the
Animals
The hedgehog or urchin...not usually celebrated in poetry, but isn't this one cute enough to deserve to be?
And a Tortie Face ornament, endorsed by Mudpie:
That didn't paste right. The one I wanted to highlight was the recognizable Tortie face at the top right. Visit Mudpie to see closer photos and links to buy the things, if you want them.
Three-colored cats' faces are as individual as fingerprints so, if you want a souvenir of your Tortie or your friend's, please feel free to upload that particular photo into Zazzle where I have the Tortie Face Collection. It's a small collection because I imagine yourall's interest in generic Tortie faces is small. The idea is to paste in images of the cat or cats you want to commemorate. Zazzle still pays me for the idea if you use my link to upload a photo of your cat.
Comedy
Long stand-up performance. Trigger warnings: jokes about body parts, medical conditions, blood, childbirth, kidney stones, rednecks, hunters, hunting, p.c. bigots, the ghost of Hank Williams, misogynists claiming to be transgender, and the thorny question of whether non-indigenous lifelong residents of Hawaii can ever be considered Hawaiians with tangential reference to the sub-issue of whether they greet visitors with leis. Apparently the comic and his family went to Hawaii and never got lei'd. Sad. I laughed.
Philosophical Rant for the Shopping Season
There's nothing wrong with a little occasional outburst of "giving without expecting even thanks" if it's genuine--you want to clear out the shelf before the groceries reach their sell-by dates, so you pay somebody to cook the overstocked food and serve it as a free "community" dinner, e.g. But in real life, "giving without expecting anything in return" usually has much nastier, stickier, stinkier strings attached than a good honest exchange ("Your aunt sent you a box of presents, so you should write her a nice letter"). People who really want to practice altruism, if they think there's anything good about altruism, need to make sure they neither see nor are seen by the people to whom they give their gifts.
Actually I think it would be good for the United States, at least, if we reclaimed the status of fair traders instead of trying to hog all the pleasure of "being the giver," like the fop dropping his coin into the beggar's hand, expecting to be seen, in the picture at the link below. We need to humble ourselves and admit that we do have expectations. And when we try to delude ourselves that we are practicing altruism, those expectations are usually unrealistic, symptoms of a diseased ego.
"I'll thrust this old unwanted coat on someone who has less--who already has a coat, who is at this moment sitting comfortably in a warm cafe, and who, although small, is still at least three sizes too big for the coat--and, as seen in that Lifetime Channel movie I watched last night, that will show the person that someone caaaares and will TURN THE PERSON'S WHOLE LIFE AROUND and within a month the person will look, talk, and think EXACTLY LIKE ME! (Only with younger eyes that can see things like the coat being at least three sizes too small for person to wear.)"
That is actually not a parody. It really happened. To me. I get more fresh air and exercise than most old ladies do in my part of the world, so I bundle up less than they do while walking, so people have been shoving coats at me ever since I left home and was free at last from a hypothyroid mother trying to smother me in winterwear and then wondering why I didn't feel like running and playing. If you want to give away a coat, there are charity stores that will hang it on a rack where someone who actually has a use for it will pay for it. If you want to give me a coat, fine, I'll try to sell it for you. If you think Lifetime Channel movies have anything to do with reality, you might as well sign yourself into the nursing home now.
There's nothing wrong with admitting that you wanted to see someone's eyes light up with delight because you'd found something the person actually wanted, and you're disappointed when--as is likely to be the case, more often than not--you picked the wrong thing. Buy your gifts at stores with liberal return policies so that at least, when you buy Tracy the lovely sweater in your favorite color, Tracy can trade it in on one in a color Tracy doesn't mind wearing in public. Or maybe on the plumbing pipes and valves Tracy actually needed, this winter, more than Tracy needed a sweater, but Tracy was polite enough not to bore you with that story. The thrill of playing the gift-guessing game is that most of the time people's eyes will not light up as they say "Oh, thank you, dear. It's the thought that counts," while they're already thinking "Do I know anyone who would accept this as a Boxing Day gift, or do I take it directly to the Salvation Army?" It's like baseball, where the odds are against anyone ever hitting the ball but, once in their lifetime, at least, almost everyone will hit a home run.
Rerun
How quickly we forget: Before the Left decided to push transgenderism as a lifestyle choice, Harry Potter was lauded for influencing young readers to express more sympathy to members of non-elective minority groups, "like refugees."
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