Herself had a video-production class the other day and so we screwed around shooting footage of Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Turkish. She used a bunch of Mia clips, so I decided to give equal time to the Turk (a.k.a. Big Pussy, Mighty Whitey, the Turkinator, Turkenstein, et al.).
Using my little Flip HD makes the process pretty much a no-brainer — why Cisco croaked this product is a mystery to me — but I’d kind of like to try one of the newer Canon HD digital camcorders. I have a Canon ZR500 that records to Mini DV cassettes, but it’s kind of clunky, doesn’t do HD and spazzed out when Herself tried to add some of its clips to a collection for her class. Strictly stone knives and bearskins — I mean, jeez, the thing is 5 years old! If it were in Maine, it could have a job.
In unrelated feline news, do cats dream (if only of Hollywood superstardom)? National Geographic wondered that, too, and here’s what they found out, via Discoblog and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, a dude who has his own feline issues. Plus he’s a Trekkie to boot. I wonder whether the old “Star Trek” episode the Drums and their cats were watching happened to be “Assignment: Earth.”
Mad Blog Media 
Very enjoyable Friday night high class info-tainment: post, video and links.
It appears Turk cooperated with your documentary. What promises and concessions did you have to make?
Libby, he’s been oddly cooperative lately. Once I decide he’s had enough outside time — assuming he chooses not to exercise his veto power by dashing underneath Herself’s Subaru or one of the two major bushes bracketing the DogHaus — why, shoot, he’s ready to do whatever I ask of him, as long as I’m wearing body armor, a pair of oven mitts and my Bell scooter helmet with a full face shield.
Voodoo Zen is neat. Of course, now I realize why you can do singletrack on a cross bike. My singletrack at the back of North Mesa is all rocks and scant little smooth stuff.
liked the butt shot.
This is certainly apropos. I saw in the paper this morning that this is National Hug A Cat Day. I got in the swing of things with Spritz and Oscar “El Pistolito” Doskar von Boskar Noskar, then bribed Misty with 5 minutes of brushing. She obliged me for about 5 seconds before the claws came out. She headed back for the window, and I was off to the bathroom stash of bandaids.
My wife has already decided to come back in her next life as a cat.
Hug a Cat Day? A guy can throw out his back trying to give the Turk a hug. Plus he mostly doesn’t like it and your epidermis is then in jeopardy. Better to give him a bit of outside time and a chance to perform The Roll of the Happy Cat in a sunny spot.
Mia, on the other hand, relishes a warm hug from Herself. But then who wouldn’t?
Being a cat is a really hard life. But hey, someone has to do it. I think the reason that people love their pets so much (aside from them being adorable and all) is that we try to live vicariously through them. If only, if only, if only I could sleep all day and only get up every once in a while for a few brief spurts of energy, then back to a nap.
Sharon, that has described my day perfectly as I try and deal with strange weather here in NorCal: rain and temps 20 degrees below normal. Perfect cat-like weather.
It’s the nap thing that I envy. I’ve always been a light sleeper, tough to put down and easily awakened. Plus once I’m awake, there’s no going back to sleep, no matter whether it’s 3 a.m. or p.m.
Herself, on the other hand, seems to be part cat in that she can sleep anywhere, anytime, at the drop of a hat, and rarely wakes up with an attitude (unlike the other two-legged varmint in the house).
FWIW, the Star Trek episode was probably “Patterns of Force…”
For what it’s worth, EO Wilson talked about studies showing that birds dream in something he put out years ago. Also, humans who have never seen a snake (Inuits, for instance) will dream of snakes. The world is more queer than we can ever imagine, as Dr Dawkins likes to say.