Howard Hughes and the Little White Pills

[greygirlbeast]

Last night...no, this morning, the insomnia laughed at enough pills to put a horse in a coma. I finally got to sleep sometime after four ayem.

Yesterday was the sort of last-minute tedium I'd expected, getting the galley pages of The Red Tree ready to go back to Manhattan, the long letter I had to write detailing why I'd made the changes that I'm

Comments

Ringing your memory!

[chris_walsh]

Are you sure that was me? That doesn't ring a bell. I used to be a chemist. And I love cats. But I don't remember any "ringing hair". Possibly some other Cleve. Or, possibly, this Cleve has forgotten; that wouldn't be too surprising, either. But, hey. If it was a good one, I'll take the credit.

See if this rings a bell: talking about a cat that had fallen into some chemical fertilizer or similar thing that you don't want on your loved ones. The cat trying to shake off the disgusting moistness, and its hair ringing when it happened. A quick washing to make sure the cat was okay, then a quick vet trip to find out if the cat was okay, and the poor thing recovering but temporarily losing its hair because of what it had fallen into.

And the punchline "Not my favorite kind of shaved p--..."

And Caitlin reacting (wow, I can still quote this) "Cleve! I'm...um...I'm...um...oh yeah, I'm appalled! I knew I had a word for that somewhere dusty."

...aaaaaaand that's what I remember. Of course, I also remember running so fast in third grade that my feet stopped touching the ground for a few steps, so maybe my memory isn't, um, REMEMBERING TRUTH, so take it with that grain of salt. Or maybe you do remember now.

Onward.

The mechanics of conversing are harder in a format like this.

To an extent, yes, but I'm very used to this format and my friends are also very used to this format. We stay logged on, and I get the notifications, and I try to respond interestingly. So do my friends. Usually. It can be more interactive, is what I'm saying.

Peace.

Re: Ringing your memory!

[fwcleve]

You are correct.

Yikes. Cleve suffers a Senior Moment. (Yes, I've qualified as a Senior (for some things) for almost two years now; I'm approaching 57.)

Our cat, Fluffy (the god of all cats, if I haven't mentioned that before), was treated by an unfriendly local grower to a bath in a drum of weed-killer, and his wet, non-water soaked fur did indeed "ring" when he shook it. The vet said the immediate cleaning we gave him saved his life. He lost all his fur, but it eventually came back, fortunately (because a furless cat is gray, and scaly-dry, and smells like -- like only a furless cat can smell; it's unique; and we'd have had to change his name).

Apparently, this is a classic farmer's stunt; I heard my cousin's friend mention (unprompted) that her father used to do that to cats. Assholes. They probably don't realized it can be a death sentence (or they really don't care).

And, yes, I now remember the "shaved" joke.

Cripes. My posts are immortal in people's heads?

By the way, Google appears to be "forgetting" Usenet posts before about 1999. This may interest Cait, who, as I recall, was not fond of the idea that Google was preserving posts Forever. I went looking for a very early one of mine and could no longer find it.

Anyway, Chris, thanks for jogging my Senior memory.

(When you're 17, being a Senior is the coolest. Not so much at 55.)

--cleve