Appreciating the Appreciative

Know what I don't get?  People who seem like they hate EVERYTHING.  I'm not talking hipsters who say it because they think it's cool to dislike anything mainstream, but people who genuinely go out of their way not to enjoy anything.  Why do that?

I suspect a few people will be staring at this post going, "Mina, seriously?  The hypocritical apple doesn't fall far from the hypocritical tree, missy." Or something like that.  And I am the first to admit that yes, I am a snob.  I am an elitist.  I openly disdain much of the mainstream in arts and entertainment and fashion because I hold myself to a higher standard than fart jokes and dick humor.  But that is my personal choice. 

What I'm talking about are the people that don't enjoy anything for the sake of trying to hold onto some ideals that don't make sense anyway.  Like a "feminist" who cannot enjoy a piece of art work because she feels that it is against her feminist ideals, and so instead of just appreciating the well crafted art which is neither exploitative nor particularly sexual, the feminist has to tear it apart as if it were nothing but a page out of a Hooter's catalogue because the subject is attractive and not wearing a tent.

Why?

What the hell does that prove, other than ideals were kept in a situation when it was unnecessary?  I guess my main problem with it is that we currently live in a society that is okay with this kind of behavior.  In today's world, we are more apt to respect the people that hate everything than those who are able to appreciate things no matter what they are, so long as they are not genuinely bad.  But the people who like everything are called stupid, uncultured, or just plain ignorant.

All I'm saying folks, is give appreciation a chance.  So something isn't your thing.  It happens.  I hate zombies, Nicki Minaj, and Jersey Shore.  But these are all popular things.  I also gave them a chance before I decided that they just were not my thing.  Hell, I swallowed my tongue while trying to read Twilight, and I don't particularly walk around spouting my hatred of it.  But live and let live is a real thing and I believe in our hate-it-to-be-cool society, that is something that is forgotten all too often.

I hate this.  Mostly because it reminds me of something out of Japanese horror.

I personally am going to attempt to practice as I preach.  I am going to give up the hate, and I'm going to go see something I don't think I'll like.  No, it doesn't matter that I'm going to just stare at Chaning Tatum for two hours.  I'm still going to give it a shot.  Because it's easy to hate.  It's a hell of a lot harder to appreciate the good in things.

...Wow this blog post is kinda...preachy.  I swear, back to funny life stories next time.

Insanity Runs In The Blood

Husband is the first to admit that I am insane.  He deals with the paranoia, depression, anxiety, and general craziness with the fortitude of a man who has faced the fires of Hell and its minions and has never batted an eye.  There is nothing he can't handle, from my crying jags to my insane insistance that the people across the street have used cake in order lure in people who they then kill in bathtubs of coleslaw.  But last night, even he was unable to deal with this new form of insanity.

For it was not I that was mad.

Oh no. 

The culprit this time is our new kitten.  For a week she had been a sweet, rational thing made of gray fluff and four paws. 

Last night changed all that. 

I went to bed, as usual, with the laptop so I could finish up what I was working on in the comfort of my bed.  Instead of crawling up next to me and passing out as she's done for the past week, Cinder decided that there was something WRONG. 

I was approached by a ball of fur and fury unlike anything I had ever witness.  She had her back arched and her tail poofed like a bottle brush, and every movement was a threat.  Every sidestepping turn and she was staring at me like I was the shower monster, about to come spray her down with water and kitty shame.  I was going to eat her, and she was going to take my ass down.

Sitting in bed, I watched as she leapt over throw pillows and curled in boxes, all in order to plan her attacks.  And what exactly did these attacks amount to?  Slightly more vicious versions of "OMG, you have TOES!".  I was unimpressed.

So she decided to start threatening me by staring at the walls for inordinate amounts of time, and then turning and sprinting out of the room at the highest possible speed, making a noise similar to that of a rhinocerous with a broken leg falling down the steps while running down into the first floor of the house.  She then returned, making this a lap of sorts.  I swear, she lapped the house a total of 1, 433 times before returning to my room and arching her back again.

Now it was time to avoid the air vent.  The air vent is apparently more evil than I am, because she would smoosh into the corner between the bed and the wall where I was and stare at the air vent in the floor, skittering around it like she would drop into New Jersey or the seventh level of Dante's Hell if she stepped on the metal grating.  I finally just shook my head and turned off the light to go to sleep.

Reluctant, and obviously exhausted from two hours of kitten rampage, she decided to begrudgingly settle down on the bed with me.  Not near my hands nor my vicious maw, mind you, but on the bed.  In the morning, she was gone, like an assassin in the night.  Or that guy I picked up at a Seven 11 the other week.

Anyway, I have come up with a theory as to why the kitten decided to go absolutely batshit nuts.  It's actually quite simple.  She's just as crazy as me.  I adopted a cat just like me, just as they say people marry people who remind them of themselves.  The one I picked waited for me to fall in love with her, and then showed her true colors.  Insanity.  Kitten insanity.

I wonder if they make kitty Thorazine.

Kittens And Unethical Questioning Tactics

This weekend, we were blessed enough to bring a fluffy little ball of pain into our home.

I speak of the evil that dare not speaketh in polite company.

Yes.  We got a kitten.

Cinder is a roly-poly ball of gray and white fluff, with huge hazel eyes and a penchant for playing with "the other kitty" she sees in the mirror behind our entertainment center.  But it has been a long time since I had a new kitten in my home.  I had forgotten the truth about kitten ownership. 

The truth about owning a kitten is that the first night is worse torture than water boarding an asthematic with the sweat wrung out of Michael Moore's windbreaker after a week in Brazil. 

You bring the kitten home, it is sweet as can be, and then it's time to go to bed.  And kitten does not want to go to bed.  So the battle begins.  First you believe the kitten is going to climb into bed with you.  Then you realize she has climbed into the bed so that she might rain terror and endless pain onto your bare arms and legs, because let's face it, you're getting into bed and not nearly as dressed as when you were wearing your jeans earlier that day.

The battle continues because you are tired of being clawed, and thus you put her down on the floor.  And she simply jumps up on the bed yet again.  You will repeat this seventeen times before you realize that you are much bigger than the kitten and can just use your foot to nudge her off the bed.  This is a huge mistake.

This would be the point in time when the kitten realizes that she has you right where she wants you.  Next is a pain so terrible that I would compare it to the time when I had surgery without anesthetic.  The kitten, that fiesty criminal mind that surpasses the sheer nefarious devilry of villains such as Mussolini, Hitler, and Pinochet now curls around your foot in a fluffy bear trap of claws and sharp teeth.  You have lost the war my friend, and your only choice is to sit with the covers over your head and hope to God that she doesn't find a way in until the Husband wakes up in the morning and gets her attention.

I believe that the government is going about interrogation in the wrong way.  Because the obvious way to get criminals to talk is not to tear out fingernails, or perform unspeakable acts upon their bodies that would make masochists cringe, but to put terrorists into rooms with kittens. 

I mean it.  Put a terrorist into a room with a few springy door stops, a bed, and make it rather warm, and then set a kitten on them when it's time to sleep.  They will slowly slip away from sanity and their convictions as they realize that the kitten, the small and fluffy infidel of the decadent lifestyle of the Western Hemisphere, has a will of pig iron and adorable whiskery vengeance.  From the jingly collar of doom to the sharp little dew claws of torment, these creatures are not to be moved.

Faith is pointless.

War is useless.

For they are kittens.  And they will devour your soul.