Small Amount of Cat? Nope, Large Amount of Crap.

I was sitting last night watching part one of the Westminster Dog Show and it got me thinking about the insinuations that Lance Manion made against me. After all, it is a dog-eat-dog world out here in the blogosphere. If a guy doesn't defend himself with rational and well thought-out logic, then he finds himself getting cooked even more by the flames.

When I first read the post I pretty much thought that the time had come for ol' Lance to up his dosage. No big surprise there. If you've ever seen the guy play Quake, you'd know what I mean. BTW, you're not supposed to blow yourself up when you do those rocket jumps, m'man. ;)

Anyway, a lot of time has passed since this was first brought up and because I've been so damn busy with work, the wee one, the older wee one, the wife's birthday, Valentine's Day, studying, and all other manner of things, it seems like this is beyond yesterday's news. Still, I don't want Lance's rantings to go to waste, so here's what really happened.

Did I throw caution to the wind and run with scissors despite knowing how Lance would react to this news? Um, ok, maybe. Did I think he'd ever find out about the damn cat in the first place? No. I mean, come on. I live in Oklahoma. He's somewhere else that's not Oklahoma.

Here's the deal: I read one of Lance's blog entries regarding his current bumper crop o' kitties (I'm not going to link to it. If you care enough, go to his blog and dig through his archive yourself...), one of which he affectionately called Small Amount of Cat. I thought the name was funny and it kind of stuck in my head. Fast forward a few weeks. I come home one night and find this waiting for
me. You all remember this.

So, I'd read about Lance's Small Amount of Cat and I happened to call the new kitten that a few times. My wife thought it was hilarious and it stuck. I didn't discourage her from using it because, well, I never thought Lance would find out.

I mean, I live in Oklahoma. He lives somewhere else that's not Oklahoma.

After hearing Small Amount of Cat a few hundred times, it got old. And, we still hadn't come up with an official name for the animal. And, calling her something like shithead wasn't too PC. It was then that a brilliant thought occurred to me.

"Let's see, Small Amount of Cat (SAC)....hmm, can't go around calling her SAC...."

Well, I could, but I probably wouldn't still be married. Besides, my next door
neighbor uses that acronym for his man-room. To him, it means "Spousal Avoidance Center". After all of this, I was spending a lot of time in my own SAC after blaming my wife for all this trouble.

Small Amount of Cat worked, but I knew that was what Lance called his bit o' trouble. "What if I change the C to a K?" Ok, Small Amount of Kat. Once again, couldn't go around calling her SAK. OK, how about SAKI? What should the 'I' stand for? Then it popped into my head: Incorporated. SAKI. Don't ask. I don't know where it came from either. To quote Akroyd in Ghostbusters, "It just popped into my head..."

"Yep, that's it." And, I happen to be a big fan of sake, the Japanese rice wine.

So, it fit. Alternate spelling included. Besides, I don't ever remember seeing any kind of copyright symbol on Lance's Small Amount of Cat moniker. I simply did what most people do these days...steal an idea, make it better, and call it my own.

Of course, now I'm going to copywrite it.

To this day, I'm unsure as to how Lance found out about the entry at DailyKitten.com. My wife was beaming when she found out that the pic of Saki that she sent in was chosen. And then her spirits were bolstered further at the number of comments left in response to the posting. I read through them and pointed out that yes, the comments were great. Yes, there were a lot of them. Yes, they came from all over the world including Australia. However, I got The Look when I pointed out that all the comments were left by women. Sad, lonely, cat women with nothing better to do than coo over a picture of our kitten being caught in the act of wreaking havoc in our other cat's food dishes.

The wife was so happy about this posting (as if she'd won the damn lottery or
something) that she called her immediate family and sent the link to just about
everyone in her address book. That might have included Lance. She didn't seem to be able to remember doing that, however.

And then a few days later, unbeknownst to me, this thing is growing like a virus. Out of nowhere, I get a call from a colleague and friend of mine. The call goes kind of like this:

"Dude, you have to read Mercenary Words."

I'm thinking...cool, Lance has written something funny again. And, I needed a break anyway.

"Dude, this time it's about YOU!"

"Oh shit, now what....? Well, it's either gonna be really good or really bad..."

I was hoping he wasn't going to mention The Ultimate or that time with that thing in that place with those people.

"Man, is he mad at you...! Wow...."

"I think I'm gonna have to have a little talk with Mrs. Armenia when I get home..."

And, that's what happened, folks. The whole story. Yes, my life is complicated.

Judge for yourself whether the Lance's flaming of yours truly was justified rage or not. Personally, I don't think so. Still, all he needs to know is that the BeefTasty is on it's way. If that's not enough, I'll officially rename the cat (like they do the dogs on Westmister) to "Madam Lance Manion Rocks You Like A Hurricane!"

I did mention it was a female cat, right?

Peace out...!
-la