I learned a lot from Ferdy. Watching him try to make sense of the world enabled me to see things I never would have imagined from my vantage point as a primate. Much as I love Boots and Lucky, they don't have Ferdy's need to understand how the world works. He's unique.

But he is also completely, insanely in love with Ellie. When she and her Mom came home from their year in North Dakota, he spent every waking moment watching her, and whenever she left the house he was visibly upset. I can't keep him here for my own selfish reasons.

Back in October, I learned my wife's intention to split the family on a permanent basis, and since then it's been harder and harder to do this. Finally, it became so painful I couldn't even bear to look at the site any more.

I appreciate all the concerned emails I've received, but please do not worry about me. Many years ago, when I first discovered my talent for helping other people through grief by telling them my life story, the friend I'd been helping asked me, "after all you've been through, how can you still be happy?" My answer was "I have Nate for a son." Since then I've gained four daughters, which makes my answer a lot less succinct, but the concept is the same. I'm first and foremost a parent, and that is a source of incredible happiness. Right now I'm going through a transition period, my brain is doing weird stuff, and I'll be very unfocused for a while, but I'm going to be okay.

Respectfully submitted,

Bruce Parrello, Ph.D.

The Ellie Zone

This is a world filled with twisting paths and distorted thoughts. Enter at the risk of your sanity.

The topic for today is Friends.

The way I see it, there are two extremes: for lack of better terms I'm going to call them the Rockstars and the Groupies.

As you can probably tell, the Rockstars are the life of the party. They draw people to them. the Groupies are the people who come to the party. They flock to the rockstars.

Now, there's also the in-betweens. If someone is mostly Rockstar, but meets someone else who is more Rockstar, the first someone becomes Groupie in the presence of that person. Likewise, if someone is mostly Groupie, and they encounter someone who is more Groupie, they become Rockstar for the second person.

By now you must be wondering what happened to the wonderful things we call cliques??? Well, my dear readers, those are the subdivisions, or specialties, of the Rockstars and Groupies. For example:

A nerd Groupie will naturally go towards a nerd Rockstar. Likewise punk Rockstars will go to punk Groupies.

People instinctively want to belong, so we surround ourselves with people as much like us as possible. If not that, then family members (mostly pleasurable family members, of course). Then, we seek people better than ourselves, people who are like us, only they succeeded where we didn't. Whether it's in disposition or life choices, they made it through more successfully then us.

Usually the last group are our Rockstars, and we are their Groupies.

Smile,

Ellie The Gremlin

Are you tired of high winds blowing your garbage all over the place?

Has your bank account been cleaned out by a plethora of littering fines?

Well worry no more! New from Hung Wong Enterprises:

!!Spray On Lead!!

Make your paper garbage cut through the air like a stone with Spray On Lead.

Easy To USE! Simply spray, wait and throw!

You'll never have to worry about missing your target again.

"Spray On Lead... is... useful and causes... no... cancer..." - Grant D. Fenwold, noted medical researcher

Hung Wong Enterprises
Because some mistakes last forever.

• No one had any desire to raise taxes on the successful.
• No one saw any good coming out of government stepping in and increasing its control of the financial system.
• No one wanted to sleep in the car.

I hope the executives at AIG read this article and realize there is no need for them to climb in their corporate jets and take a tour of the rural states. What doesn't make sense in New York doesn't make sense in North Dakota, either.

Now, I'm about to explain why the Lingerie Football League is a stupid idea, and I hope all my friends on the Chicago Force forgive me for this, because I admire them very much, but they have very different ideas about the role of women than I do. This article at ESPN.com is more typical of how they would react. But you see, I'm a cat, and it doesn't bother me to see something that's insulting or degrading to the concepts of sports or womanhood. Humans are always doing stuff that seems goofy to me.

No, all I can see is that if I were a human I would be proud to be able to say my mother played on the Chicago Force but would hope nobody ever found out she had played on the LFL's Chicago Bliss. This is a serious problem, because in the Internet age the past is never forgotten. If there's an embarrassing photo of you anywhere, it will become public sooner or later, and the LFL web site is a treasure trove of ridiculous photos.

I don't expect the LFL to last very long. Eventually, the novelty will wear off or some poor girl will die from a ruptured breast implant (I wish that were a joke). I'm not surprised this has happened, either: it's a natural product of a society that views children as a cost of having sex, instead of one's whole point for being alive in the first place. I mean, if a woman's just there for the fun of it, who cares if she's smart, or responsible, or has any strength of character?

And if a woman doesn't need to be a good mother, then a man sure as heck doesn't need to worry about being a worthwhile husband, so he has no problem with plunking down cash to watch scantily-clad women playing a stripped-down version of football, and so here we are. It doesn't make a lot of sense in the long run, but it's where we find ourselves these days, and I don't make the rules: I just try to figure them out.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

The Ellie Zone

This place is wrought with horror and destruction. Circles are squares and 2+2=18. Enter at the risk of your sanity.

Please e-mail Dad with ideas of stuff to talk about. Frankly, I'm running out.

Now that we're past that, on to the topic: relaxation.

Recently, a friend of mine asked about a good way to relax. I don't know why anyone would ever think that asking me was a good idea, but they did.

I answered honestly. The thing that relaxes me the most is listening to really loud, really brutal music. Now, this isn't heavy metal. I haven't gotten into that yet, even though some friends of mine are trying to get me started. ... It hasn't really worked yet.

But we'll get back to that later.

So I was talking to this friend of mine on the phone, and Dad happened to be in the room. so we're talking, and my friend asks for a good way to relax. I say what helps me, which is to listen to music. And so my friend replies with the usual follow-up question, "What music?"

Of course, I reply with the truth again, I am an honest person after all. The specific bands that I have actually listened to and that help me relax are Within Temptation and Evanescence. I haven't really heard much else, but there it is.

My father begins laughing hysterically and shouts so that my friend (and everyone else in the neighborhood) can hear. Not that it's needed, as I proceed to put my friend on speakerphone.

Anyway, Dad starts loudly singing the beginning of "Solemn Hour" by Within Temptation, a favorite of his. Still laughing, he questions how anything like this could make me calm. My only defense is to reply "The same way severely injuring people relieves stress."

Now remember, any slaughter should only be online, in videogames and such. Do NOT start killing people just because you're having a bad day at work, or your best friend just died. Please. I know the general populace is not covering itself with glory these days, but that doesn't give you the right to "make the world a better place."

Speaking of which, the same friend and I, again talking on the phone, began discussing the said topic. He was depressed, and for some reason decided to talk to me. Seriously. I'm the last person you want to talk to about emotional problems. Every time one of my friends decides life is too tough to deal with, they come straight to me. Why?? It's like God is laughing...

I mean, I know it's a chemical malfunction in the brain, but I can't understand why anyone would want to off themselves. I just can't imagine a life so horrible that that's the only chance of escape. And even then, you'd only hurt someone else, since at least one person cares about you. But hey, maybe that's just 'cause my life's so great.

To get back to what I was saying earlier, this friend and I were discussing why killing all the stupid people would be a great idea. He was saying that we should just do it, and remove them from the gene pool (Darwin Awards), while I was arguing that hell would have to freeze over before we could ever even think of getting away with it.

This conversation continued for several minutes.

The final say is this:

You shouldn't ever kill somebody, no matter how much you want to, because you'll never get away with it. And though it may feel great at the time, you'll just feel awful later.

Unless you're a psychopath. Then you might still feel great.

Smile,

Ellie The Gremlin

Apparently, yesterday she was pretending to be upset about something, and this got her on the hit list of the girl gang that pretends to beat people up. Although every effort is made to insure that the pretend beatings cause no damage, accidents do happen. The Gremlin had interrupted her original story to explain the initiation rites for the pretend-beating gang, which apparently had something to do with which of her friends was in charge of administering the pretend beating, when Bruce had another of his dizzy spells and left the room. I, of course, stayed for the whole story so that I would be available if The Gremlin needed to feed me a cheese snack or something.

No cheese snack was forthcoming, but she gave me skritches, and that's good, too.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Of course, when you explain to a liberal how government largess gets misused, their solution is always more oversight, but it's only been one day since the President castigated Wall Street over the AIG bonuses and already we have another story about goofy bailout bucks: Bank of America is using its cash infusion to drum up business for the latest Pixar movie.

And that is why the liberal prescription never works: the government is simply too big and too slow to convert good intentions into effective action. For example, I'm sure Senator Obama was sincere when he said that he was going to lower the boom on lobbyists, but when he actually got into office, the reality was quite different. See, it is very easy to say that you're going to put an end to business as usual, but business will continue to be usual until you can identify exactly what you intend to change. Promising "more oversight" is like promising "fewer lobbyists": it's a wish, not a plan, and confusing a wish with a plan is not just stupid, it's Illinois stupid.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

The logic here is simple. AIG needed money to survive, and the American public doesn't want the money spent on frivolous things. The problem is that the bonuses are a consequence of contractual agreements set up long before the current crisis started. There is only one situation under which AIG's hapless CEO Edward Libby could have legally refused to make the payments: AIG going bankrupt. Therefore, when Senator Obama voted to authorize the AIG bailout, he was also authorizing the payment of the bonuses.

This is the problem with bailouts, and it's why conservatives oppose them. A bailout does not change anything about the situation that put the recipient in trouble in the first place. It is, in effect, an investment in the hope that business as usual will turn things around.

Expecting anything else is not just stupid, it's Illinois stupid.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

The only problem is that The Gremlin wants to build this thing.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Anyway, the rest of the family sleeps more peacefully with Bruce on a different floor.

There is, however, one creature in the entire world who is not only willing to sleep on the same floor with Bruce, but in the actual same bed. It is the same creature who, despite his diminutive size, thinks laser printers are fun, it's okay to violate the personal space of a trained killer, and there's no risk from the spinning blades of a remote control helicopter: Lucky the Completely Fearless Cat.

If I had not seen it myself, I never would have believed it.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

And no, the punchline is not the goofy nature of explaining that you didn't mean to not deny something, it's the fact that Obama feels he's simply continuing the policies of George W. Bush, and since everybody knows that George W. Bush is not a socialist, Barack Obama is not a socialist. Or, in the President's own words.

I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -– the prescription drug plan -- without a source of funding.

This marks the second time in less than a week that Obama has justified his behavior on the basis that it is just continuing what Bush started: the first related to his philosophy on earmarks.

So, the American people voted for change, and as far as the economy's concerned, Obama is telling us that the change is George W. Bush bigger, longer, and uncut. Not only that, he felt compelled to take time out of his busy schedule to point this out. It must be important.

The reason this is happening is that the change Obama represents is not a change of policy, but a change of face. Everything about him, from the casual declaration that his victory justifies his policies to the attacks on Rush Limbaugh's opposition reflects an understanding that we elected Obama the man, not Obama's ideas. It's like buying a car because you like the salesman.

That kind of thinking gets you a bad car, and an even worse government.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat