Farewell, Freya...

Megan came by last night and took Freya home. Home to Megan's house, I should say, because I think Freya came to think of my abode as home while she was here and I came to think of it that way too.

Freya is an excellent animal companion. If she were here now, she'd be resting on my belly while I type, with her chin resting on my left thumb. Only meowing when I make a typo.

"She's a great cat," said Megan, "but she doesn't give you much to blog about."

"It's true," I agreed. "But when you acquired her, you wouldn't have been thinking of finding a bloggable cat. Not like Zoom picking Duncan because he was the most bloggable cat she could find."

I could have blogged Freya's unconventional gender assignment, but I figure it's her business and if she is comfortable with it, so am I.

I hope Freya comes to stay again. As long as I'm here, she'll be welcome.

Meanwhile it's back to my word cop beat.

Conrad 101

News item: In an e-mail to an Irish newspaper, Lord Black expressed an interest in teaching other inmates.

We're sure he could show them a thing or two . . .

Freya still fine

Back to Metablogging

Let's take a look at what is happening on some of the blogs we follow here at ESI.

Single she wrote aka Boyfriends Gone Bad

Pinky reports that her e-Harmony inbox is full and she is involved in "guided communication" with a handful of suitors. I hope that none of these turn out to be "personality plagiarists". [Here is a tip for you online daters: If your love interest says he used to be a precious mineral expert, spent some time as a pirate and is now studying French ballads, he stole his online profile from me. (And you'll know it's actually me if the profile is frank about a certain fungus issue.)]

Jo Stockton - She's Also a Talker

On Feb. 12, Jo Stockton was fat, on Feb. 20, she's a slender curvy thing with a waist-hip ratio that looks pretty close to the universally appealling 0.7. Did she get skinny in two weeks or is she also using stunt doubles on her blog?

Then on Feb. 26, she gives us a solid entry for best blog post of the year.

Zoom's Knitkut

We ESIs have to acknowledge Zoom's massive success in the Blogging awards. She surely would have won best post if she hadn't been competing with herself or if there had been a proper voting system. And 4th place Activities Blog when she blogs about her activity roughly once a year is a remarkable achievement. (It would be like Conch Shell getting an award for blogging.)

Of course, we're jealous and can point to the influence of the knitting mafia in her victories. But we could get the same sort of influence behind us if we didn't have a pathological need to alienate every interest group on the web.

Zoom also has a significantly higher Technorati authority rating than we do. She warrants this authority with posts like The police chief called me an idiot.

But because we would like her to stumble so that we could pull ahead, I'm glad to see her recent post The dinner rut in which her readers demonstrate that recipes are boring, boring, boring.

Kate Heartfield - The World Next Door

Although she is a professional blogger, I still feel bad that Kate Heartfield got raked for liking the Kemptville Library. I hope she is one of the thick-skinned bloggers.

Some of her readers could use a bit of internet education. This video might help:

How To Behave On An Internet Forum

A & J: Please Pick up Your Socks

They are thinking of moving to the country. So far it's not working out that well. (But then City life also has it's difficulties.) I hope they work out their little communication glitches before they're living miles away from other human beings.

Backstage at the metablog

A couple of days back, 4th Dwarf suggested, in a debunking tone, that I had not in fact eaten Bucky Katt. Well, duh. The Irregulars are never what they seem. But since Shorty has twitched up the curtain on our artifice anyway, maybe it's time raise it further, give you an ESI metablog studio tour, and show you our secrets.

Most of the time, the ESIs choose not to play up the endless rehearsals, sweat and technical know-how that go into producing this blog. We prefer to make it look all spontaneous, effortless and airy. But our cast and crew are pros, and when those megawatt studio lights are switched off, we're busy in the shadows backstage and offstage, preparing carefully for our respective roles.

It's not all glamour. The Dwarf, f'rinstance, has to wear painful elevator lifts in his bootees when he blogs, to jack him up to regulation dwarf height. He's much shorter in real life. I wear contacts onblog, coke-bottle glasses offstage, and shades on the street to stay incognito. I value my privacy. (I'll have you know, though, that my ears are just as big and pointy as they look on the blog, and all natural. No implants here. I digress.) Of course, too, every one of us has had a stunt double stand in for us during particularly dangerous blog sequences. Insurance.

So, all of you deluded bog-standard kittybloggers in Greely who were horrified by that last Bucky post - you know who you are - get a grip! Enough with the hate mail, already! There is no Bucky Katt. There never was. Bucky was played by a guest actor. But - listen up, because this is really cool - Legal has just told me that it's okay to reveal that the Bucky episodes were in fact Bloggie nomination-worthy performances by an uncredited Brad Pitt.

You didn't know? C'mon! The eyes and hair had to be a dead giveaway! I've gotta say, right here and now, that the guy's a total pro and a joy to work with. And I want his limo.