Here is where you will learn what I want to tell you when I can not think of anything else to write in the full diary.  Sorry, no exciting info here, just little day to day tidbits as to why I am not writing in the full diary.  I will try to add a little quote or pose a question or something each day... feel free to ignore me or throw things at me, it will be like high school all over again.  Just kidding, like me and mine ever been to no learnin place wit da books and edukashun...

September 9, 2004 7:25pm-----  Nothing really doing today... been sick and no don't worry, it's just a little sinus stuff gathered with some stomach stuff that feels like someone ran over me with a semi with its wheels wrapped in that pop bubble wrap shipping stuff.  Anyway, not much to say, just that I am starting out this real diary instead of the psuedo journal-story thing because I did not feel like writing in it and sometimes I do just want to get my thoughts on paper/screen.  Maybe I just wanna be like that guy Chris on Northern Exposure (great show, 1st season on DVD is great), you know the guy with the radio show, that gives out little pieces of wisdom.  I never want to be so pompus as to think I was wise, but I have read some wise people and like to think that means something...  So, just remember, the great philosopher Satre once said, "If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically."

September 13, 2004 5:26pm

Okay, so I have not written much lately and not for lack of anything to write, just lack of a computer... The one at home is a piece of ... and well, I do not always have the time at work.  Nothing really to regal you with much, but I will tell a little story that I promised to tell someone, but could not and while it may enter in the diary someday...  I just want to get it out of the way now 'cause I do not want to interrupt the diary for this minor (ehem?) story...

The Crazy Lawnmower Guy

So my roomates and I for the first year we lived in our house had no lawnmower.  Well, we held out for as far as we could until the yard became an amazon wasteland and then opted for a big mistake.  I am sure that in your neighborhood, as in ours, there is one guy who makes his unprofessional living by doing yardwork.  For twelve dollars he would do the front yard of our house, as he told my roomate.  The guy looked a little suspicious, and I disagreed, buy my roomate, the trusting Seamus, decided the lawn needed a shave.  So, he paid the guy.  Then he paid him a second time.  Then a third.  The guy did do a good job, I will admit, but came around cutting the lawn more than he really needed to, so my roomate started to tell him that, no, we did not need his services, maybe next week.  Then the night came where "lawnmower guy" became "crazy lawnmower guy".  I am sitting home, alone, late one Friday (? maybe Saturday) night. A knock comes on the door.  I open it and there is lawnmower guy, standing with no shirt on. 

"hey" says I. 

"hey, man, could you help me out a little, man?" says he. 

"Um, what'd you need?" 

"Man, my old lady went nuts, and I need a little bit of cash, can you help me?" (Let it be known now that I have had no contact with lawnmower guy.) 

"Sorry man," says I, " I don't have much to give." 

"Dat's okay, hey, is my friend here?" (He means Seamus, and by friend, he means other guy who has given me money before.)  

I hesitate, 'cause this is certainly an odd duck and I don't want him to know I am alone.  "No, man, he'll be back in an hour."  

"Damn, hey, you got a shirt, dude?  See my old lady went nuts and cut me," he turns to show me an impressive flesh wound on his back, "and then she threw me out.  So can I borrow a shirt or somthing?"  Again, I hesistate for obvious reasons. 

"Hold on," I say.  I close the door and throw the deadbolt and stop to assess the situation.  Nuts old lady, bleeding man on my porch, me home alone.  Time to get crazy lawnmower guy away.  But never let it be said that I am not a benevolent soul.  I walk to my room and find an old white t-shirt and walk back to the door.  I hand it to him and wish him luck and close the door, once more drawing the deadbolt.  He never said a word, but left, and I sat with one of Seamus's swords till reinforcements arrived.

I wish that was the end of our encounters, but no.  Several times in the next few weeks he would stop by, knock on the door, and we would wait until he got the message and went away.  We never paid him to mow the yard ever again.  Let me stress this.  WE NEVER PAID HIM TO MOW THE YARD EVER AGAIN.  But that did not deter him.

About six weeks after the flesh wound incident, he came back.  At night.  On the weekend.  When I was alone.  With is lawnmower. And mowed a large ten by twenty square of our front lawn.  AT TEN O'CLOCK AT NIGHT.   He never knocked on the door.  He never said anything to me.  He never even let it on like he was doing anything out of the ordinary, he just mowed a strange patch in the lawn and walked away.  I know this because I was sitting reading when the mower cranked on.  I thought it was the neighbors, getting in a little night landscaping, until the sound went directly under my window.  Then I grabbed a sword and watched him for the rest of the time he was out there, about ten minutes, then sat with the sword for the rest of the night. My roomates were as perplexed as I was. 

The crazy lawnmower guy still comes by occasionally, but we ignore his knocking and he goes away.  He has not followed his nocturnal mowing with a repeat performance or asked for anymore clothing.  Maybe he just did not like my shirt, I dunno.      The end.

Well, that's the story I promised I would tell somebody when I got the chance, so there you have it.  None of it is embellished or made up, it is pure nonfiction.  I do not think I would have the courage to make that kinda junk up...

September 14, 2004 5:39pm------  Well, Hurricane Ivan is coming to town and seems like the rest of the coast is coming with it.  I made the mistake of trying to go to Wallyworld on my lunch break and never even got through the door.  It took me about 20 minutes to get there down the major highway, 2 seconds so sum up that there was no way that I could get in the door much less find a parking space (like there is anything left, probably the only thing they have are major appliances and candy corn), and then another 35 minutes down the highway so clogged the term "constipated" pales at its might.  Anyway, that's all for my ranting and moaning, sorry.  Nothing much else happening, and at least for posterity I had to put some notes down for Hurricane Ivan.  And I may get off work for a few days, so this will be the last time you will hear from me, my adoring fans.  Or at least those of you who are reading this to induce vomiting after swallowing some kind of poison.  Safty tip:  you should call the poison control number and go to the hospital anyway, vomitting can cause permanent damage to your esophogas.  Wow, I managed to sneak in vomiting and the word constipation in the same paragraph...  My mom's really proud.

September 18, 2004  1:24pm ----   So, the "hurricane" that closed down the town is finally over.  No tree really fell in my neighborhood, but if you added up all the wood and leaves scattered around my yard, you could Frankenstein yourself a tree.  Not that I am not gratefull or anything, I could have been one of the evacuated mass that surged up during the beginning of the week and is slowly trickling down now.  Not really anything to talk about, no good stories (some hurricane, the only thing to come out of it was a sad improptu hurricane party and some time off work, not that I am complaining about either).  Sorry, no real additions to the diary, either, I just cannot seem to get myself excited about my past right now...  Don't fret though, all it will take is one little trip down nostalgic lane and I will be back to continue the adventures of my made up past...

September 21, 2004 5:49pm-----   Wow, it seems I am writing more in this journal now than I have been in the diary...  well, it is my website and I am gonna continue writing whereever I want...  Until I decide to stop telling the truth and start getting real, the real world:  Hattiesburg...  (Key up some country guy singing "True storrryy")  I just realized that made no sense because the Diary is all made up, loosely-based stories while the Journal is the truth, the ramblings...  Well that proves it, I am crazy.  And now I will tell you a little story. A true storryy, if you will.

In late February, 2002, I went to my long time friend Krusty's house (no this is not a diary story, I just needed to change his name so he cannot sue me... like he could try) to escape the monotany of visiting the folks and to get a cigarette.  Krusty still lives in my hometown, about ten or twelve blocks from my parent's house.  So I pull up to his house and soak in the aura that is Krusty, a large white guy with a bald head standing in sweats, a cigarette hanging from his lip and a dim look of concentration on his face as he prepares to throw a rock at a cat slinking towards his porch.  My car scared it away, and he tossed aside the rock and sat down on the porch swing.

"Damn cats are breeding like rabbits, man,"  he said, "gonna have to start beat'em away with sticks here soon."  I went to sit down in the busted green hulk of an armchair centering the porch, but Krusty shied me away.  "Not there, damn cat had a litter there last week.  She's the only one come out and that's to pull out some bones of a rat she musta found in the middle of the night."

The rest of the conversation was a blur, lost from my mind in the river that is lost conversation.  Probably had something to do with movies, video games or a news report.  It ended for me when I saw a little black furball came climbing out of the chair.  Well, I say climbing, but it was a little more than a crawl, but resembled a mountain climber going hand over hand, pulling himself upward.  From head to toe, the little thing pulsed with a life that, not to sound too dramatic, wanted to live more than any other thing I had ever seen not in danger.  Then the little kitten raised its head towards me, the eyelids still closed and blind, and opened his pink mouth and meowed.  I was in love. 

A moment later there was a chorus of meows from deep inside the chair, and then Momma Cat came climbing out, grabbed her baby in her mouth, and went back into the chair. 

 I looked up to Krusty and said, "Make sure the black one stays here, I want it."  I thought Krusty would have a heart attack.

"Thank God," he said, "I'm tired of these cats ending up dead in the street."

So, two months later, when the tribe of kittens had vacated the chair in favor of the yard, I came to take the little black one away.  It was time to take him now before he got to old to house train, but just old enough to eat solid food.  In fact, a haunch of a rabbit was lying in the yard.  Their mother had killed it to feed them, not trusting the humans she allowed to live near them.  I could tell that this would be difficult.

I had made the trip to visit the little kitten a few times before, and was amazed at his tenacity to beat up his brothers and sisters despite being much smaller than them.  One example, King of the Matress.  Krusty had a matress on his porch leaning on the wall.   The kittens would scale the matress, the equivelent of a two story building, and then battle until only one was left on the top.  The winner would catch his/her breath as the others would climb to the top to start all over again.  The black one was generally, not always, but generally on top. 

I waited until it looked like the kittens were slowing down, not being so hostile, then picked up the little black one.  I could fit him in the palm of my hand and almost close it he was so little.  Then I got in my car and drove the thirty miles home.  About half way there, he started squirming, trying to break free, and generally biting the shit out of me.  I tried to pet him, calm him, and nothing worked.  I let him sit in the seat next to me, but I was afraid of slamming on the brakes and him flying off.  The the radio started getting static.  I flipped through the channels in vain to have something cover up the sound of this kitten.  Then I hit on PRM, playing an all night Bach concertos.  I heard Bach and nothing else.  Looking down in my lap, I was the little guy had curled up and fallen asleep.  I just smiled.  It still makes me smile. 

Well, I got him home to the two bedroom apartment I was living in and knocked on my neighbors door.  My neighbor, a lover of animals, quickly let me in and began fawning over the kitten.  "So what you gonna name it?" he asked.  I had no idea.  I had thought of Bach, because of the calming influence that the composer seemed to have on this black little kitten, but I had no idea.  "Well," said my neighbor, "He looks like a little dark god.  Something from mythology, maybe?"  So we broke out a book on Greek and Roman gods and I found Bacchus, the god of wine and delight.  It fit for several reasons.  One, the name I had originally concocted, Bach, could be used as a nickname for my mother.  Everyone else would know Bacchus because of my friends and my appitite for... um... well drunkeness.  It was good to have a mascot.

So I took my little wild kitten to my apartment to have a look around.  He tentatively walked around everywhere and smelled everything, as cats do.  Then he found my room and fell asleep at the foot of the bed.  He would choose my room, the room I least wanted him to be in because I am allergic to him slightly.  But he looked so cute.  I reached down to pet him, but in doing so dropped a book that was lying on bed.  He jumped hissed, slashed my outstretched hand with one impressive set of claws and darted under the bed, where he would stay, hissing at me if I came within a three foot area of the bed.  I had to jump to get into bed that night.  In the morning, though, all was well.  He must have gotten cold or lonely in the night because I found him tucked into my side sleeping. 

I had the day off, so we hung out and found where his food (kitchen), litter box (bathroom), and favorite place to hide from me (under the bed, sink, behind couch, and in the fridge. don't ask) was.  He was skittish at first but his curiosity and need to play overmatched his mistrust.  It was during this first day I learned how smart Bacchus was.  Enter the dangling string.  For a kitten, I believe dangling string to be the height of modern civilization.  Not for Bacchus, though.  I dangled the string and he batted it a little and chewed on it, then he sat down staring at it.  Then he stared at me. Back to the string.  Back to me.  Then to my hand.  Then to me.  Then he attacked my hand.  When I say attacked, I do not mean he weakly.  He was a flurry of claws and teeth.  I yelled.  Like a little girl lost in K-mart.  I flung my hand back, knocking him four feet across the floor into the kitchen where he skidded into the cabinets.  I looked at my hand and the little rivets of blood pinpocking them and then back to Bacchus.  He was in the kitchen, standing up and then shaking his head.  He shook his head.  Then he cam bounding back into the living room, happily bouncing and looking to play some more.  I then remembered this as the cat who used to climb six feet up a matress to fight and then fall six feet off only to go again.  I had a little handful, especially one who could recognise not the string as his quarry, but the hand that fed him.  I still sport scars from his fist seven months of life. 

The next day I had to work.  He had come to enjoy living in my bedroom and so I closed him in there with food while I was gone, so he would not get into trouble.  When I came back later that night, he was asleep.  On the bed.  Spreadeagle on his back.  I have never seen a cat sleep like that, but he did, often.  "Comfy?" I asked.  He started up and walked to his food dish, which was empty, and looked up at me.  I got this look alot and he grew a lot faster than he would have because of it.  He never got to be a lazy housecat though.

September 22, 2004 4:13pm-------  Fastforward about three months and I got another example about how smart my little devil was. Walking out of the bathroom, I came into the kitchen and spied my little kitten, grown a bit but still small enough for me to wrap my fist around, perched on the countertop feasting on my chicken pasta that I had just laid out to cool. Now, let us discuss logistics. You say, "but cats can jump really high". Yes, well they can. I agree. But this cat (3-4 inches high)just the other day had trouble climbing onto the couch (10 to 20 inches high) and only achieved that by digging his claws into the fabric for leverage and pulling hand over hand (paw over paw, whatever). The counter was a full three feet (36 inches) high. To counter the pure luck, he did this six times before I found his secret. Now, either way one looks at this, my cat is no slouch in the brains.
Senerio #1: The cat can jump on the kitchen counter by way of the floor. This means that he has been fooling me about struggling up the side of the couch for well over a month. This takes a little bit of ingenuity on his part and a fair amount of planning ahead.
Senerio #2: The cat cannot jump on the kitchen counter and has been making his way up their by extraordinary means. This means my cat has either befriended the ghost or my cat has summoned something from the depths of the deep demensions. I do not think that something would be benevolent toward Bacchus, simply because this deflates the intelligent theory. And anyway, everyone knows that ghosts are stupid and can be controlled.
Senerio #3: The cat has fashioned himself a way to climb onto the counter by using normal household objects reached from the floor, Macguyver style. Turns out this was the winner.  My cat was doing hundreds of small jumps across furniture to reach the kitchen counter, where nine times out of ten nothing was there.  This was methodical, thought out, and well executed often far before the bait (me) had figured out plans were in motion.  This was Feline Ingenuity in the First Degree.  I procecuted by throwing him off the counter and growling, something I did often to him to make him know I was not playing this time. 
Sept. 23, 2004 12:49pm-------  So, we move forward again.  About two months.  Bacchus escapes his second story two bedroom cage.  And is terrified.  Some friends of mine were out on the balcony sitting and having a beer when I saw the door open.  Someone had left it open when getting a beer or going to the bathroom and Bacchus had jumped at the oportunity.  That and he was a social cat who liked to be petted and felt a little left out, so out he came.  Only thing was that there was a thunderstorm brewing.  The rain had not started pooring, yet, but as every Southerner knows, you do not need rain to have thunder.  Bacchus had run out and down the landing in front of my neighbor's door.  My neighbor had come out and was blocking his way from that end.  He was hiding under some junk we had let pile up, and was not coming out without me dragging him, and that left a wide open door for him to run for the great wild.  The great wild had other plans, though.  A large strike of lightning hit less than a mile away and was followed by a boom that rang my ears and shook the landing.  I never saw the cat move.  It was there one moment, in my apartment the next.  He had heard thunder before from inside the apartment, but never raw and open like that.  So, to teach him a lesson about going outside from then until I moved out of that apartment, I would take him outside only when it was thundering and lightning.  This subtle bit of psychology might seem mean, but I lived in a high traffic neighborhood.  If he ran out, he would probably be run over.

28 September 2004 5:55pm-------  The last line makes a subtle point now.  After a year and a half of apartment dwelling, in which time two roomates had come (and in the case of one, gone), we decided we needed more room.  Well, I decided.  The cat and indeed my roomate, Seamus, did not know much of the outside world as they both tended to spend most of the day sleeping and neither worked, but that is another story.  So we got another roomate and moved into a house clear across seven or eight blocks, give or take a block or two.  Now Bacchus was permitted to go outside, to bask in the sunshine, chase birds and squirrels, and hide under the back porch and not come out so I had to squeeze in there to get him and let him sleep outside anytime he did not come when I called from there on out.  And we were happy. 

Then came the day I most dreaded.  Bacchus found other cats.  Seamus and I were sitting out on the back porch one day and I looked up from my book to see Bacchus stalking something in the back yard.  I tapped Seamus and we both watched as a beautiful long haired, black and white persian (that breed may not have that color, but hey, right your own story) slinked out of the bushes toward Bacchus and sat down.  Quite defiantly.  You could just hear the, "What are you doing in my yard?" said the huffy little bitch.  (So it seemed at the time, but history is written by the winners, so we continue...)  Bacchus put his head down and laid on the ground.  Had I been more well versed in catonize (cat speak, whatever), I may have seen what was coming, but all I could think was that his brutal little bastard that had put scars and scratches on me for the past year and a half was now cowering in the grass.  What a dissappointment. 

Then the persian moved a little closer, taking one small step.  Seamus smiled and said, "Ah, Bacchus got himself a little frien---" His words were chopped in half by a black streak that had once been Bacchus flying three feet at the persian.  In a rage, Bacchus savegly kicked that cat's ass.  It all took about a second.  The cat now cowered, visibly shaking.  I don't think he was expecting that from a little black fuzz ball with a pink color (yeah, yeah, the flea collar he wore was pink 'cause it was on sale and I bought a bunch.  He never seemed to mind).  So we watched Bacchus back that cat out of our yard and a half a block down the alley behind our house.  That was the only real fight I ever saw him have, but he must have been frequent at them because he always had little cuts on him.  And no animal would come within ten feet of our yard.  I once saw a cat walking from the neighbor's yard stop at our property and move around the entire perimeter before getting back to the spot where his path would have continued had it not been interupted by the no man's land that was Bacchus's territory.  My baby could kick your baby's ass.

Months past.  Bacchus made it through his first real winter, rushing to the front door when he saw my car pull up, knowing I would let him in out of the cold night.  One night in particular I stopped at a store coming home from work and was a little late.  He must have been pissed at me, or just worried in general, because as I pulled into the driveway, he jumped on the hood of my still moving car.  I slammed on the brakes, uttering a few curses, and saw him slide to the end of the hood, get up and lay down on the hot metal.  I got out, gathered him in my arms and we went inside. 

There are many more stories about Bacchus discovering the world.  His discovery of a way to get on the roof was second only to his undiscovery of how to get off it.  I heard him meowing from inside, and went to the front door to let him in.  When I opened the door, I could hear him, but not see him.  Then I looked up and saw his little head leaning over the gutter.  He had probably been up there all night.  He learned the layout of the house quickly and found a few ways to get in and out when he wanted.  I only really discovered one, but never minded the others.  His intelligence grew.   I could tell him to meet my out back and by the time I walked through the house he would be on the back porch waiting for me.  As I said, there are many more tales about Bacchus, but I realize now that this is really not about Bacchus.  It is about me coming to terms with losing the only thing that really ever made me feel responsible.  I loved my cat and will tell his last story so I can put the self pity parade to an end.

My parents pick me up to eat with them each Sunday (just about).  A hurricane (Ivan) had just come through a few days before, so I was out in the front yard picking up fallen limbs.  I noticed Bacchus was nowhere around, but that had not been unusual lately.  He had started wandering more as the weather got worse.  Still, I called out to him.  Nothing.  I called again, and again, but in the end just shrugged and went about my buisness.  My parents came and I sat through the usual "How was your week, etc., etc." chit chat as we headed for my sister's apartment.  Two streets down I saw him.  A black furball stretched out on the side of the road.  My father saw him to, both of us recognising my dead cat with the pink collar.  My mother asked what was wrong and all I could say was "my cat is dead, on the road."  My father asked if I wanted to turn back, but I could see no use in it.  My cat was dead, and when I went to get him, I would do it alone.  Needless to say, I was in no mood to eat or talk, but I got through the dinner anyway.  Returning back to the house, I had a cigarrete and cried for my cat.  Then I threw up at the thought of what I was about to do.  I cleaned myself up and walked into the garage, time slowing down to a crawl.  Then there I was, two blocks down the road holding a shovel and a garbage bag staring down at the body of Bacchus.  He was stretched out, no visible wounds or blood.  It was like he just laid down and died.  His eyes were open, but glazed over.  I bent down and there was no smell, or none that I remember.  A car passed and I looked up.  A woman was looking down at me, a look of disgust on her face.  I flipped her off.  I picked him up by that stuipid pink collar and put him in the trash bag.  He was so heavy, much heavier than the 18 pounds the vet had put him at.  Time moved again, and I was digging.  Behind my house we had dug a little garden earlier in the summer.  All of it had grown, but none of it produced and it was just a plot of dirt now.  I dug a hole two feet by one foot by one foot.  I dug too fast and should have used gloves, as I got wound that cut deep and bled for the next two days.  Then I placed my cat in his garbage bag into the whole and covered it with dirt and several heavy stones as a marker.  The stones and a small wooden stake mark where my cat rests.  Two days later, I guess word had gotten out in the animal community because all manner of beasts, from birds to squirrels to cats, could be seen in my yard.  One less predetor in the jungle.

I have been asked if I am going to get a new cat.  I have been offered a cute little kitten.  I cannot even imagine having another cat right now because Bacchus is still with me. I have all the habits that I had when he was alive.  It has been over a week now and I still look for him when I pull in the driveway, close doors so he can not get in my room, and feel a pull to shout for him to come in around ten o'clock at night.  I still feel like I have a cat and feel that it would be kinda wrong to impose on a new animal rules for the old one.  Or it could be that I do not want to go through training a new cat.  Or it could be that I do not want something else that will die on me.  Or it could be that I just miss my cat and do not want to replace him like he was a lightbulb.  Whatever the reason, I dedicate this to my baby, my cat, Bacchus.  Thanks for putting up with me for writing this, but hey, I think I needed to.