A few years ago we were on a west coast road trip and stopped at the Whole Foods in La Jolla, CA for a snack. There were some nice young ladies working a table outside from the Stray Cat Alliance, a California-based non-profit that seeks to raise funds for the sterilization and care of feral cat colonies in California, and the sterilization and care of non-feral strays in shelters until they can be placed with a guardian in a forever-home.
Of course, I was broke at the time.
Of course, I gave them the last $5 I had in my wallet.
Now the SCA is teaming with one of their board members (and friend of Ex-Boyfriend!), Jackson Galaxy. You may remember Jackson from such thrilling things like his awesome show My Cat From Hell on Animal Planet, as well as the many gushing blog posts I write that mention him.
Anyway, Jackson has a new book (you remember books, right?) coming out:
I’m super-excited enough for the book, but by pre-ordering on Amazon via this link, you and I can help the Stray Cat Alliance raise funds for their continued operation. Just pre-order between now and May 10th and forward or scan & email a copy of your receipt to CatDaddyBook@gmail.com, and Tarcher/Penguin publishing will donate $1.00 to help these awesome shelter critters.
Plus, if you’re on Twitter (or just hate reading more than 140 characters at a time), for every picture of your cat you tweet with the hashtag #CatDaddy throughout the month of February, Tarcher will donate an additional $0.05 — seemingly not much, but there’s NO LIMIT on the number of tweets this applies to, so spread the word — make ‘em say “ugh” “MEOW”!
This is the teaser for Volkswagen’s Super Bowl commercial. Outside of the the beaver saving the motorist commercial, the best ad from 2011 was easily the “kid Vader” one Volkswagen put out. This might beat it:
Spielberg wisely left this nugget on the cutting-room floor:
Add your captions in the comments section below! Winner gets the self-satisfaction of knowing that they made the best joke about Nazis presenting a kitten with a dandelion and a grenade EVER!
I know, I know! She was the subject of the LAST Fuzzy Friday post… but she’s so awesome! SEE?! This is seriously all she wants to do — even when I feed her, she looks back and forth from the dish to me, like she’s conflicted about whether she wants food or to continue being petted. Kitty delight!
Also, we’re still a couple months away from our annual SPCA fundraiser, so if you have the cash and the inclination, please make a donation to Tamar over at I Have Cat, one of our fave kitty-blogs, in the form of purchasing one of the magnets at her online shop. 100% of the profits from each sale go to helping her cover the vet & food bills of Max, a handsome senior cat whom she’s fostering until he can be re-homed (his family of FOURTEEN YEARS gave him up due to “allergies”! If it takes 14 years for you to figure out you have an allergy, yer doin’ it wrong.) Anyway, say hi to Max:
Also definitely check out Tamar’s blog, as well as her Facebook page, for fun fuzzy pix and tales of her escapades with her feline roomies:)
Wow, sorry for the radio internet-silence; the holidays can do that to a guy. And by “that” I mean “crawl into a cave for weeks at a time with nothing to keep him company but his wife, cats, and copious amounts of fattening food and booze”.
Speaking of cats, remember this cutie from our last chat? Well, she just had her surgery on Monday morning and is recuperating nicely in the pillow & blanket nest I made for her in the bathroom. I felt bad sending her under the knife without a name, so she’s officially Penelope, at least as far as the state of Maryland is concerned. More pix will be forthcoming.
Anyway, let me show you what I’ve been working on. First up is a new design documenting the on-going exploits of Fuzz Aldrin, first kitty in space!
Cyber-high-five to Yuki Shichi, a fan who helped critique an early version of this design months ago and really got me pointed in the right direction. She rocks!
Another cyber-high-five to Victoria Vu, who loved the skull & cross-carrots on the Pirate Bunny jolly roger so much that she asked that it be made into its own shirt. Done and done!
Well, that’s it for now. I should have some new stuff up in the next couple weeks. Tomorrow we resume our normal diet of booze, weirdness, Japanese robots, and hilarity!
We met this tiny pile of cute last week on the street near our optometrist and have been fostering her while we wait for her spaying appointment and try to find her a new home. She looks a lot like our cat Oliver, so we’ve thought about naming her Olivia, but I’m trying to hold off on actually calling her that to prevent her from getting confused once she leaves for her forever-home. She’s awesome, and I’ll be posting more pix and video of her in the coming weeks!
Typically I try to not let my home life bleed into these posts too much — I am boring, Japanese robots are not. But the other night after I was done working, I laid down on the bed and Oliver just made a bee-line for my arm, and well…this happened:
Bliss complete.
Have a great weekend, guys! And for those of you mid-Atlantic folks still trying to shore up your holiday shopping, you could do a lot worse than stopping by my booth at the Punk Rock Flea Market in Philly on Sunday! I’ll have free stuff like comics, candy & stickers waiting for you, plus event-only deals on shirts, belts, bags & more! Not too shabby for a meager $3 entry donation, eh?
THE PUNK ROCK FLEA MARKET-DOME
461 N. 9th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19123
Also, in case you missed it: my very own Whale Trip tee was featured quite prominently all over this week’s episode of ABC’s Modern Family! Alex Dunphy knows what’s up; do you?
This is Jukusui-Kun, a new robotic pillow combo in the form of two polar bears designed in Japan as a sleep aid to combat snoring. Yes, seriously.
How is this miracle of science achieved? Well, the smaller bear-pillow contains a small sensor which attaches to the afflicted sleeper’s hand. This sensor monitors oxygen levels in the blood, which a microphone embedded in the larger bear-pillow records noise levels.
Both pillows feed this data wirelessly into a THIRD unit, a terminal that compiles and analyzes the data. When blood oxygen levels dip and noise levels increase at the same time, the “mama” bear is triggered by the terminal and gently brushes its paw across the sleeper’s face in order to induce them to roll over without waking them up (sleeping on one’s side instead of the back is believed to alleviate the snoring).
Interested? Well, too bad — the researchers who designed this not-at-all ostentatious device that nobody asked for will not be producing it commercially.
So Japan spent an obscene amount of money to design a robotic anti-snoring pillow device and fabricated it in the form of an adult and an infant polar bear (complete with baby bottle) that essentially does what my wife’s elbow does for free after I pass out drunk. With no plans to recoup the R&D budget by mass-producing it.
No, don’t get up, Japan — we’ll lick this climate change/famine/poverty/overpopulation/war/pollution thing in a jiff.