, I have no idea what happens to you if you hide from a cop in Virginia. I’m betting it means eventual arrest, however!

In videogames news: LEGO Star Wars II. The original trilogy. Aw yeah!

I have also signed up for NetFlix recently, and so we’re working our way through a whole slew of noir mysteries and documentaries on a variety of topics. I’ve finally rated enough movies that NetFlix is starting to recommend things that might be to my liking – such as Depeche Mode concert DVDs – but it’s also making some surprising remarks on my entertainment tastes. I currently have Wigstock in my queue – I cannot watch that movie enough times, I should just buy the damn thing – and have highly rated a few other queer-themed films and chosen “Not Interested” for the plethora of Bible stories they wanted me to watch. This apparently means, in NetFlix’ opinion, that I should watch a saucy teen drama from France titled Come Together. Ahem. The cover has two teenage boys shirtlessly making eyes at you. I did not add it to my queue, because if I want porn there’s a whole internet of it out here, but I was amused by the user review that concluded the film, which offers a richly acted, tense and complicated drama, “sadly does not include as much nudity as the cover suggests.” Eek.

At any rate, if you want to “Friends” me on NetFlix – which I take is all the rage on these webbertron things – then email me and I’ll let you know the address by which I signed up.

Finally, I’ve spent much of this week playing with my User Interface in World of Warcraft. My new flavor is Insomniax, a combination of Discord Unit Frames, BibBars and CT_Mod. Bottom line: I’ve totally smashed my old UI to pieces and rearranged it to buy back a lot of real estate on the screen. Tasty. I’ll have some before-and-after screenshots up sometime, probably tomorrow.

In the first one, Hillary gets elected President in 2008 and appoints me – me, not some dream-me who actually knows squat about such a position – to be Commerce Secretary. The next few weeks are a whirlwind of activity as people try to get me ready for the job. I’m fairly torn, in the dream, between the honor of being the first openly gay Commerce Secretary and being just totally and utterly unqualified for the job. I am also torn because, frankly, I think Hillary’s more Lieberman than Lieberman. Eventually I turn to The Boyf at one point and say, “You know, I didn’t like her to begin with, but this Commerce Secretary stuff? It doesn’t get more half-assed than this.” I wake up when my car is in the motorcade heading to her inauguration.

Second dream is one I had last night, after checking my site logs and finding that a number of people have wound up here after googling for the names of the victims in those murders in my hometown. In the dream, I’m worried that my pseudonymity has been compromised, then it is – by one of my nephews posting a comment asking if I’m me and using my real full name to ask. (In waking life, I actually don’t care. The pseudonym is more of a joke than an attempt at hiding. I mean, yeah, I try to be discreet with personal information online, but I also know my real name is, at very most, two clicks from the page you’re looking at right now, and 99.99% of the people who read this already know me offline anyway, so whatevs.  Yeah, I use this pseudonym elsewhere online, but it’s as much an effort at consistent brand-identity – oh yes I did – as it is an attempt to keep my blog safe from people just randomly googling my name, which would be insane of them anyway because my real name is so remarkably generic.) Like many a superhero, I become concerned that those I love are somehow endangered by people in my far-away hometown knowing I have a blog – because, y’know, blogging about the kittens really generates the archnemeses – and attempt to eradicate all traces of my real identity from the interwebs. Eventually I awake wondering what the next foul plan plotted against me will be. Then I realize it was a dream and immediately wonder at how stupid my subconscious is.

• There is nothing as precious as listening to a kitten snore.
• Except for when he snores while lying flat on his back, legs everywhere, with his head cocked to one side.

So here’s this weekend’s heartstopper:  last night Didi fell out of the 2nd story window in my home office.

I have no idea what precipitated this, but all of a sudden there was neither a screen nor a kitten in that window.  I remember saying something stupid at the time, and then saying to The Boyf (who was standing in the room when it happened) that I was “on it,” whatever that means, and tearing off downstairs and outside to go find Didi.  The Boyf ran to turn off the AC, since it was right next to where Didi would have landed and so loud it might drown me out when trying to find him, and I got down there and started calling out for him.

He was right where he landed, walking around and meowing and generally freaked the hell out.  I rubbed him down very lightly and didn’t get any complaints, and he was walking on his own, so I went ahead and picked him up and though he was shaking (or was that me?) he was absolutely fine.

Now that window stays closed.  And in the meantime, Didi has loved all the attention.

The Boyf and I sat down on the back porch, eventually, to catch our breath and try to let the freakies wear off, and he said to me, “Well, I guess Didi’s probably down to about 8.7 lives, now.”

“If he’s down to 8.7,” I said, “I guess I’m at point seven.”