Herewith a Picture of my Cat
by Nora Bartlett

In bed at night
no pressure
is so heavy
or so light
no word
so unintrusive
as the sound
of one cat sleeping
no shape so round
no space so empty
as the one
he leaves behind.


For Pip - who would have been 1 today.

Our red Persian, Wilfred, loves nothing in this world more than carnation milk. He gets it once a day and actually starts bothering us around 9pm because he knows it's coming. Recently, he's even learned to stand on his hind legs! (Fear not: it's very diluted, and contrary to popular belief, not all cats are lactose intolerant. His breeder was giving it to him before we got him and he's never had any ill effects.)

It was my birthday this month, and while I will pointedly neglect to mention how old that makes me, I will say that I had a lovely time in spite of my impending decrepitude. Read on to discover how this is any way connected to my brachycephalic friend above.

( Continue reading 'Age is a number and mine is unlisted' )

Back in 2009, I found the geek glasses of my dreams, and though there was a small issue of miscommunication between myself and the Japanese salesgirl (I needed the legs to be tighter, and she was spreading them like it was Basic Instinct 3), she soon had them soldered back to perfection. Over time, however, they quietly crept back into a state of bowleggedness, which is why I paid a quick visit to Boots Opticians earlier this year and asked if they could do anything to alleviate the spectacles' ever-deepening rickets. Scarcely five minutes had passed when the optician returned, and – joy of joys – handed me a pair of glasses that were the correct shape for my head for the first time in about three years...an elation that lasted all of two months until they literally snapped apart in my hands while I was in the middle of cleaning them.

My resulting horror is threefold, owing to the fact that I a) paid about a third of a month's wage for these glasses at a time when I was being vastly overpaid by the Japanese government, b) have but one spare pair, and those with a prescription that's so out of date that I gave myself eye strain within an hour of wearing them, and c) have resorted to fixing the broken pair with honest-to-god tape, which has removed all the irony of wearing geek glasses in the first place and left me a neck-brace short of the nerd who dies first in an '80s horror movie. And lest we forget d) the fact that three independent opticians have pronounced them irreparable.

At present, I'm exploring two avenues of rescue: either by somehow tracking down the exact same frames through the magic of the internet (which would, in turn, eliminate the cost of buying new lenses since I could cannibalise them from the existing pair) or using this otherwise disaster to justify the purchase of a new and completely different pair as I was so idly considering doing before any of this happened. The only problem with the latter solution: I am notoriously difficult to please (in all avenues of life, but especially when it comes to something that will be attached to my face), and also that I can't tell if I'm attracted to these Oliver Goldsmith frames, or just the model wearing them. More on this situation as it develops.

In lighter news: a few recent photos, predominantly - though not exclusively - feline in nature. Contain your shock.

( Continue reading 'Walking on Broken Glass(es)' )

A year ago, I played Heavy Rain on the PS3: a title which I had almost unilateral praise for on account of it being so strong a champion for the cause of games as a legitimate form of narrative. Despite its seven-year vintage, therefore, I was more than willing to try out Quantic Dream's previous effort (and Heavy Rain's spiritual predecessor): Fahrenheit – or "Indigo Prophecy" as it was somewhat stupidly rebranded in North America – released for the PS2 back in 2005. After my first hour or so with the game, this clemency seemed well-rewarded: the story is involving, the thrills thrilling and the mysteries suitably mysterious. How this murder mystery cum occult thriller devolves into a battle between an ancient Mayan cult and a clan of virtual cyborgs is, therefore, a mystery in and of itself – and also a tragedy. To wit: the tragedy of how I would come to hate the second half of the game roughly equivalent to how much I loved those first, halcyon hours I spent with it.

( Continue reading 'Fahrenheit' (Indigo Prophecy) )

It's Mother's Day in the UK today and, accordingly, I've put together this video starring my mum's new favourite son: Humphrey the Pug. He visited my house earlier in the week, and the cats' reactions were the exact opposite of what I'd anticipated: which is to say that Wilfred (despite being his flat-faced brethren) was terrified; and Alf (who normally hates all other animals) followed him around everywhere and tried to pick up by the scruff of his neck as if Humph were his very own baby.

A slight departure from my usual stuff but I found this in one of my old sketchbooks and couldn't resist putting it up. From Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (my very favourite guilty pleasure movies of all time), this is Janeane Garofalo as Heather Mooney - pictured in the dress that exacerbates the genetic betrayal that is her legacy. Heather succeeds in being one of my favourite characters in the film and - so I'm told - one of the most accurate representations of myself when I was in high school.

Romy: Well, I guess I won't be seeing ya at the reunion. But I'll tell everyone you said hi.
Heather: Why don't you tell everyone I said to go fuck themselves for making my teen years a living hell?