Catpaw – diary of an angry cat

Rats – I still have to work! No luck in my quest to become a millionaire with a minimum amount of work.

I’ve reworked my blog in a few different ways and still my earnings to date sit at .73 cents. My page hits are up a bit, but no movement on my ads. I’ve been listing the blog on all sorts of search engines and trying to link back to everything I can find, as you can see by the growing line of link back tags on the side of the page.

I’ve started tailoring the bidverister ads so they suit my site a bit more. Some of the ads were comical, some were annoying. Just how much gambling is going on out there in the world? I estimate about 1/3 of the ads I’ve reviewed had to do with gambling and or make money quick. I’ve denied all those ads. I like Bidvertiser because it gives me the option to preview the ad and decide whether it is appropriate for my blog. I not only approve the category, I approve the actual ad.

I also have added some ad links to sites I actually use. I have 2 links to amazon because I have used the company and like having the books on my page. Only time will tell if they are successful.

You might have noticed I have a new window that boasts my blog is worth $1,129.08. I put that in because it makes me giggle. The dollar value is based on the number of links on a site and some sort of complicated formula. What isn’t stated is the time frame. Is this a day? a month? a minute? a year? I prefer a minute.

At .73 cents a month I’m guessing this figure is based on every 100 years. Links mean nothing. I could clutter this site up with all sorts of links and still have nothing to show for it. (As some of you may have witnessed last week in my rather short lived experiment with inline links) The value of the links – what the products are -make all the difference. I’m not done tinkering. You can’t offer viewers just anything. Advertising cat traps on this site would be not be smart. Advertising catnip, maybe. I’ll find that magic formula of products and viewers.

And when I do, I’ll send all of you a postcard from France, UK, Thailand, Nepal, Hong Kong, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, oh hell from everywhere.

Oh to be rich rather than witty and charming…

OCD – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Catpaw – small, furry tech support that suffers from the above
Bed – something I should have hidden under today

I knew this day was not going to be good. I just knew it. I went to my first customer of the day. Difficult person to teach. No problem. I’m tough.

She has a dog.
The dog often has an aroma.
I’ve learned to handle it. As I said, I’m tough.
Evidently not tough enough.

This morning Rover came trotting up, tail wagging wanting a pat on the head. So I obliged. She licked my hand and I patted her and wrinkled my nose – she wasn’t just aromatic – she stunk. You could see the stink fumes floating off of her. She really, really, really stunk. I looked up at customer and she apologised for dog’s strong smell. “She’s kind of smelly. She found a dead rat in the park this morning and was rolling around on it. I sprayed her with some perfume but it didn’t seem to help.” Great now Rover smelt like a cheap hooker in a mangy fur coat.

Couldn’t you have told me before I had patted dog? I looked at my hand and immediatly started to flash onto the dead rat. I needed to wash NOW. I needed to wash multiple times. I wanted to shower and change. I wanted to be in a different city.

No matter how many times I washed my hands, I still felt like I had rat hands all day long. I obsessed about that rat all day. It sure didn’t help my migraine either. I stopped to get something to eat later in the day and all I could think was “I don’t want to touch that with my rat hand!”

All the OCD meds in the world couldn’t help the massive attack I had today. I could have taken a truck load of the stuff and I’d still be washing my hands and rubbing the spot where rover rubbed against me.

Tell me tomorrow will be better. No more rats please.

No rants today. Too busy… migraine… going to see the ultimate customer from hell … crabby … not happy…  would rather be stinking rich than so charming.

Steven Truscott has been acquitted of the rape and murder of schoolmate Lynne Harper – crimes he was sentenced to hang for in 1959 at the age of 14.

If you are interested in the details, Google Steven Truscott and you will see a lot of activity today. After living with this for decades, Truscott finally won his court case. He was sentenced Sept. 30 1959 and set to hang Dec. 8, 1959 – the crime was committed in the summer of 1959. Swift action, not swift justice.

The trial and conviction have been cloaked in controversy since the event. The community of Clinton was divided by the crime. CFB Clinton (Canadian airforce base) was equally divided. Truscott was the son of an enlisted man, 12 year old Lynne Harper was an officer’s daughter. The divide between the classes was never more evident. Justice was denied both sides.

A known sex offender who served on the base was never questioned – although he had been picked up and charged with attempting to lure young girls into his car just weeks before Lynne Harper died.

Another known offender was also never questioned.

The entire investigation was conducted with an impressive set of blinders on.

Truscott was convicted before the trial. He was 14 and on death row. Calmer minds overruled the hasty death sentence and converted it to life. Truscott was paroled in ’67 and lived quietly with a new name until 2000 when he reentered public life and asked to have the conviction overturned. He has steadfastly denied the crime for 47 years and wanted to reclaim his name and his past.

It has been a hard battle, but he won a partial victory – his case was found to be a miscarriage of justice thereby throwing out the conviction. But the courts stopped short of declaring him not guilty. I would have loved this, but there is no evidence left to use. No evidence, no retrial.

Poor Lynne’s body was dug up a few years back in an attempt to find DNA but there was none. She had nothing left to give. Many of the suspects and participants are now dead, and after 47 years memories are not as sharp. Many of the children who were so browbeaten by the police in 1959 may not even be sure of what really happened – eye witness testimony is shaky at the best of times.

Much has happened in the intervening years. 1959 is a lifetime away. People have moved in and out of the Clinton area, CFB Clinton is gone, closed long ago, the murder site has become some sort of a gruesome tourist spot for the ghoulish, Truscott is a father and grandfather, people involved in this, now pivotal moment in Canadian Law, moved on with their lives.

Everyone moved on except for Lynne Harper. Dead at 12, now a footnote in history, just a small grainy photo to remind us that there was no justice for her and there never will be. Her family must have suffered greatly. I often wonder about them. I hope they found peace in the past 47 years. Somehow I doubt that. To them, she will always be their little girl, captured in time at the age of 12. No career or family for her. No dreams. No future. She has no personality to all of us that watched the Truscott case unfold over the past decades. She is simply the victim.

Who were you Lynne Harper?

What did cats do before the advent of freshly laundered clothes?

Where did this instinct to find piles of fresh clothes come from?

How did they develop the instinct to curl up on the laundry heaps?

Is this behaviour genetic or is it passed down from generation to generation?

Is that why they became housecats? So they could sit on our laundry?

If you are looking for me this week, just search for the person on the TTC with the furry shirt.

Well I finally saw the last episode of Friends last night. And yes to answer your smart ass comments – I have lived under a rock for the past 10+ years. I never saw the show the first time around and for some reason never listened to all the talk about the show, even the finale.

Actually, I never really cared about the show. Wasn’t until this past spring that I actually watched an episode. Kind of got hooked on the series. I’ve been watching them in a rather chaotic order – just as the TV stations dish them out. I finally saw the first episode last week. And last night I saw the last episode.

My thoughts? Was Rachel NUTS! She passed up a chance to live in Paris! I can’t get past that. The audience was hooting and cheering when she came into the room to say she was staying in NY to live with Ross and I was shouting “Get back on the damned airplane!” I guess I’m not a soppy romantic. The audience was obviously routing for her to get back and stay with Ross but

it was PARIS, woman!

I would pull out my own wisdom teeth for a chance to live and work in Paris. I’d do the same to work in most places as long as its interesting and lots of history. Paris is right at the top of my list. But Rachel choose to stay.

It was PARIS, woman!

How many ways can that be said.

She was nuts. Tell Ross to pack his dino bones in a big trunk and meet her there.

I’m going to mutter about this for a long time so you better go back to work and leave me stewing.