Cat and Bear investigate: BIRTHDAYS

Birthdays are always weird and slightly depressing. Especially if you remember how terrible last year's birthday was, and therefore you try your very hardest to make this years as much unlike last year's as possible. And then you're successful, but the general rule is, that if you had a great birthday last year, the next one will be shit. This year's the shit year, so my only consolation is that next year's will have to be amazing. Because otherwise that's not fair to have two bad birthdays in a row..........

Birthdays also mean that you're growing older, and I don't particularly want to grow older, because it takes too long, and then afterwards it feels like it goes too fast. And anyway, they only like you when you're seventeen; when you're twenty one, you're no fun, according to Ladytron. So.. in another three years, my life will have finished its course and will completely lack meaning....

What else to complain about? Oh yeah, seventeen is the nothing year. Sweet sixteen is nice, because it means wahey, you're half way through teenagehood, and eighteen is nice, because it's a giant milestone and everything, but then seventeen is just like the weird No Man's Land/ purgatory/waiting room place in between. Eurgh.

Also, another bad thing about seventeen: for cats, seventeen is about eighty in human years. This may be my last blog. Hum.

CAT.

Cat and Bear investigate: SUPERMARKETS

The subject of supermarkets came to my attention today.

Mainly because upon opening my Metro newspaper on the bus this morning, i encountered a giant advertisement for Marks and Spencers, which said that from tomorrow, to celebrate their 125th birthday, they will be selling things from a stall for :

1p.

It's quite shocking how this recession deep depression thingy has made all supermarkets so desperately desperate and paranoid that they are going to lose customers that, not only have they resorted to supreme bitchiness (ie."look! we have 12 baskets cheaper than ASDA!") but they have also gone down the route of, yes, selling things for 1p.

go chekc out marks and spencers tomorrow if you dont believe me! my mummy is.


FISHY.
CAT.
LOVE.
........

(p.s M&S, not that this is a bad idea or anything, it's actually a good idea that you're selling cufflinks and what-not for a penny, because im the one who is saving money.
But i bet that Sainsburys will come out with a similar scheme next week.)

Cat and Bear investigate: COOL WAYS TO DIE

(blissfully unaware tourist, enjoying his last meal)---->

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...

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Here, artfully constructed by yours truly, a list of cool ways to leave the world with a bang. These methods are guaranteed to make you world famous. Or, alternatively, slightly well-known in your local area for a couple of days, and then never heard of ever again once the following fish-influenza epidemic steals your headline space.

GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

This idea jumps out foremost, mainly because as i write (or type?) there is a loud and flashy thunderstorm taking place on the other side of the window... And also, it would be rather comical. I would be happily strolling along in the park, just for fun, as you do, and then I'd decide to fly a kite in the middle of a frantic and gigantic storm, and .....well, needless to say, the police officials will find my burnt up corpse after phone calls about the odd smell of barbecue coming from the park............&, well, who dies by lightning? I'd be famous. If people can still recognise my face, that is.

LIGHT SABRE BATTLE.

I don't like Star Wars that much, but it would be a very dignified way to die. And, Obi Wan Kenobi if came back again later as a hologram ghost thing, then why not I?

EATEN BY A DINOSAUR.

I owe this one to my feline friend McGovil Wesley-Bongul, who himself harbours a deep, deep desire to have his head chomped on by a T-Rex. He has already ordered a gravestone engraved with a personalized inscription, depicting in detail his favoured style of leaving Earth, should his ultimate dream come true. I give this method 9/10. Minus one because it would be rather messy.

SHOT BY AN ARROW.

Robin Hood style. And people would think that you were just wearing one of those joke comedy hats, oh, but you aren't..

TURNED INTO CAT FOOD.

As a domestic kitty, with access to the great wonder that is the Internet, I could safely speak up as a representative for all other household cats and complain about the mundaneness of modern supermarket catfood. We would be a lot happier, and therefore ruin expensive armchairs and sofas less often, if we were offered a wider range of flavours in our daily meals. A odd arm or leg every now and again will suffice, if a whole corpse cannot be substituted.

FINAL DESTINATION SEQUENCE.

Because of the hilarious aspect, and it would be fun to watch. If not film, and make the trilogy into a quartet or something. And we can see how many hits it gets from Youtube in the first week. It would be highly interesting to construct too.

DEATH BY DICTIONARY.

In which the overload of vocabulary in one's brain condemns him to a doomed death, and the unfortunate victim spouts out interesting variations on the english language before he/she pops it. Actually, it wouldn't be that cool, but it would of course, be an interesting phenomenon, and you would be renowned through the ages for having such an absurd death.

DREAM DEFICIENCY.

Because if you don't dream, it's bad for you, and it means that your priorities in life are mainly centred around the joys of office work, and observing trains, and collecting rare varieties of dung-beetle. and again, not that much of a cool death, but you would be a good example to all those other people who think it's a good idea to commit themselves to robotically bleak administration work.

shall i add more?

nah i could go on for ages ....

CAT.

Cat and Bear investigate: 15/05/09

Some observations:

1) the word "Philidelphia" looks kind of similar to the word "Paedophilia."

2) i don't like examining body people, (the ones who make sure you don;t cheat during exams) because they always have extremely distracting loud clacky shoes when they walk, and also i don;t like the way they look over your shoulder and breathe down your neck. Or, if it's a male examiner, i suspect, looking down your top. I also dislike the fact that they all sport furry moustaches, the women included, but that's just a general dislike, because moustaches are just weird in the first place.

3) Everyone seems to like stroking my notebook, but i hope that that's just because it has a really nice perforated texture.

4) All the options i took for A level direct me straight into the direction of Law, which disgusts me somewhat.

5) If you buy doughnuts, you HAVE to eat them the day you bought them, and not leave them in the larder for three days, because it ruins them, as I have discovered today.

6) Last year everyone loved Gok Wan and thought he was God, but this year everyone seems to hate the hell out of him and says that he deserves to die a painful death (something that involves him being impaled repeatedly by stilletto shoes.) I agree with the latter idea.

7) The expression "taking the piss out of someone" conjures up strange images. Therefore i feel slightly odd using the phrase.

8) A friend yesterday observed in a comicbook, the use of the phrase "as i was typing," as opposed to the phrase "as i was writing." The incidence of the present tense verb: "typing" instead of "writing" sparked off an interesting conversation exploring the possibility that in the near future, the profession of "writer" will be replaced by the profession of "typer" or "typist."

9) The picture above has nothing to do with this post, but it's just that i was listening to Royksopp today and i like the image, even if that album was inadequate.

That is all.

Love your furry feline friend/mate/chum/pal/soulmate/BFF,

CAT.

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Cat and Bear investigate: SWORDFISH

I got really excited today because we were having swordfish for dinner, and because I’m a cat and i like seafood, especially odd sounding seafood, I was kind of looking forward to it. But then I got disappointed because it turned out to be kind of ordinary and unappealing, like a slab of white slightly watery fishyness. And the taste was all mashed-up; somewhere in between chicken and tuna fish. I didn’t finish it because I was so upset.

Apparently, according to many people, everything weird tastes like chicken. Crocodile tastes like chicken. Snake tastes like chicken. Rabbit tastes like chicken. I’ve not tried any of those, but if you’ve tried those and haven’t tried swordfish yet, well, you ought to know that swordfish also goes into the category of weird-food-that-tastes-like-chicken, and so isn’t really worth trying, since we all know what chicken tastes like.

Maybe because my mum made swordfish with soy sauce and spring onions, Chinese style, it didn’t really work.
Maybe if she'd made this instead? :

Paprika Swordfish with Kiwi and Chorizo Salsa recipe

ingredients
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 tbsp hot smoked paprika

4 swordfish steaks

100 g chorizo, cut into 1 cm dice

6 kiwi fruits, peeled and cut into 1 cm dice

2 tbsp fruttato Sardinian extra virgin olive oil

method1. In a bowl combine together the olive oil and paprika, rub liberally onto the swordfish steaks and put to one side to marinate while making the salsa. 2. Place a frying pan over a moderate heat and cook the chorizo for 3-4 minutes, then stir in the kiwi. 3. Heat a griddle pan or frying pan and cook the swordfish for 2-3 minutes on each side. 4. Transfer to serving plates, top with the salsa, drizzle over some olive oil and serve.

If you make any, please give feedback on whether or not kiwi and swordfish is a sane combination..

Love

Cat.

(p.s although that photograph is advertising swordfish in a postivie way. it looks yummy there)

Cat and Bear investigate : LA ROUX

What's with everyone's obsession with La Roux?

I love her hair, and she's got a really nice voice, but does anyone else think The Redhead's songs are kind of repetitive? Like I'll get into a song for the first thirty seconds, but then the der-der-der synthness in the background just goes on too much, and I can't explain it, but I just feel the songs don;t really go anywhere and just circle round and round.

& i feel that she's only getting listened to because NME is telling people to.

CAT

LOVE.

Cat and Bear investigate: COOL ROBOT

This robot looks cool
I wouldn't mind having a t-shirt with this on it.
But then again its eyes look kind of scary.


CAT
LOVE.

Cat and Bear investigate: JUDGING BOOKS BY THEIR COVERS

<-----(LOOK! SPANISH SCI-FI! & that alien made me laugh.)

I love books.
I really love books.
Books are lovely.
Books are nice.
Nicer than a lot of things.

Like junk mail.
And really ugly dogs.
And having to get up early.

And mushrooms.

But then I get annoyed a lot. Because often you come across these really disgusting books. I mean, really bad, awful, horrible books. I mean. Like. Books with really bad covers. And books made out of recycled paper (although recycled paper's not actually that bad, since it saves the mass murdering of trees in the Amazon rainforest - it's just that books made out of recycled paper always seem to be a weird off colour brown, and have a dodgy sandy texture, and are kind of seethrough. Yeah.)

Well, what i mean is, you'll pick up a book. First thing that strikes you is the unfashionable, crudely drawn picture of, say, a dog that looks like a cross between a boar and a crocodile. Or, the photgraph of the two headed man with his eyes being torn out. Or, the not very nice picture of a naked woman, posing in such a way as to suggest that you are looking not at the front cover of a book, but at the front cover of a lewd magazine aimed mainly at a pubescent male audience. (And I have actually experienced a time when I desperately wanted to read at least three books - except they all had naked or semi-naked people gracing the front covers.) And you know, it's not nice. I want to pick up a book I can read safely on a bus, without looking like a sadist, or making publicly known my more "exotic" interests.

And it makes you wonder. What the hell were those people at Random House or Penguin or Hodder and other publishing companies thinking? If your one chance to grab someone's attention is the cover, well it makes sense to use something ridiculously eye-catching. But no-one is going to buy it if the cover is so eye-catching, you want to tear your eyes out.

Which is one of those reasons why Science-Fiction so abhors me. Science Fiction books are the worst culprits for this kind of thing. If you don't believe me, check out the Science Fiction department in the library. It's disgusting.

Love, (but no love to sci-fi book cover artists,)
Cat.

(p.s. now i have to find a picture of a sci-fi book cover bad enough to put here.. And also, looking at all those sci-fi covers, i realise i inevitably have to publish a post about sci fi in general.)

Cat and Bear investigate: AMERICANIZATION

Well.

Even Bear has started saying “pants” instead of trousers [check last blog] and it is a subject matter that worries me.

Also people who spell colour as "color" and centre as "center" are just wrong.

And Ronald Mcdonald has always freaked me out, especially when they gave him a 21st century makeover so that he looked more digital and wore rollerskates, to prove that Mcdonald's is still down with the kids AND it promotes fitness.

I suggest you read Jpod by Douglas Coupland; it confronts the issue of Ronald Mcdonald, amongst other things, in a very effective and humourous way.

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& Wow. Google images is fun.

cat.

Cat and Bear investigate: THE INTERNET

BEHOLD: THE INTERNETS!

what can one say about the internet? what pithy string of words can adequately represent all of the information collated by man over the last couple thousand years and then digitized...

very little.

so instead i think it would probably be a more profitable use of our time to tell you a little about ourselves. I am Bear, i am a bear and i live in the woods. my friend is called Cat, she is a cat and she lives in a semi-detached with central heating that is always set a little too high.

what do we do?

well in between my climbing of trees, eating of honey and protesting against the vicious stereotypes of bears routinely paraded before our eyes each night on the local news, i like to write. So does Cat. so we both decided to do a blog, 

for . . . 

well.

for no real reason really, boredom i guess but regardless, we shall make it our mission to provide pressing reports on pressing issues, reviews on less pressing issues and rants about the least pressing issues. 

i hope you enjoy reading as much as i hope we enjoy writing.

yours,

BEAR