Mnemonics

    Age is catching up to me. I no longer can remember everything, or even much. Last week, I forgot my ATM PIN. I went to the bank to get a new PIN. That bank branch had sent their rePINing machine to the shop, so I went on to another branch. The second branch should have sent theirs, too. It destroyed my card for me just exactly at the moment that I remembered the old PIN. Soooo they got me a new card within a few days and at no charge but with the same old PIN. If I had been wrong in thinking that I had re-remembered the old number, it would have been a hell of a mess. Fortunately, I had been right, and all was well.
    The point to all this song and dance: I had had a mnemonic for remembering the number. The PIN had been very much like the 3-digit code on the back of my old card. Unfortunately, they had sent me a new card with a different 3-digit code, and eventually I forgot the old one. And it develops that relying on the old mnemonic had blinded me to the fact that there was a much, much easier mnemonic, one so easy it makes me hope I can keep this PIN forever. Lucky that the new PIN didn't work!
    My other memory issue lately has been that when I cook in the morning before going to see Dad, I tend to think that I left a burner on. It's happened twice; both times I was panicked enough to drive all the way home to check, even though I was sure (correctly as it turned out) that I hadn't left anything on. Yesterday, I thought of a trick: I put a sock over the front doorknob, so I would remember to check the burners before I left. Worked, too. It's heck getting old.

Oh lackey! Lackey!

    Back at the old place, I would sometimes hear Amelia calling out from the bathroom in the night. And I thought that this must be the dumbest kitty on all the planet to be able to get lost from ten feet away. Or possibly that I had one of the few night-blind kitties. And it's taken me all this time to figure out that what she was saying was, "Oh lackey! Lackey! I have befouled the litter box. It must be cleaned immediately!" Not that I would have jumped to attention any quicker if I had known what she was saying, mind you. I'm a pretty good chamberlain and all, but I draw the line at 24-hour-a-day service!

Old-time radio

    As I may have mentioned, I am a major fan of old-time radio, great stuff like "Escape" and "Suspense" and slightly less great stuff like "Inner Sanctum Mysteries." But I think my greatest fandom is for stuff that's really terrible, like "Dark Fantasy." It was a show that had a brief run in the early '40s, produced in Oklahoma City. All the episodes were written by one guy, a novelist (or so he said) named Scott Bishop. Maybe his novels were better.
    The problem with radio is that everything that happens has to be described. The problem with horror on radio is that it has to be described at the top of one's voice. The problem with low-budget horror radio is that it has to be described at the top of his voice by one of the characters, since who can afford a narrator? "Oh NO! You have a knife! You're coming at me with the knife! Please don't stab me with the knife! Oh no!"
    Or in Scott Bishop's case, a demented and disembodied (distrunked?) tree branch comes after somebody and pushes her down an elevator shaft. In another episode, a mad scientist kidnaps an opera singer and puts his vocal chords in a gorilla and trains the gorilla to sing opera. (And to talk and to fly a plane.) So he could make a fortune from his opera-singing gorilla. And when his gorilla starts singing less well, he shoots him. As if people would only pay to see a gorilla who sings opera REALLY WELL! I gotta go find this guy's novels! As a longtime Mystery Science 3000 fan, this stuff is catnip to me.

Pheromone-infused

    I have a sinus headache, so this won't be a very ambitious entry. I was looking for body wash and was amused beyond words by Dial for Men Magnetic Attraction-Enhancing Pheromone-Infused Body Wash. (No, I didn't remember all that; I looked it up.) I almost bought it for the kitsch factor, but not quite. I assume that they're trying to take on AXE, seeking to crack the dumb, cheap guy market. With my luck, I would just attract mosquitoes anyway.:P

Crisis Kitty

    Amelia the cat has always been a little keyed up. If she could talk, her conversation would go like, "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, John! There's a squirrel in the tree!" Or "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, John! There's another kitty! In the yard! Ohmygod!" Lately, she's been even more anxious than usual. She's started jumping in the laundry basket. I appreciate that this is typical kitty behavior, but she's never done it in all these years. She also jumps up on the kitchen counter to sit on the kitchen windowsill, another unsurprising kitty act which nevertheless she had never done before.
    I also noticed that she never gets up on her kitty condo anymore. Eventually I worked out that there might be a connection. I vacuumed that heck out of the kitty condo (as it was blanketed in kitty fur), but she still wouldn't climb on it. I tried the tricks I had done to get her to use it in the first place, but no go. Finally, I just picked her up and put it on it. She didn't stay long (Crisis Kitty doesn't like being picked up by anybody!) but a little while later, she was back up on it like normal.
    Later she jumped in the laundry basket again, and she's still grooming herself like a maniac. So the crisis isn't necessarily over. I'd be happy to think we're back down to normal crisis levels, however.

Slack

    As the weather gets colder, I really really need to get Dad some warmer clothes. He has a bunch of sweaters at his house which I can easily liberate. Only problem is that he has lost so much weight that they will probably be falling off him. I really need to get somebody to take his measurements, because he's going to need a whole new wardrobe, or at least to have the old one taken in pretty comprehensively. I really need to talk to the powers that be at Rice Estate about Dad's outlook and plans. In a perfect world, he would stay there until he could handle the outside world well. But he and Margaret really miss each other, and I think he'll want to go off to be with her as soon as she's ready for him. In summary, I need to be doing a lot of things, and I'm really slacking off. Combat fatigue, I suppose.

Canvasser

    Paul was over last night for shrimp boil. There was a knock on the door, but it wasn't a trick-or-treater. A young man from Occupy Columbia was canvassing to oppose the Walmart expected to go up in place of Capital City (baseball) Stadium. He met a friendly reception. We signed his petition and I gave him a bowl of shrimp boil. His name is Dillon and he lives up the street. We had to decline the opportunity to march on City Council, but were otherwise totally supportive. Hopefully he has other successful canvasses.
    Trick-or-treaters eventually turned up, though not in great numbers. Paul and I listened to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, which was suitably creepy. Amelia got comfortable enough to sit on Paul's satchel for a while. Well, I thought it was funny.