literature

Big Brother veille sur vous

~ iamthesunking ~ 22 Comments

Is there a link between Facebook and WordPress? I know that they’re not owned by the same people, but is there some sort of creepy algorithmic link, in the same way that every keystroke that we type is monitored somewhere?

I ask this because, since my last post, my Facebook feed has been full of unsavoury animal ads, of which the most alarming was: “Are your dog’s anal glands full?”

Jésus, Marie et Joseph, et le petit âne.

I am shuddering, sweating and bleeding from the eyeballs as these words fall from my once-clean hand, and I pray that it will be the only time I ever have to write this. After today, let us never speak of this again.

Worse yet, the offending ad was a VIDEO. Naturellement, I didn’t watch it all the way through, but what I did see – and what my brain visualised – was enough. Could it be that the mention of animal arses on WordPress somehow triggered Facebook to bombard me with all this?

This is not the first time that we have suspected Them of spying on us. Cat Daddy once had a brief discussion with a friend about a magic wallet into which you could stuff multiple credit cards, without the wallet getting fat and bulky. The next morning, his Facebook feed was full of ads for said wallet.

On another occasion, my students were telling me about some crypto-currency that I’d never heard of, called Moondoggy or some such thing. When I Googled it whilst chatting to them, it was top of my search menu.

Students: “WHAT? It should be, like, the seventh or eighth thing, not the first! They’re listening to us!”

The most bizarre of them all was when Cat Daddy and I were watching Fargo, and we discussed one of the actors having also been in The Usual Suspects. Forty minutes in, we paused the film to get some snacks, then resumed … to find that we no longer recognised the characters or understood the plot. We wondered if Louis Catorze had spiked our popcorn with catnip … until we discovered that we were no longer watching Fargo. We were watching The Usual Suspects. And we weren’t even watching it from the start but from about – yes, you’ve guessed it – forty minutes in.

No, we did not switch films when we paused (and, if we had, we would have started it from the beginning, like normal people). No, we do not have a smart remote control prompted by voice commands, nor do we have Alexa.

Even more peculiar was that I’d made a mistake, and in fact the actor whom we were discussing was NOT in The Usual Suspects. Which disproves the theory that either we or They had somehow summoned a menu of All Films Starring Steve Buscemi, and selected one to start playing randomly from the middle.

Not even my tech-savvy students could explain this one. However, one of them, who has a chat noir and therefore knows exactly what they’re like, said, “Miss, erm … was your cat around at the time?”

“At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful.”

I don’t recall seeing Catorze but, of course, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. I would definitely remember, however, if he’d sat on the remote and switched films with his arse.

OH GOD, WE ARE BACK TO ANIMAL ARSES AGAIN.

On that note, here is Freya, whose fluffy hindquarters started off this whole thing:

“You mock my arse? You can kiss my arse!”

It wouldn’t surprise me if Freya were the mastermind behind all this.

Meanwhile, I am mystified by how They can be clever enough to know that I mentioned animal arses, but not clever enough to pick up on the tone and to understand that I was talking about my AVERSION to them. If it were all some marketing ploy to sell me dog anal gland cream/pills/whatever, They have failed.

However, one thing in which They HAVE succeeded is getting me to buy is more vodka – lots of it – to numb the trauma.

Louis le Comte

~ iamthesunking ~ 24 Comments

You know how annoying it is when you’re messaging someone and Autocorrect changes it to “ducking”? Come on. Anyone who claims not to know this is a liar (or doesn’t have a phone).

Cat Daddy has discovered a new dimension to this problem.

Louis Catorze recently decided to curl up on a mattress cover which had just been washed and which was drying outside. Cat Daddy photographed him and sent me the picture, declaring that Catorze was a “total count”.

Just make yourself comfortable.

So … which count is he?

Here are some options, as suggested by friends:

1. Count von Count from Sesame Street. He’s goth, toothy and cute, but is he a bit TOO cute to be a role model for Catorze?

Picture, very appropriately, from muppet.fandom.com.

2. Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons (if, indeed, a viscount can still count as a count?). Like Catorze, he’s French. However, he seduces women for fun. And ladies aren’t really Catorze’s thing, if you get what I mean.

Picture from vulture.com.

3. Edmond Dantès, aka The Count of Monte Cristo. He’s French, vengeful and a skilled escape artist, and he suddenly finds himself with untold riches, all of which make him startlingly similar to Catorze. This could be the one.

Picture from thetimes.co.uk.

4. Count Dracula, the papa of them all. An evil, shapeshifting bloodsucker who sleeps all day and goes on psychotic rampages at night. Bingo. I think we have our answer.

Picture from lwiles.com.

Maybe he should never have been Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil. Maybe he should always have been Count Dracula. But, as we Brits are aware, once the monarchy are in place, deposing them isn’t as easy as all that.

Which member of the aristocracy most resembles your cat? And are there any counts that we have neglected to, erm, count? Please let us know.

Comme un esclave dans un état totalitaire

~ iamthesunking ~ 32 Comments

Whilst the rest of us have had to deal with all manner of shortages on the supermarket shelves, the squirrels are just fine and dandy, merci for asking. It’s the middle of winter and food is supposed to be scarce, yet they are, inexplicably, looking plump and meaty.

This is not just a generic squirrel thing across the whole population; the ones in TW8 are noticeably fatter than their rest-of-London counterparts, and we know this because other Londoners comment when they visit us. And, despite the fact that they clearly don’t need the extra food, they have renewed their efforts to steal the food that Cat Daddy has been leaving out for the birds.

All this makes Cat Daddy more angry with the squirrels than I ever thought possible. He is also angry with Louis Catorze for “not doing his job” in preventing this thievery.

Now, for a while I thought perhaps Catorze was reluctant to take on the squirrels because they were almost the same size as him. However, we know that he is perfectly happy to confront three foxes at a time, so this can’t possibly be the reason. I have also wondered whether, somehow, due to his advancing years and because the squirrels are the same colour as the fence and the winter shrubbery, he just isn’t able to see them. But then, if he is able to spot a bug who is minding its own business across a dark room, he is quite capable of seeing a chubby chonkster of a squirrel doing this:

Cheeky fat sod.

Conclusion: Catorze is fully aware of what’s going on and would do something if he wanted to, but he just doesn’t want to. And why would he, since he has Cat Daddy to run outside on his behalf, shouting and waving a stick at the offenders?

I was about to semi-quote Sylvia Plath and say that Catorze was steering Le Château like his own private car, but that would be far too much like hard work. He’s happily relaxing on the passenger side and letting his chauffeurs – us – get on with the steering.

Yes, that is a copy of The Bell Jar just in shot.