“The hamster was not dancing - it was shivering.”
I’m sure some of you have that boss/coworker/roommate/civilian-on-duty/neighbor who can’t help but leave you little notes passive aggressively reminding you of a neglected duty.
Send them the link to this funny site, which they won’t think is funny because it hits a little too close to home.
Go ahead. It’s Friday! Get loose. Get passive aggressive.
A friend of mine brought up this find at the bar awhile back while we were boozing and bemoaning the end of Your Daily Awesome (obviously, this was pre-Arctic Oak. A dark, dark age).
If you go to Awesome Tapes from Africa, you can painlessly download and listen to lots of African tapes you’ve probably never heard. For free. None of that iTunes one dollar bullshit.
If your a music lover or culturally bicurious, this is a scoop for you.
Dear Arctic Oak Readers,
This week I began actively supporting a small movement in my apartment building.
My apartment building is a tall, 6 apartment joint with a common hallway. My neighbors have turned this hallway into a giant cat playground. Anyway, one neighbor started doing this - letting their (multiple) cats into the hallway for playdates or exercise or whatnot. It was spontaneous, I think, and you know… once the Joneses started doing it…
Despite having no cats of my own, a medium severity cat allergy and a father who accelerated when he saw cats in the road, I really think the hallway as common cat ground is super in this folksy way that I suspect it may help people want to shoot each other less.
It does startle me to the point of letting out a small scream when I open my apartment door and there are 2 or more cats on sitting on the landing, darting away or towards me or lurking under the plants. This is just because I am not expecting them. And, frankly, the darting behavior scans as suspicious.
I haven’t touched one of them yet, but I am thinking about it. I step around them. I walk softly and try not to scare them. I shoo them away from the door when I leave so I don’t let them escape.
Though, it has occurred to me that if I were a real friend of the cats, maybe I would help them escape. They certainly do make an obvious dash for the door every day. I try not to be anthroprocentric and assume this means they feel trapped. They probably just saw something shiny, I tell myself. And in the interest of plain ole’ good neighborliness, I am suppressing all thoughts of staging an uprising (but, really, who isn’t these days?).
Sometimes, I think people should encounter animals in more spontaneous ways. I feel like my day would be better if, sometimes, I just saw, say, a pig sitting on the corner.
But that is more there than here.
In sum, I am 100%, unsarcastically ‘pro’ this new cathouse apartment hallway for reasons I have not yet begun to uncover.
Yours,
Arctic Oak
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