Folded clothes. Suitcases. Travel-sized toiletries. What could it mean?

Yup. It looks like the girls (and their cat) will be taking a little vacation while their people go off to Camp Periwinkle for the week.

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Want to make a fast friend by saving a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you. You can also go here to find out why greyhounds are running for their lives.

If you have dogs who need proven leadership, go here to find a cat.

This was taken in Round Rock, TX in the vicinity of I-35 and McNeil Road sometime around 1989-1990. I think it’s a church again these days, but I always thought the idea of a Church of Karate was kind of funny.

If they celebrate Festivus, it would certainly make the ‘feats of strength’ portion of the holiday especially interesting.

Shortly after posting last week’s installment of Weekend Cat Blogging, Morrison hopped up on my wife’s lap where she noticed to her horror that his chin and lower jaw were so swollen that he looked like Santa Claus.

Now, the old guy is diabetic so whenever anything weird happens we pretty much have to get him to a vet asap, so off we went to animal emergency where they know us pretty well.

It turns out that Morrison was stung or bitten whilst defending us from a gigantic (foot long if it was an inch) scorpion or perhaps some kind of spider (one of Shelob’s children, no doubt) that may have been lurking in some dark corner.

The vet at animal emergency shaved his chin to look for a wound, and then started him on benadryl. He had to stay for a few hours on Sunday night and then he was released back to us with enough lower jaw to build a second cat.

I had to give him benadryl tablets every eight hours. We had some fine times in the nether hours of the night in which I chased him around trying to ‘pill’ him only to watch him spit the pill out. It was a good game that we played every 2am for a few nights this week.

Finally, during a trip to Petsmart I learned that there is such a device that will allow one to shoot a pill down the back of a cat’s throat. With my new weapon in hand, Morrison was no match for me, and I am happy to report that his swelling has subsided.

He now looks like a normal cat. Normal with a shaved chin, that is. Still, he wears his battle scar proudly, a reminder of what a fierce beast he is.

Update: Upon coming back to town (after abandoning Morrison in his hour of need) I learned that his bravery has earned him the Feline Theocracy’s Legion of Feline Merit Medal with Catnip Leaf Cluster. The award was presented at the 123rd Carnival of the Cats hosted at The Scratching Post.

One of the first shows I ever saw in Austin was at the Back Room. The Godfathers (of “Birth, School, Work, Death” fame) were playing sometime either in ‘88 or ‘89. I had just moved here and was only starting to realize that Austin was a place where I could easily see some of my favorite bands and discover new ones.

The Godfathers show was pretty fun. They were shooting a video and let the first few hundred fans come in early for the shoot. We were near the front of the line and got to participate. They played one song several times and asked the crowd to really get into it. We did. Then they let the rest of the crowd in for the real set and we rocked out with the Godfathers in all their pinstripe-suited punk rock glory.

Over the years, I caught the occasional Back Room show and when I lived in South Austin, it was only a short walk away. The last show I saw there was Spindrift sometime in the mid ’90s. It was an off night for them, but the beer was, as always, cold and cheap.

The Back Room was mainly known as a metal club, and that really wasn’t my scene, so I never got to know it as I did the other late greats: Liberty Lunch, Electric Lounge, Steamboat, but it was part of my introduction to the world of Austin music and so I’m sad to read today that it will be closing its doors.

Note: In our effort to read new books while hopefully gaining insight into the various mysteries on ABC’s Lost, my wife and I are reading the books that appear on the show. We are, of course proceeding on the assumption that the books referenced and shown are included because of the way they interact with the show’s themes and not just because any given book was what the propmaster had on the truck when an actor needed something to do with his hands.

L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a fairly simple children’s tale, but it’s also a fascinating political allegory about the populist movement in late nineteenth century America. I enjoyed reading it, but in this case, I think the movie is better.

Much has been written elsewhere about Wizard’s political message, but briefly: Scarecrow is the farmer lacking the brains to use his political power; Tin Woodman is the industrial worker who cut off from the land has lost his heart; Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryant, a populist pol who was all roar and no bite; the Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard; Wicked Witch of the East is the big eastern banks that enslave the common man (The Munchkins) until savior Dorothy (backwards thy-o-dor, as in Roosevelt) comes to crush the Eastern robber barons and unite the farmers and factory workers in a magnificent populist revolution; Wicked Witch of the West represents drought and difficult environmental conditions; Flying Monkeys are the American Indians, rendered powerless by Westerners; Oz is Washington DC; and the Wizard is the president, a politician who is all things to all people, but really nothing more than a sham who offers fake solutions to real problems.

Nineteenth century populist politics and debates about the relative merits of the gold vs the silver currency standards aren’t really issues central to Lost, but thematically, The Wizard of Oz is a story of peaceful social change and looking inside one’s self to find the things one needs to live a fulfilling and successful life.

Throughout the story, the Scarecrow clearly has brains; the Tin Woodman, heart; and the Cowardly Lion, courage. They just need to be shown, and ultimately it is the wizard who shows them that they already possess what they thought they lacked. With these tools, they now have the capacity to change the world.

The journey down the Yellow Brick Road ultimately becomes one of self discovery similar to what thecharacters on Lost experience during their adventures on the island. They too have what they thought they lacked ultimately allowing them the ability to change themselves and find redemption. The Wizard of Oz is about reaching one’s potential, a concept we see time and again on Lost, and also an apparent goal of the Hanso Foundation.

The example that springs to mind first is that of John Locke who finds within himself the strength, the ability to lead, and the conviction that he never knew he had. It’s worth remembering that Henry claimed to be coming for John because he was “one of the good ones.”

The Wizard of Oz does not actually make an appearance on Lost, but it is referenced in the name of Henry Gale. Henry’s name alludes to Dorothy’s Uncle Henry from the Wizard of Oz, and like the wizard - who let’s not forget is really a charlatan - Henry claims to have arrived in a hot air balloon. Or, at least he says he did.

The Wizard of Oz also brings us to the “Lost Continent Theories” in which we are meant to wonder if the survivors are actually on the remains of Lemuria, a Pacific Ocean version of Atlantis. This is implied by the four-toed statue that Sayid sees in the season two finale and by the fact that psychic Edgar Cayce (worth looking into since so many of his ideas correspond to what we see in Lost) ”confirmed” the existence of Lemuria (and Atlantis).

Cayce believed that the citizens of Lemuria had psychic abilities and were both technologically and spiritually advanced. He also referred to Lemuria as Oz.

Considering the amount of psychic phenomenon on Lost and the number of Lost books that involve psychic phenomenon including prophetic dreams and spirit projection (Watership Down, Turn of the Screw, Lord of the Flies, A Wrinkle in Time) and the religious themes that appear on the show, it would not surprise me at all if the writers of Lost were using some of Cayce’s ideas as source material for the show.

So are the survivors of Oceanic 815 in another world, an enchanted land like Oz, or the remains of a lost continent? It would explain why Desmond couldn’t sail away. It would explain why everyone seems to have arrived by accident.

Of course, how does the Hanso Foundation know about it? If they can find it to drop supplies from the air, why doesn’t it show up on Google Earth? Is the Dharma Initiative an attempt to exploit a found Lemuria or to recreate it based on some kind of scientific/psychic discovery?

(click here for the rest of the Lost book reviews)

We actually went to a theater!

Lady in the Water (M Night Shyamalan, 2006)

Perhaps I’m the only one, but I really liked Lady in the Water, the latest offering from M Night Shyamalan. Reviews of Shyamalan’s films tend to begin with praise for the Sixth Sense and then a comment about how it’s all been downhill from there. Frankly Sixth Sense, while good, is not my favorite of his films. That honor goes to Unbreakable.

Lady in the Water is a bit of a departure for him. It does not have the Big Twist that is the hallmark of his films (especially Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village) in fact, it’s pretty straightforward as to what is going on.

Cleveland Heep is an apartment manager trying to find out who’s using the pool after hours. He falls in and is rescued by the midnight swimmer: a water nymph straight out of an old bedtime story. She’s here to help save humanity, but she doesn’t know how and so Cleveland must help her before she gets killed by a scrunt. It sounds silly and we know all this before the credits even roll, so where’s the fun?

For me it’s that once Lady gets past a slow start, it’s really very funny. Most of Shyamalan’s films have moments of quirky humor, but Lady in the Water is full of it. It’s a funny movie that is at once beautiful and whimsical, not meant to be taken too seriously, and yet it speaks eloquently to the unseen potential that we all carry around with us and are often too blind or afraid to see.

Sometimes to get a good picture one has to get between a fierce beast and his prey food dish.

I mentioned Montezuma Castle in last week’s Old Photo Friday, and today we take a couple of looks at it from two different points in time.

Montezuma Castle National Monument is located in Cape Verde, Arizona and has nothing to do with Aztec emperor Moctezuma. The cliff dwelling was built by the Sinagua people, and according to Wikipedia Montezuma Castle was the last known dwelling place of the Sinagua. It was abandoned around 1425. 

This first image was taken during the summer of 1982 when we were visiting family as we moved from the Philippines to Italy. I was 11, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a cliff dwelling or heard about the Anasazi people who built them (the Sinagua are considered a branch of the Anasazi group).

The second image was taken in 1996 when my wife and I were traveling through the four corners region looking at the ancient ruins.

Like me, the trees seem to have grown a bit in the intervening fourteen years.

In Italy, I would see the ruins of Pompeii and many other Roman sites, but none of it captured my imagination or sparked a sense of wonder comparable to what I saw in Arizona when I was a kid.

(Buzz Aldrin on the Moon - from Great Images in NASA. Click here for more.)

July 20, 1969, the day Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, is probably one of - if not the - most important dates in human history. Years after all of us who lived through it are gone, the Apollo Moon landings will probably be the main thing that school kids know about the 20th century.

Or they’ll remember the atom bomb, but I’m hoping that it’s to be the former.

When I think about how the Apollo program will be remembered, though, I think of historical analogies, and the exploration and colonization of the Americas by Europeans comes to mind. There was a time when I considered Apollo 11 to be analogous to Colombus’ voyage in 1492, but the way that manned space exploration has stalled in Earth orbit makes me wonder if it will be more of an historical footnote like the voyages of the Vikings to Newfoundland in the tenth century.

There is an editorial called “We Should Reach for the Moon” by Buzz Aldrin in today’s paper. He calls for a return to the Moon, a return to the kind of big space programs that challenge mankind to push past our limitations. There are so many benefits in terms of technology, medicine, science, and probably most important: inspiration.

We need to see things like this again.

(Earthrise - Apollo 8 - from Great Images in NASA. Click here for more.)

This Earthrise was taken in December of 1968 by the crew of Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon. The crew were the first people to see the Earth in its entirety.

This is probably my favorite photograph; certainly the most beautiful, the most amazing image I’ve ever seen. The stark contrast between the dead moon and the living Earth hanging in the infinite void of space is something that should humble us all. It should remind us of how fragile this planet is.

We need to see things like this again. We need to see the bigger picture. We need to be reminded that this Earth is all we have. We need to be reminded that we’re all in this together.

When the Apollo astronauts went to the moon, it wasn’t just NASA or America or the West going with them. It was all of humanity. Every citizen of every civilization that ever existed took those first steps with Neil Armstrong. His steps were a new beginning, but they were also the beginnning of the end of the Apollo program.

It’s past time for a new beginning.

We need this.

Sometimes - today for instance - I find myself writing a scene and it just isn’t coming together. It’s a key part of the story, but all I’m interested in is a scene that’s really coming together, but that won’t happen for another hundred pages or so.

I don’t like to claim writer’s block since that’s too easy an excuse to not write, but, man, I was so ahead of where I was and that killed the desire to work.

That’s when it’s a good idea to tackle those dirty dishes and that last load of laundry. It’s not really writing, but it’s not really not writing either. So, my heart is ahead of where I am in the latest novel, but when I got back to it I found the scene and left off at a place I’m excited to get back to.

Damn, this post is vague, but that’s what I did on this vague and fuzzy day.