James Nicoll is a blogger, denizen of rec.arts.sf.written, game and book reviewer, cat rescuer, and all-around swell person living in Kitchener Ontario. He is story prone, and has a very nice style of relating those stories (IMHO, naturally). These are some of the stories.
Cally Soukup is a denizen of rec.arts.sf.fandom, contributor to Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders, and all-around swell person. But she is HTML-challenged. Cally liked the stories of "Nicoll Events" enough to collect them as they came by.
David Dyer-Bennet is me; I got into the habit of posting useful and/or interesting things on my own web site because I had one back before most people, and have carried that habit forward.
If you have comments on the Nicoll Event list, email Cally. If you have comments on the web presentation, see my link at the bottom of the page.
Note: All unattributed text is by James Nicoll.
[*] is a request for a footnote.
AKICIF is "All Knowledge Is Contained In Fandom"
***********************************************************************
The Store Break-in
Mid-July, 1996. A Sunday, 5:31 pm. I had closed for the day
at five, had gone up to my apartment above the store and was getting
ready for a writers meeting I was running. Jasmine, my then-girlfriend,
and I had just disagreed on whether we would watch a forensics show on
insect populations in cadavers, which I normally would have watched
happily except that the pork chop I was eating was the same shade as
the dead guy I was looking at. We had switched to something else when
Jasmine asked if I had heard a thump from downstairs. I hadn't but went
down anyway, figuring it was my cat Blotchy jumping off high shelves
again.
I get down to the store and there's a man standing in the
front, dressed only in track pants. I don't notice the hole he has
kicked through my front door getting in. Sometimes I forget to lock up
and I thought maybe I had done that this time. I ask if I can help him.
"May I help you?"
"Do you have a woman? I really need a woman." He replies,
making me suspect he is not familiar with the demographics of role
playing game stores[1]. I think "Not that you're going to share",
say "Just a minute" and walk back to the wall panel for the alarm
system and hit the panic button. On the way back, I encounter Jasmine,
who has come down to investigate why I am taking so long and suggest
politely that she get the fuck back upstairs. She deduces there
is a problem and goes upstairs and out onto my balcony to see if she
can see the burglar running away.
Then for no reason I can think of I walk back to the front.
The alarm isn't the standard issue one but the extra-loud sort intended
to make the windows on the church across the street shatter from the
noise. I point out to my visitor that in the past, the cops show up
within 90-180 seconds so he should just leave. He runs over to the
wall where I used to display paintball guns, passing by the fireplace
poker and packing knife on the way. He grabs a stingray, a cheap
plastic paintball gun and tries to shoot me with it.
"That's not a real gun," I point out. "You moron," I add
helpfully.
At this point, he reversed the gun and swung it at my head,
steel CO2-bottle end first.
In comic books people can make long speeches and still
leap about acrobatically. What I did was think "Must leap out
of the way, why am I bleeding?" I didn't really feel the gun hit
but when I touched the side of my head, it was a very complex
shape and blood poured down my arm and onto the floor. My
first thought was to get off the rug, because it would be
impossible to get the blood out of a white rug.
Adrian, as his name turned out to be, ran off, pausing only
to ask Jasmine if she knew where there were women [Note: Jasmine
is noticably mammalian] and then returning briefly to return the
broken gun. Well, part of it: my head had shattered one end of it,
although the bootle came through ok and I was able to resell it
later.
Jas came downstairs where I was stopping the flow of
blood with a hand towel from the bathroom. I urged her to run to
my landlady's business next door. We argued over whether she should
go put her shoes on first. She leaves after putting her shoes on.
Well, at least I won the discussion about TV shows.
A bicycle cop shows up about a minute later. We're chatting
when his radio goes off. There's a breakin at 54 Benton, two doors
down. Adrian has gotten in by grabbing the front door and pulling
until the two half inch security bars in the door bent far enough
to come out of their sockets. The cop asks if he can go investigate
and I tell him to go.
My landlady shows up, looks at my head and says that while
she can see bone, nothing seems to be broken and the soft twisty
stuff is just scalp, not brains.
A passerby says he says the guy runnign away and leaves his
name if the cops want him to be a witness. I have a surprising amount
of difficulty writing his number down.
Ambulance shows up. The paramedics observe that I seem to have
been hit in the head, advise me to have something done about it, swath
me in miles of completely unfunctional gauze and leave.
A new cop shows up. With the help of the security guard from
the church at 54 Benton, they have caught up with Adrian. During the
course of the arrest, he tried to strangle the cops so they beat him
shapeless and he is on his way to emergency. Later, he is such a pain
there that they kick him out without treatment and send back to the
local jail to heal on his own.
I cancel my meeting. I call a carpenter to fix the door. I
find all the cats, who disappeared as soon as blood started spattering
around the room. I figure I should get -some- comedy writing in
[the meeting was to write a musical comedy called FASS] so I write
a long report for the cops, complete with snarky comments about
my burglar, various footnotes and if memory serves, helpful diagrams.
I eventually get 4 stitches, hours later. I don't get much
sleep, being pretty concussed, worse than when the tree fell on me but
not as bad as when I ran a tyke down a tall hill into a tree. Maybe as
bad as well a bus threw a large rock at me in grade five[2]. I can't
make change in my head for more than a week.
Adrian tries to claim it wasn't him but gives up when he's
given a count of eyewitnesses. He gets 4 years, so he got out this
year. The longest he's managed to stay out of jail is about a month, so
there's a good chance he's done this again since getting out and is
back in jail.
1: I have a female customer who has complained about being such an
alien lifeform to another store that they won't let her buy stuff but
just gaze her in stunned disbelief.
2: My brother has a better rock story: when we lived in the Tutor's
Residence at UW, our neighbor once went out for a walk along Laurel
Creek, which ran near by. He was flicking rocks into the creek as he
walked. He got to a spot where he could not see the creek for a small
bluff, and the next rock he threw didn't splash when it hit the creek.
He thought this was odd and being tenure-track immediately realised the
only course of action was to throw a really -big- rock. Still no splash.
He goes to investigate and finds my brother standing in the creek,
in a daze, looking like he had just been hit on the head with two
rocks.
***********************************************************************
The Store Break-in, slightly different version
It's summer 1996. It's a Sunday, about half an hour after
my game store (which I since retired from to get paid to read free
books, whee!) closed for the day and I was eating dinner with my
then girlfriend, Jasmine, in the apartment above the store. We had
just had a minor disagreement about what to watch with dinner, since
while I usually like to watch forensic science shows the particular
corpse they were showing bug population stuff on was the exact same
shade as my chop. Jasmine claims she heard a thump. People are always
claiming they hear things or that they are speaking audibly and I have
learned to humor the mumblers, as I affectionately like to call them.
I go downstairs.
What I expect to find is my 20 pound store cat amusing himself
by climbing to the top of the shelves and leaping back down (This is
apparently even more fun at 3 am from the bedroom bookshelves with me
as the cushion). What I actually find is this guy, wearing only track
pants. At this point I can't see the hole he has kicked through the
front door, so I assume I forgot to lock the door.
"Can I help you?" I ask Adrian (He had his full name tattooed
on his chest, which might have come in handy later if things had played
out a little differently).
"Do you have any women? I really need a woman."
I immediately could tell he was not a customer. Customers
would know better than to look for a woman in a roleplaying game store.
Atypically my store did have a woman but I was not of a mind to share.
I toddle back to the alarm box, which I had not set yet that
day because I was headed right back out after dinner and hit the 'Oh
Shit' button. My alarm is no effete meep meep meep thing. I paid extra
to have something that would burst eardrums at a 100 meters, because
the sound element of the alarm to make the burglar run away. It's the
phone connection that summons the police.
Jasmine comes down to see what is taking so long just before
I hit the button.
"Get the fuck back upstairs," I explain. She figures I have
either gone mad or something bad is happening so she goes out on what
we later learn is a totally rotten balcony (but that doesn't figure
into this).
Then for some reason, and I think 'complete stupidity' probably
covers it, although it is possible I was trying to impede his progress
towards Jasmine, I then go back to Adrian and tell him the cops will be
there in 3 minutes and if he doesn't want to be arrested he should
leave now. He doesn't like this and runs over to the wall of the store
where I had paintball equipment on display, not loaded (duh). He grabs
one off the wall, ignoring the packing knife, the fireplace poker and
the somewhat bored looking store cat. Then he tries to shoot me.
"That's not a real gun," I say. "You moron", I add helpfully.
He then swings the CO2 bottle end at my head very hard and as it turns
out in a lot less time than it takes me to think and act on " Must!
Dodge!" [I have legendarily slow reflexes].
I was not actually certain he had connected, although the fact
that I was on one knee and I couldn't recall quite how I got there was
a bad sign. I put my hand up my head and my head wasn't round any more
on the left side but some more complex shape. Blood poured down my arm
and off my elbow and my first reaction, as God is my witness, was to
get off the white rug because you can't get blood out of a rug.
I totally destroyed that gun with my head. Thank God he picked
the el cheapo plastic and aluminium Stingray rather than the other two
paintball guns I had on the wall that day because my wholesale on those
was much higher plus one had a heavy wooden stock and the other was
mostly steel. The CO2 bottle was steel and I have to say it was intact.
In fact, I later sold it.
Adrian runs away. More on him later. The cat finds a hiding
spot I would have sworn wouldn't fit a kitten, let alone a large tom.
I get a towel I don't like and stick it on the wound.
Jasmine comes down. I urge her to go to Barrels (the Portuguese
restaurant around the corner, whose owners owned my building then) and
tell them what happened. She stops to put on her shoes because
apparently some people don't toughen up their feet in case they need to
run barefoot before a wandering psycho straight out of the AD&D Urban
Encounters Table returns. This entire process was exactly like those
running but can't get anywhere dreams I sometimes have.
After an intense discussion, I get her to leave. Later I find
out he saw her on the balcony and asked her where there were women.
Note that thanks to google I probably should not be specific here but
Jasmine is visibly female. We're not talking a stick insect here. Of
course Adrian is totally looped out of his mind on drugs which is why
the foot he broke coming through my door didn't slow him down any, but
still, this was little like asking the captain of the Hindenberg if
he'd seen any balloons lately.
A bicycle cop shows up in under two minutes after the alarm
started (and I must have turned off the alarm at some point but I don't
know when). We're chatting when his belt radio goes off: break-in at 54
Benton, which is the Lutheran Church two doors down from my place. He
askes me if I mind if he responds and since he wasn't giving me first
aid, I didn't particularly. Off he goes. More on him later.
Fran from Barrels shows up. She has first aid, looks at my head
and says that while she can see bone, no serious damage seems to have
been done. I call my carpenter to come slap a board on the door. I
cancel my writer's meeting for that night.
The cops come back. Well, new cops arrive. Adrian has been
arrested. In fact it was him at the Church and a little later it was
him breaking into a bingo hall. The security guy from St. Paul's
followed him, talking to the cops on his radio but he stayed well out
of arm's reach and wasn't hurt. Adrian is less fortunate because he
feels no pain and basically had to be pounded into a boneless jelly to
get him to stop attacking the cops (Plus two of them were female cops
and I had noticed the female cops took it very badly when people
resisted arrest. That uniform is very cute right up to the point the
batton comes out. But I digress).
I fill out a report form. Now the meeting I was missing was for
a musical comedy I was helping write and I figured that if I was not
going to go to my meeting, I would practice on the report. Apparently
six pages of attempted comedy on how someone beat someone else up
written by the victim is unusual, judging by the reactions I got, or
maybe it was the hand drawn diagrams or the many end-notes. It's
academic because Adrian is on his first week of parole and this is a
bit of a violation of his parole terms. Actually, it's about twenty
violations and although he at first tries to claim it wasn't him, he
soon sees reason and he goes off to pokey for another three years,
after his bones knit a bit.
Turns out this is what he does. His life is an endless cycle
of prison, with forced medication controlling his brain chemistry, a
parole or end of sentence, a quick location of some drugs, an act of
violence and back to prison. He isn't even from the crack-houses a
few blocks over (at the time. They've since moved) but an out of towner
whose idiot brother was trying to find him a place to live and a job in
KW. Adrian is nuts but not in a way that would let him be committed.
For all I know he's dead by now or has earned a life sentence.
Eventually I get to go have my head looked at (I have no idea
why I did not rate an ambulance with the alarm). The damage looks and
feels more alarming than it is, basically a flap of skin folded back by
the plastic flange on the bottle (Used to simulate a shoulder stock) so
my pearly white can peek out and say "Hi" (Actually, I didn't look at
it because I didn't want to ruin the bizarre sense of calm I felt, and
still feel, about the whole thing). I get some stitches and then am not
allowed on my own furniture because it's white, see, and I am still
leaking a bit. Also, because of the concussion thing, my sleep schedule
is really interfered with. Jas watches me from my comfy couch to make
sure I don't fall into a coma while I sit on a dining room chair. The
_cats_ got a wider selection of places to sit than I did.
No head ache. No particular feeling of alarm, even before I
got to claim concussion, which is very odd because when I was a kid
I was always excessively cautious, especially after the dog mauling
and the fatal car crash. The worst was because of the concussion I
could not make change in my head because for about a week I could not
keep a chain of thought going long enough to do A - B = C. Well, I did
get benign periodic positional vertigo afterwards but I don't know that
that is related. It does make changing light bulbs interesting, as
the position I hold my head in when I do that is exactly right to
trigger it.
If it had been 30 minutes earlier, Adrian could have invaded
the lady's clothing store next to mine. 30 minutes later and Jasmine
would have been there alone. I figure this was the least bad home
invasion I could have had because if there's one thing I do well, it's
heal.
***********************************************************************
Trike story and schoolbus stone story
Someone put on a tricycle at the top
of a tall tall hill in Herne Hill and told me to ride to the bottom
of the hill. I was about 4. Apparently I was supposed to deduce the
idea of brakes on the way down. Luckily, the tree stopped me from
heading out to the next road, which was pretty busy. I was concussed
and the trike died.
The stone was just a big rock a school bus drive over,
squirting it out like a 5 kg orange seed.
***********************************************************************
Nettle story (short)
I was with Jo and others in Wales, walking along a country path. I saw
a plant I thoguht was mint so I crushed a leaf between thumb and
forefinger to see if it smelled like mint. Jo didn't manage to warn me
in time.
Canadian nettles are very much less painful than Welsh ones.
Orders of magnitude.
[a later version below:]
Empress of Blandings <piglet@panix.com> wrote:
>Jo@bluejo.demon.co.uk, in article <915744591snz@bluejo.demon.co.uk>, dixit:
>> james_n@ece.uwaterloo.ca "James Nicoll" writes:
>>> I made the mistake at Walesboink of grasping a nettle leaf
>>> firmly to crush it and smell the leaf. My thumb was numb for
>>> several days.
>>Which got a response of "You did _what_?" (And that was numb despite
>>a pretty much instant application of dock leaf.)
>>It's a good point though - take reasonable adults from one ecosystem
>>into another and they'll start acting like three year olds, because
>>the things they think they know are suddenly useless or worse.
>
>Yes, but *why* would someone TOUCH something they didn't know anything
>about? Especially a brightly-colored thing (back to the brilliant red
>frog). Not just touch, *grasp*. I don't grasp the appeal, at all.
One way I understand things is by touching them. Also, while I
have common sense I rarely let it interfere with my actions, prefering
to use it to analyse why I shouldn't have done what ever it is that I
did to cause the most recent Darwin moment.
Tapping the point of a recently liquid-hot bit of glass tubing
against my thumb smarted much more than that nettle did. I am just luck
I didn't go with my first thought, that the nettle was some kind of
mint, and *taste* it[1].
Have I mentioned how I spent the afternoon playing with a
deadly poisonous snake once? The neighbors kept telling me it wass
venemous but they said anything with scales was venemous.
1: ObIrony: Jo was surprised to find out Canadians have poisonous
plants in their gardens and I replied that natural selection kept
the number of plant-tasting children to a minimum.
BTW, the active ingedient in milkweed that kills birds doesn't
work on me.
[and, further:]
Captain Button <button@eris.io.com> wrote:
>
>To merge with another subthread, has James Nicoll ever been to
>Australia to meet all the poisonous lifeforms?
Fuck, no. I am not insane. I went to _Wales_ and was
attacked by a savage nettle whose leaf I was thoughtfully crushing
between thumb and forefinger. Even with the dock, I couldn't feel
that thumb for a day.
I thought it was some kind of _mint_, ok? The leaves looked
minty. Thank god I didn't go with my first instinct, which was to
taste it[1].
Anyway, I would avoid swimming with the crocs only
to be maimed by a peeved koala or something equally stupid.
I might last half a day in Australia.
1: Milk weed is nowhere near as toxic as they claim.
[one last addendum:]
After the Nettle Incident, I believe A.M. was a bit surprised
to learn that dock does not grow in Canada, despite the presence of
nettles.
Mind you, our nettles are to British nettles what the
industrial might of Prince Edward Island is to that of the United
States of America.
***********************************************************************
Christmas Drunk Toddler
Did the Christmas thing with my brother, his sweetie and
the nepoti. Got a small cup, the very cup that I used at age 3
or 4 when I got up early, slid open two bolts [One at the top of
the door. Had to put a stool on a chair to get that high], got
out a place mat and the fine china cup and knocked back a full
bottle of sherry. My older brother found me and reported rather
puzzledly that "James can't stand up and he can sit down either."
Off to the hospital with James, waving happy, "Goodbye! Goodbye!"
Hmmm. Couldn't have been 3 as I wasn't speaking yet.
My nepoti observed that a lot of my stories end with "And
when I regained consciousness, there was a crowd standing around
looking at me."
My older brother has taken up mule skinning.
My younger brother, wanting a nice quiet vacation, is in
Venezuela.
***********************************************************************
Flash Paper Bonfire
Ken MacLeod <ken@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Jo Walton <Jo@bluejo.demon.co.uk> writes
>>james_n@nyquist.uwaterloo.ca "James Nicoll" writes:
>>> True story: a theatre group I used to be in writes its own
>>> scripts. At the end of the process, all the scrap paper [previous
>>> versions of the script and what have you] is gathered together and
>>> burned in a bonfire.
>>> My first time as chief scriptwriter I thought that was kind of
>>> dull so I asked my older brother if he knew how to turn the normal
>>> paper into flash paper. He thought it was pretty straight forward
>>> to come up with something to soak the scripts in so they'd all
>>> burn rapidly. Plans were going along swimmingly until he asked
>>> how much paper was involved and I told him it was a four foot
>>> stack. Apparently that much flash paper would have carbonised me
>>> when I lit it and left a large circle of melted snow, save in the
>>> thermal shadows of the other writers. Still, it would have been
>>> something to see.
>>
>>The words "born to be hanged" come to mind.
>
>As do the words 'Divided by Infinity' [*]. We're all living in the
>worlds which include the increasingly improbable survival of James
>Nicoll.
Happier ones than in that story, I hope.
Not that improable: say I had a one in three chance of surviving being
born and a one half chance of surviving any potentially fatal bit of
stupitity on my part that I can recall right now and I get odds of at
l/3x2^12th. Rather high, actually.
>Hey, that would explain a *lot*.
>
>(Notice how *weird* the news seems these days?)
I was trying to explain that we are living in the future to
my ex-girlfriend last week but she was sceptical.
Hmm. Forgot the time I checked to see if Jasmine's car brakes
work.
***********************************************************************
Walking Home from Kindergarden
I'm sure I've told this story: when I was in kindergarden, I got out
earlier than my older brother did from grade 4 and I hated having to
wait for him. I asked my parents if I could walk home by myself. They
thought about it and said that I could, provided I didn't talk to
strangers and I didn't cross the intersections by myself.
Around 6 pm, the cops found me wandering around and around on the block
my school was on, trying to find the route home which didn't involve
crossing the street.
After that, I was allowed to cross by myself.
***********************************************************************
The Balcony
One nasty surprise when I renovated my store was that a previous tenent
had knocked a big hole in a load bearing wall. The second floor was
sagging by 6 inches in one spot, so the workmen cranked the second
story back up [How, I don't know] and put in a splendid I-beam to
support the second floor. Suddenly, all the doors in my apt lock.
Suddenly the connecting door to the apt wouldn't latch at all, which
was a pain because that is the door which keeps the cats from setting
off the alarm. I noticed the lock still worked, so I took to letting it
lock behind me as I retired for the evening. Note that the door can
only be opened without a key from the store side.
One night, the ex and I were planning to go see a play. I
walk through the connecting door and hear it lock behind me. I realise
that -my- keys are in my coat in the store office. No problem, J has
keys. Call her up to say I have been an idiot. I forgot that I had had
the front door lock changed when I replaced the old door with a steel
one. Her keys are in my desk. In the store.
I call a locksmith. Nobody available until 8:30 and the play starts at
8. I call the theatre and explain the situation: the tickets are also
in my coat and will they let us in without the actual tickets? They say
yes. I run through several plans:
* Knock the connecting door down. I badly bruise my shoulder trying.
* Try to settle for knocking out a door panel. No dice. Screw up the
paint.
* Brilliant idea: get the ladder, which is on my side of the door and
lower over the balcony. Go to the show, come back later with a lock
smith. About this time, J shows up. I go out with the ladder. To get
into the right position, I have to scale my new balcony railing, which
I installed because the old one was so short one might trip over it.
The new railing is really tall so I get a chair, go over and let the
ladder down. No dice: the ground is too uneven for the trick to work.
It was at this point it occured to me I had marooned myself on the
wrong side of a railing I could not get over without a chair that was
too wide for the section I was standing on, in my shirt, in winter. I
had visions of TV crews filming me ofr the local moron of the week spot
as the fire department got me off my own building.
Potential humiliation is a great goad: I forced my way over
the railing, giving myself huge bruises in the process [Due to the
medication I am on, I bruise like a bad tomato] and settled down to
wait. J goes on on her own, seriously Not Impressed.
Locksmith shows up, unlocks everything in seconds. I go to the
theatre, where I am Recognised in that way that tells me I will feature
in stories there for some time, present the tickets and watch most of a
play.
Except for calling the locksmith, every single idea I had
made it worse.
***********************************************************************
Heather Anne Nicoll <darkhawk@mindspring.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll <james_n@babbage.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>> I am sure if I carried a running chainsaw with me, I would get
>> better service all round.
>
>I suspect that you'd probably cut your foot off or something, though.
>Or, perhaps more accurately, nearly cut your foot off and notice a few
>hours later.
>
That happened to my uncle Dave, sort of. Lopped off a toe
with an axe and didn't notice until someone pointed it out. Shock,
I guess.
***********************************************************************
I once insisted that my friends stop paddling a canoe in
Algonquin Park so I could admire the fantastic show the Northern Lights
were putting on. We floated there for maybe half an hour and then we
kept going so I could get to a hospital to get treatment for my hand,
which I had crushed under a 300 pound rock. Those were some great
Northern Lights.
There were three of us on the trip. Now, as it happened, the
spot we picked had a nice table like shelf of rock and two boulders
near it t sit on. There was a 300 pound boulder maybe ten meters away
so we each grabbed a piece and moved it. For better grip, I slid my
hand under the rock. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
***********************************************************************
A note: just as one should measure the corridor leading to a
kitchen when installing a new stove, so should one calculate at what
height the sloping walls of an attic bedroom will encounter the
bedposts of a new bed.
It's not so much that I can't get the frame in: I can, given
a little hammering to make it fit into the drywall. It's just I'd never
get the mattress onto it and if I did, I'd never get into the bed for
lack of crawl space.
No worries: got two other rooms it will fit into and one of
them is always cool year round.
***********************************************************************
Desdemona and the Razor
>I'm picturing a James Nicoll Shaving Moment, here.
My shaving moment was the moment of clarity when I realised
I shouldn't use a straight razor. It came just after my burmese,
trying to get attention, leaned over and bit me on the ass just
as I was drawing the blade up my throat.
It's harder to cut your throat fatally than they make it
look in movies. I bet I could try a hundred times and not succeed
more than once.
***********************************************************************
Del Cotter <del@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, in rec.arts.sf.fandom,
>David G. Bell <dbell@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>ray@learnlink.emory.edu "Ray Radlein" wrote:
>>> Graydon Saunders wrote:
>>> > You do know the torch-and-penetrating-oil trick?
>>> I'm picturing a James Nicoll Shaving Moment, here.
>>
>>Don't oil thread
>>By naked flames.
>>It's how you get
>>A Nicoll Shave.
>
>Americans will correct me, but I believe the words "Nicoll Shave" should
>come *after* the rhyme, like this:
>
>Don't oil thread
>By naked flames.
>You'll lose your eyebrows,
>Just like James.
>Nicoll Shave.
Clarification: even when I managed to suround myself with a
fireball, and that was -once- [so far], I never lost hair to the
flames.
The burned-eyebrows case was the neighbor girl, who used a lit
match to see if there was gasoline in a jerry can.
***********************************************************************
My father bet his sister he could shoot around a corner.
Bent pipe with one end [this is the part I don't understand[1]]
against her arm. Worked too. Pity the lecture which no doubt
followed wasn't taped.
James Nicoll
1: But then I let my older brother set my foot on fire once.
My urge to leap to one side when someone asks me to
stand still for a second wasn't nearly as honed then
as it is now.
***********************************************************************
Re: Balloons.
My father discovered in his MIT undergrad days that stove
gas [which he got at a set rate regardless of use] is lighter
than air and will fill a weather balloon nicely, if you stick the
balloon out the apt window so it has room. Mind your sparks.
***********************************************************************
Groucho, my reclusive grey tom, likes to open cupboards
and hide in them. What makes him stand out in the world of cats
is that he -shuts the door behind himself- somehow. The problem
is he is terrified of strangers and if one happens to get to
close to his hiding place, he leaps out ala the chest burster in
_Alien_, to run away to a new hiding place. This is apparently
very startling to the people it has happened to, judging by
the screams.
***********************************************************************
I was reading in the living room when I hear this incredible
deep growl from the hallway. Now, I knew the only cat in the apt was
Blotchy and I have never heard a sound like this from him so I
investigated[1]. What he had done was pull the bathroom door shut on
his paw. As long as he pulled, it pinched him more. A push would have
[and did, once I got there] freed him. He was pulling as hard as he
could and trying his damnedest to intimidate the door....
1: Always check unfamiliar sounds. Might be nothing. Might be a cat
with her head stuck in a watering pot.
***********************************************************************
Thomas Womack <tom@womack.net> wrote:
>"Kip Williams" <kipw@home.com> wrote
>> Loren MacGregor wrote:
>
>> > Er, I think it's time we stopped talking about sharp objects for a
>> > while.
>>
>> Okay. Who has a good story about damaging themselves with a blunt
>> instrument?
>
>I have nearly broken my nose with Oriel College Chapel. Does that count?
I removed much of the skin from my face and gave myself a
hell of a concussion with the city of London.
While building wall units for the used game section [the old
ones having gotten dangerously shakey], I managed to cut myself with
a hammer. No, I have no idea how one slices a thumb with a blunt
object.
***********************************************************************
On Superpowers
I seem to be either Avoidable Accident Lad or perhaps Near
Death Experience [Own Fault] Boy.
Right now I have two sore arms, in part because as I was
walking down a hall at Boskone with a heavy box of books on my head, I
found a door shorter than the total height of me+box. Luckily, I caught
the box on the way down behind me, at about head level. Never caught
anything quite like that and it doesn't seem to be a good idea.
***********************************************************************
On Cats and Agressiveness
My Taps love attention or hurting people. The clues as to
which it will are subtle except for the bleeding.
Part of the problem is she is extremely territorial about
her chair, the right side of the back of another chair and the cash
register.
***********************************************************************
James and Survival Guides
I can give some good advice on how to handle being stalked
by someone armed with a bow and arrow: look sufficiently like other
people that the stalker goes after the wrong person. Goody for me,
less so for them [although nobody got hurt].
***********************************************************************
Why James' Dad Had Multiple Kids
I think risk assessment must vary a bit.
My father once bet me that I couldn't swim upstream during a
thunderstorm, from the dam we built up to Fort Courage (an old willow
tree which had been struck by lighting some years earlier and which
formed a natural dam across the creek. Some years later, it was struck
again). I won my 25 cents, which could buy significant amounts of candy
back then.
He also talked me into trying to outswim an undertow, which
didn't work out quite so well. What was worse, it turned out my older
brother couldn't outswim it either, about 30 minutes later. I think
this is why some parents have multiple kids.
On the other hand, I could read any book or magazine I liked.
***********************************************************************
James and the Ants
Something which fascinated me as kid in Brazil was the
amazingly huge ant hills which are found there. Until then I'd only
ever dealt with ants in temperature climates and those are quite
small. Brazillian ant hill can be at least 4 feet tall and have
the consistancy of concrete. They can also be buried in the loose
soil of a river berm, which is how I managed to stumble into one.
Up to my knees, actually.
I am told that some native tribes use ant jaws as stitches
and I can believe it.
After the river incident, my interest turned to exterminating
the little fucks. Harder than it sounds: a number of ant species down
there seem to be able to survive being stomped (Don't do this in bare
feet). Gasoline won't touch the hills, although it will destroy
infested logs (Do _not_ hang around once it catches fire). Even jellied
gasoline is ineffective. Luckily, at the time Brazil had lax laws about
fire crackers and some of the bigger ones, the one centavo fire
crackers, were the size of a man's thumb. Cut some bamboo (Not the ones
with wasp nests in them), fill with a cruzero's worth of fire crackers,
knock a hole in the nest, hammer the bamboo stake in (Remember to run
away before they swarm you) and light the match-head fuze. Nice
explosion and it takes a day for them rebuild.
Thermite works best, it turned out.
I've mellowed greatly on the subject since escaping the tropics.
***********************************************************************
The Chandelier and the Cabbage
[a discussion of tabulations of unlikely accidents, such as with tea
cozies]
>> >Can anyone improve on these? <g>
>>
>> Ahem.
>>
>> 2 : Chandeliers to the head (One also involving a cabbage).
>>
>> Although the low point was the moment a few years ago when
>> I realised I had locked myself -into- my apartment.
>
>And there you were, hanging from the chandelier, while the savage
>cabbage rampaged below?
In my defence, I was about ten.
I was putting away groceries in our kitchen when I got to the
cabbages and thought "this needs to be tossed into air, preferably
without looking up first." Above me was a large, expensive imported
from Scandinavia where gravity is apparently less, light fixture.
As it turned out, although bits of the thign weren't glass, all the
screws holding it up were through holes in glass so when the cabbage
bumped it, the whole thing came down.
I look like I have the beginning of male pattern baldness
but it is just all the cranial scarring.
***********************************************************************
James' Grandmother and the Moaning Corpse
I am sure I've told this one: Grandmother on my mother's
side was a teacher. The town was at church for a funeral when the
guest of honour groaned, leading to the kind of stately considered
retreat from the church which makes people burst like water balloons
if they hit something hard on the way out. Someone had to go back
in to see if the dead guy was dead or just mostly dead and my grand-
mother got selected, since she was a teacher, educated and therefore
able to deal with the walking dead. There's a leap of logic in there
I don't quite follow. In any case she went snowy white after that
and blames the sound the dead fellow made as the gasses of decay
escaped him for the change.
***********************************************************************
On closing the bookstore and retiring
Timothy A. McDaniel <tmcd@jump.net> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>Timothy A. McDaniel <tmcd@jump.net> wrote:
>>>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>>> You'd be amazed what kind of paper cut the edge of packing
>>>>tape can give you.
>>>Did you mean that as irony? With that juxtaposition, I'm not amazed
>>>in the least. I'm only amazed that your packing tape didn't catch
>>>fire.
>> Actually, the fire was later.
>Mr. Nicoll, surely you are certainly aware by now that the newsgroup
>at large will not allow you to get away with just that bald (but
>utterly convincing) narrative.
Lesson for the day: make sure the flue is open.
***********************************************************************
Bleeding
Insert razor story here, the one with the cat, not the one
where Toddler James picks up his father's razor by the wrong end.
I bleed like a character in Python sketch. After years of topical
steroids, a good sneeze will break my skin. Soft caresses leave welts.
It is all very funny, esp when people who had no intention of drawing
blood do.
***********************************************************************
Time to Read
mike weber <krasnegar@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On 23 Aug 2001 13:36:14 -0400, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) typed:
>
>> Of course, I could be kept happy with a book. I was quiet
>>enough that sometimes they'd drive off without me and not realise
>>their mistake for some time. As long as the book was long enough, I
>>never noticed, either.
>>
>Ummm, James? Is this true, or are ya joshin' with us?
Nope, really happened a couple of times. It was never more than
an hour of unsupervised reading time, though.
***********************************************************************
The Nicolls and Wild Critters
In article <1ezxydg.1ljtktztq2b8yN%adaldan@nit.it.invalid>,
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <adaldan@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>Ray Radlein <rayradlein@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> >The scary thing about this, of course, is that when James says
>> >something like "Don't use a staple gun to fix your watch's wrist
>> >band while you are wearing it," or "Don't shake that wolverine to
>> >see if it's dead or merely sleeping," he is *usually* speaking from
>> >firsthand experience.
>>
>> As god is my witness, I thought that racoon was a cat. Also,
>> same for the skunk. And I now know that while the things with tufted
>> ears are cats, they are not friendly cats.
>>
>> >So there you have it, folks: Don't pour a cup full of antimatter
>> >into your lap. James says it would be a mistake.
>>
>> I've seen the light.
>
>ROTFL
>Bless you.
>
I live to serve. Any other animals you have you need indentified
as not-cats?
My brother once wandered off when he was four and was found
playing with bear cubs, somewhat to the park ranger's alarm. My brother
thought the cubs were dogs.
***********************************************************************
Childhood Fire Drills
Between 1968 and 1980, my family had a house out in the
country. If the house caught fire and cut off my escape, my escape
route was to jump out the window, fall about a story and a half, hit
the ground rolling and keep moving (This is better than my younger
brother's escape route, which involved leaping out his second story
window to a tree and climbing down). I practiced that move several
times.
So this is what you call a previously solved problem for me.
The problem now is that I expect I'd explode like a water balloon if
I tried it at my current weight.
***********************************************************************
James' Family and Foreign Tourism
Lis Carey <liscarey@mediaone.net> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>>Pete McCutchen <p.mccutchen@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>On 28 Sep 2001 01:12:11 -0400, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>>
>>>> I saw the UK, France(Excellent hospitals, very polite),
>>>>Germany (Excellent hospitals as well, although their medicine
>>>>tasted horrible),
>>>
>>>When I visit a country, I ride their roller coasters. When James
>>>Nicoll visits, he stops by the hospitals.
>> It's a learning experience. What I learned in France is,
>>you go up to a policeman with your shirt soaked to the waist in
>>blood and you don't even have to say the word 'hospital' in French
>>for them to take you there.
>Okay, I can't stand it anymore.
>
>How did you come to have your shirt soaked to the waist in blood,
>James?
>
Not me, my father. He had this nose bleed. Not your pesky,
wet the lip nosebleed or the more annoying wake up to find your head
scabbed to the pillow nosebleed but the Niagara of exsanguination,
and it would not stop. He had weird clotting and bruising problems
which in restrosect he probably should had have looked at but on this
occasion he finally gave up and tried to use his French, which would
have been about ten years out of use at that point. Didn't matter
because the police apparently thought he was an attempted murder
victim and zipped off to the hospital (1).
The story of How the French Stopped His Nosebleed became
part of family folklore. He was amazed by the amount of cotton you
can stuff up a man's nose if you are sufficiently motivated. I
think in the end they cauterised it somehow. I saw him take the
packing material out of his nose and it was indeed quite impressive.
James Nicoll
1: Which is kind of funny because the next major nosebleed came when
Ishiyama our Siamese got him up the nose about ten minutes before
guests were supposed to arrive for a party. They showed up, he was
in the standard post nose bleed drenched in blood postion and he
thought it'd be a yuck to claim my mother had tried to kill him,
using this matter of fact tone of voice and of course going on
with the party.
***********************************************************************
The Hazards of Straight Razors
mike weber <krasnegar@mindspring.com> wrote:
>OTOH, if one is remiss enough to leave the bathroom door open when one
>has business there, one is likely to feel a small velvety-soft
>claw-sheathed paw reaching up an patting one on the fundament a few
>times...
Desi did something similar except it involved biting, which is
why I gave up using a straight razor.
***********************************************************************
A Safety Comment
Graydon Saunders <graydon@dsl.ca> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> scripsit:
>> Kris Hasson-Jones <snippy@pacifier.com> wrote:
>>>James Nicoll wrote:
>>>> Moustaches are not nearly as flammable as fiction would
>>>> have us believe. Eventually, they go out.
>>>
>>>[*] !!!
>>
>> Wooden matches sometimes explode, or the match head does in
>> any case.
>
>What were you doing with a wooden match that close to your mustache?
>
The match was unusually energetic in its rapid combustion,
not that close to my face. I look at it as better to have flaming
fragments in my moustache than up my nostril, although not really
desirable in either case.
***********************************************************************
Emergency Rooms
Margaret Young <mmyoung@umich.edu> wrote:
>Last time I was at one (in Canada) it was called the Emergency
>Department.
It still is.
Boy, do you get funny looks when you explain that yes, you
cut yourself again showing someone how you did it the first time.
***********************************************************************
Underdressed in the Winter
I hate showering at the gym, so I generally change here and
walk over. I expected to be forced to stop this some time in the fall
but was suprised over the years to discover that it can be as late as
-January- before it stops being shorts weather due to either freezing
rain or wind chill. Shoes seem to be key here: barefoot in -20 is much
worse than shod in -20. Much worse.
Of course, I now know that the time I thought I could run
coatless and gloveless 40 feet between two locked exterior doors in
-40 degree weather with 60 km/hr winds and still be able to open the
door at the other end, I was incorrect.
***********************************************************************
A small kite anecdote
My grandparents sent us all chinese kites with 2000 foot lines.
Our eventual solution was to jack up the back of our motorcycle and
grasping the spool lightly (and in later trials, in gloved hands) let
the rear tyre of the bike do the rewinding work.
***********************************************************************
James Nicoll - Vampire?
Margaret Young <mmyoung@umich.edu> wrote:
> On 30 Nov 2001, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>> See, _I'd_ have flubbed that bit because I can't enter other
>>people's rooms without being invited and even then, I am likely to
>>lurk as near to door as possible.
>>
>Please tell me that sunlight doesn't have a fiery effect on you.
Until half my face peeled off at the World Fantasy Con, I'd
have sworn that I didn't burn from UV period (Thermally, up like flash
paper, at least if thermite or home made napalm is involved). Normal
sunlight just makes me darker.
***********************************************************************
On the sounds of bones breaking
When you and your friends put a three hundred pound rock on
your hand during a friendly poker game, the sound of the bones going is
audible at arm's length.
When the batter flies into second a foot off the ground and
breaks the second baseman's leg, you can hear the big bone in the lower
part of the leg break from home plate.
***********************************************************************
Youthful fun and games
Anyway, I did used to play with explosives and incidiaries back
on the farm and it was safe as houses. The explosives were, anyway. The
inside of a fireball is a pretty pretty place but that was a sort of
fuel-air thingie, not a real explosive. No beard lossage as a result.
I do regret not hearing about ANFO devices back when I could
have played with some without endangering people. Ah well, next life.
***********************************************************************
Past Haunts
I used to have a favourite seat at a local cinema but first the
seat was roped off because it was under where the roof fell in after
years of neglect and then they turned the place into a dance club. All
the core movie houses seem to be turning into clubs...
***********************************************************************
Life Imitates Art?
In article <3C227183.B95775F7@home.com>, Kip Williams <kipw@home.com>
wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> Although I have to say that for a movie which gave me
>> nightmares as a kid, _Poseidon Adventure_ didn't really stand up to a
>> recent viewing.
>
>When you were a kid, you hadn't experienced all that stuff yet.
>
Well, let's see. I think I saw PA in '73 or '74...
Bad (or humourous, depending if you were me or just watching me
from the shore) experience with a wave, check.
Near drowning, check.
Getting trapped under something, check.
Set on fire, many checks.
I miss anything from the film?
***********************************************************************
Firebreathing
mike weber <krasnegar@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On 31 Dec 2001 00:56:34 -0500, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) typed:
>>Dan Kimmel <dan.kimmel@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>I'll be the one breathing fire. :)
>>
>> That's bad for your lungs. _Really_ bad. Always hold your
>>breath while in the fireball.
>>
>For just a second there, i had this mental image of what you might
>have done that would let you speak familiarly about such...
Poured a gallon of gasoline on a big bonfire to light it, had
no matches and took ten minutes to get them, giving the gasoline lots
of time to evaporate. Big whoosh, startng from when I struck the match
rather than when I tossed it.
At least _I_ never tried to put out a molotov cocktail's lit
fuse by stamping on the whole thing. That didn't work out too well.
How we laughed and laughed.
***********************************************************************
Catwatering
Hillary once managed to discover that her head fit like a key
into the hole of my watering pot. I don't know how many people have
had to pour water out of a pot with a flailing cat sticking out of
it but it's more difficult than it sounds.
She didn't drown and eventually she turned her head so it could
pop out of the pot. It's not like she's still running around with it
stuck on her.
***********************************************************************
Another Cat Story
[Nimrod] still has one bad habit from kittenhood: any
irregularity on or under the surface she is sprawled against is seen as
a fur snarl and will provoke an attempt by her to nip the snarl off.
This is bad when it is a nipple against shirt material but was much much
worse the time she went after a testicle.
***********************************************************************
And Yet Another
Paranoia runs in [Groucho's] family and his little sister
Nameless is the single spookiest cat I have ever shared space with.
Nameless likes to creep on humans and watch them. If they are awake,
she approaches from behind. If they are asleep, she sits beside them
and stares intently at their face. It is rather unsettling to wake up
and see a hostile cat face six inches from one's own. Attempts to pet
her result in blood loss.
************************************************************************
How James' Parents Met
I think my father noticed my mother making her way down the
outside of the building they both lived in, on her way to break into a
friend's apartment somewhere in a sequence of escalating practical
jokes. Apparently nobody locked their windows back then.
***********************************************************************
Accidental Mountainclimbing
Nels E Satterlund <Nels.E.Satterlund@intel.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>> Of course I do jaywalk but only got run over once, so that's
>> ok. And I have accidentally bicycled down a flight of stairs. Also,
>> I once accidentally climbed Mount Tamalpais but it's an easy climb
>> and the road makes it trivial to get off the top of it.
>
> [*] accidentally climbed Mount Tamalpais?
>
Climbed a small bluff next to the road which leads to the
top and discovered once on it that I couldn't get back down, so I
worked my way up to the top, where I could use the road to get down
again.
***********************************************************************
A Safety Note
Safety razors can go -right through- fingernails.
***********************************************************************
Witch Doctors and Dowsing
My father employed a dowser once and also used the local
witch doctor (I guess that would be folk healer these days) in
Brazil, both in the interests of science. Although come to think
of it, the witch only got used when my mother got sick; Bill went
to the hospital when he finally was convinced his foot shouldn't
be three times larger than it had been, greeny-black and drippy
(Two unrelated events, really). The conclusion he came to wrt
dowsing was that it might or might not work but that whatever
method the plumber who dug our well used was pretty bad because
you could dig pretty much anywhere on our farm except where the
pump was and hit water 10 feet down. The well ran over a hundred
feet down.
***********************************************************************
James' Cats Take After Him
Cleo is my extremely needy ex-stray, who it turns out will
pay -so- much attention to running beside me crying for attention that
he will completely not notice a rapidly approaching wall.
***********************************************************************
Moving Disasters, or, It Runs in the Family
When my great grandfather moved to Hawaii, he and the Flemings
hauled their goods from their home in Scotland to a British port, from
there across the grey Atlantic to America, from the east coast of
America to the west coast (looking nervously at the very temporary
looking wooden train trestles), across the blue Pacific to Hawaii
itself, where all their goods were locked in a warehouse which burned
down that night.
I have one of the things which survived, my great grandfather's
bible.
***********************************************************************
A Word About Horses
In article <GxHtIB.A0z@kithrup.com>,
Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <3d04ab58.683369@cnews.newsguy.com>,
>Lucy Kemnitzer <ritaxis@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>On Mon, 10 Jun 2002 10:09:03 GMT, stacey@xtra.spam1.co.spam2.nz (The
>>Blue Rose) wrote:
>>>
>>>Strawberry roans aka pink horses are also very cool!
>>
>>But you'll never ride one, according to the song . . .
>
>I certainly never will. They had some horses at a
>recent SCA event, my gosh those things are huge.
And heavy. Trust me on this.
***********************************************************************
Quandry
Last night Cleo (a 20 pound b&w tomcat) and Blotchy (a 20
pound b&w tomcat) settled down to sleep about two feet apart (while
Cleo is more than happy to be friends with Blotchy, Blotchy views
Cleo with distain and dislike and mauls him if he tries to curl up
next to Blotchy). Enter Nameless.
Nameless really likes Cleo. Nameless really likes Blotchy.
As soon as she sees either, her tail goes straight up and she runs
over to get groomed. If the tom in question isn't awake, she rams them
with her head until they are awake.
Last night she walked in, tail went up, she ran forward,
go to a point equidistant from both and froze in indecision for
about a minute, head turning from Cleo to Blotchy, from Blotchy to
Cleo. We're talking complete mule between two bales of hay here,
incapable of making a choice. Her expression was very funny.
***********************************************************************
Cat Grooming
Cleo is long haired, round and incapable of grooming several
hectares of his flanks (He makes up for this by grooming other cats*).
He is of course prone to mats and was unspeakably filthy when he came
in from the street.
Of course this is the one cat who likes human contact but
regards bushes and combs as The Enemy, going so far as to attack them
when they threaten to touch -other- cats**. Of course bushing him
involves howls and hurt looks. Combing him involves bloodshed. Trimming
him requires cunning tricks to avoid being maimed.
***********************************************************************
Swimming Lessons
Boudewijn Rempt <boud@valdyas.org> wrote:
>Taking cycling lessons? I think I'm coming down with a bout of culture
>shock...
>
>Cycling lessons consist of plonking the kid on a bike, pushing her
>off, running at her side to make sure she doesn't keel over, and then
>giving her an ice-cream or a pony ride if the running part isn't
>necessary any more.
You forgot 'explaining what brakes are for after the first trip
down the hill terminates at a tree.'
My first swimming lesson was something along the lines of "I
bet you twenty five cents you can't swim up-stream during a
thunderstorm." A quarter bought a lot of candy (or two comics or one
100 pager) back then, so I swam from the rock dam all the way up to
Fort Courage, which was a big old tree that had been hit twice by
lightning, one half forming a living dam.
***********************************************************************
Groucho the Paranoid Cat
I've mentioned Groucho the paranoid cat before, the cat
who can work himself up over his food dish looking at him funny?
He's been living in my bathroom and hall closet for years, unable
to stop himself from growling at the other cats and then running
away, generally start of a fight. Valium didn't help, either.
I've been taking him into the living room in the evening. At
first, he could only take a few minutes before running away and even
when he was on my lap it was clinging to my knee, looking around with
wild eyes and refusing to look anything in the face (Faces seem to be
especially scary to him). Then he discovered my chair has an arm wide
enough for him to sleep on facing the wall. Over the last few months,
he'd gotten to the point where he is quite bold as long as he gets to
be on that particular part of the chair (It looked like he'd add the
radiator but he keep sliding off sideways when he sleeps). Now he's in
the habit of spending the evening sleeping there, occasionally looking
around with some interest. His ears even go into the interested
position rather than the folded back out of the way position he usually
adopts and when he is treatened instead of running away he flattens out
to protect his bit of chair. Touching, really.
The side effect is that he now insists on sleeping on the bed
with all the other cats, which makes my bed more of a DMZ than it used
to be, with me as the minefield and barbed wire between hostile factions
of cats.
Unexpected Benefits; a follow-up:
Big, big cat fight last night apparently started because
Groucho was eating out of the communal dish instead of his own.
Hillary seen with tufts of Groucho fur stuck to her claws, looking
very pleased.
Smaller fight, in the bathroom, Groucho walkng around with
a tuft of Hillary fur sticking out of his mouth, looking defiant.
Five minutes ago, I noticed the usual pile of cats on the
bed, but with Groucho included in the pile. Why they fight in some
locations and not others, I have no idea but he was definitely
part of the huddled mass, curled up to two of his nemesi, although
facing away.
***********************************************************************
True and false stories
Loren Joseph MacGregor <lmacgreg@garcia.efn.org> wrote:
>
> This is James Nicoll we're talking about, remember.
>
> He won't be killed; he'll be startled by the poisonous spider
> that's just bitten the poisonous snake that was disturbed when
> James, out of curiosity, opened the glove box of the abandoned
> car that was sitting on the top of the mesa with no evidence
> to show how it had gotten there. As he jumps back, he bumps
> the car, which rolls off the edge of the mesa as he falls over
> the opposite edge, into a bushy evergreen branch growing out
> the side of the cleft. Bouncing off this without incident, he
> falls into the gulley bed which is normally dry this season,
> but which due to an unseasonable rain is now filled with
> sufficent water that it breaks his fall, allowing him to
> reach the edge without incident. In crawling ashore, he
> stubs his foot on a rook and breaks his toe. The physician at
> the emergency care center has difficulty believing his story.
Back in 1970, my grandmother made a subtle hint about the
frequency with which we did not write letters by asking if my brother's
writing arm was out of the cast. He jokingly said yes, she excitedly
asked how he had broken it and my father then sat down and wrote a long
letter to her, with illustrations, of how my brother and my father had
damaged their hands.
It began, he claimed, when we were visiting Itaimbezinho
www.amazonadventures.com/itaim.htm
and the edge gave way. Scott and Bill plummeted a thousand
meters before encountering a jaguar on a ledge. One of them grabbed
it by the tail, the other by the mouth. The cat first maimed the one
who had grabbed its mouth then whipped to bite the other person in
his writing hand. Then they continued their fall for some time. An
unlucky condor got in the way, slowing the group enough that when
they hit the tree branch overhanging the river, nobody was killed.
Bill and Scott left the stunned animals hanging a branch and slipped
off into the river, where they were eventually rescued.
The letter was longer and the illustrations suitably fantastic.
I'm sure of all the reactions my father thought his mother
might have, her acceptance of the letter at face value wasn't among
them...
**************************************************************************
A Retarded Cat Story
Lizzie used to be a dipper, drinking water from her
paw. She was also very very retarded (The vet thought she'd
been oxygen deprived at birth) and much of life was a deep
mystery to her. Her brother Jack used to stand next to her
when she was drinking to lick her paw dry before Lizzie
could get a drink. She was always amazed to discover that the
paw was dry. I imagine if I had not given Jack away, she'd
never gotten a drink.
She also never understood 'up', which meant any other
cat could sneak up on her simply by hopping up onto a chair.
**************************************************************************
A Small Life Lesson
Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <amfums$805$1@panix3.panix.com>,
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> Today's life lesson: do not zerbit a sleeping cat.
>
> [*]
Blow a raspberry using the cat's tummy as the tympanum. Even
if they are sleeping on their back with all four paws in the air.
***********************************************************************
A Poem by Jo Walton in honor of James rescuing a small, scarred, kitten
In article <jrksqugm356p7u6l8vf9ucjnp9lttrt2kv@4ax.com>, LAFF wrote:
> 'tis said that on Wed, 16 Oct 2002 23:12:36 +0000 (UTC), tmcd@panix.com
> (Timothy McDaniel) wrote:
>
>> In article <uqr8i15kuqhta3@corp.supernews.com>,
>> Karen Lofstrom <lofstrom@lava.net> wrote:
>> >I'm starting to get the impression, James, that there's the cat
>> >equivalent of the hobo sign "soft touch here" sprayed all around your
>> >house.
>>
>> Note James's description:
>>
>> Hrm. You should see this little guy, he looks like he took on a
>> lawnmower and lost. He seems to be mostly ribs and scar tissue.
>>
>> (1) Scarred. Like attracts like.
>> (2) "He's as accident-prone as me and *he's* survived. Maybe if I
>> stand close to him, the barbed-wire-wrapped red-hot anvils will
>> fall on *him* and he'll still feed me."
>
> Maybe some of the cats' nine lives have passed on to James?
Few of them had all nine: they'd had to roam
alone through many perils, icy nights,
hypnotic headlight beams, a thousand fights,
starvation, when the hunt was thin, no home.
Rescued, inside, and dry, and checked by vets,
the lucky ones had eight, some still had five,
and some were on their last, barely alive,
when they were offered safe warm lives as pets.
Cats do know gratitude they won't admit
they'll curl up close and give a special purr
then look embarrassed, stop and clean their fur,
here, life for life, it's spare, don't mention it.
Nine lives, or eight, or seven, cats make these claims,
and who'd deny the many lives of James?
--Jo Walton
***********************************************************************
Cat Dynamics
Eddie discovered the toilet a few days ago. His little cat
eyes lit up and he made a valient attempt to dive in. Cats, brains
the size of a walnut.
Groucho has decided that since Eddie defers to him Groucho
must be a very big cat, so now I get to watch Groucho try to fight
his way up the chain of dominance. The next cat up is Cleo, 22 pounds
of 'Finally, someone who will wrestle with me!' and progress is slow
to date. Cleo's wrestling involved holding Groucho down with one paw
and carefully cleaning G as G squirms like an irate junebug.
***********************************************************************
Why I Love Bicyclists
This year, my close encounter with a bicyclist was thanks to
what seemed to be low self-esteem. The fellow on the bike was staring
down at the ground as though he was too shy to meet the eyes of the
people he was forcing off the sidewalk (1). Luckily I noticed that
he had the subliminal signals of a fuckwit and I was able to react
before his sudden loss of control of the direction of the bike resulted
in his front wheel encountering my 'nads. He was moving too slow, I
think, and definitely on the wrong part of the transport network. Of
course if he had been moving faster, he'd have done real damage when
I put my hand on the handlebar of his bike to stop him.
1: In this case, only me.
***********************************************************************
Card Game and Boulders, redux
Joann Zimmerman <jzimm@bellereti.com> wrote:
>In article <aqrfi4$bjp$1@panix2.panix.com>, jdnicoll@panix.com says...
>
>> I once accidentally placed a large boulder on my middle two
>> fingers of my left hand during a card game that went horribly wrong.
>> I'd say the rock was about 300 pounds. I had broken bones and some
>> nerve damage (The only finger on that hand I still have full feeling
>> in is the pinky finger, although only two were involved in the cards
>> incident).
>
>I know that this is a "James Nicoll story", and therefore I *think*
>you'd better explain further. The connections between a card game and
>a 300-lb boulder may be obvious to you, but not, I think, to your
>audience.[*]
1978 or 1979 Algonquin Park. We're two days into the bush.
Three of us decide to play cards. Problem: two rocks by a shelf will
serve as seats but the thrid rock is some way off. We pick the rock up
and move it. I stupidly slide my hand under for better leverage. We put
the rock down. *pop* I lift the rock up with one hand but the crushed
hand doesn't hurt. "Dodged the bullet" I think. Ten minutes later my
fingers think "OK, that was enough time for him to get to emerg" and
they start to hurt like hell.
John Krill goes over to the next camp site to ask for
painkillers, which the two well groomed naked men in the very small pup
tent don't have (This is funnier if you consider we were all from a
very rural high school, where 'alternative life style' meant 'Not Old
Order Mennonite'). Averting his eyes, he returns and we decide to make
a fast run into the emergency station the park must logically have.
We stop to watch the Northern Lights.
Reaching where we entered the park, we discover that there are
no first aid facilities. Instead I have to call an ambulance (Luckily
unlike my previous trip in an ambulance I am not declared dead as a
result). Walking to meet the ambulance, my trick knee goes out.
Huntsville has one of the worst emerg departments in Canada.
They let me wait in an empty room while the doctor flirts with the
nurse, then he tells me my huge, purple fingers are either broken or
bruised. Ditzy the nurse bends one splint over a crushed finger tip and
the next one over an non-crushed finger tip. Then they warn me to hide
my money walking to the hotel so when, not if, when I am mugged the
natives won't get my wallet.
Note: I dated a native woman from the region and she didn't
seem to have the universal criminal tendencies the doctor claimed
natives had. Ah, the 1970s. The natives wouldn't get the vote for
another 6 years and women were still considered property of their
husbands.
A cop sees me limping down the street and gives me a ride. Nice
guy. He sets me up with a cheap room at the hotel. I go to my tiny,
stuffy room, slide the window up and am looking at the stick on the
sill thinking 'What's that for'
You'd think I would know to curl into a protective ball when I
think that
when the window slides shut on both hands.
I take my painkillers and wake up eighteen hours later, except
for the brief stoned episode where I woke up with my left arm tucked
under my head, numbed from lack of blood (the arm, not the head) and
reaching over to move the arm failed to find it where it had been for
most of my life. It only took a few minutes for me to discover I was
not in fact suddenly an amputee.
Walked back to the hospital, got x-rays, wandered around
Huntsville, found _Darker than You Think_ and _Web of Everywhere_.
Eventually I met my friends, who finished the trip on their own, and we
went home.
**************************************************************************
If a Tree Fell in the Forest, would it land on James?
The previous trip a tree fell on me(1). That hurt less than
having the fingers crushed, actually. After enough concussions head
injuries all seem to blur together. I don't camp anymore, though.
That same emergency department twenty years later looked at a
leg wound a friend got tripping onto a upthrust root, commented that it
was the dirtiest wound they had ever seen and then prescribed -no-
antibiotics. Luckily doctors back here in civilization managed to save
the leg. It's nice to see institutions keeping their traditions.
James Nicoll
1: _Of course_ it was my fault. What, did you think trees lurk around
waiting to fall on me? I found a dead tree by a cliff and needing fire
wood decided to use its resonent frequency to snap the trunk and send
to the rocks below, which in my plan would break it into little bits.
Key oversight: what happens if the tree breaks as I am pulling rather
than pushing? I'm not sure, actually, but the evidence suggests it fell
on me.
***********************************************************************
Cats and Baths
My cats come in and try to drink the bathwater, even Nameless.
My brain damaged cat Lizzie* used to climb in. She also liked
to run back and forth in the shower as well and could be kept happy for
an amazing amount of time by a tub with about two inches of water in
it, but would swim around happily if the water was deep enough. Never
was sure if this was a side effect of the brain damage (O2 starvation
during birth, the vet thought) or just a little personal oddity she'd
have had even if she'd been a luckier cat.
James Nicoll
* THis is the one who would walk into windows on a regular basis, who
tried to leap into fires, who spent a lot of her life stuck to things
because she had no idea her claws retracted.
**************************************************************************
The Brave Little Cat
Groucho has officially decided that the main floor is now
part of his territory. I can tell because he spent the day walking
around marking objects with his nose.
"Mine. Mine. That's mine. So's this. This is mine, too."
Occasionally he'd come to me and poke my elbow with a paw
to get human reassurance and then go back to claiming half the building
as his. Blotchy watched the entire process with one half-opened and
disapproving eye.
***********************************************************************
My Medical Lesson for the Day
If you feel a searing pain in one eye, try not to blink
before washing the eye out with water/visine because what you might
be doing is cutting the inside of your eyelid with a grain of
something. Not esp dangerous but very very irritating. *Of course*
it's my reading eye.
Unlike the knee incident, I immediately went to emerg. I do
have a learning curve, however shallow.
***********************************************************************
Footwear
I have startlingly comfortable sandals. I say startlingly
because they make my feet bleed if I wear them but it doesn't hurt. Tis
a mystery.
***********************************************************************
A Cinquenta by Manny Olds
James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
> To see little cat paw prints on the roof next door where
> some cat (not one of mine) has clearly been sitting, looking
> in...
This reminds me to give you a cinquenta I just finished.
Beacon (30 November 2002)
He searches onward, weak and ungroomed, seeking the sanctuary he senses
nearby. At last he hears the faint echoes of countless old blessings.
He limps toward the source.
"James, there's a strange cat on the porch. He's hurt!"
As he is carried in, he adds his blessing to the chorus.
***********************************************************************
Smelly Eddy
Smelly Eddie came back from the vet's slightly lighter than
when he went to the vet's and very dopey. It turns out that with his
semi-paralysed leg and the drugs he is incapable of jumping onto
chairs. Instead he hit about half-way up and very, very slowly fell off
sideways with a 'whoah...something...isn't...right' expression on his
face.
The vet was happy to see him leave because his personal
pungicity was setting off all the other cats, even the normally docile
ones...
Eddie seems to have decided that his new life, free of menacing
cars (which is where the broken tooth and bad leg seem to come from),
is going to consist entirely of
1: Sleeping in the carrier
1a: Sleeping on a window ledge.
2: Eating
3: Apparently vast engineering projects in the litter box.
Judging by the time he spends digging, he is rebuilding the
pyramids out of a material less likely to attract tourists
than that used in the original pyramids.
He's amiable but not that interested in other living entities.
***********************************************************************
Ophelia
Ophelia has discovered it's easier to groom herself if she uses
Blotchy as a prop for her hind leg, like a ballerina and a dance-bar (Or
whatever those are called). His reaction is displeased tolerance...
***********************************************************************
Cleo, the feeding of
Cleo isn't stupid but for some reason he can't find food if
someone is holding it. Offer him something and he carefully checks the
floor beneath the hand.
On the other hand, the first time I fed him I discovered that
I should never pull my hand away suddenly unless I want to trigger
hunting reflexes in a cat who hunted (at the time) to live.
***********************************************************************
Lab Accidents, or the lack thereof
David Burns <dburns731pottedmeat@attbi.com> wrote:
[snip Paul Dormer's lab accident story]
>Did anyone else reading the above recheck the header to see if it was
>from James?
I've never had a lab accident except for the molten glass
incident.
My father, otoh, once got a mouthful of H2SO4.
**************************************************************************
AKICIF: Electrical Fires
And be sure if that entry with my name make your heart go pit a
pat, so did mine on turning on a piece of non-vital equipment plugged
into an extension cord to hear electrical crackles and see smoke. I
promptly tugged the non-smoking end out of the wall and pitched the
cord outside.
OK, so the cord is clearly pooched. Should I worry about the
plug that was stuck into it?
***********************************************************************
Comparitive Burns
>> >> > James Nicoll wrote:
>> >> David Goldfarb wrote:
>> > James Nicoll wrote:
>> Chris Malme wrote:
> Thomas Yan wrote:
>> >> >> Nope. When I accidentally burn myself it involves things
>> >> >> like clouds of gasoline vapour, molten plastic or attempting
>> >> >> to stamp out a thermite fire. I think the last time I burned
>> >> >> myself with a mundane object (1) was with an iron when I was
>> >> >> three.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> James Nicoll
>> >> >>
>> >> >> 1: Actually, I give myself second degree burns with the space
>> >> >> heater on a regular basis. Not sure how.
>> >> > Attempting to stamp out thermite?? Ow ow ow.
>> >> Only a very little thermite. It did turn into more of a
>> >> 'how quickly can I get rid of a flaming sneaker' though.
>> >>
>> >> The worst burn I got was from some flaming plastic that
>> >> fell onto my bare foot, burning me between two toes and on the
>> >> heel just where shoes would rub. In the tropics, so of course
>> >> they got infected.
>> >>
>> >> Sorry, that was the most annoying. The worse involved
>> >> almost-molten glass and my thumb. There's a distinctive sound.
>> > Normally described as screaming?
>> No, more like bacon sizzling. It actually took some time to
>> hurt.
> Nerve damage does that, I assume.
Dunno. It took a while for my fingers to hurt when I crushed
them but knee pain is instant, possibly faster.
***********************************************************************
More Cleo, the Feeding Of, or Mind Games for Cats
ObHowSmall_Are_CatBrainsAnyway?
My most recent street cat (Can cats be autistic? I think Eddie
may be) has discovered that Food Dishes Can Be Moved. His particular ap
is to pull the dish Cleo is eating out of away from Cleo so Eddie can
eat from it instead. Cleo is baffled by the disappearing dish and sits
there looking sadly at the place it used to be...
**************************************************************************
Sleeping with Cats
One of my cats (1) weighs seven pounds and can still put my
back out jumping on me as I sleep (2). Not sure how.
1: Because I own Too Many Cats, I am now able to work on a theory
of Cat-Tiling, the process by which nine cats divide up a bed so that
no two that are overtly hostile to each other have to sleep next to
each other in a manner that must be acknowledged.
2: I understand how the twenty pound cat does it. It involves
first climbing to the top shelf of the book case and then doing a Death
From Above attack. It's bad to wake up and see a large cat in mid-leap
from the rough vicinity of the ceiling.
***********************************************************************
Early Schooling
Don't know about pre-school. In the first half of the 1960s, I
lived in the UK and never got to the top of any list I was on, whether
for a spot in a day-school or necessary operations (I strongly suspect
my parents' negotiation techniques may have had some to do with
this(1), plus we had an incompetent doctor(2))
In Canada, I did attempt to attend a pre-school but got my hand
crushed before I got to the front door. I never did attend until I was
old enough for Kindergarten (3).
James Nicoll
1: "What do you mean we're not at the top of the list? We're
-Americans-. If it wasn't for us, you'd be speaking German!"
2: We had one who was just about as bad over here, too. Not sure what
criteria my parents used to select doctors, but the one we had thought
blocked salivary glands were allergies, a broken neck was nerves and
my ulcer was broken ribs.
3: Where about a minute after I arrived, while we were all waiting for
the school to let us in, some kid asked me to look up his coat sleeve
and when I did rammed his fingers into my eyes as hard as he could.
What fun we had as children.
***********************************************************************
An Eddie Update
I swear the narcotics from his visit to the vet never wore
off. Eddie has a consistent look of pleased surprise on his face,
whether its while moving the food dishes around or sitting under
the tub tab, waiting for the rain to start. I have discovered one
thing that really throws him and it isn't my fault.
There's a cat-flap in one of the doors. He knows it can
be gotten through but his method is bat the door forward and try
to dart through before it comes back to smack him in the nose. So
far, the cat-flap is winning.
***********************************************************************
Hit by a Car
Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.juric-kokic@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>PS I got hit by a car when I was 12. Ended with a serious concussion
>only (!), spent two weeks in hospital.
Some guy's car [hit me] at age four and I only got scraped
ankles. Not that I am complaining. The poor guy managed to hit all
three Nicoll boys at once as we stepped out from behind an obstruction
that prevented us from seeing him and as it turned out, him from seeing
us. Entirely our fault.
***********************************************************************
Tail Chasing
Hillary still chases her own tail and she's nine. She seems
to be cheerfully aware how silly that habit is, too.
Cleo chases other cats' tails with a helpless 'I can't resist
the urge' look on his face as soon as he sees the tail in question. It
always ends badly.
***********************************************************************
Ineffectual Catfights
I really wish I had thought to video tape the period during
which Ophelia and her sister Hillary integrated jumping into their
fighting styles. They only knew how to jump vertically, not
horizontally, so they would bounce up and down agressively at each
other, usually at a distance of about ten feet.
***********************************************************************
Carbon Monoxide and You
My exgf, Jasmine, was woken by her CO detector going off. It's
easier for me to meet service people during the day (I can read MSes
anywhere) so I was the one who got to be there when the service guy
turned the oven on to discover the CO level jumped up to 500 ppm as
a result. 500 ppm will put you to sleep in 45 minutes and kill you
in 3 hours, so the rest of his visit consisted mostly of variations
on 'Get a new stove' and 'Under no circumstances use that oven!'
The new stove only ignites if you set it to ignite, although it
seems to be willing to pump gas on through if one, being unfamilar with
gas stoves, turns the dial past ignite too quickly for the gas to
light. Since I think of gas stoves as bombs waiting to go off, I turned
the stove off and consulted with the expert before fiddling with it,
wanting to avoid the scenario where the kitchen fills with a gas/air
mixture before finding an ignition source.
Nothing exciting because when you get down to it I don't trust
gas enough to play with it.
***********************************************************************
More Eddy Updates
Eddy has decided that the cat he most likes of the rest of
the herd is not the carefully solictious Cleo, the pushy Hillary
or the flirty Nameless (who should be called Shameless as far as
tomcats go) but the timid Nimrod. Who naturally wants nothing to
with the still somewhat wiffy and limping tomkitten who keeps
following her around, making hopeful chirping sounds at her
while gazing adoringly at her...
***********************************************************************
Life Lessons
Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. Things
with lit fuses should not be held onto. Beware the savage croquet ball.
If it is -30 out, put on a coat before you leave the house. Just
because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the objects do not
cease to exist. Clotheslines are the enemy of the bicyclist. If you
don't remember how you got on the ground or where the blood came from,
don't get up right away. Gym teachers think it's funny to commit
assault with a baseball so don't day-dream during PE even if they have
you so far in the outfield there are DEW line posts on either side of
you. All guns are loaded. So are many bows. Trebuchets are for outside
use only. The sharp side of the knife goes away from you. Pure reason
does not trump brute force but suprisingly few people know what hot
peppers look like when the teacher asks if you have enough to share
with everyone. Never take the lid of a pressure cooker 'to see if it's
done yet'. Even if you are careful with the picric acid that won't
matter if you are careless with other items next to it. Move *away*
from mysterious burglar alarms. Do not append 'you moron' to exposition
directed at people who have just broken into your building. 'We need to
talk' is overwhelmingly unlikely to precede good news. A rough brick
wall may be used to sort socks or as a backdrop for sock-art (The
Neglected Art). A silent cat is Up to Something. Lungs are unsuited for
many possible atmospheres, including that of London, and anything with
a high content of industrial cleaners. Youth will not save you from
Newton's Laws. Or Darwin's.
***********************************************************************
Life Lessons commentary
Per C. Jorgensen <p.c.jorgensen@hfstud.uio.no> wrote:
>"James Nicoll" <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>> Beware the savage croquet ball.
Most embarassing crippling knee injury ever!
>> Trebuchets are for outside use only.
>
>:-)
Unlike most people, I know I had an effect on my
high school.
I also picked the initial set of books for the SF course.
>Fine list. Best post I've read so far today.
Thanks. I have a million of those rules.
***********************************************************************
Eddie the Precision Bomber
Woke up. On the way to the office, which takes me by one of the
litter boxes, noticed olfactory evidence someone had not bothered to
bury their deposit. On closer examination discovered that I had
apparently left the lid off the kitty litter bottle and Eddy had
decided to take a dump in it. The opening is too narrow for him to
reach in and bury.
Pretty good aim for a three legged cat. I can't visualize
how he managed to, ah, position himself correctly, given how the
bottle is designed.
***********************************************************************
Petting Zeus
I know an extremely timid tomcat (Groucho's brother Zeus, whose
normal gait is the wide-eyed belly to the ground creep) who loves being
petted but only while on a specific wall unit shelf (it's next to a
pile of boxes he likes to hide in when life gets to be too much for
him) and preferably *not* with a human hand. He likes to petted with
the plastic strip off the top of a cat-food bag. I discovered this
while trying to play with him.
***********************************************************************
Camping thoughts
Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:
>
>I have been told, and it seems plausible, that a good way to test
>out a prospective partner is, not to live with him, but to go
>camping with him.
That would give an exaggerated impression of the degree to
which I am accident prone. And given that 1: the severity of my
accidents was increasing with each trip and 2: the last one left unable
to walk and with a crushed hand, I'd probably be dead, carried off by a
bear or something.
***********************************************************************
Nameless hears the Call of the Wild
One of my cats decided today would be a good day to nose open a
window latch and go out. Not the street cats, who know how to survive.
Not the People cats, who know how to suck up. No, it was Nameless, who
hates people with a passion and won't come within 10 feet of me if I am
awake.
Borrowed the Vet's humane trap, only to come home to an
impatient looking Nameless sitting at the front door. WIth a male,
unneutered pal, which is likely what she was going out the window after
(Yes, she's neutered. No, this has had no effect on her behavior wrt
tomcats. She really really likes any male cat). He ran away.
***********************************************************************
Declared Dead
Timothy McDaniel <tmcd@panix.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>> For the record I have only ever been the fatality in one
>> car crash and it was my father, not me, who survived the Canary
>> Island plane crash (by switching to a later flight for some reason.
>> Boy, was he pissed).
>I hate to gratify you with the [*] that you well know that that
>comment would provoke.
Short version: the local hospital really screwed up the
paperwork on the accident. All I really had was a spectacular but very
minor scalp wound and some broken ribs. *They* listed me as dead, which
eventually got my orphans benefits cut off for about a year while we
straightened things out.
***********************************************************************
Brains the Size of Walnuts
In article <3EDBCB70.1070906@cox.net>, Kip Williams <kipw@cox.net> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>> No, not the Progressive Conservatives.
>> [James pauses to laugh at other people's pain for a while]
>> So I keep finding [1] water on the floor of the kitchen,
>> where the cat's water dishes are. I *thought* it was because Cleo
>> and Eddie *have to* drink out of the same dish at the same time (and
>> if one goes to a different dish, the other follows). Eddie knows how
>> to grab dishes with his paw and tug them away from Cleo while Cleo
>> is about four times Eddie's size and has four functional legs as
>> well. One damp failure mode of their on-going competition is for
>> Cleo to wedge the water dish between his front legs and for Eddie to
>> yank unexpectedly hard with an airborne dish as a side effect.
>> It turns out that isn't the only cause of floods.
>> I walked in on Eddie swatting the water in his dish. Splash
>> splash splash, clean the paw with a mildly peeved expression, splash
>> splash splash. I have no idea what he thinks he is accomplishing.
>> It isn't drinking the water and he seems to be upset that his paw is
>> getting wet but he's determined to Punish the Water.
James Nicoll
>>
>> 1: In much the same way Bill Cosby's dad found out about Cosby's
>> anti-monster trap.
>He sees Enemy Cat in the water?
Maybe, or just another cat. His reaction to any cat is to
look at it with a deadpan expression and then poke it with one paw.
He looks mildly surprised when he gets pummled back.
In the context of how he acts around other cats, the fact
that at less than a year he is covered in scars makes perfect sense.
***********************************************************************
The Solution to the Eddie Puzzle
Having watched Eddie spread water over the entire floor
for a while now, I have decided that what he is trying to is to
copy Ophelia's drink-by-paw-dipping trick without getting his
paw wet.
***********************************************************************
Late Talker
Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.juric-kokic@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>On 12 Jun 2003 12:07:16 -0400, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>wrote:
>> My nose-in-book habits were a contributing factor to the
>> frequency with which my family would leave me behind without noticing
>> on trips.
>> But I was a quiet kid anyway. Didn't bother speaking until I
>> was four and all that.
>Hadn't had anything to complain before that?
[takes joke seriously]
No, I was in the process of setting a world record for
concussions sustained by a small child in the brief periods between
bouts of serious illness [1] so I had a lot to bitch about. A lot
of my early memories are about being forced to stay awake lest I
slip into a coma and die.
In retrospect I would guess the degree to which my parents
subjected my developmental progress to close scrutiny was out of
concern that I had either managed to give myself brain damage
by ramming my head into things or cooking my brain or that the
accidents were a symptom of deeper problems (Other kids certainly
didn't seem to fall over as often as I did) but it actually
made things worse from my POV because observation triggers my
paranoia.
1: I really was an accident prone kid, in case anyone is reading
something darker into that. On the plus side, I know how
to fall now and what to do when I notice I am on fire.
***********************************************************************
Bag Monster
Cally Soukup <soukup@pobox.com> wrote:
>Marilee J. Layman <mjlayman@erols.com> wrote in article <bcojevcbftmcbbf53o0ug8
lbtstmvpikr3@4ax.com>:
>
>> I used to leave the handled bag with packages for the post office on
>> the dining room table overnight until Spirit stuck her head in a
>> handle one night and couldn't get out and raced around the house
>> terrified several times before I could catch her and get the bag off.
>> I bought one of those stick-on hooks and put in on the inside of the
>> halll closet and leave the bag there now.
>
>My Smudge did that once with a Marshall Fields bag. "The bag-monster!
>It's CHASING me!!"
>
I once bought a bag with handles like that and *right* after
I thought "Better put that where the cats can't get to it, Ophelia
ran up, got her head tangled in the strap and then took me on a high
speed tour of the house.
***********************************************************************
More Groucho
One of Groucho's quirks is that he hates to see other
cats, so if he's having a bad day [1] he finds a blanket or
something to get under. If it's the blanket I am under, he
flops on his side with all claws towards me and alternates
purring with growling. If for some reason I don't make room
for him to crawl under the covers, he does this bizarre kneading
thing than involves a demented look and all four legs, used
hard enough to move me (80 kg) around the bed. It looks less
like an act of friendship than some sort of full body seizure.
Blotchy, otoh, has this habit of GAFIAting by
putting one paw over his eyes as he sleeps.
James Nicoll
1: Like Sunday, when in the 10 m between the bathroom and
the spot on the bed he likes to sleep on he got mugged by
four other cats, one after the other. One hates him, one
is Eddie, who doesn't know that slamming other cats across
the room into the bookshelves isn't fun for them and the
other two I think just saw an opportunity to see where they
were in the pecking order.
One of his unfortunate habits is fits of bravery if
I am close. He leans on my leg and announces to the entire
world that he is the Biggest Cat in the House. Grrrr.
***********************************************************************
TERROR! In a small Canadian Town
So I am in my office, reading news, wating for the coffee to
hit my central nervous system, when I hear a tremendous racket from
upstairs. It's not static, either, beginning in the upstairs hall,
moving into the bedroom and out again, accompanied by the sound of
at least two dozen cat feet, presumably attached to cats, running
back and forth.
I know you can't ignore odd sounds from cats so I go look.
I must admit my assumption was that Eddie had done something to trigger
a mass attack on him, Eddie having the social skills of the Hulk
and the combat abilities of Bruce Banner.
Somehow, Nimrod had opened the cupboard where I keep old
grocery bags, looped a handle over her head and had been trying to
escape the Bag Monster by careening around at high speed. The bag
made Scary Noises, so all the other cats were also trying to escape
the Bag Monster but judging by the mess, Nimrod was moving fast
and unpredictably enough to make that goal problematic.
It was a moment's work to remove the bag from Nimrod's neck.
I imagine it will take somewhat longer for the cats to deflate...
The cupboard is now tied shut. I don't think they can undo
knots.
***********************************************************************
TERROR II: the sequelizing
Hillary just discovered which of the ground floor bookshelves
it is hardest for me to move once she has gotten trapped behind it. In
fact it is the only bookshelf it is possible to become trapped behind.
***********************************************************************
Reading and Walking
Dan Kimmel <dan.kimmel@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Do you read while walking? People are occasionally surprised, but if
>it's not a busy city street -- or stepping in front of traffic -- I
>don't see what the big deal is.
I do if the street is quiet and I have memorized the locations
of the street signs (Purely out of concern for others, of course.
People who have seen me walk into a sign pole are so emphatically
sympathetic I am afraid they will lose bladder contol).
**************************************************************************
The Cat of Little Brain and the Infinite Cycle
There are three places a cat in my home might find food:
the automatic feeder, Groucho's dish (Groucho won't eat from a
communal dish) and the distracter dish, put there to make the other
cats ignore Groucho's dish.
It turns out that if both Groucho's dish and the distractor
are empty, Eddie will check both but as far as I can tell the process
of checking one makes him forget he checked the other. Back and forth,
back and forth...
***********************************************************************
Eddie's Purpose in Life
Is to wear shoes. Or to do -something- in shoes, anyway.
He discovered shoes last week and now several times an evening
runs over to the nearest one, places both paws in and begins
to knead them furiously, with a happy expression. Once when he was
on his way to pounce on Cleo, he hooked his paw through my sandal
to take it with him...
All cats should have a purpose, I guess.
***********************************************************************
Terror! in a blue blanket
Last night Hillary hid under a fold of a blue blanket I
have draped across my living room chair [1] to protect it from
contact with me. When Eddie ambled by enroute to the window, she
pounced. I didn't actually see that but I did see Eddie move
straight up one meter and bear in mind this is a cat with a
crippled hind leg. This would have been hilarious except he was
so terrified he was shaking and he obviously didn't see the smug
female tabby trotting around looking pleased with herself, as he
spent the rest of the evening keeping an eye on the Evil Blue
Blanket from various parts of the living room. Since he has to
step on it to get to the window, this phobia may be a serious
crimp in his lifestyle.
I had a cat who spent her entire life convinced any towel
on the floor was a monster that wanted to eat her, thanks to me
tugging one away from her as she was sniffing it, so I know one
bad experience can colour a cat's ideas for the rest of their
lives...
1: I have another chair in the living room but the overstuffed white
one is the one I sit. I'm not sure why I bought something that was
white.
***********************************************************************
Advice your mother never gave you
'Don't run with scizzors' also includes 'don't walk across
a floor with a knife in your mouth[1] if Eddie the Cat has tipped
his water dish again'. Not that anything bad happened, aside from
a heightened heart rate. I am pretty sure it would have hurt if I went
over forward rather than backwards, because a friend of mine did
do something quite similar and would share a needlessly graphic
description when it seem appropriate.
1: It had peanut butter on it, ok? And I was only goign six feet and
I never had an incident like this before.
***********************************************************************
Molten Lead
Funnily enough the one time I got a chest full of molten lead
[1], it was hot enough to burn my t-shirt, but not hot enough to
seriously burn me. My guess is that that had to do with the droplet
sizes of the lead, that the cotton sucked up enough heat to limit the
burns to merely second degree.
1: Someone, not me, got water on a lead dipper, used for pouring molten
metal into a form, and I was the very next person to use it. Put loud
popping sound here. I hated that job.
***********************************************************************
Wallpaper
Except for the [...] and [...] incidents, I think my circle
of friends has survived knowing me unscathed. Well, except for what
happened to Ian's wallpaper. Hope I live long enough to live that
one down [1].
Jim's detached retina was simply a single expression of the
range of possibilities resulting from studying martial arts. Nothing
to do with me.
[...] = Someone else's anecdote.
1: Bottle of pop with what were in retrospect unusually large bubbles.
I preferred flattish pop at the time, so I dropped a sweet tart in to
give the CO2 a surface to form bubbles on. All of the CO2 flashed out
of suspension or so it seemed to be. Instant bottle rocket, aimed
upwards.
***********************************************************************
Goodbye, Yellow Brick Building
[The building next door is being demolished]
Nine cats. Eight hiding from the noise. Eddie, the
year old cat with the scars and healed injuries of an elderly
cat, wants to go see what the noise is all about.
I've noticed that during loud accidents, he's consistantly
the one who comes tearing in to see what made the sound, as the
others are tearing away to escape it. I think this may explain
a lot of the old injuries...
***********************************************************************
Dept of Unintended Consequences
[Directly related to the above]
My bathroom window (which is at right angles to the shower and
allows an umimpeded view of the contents) no longer faces a brick wall.
It now faces the windows of a church.
***********************************************************************
Comfort in Footgear
Kip Williams <kipw@cox.net> wrote:
>Neil Belsky wrote:
>> On 9/15/03, 5:21:28 AM, Kip Williams <kipw@cox.net> wrote
>>>It's not so much the distance as the fact that it was very hot
>>>outside and very cool inside. After two trips, my socks were going
>>>"squush squush squush" when I walked. Not comfortable; and when I
>>>got inside, all the sweat would chill me.
>> Wear Sandals? ((((Snark)))))
>Oh yeah, rub my feet raw. What an excellent suggestion. Unless I
>wore them with socks, in which case read the first paragraph again.
You make that sound so bad. I have a very comfortable set of
sandles, now that the scar tissue stops my feet from bleeding when I wear
them.
**************************************************************************
James and Wildlife
I'm allergic to cats. I have nine of them. Seven of those
are rescued ferals, six of which did the Big Hopeful Eyes thing on
my doorstep. I've also had skunks try to move in, although I am not
sure if it was one skunk trying a few times or a bunch of hopeful
skunks. I have had people knock on my door late at night with animals
that needed help and once someone handed me a wounded seagull on the
basis that a man with nine cats must know what to do with a wounded
seagull [1] (Yes, there's a step in there I am missing, too).
I caught the latest feral female showing her kittens where
my porch is. OK, maybe that was protection from the elements but I
am guessing not.
1: Take it to the UGuelph Bird Sanctuary where it will hop out of
the car and fly away.
***********************************************************************
Sleep-Running
Hillary recently showed me what sleep-running looks like. She
was in the comfy chair, legs and muzzle twitching in her sleep, when
she took off like a rocket across the room and into the wall. Her
attempt to look dignified afterwards was less successful than the time
she got the waterpot stuck on her head.
***********************************************************************
Learning to Ride a Bike
Dan Goodman <dsgood@visi.com> wrote:
>"There are no brakes."
That describes my first bike ride at age four, except that
there were brakes. It's just that it didn't occur to anyone to explain
what they were to me before sending down a steep hill towards a busy
road. Luckily there was a stout tree at the bottom of the hill.
***********************************************************************
Family Specialities in Disaster
I've learned to savour concussions. I think I'd take the tree
over what happened to a sibling, involving a hand placed in contact
with the top of a rapidly moving bike tire. Come to think of it, all
the 'entangled around an axle accidents' I know of in the family
happened to him. I'm more of a combustion and direct exchange of
kinetic energy sort, myself.
***********************************************************************
Well, KW still has a fire department
I know because three of their trucks just left. Let's just
say that until the Nice Repairman shows up, El Diablo in the basement
stays off. It's burning very dirty.
I have not see smoke like that since my grandad fired up
the refurbished German Patrol boat in a San Francisco marina. He
got more trucks though: the marina burned down once before and
sailboats tend not to smoke normally
***********************************************************************
Hot Wax Burns
I carelessly picked up a candle to check something, unaware
that it had only been put out and still contained liquid wax around the
wick. Luckily, I kept most of it off the floor by blocking it with my
hand.
The odd thing is that my hostess reacted with horror to this
not because I just spilled wax on the floor but because she expected
I would be horribly burned. I've had hot wax on me before and my skin
doesn't even go pink. Are burns a common result from hot wax?
Now, -burning wax- is hot. And hard to extinguish. And the
reason I picked up the candle because I wanted to see if it had that
tiny metal plate connected to the wick (which serves to ignite the wax
if the candle burns low enough) so I could warn her if it was one of
the fwoooshy type candles.
***********************************************************************
Comparitive Health Care
I have either experienced or watched emergency medical service
in the UK [1960s], France [1960s], West Germany [1960s], Brazil [1971],
the USA [1981, I think] and Canada [1966-present] and unfortunately the
worst, bar none, treatment I got was in the UK because our doctor was
total crap in a way that transcends nationality. Actually, my first
Canadian doctor was crap too but as it happened none of my emergencies
involved him, which is lucky because he was the kind of guy who could
diagnose a broken neck as nerves. Not sure how my parents ended up with
the GPs they did but if the GP is incompetent the funding mechanisms
are probably a side-issue.
[BTW, has anyone mentioned the various Canadian plans are
provincial, not Federal (although they get Fed funds and interference)
so they vary from province to province?]
My *second* doctor, Goldberg, was good and so is my current
doctor, Arya. I thought my first dematologist was good but off putting
and my current one is good and personable, plus the treatments I got
were very effective. Yay, UV!
The time I discovered my most recent car related injuries could
cause what seemed to me at the time to be symptoms of a heart attack (I
now just ignore them) was in the US and the important thing there
seemed to be the wallet biopsy they wanted to perform first. Luckily it
wasn't really a heart attack and there was a way to handle the fees. I
make sure to take out extended insurance when I go to US now, though.
In Brazil, if you had money you could buy quite good treatments
(They were sure they'd have to chop my father's foot off but they
managed to save it, although the holes never fully filled in. AT one
point you could run a cord right through from one side to the other)
but the poor saw hospitals as places to die.
The West Germany hospital I spend my hols in was good,
considering the shape I was in when I arrived.
The French one eventually got my father to stop bleeding.
When my father's appendix blew up, Kitchener Hospital did
a good job of not letting him die and when he then went straight
from the hospital bed to the back of a tractor, they did a good job
of stuffing the various bits back in. I am told that that hospital
had an unfortunate culture wrt mothers in the 1980s, though.
***********************************************************************
Once I had a Living Room Door
Kris Hasson-Jones <snippy@pacifier.com> wrote:
>On 10 Dec 2003 13:12:50 -0500, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>published these words:
>
>
>> [This is probably a bad idea but I have a splitting headache
>>from a shirt injury]
>
>[*]
>
>[Waiting patiently for a new James Nicholl anecdote.]
Nicoll.
I put on a turtleneck. Apparently my neck is even fatter than
it was the last time and the neck constricted blood flow enough during
the few seconds I had it on to give me a powerful headache.
But I can top that.
My oldest tomcat Blotchy doesn't like to be locked out of the
living room. He knows how to tug doors open and when they are latched
he will use his paw under the door to lever his head down far enough to
peer sadly under the door, if there is a gap.
Today the living room door wasn't latched and he managed to do
something he had not done before: pull the door towards him to a part
of the foyer floor that has a tiny rise, enough to irretreivably jam
his paw under the door. He tried to threaten the door into letting him
go, and he tried pulling which made it worse. This is when the
screaming began.
Then the other cats tried to help by attacking B.
So now I have a scared 20-odd pound cat with all his claws
trapped by one paw while at least four other cats repeatedly try to
maul him. Note that the attackers are cats who are normally his chums
but I guess his scared yowls panicked them. Some cats get flying
lessons into a lockable room.
First idea: lift the door. No go, not enough give. Plus any
movement makes him scream more...
Second idea: take the door off the hinges. No go, the guy who
hung it for me seems to have put something over the ends to prevent
them from working free.
Third idea: it is a hollow core door. I got a sharp knife and
sawed a big enough gap to free B. This is in fact the only door in the
place where this would have worked. All the others are solid. There was
probably a better solution but I challenge people to think fast under
those circumstances.
He seems to be ok. Nothing broken. I need a new living room
door, or at least a cat door to fit where the new notch is.
***********************************************************************
Once I had a Living Room Door Followup
It occured to me as I was going to bed I never tried taking the
hinges off the wall but when I got up and reconstructed the angles,
there's a row of screws my screwdriver could not reach without moving
the door and hurting the cat.
He spent a couple of hours hiding under the bed and now views
the living room door with great suspicion. Eddie, on the other hand, is
now convinced that since his nose fits into the hole, he should be able
to slip though. I am present with a little cat nose under the dooor
now...
***********************************************************************
Fun with Teachers
I had a teacher who thought that 'centipede' and 'millipede'
were strictly descriptive: one had exactly a hundred legs and the
other exactly one thousand.
When introducing the idea of empericism to a discussion as in
the above, you want to warn the teacher that you are about to dump a
load of bugs on her desk.
***********************************************************************
Crosses, Garlic. Mirrors, etc.
Joel Rosenberg <joelr@ellegon.com> wrote:
>jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>> Jim Toth <jtoth@acm.org> wrote:
>> >In article <btem4l$kgt$1@panix2.panix.com>, James Nicoll wrote:
>> >> Lance Parkin <lance@lanceparkin.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> >>> The thing I didn't understand from the news reports was that
>> >>> wearing 'large crosses' were also to be banned.
>> >>>
>> >>> Is there some size at which a crucifix becomes a religious
>> >>> symbol? Does anyone know the reason why some crosses were
>> >>> banned but not others?
>> >> Above a certain size people can find themselves nailed to
>> >> them. With the smaller ones the worst that can happen is that you
>> >> find someone has crucified your hand or maybe a foot.
>> > This isn't a prelude to a personal tale of woe, is it, James?
>> Nope. I can't think where I would come in contact with a cross.
> Hmmm... how are you around garlic?
People keep asking me that.
Item Reaction
Garlic Yum
Citrus Fruits Yum but allegic.
Running Water V. useful for showers. Note self: remember to
turn both taps on.
Wooden Stakes I am not checking. I did have a snapped off
branch through my hand once and that
smarted.
Icons No noted effect. I got married in a church once
but that seems to have been atypical.
Not a lot of them in my life what with
being the kid of atheists, one an
ex-nun.
Blood Other people's makes me sick even to look at
it.
Entering It makes me accutely uncomfortable to enter
Territory someone else's. I believe there is
at least one person who can attest to
this on this NG.
Poppy seeds Like popcorn, I can't eat them. Get stuck in
hard to reach parts of my mouth.
Mirrors I couldn't say. Don't like them or photos.
I also have no particular affinity to the island of Santorini.
***********************************************************************
A response to the above
Joel Rosenberg <joelr@ellegon.com> wrote:
>jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>
>>
>> Blood Other people's makes me sick even to look at it.
>
>I take it that familiarity has, with your own, bred some comfort?
That and something a little like the hitting people thing: If I
thump a relative, I know from considerable experience that bouncing
their heads off a stone surface won't have any long term effect. Other
people, who knows? If I am bleeding, I know how bad it is and have more
comprehension and control over it than if someone else is bleeding.
***********************************************************************
Another response to the above
Nate Edel <archmage@sfchat.org> wrote:
:
>Never been mistaken for a vampire?
>
Uh, actually I kind of ended up dating someone for years and
years thanks to a vampirism related incident. Come to think of it, it
might be that that sort of thing contributed to another relationship
beginning. Huh.
But, no, not in the Buffy Summers stake through the heart
thing. I did have a little kid look at me with big eyes (back when I
had a long black coat and fedora) and ask his dad if I was "the bad
man." Kids.
***********************************************************************
Concussions
Shelly <shellys555@aol.com> wrote:
>You can, of course, have a concussion and remember the event.
I've been concussed on the following occasions that I recall
off-hand.
Fell down a flight of stairs (age 4)
Fell down twenty six iron fire escape steps (age 4)
Ran a trike into a tree (age 4. 1965 was a bad year for me)
Had a bus-propelled rock impact my head from behind (Age 11)
Had a tree fall on me while I was building a fire (age 17ish)
Ran into a door edge on (35ish)
Battered by a home-invader (35 yrs 3 mo)
And the only ones I don't have a clear memory off are the
bus-rock incident (because the rock got fired at me from behind so the
first I knew of the whole thing was realizing that I was on the ground
for some reason and everyone was looking at me) and there's a second or
two when Adrian hit me in the head that I think I lost track of
(because at first I wasn't sure if he connected).
snip
>And I've read that concussions are cummulative. A number of athletes
>have been forced to quit cuz one more might kill them. So you would
>need to be careful having your characters hit over the head too
>much. :)
Well, crap.
***********************************************************************
An observation
Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org> wrote:
>Ho hum. New washing machine tomorrow ...
You'd be amazed at the amount of water that comes out of
one of those if the hose to the sink fails.
***********************************************************************
So, what are the symptoms of CO poisoning anyway?
Wilson Heydt <whheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>> It's never a good thing when the repair guy turns pale and says
>>"I have to call my boss."
>>
>> My old furnace is not in need of cleaning so much as it
>>needs to be replaced before it kills me. Gas heating, here I come.
>>Unfortunately this means three days with no heat.
>>
>> I wonder if this has anything to do with the headaches I
>>keep getting?
>
>IANAD, but that is certainly one of the classic symptoms.
The problem is, I never don't have at least a small headache,
going back to the 1980s. I work around by keeping a model in my head of
what it is like not to be in a fog and then I emulate how I would
behave if that model were true. Anyway, it's hard to tell headaches
that are caused by something from days where my head just decided to
hurt. Or days when I forget to drink any water and get dehydrated,
thanks to my inability to feel thirst.
>You *are* James Nicholl AICMFP.
>
Nicoll. And since the bill is in excess of 10K [1], I have to
admit I am missing the inherent charm of being James at this point in
time.
James Nicoll
1: Did I mention the asbestos? Or all the special to my building
problems of removing what may be one of the first furnaces ever
installed in KW?
***********************************************************************
Learning to Read
I didn't even learn to speak until I was about four [1] so I
must have learned to read at almost the same time. I prefer print to
spoken language, in any case.
My parents method of teaching reading was to read some of the
story and tell us that we could find out how it ended if we learned to
read. I don't recall when I started reading to myself (1966ish) but I
_can_ recall the first -public- demonstration of me reading because yet
again it highlighted my social deficits in those days. I must have been
in grade one because we were in the Tutor's Residences at UW. My
parents were throwing a party, I was quietly reading a Thor comic and
someone asked me if I was -really- reading it. I huffily said yes,
pointed to the dialogue and read it out loud. It happened to be a
splash page of some guy being tossed out of Asgard and the balloon
read, as I recall,
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaahhh."
Hilarity ensued and another story got added to the Why Young
James Tried Not to Speak in Public file.
James Nicoll
1: My suspicion is that this was the earliest manifestation of my
stubborn refusal to adopt into my life yet another new thing I did
perfectly well without before. I'm guessing there was a lot of pressure
on me to learn, which would only have made me dig in my heels harder.
***********************************************************************
Uh, about broken noses
Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>> How does one tell if one has one? It seems reasonable that if
>> you have to ask, you don't have one but mine feels a little funny.
>> No bleeding, real pain or swelling, though...
>> What happened was I went to the kitchen to get a muffin last
>> night, turned off the light, walked through the unlit corridor to my
>> living room to discover my faith in my memory of the geography of my
>> home was flawed in as much as the cats could by standing on the end
>> of the retractable stairs to the attic cause them to come down into
>> what I will call the extremely startling facial impediment mode.
>> Definite crunch sound when I hit the back of the step, but nothing
>> seems to be seriously damaged. Numb but small headache and a sort of
>> tingly feeling in the nose 10 hours later, though.
>> I dropped my muffin, too. But I had more.
>I am truly impressed at your accident proneness. I too used to have
>the habit of wandering around late at nig