I decide to spend Christmas with my family this year. We're not all Buddhist, but we celebrate it anyway, sort of. We do the secular stuff, but none of the religious or spiritual stuff. We don't do the usual meditation or fasting. We don't read the sutras or restrict our diets. We don't even play Yahtzee or lawn darts. We just sort of sit around with the TV on, chat, exchange presents, and eat tuna right out of the can. It's actually been pretty quiet.

It might surprise you to learn that I don't have any particular bits of wisdom to share with you today. Sorry. Instead, I thought I'd give you a little window into my family.

My dad spent most of the morning sorting through the six boxes of Fallen Empires Magic: The Gathering cards that we got him. Then he hinted that he might be willing to try Yu-Gi-Oh for Valentine's Day and promptly fell asleep on top of a pile of Icatian Skirmishers.

My mom tested out tuna all day. You may not know this, but cats don't have the easiest time getting canned tuna. Grocery stores are unwilling to allow cats near the canned fish section for reasons that are, I think, opaque to all of us. It's probably some kind of wacky Victorian bias. Who knows. Anyway, cats usually end up getting canned tuna through a sort of black market. While I'd like to say otherwise, not all of those who run tuna adhere to high standards of quality, and we all do well to check our tuna. Mom opened can after can and had me test it for poisons or taints. So I wouldn't be biased by my eyesight, she blindfolded me and made me eat a little from each can. Then she'd kick me to see if I was dead or not. She works so hard to take care of all of us.

Uncle Pete is, in fact, a tuna runner. He was pretty busy last week importing tuna from Lichtenstein, so he slept on top of a copy of Eddie Izzard's Dressed to Kill until about 3, when he had a hairball. After that, he moved to Circle and went back to sleep.

Pete's wife, Aunt Flora, races cars. Unfortunately for her, she managed to flip her 1:8 scale Testarossa Spyder two days ago and is currently in a full-body cast. She couldn't eat, so Mom made us all put our tuna next to her for a few minutes so she could enjoy the smell.

My cousin Fuffywuffykins is the family gadget geek, and while she's been on my parents' couch for the last month, nobody has successfully spoken with her for more than about six seconds at a time because she is hooked up to her new iPod Zepto, a Nintendo DS, a Blackberry, and iPhone, a Kindle, and a Pocket Fisherman. She did give me a very nice iPod Nano, though. She tossed it my way when her Zepto arrived in the mail. All I have to do now is put all the bits back in and I'll never be away from my music again.

Great-uncle Tamerlane Nobunaga Cochrane Zhuge Skoochybottoms von Nelson is also here for the day. We're not really sure what he does for a living, but he tells the greatest stories. I can't quite remember any of them right now, but I'll see if I can remember some of them later. They're great. You'll laugh.

My nephew Doug was going to join us, but I guess he was kept late at work. He just started a new job as a therapist at a pit bull rescue center, and he probably couldn't get away. He's such a workaholic.

Finally, my other cousin, also named Doug, did manage to make it. He's actually allergic to tuna, so he and I broke out a canister of unagi and played parcheesi.

Anyhow, that's my family, and we all got along really well this holiday season. Hopefully you and yours will get along equally well, whatever you do or do not celebrate. Unagi! Out!

Today is my birthday. Thank you to everyone who has wished me a good one. I'll give you a general rundown on how it has been.

First, I'm feeling okay. I'm not feeling great, but I'm okay. I like my pillow. Actually, I love it. I don't know how I've managed to live without this. Thank you, J & J!

Unfortunately, the company that manufactures unagi for sale in the United States seems to have recalled their supply, so I wasn't able to eat any today. I'm looking forward to some treats, though.

My parents called about a week ago to wish me happy birthday. I'll try to convey as clear a sense of the conversation as I can. To get as close to reality as I can, imagine that my dad is played by Walter Matthau, my mom is played by Jack Lemmon, and I'm played by Dooley Wilson (not credited).

ME: Hello?

MOM: Hi, Sweetie!

DAD: Now what kind of way is that to talk to WOTC Tech Support?

MOM: It's Miss Kitty, you idiot!

DAD: I have a question about the Necropotence card. Can you--- Wait, Miss Kitty? How the Hell are ya, son?

ME: I'm fine.

DAD: Oh.

ME: I've got cancer.

MOM: Can it be treated?

DAD: I'm not paying for it.

MOM: Miss Kitty wasn't going to ask for help. You weren't going to, were you, Dear?

ME: No, I'm fine. I'm getting treatment.

DAD: Damnit.

MOM: Don't say things like that.

DAD: Do you want me to lie?

MOM: Well, I lie. Mommy's very sorry about your... cancer, was it?

ME: Yeah. Cancer.

MOM: Does the treatment hurt?

ME: Yeah.

MOM: ... ... That's... really... um... Anyhow, we're just calling to wish you a happy birthday.

ME: My birthday is next week.

DAD: We kinda figured that, but we probably won't have time to call you next week, whenever it may be. The TV is broken right now, so we've got nothing else to do. Happy birthday!

ME: Gee, thanks.

MOM: Honey, I see a squirrel through the window. We've got to go. I'm glad you are doing well.

DAD: Bye.


I got a card from them yesterday. I'm kind of touched that they thought of me enough to send one, even if it does say, "Sorry you've got the mange!" I was really surprised when they called again this morning. It went something along these lines.

MOM: How's Mommy's little moron?

DAD: That's how you talk to Tech Support! Moron!

ME: It's Miss Kitty.

MOM: Who?

DAD: From Gunsmoke?

ME: Your daughter.

MOM: Oh, yeah. Whoops.

DAD: Make yourself useful, son. Tell Daddy how to make the damn VCR clock stop flashing.

MOM: Come on, Sweetie. Tell us how to make the nasty clock stop flashing.

ME: I'm not sure. I think you have to set it or something like that. It's my birthday, you know.

MOM: Oh. So you can't really help? Bye.

DAD: I knew we should have called collect!


So yeah, my birthday was pretty good. I got a card. I got to talk to my parents. I'm going to get treats at some point. I've got an awesome pillow. It doesn't get much better.

So in the tradition of most of my best birthdays, with "my best" being a seriously limiting factor, I spent most of the day alone without unagi of any kind. As always, I got a card from the ASPCA reminding my "owners" to have me "fixed." Hand-written below that charming birthday wish was, "Already had it done? Have it done again, just to make sure!" *sigh* There are rumors that I'll get unagi, though. I'm running in circles just to get ready for the excitement.

Thanks to those of you who have wished me a happy birthday. Your love and respect makes up for the rambling phone call from Dad at about 1:45 this morning asking if I had any clever ideas for how to use the Necropotence card.

In other news, yet still following on a tradition of lousy birthdays, I suspect the Easter Bunny is way out of my league and I'm actually lucky that it didn't show up here Sunday. We were wondering if the Easter Bunny was male or female or what have you. wintersweet apparently wasn't sure, but concluded that because it produces eggs, it must be a Sidhe. If so, I'm out of luck. No tasty bunny fritters for me, unless I can get access to cold iron fang-caps. Of course, maybe next time I can trick it. I'm a master of riddles. I could whip out something about selling seashells by the seashore or buggy bumpers or pickled peppers. The list is endless, at least if you've got a keen mind like mine.

So I guess one key issue is whether the Bunny is Seelie or Unseelie. What do you think?

Poll #466517
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 35

The Easter Bunny: Seelie or Unseelie?

They say addiction runs in families. From time to time, you'll hear about whole families of alcoholics. I've also heard that during the Heian period, one branch of the Japanese Imperial Family was addicted to Red-Hots. This seems to be the case with my family, too. I went to one of the local Jain geneaological vaults yesterday and did some digging on my family. I found out a couple of things. One is good, I think. The members of my family are cats as far back as I've been able to trace, so they aren't allowed to legally marry. However, it looks like the Jains edited records to marry them off after they were dead. They even married a bunch of people who had decided never to marry. That's sweet. I guess... Or maybe it's creepy.

The really disturbing thing I've discovered is that as far back as I look, I find my ancestors were addicts. Uncle Ivor, who ran a flea circus, was hooked on salami and was found dead one day surrounded by a dozen half-eaten salami sticks. My cousin Winthrop was a total Cheers junkie. When the show was going off the air, one of the local stations ran a 36-hour Cheers special. He wouldn't leave the television even during commercials and had to be taken to the hospital when it was over. Back in 1886, my great great great ... great aunt Chester collected tobacco advertisements and tobacco company documents. She even had a memo proving that the tobacco companies knew that their products killed people and were covering it up. A piano fell on her while she was in the litterbox.

I'm thinking about all of this because since giving up Action Heroes of Science, I've been hooked on and then given up a whole bunch of things. First it was the Popes collectible card game. Then it was the Dumb Ideas of Sigmund Freud cup and plate set. Then it was Faberge eggs, which aren't nearly as tasty as you would think from the price. After that, I got hooked on this card game called Recursive, in which you take on the roles of people who design collectible trading-card games and try to get your product to the market first. This morning, Clint helped me send back the whole line of Herman's Hermits foot- and dental-care products. I'm in trouble. Yesterday I was hooked on twelve-step programs, but I quit. With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm afraid I'll get hooked on and have to quit cold turkey as well.

I don't think it's very nice, given my family's history of addiction (It turns out my dad's mother collected Pearl Buck novels. She died when her tower of All Men Are Brothers fell on her.), that the minute I announce that I'm giving up collecting Action Heroes of Science, Clint gives me a starter deck for Popes: The Collectible Trading Card Game of Sin and Salvation.

I just love "St. Gelasius I." First, Rome gets +3 as long as he is in play. Second, as soon as he comes into play, everyone has to identify their Manichaean cards. Finally, he can keep secular cards from bothering you from one turn. "HIV-Spreading Lies," on the other hand, is just sick and wrong.

It seems that I've got a new kitten to take care of. She calls herself Jenn the Kitten (jenniferward), and I'm a little worried about her. I mean, she's kind of big for a kitten, and she has odd ears. They don't seem to move that much. She doesn't have whiskers and she keeps her tail tucked into her jeans, so I'm a little baffled that she hasn't fallen over yet. Also, she appears to lack any sort of food-finding instincts. She showed up this afternoon and hasn't even tried to steal any of my food or get me to scam some milk for her. I'm pretty sure that mother cats are supposed to get milk for their kittens. I looked it up. We're mammals, so we're expected to give milk. This is kind of hard for me, since the mammals I live with won't give me any. I know it's there. I've seen it. It's on the top shelf of the fridge. I feel like a bad mother because I can't get any milk for my (presumably special) kitten. However, she does have one really useful physical mutation. She's one of those cats with thumbs, so I think I can teach her to open tins of unagi.

Anyhow, I'm not going to make the same mistakes that my parents made with me. My dad was a hopeless Magic: The Gathering addict. I'm not really addicted to anything, as far as I know, but I'm going to make sure. Starting today, I'm giving up collecting those Aciton Heroes of Science toys. I really wanted the Albert Einstein with Kung-Fu Grip, the Georg Cantor with Sword-Swinging Action, and the Trofim Denisovich Lysenko's Dungeon of Doom set, but I'm giving them up. I'd hate to become a junkie.

I'm an animal test subject, and I think it rocks! Pounce, the people who make some kinds of cat food, sent us a bunch of free cat treats that they are testing, and let me tell you, it's quite tasty. In the next few months, you should buy and eat anything you see from Pounce that says, "New!" Take my word for it. It's tasty. It's not unagi-tasty, but it's really good. Plus, it's Tartar-control, so I'll never have to go to war like Alexander Nevsky did to keep the Mongol hordes out of my town.

Serously, though, I'm not sure why people object to animal testing. I guess it's a species-based anti-outsourcing argument. I mean, I am taking the job from some human who would otherwise have been paid to taste-test this Pounce stuff. However, it's not like the jobs are leaving the country, so I can only assume people who are against animal testing are speciesist spigots.

I've been involved with animal testing for a long time now. When I was very young, my parents enrolled me in a cognitive disorders experiment. A bunch of protesters shut it down, but not before my parents had some cash. Plus, since I was part of the test, I guess I must be protected against cognitive disorders for the rest of my life. Mom said that the money probably saved my life. She said it was the only way they could afford to keep me instead of drowning me in a bucket. Of course, when she was drunk, she said it was so Dad could buy a couple of expensive Magic: The Gathering cards. Dad's story is and always has been that he wanted the money to buy a bigger bucket. Anyhow, whatever happened to the money, I'm protected from cognitive disorders. That means I'll never have cancer of the cognitive or anything like that.

I'm interested in taking part in more tests. I've heard that a lot of makeup companies test hot new makeup on animals. Since I'm a goth, I could use some makeup. I'm thinking a little black eyeliner would bring out the yellow in my eyes, but I'd be happy to have any hip new makeup.

I'm not that fond of newspaper comics. I will admit that the art is usually quite good, but I'm not generally taken by the humor. It's usually crude, involving bodily functions, cheap shots and laughing at the stupid or ignorant. Peanuts, for example, is just full of cheap bathroom humor. I do like Doonesbury and Get Fuzzy, however. Get Fuzzy packs a lot of humor into each litlte picture, and it has Satch. He's *so* cute. Doonesbury is actually one of the hardest-hitting sources for news outside of The Daily Show. They don't pull punches for anybody, and they do some pretty fine science segments, too. I have fond memories of the time they took a safari in Ronald Reagan's brain, and that time they went inside Bush's head to take a close look at his morals. The last segment never actually made it to the newspapers, though. The people who did that Powers of 10 book and movie thought the intro sequence where they were shrunk down enough to actually see his morals was too similar to something in their book.

Also, I like The Far Side. The art is really funny, even if the words don't make any sense.

However, while reading Sunday's comics, I noticed that Clear Blue Water had a profound and, to my mind, unanswerable question:

"Why do punkins gots triangle eyes?"

I did some research, and I can only conclude that I have no idea, but a quick check on Google's image search confirms that it is true.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that my investing skills have failed in this case, but I have to say in my defense that my family wasn't really that big on Easter. I remember when we tried to celebrate it during the year I lived at home. Mom had the grill and the fireworks all set up when Dad pointed out that he was an Orangeman, so it was kind of stupid to celebrate. Then he collapsed face-first into a huge pile of Magic: The Gathering cards.

A wedding anniversary is a wonderful thing, and a first anniversary is even more wonderful. My roommates have theirs today. It's truly beautiful.

A wedding anniversary is a chance to stop and renew the bond of love between the two partners, or, depending on the vows, to stop and remind one of you that you are the property of your spouse and not really your own person. Fortunately, my roommates didn't take one of those kinds of vows. Neither did they take one of poverty, or silence, or of going to a very holy land and slaughtering as many people as it takes to keep it holy. No, they took one of the good kinds of vows.

A wedding anniversary is also a chance to look back on your life together, and to remember all of the amazing times the two of you have shared. Examples include that honeymoon in Angola, your part in the capture of Frank and Jesse James, and the time you rewrote the Star Wars script to make it look like Han didn't shoot first.

Some of these memories may be missing in a first wedding anniversary, since tradition dictates that it take place within a year of your getting married. This is more than made up for by the novelty of the whole thing and the fact that you probably haven't passed into what psychologists call Stage II Love. In Stage I love, people are about as objective about each other as those Swift Boat Veterans for Bush: your partner can do no wrong, even if he/she sets your hair on fire while trying to make ice cubes or comes home drunk and wearing one of Dick Cheney's ties. Stage II Love is the more mature kind of love, and from the other families I've lived with, appears to involve storming out of the room in a huff whenever your partner turns on the Weather Channel.

However nice the renewal of bonds and the remembrance of things past may be, the best part of an anniversary is in the now: the partners get together and share unagi with their cat.

Happy anniversary, assaultdoor and wintersweet, you two crazy kids. Here's looking forward to the unagi today and years more to come.