Tag: cat

RIP Smokey

“I bite my tongue at you.”

Our old gray cat finally passed away last night after suffering a stroke. Kinda saw it coming, as she’d been acting abnormally recently – a bit more clingy, not eating as much, not wanting to go outside, crouching with her head held over her water bowl. Then yesterday her tail and hind legs wouldn’t work and she slowly drifted off.

Here she is in 2009, one of the few “Cat Posts” we’ve shown here:

Bunkessa and Bunkarina had adopted Smokey as a stray. She needed very little training, suggesting that she’d been abandoned by a previous owner. She loved the missus and the kids, but couldn’t stand me, at least for the first few years we had her.

Smokey knew to go outdoors to do her business and would paw the frame of the screen door to tell us. She figured out how to “knock” at the front screen door by pulling on it and letting it bang shut when she wanted to come back in. She’d bring us “presents” occasionally, including a live terrified mouse that she dropped on the living room floor.

RIP Smokey 1995(?) – 2012

Saturday Matinee – Country Blues Edition, With Furry Lewis, Belton Sutherland, and Taj Mahal Hosts A Documentary

“If you want to go to heaven when you D.I.E.,
Put on your collar and a T.I.E.
If you wanna scare a rabbit out an L.O.G.,
Just make a little sound like a D.O.G.”

That’s Furry Lewis playing slide on “Kassie Jones,” a song he recorded in 1927. The video is from 1968. A few years later Joni Mitchell met with him and recorded “Furry Sings The Blues” in tribute.

Lewis despised Mitchell’s song and demanded she pay him royalties. “She shouldn’t have used my name in no way, shape, form or faction without consultin’ me ’bout it first. The woman came over here and I treated her right, just like I does everybody that comes over. She wanted to hear ’bout the old days, said it was for her own personal self, and I told it to her like it was, gave her straight oil from the can.”

Belton Sutherland was a Mississipi Delta bluesman. There is no Wiki article for him and little other information about him on the internest. There’s no entry for him in Lawrence Cohn’s “Nothing But The Blues” either. Sutherland was filmed in 1978 by Alan Lomax at Maxwell’s Farm, near Canton Mississippi.

A story about Lomax’ film “American Patchwork” includes one mention:

“…Lomax rounded up folks even he hadn’t heard of, like Mississippi bluesman Belton Sutherland–a master musician who appeared during Lomax’s session with another singer and asked to ‘try’ the guitar.”

That’s a great documentary about Country Blues, hosted by the great Henry Saint Clair Fredericks.

For those of you who find the rough roots of The Blues too tough to listen to, here’s a a WTF moment for a cat instead.

Have a great weekend folks, and we’ll be back tomorrow with more odd funnies.

Maaaaaaaarketing

[Found here.]

The .Gif Friday Post No.243 – Dogmail + Cat Love + Pwnage

[Found here, here and here, with a bonus just because it’s awesome.]

The .Gif Friday Post No.240 – Pondering Sloth, Godzilla Madhouse & Catbox WTF

[Found here, here and here.]

We modified all three animations. We don’t take credit for resizing, only for looping/reversing/stitching and other modifications, and we link to the sources where we found them.

Catbox Triptych

Definitely NOT a Skogkatt.

[Found here.]

MoonCat Walking

For some, it’s just a big sandbox in the sky.

[Found here.]

The .Gif Friday Post No.239 – Cat Snort, GTFO Cat & Shadow Cats

[Found here and here. Top one courtesy of  Mrmacs, and dude, that was just disturbing.]

Saturday Matinee – Cat Fail Sail, Mechanical Principles, & Tom Waits

[Tip ‘o the tarboosh to Mrmacs who found it here and insisted that we post it.]

“Mechanical Principles” – Simple gear actions from 1930 by Ralph Steiner, set to classical music. From the UToobage comments:

Some of the mechanisms featured:
0:16 Positive displacement pump
0:26 Four-stroke engine piston;
0:50 Simple steam engines or pumps;
2:00 Steam engine reversing gear as on ships;
3:10 Differential gear;
4:05 Worm gear;
4:10 Archimedes screw;
5:22 Geneva gear;
5:32 Pawl and ratchet;
5:55 Grasshopper escapement;
7:15 Scotch yokes;
8:07 Positive displacement pump (same as 0:16);
9:29 Wheel and disc integrator used in analog computers;
9:54 Possibly a turbine.

The only other soundtrack I can think of that might go along with that vid would be something by this guy:

Tom Waits’ Private Listening Party. I’m there if you need to get in touch with me. Have a great weekend, be back here tomorrow.

ArCATecture

[More here.]