The Thomas Chronicles

With all the conspiracy theories in the world and all the conspiracies of conspiracies and counter conspiracies of conspiracies, do you, dear reader, ever get the sudden impression that there’s a long-haired white cat clicking his claws together pondering to take over the world. And if there is such a deranged feline lurking somewhere in the shadows and crevices inside the long corridors of power, and does he do this every night? Try to take over the world? However, if he does indeed succeed, WHAT WILL HE DO IF HE RUNS OUT OF MEOW MIX AND PERFUMED KITTY LITER? WILL HIS IMPERIAL KITTY WILL ANNIHILATE THE WORLD IN A FIT OF FUR??!!! HAVE YOU THOUGHT OF THAT??!!!!

Dear reader, are you pondering what I’m ponder?

No, my dear friend. Pinky and the Brain would not available for comment. I’m sure mice, even genetically altered laboratory mice with the same aspirations, will be scarce in such a world.

I was actually thinking that should such a nefarious feline horror ascend to the heights of global dominance, we must employ our superior physiology, the opposable thumb, and deny the feline mastermind from obtaining digestive medicines. He would be so overwrought with discomfort from hairballs and other maladies that he would be incapable of mounting the effort to sway the jaded, disgruntled American public to do his bidding.

Should our efforts fail, we would be plunged into an everlasting effluvium of catnip and our thumbs would forever be used in the employment of opening cans of wet cat food.

It is a fate too terrible to contemplate.

(For the record, I love my sweet little cat and I don’t think she could ever do something as horrible as that.)

Generally speaking, I like to keep my personal life out of this blog. On this one occasion though, I think I might tell you a little bit about myself without give too much away. (I know. Anonymity is a pipe dream in the cyber-universe if someone really wanted to find out who you are, but what they hay.)

So, without further ado, via Mrs. Bookworm:

Players list 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, players then tags 8 people by posting their names and makes sure they know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at the tagee’s blog.

1. I love pens. My friends keep their good pens under lock and key, buried inside their drawers, and stuffed in between the mattresses when I come by. I’m a regular klepto when it comes to pens… (”Roll the sad music! Yeah, the one with lots of strings!”) It’s a character defect I’ve just recently admitted. It’s tough, sometimes, you know. Just walking by and not taking that lovely Bic home.

2. I have a cat, a female American Tabby. She does very strange things, this cat. Every morning when I stumble out of bed and grunt at the sun drilling into my eyes on my way over to make coffee, my cat trails me into the kitchen meowing at me in ten different tones. Mew, Meow, Myyyew, Miiyahh, and so on and so forth, almost like she’s singing to me. But alas, she just wants to me pet her while she eats her dried food.

3. That brings me to coffee. I used to drink about 8 cups a day while I was in college. I’ve scaled it back some. It’s just 3 cups nowadays.

4. I recently kicked the habit of smoking. For a little over ten years, I smoked about a pack of cigarettes a day, and by the end of it, I was smoking about a pack-and-a-half. Since quiting I’ve stayed the same weight but I’ve unaccountably grew in width. Ah well. At least I can walk up a hill without gasping for air on my knees, eh?

5. I own a typewriter… and it’s not for show. I actually work on a manual Royal Aristocrat typewriter when I’m not on the keyboard blogging. In my humble opinion, there is no replacing the sound of keys jabbing at a white page. I’m sorry, the electric hum of a computer just doesn’t do it for me.

6. I’m 28 years old and I’m ethnically Vietnamese. I grew up in a strict traditional Vietnamese home but can barely speak the language anymore.

7. I was an English Literature major in college, even after I wasn’t. I was very sore at college as an institution for a long time because I was taught more Marxism than Dickens, four whole years of it, in fact. So, even while I obtained a little sheet of paper that said I went to college (kind of like a postcard), I was self-educating myself outside of it. The maxim being, “I shouldn’t let school get in the way of my education.”

8. I love movies. From the old, black and white days of Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart; to musicals like 1776, Mary Poppins and Moulin Rouge; to action movies like Die Hard, Gladiator and Fist of Legend; to dark brooding horror movies like Salem’s Lot (the Rob Lowe version), the Omen and In the Mouth of Madness.

I think I’ll let whoever I was going to tag off the hook…

Do you ever sit and wonder sometimes how when you’re young (grade school, that is) time seems to stretch endlessly before you. Minutes and hours seemed to go on like Chinese water torture; eons between moves. You used to stare vacuously at the second hand of a clock. Drip. Tick. Drip. Perhaps back at that blissfully benighted age, as that clock hypnotizes you, you started to play with your drool, carefully yo-yoing from the side of you mouth. If time was a horse, you’d want to spur his sides and kick his rump into gear (Though I actually wouldn’t recommend you do the latter. Horses have a wicked snap kick, though I’d have to say it is preferable over an Amazon woman kicking you with four inch high heels…)

Anyway, I was thinking about how nowadays, time seems run like a mad pooch on mescaline and with less brains. On Monday morning, I wake up, shower, force down some breakfast and drive a rapid 30 miles per hour on the freeway towards work. (”Hey, get outta my way, Turdball!” Ahem. Actually, most of all that verbosity occurs somewhere between my ears…) I arrive at work, turn on my computer, and stare at the monitor for a few hours. Then I go home.

Rinse, repeat, spit.

Rinse, repeat, spit. And so on and so forth.

Then one morning a fellow co-worker who’s also plugged into the Matrix says to me, either at my cubicle or inside the elevator,

“Damn, did you know it’s Friday?”

“Naw, really?” I said. “I hadn’t heard.”

“Fuck yeah it is,” says my enthusiastic colleague. “Next thing you know it’ll be winter and 2008 and then I’ll be sitting my rosy ass in an old folks home. How’d you like that?”

“Not very.”

(Now don’t get me wrong here. I love my job despite its occasional monotony. It gives me time to ponder the imponderable. Fathom the Unfathomable. Unlock the mysteries of EXISTENCE ITSELF! Well… not really. I just kind of sit there writing things when I’m bored. But it’s worth it.)

But back to time. I occasionally get the impression God is pressing the fast-forward button, and suddenly we feel as though our lives are flashing across our eyes… because it is.

Or in the immortal words of that noted sage Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

This has become something of a motto for me… at least with my friends since they’re all taller than me.

Janet… Janet…

Sitting around the house this past weekend, my friends proposed we watch a very unlikely movie… The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had never seen this showcase of dark, cinematic cracked humor, and I never intended to until Sunday when it was hot and there wasn’t a helluva a lot to do.

And I was right… It was more than I bargained for.

What began as a very large mouth with some very red lipstick singing a bizarre song in a quasi-male voice became even more outrageous as the movie progressed. The main character in this dark, sexually ambiguous comedy is Frank played rather brilliantly by Tim Curry.

But aside from the shock of men singing in five-inch heels, black pantyhose and corsets (Frank: [singing] I’m just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual Transylvania!) …

… aside from the curious dance maneuvers (All: You bring your knees in tight! But it’s the pelvic thrust / That really drives you insane / Let’s do the time warp again!) …

… aside from scenery that somehow mashed Frankenstein’s castle into the bright, blinding colors of the 1970’s…

… aside from the intimation of lasciviousness in the dialog (Janet: [singing] Touch-a touch-a touch-a touch me / I wanna be dirty! Chill me, thrill me, fulfill me / Creature of the night!) …

But aside from all these bizarre displays traversing my television screen in lace and clicking stilettos, nothing was more shocking, nothing more revealing, than seeing Susan Sarandon.

She looked charming, beautiful… she looked… human!

The images of her on my television collided with my mental image of her as she looked now. I almost short circuited at the incongruity.

How you go from that all-American, “sugar & spice” girl to that screaming harpie I recently saw braying in front of the Washington Memorial just boggled my imagination. Of this I was totally unprepared.

It also made me wonder. How would I have faired in that mutual admiration society that is Hollywood? Having people figuratively licking one’s toes for decades is not conducive to sanity, and neither does surrounding oneself with decadence and with every possible want. How does anyone in Hollywood avoid such a fate is beyond me…

As they sang in the movie: “It’s just a jump to the left.”

Janet…

In other related news, Britney Spears’ mother’s friend’s sister’s cousin’s step-brother’s daughter’s pet dog released a statement by the neighborhood fire-hydrant this afternoon that dared to comment on her newly lawn-mowered hairstyle.

Witnesses to the scene absconded the area after the said pet poodle threatened to make further statements.

Britney Spears wasn’t available for comment.

And now for news from Iraq…

(Roll Video Clip:

(Close up shot: Large explosions rip across the TV as a soldier stands unperturbed, impassively staring into the camera. The timid reporter hits the deck and wails and gnashes his teeth in his blue Kevlar jumpsuit. Everything wobbles like a chiwawa on speed.)

Reporter: What’s happening? Is it a Civil War? Are the militias going outta control? What’s goin’ on?

Soldier: Sir, we’re kickin’ the sh*t outta ‘em, sir.

Reporter: Huh? But the explosions?!!

Soldiers: Tha’s our ordnance, sir. F**ked ‘em real good tha’ time, sir.

Reporter: Is that an official term?

Soldier: No, sir. It’s the technical term.

(Mid-shot: Soldier hoists the cringing reporter from the pavement and waves to the Apache helicopter pilot as he passes overhead.)

*** Endit *** )

Back to Britney Spears and her hair malfunction…

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