A Lot of Consonants

I’m somewhere between Tennyson’s famous quote that’s been canonized as cliché (“‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all”) and George Carlin’s truest of true assertions that buying a pet amounts to “purchasing a small tragedy,” as you will outlive this life that you’re emotionally investing in (and if you don’t, that’s even worse, since you’re dead).

One of those small tragedies happens to be the uber-flat-faced exotic shorthair Winston, who’s netted millions of views on YouTube and has a few thousand Twitter followers. He’s no Maru, but I’d call him “Internet famous” if that weren’t a boastful reflection on myself and if I just hadn’t spent the weekend at ROFLcon listening to people describe themselves as such, beckoning the bile up my throat. People who’ve never visited my apartment know who he is; strangers tell me they love him. And now when they inquire about how he’s doing, I’ll either have to lie vaguely or explain my situation specifically. That’s the downside of etching in Internet stone something as skittish as life.

Everything about this is so good, for so many reasons.

Thank you, Rich.