Late night catastrophe

by RAF KATIGBAK

Hmmmm, let’s see what’s in the news today, shall we? Oh look! Zimbabweans have warmly welcomed a deal setting a framework for talks on the country’s political crisis! Sweet! Alls I can say is it’s about freakin’ time…

Can I confess something? Most news makes me feel stupid. Already I consider myself out of the loop when it comes to things like politics, geography, science and pretty much everything that required a textbook in school, but now, thanks to the Internet’s plethora of news outlets, blogs, alternative information agencies, etc, my ignorance of the goings-on in the world is more glaring than ever.

In an effort to stay on top of shit, I got one of those Web browser thingies that shows me when there are new stories appearing on sites like BBC News. Of course this only made me feel even stupiderer. Every five minutes, there’s a reminder of yet another foreign dispute I know dick squat about. And while yes, I believe this should stimulate me to learn more about all these conflicts going on in all these weird foreign-sounding countries all over the world, the sheer amount of information, as Will Ferrell put it, bottles the mind. Sure you could look up Zimbabwe, but where does it stop?

Because I don’t want to become one of those people whose idea of breaking news is PerezHilton.com (btw, Nicole Kidman: lipo or no?), I refuse to give up completely on the news. And every now and then, an item comes in that I can actually relate to, that keeps me holding on.

A woman in downtown Montreal got the fright of her life Sunday night when she discovered an almost metre-long python under her bed.-www.cbc.ca

Did y’all hear about this?! Okay, forget about all the lame, piggish jokes about waking up and “feeling a python.” How fucked up must this have been for that girl? Already I’m frightened of sleeping in an empty apartment, but to get up in the middle of the night and find a metre-long symbolic incarnation of pure evil writhing under my tenderly slumbering body would definitely give me a one way ticket to Shit-in-my-pyjamas-ville.

This isn’t a complete speculation, of course. I speak from experience, sort of. About five years ago, my girlfriend and I were awoken by a strange meowing sound and the feeling of pawing about our legs. I knew right away it was Billy, a black longhair cat who had just moved in next door with the neighbouring occult shop owners. I assumed that he had once again traversed the treacherous window sill to look for love, as he had a few times since he moved in, but I was wrong.

I looked up bleary-eyed to see his puffy black face staring at me inquisitively. “Hey buddy! What’s up? You come to sleep with us?” He turned around presenting his rear. “Aww you want some lovin’ little buddy?” I whispered as I reached over to pet him. He slowly arched his back, raised his tail like a flag, and began to spray me, my still-sleeping girlfriend, and the entire headboard of my bed with odious cat juice.

“Oh God!” I screamed as I placed my hands in front of my face like I was fending off the errant shower of some furry malfunctioning faucet, “What the fuck!” I knew then that screaming was not only futile, but a mistake; I had gotten some of the feline essence in my mouth. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the chemical composition of cat spray, but it’s basically urine mixed with a viscous fatty material that most describe as “musky” and that I would further describe as “fucking disgusting.”

What happened after disturbed me even more than being drenched in cat juice in mid-slumber: believe it or not, my girlfriend not only stayed completely asleep during the entire debacle, but she also refused to do anything about it after! After the cat scampered away, I tried to shake my girl awake to shower off and change the sheets, but she just swatted me away mumbling, “Just go back to bed babe, we’ll deal with it in the morning.”

“Are you fucking kidding?” I replied, “We’re drenched in feline fluid and you wanna go back to sleep?!”

“C’mon, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“No big deal?! I got a mouthful of cat spray. It tasted like somebody shat on hobo puke. That cat just marked my face as his territory! I’m fucking brushing the shit out of my teeth right frickin’ now!”

I finally snapped her out of her lucid state, changed the sheets and went back to bed. But not before closing and locking the window.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca