Friday, September 28, 2007

RIP C-fer Cat


He came into our lives at the end of October 1998 and was struck and killed by a car near the end of September 2007.

So, for very nearly nine years, he was our pet.

C-fer.

C-fer Cat.


A silly name, I know. But then, C-fer was just that kind of cat: Silly. Funny. Sometimes moody. Always affectionate.

You know - a cat.

A cat who was great at catching mice but had the nasty habit of eating the top halves of them and leaving the rest for me to dispose of. A cat who was great at catching birds even though we put a bell on his collar so that he couldn’t. It didn’t matter: he learned to move so that the bell didn’t ring. We tried two bells – didn’t matter. C-fer was nothing if not determined. Finally we just took the bells off.

A nice neighbour saw what happened: a red car zoomed around the corner and struck him. The neighbour said there’s no way the driver didn’t know what happened but the driver didn’t stop. The nice neighbour put C-fer in a box and returned him to us.

There wasn’t a mark on him. I think he died instantly. But then, I need to think that.

He was still warm when we wrapped him in a shroud and buried him in the back-yard with a toy mouse to keep him company. Trish put a stone on his grave; I scratched his name on the stone. We all cried.

Good-bye C-fer. Thank you for being my friend.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

The Perfect Mistake

Okay - here's the back story: In July, I was on a family camping trip and I wrote this song - The Perfect Mistake.

I decided that I'd like our church band (SEGUE - I'm the drummer) to do this song so I threw together a demo of it so that I could teach it to the rest of the band.

I uploaded an MP3 of the demo and asked several people to comment - the comments were very positive; not just about the song itself but even about the demo (which, I must admit, surprised me because I didn't spend a great deal of time preparing the demo since it was only meant to be instructional and in no way a finished product.)

So I decided to add some video to the demo and upload it to my 'youtube' account and that brings us to here. I hope you enjoy it.



And, just for fun, here's a list of items supposedly invented by mistake:

Coca-Cola
Sticky Notes
Scotchgard
Implantable Pacemakers
Penicillin
Potato Chips
Nitrous Oxide
Tea Bags
Air Conditioners
Barometers
Purple Glass
Guinness
Champagne
Vulcanized Rubber
Microwave Ovens
Bubble Wrap
Teflon

"Mistakes are the portals for discovery."
- James Joyce