Diversionary idea du jour

Maybe it’s just me needing a diversion from the emotion-based thoughts of the day while our elder feline is thoroughly examined at the animal hospital this afternoon to assess the save-or-euthanise, cost-benefit, failure mode analysis by Dr. Erin and staff (my wife and I are already $700 in the hole for the analysis, IV fluids, and overnight stay that will accrue by tomorrow morning).

At this moment, Merlin has a mouth full of dental problems that may mean sepsis spread through his body; a heart murmur, rapid heartbeat (200+ bpm) and other problems (thyroid, potentially) may prevent the use of anaesthesia for surgery.

On a limited budget, what is a feline companion worth?

What are any of us worth?

In any case, I examine the Microsoft Paint image above.

“A” is a typical spray bottle configuration in which the suction tube rests just above the last particles of liquid, especially when the bottle is tilted.

“B” and “C” represent a spray bottle with a check valve that rotates based on the bottle’s vertical orientation, such that, when the sprayhead is tilted downward (“B”), the forward portion of T-shaped suction tube draws in the last few precious drops of fluid, and when the sprayhead is tilted upward (“C”), the rearward portion of T-shaped suction tube draws in the last few precious drops of fluid residing in the other end of the bottom of the bottle.

Elegant solution?  Hardly.  Cost-effective?  Unlikely.

Humourous diversion?  Precisely.  Reminds me of a child’s game I played in which we matched cards on which odd contraptions and inventions were printed.

Simple solution?  Pour the last drops into the new, nearly-full bottle.

Returning to the running analysis at hand – comparing and contrasting the lives of Dr. Benjamin Spock, Joseph Campbell and Hermann Hesse, against the backdrop of watching the following films, courtesy of Amazon Prime free rentals:

• A Clockwork Orange, starring Malcolm McDowell
• Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston
• Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion
• 8 1/2 by Federico Fellini
• Between the Folds by Vanessa Gould
• Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead
• My Name is Nobody, starring Henry Fonda
• Objectified, starring Dieter Rams
• Bukowsi Born Into This, starring Charles Bukowski
• OSS 117: Lost in Rio, starring Jean Dujardin
• Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause, starring Noam Chomsky
• Ramones: RAW, starring the Ramones
• Red Skelton: A Royal Command Performance, starring Red Skelton
• Steppenwolf, starring Max von Sydow
• My Name Is Bruce, starring Bruce Campbell
• Barenaked Ladies: Talk To the Hand: Live in Michigan
• Moog, starring Robert Moog
• Slipstream, starring Anthony Hopkins
• Dinosaur, Jr.: Live in the Middle East
• Foreign Field, starring Lauren Bacall

Then, during and after, examining my own life and wondering more about why I am the way I am in the social system in which I normally operate these states of energy called me.

There’s a joke in here somewhere.  We want our Deity/deities to be serious because death is such a traumatic way to announce the end of a life (more so for us than for the food we eat) but if we were blessed with humour and appear in one form or another of that which we say created us, then can we not also say that our Deity/deities have a sense of humour?

And if you hold no theistic beliefs, were you not created by your parents or by some combination of DNA that must, by definition, hold a sense of humour within its genes?

Erin (the cat, not the veterinarian) and I miss Merlin today.  My wife is beside herself at work with worry.

People are dying by the millions and a little domestic drama at home has all my attention.

This is my life.

I won’t have it any other way.