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.

Blogging with Freya

Freya is sitting on my lap as I type this. She's purring like a muffled V-8 engine where one of the cylinders is missing a stroke. Or maybe it's more like the slant-6 on the old Plymouth Valiant. Anyway, it's loud for a cat.

I'm playing easy to get and lavishing her with attention so that she won't feel the need to sleep on my head tonight. Not that she slept on my head last night. She found somewhere to hide instead. This morning, the only evidence I had that she hadn't run off or gotten trapped down in the caves was that her food was gone and her litter box had been recently used.

But I hear that if you play hard to get with cats they sleep with you. I'm all for having a cat on my lap. It's one of life's true pleasures. But there are certain intimacies I prefer to restrict to my own species.

Perhaps it's because of a trauma I suffered many years ago in my youth. I was about 29 when a friend went away for a week. In exchange for looking after her cat, she let me drive her sports car. The cat was just a young thing, a street cat my friend had taken in. Let's call her Stella. Stella had been in for all its shots, but they were waiting until after she'd gone into heat the first time to do the operation that would prevent unwanted kittens.

As it happened, Stella experienced her first estrus while she was in my care. I knew the signs well having spent some time in a place where cats were encouraged to multiply. But I had never seen a cat in heat who wasn't allowed to run out and take care of her needs. This poor kitty was in distress, yowling and writhing. I called the animal hospital and described the situation. "Is there anything I can do to make her more comfortable?"

"Well," said the young woman, "you could take a cotton swab, like a q-tip, lubricate it with something like vaseline, and stimulate her vaginal opening. That might make her more comfortable and even help it end sooner."

Did I do it? Did I create a tiny cat dildo and then manually stimulate a kitten to the point where she got what she needed?

On one side of the issue was potential humiliation. On the other side was leaving a poor creature in distress. When I have a choice like this, I have a motto: The Dwarf does the difficult thing.

Was it good for Stella? I don't know, but she seemed a bit calmer afterwards.

As for me, there's a reason that I didn't have q-tips in my house even before they turned out to be deadly.

Now I'm a Kitty Blogger

Here she is. I wasn't blowing smoke last week. I am the proud host of a famous Ottawa blog cat. Do you recognize her? It's Freya, the friendly hunting cat who shares an apartment with Megan of Asteroideapress. Megan is away looking for g-spots or something and kindly offered to let Freya stay with me for a few days.

Unlike less sophisticated cats, Freya travels in a cosy backpack rather than in an uncomfortable plastic crate.

She seems to be settling in well. I am hoping she will get along well with the rodents and other creatures who share the place with me.

Cryptic Word Cop: A chewy fruit cookie?

Or did you mean Pure Milk Chocolate Covered Mint Oreo?

* Baylinkbot is a Fig Newton of my imagination.

* No longer a fig-newton of my imagination, Our Lady of Weight Loss: Miraculous and Motivational Musings from the Patron Saint of Permanent Fat Removal - is HERE!

* No doubt a Saxon stronghold in the 10th century, the Normans built the substantial keep in the 11th century. ... In the late 20th century the castle emerged as a fig-newton of my imagination.

* Please explain or better yet show me that coydogs and lynx cats can not exist. I have ridden a mule, was that a fig-newton of my imagination? Give us just one fact Carico, just one.

* I’m sure you wish it were so, good nurse, but alas: Lanny is merely a fig newton of my imagination.