All I Do is Eat and Sleep and Sing

This brings us to the first of the film’s many fatal flaws. I love cats on an almost unhealthy level. At one point I had five cats living in my apartment. When I had to give away my cats because my wife is violently allergic, I got a cat tattoo so that I could always be around at least a symbolic representation of a cat, if not the real thing. As someone who loves cats deeply and unconditionally, I can tell you that the main cat in A Talking Cat!?! is fucking dreadful. The worst. It would need to improve dramatically in every facet just to rise to the level of mediocrity. Watching the film, I was reminded of this great article from our sister publication The Onion. How awful is the title cat? It’s so non-photogenic and dull that the DVD box features a different, much cuter, and much younger cat.

I made a case?! *checks* Haha, thank you. Book Two is called Here’s Looking At You and once again features someone with something in her past she has to resolve to move forward – this time it’s being very badly bullied. It’s set in London this time, though not a ritzy part – grimy London and hipster London. The theme of the book is about appearances and being judged on them and the importance we place on image, and London felt right for that. It surely has the greatest concentration of show-offs in Britain. That’s just fact.

It’s natural to seek voices for our pain, and images to match. But pain isn’t a condition to which you should aspire. Pain isn’t glamorous, or deep, or special, or interesting. Pain is usually a sign that something is wrong, and if it’s fixable, you need to fix it. And any book that tells you otherwise is suspect. Such stories of female martyrs lead us astray—they’re a sly and sneaky way to prevent women from ever really standing up for themselves. Agnes, Dymphna, Barbara, Cecilia: they’re all defiant and principled. But to be defiant and principled, in this book, is to let people treat you terribly, and do nothing to stop it. Here suffering is something God actively wants for us; it’s only by submitting virtuously and constantly to it that we can prove we’re truly good. Too good for this world, in fact, which means we must self-destruct.

There are a lot of things I really dislike about this song. The first is, I really don’t like the overwhelming, unabashed optimism within it. It seems to be not tinged at all with anything remotely humble or even slightly human. It doesn’t seem human to me to be that way. The whole song is kind of plastic in a lot of ways. The positivity doesn’t sit well with me. I like optimistic songs, but there’s got to be some kind of level there. The quite frankly childish way Mika presents his thoughts is off.

Ladies, I know how much you love spin class, and I am definitely not telling you to stop going. I’m just saying be careful. It’s a dangerous world out there, you never know when some anonymous dork in a long sleeve shirt is going to rip that shirt off and reveal himself to be Bradley Cooper and then you’re in the hospital because you “literally” fell off your bike.

When I went back to work, on December 27th, I wasn’t sure what to expect. To this day, that shift is still the worst eight hours I have ever had. That day I realised how selfish and horrible other people can be. We all got to work and there was a grim determination in the air. It was like none of us wanted to be there, but we would get through it together. Then trading started, and all I remember is being shouted at by angry people who couldn’t use their gift cards. If you know anything about companies who go into administration you will know that gift cards immediately become invalid. It is not the choice of the staff. Let me say that again. IT IS NOT THE CHOICE OF THE STAFF YOU ARE SHOUTING AT. If you are the kind of person who would get angry about that, then think about this. You have just lost your £10 gift card. The person you are screaming at has just lost their livelihood. You may not think there are many people who would be that thoughtless, I certainly didn’t. But for the following six weeks, its all I can remember. We had people who were very understanding, kind, sorry for us. But my overriding memory, sadly, is not of our regulars who came to offer best wishes, but the many people who were angry at us for their loss. I understand the frustration, but I was too busy worrying about how I would pay my rent or find a job in January to be too sympathetic.

Overt Christianity aside, carol singing by its nature seems to be socialist, whether reflected in lyrics (Good King Wenceslas) or musical structure (Ding Dong Merrily on High for example, democratises the melisma, making singers of all levels feel like an opera diva/Whitney Houston). Like many, getting caught up in the flow of everyday working life and the relative solitude of the internet over the years meant I hadn’t realised how much I miss the days of singing in a choir, particularly carol singing; working together with my colleagues and friends to create something beautiful, or at the very least, tolerable.

Cat Fact Number Four: When I talked to my cat, or sang to her, or danced around with her in the kitchen…it was because that’s how I show things that I care about them. In exchange, Denver would follow me round the house, keep me company whenever I went out into the garden and occasionally just put her paw on my foot like a tiny stamp of approval. That’s how she showed things that she trusted them. And so, although we would never have a conversation, or sing a duet or cook a meal together, it was a relationship. Both of us got happiness and comfort from knowing each other, and that’s pretty deep in the heart of the point of any of this, right?