Remove Cat Before Flying

Just saw this video on Mastodon and had to share...

Video is of a small open-air two-seat plane, with the camera pointed at the pilot and passenger. You can see a portion of the left side wing (left from the pilot's point of view). The plane takes off, and shortly after they are in the air, a cat appears on the wing, crawling out from some hiding spot it had found to sleep in. It hangs onto the inside edge of the wing, looking grumpily at the humans. The pilot spots it and does a double-take. The cat meows into the void. The pilot quickly lowers the speed of the aircraft and turns it around to land while the passenger is oblivious to the cat for awhile. The cat shakes itself, clearly not enjoying the ride. As they are landing, the passenger spots the cat, who is glaring at the humans who interrupted its nap. After landing, the pilot quickly unbelts himself and jumps up to assist the cat out of the plane. Once the cat is certain it's safe, it jumps away from the pilot and passenger. Video was posted by romain jantot on YouTube Jun 21, 2015 with the following notes:

A standard flight until... i still don't know if it got in after the pre flight check or if i missed it.
The cat is doing well, she is still our mascot.

Edit :
Ok some details :
- the cat was INSIDE the wing, not on it. she was actually pretty safe in there, the danger was if she wanted to get down to reach us..
- i was the pilote, the woman was on her first flight as a passenger. she smile and giggle a lot, well because that's what flying does to people sometime.
-i told her not to reach for the cat. i told her not to move at all actually. i trusted the cat to not move if we didn't try to reach for her.
-you can see me smile shortly before landing. I was pretty assured by then that the cat wouldn't move and there was a relieve of tension; and the radio exchange with the control tower was kinda hilarious, i couldn't contain a smile.
-cat is a female.
-the flight was normally 20minutes long

The Legend of Jorts and Jean

This is not my content. I am preserving it here ONLY so I can get at it later when I need a laugh.

"Pam is NOT to apply margarine to any of her coworkers."

Inkwell and the Sky Raisin

As anyone who has bothered to read this blog for any length of time knows, my husband and I are owned by a black cat named Inkwell. These are some of his recent adventures, mostly from Facebook and a few of his "Inkwell Sings the Blues" from his Twitter Feed.

This morning I woke up late, and my husband was already off running errands. I looked around the house for Inkwell, fearing he might have somehow gotten outside (he's very much an indoor cat). I went from room to room looking for him, and when I opened the door to the garage, a fly (aka Sky Raisin) flew into the house. Eventually I found Inkwell by shaking his treats. He casually wandered out from wherever he was hiding to get his reward for being a cat from his mommy.

A half an hour later, he noticed the fly.

I watched as Inkwell stalked it around the house, and when it flew upstairs, Inkwell stood on the landing and leaped into the air every time it passed by. It was quite spectacular from where I was sitting. He also chittered at it and flung insults that probably couldn't be repeated in human language without censoring. For Inkwell, it was great.

Late Thursday night a massive thunderstorm passed overhead. The sky rumbled for well over an hour, grumbling and rolling. The power blinked out once. I was up late, as has been my habit recently, and was sitting in my chair as the thunder shook the house. Inkwell finally came into my room and insisted on sitting on my lap. Every time there was a peal of thunder, his ears twitched back. He huddled on my lap for a good half hour before he finally felt safe enough to get back to whatever cat duties there are at 11 pm.

Inkwell is not fond of me staying up until 3 or 4 am then sleeping in until his first kibble feeding time at 10 am. On Tuesday morning he was upset that I was up at 9:30 and not feeding him. When I finally did go downstairs to feed him, he was very disapproving that I was putting his kibble into the egg-cersizer instead of just giving it to him in a bowl. He sat glaring at me with his tail twitching as I set the egg down...

...when he suddenly jumped about a foot into the air, twisting as he did so to look behind him.

I thought for a moment that he might have been bitten by a bug or something, but then I realized he had been sitting on the vent and the AC had just turned on.

He glared at me again, as if it was entirely my fault, then started batting his egg around to get his kibble. I tried really hard to not laugh, but I fear I may have offended the fuzzy master of the house. He stalked around the rest of the day trying to display dignity, but it was hard for me to not see his startled look as he jumped into the air, having just received a blast of cold air to his butt. At one point he decided to increase his mass as he thundered up and down the stairs, sounding like a herd of cattle. I still don't know how cats control gravity like that.

Last Friday I had an Inkwell experience that I also recorded on Facebook: Inkwell came into my room while I was typing away and just ... stared. He just stood in the doorway and stared. He looked so sad, I put the computer aside and reached down. He came up and put his head under my hand in the universal "please pet me" gesture. I pet him.

It soon became apparent he wanted something else. His front paws were very gently kneading at the carpet. So I got up and walked to the bedroom. He followed and when I got on the bed and pulled the blanket up, he jumped up and started purring and kneading me.

I spent the next ten minutes in a cat spa being meowsaged and purred upon.

When I thought he was done, I started to get up, but he sauntered to my ankles and stretched out over them with a possessive "mrrrow". In short, I was trapped. For another few minutes I dozed a bit while waiting for him to get bored and move on.

Finally he seemed satisfied and I quickly got back out of bed. He curled up on the end of the bed and stayed there while I did a couple of minor chores. Then I sat down to finish my piece, found I couldn't concentrate, and decided to write about Inkwell instead.

He's now downstairs, playing with his kibble egg-cersizer and singing the songs of his people.

We also recently had the opposite of a staring contest: Inkwell was staring at me, so I looked over at him. He gave me a slow blink.

I responded with a slow blink of my own. When I opened my eyes, his were closed.

So I closed my eyes most of the way and watched his eyes. I could tell he was doing the same. For a long moment we had a slow blinking contest.

Finally he opened his eyes, I opened mine and we both got on with life.

Earlier in the month Inkwell got a scare when all the fire alarms in the house were set off by a nearby electrical storm. In addition to the storm, Inkwell had been upstairs hiding from the vacuum when the alarms went off, and never heard Eric put the vacuum away. It took him several hours to fully calm down, poor skittish kitty!

Now, for the finale of this post, some Inkwell Sings the Blues. I'm not entirely sure what the melody to these are, but they are funny enough and I can usually manage to sing them...

7:25 PM - 27 Apr 2018:
I got the "my mommy won't get up and feed me, and I'm starving to death" blues.
I got the "my mommy won't get up and feed me, and I'm starving to death" blues.
I bopped her on the nose, jumped on her chest and I'm gonna throw up in her shoes.

7:28 PM - 27 Apr 2018:
Mommy won't feed me and I think that I'm starving to death.
Mommy won't feed me and I think that I'm starving to death.
I'm gonna keep meowing at mommy with my dying breath.

9:52 AM - 28 Apr 2018:
Daddy won't get up and feed me, mommy says I've just been fed.
Daddy won't get up and feed me, mommy says I've just been fed.
They will both be sorry, when I'm so hungry that I'm dead.

6:17 PM - 28 Apr 2018:
Daddy just gave me kibble but I really wanted wet food instead.
Daddy just gave me kibble but I really wanted wet food instead.
I'm gonna eat the kibble, but I'll throw it up on his bed.

7:15 PM - 1 May 2018:
Mommy closed her room off, she don't love me no more.
Mommy closed her room off, she don't love me no more.
I'm gonna lay down and cry outside her door.

More Inkwell Tales

Last night as I was watching a documentary on Amazon Prime, I suddenly heard hubby-Eric yell - a growling yell he usually reserves for scaring Inkwell the cat - and then a number of loud thumps, as if he were deliberately pounding his feet as he chased Inkwell. The yelling and pounding continued, surprising me enough to pause my video and start to get out of my chair. But the thumps were coming up the stairs, so I waited. Sure enough, Eric popped his head in and said, "Inkwell has vanished!"

I was terribly bemused and unsure what to say, so hubby continued, "I chased him up the stairs and was about to chase him down again, then he just *poof* vanished!"

As I tried to figure out a response, hubby said, "Oh, there he is." and the chase continued.

I love my boys.

Inkwell the Magnificent

There is something that Inkwell the cat does that I would love to get video of (since a still photo would never do it justice), but because of the circumstances it's impossible for me to record.

He did it to me again this morning.

I was waking up late after staying up until 2 am and he did a half-meow half-purr as he jumped up onto the bed. I was lying under the covers on my back, and he quickly made his way onto my chest, then started "tucking me in" by massaging the blankets in my neck area while purring EXTREMELY loud. I peeked up at him and his face was next to mine, purring away in wonderful bliss as he kneaded the blankets.

After a few minutes of this, I put my left hand up to pet him a little on the top of his head. He responded by rubbing up against my hand, directing me to the best places to rub. He wanted me to rub his jaw and behind his ear. Then he glanced over to where my other hand ought to be, so I hastily put it out and he rubbed up against that hand as well. Suddenly we were locked in a mutual moment of comforting each other. He was kneading me while directing my hands to the best places to rub him - mostly his jaw, behind his ears and on top of his head.

I'm not entirely sure how long that lasted, but finally he made a few murping meows and stepped off my chest, walking to the foot of the bed and looking back at me. I checked the clock and realized it was time to feed him. I got up and went downstairs with him at my ankles giving me what sounded like instructions all the way.

But I have to admit, for a short time there I truly felt completely in tune with Inkwell. He's been my owner for many years now, but this may be the first time I felt like we completely connected.

Some Links

I hope Carrie Fisher fully recovers. She has no idea how many fans echoed her heart attack when they heard about it.

The thing about this story that makes me very curious is why the letters are sent to that particular address in the first place.

Yes Virginia, there is a Spider-Man.

Here's a gingerbread creation I can get behind. I want a C64!

I was delighted to hear a great story about my hometown police department:

"Adrian and I were driving on Lincoln Ave. Towards Wal-Mart when I saw a police car with 2 officers and they were talking to a lady and her little (maybe 3 year old) daughter I thought something must have happened...Well it did in front of my eyes I witnessed these 2 policemen handing the little girl a wrapped present from the trunk of the car...I was almost in tears and I gave the officer a thumbs UP and a Honk of approval and he waved back . It made my Christmas seeing this Act of Kindness in my Town !" -Betty Lynn Garza on Facebook

I love this video that sets two pug puppies against a mostly indifferent kitten. The fact that the puppies aren't sure whether they should be playing with each other or trying to get out amuses me.


I still haven't been able to wrest control of my Twitter account from Inkwell. At least he is still allowing the blog posts to go through.

A new vaccine developed to protect against ebola was apparently 100% effective in a trial during a live outbreak. If that's really the case, it would be an amazing success. A total of 5,837 people were given the vaccine. Two people had serious side effects (including an allergic reaction) while many others had general soreness. The World Health Organization has a good summary of the results. While the vaccine only protects against one strain of ebola, it's a good start and the trial is definitely promising.

Author David Brin answers the question "Is Government Useless".

Question: If you are pro-life, are you for preventing unwanted pregnancies, or are you for punishing people who have unwanted pregnancies? Because there are many ways to reduce abortion that don't involve making it illegal and punishing people who are in desperate situations - but the pro-life movement rejects them all. Which suggests to me that the movement isn't about preventing abortion as much as it is about punishing people who have sex.

Thoughts

Some pointless thoughts after the jump...

Inkwell left me a present...

Apparently, I haven't been paying close enough attention to him, as he managed to throw up in the front window sill without me noticing. I'm not sure how long ago it happened, as I don't open the front window unless I absolutely have to. In addition, I'd built up a "cat castle" in front of the window, making it a safe space for him to get away from humans.

Well, he took advantage of it.

I just spent the last half hour scrubbing the area and vacuuming up the remaining chunks. It looks to me like it was a dinner, so it probably happened in the middle of the night sometime. It was dried enough that cleaning it wasn't too bad, it just required some scrubbing.

I have been in a major depression with some anxiety attacks for the past few months. It's been bad enough that I've been trying to stay inside and away from people. I'm going to have to break out of it soon. It's not a comfortable way to live. As a meme on Facebook said, "Depression is when you don't really care about anything. Anxiety is when you care too much about everything. And having both is just like hell."

In lieu of forcing myself to be creative, here's a summary of some of my recent Facebook posts - stuff that I found interesting enough to share.

Andy Borowitz again hits one out of the park with Nation with Crumbling Bridges and Roads Excited to Build Giant Wall. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. We need leadership that will rebuild our infrastructure, not make stupid promises about walls on our borders.

U.S. Doctors Call for Universal Health Care. A single-payer system is the only moral system. Companies that profit from denying care, which includes most health insurance companies and many pharmaceutical companies, are basically evil. If the goal is increasing shareholder profits and not saving lives, then the companies should go away. Forever.

CharityWatch ranks lots of charities, including The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Foundation. Note the extremely low overhead of the Clinton Foundation, at only 12%. The charity gets an "A" rating because most of its money goes to help people. The numbers being used by conservative critics are not false... they simply count everything that isn't a grant as overhead. Since the Clinton Foundation assists people using other methods besides grants, the critics' numbers are misleading and basically a giant lie.

When we lived in Frankenhaus, one of the biggest problems we ran into was keeping the blackberries under control. Well, we have Luther Burbank to blame. I've spent many days at Luther Burbank Park, so I was a little surprised to read the history of the man. Kind of strikingly eye-opening, and not in a good way.

I quite liked this tweet:

So Sarkozy calls the burkini a 'provocation.' Whether women cover or uncover their bodies, seems we're always, always 'asking for it.'

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 25, 2016

In case you don't know the backstory, several seaside towns in France banned the "burkini", a full body covering suit that allows Muslim or similarly shy women to go to the beach without exposing themselves. At one beach, a woman wearing one was forced to strip by police. That's right. Police forced a woman being modest at the beach to strip. The French Supreme Court banned the laws, but they are apparently still being enforced and a disturbing percent of the population is just fine with it. On the one hand, I'm kind of relieved that another country is outdoing America for sheer stupidity, but on the other hand, really, France? Really?

Women can't win.

New DeLoreans are being built with original parts. These will reportedly have a much better engine. I'm just going to take the opportunity to note that I got to ride in a DeLorean on Back to the Future Day, something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

On a very light note, the entire British Olympics team had an unfortunate airport problem. Oops.

I don't know if you'll be able to see this if you don't have Facebook, sorry, but Dee Snider did an acoustic version of "We're Not Gonna Take It" that is just amazing and done for all the right reasons. I'm going to try to embed the YouTube version:


Moving on, Phil Plait got really excited about a new astronomical discovery. What does it mean, practically? Not a lot for the average person, but it expands and changes our knowledge and potential understanding of the universe.

A teenager in Montreal showed himself to be a true man by calmly saving a woman from a kidnapper. If that story doesn't bring happiness to your heart, you're probably dead.

A post by a Fort Worth mother of a note from her child's teacher has gone viral. Basically, the teacher was informing parents that the children would not be assigned any homework - only work they didn't finish in class - and urged parents to do evening activities with their children that are proven to correlate with student success. Activities like reading together, eating as a family, playing outside and getting to bed on time. My response is positive. I didn't do homework. I always asked myself if I could pass it if it were on a test. If the answer was yes, I ignored any homework assignments. If the answer was no, I went to the teacher to get it fully explained to me so I could pass it on a test. Homework never figured into my understanding. It was all just busy work. Pointless and useless. If I understood it, why would I want to waste time and energy doing another 50 problems? If I didn't understand it, I couldn't see how struggling through 50 problems would help me in any way.

If you haven't read the Hugo-winning Short Story "Cat Pictures Please", go check it out now. It makes me want to take photos of Inkwell and post them. If only I weren't so upset at him at the moment for his present he left in the windowsill...

I just can't stop laughing at this...

If you know the source of this, please let me know in the comments. I'd like to link back to the original, if possible.

UPDATE: Here's the source, and it includes a little more of the video.

Links

About cats and how they went from a "necessary household appendage" to cuddly companion animals.

Woohoo! N. K. Jemisin's Patreon worked and she'll be writing full time.

While I'd love to get these to put in our driveway, I bet it wouldn't take long for people to catch on that they are fake.

Here's a cartoon for my hubby. Humid days, indeed.

I signed up for the 30-day free trial of Comixology Unlimited, and I'm not impressed. I've always thought the search functions on Comixology are awful, and trying to find all books of a certain series that are offered in the unlimited service is annoying. In addition, it appears that most of the "free" stuff is first issues, not the most current content (in short, very limited). And it doesn't include any DC or Marvel books. So I'll probably drop it in a couple of weeks, before I end up being charged. It's just not worth it to me if there's nothing current. Add in the fact that some creators were never notified their books would be offered on the service, and it's even less appealing.

A comic about being a "nerdy, Mexican, gay, Mormon child of the ’80s and ’90s".

Not all school shootings are modern. Take a moment to remember the 1927 Bath School Massacre.

I love Lego Bricks, but I'd never be able to build a pop-up Lego Castle:

Linkdump!

Did flails even exist?

Here's another article about albinos in Africa. Depressing read, but important, I think.

Atlas Obscura, which has become a favorite destination but threatens to overwhelm with too many articles, had a fun story about a nuclear bomb that was dropped on South Carolina.

So, are there no secret hidden chambers off King Tutankhamun's tomb, or is Egypt suppressing the truth? I don't know, but I'm curious to see how it turns out.

MetaFilter has a history of Looney pyramids. These come from the same guy who created Fluxx.

It seems to me that if police are scared to beat people up because of viral videos, then that should be considered a good thing.

Ever wondered why it's called "drop candy"? Well MetaFilter has a link to a video that explains it (5 minutes in!). I'd love to try the nector candy, but I'm not a huge drop candy fan and I'm broke, so I'll just share it instead.

A story linked on Slashdot says Apple doesn't know why its online streaming service is deleting people's files.

Transgender folks are, sadly, able to tell us about our biases.

DC Comics honors Darwyn Cooke.

Let's finish with Simon's Cat:

Yes, yet more links!

I'm feeling the need for some more links! Let's start with a bit of personal news...

I took the leap today and submitted an application to The DC Writers Workshop, even though I do not believe I quite fit the profile of what they are looking for. I have no published fiction, yet, so my writing samples were news articles. That alone may disqualify me. However, the experience of forcing myself to fill out that application, instead of a boring job application, felt good. And hey, there's a chance they might invite me to the video workshop, which could lead to new writing skills. That's nothing to sneeze at.

In some other happy news, Variety and DC Comics have confirmed the return of Supergirl for a second season. It will be moving networks and filming will likely move to Vancouver, which could mean cast changes. I hope not, since the cast is the strong point of the entire show.

I wish I could afford a catio for Inkwell. And for me. Inkwell really wants to go outside, but is terrified of it. And I don't want to lose him to a car or coyote. Via King5.

I'd like to hang out with these women, but I don't work in comics at the moment.

Enjoy a video at Boing Boing of skipping sodium into a river. Lovely explosions!

There's a very interesting discussion at MetaFilter about the cost to taxpayers of businesses like WalMart that fail to provide adequate security and end up calling the police four times as much as comparable retail stores. This is a form of hidden taxes and corporate welfare, like how many WalMart employees qualify for food stamps. If WalMart were a responsible corporation, it would take care of its employees and not rely so heavily on local police to handle its security. But read the comments... lots of good views and other examples there.

A bunch of white morons got upset when a group of 16 black female West Point cadets raised their fists in one of many photos during a photo shoot to celebrate making it through the academy. The photo pose was determined to be "inappropriate" by an official inquiry because the raised fist (commonly used to indicate "Army strong!" during football games) could also be taken as a political statement. Personally, I think it's a great photo and the lily-livered idiots who got upset are clearly trying to make up for their own deficiencies.

Speaking of deficiencies... definitely not safe for work: Why ancient statues had small penises.

The Zipper Merge is the only way to drive, but for some reason, it's considered rude by people who don't know how to drive. The Minnesota DOT is trying to teach people how to use it, even including a video of why it works and a video of how to do it. These links are from MetaFilter, which has quite a long and heated discussion on the issue. Personally, I'm for proper zipper merging, but since the majority of Washington state is not, it's too dangerous to do it. People will literally try to kill you if you follow the law and use the open lane until the merge.

Inkwell believes this website is the most annoying thing online.

I really hope this archive is being digitized and preserved for posterity, because it sounds like it might be invaluable when looking at history.

A Sunday Review

Here are reviews of the DCBS comic books that I've gotten around to reading and reviewing, sorted by the original shipping date:

• Mar 2nd
• Green Lantern #50 - Ah, the jumble that is the DC Universe now... allowing us to have multiple Hal Jordans, as if one wasn't too much!
• Batman Beyond #10 - Yay the Justice League is back! Including Aquagirl. Boo, they aren't themselves.
• Batman '66 Meets the Man From UNCLE #4 - Fun little story, with all the Bat-villains out having fun in another country. And, of course, Batman has a great disguise.
• Scooby-Doo Team-Up #15 - The Flash this time... and a visit to Gorilla City. I like the "talking gorilla"\"talking dog" moment. Very cute.
• DC Comics Bombshells #10 - No Mera, but lots of battling. This is a darn good book, and it just keeps getting more fun with all the twists and turns.
• Doctor Who 11th #2.6 - Well, if you are going to go there, you clearly need River Song to do the driving... This is getting kind of exciting.
• Steam League #2 - Still extremely disjointed, and the rivalry between Dorothy and Alice is amusing but I'm not sure it was quite set up right. I'll stick with it, but it's a bit of a confusing book.
• Legend of Oz: The Wicked West #6 - Not much to say about this one. More of the same, really. I suppose I'd write more if I hadn't already read it the first time it was published, but I'm just rereading.

---

Fortean Times #32 (Summer 1980). Seesawing between old and new, once again I'll head back to the 1980s and to what was, to me, a memorable summer. Mt St Helens had just erupted, and I was obsessed. It wasn't the first time I became obsessed with something, but it was one that had a lasting impact on me. I learned a lot about geology and how odd the Pacific coast is, and tons about volcanoes and what makes them. I also vividly remember the photographs of the devastation... I had a book about the eruption that showed the remains of a truck with a body in it. I didn't quite go so far as to memorize the names of the dead, but I was close to it.

Meanwhile, across the pond, the next issue of Fortean Times came out with almost no mention of Mt St Helens, and the one mention I see, on page 26, got the date wrong. The eruption happened on Sunday, 18 May, not the 20th... although the phrasing is unclear enough it could be just sloppy writing.

I love the cover to this issue. The artist is Gilbert Shelton, a well-known underground comix artist. As a person might guess from the cover, much of the issue focuses on cats. Mostly big cats showing up where they aren't expected. There's an article on The Panthers of Southern Australia, and Loren Coleman's "On the Trail" column is about African lions, complete with manes, showing up in the United States. Out of Place is also about... well, out of place big cats. Even Phenomenomix gets into the act, with the main character turning into a cat trying to get into a phantom tin of cat food. Naturally, there's a lot of fun bits in these pages. People seem to like spotting giant cats, and for some reason they are kind of fun to read about, too.

The first main article is actually about the "Mississauga Blob", a strange plasticky thing that hit someone's picnic table in their backyard about the time Skylab was falling. There's some information about the incident and what happened when the witnesses attempted to report it. All told, a strange story, and nearly impossible to figure out what really might have happened.

The second part of the Gateways to Mystery article is in this issue, and features a collection of events by date in one relatively small area of Michigan, just to illustrate what a gateway area might look like. Some of the sightings are fun reads and some are just odd. There's no conclusion reached, just a general theory with some ideas on how to possibly record features of the area near the events to maybe get an idea of what's really happening. Fun, but I'm not sure where it's all headed yet.

Paul Sieveking presents the readers with a horrible selection from a 1749 book called Aristotle's Book of Problems that has absolutely rubbish advice for a variety of problems and total BS answers to somewhat childish questions. I'm just going to say if I had a time travel device, I'd be tempted to go back and smack whoever wrote the thing upside the head just for the Basilisk answer alone.

The letters start out with a really good "It Happened to Me" type of story, about being approached by someone at a cemetery who saw his own name on a gravestone, only to go back later and fail to find the gravestone. It reads just like an urban legend, though the writer claims it was a personal experience. There's also letters about tulpas, booms, films committing suicide and a giant kangaroo in Lancashire.

Comix starts with a very silly Telly Kinex, in which Telly hears about a mind-improving fish spread and tests its power by purchasing and consuming 15 family-size pots of the stuff, with predictable results. Ug. I've already mentioned Phenomenomix, but Facts You Might Forget is about ... um ... knitting patterns received via a knitting needle through the head? I don't want to think about it too hard.

This issue has some photos of winged cats... the poor critters have fur-covered growths on their backs, usually just in front of their hindquarters. There have been lots of reports of them, so the wings apparently don't hurt them much, since they survive to be found and photographed. The photos are part of a selection of clippings by George Ives that were being collected into a book.

A new column in this issue is by the problematic writer, but it's fine because I read it and it makes almost no sense anyway. It reads like a stereotype of a conspiracy theorist, with each paragraph almost making some sort of sense, but as a whole it really doesn't come together at all unless you cross your eyes and hit yourself over the head with a frying pan a few times. Again, everything from that writer gets a bucket of salt to go with it.

The reviews are fun, although I can't see much I'd want to track down. There's a book called "Guardians of the Universe" by Ronald Story that apparently addresses the Ancient Astronaut theories of von Daniken, a book I was exposed to early on because there was a copy in my parents' house and I read anything I could get my hands on. Even then I thought it was pretty silly, so this book sounds like a fun takedown of it. There's also a review of the print copy of the House of Lords UFO Debate, which happened in January 1979 and apparently caused a stir in Fortean circles. Another one it would be fun to look at some time. I was also amused to see a book called "The Manna Machine", which is apparently the genesis of the article of the same name by Ted Harrison in FT326. Connections...

Some of the other features have collections of strange tales, stories about sorcerers in China, swarms of varieties of critters, a round-up of odd news from India, reports of human sacrifice, talking elephants and monster hunts. Lots of neat bits and pieces, densely packed into a fairly small magazine. Definitely something I enjoy reading, the magazine that makes me laugh and think.

Fortean Times Wishlist: FT1-FT24, FT40-FT163, FT194-FT211, FT219-FT222, FT229-FT238

---

Past Sunday Reviews -- My Kindle Wishlist

New Simon's Cat - more than he bargained for...

Breaking Cat News - Special Report

Inkwell approves of this important message from Breaking Cat News about shelter cats. Inkwell particularly approves of the bits about black cats, but the rest is good too, Inkwell reports.

New Simon's Cat!

Fortunately for me, Inkwell is relatively easy to get into his carrier. Most of the time. Sometimes... well, I have scars.

Inkwell doesn't want his photo taken...

Silly human, I am the ruler of this house.

Exploding Kittens

Over the weekend, we had guests at our house. We played Exploding Kittens and I was the second to explode. Eric was the third, and his co-author Karyl was the survivor of the match.

It is a very funny game, especially if you watch the videos on how to play before you play and imagine your competitors exploding like in the videos. The cards are so incredibly crazy that everyone spent a little bit of time just reading them and saying, "What?!" as they read. The rules are pretty simple... don't draw an exploding kitten and if you do, have a defuse card. The oddest thing about the game is that you draw a card at the end of your turn, which took some serious getting-used-to.

In any case, I promised to link to the game here, so anyone interested can go to the Exploding Kittens website to find out how to get their own copy and start avoiding exploding.

Tiny Linkdump

Matrix patch notes.

Nineteen covers to Doctor Who: The Four Doctors #1.

I'm so glad Inkwell hasn't discovered the button.

It took me a moment to get it.

Cats have always licked themselves.

It really is the Berenstain Bears.

Were Dorothy Parker's ashes kept in a filing cabinet for two decades?

Almost another statistic.

Linkdump

There have always been women in comics. Since the very beginning, really.

Dalek Relaxation Tape. "Your tension has been EX-TER-MIN-ATED!"

I'm still amused by the Wheel of Time pilot that was shown early in the morning back in February on the FXX Network.

A scientific explanation as to why cats rule the internet.

Bleeding Cool looks at subscription boxes. I've been tempted, but my tastes tend to be fairly narrow. I suspect I would usually be disappointed by all of these.

Doctor Puppet, videos on YouTube...

Yes in Pictures. via.

That would be a dangerous wedding to attend.

Remember that guy who used Kickstarter to raise $10 to make a potato salad? Then it went viral? Well, Potatostock has happened, and it sounds like it ended up being a win-win all around.

I backed another Kickstarter graphic novel of world's colliding. And the second volume of another Kickstarter as well. I have the first volume.

I also bought a fantasy storybundle, thanks to Sherwood Smith, who mentioned it and made me curious.