How To Talk Your Friend Out of Wrapping His Cat’s Feet in Tinfoil

It’s strange what open-ended, splintered memories your brain holds on to.

We were 11. Our friend Shawn had this thing about putting tinfoil boots on his cat. He’d talk about it more often than one would expect, to the point where you realized, He’s not fucken kidding. He really wants to put tinfoil boots on his cat.

Chuck was the cat in question, and he was a beast all the way around: grossly overweight with a bulbous head and squinty eyes, he defied what Siamese cats are supposed to be. He was old and slow and clumsy, which made him hapless, which is why I think Shawn wanted to put tinfoil boots on him: because the chances of him being able to do so were very high while simultaneously having almost no chance of getting injured himself.

Everyone thought Shawn was weird bird, even weirder when he started talking about cutting short whatever we were doing so ‘we’ could go home and put tinfoil boots on Chuck. It was all uncomfortable small talk until the day he invited us over for some casual Commodore 64 video games, and, as it turned out, to watch him ensnare Chuck and finally put aluminum booties on him.

When we walked in the house, Sean was in the living room — his mother off at work — and Chuck was on the couch. Chuck, having the metabolism of a potato and the IQ to match, was lazing about obliviously while Shawn cut small swaths of tinfoil from a roll of Reynolds Wrap. Shawn barely looked up at us. Chuck blinked lethargically at a throw pillow, completely unaware.

“Hey guys.”

“Hi Shawn,” I said. “Um, what are you doing?”

“Finally gonna put booties on Chuckles here.”

The three of us — me, Russ and Tom — stared at him. Tom finally spoke, “Dude, we’re here to play Bruce Lee. We don’t want to put tinfoil on Chuck.”

Shawn looked up from his tinfoil and pile of rubber bands. “Oh come on. Consider it science.”

“Or consider it mean,” I said. It seemed to me that putting tinfoil boots on a cat with likely cardiac problems was not a good idea.

“Nah,” Shawn said, expertly sidestepping the issue.

Then Russ asked what none of us probably would have thought to: “Once you get the tinfoil on Chuck, what are you gonna do?”

Sean had the answer in his mental ammunition chamber and didn’t miss a beat. “Gonna put him on the kitchen floor, turn on the vacuum and see if he freaks. If he does, he won’t be able to run, and that will be hiiillllaaaarious.”

None of us were vets or cat whisperers, but we were pretty sure if you put an overweight 14 year old Siamese cat on a linoleum floor and hit the vacuum while said cat was wearing tinfoil booties rubberbanded around his legs, yeah, we were thinking, he’ll probably freak. If you’re a 14 year old overweight cat, freaking probably leads to not being alive anymore.

The exact mechanics of the debate that ensued are unimportant, but in the end sanity prevailed: the tinfoil was thrown away, the vacuum stayed in the closet, Chuck didn’t Code Blue in front of sink, and Shawn didn’t go to juvy. Shawn did seem slightly defeated, but later came around to admit that it wasn’t a good idea after all. “Cats are pretty uptight,” Sean concluded, authoritatively. Mr. Animal Fucken Planet.

We let the issue rest after Shawn closed the topic with this. We all thought it best not to upset whatever balance his hormones found that made him temporarily stable. We’re pretty sure Chuck appreciated it too.

We didn’t do much with Shawn after that.

“Please Move the Deer Crossing”

The Hustler’s MBA

While I have the poker skills of a baked potato, I’m finding it hard to disagree with much of anything in Tynan’s post about the alternatives to a formal college education.

A Wendler 5/3/1 Primer

T NATION has the best one-page primer on Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 programming I’ve seen. If you’re interested in 5/3/1, start here.

Are You on the Internet Right Now?

The Awl’s Choire Sicha with a handy guide:

5. Can you see the words “Warcraft” anywhere? Then you are on the Internet but in a grey area. Have all your lulz here, no one can see you but some gay guild of pasty nerds.

I actually know people for whom this guide would be useful.

Regarding My Stupid Bengal Cat

You guys, I can’t tell you how often I catch my stupid Bengal cat looking exactly like this.

It’s his busted face. You see it when he’s in the process of being a top-shelf asshole, which is, by my math, every minute he’s not sleeping or licking the poo from his paws. He’s so invested in being a dick his tiny cat brain forgets to rearrange his face into something resembling cat nobility. So I’ll come home, hear some grunting in the dining room, grab the camera (for possible insurance photos), and just leap in and snap. Boom, busted.

After two years of me playing Amateur Cat Whisperer, he doesn’t even care. He just stares at me with this ridiculous face and goes, “Yeah? What? What are you going to do about it? The female human likes me. You don’t matter, jackass.”

And he’s right.

So when we buy our cats (yes, plural, but please don’t ask) a ten-dollar cardboard box that we could find for free at any Costco, what does he do? First, let’s start with what he’s supposed to do: SIT IN IT AND ACT LIKE THE CATS YOU SEE IN CAT FOOD COMMERCIALS. What does he really do, almost immediately? Start biting the edges, ripping off little pieces, and spitting them on the carpet.

He SPITS. And you can HEAR IT. Rip chew rip chew THWOCK. That happens before the sound of ten dollars going up in smoke.

So I yell at him. I make sharp, loud noises so he gets startled and stops. But his dicky little amygdala is so honed, so advanced in fight or flight decision making, he know’s there’s no real threat. He completely ignores me. Until I feign getting up from the couch. Then he finally pays attention and I get – YOU GUESSED IT.

That’s just one ten dollar example.

We have another cat, one who’s jerk gene isn’t totally dominant, who’s the cat version of Bob Marley: he just wants to kick back, man, and enjoy everything. Music and colors are everywhere, dude. This cat was born with the following belief, which he holds dear to this very day: The world is a great place. Everyone is nice. Nothing bad can ever happen to me. Here, rub my belly. I love you. Food would be nice.

The jerk cat knows this other cat is gullible. Way gullible. Gullible and trusting to the point where if he had to pass a cat test to keep his cathood, he’d fail and be demoted to frog or something. So when the Happy Cat is sitting around, blindly trusting every atom in the universe, the Jerk Cat will come up to him, meow lightly, and start cleaning him. And they will lay together. And they will have a little conversation.

JERK CAT: Hey. Meow and shit. Mind if I sit down and clean you?

HAPPY CAT: Sure! I’d love that! I love you! This is great! Heck yeah!

JC: Excellent. (Starts cleaning HC)

HC: Omigosh this is amazing! I mean, aaammmaazing. You are cleaning me! I love this! This feels great! My face doesn’t smell weird anymore! Thank you!

JC: Don’t mention it.

And then, there’s a subtle change. Jerk Cat goes from cleaning, to little nibbles, to full-on biting anything within his striking distance: neck, ears, paws – name it. And despite this happening nearly every single night, Happy Cat is all, “Wha? What’s this? You are licking me so hard it hurts, man! I mean, you just bit what’s left of my scrotum! Seriously! BUT I STILL TOTALLY LOVE YOU.

I will see this, get up and thwart natural selection. Instead of letting dickhead theater play out, I will stop the passive-aggressive-cleaning-turned-cat-cagematch, and Happy Cat will, for a brief second, realize things aren’t copasetic and bolt into another room. That leaves Jerk Cat, who sits in one place frozen and stares at me, as if he previously was invisible and I just somehow found a way to see what he’s doing.

And it’ll come again:

The moral of the story: I have one cat, a Bengal, cheap. Inquire at counter.

(modified cp)

Speaking of DPR Connect

They have the most in-depth review of the iPhone 5 from a photography standpoint that I’ve seen. Don’t miss it.

Also: check out their feature in which Dean Holland shoots his second honeymoon with the iPhone — leaving his big-gun DSLR at home. As a photographer who gets the howling fantods at the mere thought of this, I find it a fascinating — and surprising — experiment.

DPR Connect

A new website by the makers of DPR that focuses on where the photographic puck is certainly going: mobile photography. Bookmarked.

→ DPR Connect

Amazon’s Aim to Disrupt Everything About Retail

I do a lot of thinking about Amazon because I feel it’s on the verge of massively disrupting Google and, on a much, much larger scale, retail as a whole.

For now, let’s talk about retail. Here I mean retail across the board, save specialty stores (Apple, Bose, etc.) and emergency sundry retailers (pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.). If I’m right, a large swath of retail as we know it might be quite well dead in five years, with a few exceptions.

What makes Amazon tick isn’t prices – unless you’re a Prime member, in which you get free two-day shipping on everything. But if you’re not a Prime member, you pay for shipping. And once you pay for shipping on Amazon, you’re roughly at mainline retail prices.

So for many folks, price isn’t a major incentive to shop at Amazon.

What is, then? Why are people choosing Amazon in increasing numbers, from quick everyday jaunts to full-on holiday shopping sprees? I have three things I always come back to when I’m in the shower and kicking this topic around:

1. Convenience
2. Insanely quick and accurate shipping
3. Brand image/trust

Convenience

Let’s be honest: getting in the car and burning fossil fuel to drive on construction-riddled roads to go to a store and buy something is becoming – has become? – a full-on pain in the ass. As the holidays draw near, the mere idea of going out and battling legions of pressure-cooked shoppers is enough to give any determined taskmaster the howling fantods. Assuming you’re OK with Internet commerce, it’s massively, exponentially, galactically easier to log into Amazon, run a quick search, and buy something with 1-click shopping. Total elapsed time, assuming you know what you’re shopping for: maybe two minutes – if you didn’t get hijacked by one of Amazon’s scary-accurate and compelling ‘customers also bought!’ suggestions. A day or two later, your stuff shows up at your door, and boom, done. You never left the house. It’s the slightly time-lapsed reverse teleportation game. Fun!

Insanely quick and accurate shipping

To me, this is the cornerstone. This is Amazon’s iPhone, its halo, its addictive magic.

No other company on earth ships as quickly or accurately as Amazon. Despite everything I’ve bought on Amazon, never once have I had a shipping issue. Not one. And sometimes, an item will actually show upearlier than it should. Earlier. When that happens, I just shake my head and wonder how ‘regular’ retail will ever compete.

And then I think: it won’t. It can’t. The model has almost been disrupted entirely. We just haven’t seen the full picture yet.

But we will.

Brand image

There is nothing shady or scary or untrustworthy about Amazon. They sell things and get them to you more efficiently than anything on Earth. Their security is top-notch, their commenting system is a fantastic research tool, and returns are almost as easy as Zappos. They do what they say. They never miss on logistics. You can shop the way you want, with no annoying salesperson who’s vying for a spiff to harass you. If you want to buy a camera and read all 500+ reviews while drinking lukewarm coffee in your underwear while P!nk blares on Spotify, go for it.

(Purely hypothetical scenario, of course.)

In a nutshell, people trust Amazon. That’s the ultimate brand goal of any company: pure, gleaming, frictionless trust. Amazon has it in spades.

Amazon’s nuclear warhead

There’s some talk out there about Amazon working towards same-day delivery. That is, if you order a coffee grinder at 11 AM, you will have it by, say, 3 PM. You won’t have gotten in your car. You won’t have gone to pick anything up. Heck, you might not have even gotten dressed. Sure, you might have paid a nominal fee for such convenience, but that is offset buy the gas and time and shower water you saved.

In short, you will have just experienced the zenith of retailing: trustworthy web commerce coupled with instant gratification.

If this comes to pass, this will put the icing on the doom cake for retail. In fact, if something like this is even close to being real, the pox of empty strip malls will only get worse as the market implodes violently.

Does this cast a shadow?

Is there a downside to what seems to be this utopian scenario for consumers? Of course:

1. The economic and social impact of a physical industry literally dying before our eyes, and the artifacts (jobs, buildings, etc.) it leaves behind, and
2. The ascension of Amazon as The Big Retailer, a credit card-devouring Skynet, that runs everyone’s commerce everything and has millions of credit card numbers and is literally so big and powerful that nobody can compete with it. Logistics is hard and expensive. Building a merchant base isn’t done overnight. Keeping your brand squeaky-clean is studied every other month by HBR.

For consumers, it will be a revolutionary step forward, but at a macro level, I don’t think we realize the full set of consequences something like this will have.

Still, it’s coming. I would bet money on it.

Media and the ‘Post-Truth’ Age

In the wake of last week’s nationally-televised debates, in which Romney and Obama peddled us sales pitches and marketing propaganda and ‘facts’ that were quickly tallied as punches landed against the opponent, one thing became clear to me after all was said and done and the fact checkers got to work: so much of it is bullshit.

Just pure, utter bullshit. Romney, despite handing Obama a stylistic can of whip-ass, seemed to bend the truth the most, telling enough lies so as to draw notice from pretty much everyone on the Internet. People are talking about it, but you know how?

In passing.

In passing like: “Romney kicked Obama’s ass.”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t exactly truthful in what he was saying. He contradicted himself at least a dozen times.”

“Yeah, but so what? Obama probably did too. It all evens out and Romney still kicked his ass.”

Actual conversation.

People don’t care what is real anymore. If the lies they hear are congruent with what they already believe, then it doesn’t matter if it’s a lie. If the lie runs counter to what they believe, then of course it’s a national travesty, and how could you possibly vote for someone with such questionable character?

Politics in this country have become a team sport, a game of totally binary thinking. For someone who can see the plumbing of it all, it’s infuriating. As I said on Facebook, imagine Googling for something and getting only two links, one red, one blue.

I was sucked into the debates as much as the next guy. But afterwards, amidst all the spin and hype and fact checking, it hit me: we’re all wrapped up in some staged TV marketing-drama to determine which of two worthless fucks will lie to us the way we want.

→ The Atlantic