2011.11.02 — The Cat & the Camel - Fushigi*

Well, this is an odd fushigi blog, and may not even properly be one. But it amused me enough to write it out. So, right or wrong, one of the two beginnings began with my flipping to CNN's latest celebrity driven news show, Erin Burnett OutFront.

I flipped to it after it had already begun as a diversion from advertising boredom on the show I was watching and out of curiosity about how this 'new' show would approach the news. (Unfortunately it is old CNN because it suffers from CNN's typical surplus of high energy concision that delimits discussion and argument.)

Anyway, in a kind of amusing warning against my watching it, I managed to catch a 'fluff' piece on camel racing. (I just checked her CNN-blog link, above and it wasn't listed in the news items there.)

However you can see her and camels via her Facebook page.

As a fluff piece, it was quite elaborate, with a caricature of the Seabiscuit movie trailer complete with Burnett leading a camel to the race track. Silly, who cares — and it didn't really convince me that the show is likely to be worth watching. [Although I stumbled into something interesting when I poked around on the web for it. I found an earlier piece by Burnett on Australia's camel population problem — a problem the authorities want to help solve by killing 6,000 of them.]

Later that night — 10:30ish or so — as I was shutting down the computer I took off my headphones and heard my wife's Wives of New York screaming about riding camels.

Completely trivial, but completely weird.

What perhaps makes the entire day of near fushigis more completely amusing is how cats did something similar as camels on that same day.

Earlier that evening, as part of a Haiku game in Goodreads, I wound up writing two cat related poems.

Because of the cats
so I've heard; they primp and preen
before they are seen.
           Nov 01, 2011 05:17pm

The jellicle cat

sat. But with a butt he left
to flip, flop and fly.
           Nov 01, 2011 07:56pm

Nothing special here — and not particularly good Haiku, but amusing in the context of the poetical conceit they are following in the game (but not shown here). Later that evening when I re-commenced reading The Sea by John Banville the first paragraph in there was a cat reference.

When I came back to the computer with the book, I was annoyed at myself for not having marked the page. So I began flipping to find it. Then I started to laugh because iTunes, which was moving through my three Laurie Anderson CD's, filled my ears with the lyrics of 'Beautiful Pea Green Boat' from her album Bright Read:

…
The owl and the pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat.
They took some honey and lots of money
Wrapped in a five pound note.
The owl looked up to the stars above
And sang to a small guitar.
O lovely pussy! pussy my love!
What a wonderful pussy you are.
…

Shortly thereafter I found the passage:

…All creatures have their habits. Now from the other side of the garden a neighbour's piebald cat comes creeping, soft-stepping pard (p32).

Now, if I wanted to be totally obnoxious, I could stretch back and add that I recently (October 25th) updated for the Goodreads Short Story Group an old cat story called Bar Cat.

Oh! If I want to extend the fushigi obnoxiousness to the max, I could add that on November 1st I began to write my blog-book review of Ondaatje's The Cat's Table, which I am 'supposed' to be writing and finishing now, instead of poking around in stupid near fushigi-like things.