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've heard a lot about this old video game called "Mortal Kompost," and I'm really not sure how it ever became popular. I mean, what is there to do? You eat a virtual apple (still yucky) and throw the virtual core into your virtual Kompost heap. Then you watch it to make sure it doesn't catch fire. I've heard that people used to pump quarters into these machines! I know this was back before the internet got big, but really! The only thing I can imagine was that people missed Pong and only played Mortal Kompost so they could hit that secret Pong level.

Then it became a movie. I'll never understand how that happened, or why anyone cared. I mean, how could people sit in theaters for two hours and watch a bunch of people in strange costumes throw food scraps into big piles? Actually, it's both better and worse than that. Christopher Lambert was one of the stars, and I'm sure it was better than another Highlander film. That's the better part. Unfortunately, his character is Raidon, which is a toxic gas. This is what happens when you let Hollywood modify things. Raidon is found in abandoned mines, not compost heaps. Honestly.

Then the collectible trading card game came out. That was actually kind of interesting. Picture:
PERSON 1: (looks through hand) I play "Watermelon Rind!" (throws down the "Watermelon Rind" card)

PERSON 2: (Smiles and pulls out a card) Not so fast! I counter you with a "Hungry Squirrel!"

PERSON 1: (Whips out another card) Ha! I counter your Squirrel with my "Unsanitary Rat Trap." Snap!

Mmm... trapped squirrel...

I'm actually disturbed by the thought of a Mortal Kompost boardgame. I mean, what would you do? Would it be like Monopoly, where the goal is to use your special powers to beat the living crap out of your opponent, perform some kind of special "finishing move," and throw the body in your Kompost heap, or would it be like Jenga, where you just try to build a Kompost heap?