Abracadabra!
I've been looking at some magicians via this internet thingy. David Blaine is my favorite. He really does some amazing feats. I like the close-up street magic... putting cards into beer bottles or making an empty, bent up beer can into a brand new cold one.

I was fascinated with magic as a kid. I loved the Tony Curtis flick about Houdini and got a couple of magic sets as gifts. There was a really cool store downtown. It was called Bentley's Trading Post and they sold tricks. There were a couple of good shops in Disneyland too. We lived in Orange County so we got to go there all the time. I liked studying the tricks, but was never diligent enough to really perform them well. Occasionally I would pull one off for someone though. One of my problems is that I'm not a good liar, and magicians are lying all the time.

If you would like to see a card trick that I managed to catch on my web cam, click here.

So It Goes
We lost Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. last week. A real milestone. We saw various clips of interviews on the tube. There was an old one, I think it was just after Slaughterhouse Five came out. I thought I was looking at Tom Hanks for a second. In one interview with Charlie Rose he graded some of his books. He gave Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, and Mother Night a grade of A+. When asked which ones failed he said that Slapstick must have, because the critics hated it so much. I loved it.

There was something special about his writing, no question. Way back in high school a friend recommended Happy Birthday, Wanda June and I was hooked. I've read all of the novels, and some of the collections. After arriving in Albuquerque I started checking out books from the library that I thought I hadn't read. I had already been through most of them though.

It was quite a week in the news -- the Lacrosse kids, the Imus flap, explosion in the Green Zone, and the death of a literary giant. This week starts with the deadliest campus shooting ever. So it goes.

Cowboy

This is Cowboy, the WonderCat. We got him at the Humane Society for $6, but he's racked up several additional expenses. Oh well. We had mice brazenly visiting the apartment, so we thought we'd get us a cat. He caught a mouse and left him on the carpet with no apparent injuries. I think he probably died of a heart attack!

So Cowboy did his job, and now he just hangs around, kind of like me. He watches everything I do, and is always trying to say something. My arm is all scratched up because he just can't resist putting out those stiletto claws when I horse around with him. He looks out the windows and watches the birds. He sleeps with his head upside down sometimes. Yes, quite unusual in his behavior.

I've often thought about what a lucky thing it was that human beings got to have such wonderful pets as dogs and cats. They're all the same, yet unique in their own way. It's nice to have a critter around, ain't it?