Man's Face Mostly Licked Off by Demon Cat

It was a dark and furry night in the Mitchell household when the demon cat, Pico, emerged from the litter box, bits of kitty litter dropping from his clawed paws, green saliva dripping from his fanged jaws, whiskers ablaze with unnatural intent, and slunk towards the sleeping Biff.

Reaching the slumbering author's face, he began to lick with his barbed tongue until Biff awoke, horrified upon looking in the mirror held by the cat that his face, like his hair, was mostly gone.

Biff ran screaming from the room and locked himself in a closet full of oriental weapons as the cat purred viciously just inches away. Biff had a thought: There's weapons here. I can protect myself. I think.

Whereupon he threw the door open and emerged half faceless with a pair of Sai. The demon cat, Pico, quickly retreated to the litter box ... and remains there to this day waiting, always waiting, for Biff to sleep.

Biff protects himself against the demon cat, Pico. (Photo by Ann)

The Tourist-Eating Whales of Grand Manan

Just got back from Grand Manan and nearly a week of whale watching, sunning and flying kites on the beach, body surfing till our toes froze off, and camping on cliff sides. Grand Manan is an island off the coast of southern New Brunswick, its most recent claim to fame being the burning down of a crack house by a gang of irate locals, giving the country’s prime minister an excuse to implicitly condone the action (much to the chagrin of every decent cop in the country, I would imagine) on the grounds that it shows that Canadians want tougher laws.

Hmm, well … maybe if the cops were to spend less time on pot and more time on crack, we’d be able to get by on the laws we already have. On the other hand, the laws to do that would piss off the prime minister’s boss to the south.

Now for the bright side … it looks like Harper finally sees some merit in the Maritimes being part of Canada. But I think the good folks on Grand Manan would like to just see the whole thing go away. In fact, here’s the way they put it …

But Grand Manan is one of those places with a jagged coast line and lots of cover for covert operations like smuggling and is suspected of being the entry point for more than one questionable cargo. I caught one of these ships sneaking through the fog bringing in a load of tourists, many of whom I suspect were planning on storming into crack houses and drinking all the poor drug dealers’ beer.

Yes, the prime minister has made it clear, it’s open house on drug dealers’ beer and, on the way out, you burn the house down. Do it today in your community … for tougher laws. I mean, what’s the country coming to in Grand Manan? Some streets are safe for no man …

My daughter and I took no chances. We hired a well-known island body guard, Steven Sea Gull …

All joking aside, Grand Manan is a slice of paradise. We stayed at the Hole-in-the-Wall camp ground … right on the edge of a cliff. Here’s what the cliff looks like (we’re right in the center, just right of the bright downward slash …

Here’s my beautiful sophisticated teenage daughter, Cassie, at the picnic table in front of our tent. Notice the proximity of the cliff edge over which she threatened to throw me if I ever called her my sweet little girl again …

This is the view from our picnic table. Notice the irreversible first step ...

We watched boat after boat smuggling in tourists all day. We even saw a bunch of tourists on a sail boat being led back and forth by a Minke whale that was trying to get them to use up all their wind so that he could board the boat and eat them. They disappeared around a very jutting promontory before I could get a picture of this surprisingly common phenomenon.

The cliffs on the northern tip of the island are the highest, and again, little or no railings.

And talk about your idyllic fishing village …

And, of course, no self-respecting island paradise is complete without celebrities. On one of our walks along the cliff edges, Cass and I encountered Peter and Beth Powning. Beth is one of Canada’s leading novelists and Peter is one of Canada’s leading artists. They were roaming the cliff sides, filling up on inspiration.

If you go to Grand Manan, be sure to stop in at the bakery on Route 776 (you can’t miss it … it has windows) for great coffee, bread to die for, and (if you get there early enough) cinnamon rolls that will give you wet dreams. They seem to have a lifetime subscription to the Times Literary Supplement. It’s a must stop for artists, photographers, writers, and beautiful sophisticated teenage daughters …

A trip out to the Swallowtail Lighthouse is a must. Again, no railings. At the end of my 10 K run, I ran out to the lighthouse.

There’s a steep concrete stairway that goes down seemingly forever. On the way back, it goes up. I passed a group of tourists on my way back who chided me about the climb I was in for. I assured them I would die before reaching the top. Amazingly, I took the steps two at a time and practically sprinted to the top where I did the Rocky thing while the tourists a thousand miles below cheered and applauded. Shoulders back and chest out, stride long and purposeful, I ran just past their view and coughed and hacked and nearly threw up. But I didn’t die.

Later that day, we were on the ferry back to the mainland with a boat load of suspicious looking tourists, many of whom I suspected of having been eaten by Minke whales.

Learn more about Grand Manan Island.

Learn more about the Hole-in-the-Wall campground.

I’ll post more pics when I get the film from the other camera developed.

I Survived the 2006 Maritime Writers’ Workshop and Literary Festival – The Head Cracked from Ear to Ear

By the end of the week, madness was upon us. Our blood was fire. Our minds had long since gone home. We were poor little lambs with sharp teeth and claws and a gnawing thirst for wine and beer. We were writers on a tear.

Plath grabbed the food from Vonnegut’s plate, threw it into the air, and yelled, “Watch me catch it with my teeth!”

Barth was astounded when Plath actually caught the entire meal with her teeth.

Seating for the live music was scarce, so everyone was forced to take off their heads and attach them to music notes. Not surprisingly, this solved the problem of seating.

Unfortunately, there was confusion in the reattachment of heads.

Ionesco (dressed in drag) points out to Faulkner, that Woolf’s head has been falsely reattached … the dimensions are all wrong. Faulkner maintains that Ionesco (in drag) is going rhino again.

Next: Vacation pics of Grand Manan … when I get back from vacation.

I Survived the 2006 Maritime Writers’ Workshop and Literary Festival – Partying with Ionesco (in drag)

It was brutal and inhuman. The bastards expected us to get up early, go to lectures with our eyes open, ask intelligent questions, go to workshops and do … writing stuff, and then hold down lunch, followed by more workshops and one-on-ones and readings and more lectures and supper and … and … they made us stay up all night and party.

It was awful.

Apparently, it was in the fine print in the contract: Thou shalt imbibe much and cast much loudness of mirthful nature upon the firmament. If thou shalt not, thou shalt surely be dubbed a sorry metaphor and shalt surely die. Horribly.

The things they don’t tell you when you sign on the dotted line.

In this photo, Coleridge metaphors Wordsworth in no uncertain imagery. Shortly after, Wordsworth spontaneously overflowed. Horribly.

As Wordsworth overflowed, Sarte bashed him repeatedly with existrhetoricalism all about the ears and brow. It was horrible.

Mabel Dodge, caught winding up just before plastering Turgenev for taking Wordworth’s side.

Turgenev somehow managed to crawl to a wall where he wrote a poem under a false name. He then spontaneously combusted and we drank his blood.

Ionesco (still in drag) pours voodoo elixir into everybody’s glass when they're not looking. Strangely, this was actually in Ionesco’s contract.

Under the influence of Ionesco’s vile voodoo vintage, Coleridge grew an extra thingy between his legs. It played the best of Willie Nelson while Coleridge played the blues. Nobody noticed the discrepancy until Coleridge tried to sit down and finish Kubla Khan.

Next: Plath gets out of line and heads are lost.