Matters mundane and exotic (you decide which is which)

It's the first of June, and that means I weighed myself this morning. I'm at 213 pounds, which means I lost 4 pounds in May and 21 pounds so far this year. Not bad. I'm a little surprised, because May was a stressful month, what with the cat having surgery and both of us working (okay, I was only part-time, but it was still stressful). I have to go to the doctor next week to see if the fiber I've been eating has helped the cholesterol at all, but at least I'm losing weight.

As it is the first of June, that means we have winners in my comics giveaway contest! Thanks to everyone who entered - I knew almost all of you, except for the mysterious entry who only identified himself (or herself, I suppose) as M. I hope to see you around here, M, more often! The winners are:

For the Batman Chronicles, Nik from Spatula Forum offered up this gem:

"There! In the distance! Can you see it? That glowing talisman of four-colored glory, that clarion call that echoes through the stars that only I, cursed with the burdens of the Power Cosmic, can answer! What call is that? The call of what men call "free comic books," and all the riveting triumph and tragedy that lurk therein! A man, some would say, an ordinary man, clad in black and faceless gray, who dresses as a bat, to haunt the corridors of dreams and power, to reduce foes to ashen heaps, to avenge those with no voices! How can any
being ignore that voice? Yes, I will answer that call! I will venture into the unraveled realms of cyberspace, and I will step forward to
do what mortal men cannot - I will claim that comic book!"

It was a tough choice, as Chris "Lefty" Brown offered an excellent Silver Age rant of his own, but I went with my gut. If Chris thinks he got jobbed, he can always appeal to my good nature (yeah, right).

Layne wins the groovy book Nil: A Land Beyond Belief with this nugget of philosophical goodness:

"Life will be more fully lived insofar as it has no meaning." - Albert Camus

Ah, that wacky Camus! What an excellent way to view life! Because he's so bleak, Layne will enjoy Nil. If he doesn't, well, life has no meaning anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

I'd like to do more of these, so keep an eye out. Shame on you who didn't enter - they're free! You must go to your rooms now.

Meanwhile, in the world of the cats, Smokey is doing very well. He's tearing around the house like he did when we first got him, chasing his tail, "helping" me make the bed, taunting the other cat, and generally having a grand old time. He's eating fine and he's not puking as much - since the surgery he's only thrown up maybe thrice - which means he's gaining some weight, so that's nice. We have to get his ear checked out, because apparently he has an inner ear infection that might require (you guessed it) surgery, but thevete wants to see if antibiotics will treat it. So he's doing really well, and we have told him that he's not allowed to jump up on my mother when she visits this summer, because my mom thought we should just put him down, so he's dead to her.

I'm trying to review the mixed CDs I received before Round 2 gets going (any day now; I just sent mine out), so here's a quick one of the CD mixed up by Tom the Dog:

It's a good bunch o' tunes, with only a few clunkers. The Presidents of the United States of America cover Kick Out The Jams to start the disc, and it's a good, fun start. Following that comes The Donnas with I Don't Want To Know (If You Don't Want Me), which is an excellent tune. I have heard The Donnas (on TRL, of all places), and never picked up anything by them. This might change my mind. There's a Bruce Springsteen song, Further On (Up The Road), which isn't bad, but I've never been a big Boss fan - he sounds like he's constipated all the time. If it's not "She's The One," it's not doing it for me. Let's Get It On is always a fun song to hear (and one my students actually liked when I played this disc in my room last week), and after that we get three good-but-not-great songs, Miserable by Lit, The Battle Of Who Could Care Less by Ben Folds Five and Uptight by Green Day. All songs by bands that I have never gotten into, but don't mind hearing occasionally. The clunker portion of the disc follows, with Coconut by Harry Nilsson (I just don't get it!), Cars by Gary Numan (not bad in a nostalgic sort of way, but nothing great), I'm The Man by Joe Jackson (ditto), Dean Martin with That's Amore (which is just silly), Heaven Or The Highway Out Of Town by the Refreshments (the highlight of this section) and Kim Wilde's Kids In America (see Numan and Jackson). He gets it going again with AC/DC's It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock & Roll), which I cannot summarize better than Tom already did: Bagpipe solo, bitch! The Legend of Finn MacCumhail by the Dropkick Murphys is oodles of fun, and like Marvin Gaye, it's always good to hear Patsy Cline's Crazy. Unfortunately, he chose to put Tori Amos's cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit toward the end of the disc. I like Amos, but I don't like this cover, because it pretty much neuters the song. I like how he follows it with Foo Fighters and Times Like These (a good song), but still. Her Majesty by the Beatles ends the disc, and it's a nice little song. I enjoyed this disc a lot, even the weak section in the middle, since none of those songs are bad, they're just kind of there. I'm not skipping them or anything, and I'm singing along with them as loudly as the rest. Good stuff from Mr. The Dog.

See? I can be cheery. More later, perhaps. There's no reason not to!