Both cats smell like cats. Something might be wrong.

F U EA Games. F U Maxis. Never again.

Ciaran smells like Shelly. Shelly smells like Ciaran. My nose imploded.

I’ve identified with Torg for years and years with but one reservation until today.  At last, you’ve made it okay for nerdboys to kick ass.  I can’t wait to tell all my friends how awesome I am. Thank you!

Your loyal Sluggite,

Quasijo

P.S. Shelly smells like maple syrup. Ciaran smells like a squirmy kitty who doesn’t want to be snuffled today.

Except today.

To my conservative friends:  I’ve said for a long, long time that if we hear the same memes often enough we’ll being to believe them in spite of our better judgement.  Supposedly that’s a known phenomenon called cultural para-stimuli discovered by Victor Ransome Starling, a Nobel Laureate by virtue of discovering the syndrom in cats.  Read all about it in the forward to Tom Wolfe’s novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons.

Wait, what?  This seems wrong doesn’t it?  I checked the Nobel Prize Nomination Database for the names Starling, Victor Starling, Ransome Starling, Ransome.  The guy doesn’t exist, or at least he was never nominated for a Nobel Prize.  You can verify that he wasn’t awarded a Nobel Prize even more easily at Wikipedia.org.  In fact, the only authoritative-ish place I found informaiton about him was in a book review in the Washington Post.  Why have I even heard of this guy?  Because Rush Limbaugh made a big deal about him a couple of days ago and now the meme has spread around the blogosphere.  The idea rings true to people because we do observe the effects of a similar process.  The spread of theVictor Starling meme is a limited example.  The spread of the Bush Air National Guard meme is a similarly trivial example perpetrated with considerably more pomp and bluster.

I discovered the meme via a link on AnnCoulter.com.  The link is to an article on the BigHollywood blog.  While I agree with the grist of the article, the reliance upon this fictional scientific result discomforts me.  The spread of memes is a better model on which to base the author’s conclusions.  To be sure, I can’t cite scientific studies of the meme phenomenon, but I’ll assert that no citation is better than citing bogus science.  My dear, conservative brethren: please stop spreading the cultural para-stimuli meme.

Shelly smells like griddle-browned sausage and flapjacks smothered in maple syrup.  Ciaran smells like deep woods soil just before the first frost.

It’ll be a day or too before I know whether I picked up any nasty bugs that’ll make the sponge inedible. So far it looks like a success.  My house kind of stinks, now, though.  That’s a typical, temporary side effect of growing a starter; it’ll stop stinking in a day or two.  That’s pretty much the same time that I either throw the stuff away or pour it into jars and tuck it in the fridge.

Good times!

Shelly smells like maple and sausage – so that’s normal. Ciaran smells like a memory of cappuccino.

Also, Ciaran’s tail is broken or bruised or something.  It’s healing up very well and he still has feeling/mobility to the length of it.  There’s a crook in it, now, about four inches from the base.  That was hurting him earlier in the week, but it seems to be a non-issue, now.  He doesn’t complain when I touch it, and it’s moving more or less like a tail – go figure.  My big indicators are he still grooms it all the way to the end, it’s warm, and the end waves like grass in a gentle breeze.  Any of that stops and I’ll worry.

I met a nifty woman on OkCupid. Finally.  I’ve had an active profile on that site since 1998 when it launched.  I search it weekly.  In ten years, I have now met one woman I really want to meet.  Granted, I met a half dozen wonderful women out in the real world in that same time frame.  I’m just blessed all around, I guess.

I can’t tell what the cats smell like because my apartment smells like baking bread.

I baked a third loaf of bread today.  It was too big for the loaf pan, but it mostly grew straight up because of the way I slashed it.  Came out looking like a lopsided mushroom cloud.  You know I liked it.

Shelly smells like maple syrup again.

Ciaran smells like recess.

I went biking this morning for several hours. A guy from work and I went to the Wakefield park to try out their trails. We started out on a mountain-bike trail that was uphill both ways. Crazy, right? My bike was not built for that kind of riding. Neither am I; I’m way too wussy to power through banked switch-backs. Maybe someday… We finished off on the Fairfax County Cross Country Trail. Rode a couple of miles down that to a small lake and back. The CCT connects a bunch of parks in Fairfax and also connects to a network of trails that will take you hundreds of miles all over northern VA. Pretty neat stuff. I’ll be biking more of it while the weather holds up.

Cat smells: They smell pretty much the same as after I bathed them: clean and a little musky. Ciaran’s ears are cold. They remind me of artichoke leaves.