I'll be on a Yellowstone vacation for the next couple of weeks, starting with a quick jaunt to Sioux Falls tonight. Lots of camping in my immediate future, with very little Internet, although there may be Internet cafes along the way I can pop into and log on to see what's up in the digital reality. Here's hoping for good weather and grand vistas. I'll return, hopefully, with a journal of events and PC-wallpaper-quality pictures.
For now. . . tootles.
Last week, as I was making a Diet Pepsi purchase at a local convenience store, another patron remarked to the cashier: “It’s like you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting floodwater.”
Now, I’m a guy who thinks about stupid stuff way more than is probably healthy, and as stupid stuff goes, swinging a dead cat into a puddle ranks pretty high, so I thought about that lousy convenience store patron and his sentence for the better part of a day. Of course, I understand “swinging a dead cat” is just a saying, kind of like “keeping your eyes peeled,” or “she thinks you’re cute.”
Even though I know it’s just a saying, I couldn’t help but think about the phrase “swinging a dead cat” because, honestly, as with most sayings, it occurred to me it could quite possibly trace its origins to an actual event. As a cat owner myself, I naturally found myself wondering if I could bring myself to swing either of my cats should I find them dead, just to see what I couldn’t avoid hitting.
Even as I tried to think about other things, my mind kept wandering back to a mental image of a frontiersman in a horse-drawn buggy, frantically swinging a dead cat over his head, lasso-style, in an attempt to keep a group of angry bears away. Later on, after a harrowing escape, he related to his friends how he “couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a bear!” Thus a morbid, yet hilarious, saying was born!
Then again, maybe the saying has different origins entirely. I suppose it could have arose from a more sweet, yet morose chapter in a little girl’s life. Perhaps an 8-year-old girl, Susie, had a pet cat that really enjoyed, for whatever reason, being pushed on a swing in the backyard. Oh, how Little Susie enjoyed swinging her cat, which she named “Chairman Meow.” Then, one day, little Susie found the Chairman dead from unknown causes, perhaps after falling short during a great leap forward. Crestfallen and sick with grief, she took the carcass to the backyard, loaded it onto the swing set, and started absentmindedly giving her beloved feline one last, mournful swing ride, only to have her mother admonish her from the kitchen window: “Susie! You can’t swing a dead cat! What will the neighbors think?”
But, those are just two possibilities for the origins of the saying. As my ponderer continued ponderating throughout the day, toggling from one cat swinging scenario to another, a horrifying thought came to mind: what if the origins of the saying “you can’t swing a dead cat” were somehow tied to the origins of the saying “there’s more than one way to skin a cat?” How twisted would that be?
I started to imagine some sort of evil veterinarian or scientist, with a long, curled moustache and a monocle, wearing a bloodied lab coat, skinning cat after cat, meticulously documenting (CATaloging?) his various skinning methods in loose-leaf notebooks. Finally, after definitively proving his theory that there’s more than one way to skin a cat (oh, how his colleagues mocked him for such thoughts!), he triumphantly started swinging his last cat cadaver (CAT-aver?), cackling maniacally and accidentally knocking over and breaking several test tubes and beakers, thus leading him to the conclusion you can’t swing a dead cat in a laboratory.
Then again, I suppose all these theories could be wildly inaccurate. Perhaps the term “Dead Cat” was a way of referring to an un-cool or un-hip person back in the 1950s. Bored teens with slicked back hair, hanging out in the parking lot of the local Soda Shoppe, would remark as a middle-aged family man walks by “Man, that cat’s so dead.” Of course, with swing dancing being popular at the time, teens couldn’t possibly imagine a “Dead Cat” swing dancing. So, obviously, you can’t swing a dead cat.
And the moral of this particular post is: be careful what you say in a convenience store, lest I overhear you and think wayyyyyyy too much about for the rest of the day.
Jody says: Why is it always Little Susie? Not Hefty Martha or something else?
Ryan says: Would you feel as bad for a Hefty Martha?
Jody says: yeah...probably worse considering her chances in life are reduced by being portly
Ryan says: Fat girl's cat died? HA! HA! < - Nelson Muntz.
Jody says: I mean...who doesn't feel sorry for a fat kid
Ryan says: Depends on how fat they are.
Ryan says: Because a really fat kid wearing a Navy hat and eating an oversize lollipop = hilarious.
Jody says: How about so fat that is the reason wny she swings the cat is cuz she can't fit in the swing?
Ryan says: So fat she has to swing vicariously through her cat?
Jody says: yep
Ryan says: That would be pretty fat.
Jody says: Now that's funny.
I just received a Spam e-mail with the subject line:
"Get a fast stiffy"
Good advice. Good advice.
Caroline says: Did you read Coleman's LATEST MONKEY TIRADE?
Ryan says: I just glanced and saw he was droning on again about the bridge collapse.
Caroline says: Ah. Well, it confirms what we suspected all along: that Coleman keeps files and puts labels such as "Duh" on them.
Caroline says: On Tuesday, responding to a request from Pawlenty, President Bush declared the bridge collapse a disaster. We can file that under, "Duh."
Ryan says: Coleman's "Duh" file is probably the largest at the Strib, filling two offices.
Caroline says: It's so big, he had to make another file called "Der."
Caroline says: Some of Nick's most commonly referenced files: "Cliches;" "Monkey, I'm Nobody's;" "Bananas;" "Duh;" "Der;" "People I Made Up To Whom I Attribute Quotes"
Ryan says: "e-mails I probably shouldn't have sent;" "how to be childishly defensive;" "Google searching for Dummies, a.k.a. Me."
Caroline says: "Journalism: Common Rules to Avoid;" "Grammar and What it Means to Me;" "Fact-Checking: Myth or Necessity?"
Study Warned of Poor Water Drainage Potential in 2005
ST. PAUL (Rhodes Media Services)--Even as the flood waters have yet to recede from affected areas of Southeastern Minnesota, evidence has come to light showing the rolling hills were deemed "deficient" following a state geological study completed in 2005.
In documents procured by a source within Rhodes Media Services, at least 40 hills and several valleys were listed as "potentially dangerous" and "requiring some sort of attention, although exactly what should be done is unclear."
The damning survey results conclusively show Gov. Tim Pawlenty knew full well of the dangers of heavy rain, shallow topsoil, and the downward pull of a universal force known in the scientific community as "Gravity."
Together, along with hills described in the study as "dangerously slanty" and "prone to slant towards valleys and other low-lying areas," Southeast Minnesota was a flash flood just waiting to happen, yet the Pawlenty administration apparently did nothing to flatten out or otherwise sufficienty grade Southeast Minnesota.
"Quite frankly, I don't know what more has to happen for Minnesotans to wake up to the evils and incompetence of the Pawlenty government," SAID JEFF FECKE, tears streaming down his face, fists clenched, a urine stain spreading across his groin. "We knew almost two years ago those hills were flood bombs waiting to go off, but we couldn't pony up the tax dollars to flatten them down and get one state trooper for every three Minnesota citizens?! I mean, does that sound so hard?"
NOTE: This post was inspired by my ThunderJournaling colleague, LEARNEDFOOT.
You may have heard about some flooding going on around these parts. I reckon. Ya'll. Shucks. Some other "folksy" speak.
Yes, much rain and flooding have indeed inundated the area. Rivers are high. Creeks are higher. Streams are highest. The sidewalks framing my property were practically streams all by themselves. And more rain is in the forecast!
The local news outlets are on the case, of course, with the Post-Bulletin going all out with a series of articles dubbed, in full-blown, attention-grabbing fashion, the "DEADLY DELUGE!" I suppose you could call it the "Double D," or the "Dolly Parton Flood," but I guess "Deadly Deluge" works as well as anything.
I can't blame the P-B for wanting to capitilize on this. I remember the big storms that hit back in the summer of 1998, when I was a reporter for the Winona Daily News. There was an electricity in the newsroom and a general feeling of "duty" to get the story out to the readers, DAMN IT! Plus, it sold papers, which was just kind of a bonus for us beat reporters, but was probably of some significance for those above us making more than $6 an hour. Just a hunch.
Today, of course, I'm just a marketing/journalist stooge working for THE MAN, having long since sloughed off the nonsense ideals of "objectivity" and "speaking truth to power," the latter of which always conjured images of reading an encyclopedia to a plug-in outlet: both ridiculous to behold and basically pointless.
Thus free of such meaningless contraints, I CAN LAUGH AT THIS. I don't care who you are, the idea of a "failed dike," should make you laugh: a lesbian who just can't find the g-spot. Granted, you have to look past the human drama of the flood to get to the "failed dike" humor, but I've always been a heartless, morally bankrupt soul, so it wasn't that difficult.
