Pertinatious

You can't win every battle. There are times when the best option is to surrender. That's one of the hardest but most valuable lessons to learn.

Too bad my head's too hard to learn that hard lesson. Pretend to retreat, regroup, then catch 'em with an ambush. I'll surrender when I'm dead.

Cat Crap Fever

The temperatures have been pretty cold at night. It seemed the right thing to do to let the barn cat stay in the house. He was set up in a little spot where he could access his food and a litter box, but not have full run of the house. He came in at night and was put out when I left for work.

He was good for several nights. Then, one morning, something went wrong. Bad wrong. Nasty, runny, all over my nice kitchen rug wrong. It seemed the cat decided his poop was too good for the litter box. I quickly cleaned up the mess outside the box, not investigating what might have inspired him to abandon his indoor outhouse and try to paint my rugs brown, then left for work.

That evening, Amy came over. I hadn't yet been home and therefore still hadn't completed the poop box investigation. On the way to the house, I told her about my stinky morning. She volunteered to investigate the litter box while I found a movie to watch on Netflix.

As I scrolled through movie titles, I heard her excited voice rising from another room. Then, there was a sudden commotion, the sound of the door opening, and finally, more excited talk trailing off into the garage.

Following the noise, I found her outside, frantically slinging something from the litter box. In the dark, there looked to be a couple of small, dark-haired creatures lying on the lawn. They were motionless.

After retrieving a flashlight, we took a closer look. Covered in dried fecal matter, whatever it once had been, it was no more. It looked like the cat hat swallowed half a mink, or some long-haired critter, and crapped out just the hair.

The next morning, I took these pictures:

The cat is back to using his litter box. There have been no more creatures. I still have no idea how he swallowed whatever the %^&* that was, much less how he pooped it out.

Connecting Stars

When they created their pareidolia-fueled constellations, the ancients saw creatures and men in the void of the night sky. We see things because we want to make sense of what we don't understand. Where there is nothing, we see something. We see something because it makes more sense than the nothing. Stars trillions of miles apart come together simply because we think it.

We have no right to think it. Those distant stars have done nothing to make us steal them for our own fantasies. We are unable to fight the urge to see those things, though. The synapses fire and make the face appear, even though we know it can't be so.

I Spy with My Naked Eye

Just watched the ISS go over. Watching the space station pass a planet was always a cool superimposition in the view finder of my telescope. It flew by Mars so effortlessly, tonight.

In a little while, the heavier coat will go on, and a little of the lunar eclipse will be glimpsed before bed time. That's a nice naked-eye superimposition. Naked-eye is fun, but it would be nice for something to motivate me to break out the telescope.

Odd Time Signatures

There are some frustrations even music can't soothe. At least tomorrow is Friday. Here's hoping for starry skies.

Disappearing Act

There's this magical motivation that hits while driving home from work. It brings all these thoughts of interesting things to do and tasks to accomplish. Then, when home is reached, clothes changed and a comfortable position found on the couch, it vanishes.

Ouch

Apparently, you can break the Golden Rule without meaning to intentionally hurt anyone. It isn't really obvious how much power you may have over someone else's life and emotions until you experience it, yourself. It's eye-opening.

That's the kind of thing that can be a crisis of conscience. How can you avoid doing something like that if you don't know it's happening? If it's beyond your ability to perceive it, is it supernatural?

Not really being into metaphysics, it would be interesting to know if you can prove something to be supernatural with only the tools our natural world can provide. Can the scientific method prove something that, by its definition, is out of the scope of science? If so, doesn't that bring it into the realm of the natural, and therefore make it no longer supernatural?