"There are no bedrooms. The sleeping area for Yoichiro, a painter and metal guitarist, is little more than a bed in a corner..."

"... with one real wall and three makeshift ones fashioned out of a painting rack, a stereo cabinet atop a dolly, a bookcase and a bureau. The area is decorated with stuffed animals sitting atop a canvas; Yoichiro’s drawing of a departed family cat; and photographs of his muse, Laura Ingalls from the 1970s television show 'Little House on the Prairie.' His parents’ sleeping area is tucked in a more secluded corner of the labyrinth, reached by navigating among yet more canvases, under a clothesline strung with coats and through a passage no wider than a goat path. On the walls hang fuse boxes and Yoichiro’s paintings. A typical morning begins with Toshihisa rising around 6:30 to make tea, which the Yodas use in a prayer ritual at a Shinto shrine that sits atop an old dresser. Then they work...."

From "A Family of Three in a SoHo Loft Without Walls/Toshihisa and Junko Yoda and their son, Yoichiro, have been making art in a 4,000-square-foot space on Mercer Street for 35 years, each following their own muse" (NYT)(gift link, because there are cool photos of artwork and arty interiors).

It's a big living space, and right in a beautiful part of NYC. A 53-year-old man lives with his 85- and 82-year-old parents. And no walls! "In lieu of walls, the Yodas have divided the vast space into an eccentric warren of 'rooms' with hundreds of stacked canvases and boxes, some adorned with a Japanese moving company’s logo of a mother cat carrying a kitten in her mouth."

You can see that logo — and the children's drawings it's based on — at "The Cat that Carried a Nation/What Kuroneko Teaches Us About Brand Trust" (Medley): "A black cat carrying her kitten. No text. No slogan. Just a gentle silhouette, frozen mid-step. In Japan, you don’t even need to see the full image. A flash of yellow and black, the curl of a tail, and you already know — it’s Kuroneko. And your package is in safe hands. What makes it brilliant isn’t just recognizability. It’s emotion...." 

"Republicans should not have to clean up the mess Andrew Cuomo and the Democrats created, and we will not allow the political class to interfere with voters or hijack our ballot."

Wrote the party chairs of each of 5 NYC boroughs, quoted in "Curtis Sliwa Has the Spotlight. He’s Not About to Give It Up. Mr. Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor of New York City, finds himself a major player in the race. He’s under heavy pressure to drop out" (NYT).

Doesn't Sliwa have a duty to stay in the race, having won the nomination and used the Republican Party's resources? What would that say to those who have donated to the Party? There's a line on the ballot for the Republican — is there to be no one on it?

I don't see the basis for replacing Sliwa with no one. But Trump is one of those who are leaning on him:

"Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine?"/"Cleopatra, of course."

"I was 15 when I read “Antony and Cleopatra.” I desperately wished for a gorgeous general who was willing to die for me and say, as he’s dying, 'I am dying, Egypt, dying.' I’ve always wanted a lover who would consider me an entire country.

A question to and answer from Rabih Alameddine, in "Rabih Alameddine Is Done With Dostoyevsky/Then: His favorite writer. Now: 'So earnest, so didactic, so humorless.' His own new novel is 'The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)'" (NYT).

Speaking of wanting to be considered an entire country, I also liked "My queen-size bed is divided into quadrants; I sleep in one, my two cats get one each, and one is for books."

"A rat walked across my foot the other day. They’re bold. You can stomp your foot all you want, but they’re New York City rats. They are not afraid."

Said one New Yorker, quoted in "Rats in a Stroller: The Central Park Playground Panic/City data actually suggest that rat sightings are declining. But horror stories are everywhere, and a single rat in a stroller is enough to set off a panic" (NYT).

The last 3 paragraphs of this article are about Curtis Sliwa:

"I knew that he loved the song because he played it at his rallies.... But I didn’t know he knew my name."

"It left me really gobsmacked that my name actually resides in his consciousness.... My theory is that Trump, on a deeper level, wants to connect. He’s trying to be seen and to be loved. So for a while there, I felt this kind of glimmer of hope that wouldn’t it be great if he could allow us, as theater artists, to share with him that which we know in storytelling to assist him to see things a bit differently."

Said Betty Buckley, quoted in "'Is Betty Buckley Still Alive?' Trump Asked. She Certainly Is. 'What’s happening these days,” the singer said at the start of a Joe’s Pub residency, 'is weird, and not cool'" (NYT).

"I still have hope for an awakening of awareness of community, of humanity, of the importance of life, the importance of every one of us. I’m appalled at the tech bros who think empathy is a weakness. Art is really important, because it’s there that we express these feelings — you can feel that connection — and I feel sure that that’s why Trump is moved by that song.... I would wish for him that he could build on that feeling that he has for the song, and translate that to good feelings for all others...."

If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is....

ADDED: I'm struck by Buckley's idea that Trump is "trying to be seen and to be loved." It made me think of my Mother's Day post about a question a NYT writer thought we might ask our mother: "Who made you feel seen when you were growing up?" I hope that Trump invites Buckley to sing — on some appropriate occasion — and that she allows herself to be seen by and to see this person she believes has a longing to be seen. But I would guess that, like most celebrities, she wouldn't be caught dead with him.

"Flow."

I watched this on Max over the weekend and recommend it for the beauty of the visuals — I love the light and the water — and the wordlessness of the storytelling. 

There are various animals — cat, dog, secretary bird, lemur — but I was interested to see the capybara, because I'd just been reading this New Yorker article by Gary Shteyngart, "How the Capybara Won My Heart—and Almost Everyone Else’s/It’s not hard to understand why capys have a cultlike following on Instagram and TikTok. I fell for the giant rodent decades ago."

Looking back at that now, I see that Shteyngart discusses the movie "Flow":

"I love you, Mittens... so very much."

Haters will say this is edited pic.twitter.com/fQqNOE9DaY

— Joel Fischer 🇺🇸 (@realJoelFischer) January 24, 2025

"Calling themselves 'TikTok refugees,' [American] users paid the 'cat tax' to join RedNote by posting cat photos and videos."

"They answered so many questions from their new Chinese friends: Is it true that in rural America every family has a large farm, a huge house, at least three children and several big dogs? That Americans have to work two jobs to support themselves? That Americans are terrible at geography and many believe that Africa is a country? That most Americans have two days off every week? Americans also posed questions to their new friends. 'I heard that every Chinese has a giant panda,'” an American RedNote user wrote. 'Can you tell me how can I get it?' An answer came from someone in the eastern province of Jiangsu: 'Believe me, it’s true,' the person deadpanned, posting a photo of a panda doing the laundry. I spent hours scrolling those so-called cat tax photos and chuckled at the cute and earnest responses. This is what the internet is supposed to do: connect people...."

From "TikTok, RedNote and the Crushed Promise of the Chinese Internet/China’s internet companies and their hard-working, resourceful professionals make world-class products, in spite of censorship and malign neglect by Beijing" (NYT).

There is always a dog story on the home page of The NYT and The Washington Post.

Watch. You'll see. And it's some of the most inane material.

For example, today, at The NYT, there's "Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?" and at The Washington Post, there's "This love letter to dogs praises them as 'creatures of commitment.'"

Obviously, they know there are readers who click for every dog. I am not one of those readers, and I won't even click through to get links. Every day, the story is the same: Dogs continue to be dogs.

And, no, there is no equal treatment for cats. A search for "cat" on the WaPo home page came up with nothing, and on the NYT home page, it got "Biden Awards Medal of Freedom to Pope Francis/President Biden, a Catholic, awarded the medal with distinction to the pontiff, to whom he has turned for personal guidance" and "Hams in the Belfry: How a Cash-Poor French Cathedral Fixed Its Organ/A dispute over a project to cure hams in a bell tower underscored the difficulties that churches in France face trying to pay for restorations."

If Althouse were to make a free-access link to one of those articles, which one would you want?

Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?

This love letter to dogs praises them as "creatures of commitment."

Biden Awards Medal of Freedom to Pope Francis

Hams in the Belfry: How a Cash-Poor French Cathedral Fixed Its Organ

 

pollcode.com free polls

"What was the Lie of the Year?"

Meade asked me just now, referring to the annual designation that appears in PolitiFact.

I thought for a moment, then said: "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack."

Meade said he thought PolitiFact would pick "They're eating the pets."

Hearing that, I agreed. Because PolitiFact would want to go against Trump, not Biden. And because "They're eating the pets" was such an extravagant and wild statement. It was interesting to talk about the instant Trump said it. But "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack" was much more of a lie. Because it was believed. For a long time. And it was completely momentous. It prevented a normal primary process for the Democrats and left them, in the end, with a candidate who couldn't win. 

I looked it up. PolitiFact made its Lie of the Year announcement 3 days ago. We hadn't noticed. Here: "'They’re eating the pets'/Trump, Vance earn PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for claims about Haitians."

PolitiFact, which for 16 years has issued a year-end lie of the year report, keenly understands that when emotions collide with facts, emotions often prevail. To wit: Trump increased his voter support in Clark County, Ohio, which includes Springfield, this year above what he garnered in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns....

Speaking of garnering... the brilliant song made from Trump's "pet" bit has garnered over 14 million views:

ADDED:

 

"This is repulsive to me. I mean, that anyone would do this to an animal. And an animal’s like a child. I don’t know if you understand that or not."

Said the judge, quoted in "Disgusted judge puts away woman who ate cat in stomach-turning video: 'You’ve embarrassed this nation'" (NY Post).

"Cozy, whimsical novels — often featuring magical cats — that have long been popular in Japan and Korea are taking off globally."

I'm reading "In Tumultuous Times, Readers Turn to 'Healing Fiction'... Fans say they offer comfort during a chaotic time" (NYT).

[Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series, “Before the Coffee Gets Cold,”] — set in a magical cafe in Tokyo where customers can travel back in time while their coffee cools — centers on ordinary people struggling with loss and regret who wish they could change the past....

Recent releases of cozy Japanese novels include Mai Mochizuki’s “The Full Moon Coffee Shop,” set in a magical coffee shop run by talking cats.... [There's also] “The Travelling Cat Chronicles,”.... “The Goodbye Cat,” and... “We’ll Prescribe You a Cat,” [and] “We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat”....

Cats are such a staple in healing fiction that Kawaguchi’s publishers in the United States and Britain added a fluffy brown cat to the covers of “Before the Coffee Gets Cold,” even though, in a break from tradition, cats are not central to his novels....

No mention of Trump (or Vance) in this article, published yesterday, but it's featured at the top of the home page like this... 

... so it's pretty obvious that the NYT is offering this Japanese fantasy material as self-care for its readers suffering from the Democratic Party's blistering defeat. The election that's come to such a bad ending for them featured cats — Trump said "They're eating the cats" and Vance had said "childless cat ladies." So maybe cat offers some charming help for the suffering Trump haters, some balance for that awful squirrel that controlled the American election from the afterlife (as depicted charmingly in a cool fantasy novel to be counted among my unwritten books).

And, yes, I see the headlines on the left-hand side of the page. They're really important, but I'm not blogging in order of importance.

ADDED: I love the framing of Donald Trump inside the coils of barbed wire. It's all that's left of the dream of imprisoning him.

Decorating your front lawn for Halloween in an election year.

I laughed but somebody else might be truly horrified (and by what, exactly?):

Watch Senator Fetterman deal with the question of fracking by repeatedly invoking the old eating-the-dogs-eating-the-cats foofaraw.

You may question your brain function:

Fetterman on Meet the Press in response to Welker's question about fracking: "Now in 2024, we're still trying to talk about fracking & the other side is talking about eating cat and geese and dogs... having a serious policy conversation when the other side is absolutely on fire." pic.twitter.com/5A4ZuBfAS4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2024

"When you guys wrote this song — you know, 'we'll make good pets' — you were talking about if these aliens came and visited us and we suddenly became a planet of pets."

Said Howard Stern to Perry Farrell in 1997:

I found that because I've been reading about Perry Farrell this week and it intersected in my head with all the loose talk about newcomers eating the pets of the people who live there in Ohio.

Here's the NYT story if you need to catch up on Perry Farrell's problems: "Jane’s Addiction to Cancel Tour After Onstage Fight/In a social media post, the rock band said it was halting its reunion tour after the group’s singer, Perry Farrell, hit its guitarist at a Boston show" ("Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau Farrell, said on Instagram after the concert that her husband had been upset throughout the tour about the band’s sound levels drowning out his vocals. He was suffering from tinnitus and a sore throat.... 'He was screaming just to be heard,' she said.")

Lyrics from the song "Pets": "Will there be another race/To come along and take over for us?/Maybe Martians could do better than we've done/We'll make great pets!"

There's always the question whether Martians will eat their pets. I come from the "Twilight Zone"/"To Serve Man" era of thinking about the aliens....

"Eating the Cats ft. Donald Trump (Debate Remix)."

I saw this yesterday afternoon, so maybe you've seen it already:

Let's see more credit to the creator, The Kiffness, who appends this note about his motives: "Disclaimer: as a South African, I am non-partisan in my support for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the US elections. I just thought the clip of Trump was funny and I wanted to make it into a song that could make a difference in the lives of animals. Whatever your political offiliation [sic], dogs & cats unite us!"

And watch some other things from The Kiffness. They're not all about cats, but some are — like "Ha Hee" and "I Go Meow" and "The Kiffness X Alugalug Cat 2.0 (Please Go Away)."

Here's the Spotify playlist for The Kiffness.

"Everybody loves their kitty cat and lets it run around outside. It’s just one cat—how many birds can it kill?"

"Well, every year in the U.S. one billion songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats. It’s one of the leading causes of songbird decline in North America. But no one gives a shit because they love their own individual kitty cat."

Says a character in Jonathan Franzen's novel "Freedom" (commission earned).

Something to contemplate in the context of this week's foofaraw about non-native human beings snatching up kitty cats. True or false, I don't know.

But I want to examine the outrage. Why are the cats out where they can be caught? The cats are an invasive and predatory species, and the human beings — who style themselves victims when their cats go missing — are responsible for allowing them to invade the habitat of the native birds.

"15 Countries where people eat dogs and cats."

From Taazakhabar News Bureau.

Highlights:

10. Canada: Dog meat is legally sold at restaurants in Canada.... Food animals are “mammal or bird raised in captivity–whose meat or meat or by-products were for human consumption.” So to obtain a license you have to prove that the dogs were raised explicitly for food and not keep as pets....

12. Switzerland: A small percentage of Swiss population secretly eats cats, dogs, and horses. Eating cat and dog meat is part of Christmas celebrations. While there are no commercial slaughterhouses for cats and dogs, farmers kill the animals themselves.... Swiss cantons of Appenzell and St. Gallen have a tradition of eating dog meat, preserving it as sausages, as well as using it for medicinal purposes.

"Remember: No eatin' dogs and cats!"

NEW: Full exchange of the incident leading up to Joe Biden putting on a Trump 2024 hat.

Biden: "Sure, I'll autograph [a hat]."

Man: "You remember your name?"

Biden: "I don't remember my name... I'm slow."

Man: "You're an old fart."

Biden: "Yeah, I'm an old guy... You would… pic.twitter.com/yQcCXmtzIZ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 12, 2024

"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there."

"And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far -- the reason they go is they like what I say. They want to bring our country back. They want to make America great again. It's a very simple phrase. Make America great again. She's destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success. We'll end up being Venezuela on steroids."

From "Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript."

Let's say you're a person who really hates chaos. Which way to you go?

If I had musical skills, I'd concoct something using that line over and over: "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there."

Let's say you're a person who really loves cats. Where do you go? Cat ladies?

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