April « 2007 « Spectre Collie

Friday April 13 2007 Apple

Consumer breakdown

It beckons. (WARNING: Yuppie-in-denial complaining follows. If you’re the type who’s offended by the petulant whining of the over-privileged, you’ll want to skip this post. And a couple of the next posts, too. For that matter, you probably want to skip this whole blog.)

These past few months have been kind of a test of will power for me. I’ve had this irrational jones to get a new computer, one that I haven’t been quite able to justify. I’ve got a behemoth of a Windows PC that I hardly ever use anymore, and it’s just taking up desk space. And because it’s one of those flashy black Alienware cases, it feels like it’s mocking me for not using it — it’s like having a pimped-out motorcycle in the garage that you don’t really need anymore because you actually just prefer driving the minivan.

So I want to get rid of it, and get a Mac desktop instead. Even though my laptop does everything I need, it makes me uncomfortable at an OCD-level using it as my one and only computer, for reasons that only years of therapy would be able to explain.

But I’ve been able to keep it under control, all this time. I figured I’d wait until it was time to get a new monitor, and upgrade everything at once. Then I found a deal on exactly the monitor I wanted, at almost $200 less than it normally sells for, so I picked one up.

Then I said I’d wait until Christmas-season unemployment situation worked out, and I started getting income again. Almost immediately, I got a check from a contracting job, which was almost exactly the cost of a new machine (after taxes).

Then I said I’d wait until Apple updated its desktop Mac line, to get in at the beginning of a product cycle instead of at the end, like I usually do. And literally the day after I said this, they announced their overkill model, which has way more processors than I’d need at a price there’s no way in hell I’d ever pay for a machine. So that was a wash.

Then I figured I’d wait until they released the new version of OS X, so at least I’d get that included in the price. It was coming out “in Spring,” most likely early June, so it was only a couple of months to wait and see if the feeling subsided. Tonight they announced that the next version of OS X has been delayed until October.

There’s no way I can hold out until October. I’m really tempted to just buy the damn thing now and be done with it. And reading the comments in response to that post on ars technica, a few other people are saying the same thing: “At least now I don’t have to wait to buy a new Mac.”

Now, that’s kind of creepy. The whole “Mac users are a cult” concept is tired and played out, but I’m kind of alarmed. They announce a delay in the release of their OS, and my first impulse was to punish them by giving them a lot of money for a new computer? And I’m not the only one! I really want to get a pair of those They Live glasses to see if my computer is projecting brainwashing images at me while I work and sleep.

And seriously: if anybody out there is still a Windows fan and would like a still-reasonably-capable (AMD Athlon 64 2.66 GHz, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum w/256MB VRAM) PC for a reasonable price ($800 or best offer), send me an e-mail at my name at this domain. Friends don’t let friends use ebay.

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Thursday April 12 2007 Videogames

SHODAN and Max

Maybe you’ve heard about Telltale’s Sam & Max games, and you’ve had your little mouse-clicker thing hovering over the “buy” button, but you’ve stopped yourself. “I’m tempted,” you say, “but I’m a strict adherent of post-modernism, and I would only play a game with self-referential humor about videogames and the burgeoning ‘internet’ phenomenon that all the kids are talking about.”

Well that excuse won’t work anymore, chump, because their latest episode, “Reality 2.0,” is available now. Here’s the trailer (higher quality version here):

What’s that? You’ve got more reservations?

But I hate adventure games!
Hey, so do I! But once you start playing these episodic games, it’ll be as if you’d rediscovered a long-dead part of yourself. “This… this is what adventure games are like?” you’ll stammer, a tear forming in your eye, “I’m sorry… I… I never knew.”

I’m recovering from recent surgery. Am I subjecting myself to physical harm from the non-stop side-splitting hilarity?
Calm down, you pansy. It’s still a videogame, and everybody knows they’re still not as well-written as TV sitcoms.

I hate Chuck Jordan and everything he stands for. His participation alone is enough to dissuade me from buying the product.
I told you to stop reading my website, Mom. But for Episode 5, all you have to do is grit your teeth and force your way through the first 15 minutes or so. Everything I wrote is at the beginning.

How do I know that Telltale, Inc. is a name I can trust? I’m wary of internet purchases and Digital Rights Management, and if I buy a game with my own money, I want to be sure that I can still play it ten years from now.
Dude, relax. It’s like nine dollars. I’ve spent that much on a copy of Wired magazine that ended up sitting in a recycle bin after a month. Plus, there are games that I’ve worked on that are less than 10 years old, and I can’t play them anymore. This is the information age! Stuff changes quickly! And the jokes aren’t going to be as funny 10 years from now, anyway.

I thought you were going to get me a free copy.
Yeah, and I thought I’d be married with a house and kids and my first published novel by this age. Life is full of disappointments. Get used to it.

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Thursday April 12 2007 The Internet

A

Fans of Lore Sjöberg’s, especially the Book of Ratings, should take a look at his latest experiment. I’m a fan. It’s one of the only cases where adding all the new media internet video podcast hoopla actually improves the original material.

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Thursday April 12 2007 Politics

Your papers, please

Apparently, it is possible to be too ignorant of the state’s rights vs. federal rights issue, and too complacent in the idea of a Democratic majority in congress magically making everything better. I was totally ignorant of the RealID Act and that it’d progressed so far.

Ars Technica has an article about Real ID and how some states are refusing to adopt the standard. According to the Wikipedia article, California is one of the states eager to adopt it, so it’s still unclear what can be done by those of us who live in CA and are just anti-Federalist enough to be annoyed by the bill, but apparently not so politically savvy that we did anything about it when there was still time.

This Snopes article refutes the more tinfoil-hat level conspiracy concerns, but seems nonplussed about the bill’s legitimacy. I can remember growing up and hearing people in suburban Atlanta freaking out about UPC symbols, ATMs, and even credit cards being either government plots or The Mark of the Beast. So it’s a damn shame that legitimate complaints about this inane bill could come across as similar paranoia.

Going back to the Ars Technica entry, I think the problem is best summed up by this observation:

When considering the potential security implications of the Real ID act, it is worth noting that the 9/11 hijackers were all legal residents with proper identification.

Personally, I tend to be so skeptical of conspiracy theories and privacy paranoia that it could even be called naivete. But even if you dismiss the privacy concerns, the idea of increased federal bureaucracy with no foreseeable benefit should be alarming. A centralized mandate for identification from Washington, forcing the states to modify their already-existing systems to comply? With absolutely no effect on terrorism or illegal immigration, the two areas that homeland security is supposed to care about?

You don’t have to be a libertarian to think that’s pretty stupid, if not downright scary.

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Thursday April 12 2007 Television

Hellboy + Obakemono = Nerd Bliss

Normally, seeing my favorite things come together three separate times in one week would be downright eerie, but I don’t think Hellboy: Sword of Storms counts. For one thing, it’s old news. It was aired on Cartoon Network back in October, and due to a TiVo mishap, I’m just now catching it on DVD. For another thing, nerdy white American guys who think Japanese stuff is just radical is hardly some eclectic, obscure branch of fandom — it’s basically a demographic.

It’s not that hard to find fans of Hellboy, either — start by looking at the production of the comics or any of the adapations or spin-off projects, and just about everybody involved will confess to being a Hellboy fanboy. So the people making these things really love the source material. In the case of The Amazing Screw-on Head, you end up with a slavish recreation of the comic. That was an admirable effort, but came out a little bit cold, and also revealed the problems that can come when you try to adapt a very graphic comic art style to animation.

The new series doesn’t do that; they made a conscious effort to give it an art style different from the comics. According to the documentaries included on the DVD, it had to suggest Mignola’s style but at the same time he wanted something that would be more modern and streamlined. On top of all that, it had to be animatable on a television production’s budget. Personally, I’m not floored by the result — I think it’s fine, but if they were going to simplify the characters anyway, I wish they’d taken them a little bit further. The character designs regress into Disney Television Animation mode more than I would’ve liked. There are hints of the comic style all over the place (especially the hands, which is a good touch), but the characters frequently look too traditional and too “safe,” like something you’d see on any other TV action series cartoon.

Of course, this is criticism from a guy who knows pretty much nothing about art. And my disappointment that it didn’t go further doesn’t mean I disliked the movie; I’d even say it’s about as good as a TV-animated Hellboy series could possibly turn out. Watching the making-of documentaries, you could really tell that they put a lot of thought into the production, and that they made the right choices all along. And throughout the movie, you can really see what they were doing, even if you don’t entirely agree with how they did it.

As far as subject matter, it was obvious that I was going to be all over it. Most of the movie works like a survey course of The Obakemono Project. (Of course, it also wipes out my plans for NaNoWriMo this year, even though I swear I had the idea a year before I even heard about this movie). Mike Mignola and Guillermo del Toro mention that the original idea just came from wanting to see Hellboy with a samurai sword, and seriously, who wouldn’t want to see that? There are plenty of cool moments taken from the comics, from Japanese folklore in general, and images from classical Japanese art — there’s a great bit with the Gashadokuro, a giant skeleton that was also referenced in Pom Poko.

Apparently the second in the Hellboy Animated series, Blood and Iron, came out last month. I can’t blame the TiVo for missing that one; I was simply unaware that it was coming out. If anbody saw it, let me know how it turned out, because I’m going to have to wait until June to see it.

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Wednesday April 11 2007 The Internet

A Million Little Pieces

Totally original and edgy artwork copyright 2007 I’ve wasted way too much time today reading the internet hubub about how a webcomic was ripped off by an art thief. Actually, “art thief” isn’t as good a description as “some dude who makes crappy drawings from internet catchphrases and puts them on T-shirts and paintings and has made obscene millions doing so,” but I feel obligated to do my part in the nerd fight.

The whole thread where it went down is on somethingawful.com, but it’s interminable and filled with your standard internet “nerd rage,” as the victim points out. The highlights for me were the truly awful company started by the guy, and this article about his gallery showing in Vegas. Even without the clear-cut plagiarism charge, I don’t see how anybody can read that article after seeing his work and not just be filled with an ill-defined rage and a queasy feeling about the state of humanity.

There’s been a good bit of this going around; charges of lying or plagiarism followed by an internet outrage. There was James Frey’s smackdown on Oprah, then more recently the stand-up comedian slap-fight between Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia over Mencia’s stealing comedy material, and now this.

What gets me is that all the cases have one major thing in common, one that frequently gets overlooked: the perpetrators all suck. Everybody made a big deal about how Frey lied, and how Mencia, and Dane Cook, and now Todd Goldman all steal. But people don’t give enough attention to the fact that they all put out really terribly awful shit, and make millions and millions of dollars off of it.

It was hard to get too incensed about the Rogan/Mencia spat, because I’m no fan of Rogan outside of “News Radio.” But as was the case with all these stories, you start reading little bits about it on the internet, and then start digging deeper and finding out more about these talentless hacks, and it just gets worse. I’d never seen Mencia’s TV show, but of course I had to go on YouTube and see this god-awful stupid video of his catch-phrase song, which just raises the question “The dude makes this and people’s biggest complaint is that he steals material?” The only defense of Mencia I ever saw was this blog post from one of the series’ writers, where he says that Rogan was just jealous, and that the jokes in question were so obvious anybody could’ve made them. Seriously, that’s his defense. The guy gets paid to write this crap, and he justifies it by saying that it’s not plagiarism, it’s making completely obvious and uninspired commentary that absolutely anyone could’ve come up with first. In other words, he’s a total hack.

The T-Shirt guy fiasco is even stupider. Here’s a compilation of thefts and alleged thefts. What bears repeating: this is an intellectual property argument over novelty tees, and not even particularly clever ones. And the guy has made an obscene amount of money selling them. And his defense, at least at the moment, is that he “unintentionally” took the design from a submission and didn’t research it enough. Note that the guy isn’t just talentless and dishonest; he’s a total douchebag. But back up a step to really appreciate his “defense:” the guy takes drawings “submitted” by other people, paints them on a canvas with his name on it, and charges thousands of dollars for them. And they sell. I can’t help feeling like we’re all victims in this scenario.

Whatever happened to stealing and lying to come up with something good? Self-important hipsters have been saying for years that the only way to really make a lot of money in the arts and entertainment is to make stupid, non-challenging crap that’s been dumbed down for the mass market. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence, I just can’t believe that’s true.

I’ve still got my theory, but I’m afraid it might be overly optimistic. I like to think that the reason these cases get so much attention is because there are still enough people who get it and recognize them as being talentless hacks. Once a revelation of lying or plagiarism comes out, all the anger isn’t just at the dishonesty, but at the idea of being such a bottom-feeder and still being obscenely successful from it. Outrage over the awfulness of the result material is what gives it its initial traction, and it snowballs from there. Most people really want to see good, original, intelligent stuff. The internet rage is really about quality, not just money or copyright.

And the fact that “Robot Chicken” is not only still in production, but it regularly gets some of the highest ratings on the Cartoon Network, is because people are just naturally inclined to be nice and give a helping hand to the mentally challenged.

Just humor me on this one. I want to believe.

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Tuesday April 10 2007 Battlestar Galactica, Television

So Like Us

Speaking of set detail and “Battlestar Galactica,” I think I may have uncovered more shocking evidence that the colonists have connections to Earth. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again:
From BSG's 'No Way Out' inspired episode
Powered by NEC
Like all of the Battlestars, the Galactica relies on NEC’s Multisync Series for the brightest, sharpest LCD displays in the entire galaxy. So see we all.

Has anybody on the internets made a parody video showing a Cylon waking up in the resurrection chamber and hearing the “Intel Inside” start-up sound? If not, pretend I made one and posted it here, because that is high comedy.

That same episode has what might be my favorite shot in the entire “Battlestar Galactica” series to date:
The Colonists' optical drives use OCDs
“I suspect this disc might be a fake, Commander. My first clue that it wasn’t an actual Colonial Defense Ministry disc is that we don’t have any devices that will play it because it’s not round.”

One of the comments from Ron Moore’s podcast about the series is that they never bothered to explain how the fleet got its infinite supply of cigarettes. I think the best explanation is that they form them out of all the excess paper they obsessively cut the corners off of.

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Sunday April 8 2007 Battlestar Galactica, Movies, Television

Many anal-retentive Bothans died to bring us this information.

I was just watching a few minutes of the original “Battlestar Galactica” series, and because I’m a nerd, I noticed that the displays and panels in the Vipers were full of English text. Because I’m a really big nerd, I started to wonder what that means in the context of the series as a whole.

There was a big deal made about the season 3 finale’s choice of music — it’s supposed to be some momentous sign that the colonists haven’t just been following a myth, and they really do have some kind of connection to Earth.

But modern English is all over the place in “Battlestar Galactica.” Some of it you have to have for dramatic impact:
There are only twelve Cylon models. PS: Would you like to go with me? Check one.
So you can say that they’re just auto-translating whatever language the colonists speak into a version of English that exists thousands of years later. Which is fine, but they’ve also got it in places where it doesn’t matter — in badges and logos, books, and plastered on the side of the ship. The only real attempts at indicating they’re a truly alien group of people is that they’re still polytheistic (very cool), and that they cut the corners off all their paper (I still don’t get that).

The only reason I would’ve noticed any of this at all, is because another franchise already tackled the “problem.” I can still vividly remember seeing The Empire Strikes Back for the first time (Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, represent!) and every little detail just blowing my nine-year-old mind. When Luke is arguing with R2-D2 about flying to Dagobah, all of R2′s speech is translated onto a screen in the cockpit:
From the original version of TESB
There’ve been dozens of documentaries and making-of promotions about the Star Wars movies and how they put insane amounts of effort into production details. But it still impresses me that they thought to invent a language not just for the aliens, but for the main characters. All as a reminder that the story is taking place you know where and you know when.

But I also remembered something from the first movie — I’m not sure how, because I was only six years old at the time. But this has still stood out in my mind just as clearly as any of the other memorable images:
From the original version of Star Wars
That’s from when Ben Kenobi disables the tractor beam, and apart from the numbers on various displays, it’s the only bit of English text in the whole movie. (There are letters and numbers that flash on Darth Vader’s screen during the final battle, but they’re fuzzy, hard to make out, and aren’t there long enough to read).

The reason I’m only embarrassed to recognize this kind of thing, instead of being completely ashamed, is because I know I’m not alone. The special edition of the movie, in addition to the Greedo nonsense, wacky Jabba, and that damn shockwave, added this:
From the special edition
The same text, now in Basic. (Yes, the common language in Star Wars is called Basic, sometimes called Galactic Standard. You think after all this I’m going to pretend I’m not enough of a nerd to know that?)

I’m not sure if it was changed for the 1978 theatrical release, or if it was just put in for the “special” edition. But still, somebody involved in the production cared enough about creating an alien universe that they put in that detail. And they were thinking of this kind of thing as far back as 1979. Obviously, world-building alone can’t save a movie — the Star Wars prequels had insanely detailed concept art and production design — but I think it’s part of what makes the movies classic.

In case it sounds like I’m faulting the new “Battlestar Galactica” for not doing this, I’m not. They had more hours of content in their first half-season than all of the Star Wars movies combined, and having to constantly translate everything would’ve just been nerd-wankery that would’ve gotten in the way of the story. Their sets are just as detailed, like with Tigh’s fighter squadron logo hanging on the wall, or the minor but ingenious touch of writing “NO STEP” on the Viper bodies just like on a real aircraft. Especially when you compare it to the original series, which pretty clearly all took place on sparse sets somewhere in a Los Angeles studio. The reason the new series has so much resonance is mostly because of the writing, but also because at every step in the production, they’ve treated it as part of a real story that’s really taking place in a real world. Right down to the sparse sets on the Cylon basestars, which seem so alien because they look like they were filmed somewhere in a Los Angeles studio.

Plus, the production designers for “Galactica” realize how to make the civilization non-Earth-like exactly where it counts. A big part of that is the music, which they’ve chosen from the beginning to be foreign and vaguely mystical-sounding. Just like Star Wars wouldn’t have worked as well without the classical space-opera soundtrack, BSG has a constant subtle reminder that you’re watching an alien civilization with an alien religion. So the reason the song from the season finale worked so well at “breaking the fourth wall” and throwing everything off balance isn’t because it’s the only connection to Earth that we’ve ever seen, but because it’s the only pop song we’ve ever seen.

And because I’ve been taking so many screenshots, here’s one from “Battlestar Galactica” where you can totally see Starbuck’s nipple:
Nip shot!

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Sunday April 8 2007 Apple, Television, The Internet

Idiot Box

Back when I was writing columns for SFist, one of the things I kept harping on was that Apple should make a DVR. If they could do for television what they did for the iPod, that’d be huge, right? An interface for TV as slick as OS X, without as many of the weird limitations that the cable and sattelite companies build into their machines, and with the ability to use the video you record on your computer. It seemed like a no-brainer.

Of course, what they came out with instead was the Apple TV. I was completely unimpressed with the announcement, I was more blown away at the concept of Apple’s releasing a product that I didn’t want to buy. The Apple TV isn’t a DVR; it’s just a way to watch and listen to stuff from iTunes (and iPhoto) on a big screen TV. That’s it. I could barely see the point, and it seemed like a step backwards instead of an innovation.

Now that it’s been out for a while, I just read this review of the Apple TV on arstechnica.com. And I still would never even think of buying one of the things. But after seeing in detail how the thing works and which audience it’s targeted at, I think I finally understand it. And I’m more than a little disturbed.

I’m disturbed because of this: the reason I didn’t understand the thing is because I can’t conceive of a world without television.

It’s kind of embarrassing. It’s not like Apple has been subtle with their whole strategy — they want you to buy stuff off iTunes. But even though I’ve got several friends who don’t have cable or satellite, and I’ve got friends who even watch shows off iTunes and have told me about the process, I just couldn’t understand how the process would work. How can Chuck watch TV if Chuck no can hook satellite to computer? Chuck confused and angry!

Am I just too short-sighted and old to understand new media? Or have I been living for so long with a coaxial cable from Comcast or DirecTV that I see it as an umbilical cord, and can’t imagine life without it? I don’t even watch nearly as much TV as I used to, but still the thought of going without it altogether just never occurred to me. As a thought experiment, I decided to go through and find out what it would take to do the unthinkable, and live without a live TV feed coming into my home.

Microsoft has a new Video Marketplace you can access over the Xbox 360 (and I’m guessing Vista), but a) it doesn’t have a lot of TV content yet, and b) they don’t as far as I can tell let you download entire seasons. So until that matures, the only other option is iTunes.

And yes, I am aware that with the internet, you can get all the TV you want in high definition for free. But at present, the majority of my income comes from a major multinational media company, so I can’t really condone that with a clear conscience. And still, that stuff is hard to find, takes forever to download, and just has a “ethical gray area” feel to it. So I’m not considering that.

So for this test, I’ll take the shows that I watch regularly. I’ll pretend that their seasons all overlap, and that a season is about 9 months.

Now, I pay an obscene amount for my satellite TV connection. It’s almost as much as I pay for real necessities, like cigarettes. If I think about how much better it would be for me to take that money and donate it to charity or something, it just gets depressing and strikes me as vaguely un-American, so I’ll just leave that idea alone. What I will do, though, is cut ten bucks a month off the bill, because that’s what I pay for the HD package (which is mostly worthless, but the rare shows that are broadcast in HD are sweet), and iTunes doesn’t support HD yet.

So for DirecTV the total is: 9 months at $50 a month = $450 per season.
Downsides: Commercials, being stuck with DirecTV’s lousy DVR.

Looking on the iTunes store, here’s the cost of season passes of shows I’ve watched with any regularity in the past year:

30 Rock: $34.99
Heroes: $42.99
Lost: $34.99
Monk: $29.99
Battlestar Galactica: $34.99
Doctor Who: not available
The Venture Brothers: $19.99
Mythbusters: $25.87
Passport to Europe: $22.99
Saturday Night Live: $29.99
The Sarah Silverman Program: $9.99
Kim Possible: $37.99
Legion of Super-Heroes: not available

So for iTunes the total is: $324.77 per season.
Downsides: waiting for downloads; the day delay between broadcast and iTunes availability; the lack of local programming, CNN and just lazy channel-surfing; knowing that I paid $43 for a show that I hate but am hooked on anyway (“Heroes”); no “Doctor Who;” no cheesy anime on adult swim. Plus, missing out on the stuff I watch sporadically but would never go out of my way to pay for — Discovery Channel documentaries, cheesy movies on the Sci Fi channel, and just about everything on the Food network.

I’d never seen a break-down like that before, and the result really surprised me. First, obviously, because it comes out cheaper to buy entire seasons online than it does to pay for a monthly satellite bill. Second, that there are shows available I never would’ve expected to be, like “Mythbusters” and “Passport to Europe.” And third, that browsing around the iTunes store works as well for TV shows as it does for music or watching stuff on a DVR. Especially since you can buy individual episodes to try them out. So I’ve gone from thinking that the iTunes video store was worthless, to realizing that unless you watch a lot more television than I do, it actually makes more sense to get stuff online than pay a regular monthly cable or satellite bill.

I’m not going to cut the cord anytime soon, since live and semi-live TV has gotten to be a habit. And there’s still a mental block with the pricing — even though it actually comes out cheaper, it’s easier for me to rationalize paying a bill and considering it a “utility”, than it would be to pay thirty or forty bucks for a series I feel somewhat guilty for watching anyway (like, for instance, the Disney Channel animated series aimed at teenage girls).

But after seeing it actually broken down, I feel like I finally understand why everybody’s making such a big fuss about TV over IP. If they can get semi-reformed TV junkies like me to make the switch, there’s a ton of potential and even more money to be made there; I wonder why they don’t make more of an effort to demonstrate how it’s cheaper.

And in case you’ve read all this, and your response is, “or you could, well, read a book,” then you just don’t get it, man.

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Saturday April 7 2007 Personal

Mutual of Omaha's Annoying Kingdom

I’m sure the San Francisco Animal Control People do a fine job with the fixings and the basic health exams and all that. I just think it’s irresponsible for them to be releasing pets without doing a proper psychological examination first.

The problem, see, is that my new cat is batshit insane.

There are plenty of people out there (cat people) who would dismiss it all as “frisky” or would even go so far as “rambunctious,” but that’s only because they haven’t seen the cold madness that seethes behind those narrow slits he uses for eyes. He’s a demon from the Pit, made flesh and fur.

Like many of you, at least the ones who didn’t go to a different website the moment it became clear I was making another post about my cat, I assumed at first that it was all normal. You might look at pictures and just think that I’m making a big deal out of nothing; it’s all standard new kitten adjustment behavior. And there has been a good bit of that. Books get knocked off of bookshelves, computer equipment gets knocked off of desks, wet paw prints appear in a direct line from the kitchen sink to my living room couch, or on the television where he’s tried in vain to attack the Mythbusters. Random keys get pressed on keyboards, and my web browser’s home page gets inexplicably reset to Stuffonmycat.com (I swear to God that really happened).

All that kind of thing, I expected. I’ve had cats before, albeit in larger houses, and they were usually kept in check by larger dogs. I knew that I’d have to remain completely still when I go to sleep, because he’d pounce on any movement under the sheets. I knew that I’d have the pleasure of walking barefoot through a Zen Garden of stray cat litter on my bathroom floor every morning. I even knew, not long after I saw him, that if I were ever to choke on dinner or succumb to a gas leak, he’d be one of those cats who’d start eating on me before my body was found.

Now, however, I’m convinced that he’s not content to wait. His favorite game at the moment is to lurk in the shadows, waiting for me to walk by, minding my own business, and then suddenly spring out from under a bed or behind a piece of furniture, leap up, and grab onto my leg at the upper thigh. He’ll hang there for the split second it takes him to realize he’s not big enough to take me down (yet), and then dash off to hide under the bed again. Over the course of the last week, my status has been reduced from master to friendly companion to the weakest gazelle in the herd.

What I originally mistook as adorably cute affection has taken a decidedly Frank Booth-like turn. At first, he would hop up in my lap, then bury his head in my armpit or under the crook of my neck and just sit there and purr contentedly, which was charming enough to be “eccentric” instead of just “weird.” He still does that, for a minute or so, but then succumbs to his bizarre beard fixation, chewing on my chin or upper lip and pulling out small tufts of hair in the process. I gently push him away, and he looks up and meows at me — unintelligible at first, but now I recognize it as “Don’t you look at me!”

And I can’t just leave him alone, because he’s self-destructive, even for a cat. He was so desperate to get out his collar that twice I found him with the still-attached collar stuck in his mouth like a gag, and he was trying to back his way out of it, making the most mournful sounds I’ve ever heard come out of an animal. I regularly hear large boxes falling over or plates banging together; it’s like living in the Amityville Horror house.

The only thing I’m convinced of is that I’ve chosen the right name. He’s spent the time it’s taken me to write this post running at full speed between the living room and the bedroom, ignoring all of his cat toys and choosing instead to chase his own personal demons. Then he just stops and stares into space, then meows something that I’m sure in cat language is unspeakably profane. Occasionally he’ll pause to lick himself, as if all is normal, then suddenly and without provocation crouch down, his eyes wide and his ears flat against his head, staring in abject terror at my coatrack or a chair.

Now, he’s jumping on and off the bed, flinging himself into pillows or attacking spots in the comforter that offend him for reasons only he knows. He’ll stop and stare and meow something, then leap straight into the air and run off into the kitchen or to hide under the couch. And I’m watching it all helplessly, like Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist. I can’t leave the apartment for too long, and I can’t have anybody over, for fear that he’ll march into the living room, meow “you’re gonna die on that plane!” at the guests, and then pee all over the floor. I realize I brought the evil on myself, looking for a companion but having accidentally summoned myself an Overly Familiar.

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