YOUR KITTEN IS A WHAT?

So here's your crazy story of the day - my dear wife goes to take our lovely kitten to the Vet. No, no, that's not the crazy part. Anyone can do that. The fun begins when the vet turns the cat OVER. Why is this so amazing, you ask? Did the cat then spontaneously combust? Was there a little tag on our kitten's belly saying "Open Other End?" Did the cat land on it's feet, even though it was being held up-side down? Well, let me start at the beginning:

Ember, our cat, came from the pound. Folks, if you're going to get a cat, rescue one from the pound. Trust me, once you go there, you'll want to rescue all of them in some ill-fated "101 Dalmatians" inspired manouver. This, my friend, is a bad idea, because you will become the "woman with 100 cats," even if you are a man. However, anything you can do for one or two of them will make a difference, especially for your new furry companion.

But I digress.

You see, we rescued this very cat of ours for two reasons: it was a young kitten, and it was a girl. Getting a girl cat was an important part, because my dear wife didn't want the cat claiming property rights over everything we have through the distribution of bodily fluids, if you catch my drift. So we went to the pound, got this adorable little black kitten with strikingly blue eyes (they've since turned gold), which was identified as a girl.

The crazy part is that when the vet turned our dear kitten over today, he discovered that this is indeed NOT a girl cat. We have a BOY. Apparently, it's very hard to tell the two apart until things have developed, and we'd just reached that point. And honestly, that makes sense. I mean, how many babies would you be able to tell their gender if you saw two side-by-side wearing just a diaper and no silly bows in their hair or color-coordinated clothes? Now, you can tell a boy baby from a girl baby even before they're born, but they don't have fur. So, happy for me, there's another man in the house. At least until he's neutered. Because we listen to Bob Barker.

Sorry if this all rambles a bit. I'm writing it on my PDA late at night in bed, so there's not much power of cohesion left in the ol' grey matter.

**UPDATE**
If you'd like to see some pictures of Ember, click here, here, here, or here.

WELCOME TO THE GRAND ILLUSION

Come one, come all, let's give this site a whirl. I'm excited about what this new home for "The Swan Speaks" could mean, and I hope you guys enjoy my ever-so-lovingly generated content. Right now I'm visiting my best friend from college, and using his 17" PowerBook to make this posting. Let me tell you, technology is something sexy alright. Got this sleek Mac with a screen wider than anything one could possibly ever need it for, and I'm posting all through the miracle of Wi-Fi. I DO love my life sometimes.

So, sit tight, hold on, enjoy the ride. We're going to have a lot more going on here, and i even plan to import the posts from the Xanga site, so you can enjoy previous rants of utmost hilarity. More from the Swan later....

"...You came to me like wine comes to this mouth, grown tired of water all the time..."

CORINTHIANS 1, CHAPTER 13

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary....

Wait, never mind, let me try that again.

See, I like Xanga. They've managed my online ramblings sufficiently well, and nobody's been hurt in the process. There's even a few bells and whistles available on here to make most bloggers feel warm and tickly in their stomach as they edit their site's look and feel.

Unfortunately, I have seen more. I have been informed of perfection. I have seen the light, and the scales have fallen from my eyes. When I was a child, I surfed as a child, and I blogged as a child. The first was taken care of with Mozilla Firefox. The second, my brothers, has been fullfilled by the joy of Blogger.

What is this to say? What, then should we do? Simply be advised that there are newer and greater realms for the Swan to enter, and a new one is forthcoming. If you've got to check it now, go to stoplookingswan.blogspot.com. I'm throwing a lot of test crap up there, so it won't look entirely beautiful for a while. AH, but when it does.... oh yes, when it does...

Keep your eyes open, go check out my other workspace for a while, and I'll fill you in with more as it comes.

AND THE BEATBOX GOES...UNH!

Those of you that know me (and you probably ain't readin' this thing unless you do) know that I have a real love for A Cappella music.  I'm a singer of some talent myself, and I'm tellin ya, there is NO experience like being inside a sweet vocal chord.  Now back in college, when P2P was hot and MP3's were flying around the net with reckless abandon, I began collecting great a cappella arrangements of mainstream secular songs.  It's really amazing what happens when you take a song you already like from the radio, and then transplant it into this new environment of the voice. 

For example, one of my faves right now is "Where The Streets Have No Name," as done by U Penn's Off The Beat.  You'd never know a slowly crescendoed shimmering guitar intro could be replicated ably by a group of voices, but it can baby, it can. 

Now, if you wanna get up on this hip music, you've got a number of options.  The first is to buy one of the "Best Of College A Cappella" albums coming out every year.  They take the most relevant and top-notch stuff and cram it all into one disc of loving goodness, so you're really not doing your $17 an injustice by purchasing one.  In fact, I'm going to see if I can convince my wife that it's a worthwhile purchase myself...or perhaps a quality Christmas present....

There IS another way, but the road is narrow and the way is rough, as it were.  You enter at your own risk, because this is the world of the electronic frontier as ravaged by packs of roving RIAA lawyers.  THIS is the world of the MP3.  Lord knows I'm not interested in one of their suits, so there ain't no way I'm hosting music on here.  But, if you were so inclined, you might follow this handy search link here to get some of this stuff for free.  Don't tell them I told ya, and we'll be alright.

And hey, if you can't find what you want, shoot me an email.  Maybe we can work something out.  I mean, after all, I am a nice guy.

"Set drift on a memory bliss..."