willhines.net

Maggie: Thin, frightened, dumb.

Hopey: Fat, mean, smart.

9 Comments | Tags: cats

I am only just now watching 30 Rock, at Tabitha’s insistence. Working my way through season 1 — the show is so good, it hurts me.

I’ve been asked to put together a series of ideas for news-based comedy. News-based comedy! Not only is it all people (with money) seem to want, it’s what people assume I’m good at. I may radiate “newsiness” but I’m as topical as Wacky Packs.

DeCoster and I did Oxygen Destroyer for Michelle’s Gilda’s Club benefit. Fun. People laughed.

The second (of this era of) Maude Night happened. I direct the team Mix Tape ‘98. It’s terrific fun. There were no Rick Roll parodies, which made me feel better about the world.

Cat update: Hopey is now enormously fat. [...]

4 Comments | Tags: 30 rock, cats, comedy, comics, decoster, hopey, maggie, matt little, michelle dobrowsky, news comedy, tabitha

Some three and a half years into it, these two once-terrified cats have decided they like sitting on people. It’s especially new for Maggie. I credit the enormous iMac looming over them and bathing them in digital light.

I realize this is the textbook “terrible” blog entry (cat photos) — the equivalent of monopolizing a conversation by talking about a dream you had, but this is a landmark event in the assimilation of my creatures.

6 Comments | Tags: cats, hopey, maggie, photo booth

Got my new iMac. It’s hilariously big — might be bigger than my television. Look at it dwarf my old iMac G5 (pre-Intel). At this moment, the new computer is sucking the files and applications from the old one — it’s like a Cylon downloading into a new body! Yeah, you heard me! CYLON!

Seriously, though it’s so beautiful I feel like I have to start taking better pictures so I have something worth displaying on it.

You can see Hopey peeking from behind it — she’s stunned to be almost completely enclosed, I think.

2 Comments | Tags: cats, computers, imac

Thanksmas, when my mother’s family in Cleveland (or Strongsville, specifically), Ohio gathers the tribe for a get-together in between the two other holidays (ones which draw us all to more nuclear-family-oriented-gatherings) has finished. It was fun. Brian, Kevin + Cat, and I descended back to our birthplace Friday afternoon and began a weekend of board games, inside jokes, photos and a few nice meals.

The highlight for me, as it is often is, was our ritual of abandoning my Aunt Sue alone while the rest of us duck out to the divey Dapper Dan’s for a beer. I don’t really remember how this started. Anyway, I always think she’s going to be tough to fool, but [...]

3 Comments | Tags: brian, cats, family, kevin, thanksmas

My digital camera seems to be working. Let’s get right to it, folks!

This top-entry litter box has changed my life. I had resigned myself that my kitchen would forever be a shallow sandbox of scattered cat litter flicks — but this contraption has returned it to looking like an Actual-Grown Up’s kitchen. Big thumbs-up to these things.

I’m pleased to report that my Windows 2000 machine at work did not need any software installed in order to extract photos from my camera. My iMac at home had no problem either, but I had expected that.

I’m going to see Morrissey tonight with Porter Mason. It should be ridiculous and fun. I told my [...]

12 Comments | Tags: cats, computers, music

Those of you asking for cat pictures: trust me, I LOVE posting updates on the cats. Unfortunately, with my relatively new full-time-working lifestyle, I’m not home nearly as much as I used to be, so I don’t have as many chances to capture their antics on film.

I know it’s a poor substitute, but here instead of photos are brief observations on my cats:

• They are both crazy.
• Well, that was vague. What I mean is they are socially skittish. They are scared of everyone and usually won’t come out if anyone new is over. Even when they like people, they do not like to be touched. They DO like to be NEAR people, just not in contact.
• Maggie is dumber, more slim but [...]

5 Comments | Tags: cats