Month: October 2006

Scary musings for Halloween

All Hallows Eve is again upon us as it seems to do just about once every year. Of course, the theme this year is on a happy and safe Halloween for black kitties, but that doesn't mean not getting more into the spirit of things.

Here I am attempting to provide a little Halloween spirit at the office, yet remain fully productive and engaged:

The astute observer may recognize Lotus Notes on the screen. Talk about scary…

Want to hear something else scary? Check the latest report on climate change (aka global warming) as a human and economic crisis. Nothing new for anyone using their eyes, ears, and a fraction of their brain. But once again we see our leaders downplaying the dangers, calling for more science and questioning the costs of working to reverse the problem. Funny how they have all the science they need to ban stem cell research or deny the theory of evolution?

Forget the war. The biggest crimes against humanity by Bush, Cheney and their cronies are the failure to act against global climate change and the crisis already upon us, and their general dimissal of scientific reality and its benefits for all human-kind in order to support their narrow interests. Big oil, big outdated industries, big religion.

Close to home, this is yet another reason to oppose Richard Pombo (did we mention that he is California's worst representative?). Recall that he is the person who proudly tramples any attempt to preserve land and air and natural treasures and acts like polluting and plundering are divine rights of his friends. What amazes me is that the people of his district need other incentives like the war, corruption and general anti-Republican sentiment to vote against him. Isn't his shameful record on the environment enough?

More Halloween-and-politics convergence. With the election only a week away, here?s how things currently look (actually, this will always be current no matter when you look at it, at least through November 7):

Click for electoral-vote dot com

Click for electoral-vote dot com

This is where we start have to worry about the ability of Republicans to ?raise a zombie army? of voters, as I heard one commentator describe their get-out-the-vote effort in 2004. Actually, the phrase Republican Zombie seems to be quite common ? you can check that yourself with a quick Google search. Then again, any good republican zombie will tell you that Google is liberally biased. If that were the case, I would expect to see more amusing images on this topic. The best I came up with was this old movie poster:

If I had more time this week, I could easily put something together in Poser/DAZ-Studio, but I already have an incomplete Halloween image in the queue as November 1 rapidly approaches, so maybe an update later on?






Halloween Weekend Cat Blogging: Black Cat Appreciation

This special Halloween edition of Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Linda and Aggie over at kayaksoup. It is a lovely warm sunny October afternoon here on the left coast, and Luna has some lovely harvest-themed pictures to share:

Here Luna obliges us with the traditional Halloween pose:

Sadly, Halloween can be a difficult time for cats in the United States, especially black kitties. The image of the black cat as “bad luck” or witches' familiars permeate folklore as well as the pop culture and commerce surrounding Halloween. Ritual sacrifice and harm to black cats is largely documented to be an urban legend, but the fiction can influence kids. Indeed, animal killing and abuse does rise around halloween mostly because of “poorly-behaved kids” influenced by the folk and popular images:

Far too often, the animals are tortured and sacrificed during pseudo satanic-based rituals.

“But not by the real religious satanic groups,” [Lillian Dubois-Tercero, president and executive director of Arizona Pet Line] stressed. “They don't sacrifice cats and dogs. It's the idiot juveniles (who are) responsible who don't know what they're doing.”

This is one reason why many shelters control (or ban) adoptions of black cats in the weeks leading up to and immediately after Halloween. However, shelters are trying to minimize another problem faced by black cats around Halloween – people “adopting” them as living decorations, trying to go one better than the ubiquitous paper cutouts. Even if not specifically “hurt,” many of these cats are apparently returned to the shelters after Halloween. Such “shelter whiplash” can be traumatic, and if I were a cat I would lose some of my trust in humans.

About.com has an excellent article on The Perils of Halloween for Black Cats. We join the author in dubbing October as Black Cat Appreciation Month. Of course, here at CatSynth every day is Black Cat Appreciation Day.

So be kind to kitties you meet these week, and keep your own feline companions indoors. Might want to keep an eye on some of those kids, too…

UPDATE (Oct 29): AP has an article today entitled “Black cat adoptions banned on Halloween”, which discusses both the practice as well as potential downsides for already stigmatized black cats:

Janet, a black cat up for adoption, pauses on a wall ledge at the Kootenai Humane Society, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006, in Hayden, Idaho. The Kootenai Humane Society is prohibiting all black cat adoptions from mid-October to Nov. 2, fearing the ebony animals could be mistreated as a Halloween prank, or worse, be used in a satanic sacrifice. (AP Photo/ Kirk Mastin)

Doesn't Janet look a lot like Luna? Such a sweet face…








Worthless Kitty Backfill: "Not a catsynth pic" and other diversions

There are real catsynth photos, and then there is this submission we received this week:

It came from a rather odd site with copies of the same picture over and over again, with long biblical quotes. The trackbacks were rather suspicious, indeed the whole thing seems kinda sketchy. Thus I am not providing a link to the original source to order to protect you, my loyal readers (hey if you're reading this post you must be pretty loyal).

Speaking of biblical spam, this seems like as good a time as any to note (as so many have already) the resemblance between the new Pope Benedict XVI and the Emperor from Star Wars:

You can google “pope star wars emperor” for plenty of earlier and more authentic references. While the metaphor for the imperial past of the Church is obvious, I wonder what it says about the future? Perhaps the ultimate fate of the Church is to be overrun by dancing ewoks…

We'll have to wait about the ewoks, but in the meantime, the cats are invading the Holy See. It turns out that the new pope is quite the ailurophile. If he loves cats, he can't be all bad, though I still don't like this “the dictatorial relativist Left is apoplectic” thing.

Yub dub, erub yub








3000 visits…

Well, like the United States, we hit our milestone of a number beginning with three followed by lots of zeroes…

After 3000 visitors, though, you think a few of them might go and buy the CD or download tracks from iTunes or eMusc. But it seems very few visitors even bother to listen to the free samples.

I take pride in keeping this site and my personal/professional site free of ads save for clean and tasteful promotion of my own work. I would like to keep it that way…

…so, time for a Guilt Trip?. If you enjoy this site, would it really hurt to check out the music, maybe buy a 99-cent track or two? If you're an emusic subscriber, add us to your download queue. And if you like anything you hear (heck, even if you don't), please consider writing a short review at one of these sites. Consider this review from Gloria in Toronto at CD Baby:

Amar has done an amazing job in putting together a very creative ensemble of various electronic instruments. Each song in the CD tells a story. Just close your eyes and you can visualize and hear the stories of love, passion, suspense, and anger. It's almost as if I'm watching a movie. The songs made me feel, and every time I listen to the CD, I get more out of it than before. Amar brings forth what I consider to be an exciting new genre of music.

OK, I better wrap this up before it turns into an NPR pledge drive…





Weekend Cat Blogging #72: The furry encounter

Jelly and Kamikazee over at I got Two Shoes host this weekend's roundup. Uncle Kamikazee is up to his old antics again.

We had our own little drama here earlier. Luna was looking out one of her favorite windows here in the studio when one of our neighbors showed up:

This tuxedo kitty has been in the neighborhood a lot longer than I have, and, well, he thinks he owns the place. That being said, Luna has her own claims to the view out the window, and attempts to let him know who's the queen of this domain. She has a unique sound she uses for encounters with other felines, as can be heard in this Catster video:



This is as good a time as any to let folks know that Luna has her own profile and blog at Catster, where you can read about this episode from her perspective and watch Furry Encounter Part 2.








Catsynth pics: Silicon Breakdown

Silicon Breakdown features the cat April programming a micromoog:

Small world; Silicon Breakdown performed at Woodstockhausen 2002, same year as my first appearance at the “tiny festival of esoteric music.” Check out the track Mutate from WSH 2002, which is part of their 2003 CD Green, available as freely downloadable mp3s.








Beckett enters California politics

Few political articles reference Samuel Beckett's masterpiece Waiting for Godot, but that's exactly what we find at SayNoToPombo as they cover the recent wave of newspaper endorsements against Richard Pombo.

We at CatSynth dubbed Mr. Pombo California's Worst Representative in an earlier post.

It is nice to see literary references that add a bit of sophistication to what is otherwise an ugly campaign season.






Worthless Kitty Redux: Pyramid

Pyramid
September 19, 2004

Red
It was a red triangle
That formed on the side of the black pyramid
It was the red light curving from the source
Bent around the invisible smoke

It is hard enough to keep things straight
Without adding an extra dimension
But I string them all together
In hopes of something beautiful, something fantastic
For which I will find myself forever grateful
I thank my geometric farm
And turn all of my eyes elsewhere

It is maybe five in the morning,
I look over towards the window of our New York apartment
The dawn of early summer meeting the waning glow of city lights
And see her rising from the bed
In her T-shirt and boxers
Her indefinite-length brown hair irrelevant against her own shadow
This is a safe place
It is us against them
And I think we might still stand a chance

© 2004 Amar Chaudhary

Weekend Cat Blogging #67

Luna blends in perfectly with her dad's decor while getting warm on a table above our main heater. The temperature this morning was 49F (10C)! That is a travesty in September, usually the hottest month of the year along the California coast. It's not helping my recovery from whatever ailment has befallen me this week, either.

Anyhow, being stuck home gives me plenty of time to host Weekend Cat Blogging #67, taking over from last week's host, chefsarahjane. Assuming I'm feeling better over the weekend and things warm up a bit, I'll be spending as much time as I can outside – but that shouldn't stop me from posting updates.

So send us your feline articles and photos; either leave a comment on this post, or send me a message. Bonus points if you can fit into the cats-with-music-and-art theme of this forum.







Weekend Kitty Blogging #71: Silliness and The Mighty Hunter

This weekend's round-up is being hosted at Rosa's Yummy Yums, featuring Fridolin and Maruschka taking turns with a knit bonnet and looking quite embarrassed. Check out this week's round-up of silly and crazy, but nonetheless extremely cute felines.

Luna is quite the sophisticated cat, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have her silly moments, such as her fun with boxes last week. She also loves to play with her toy mousies, and goes at them with reckless abandon:

One of her favorite games is to push them under the couch farther than she can reach, which often leads to amusing scenes like this:

Indeed, Luna can be quite silly and obsessive when she plays the mighty hunter. I snapped this pic while she was engrossed for 15 to 20 minutes with a bug that fell behind the dresser after she succeeding in swatting it:

Sweetie, just let it go…