Biscuit: Tasty Doesn't Get You A Date To The Prom

My cat has fleas! And also, kitty acne. My fourteen year old cat has acne. And fleas. So the $49 visit to the vet turned into the $225 visit to the vet. At least this is supposed to fix my poor little kitty, so I am sure she is pretty excited about that.

Fleas are pretty yucky. Just so you know.

I also find it intriguing that the most interesting thing I have to talk about right now is my cat. My poor sad little itchy kitty. Meow!

Summary of other news:
--HOORAH for The Kate, Californian Edition, moving to crazy-exciting The NYC!
--HOORAH for The Kate, Chinese Edition, moving to New York soon!
--My play (Twelfth Night) started this weekend! We had a show on Saturday and then on Sunday it was canceled due to rain that never happened. But there are more shows next weekend, so that will be lovely.
--My interview was remarkably easy and I should find out something on Wednesday.
--I applied to be the assistant to the Food Editor at Vogue magazine! I bet you do not need me to tell you that I would saw off my feet if it meant I could do that job, instead of another stint as brain-sucked HTML guy. Cross your fingers for me, would you?

Miss Redvelvet Fish, a daughter of Eugenia Cornwallis-Fish and Herbert "Herby" Thompson Fish of the Boston Fishes, was married on Wednesday to Mr. Fulminous Biscuit, the son of Calliope Biscuit and Dr. Anderson Biscuit of Hyannisport. A non-denominational service was performed in New York City.

The bride, 26, is president of Fish Communications, a global enterprise headquartered in Manhattan with offices in London, Tokyo, Sydney, Paris, Venice, and Helsinki. Miss Fish maintains modest residences in each of these cities to facilitate her sometimes-frenzied travel schedule. She received a degree in English magna cum laude from Harvard University. She is the author of several best-selling novels, and also regularly appears as a model for Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, and is a close personal friend of Donatella Versace. Her father is an investment banker with J.P. Morgan Chase, and on the Board of Directors of the I.M.F., and her mother is president of both the Junior League and the Daughters of General Cornwallis Foundation.

The bridegroom, 27, is executive chef at several four-star restaurants including Parfait, Croquembouche, and The Shiv and Biscuit (the last in partnership with Bridgett-Cavouras LLP), with cuisine ranging from classic French to Asian-Cajun fusion. He is the author of a series of cookbooks, credited with the single-handed revival of gourmet home cookery and the art of the cocktail party. He is the face of the recent Claiborne Luxe ad campaign, and was also recipient of the Year’s Best New Chef award from Gourmet Magazine in 2003. His father is an experimental neuropathologist and his mother is editor of several poetic anthologies and director of the Emerging Poets Guild of New England, designed to nurture young poetic talent.

Miss Fish and Mr. Biscuit met in October 2003 on a bridge over the Charles River, which divides Boston and Cambridge, Mass. From there, both were watching the annual Head of the Charles crew race, in which Miss Fish's cousin's former roommate was competing. After a few gusts of cold wind, Mr. Biscuit offered his Armani jacket to a chilled Miss Fish.

"It was love at first sight," offers Mr. Biscuit. "Not only was she lovely, but she was wearing really really great shoes."

Lacking the courage to ask for her number at the time, it wasn't until two weeks later when, by chance, the pair bumped into each other at a gelateria in Venice, that they had their first date.

"I couldn't decide between the Nocciolata and the Stracciatella. Then imagine my surprise when I saw the dreamy guy who'd lent me his jacket standing at the counter! We ended up getting one of each, and sharing bites as we walked all over Venice that night,” Miss Fish recalls. "It was so romantic!"

Mr. Biscuit proposed less than a month later. When they walked down the aisle, they exchanged custom-designed Tiffany bands, and retired to a star-studded celebration, catered by none other than Mr. Biscuit himself.

Dearest Bast, Goddess of all things Feline-ical:
Oh most gracious, divine, and sleekly pretty Bast -- please. Quit it. I know you know what I am talking about. Yes, Bast. The kitty vomit all over my floor. For a while there, I thought you had taken pity on me and the beautiful kitty who I am lucky enough to be able to feed, pet, care for, pay for, and clean up after. There was a good month where for some reason, my cat had against all odds, stopped throwing up her food after every meal. She has done this her whole life, Bast, as you are, I am certain, well aware. A few days into this glorious period of no throwing up, I thought it was just a natural waning period in her hurking cycle. But then, the absence of vomit continued! "Hoorah!!" I thought to myself. "Poor little Nellie is finally in a home she likes enough that she doesn't feel she has to bolt her food and then throw it all back up again!" I know I said nothing aloud at the time. I did not praise you as perhaps I should have. Realize, Oh Most Purrfect Goddess, this was not intended as a slight to your generosity -- rather, I did not want to jinx my good fortune by discussing it.
Then, of course, we all know what happened next. Perhaps your vengeance, Oh Bast, punishing me for failing to venerate your most gracious and wonderful gift. Little Nellie came down with a bad case of the fleas. I did not waste time, Oh Bast. I did not shirk my duty as Kitty Caretaker. I zipped her straight to a vet and spent a large (yes, very large indeed!) chunk of money intended to pay my rent on ensuring that she could once again be pest-free.
And as soon as she was not busy scratching at fleas or fussing with her...sigh, her feline acne, too...well, she started hurking everywhere, every day. Again.
Please, Oh Great and Mighty Bast, Ruler of Kittydom Everywhere, please do not leave me with this horrible choice. Must I either let the fleas return and walk through my apartment carefree, or keep my charge clear of bugs and step in half-digested food every morning and night? Oh, She of the Unblinking Eye, She of the Tail That Lashes, Goddess of the Icy Calm, Oh, She Who Can Leap To The Top Of The Really Tall Bookshelf Without Thinking Twice About It! Hear me! Let my cat once again eat her food without changing her mind! Let my floor remain clear of gustatory debris! Never again make me listen to the hukk-hukk-hukk-hukk-HRRRULLCH sound while I am being...err...intimate with my boyfriend. Oh Mighty Bast, She Whose Coat Is Particularly Shiny Today: Hear my plea!

Mere moments after I posted that plea...My bathroom floor was covered in gastric juices. "Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers?" Stupid Garth Brooks. You obviously never had a cat with a dodgy tummy.

My mom thinks I should write a book. "It's all so funny!" she says. "Or, at least it would be, if it weren't happening to you."

Landlords from two years ago who still refuse to give me my $3500 fucking security deposit, despite the fact that I have, after discovering their new, non-discontinued phone number by chance, called them dozens of times in the past few days. It is a much longer story than that, but the summary should suffice.
A cat who vomits all over the house every day.
A current landlord who has yet to fix our kitchen faucet that was a known issue when we moved in three months ago.
A boyfriend I never get to see because he's working all the time because I'm stupidly unemployed.
A client who owes me $250 for a project I finished a week ago who has yet to tell me when I can expect payment.
Another client for which I'd like to start working but who asks me the same god damned question nine fucking thousand times before it sinks in to her thick fucking skull and who has yet to give me the go-ahead, despite two meetings and almost 60 (SIXTY!!!) exchanged emails.
I just got an actual job today, freelance, of course, working at a monolithic financial corporation, which should make me REALLY FUCKING HAPPY but for some reason makes me more depressed than ever. Going back to do another computer job at some depressing downtown office across the street from the WTC that requires passage through three sets of guards, a metal detector, and a daily visitor photo ID scan, just for the privilege of making yet another set of corporate-defined financial websites, is most defnitely not my idea of where I want my life to be right now.
Tonight, I called almost every god damned number in my cell phone and not a single person answered. "I'm sorry, I'm away from my..." "I can't take your calls..." "Leave a message at the..." I seriously felt like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone, where I was the last man on the planet.
My cell phone, purchased in November, if you recall, has stopped accepting dialed numbers while I am on a call -- which means I cannot check my voicemail because I have to enter a password. So I called AT&FUCKINGT to complain, and they decided to send me a new phone. They passed me through to their automated Warranty Replacement service...which immediately asked me to enter in my cell phone number WHICH I CANNOT DO BECAUSE MY PHONE NO LONGER ACCEPT NUMBERS.
I just spilled half a glass of CHARDONNAY all over myself because apparently the cosmos decided that I was TOO FUCKING DRY and needed some added MOISTURE on my PANTS.
My bank just charged me a $30 overdraft fee despite the fact that I had just made a deposit, and took money out of THEIR ATM. "If I didn't have the money in my account," I asked the teller, "why would the ATM have given it to me? I would like to point out that it was, in fact, an ATM in the lobby of this very bank, which should know the status of my account if anything should." "I don't know," the teller said. "The deposit you made looks like it hadn't cleared yet, but it shouldn't have given you cash. That's weird." "Yes, it is," I replied, and then they told me to call their 1-800 number to see if I could talk to a supervisor and maybe, just maybe, get the charges reversed.
I called the number. "Press one to continue in English," the dulcet tones announced. It was at this point that I clawed out my eyeballs and my eardrums to live a life of quiet contemplation. Just like Helen Keller.

Maybe mom is right. Maybe this is all really fucking funny, and I just need a little bit of distance to realize it.

Some things are guaranteed to shake one out of a funk. No matter how deeply one might have mired oneself in grumpiness and irritability and pure disdain for bureaucracy and the fuck-wittedness of the general public -- nothing rescues you like a trip to the beach.

The delightfully Tinkerbellian Little Owl already told the best moments. It is all of that.

It is also running around without your shirt on, eating ice cream on the boardwalk.

It is looking at your untanned self at the end of the day and sighing, only to smile when the first red blush of a burn starts to show up hours later, where the back of your legs and your shoulders were exposed to the sun while you laid on cool white sheets in the sand and did a crossword puzzle with a purple pen.

It is splashing your boyfriend with sea water and trying but not being able to make out underwater because the whole ocean would go straight up your nose.

It is imagining the sailboat just on the edge of the horizon slowly tipping on its side as it falls off the edge of the world.

It is this exchange:
Biscuit: (staring blankly into space)
Kate: Biscuit? You okay?
Biscuit: (shaking head quickly and looking up with a bright smile) Huh? Haha, what?
Kate: Hahaha! It's like all the pixie dust in your head settled to the bottom for a second and you just shook it all back up and you're smiling again!

And it is standing tall in the water, yelling excitedly in crescendo as a wave breaks and curls towards you, focusing on the tumbling sight and roaring sound, leaping as high as you can go so the rushing white smacks you hard in the chest, fighting to stay upright, fiercely denying the world the right to knock you over, shaking out your hair and wiping your eyes, laughing, shouting, and spinning back to look for the next one.

Apparently, I am a big gambler. And by big, I mean, like, seriously huge. I clearly have no respect for my finances, and choose to throw my money away to anyone with a deck of cards.

At least, that is the impression I get based on my recent comments. I have been invited no less than 70 times in the past 48 hours to go play some online blackjack! I had no idea I was so big in the world of the virtual casino. That, and it seems I am also in desperate need of caseloads of Viagra AND Cialis -- and I will not even tell you about my insatiable craving for Japanese porn. (I guess I need something to do when I get all that Viagra and Mike is at work.)

I just spent the better part of an hour deleting the ones that showed up today, and I did the same yesterday. I keep adding all of them to my banned IP address list -- does anyone know of a more efficient/effective way of dealing with these nasty little locusts? I wonder how useful this technique IS for them, anyway. Are there legions of people who say, "Well! If bob0y1025 says that Texas Holdem is gaining massive popularity, and he's saying it to this guy who runs this random website...well then! I have to go check out this hot new trend! I don't want another repeat of the I-missed-out-on-the-hula-hoop fiasco!"

Of course by talking about it, I have probably just thrown a big fat bloody lump of raw beef into the open sea.

Now that my little home on the web has had a little housecleaning, I am going to celebrate my first day at my new freelance job by buying myself a bottle of wine and sitting on the couch. I know it should not be terribly surprising at an instutution such as the one at which I regrettably find myself, but they have blocked access to my personal email account. Cell-phone text messaging and I are about to become VERY fast friends.

I like walking. I walk pretty much everywhere I go. That, and I also like standing. Sometimes, I just stand, like when when I am on the subway and I am waiting for another opportunity to walk somewhere.

I did a lot of walking and a lot of standing on Sunday during the protest march in New York. I told my mom about it.

"You were protesting George Bush?"

"Well, that, and the fact that the Republican Convention is here."

"You can't protest that. They still have a right to have a convention."

"Well sure, mom, but considering how this is the first time the Republicans have ever had a convention in here...well, what do you think is their motive? I'm not going to let them claim New York as their city and use September 11th as the backdrop for their photo-op."

That seemed to make at least a little sense to her. I hope it makes at least that much sense to everyone else.

Now look. I do not intend to say that the Republicans do not have a right to speak. In all fairness, they also have a right to speak in New York. There are Republicans who live here and work here. At the moment, I am pretty damned sure I am working with a fairly large contingent of them.

What I do not intend to allow is the wholesale claiming of my goddamned city for their cause. If I acknowledge that they live here, I intend to make my presence known as well. September 11th did not happen just to the Republicans, nor is their party's response to it the only viable choice. In a week that is going to be given over largely to media coverage of their convention and their point of view, an alternate vision is more than welcome. I think that the march that happened here on Sunday helped show that, even if just a little, and even if tempered with the radical images that nobody else but the protesters are going to understand a anyway.

Still. Walking. And standing.

Walking and standing.

It seems not quite enough, really. When there are people out there who are really putting themselves into trouble's way to ensure expression and notice of their point of view. When there are people who are being arrested for the crime of making Republicans uncomfortable during their dinners, or during intermission. It never hit home until now, I have to admit. I am an absolute neophyte, and I have to sit at home and marvel at the continuously streaming reports of others' daring, while they march and protest and exhibit the kind of courage that I really, truly admire -- in the face of overwhelming odds and intimidating opponents. Not just Sunday's march. But today's. And tomorrow's. And all the people who have done more than me, sitting safely in my comfortable little apartment. The people who have taken part in big actions and little ones, for weeks and months and years. I am truly humbled, and thankful.

Thank you, you who show true bravery.