This dog has a super power; she builds pillow forts.
Honest to god, she’ll stomp around in a pile of throw pillows until she hollows out a nest. Admittedly, it’s a somewhat lame super power. She has a more impressive one, which is the ability to singe nostril hairs and clear rooms with her terrible farts.
Do you or your pet have an even more impressive super power? Please feel free to discuss that — or anything else.
jibeaux
We have a chihuahua who can climb a chain link fence like a cat. She will also lie on your lap and swat idly at you with her paws like a cat. She is sort of a Bizarro Skippyjon Jones.
Comrade Mary
Soooo … Rob Ford. Damn. Rob fucking Ford.
piratedan
I have a cat named Blueberry who is a hypnotist, she keeps finding ways to get me to cough up tiny bits of shredded chicken or slivers of turkey lunchmeat.
schrodinger's cat
My boss kitteh, can figure out when hubcat and I are going to have a fight. He will meow musically in a rather forlorn and sad fashion. Very cute. Has stopped many an altercation.
Betty did you see the lol I made you when you posted the cheesecake recipe?
Alexandra
Our (long-dead) black cat — who had little vampire teeth and occasionally dribbled — without any training, used to leap and pull on handles to open doors.
However, he was too fond of sitting in the street and one fateful summer evening, got run over by a car.
Phoenix rising
Our newer model of dog, 5 yr old Dane, rearranges the living room if we leave her brother, the 16 pound poodle mix, roaming for a day. Couch over there, end table in dining room…etc. Is redecorating a power, a talent or a side effect of their play that I should be grateful hasn’t resulted in disaster for the TV?
schrodinger's cat
Is that Daisy Mayhem? She looks so sad, why you make goggie sad?
Phoenix rising
Open thread with a poll: my editor suggested that marketing suggested that the book I’m writing (memoir in a genre that is heavily Xtian) be published under an androgynous first name. Her theory apparently is that it will blow the doors off if my intended audience thinks I’m a dude.
So…who here thinks I’m a dude?
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I missed that somehow! Ha! And that’s about exactly the right amount of cherries too!
Phoenix rising
Open thread with a poll: my editor suggested that marketing suggested that the book I’m writing (memoir in a genre that is heavily straight married Christian) be published under an androgynous first name. Her theory apparently is that it will blow the doors off, if my intended audience thinks I’m a dude.
So…who here thinks I’m a dude?
Higgs Boson's Mate
“The Story of Film: An Odyssey” is on Netflix. It is an amazing, informative series of documentaries on the history of movies. Although I am nothing of a cineaste I found that the series not only turned me on to some great movies it added immensely to my appreciation of movies in general.
fastamdsloppy
My black lab can catch a tennis-ball pitched fast and overhand. I didn’t “teach” her this, she just started doing it. That’s pretty much the definition of a super power right there.
(I did teach her to return it to my palm after every throw, but that doesn’t have the pizzazz of catching those fast pitches)
Phoenix rising
Open thread: my editor suggested that marketing suggested that the book I’m writing (memoir in a genre that is heavily straight married Christian) be published under an androgynous first name. Her theory apparently is that it will blow the doors off, if my intended audience thinks I’m a dude.
So…who here thinks I’m a dude?
Phoenix rising
Who here agrees that the iPad interface has an error?
Fester Addams
As best I can tell, our golden can actually hear the sound produced by a sharp knife bisecting a tomato from two rooms away. Even if I’m careful not to clunk the blade against the cutting board, he still hears it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Phoenix rising:
For all I know you’re a super intelligent blancmange from the planet Skyron in the Galaxy of Andromeda.
Vlad
When I was a kid, we had a cat who could answer the phone. He’d knock it off of its cradle and meow into the mouthpiece, like he was talking to the person on the other end. He’d hang it up when he was done, too, but after answering two or three calls he’d get pissed off at the inconvenience and leave it off the hook.
He used to open doors by turning the knobs, too, and other stuff you wouldn’t expect. He was more like a brother than a pet a lot of the time.
peej
I had a cat who could (and would) flush the toilet. I’d be in another room and hear the toilet flush (and there wasn’t another human in the apartment). I swear he did it just to see the water go down like a little kid. That’s when I got in the habit of leaving the lid down on the seat.
Phoenix rising
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: And if they bought books, that would be helpful input. Thanks.
Gex
Casey opens Gladware by holding the dish with his paws and peeling off the top by grabbing the tab with his teeth. He will also open a back pack, grab a granola bar, open the wrapper neatly, and eat the granola bar. Unsurprisingly his powers are food-focused.
Shortstop
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: That sounds wonderful. Thanks for the tip.
Our late, much-missed heeler mix, Norm, learned to silently paw open a lower cabinet and thoroughly nose through the garbage. He repeatedly pulled this off undetected by us as we sat on the other side of the kitchen island, eight feet away.
ruemara
@Phoenix rising: Your Phoenix Rising seems very masculine.
Betty Cracker
@Phoenix rising: I figured you were a woman. I don’t know how I know that. I suspect you wrote something that clued me in.
You briefly described the premise of your book recently, and it sounds very intriguing, but it also sounds personal and family dynamics-specific enough that it would soon become obvious you’re a woman, even if the name on the cover is androgynous, right?
cckids
My tortoiseshell cat has psychic threat powers. If either of her brothers or the dog (also male) is sleeping in a spot she wants, she stands by them silently & just stares. After 20-30 seconds MAX, they startle awake, look at her & leave. Instantly. And she gets her spot.
cckids
@Vlad: Stories like yours make me think about reincarnation.
Phoenix rising
@Betty Cracker: Thanks for the feedback to all.
Yeah, that’s the problem. The editor sent a sample chapter to marketing and they thought it was from the wrong book, because it was obviously written by a guy named Bob. Is how this came up.
AnnaN
Have you tried changing her diet? Sounds as if she’s allergic to something in the food and it’s upsetting her stomach. If the stench is as bad as you say, she’s probably got a lot of intestinal distress.
Otherwise, awwwwwwwww.
AnnaN
Have you tried changing her diet? Sounds as if she’s allergic to something in the food and it’s upsetting her stomach. If the stench is as bad as you say, she’s probably got a lot of intestinal distress.
Otherwise, awwwwwwwww.
Tokyokie
Marvin the Siamese has the amazing ability to remove unwanted contents from purses and bags. Along with the wanted contents.
Flying Squirrel Girl
I have a Rhodesian ridgeback/black mouth cur mix that managed to turn a box of organic chicken broth into a fountain that squirted when she stepped on it. I suspect it was an accident, though.
scav
@Phoenix rising: Well, Currer, Ellis and Acton might be judged androgynous enough by now. Good to know book marketing is still firmly in the 1840s, with twists.
Has Marketing offered,to rescript the personal experiences so,they too are more conformable to stereotypes and salable?
Good luck though, whatever you publish under, in gold lettering.
Hawes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw1C5T-fH2Y
It’s pretty funny. ‘Cause it’s true.
Tata
The new kitten has been with us sixteen days now. Her name is Darla, but we mostly call her Monkey. She taught her tiny self how to walk up and down stairs. On Sunday, she hunted and caught a moth.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Phoenix rising:
On a more serious note, I’m not very good at discerning someone’s gender from the content of their comments unless it’s something overt like “I’m the mother of two girls.” My dad was a career Navy man I was raised by my mother and I spent some time in my formative years in the company of her and her friends. It may be that my experience desensitized me to whatever differences there might be.
I am an avid reader whose interests range from William Burroughs to St. Augustine. I have read vivid, muscular prose written by women and sensitive, painfully revealing prose written by men. The gender of the writer isn’t a concern for me.
burnspbesq
That great champion of freedom, Rand Paul, has introduced legislation (S. 877) that would restore one of America’s core freedoms, the freedom to evade U.S. income tax by hiding income and assets offshore. The bill would repeal FATCA in its entirety, along with some related reporting-and-disclosure rules.
In case anyone was still confused as to which side the Randroid is really on.
PhoenixRising
@scav: That’s the hard part. The personal experience is apparently salable in proportion to how many others can identify with it. And really this story is 2% about how gay I am (very), 98% about adoption, which is something a lot more straight couples do/are considering.
The audience I want to reach is that last category, and I honestly don’t care what they think about me or my family–as long as they think, Hey, that could happen to us.
So when it was pointed out to me that the first 97 pages have no markers about my gender ID and many indicators that I’m a dude, I thought…well now. The hesitation I have is about offering 40 pages free online, which is the technique that’s current, and selling books to folks who will be pissed at page 98 because they feel misled. This has ethical and practical dimensions, obvs.
The Red Pen
Yesterday, Glenn Beck announced that he was going to disclose something “huge” that would “take down” the Obama administration. The Freepers were wondering what it was or if it would be another Beck fizzle. Today, they’re wondering WTF he was talking about because he didn’t announce anything. Best comment:
gogol's wife
@Gex:
Is that a cat or dog? Amazing either way, but I’m guessing a dog.
This isn’t really a superpower, but I’ve had two gray tabbies, the late lamented Pookie and the still thriving Sasha, who could/does always sense when I was feeling sick and would/does sit on my legs until I felt better. Then they would/do go back to scratching me viciously if I pet them the wrong way.
burnspbesq
@Phoenix rising:
Can’t help you on this one. The first thing I do after BJ loads on my iPad is get out of the mobile version.
Stella B.
I had a German shorthair who could open the refrigerator door. She was a fat shorthair. Her colleague, also a GSP, would drop her ball from the top of the stairs so that she could run down the stairs and retrieve it herself. She preferred my limited throwing skills, though.
Shortstop
@AnnaN: We had a pooch who was an abominable farter. We solved the prob with a tablespoon of plain yogurt every day. Her gut flora got happier and so did we. However, some dogs are just gas giants (we considered naming that one Jupiter for this trait plus a huge spot on her back), and their GI tracts are fine.
PhoenixRising
@Betty Cracker: Have you noticed any pattern to the fart production? We put the big dog’s kibble in a cool, dry space as an experiment in following the directions for storage, and for the first 95% of that bag she was a lot less stinky. Might be worth a try if you can find a cool dry space in your region.
ranchandsyrup
Not my dog but this dog’s b-hole looks a lot like Jesus. http://jezebel.com/this-dogs-butthole-literally-looks-like-jesus-513072075
Higgs Boson's Mate
My Maltese/Poodle mix doesn’t fart very often. When he does it startles him and he stares buttward for a few seconds with his ears in the “WTF” position.
Karen in GA
Here’s the moment when my psycho calico acquired a superpower.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HirAJWsvm-A
ranchandsyrup
Our aussie cattle dog builds pillow forts, can open doors and will leap up on any surface to knock off crockpots or any sort of food to share with his two maltese partners in crime.
MattR
@Hawes: That is great.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Hawes:
Excellent. Thank you. The one about the catbox reminded me of P.K. Dick’s short story “Roog.”
Josie
I have a corgi who can bounce from now until Sunday outside the door. We can let Duncan out to do his business, wait a few minutes, open the door and he is bouncing several feet in the air. If we close the door and come back later, he is still bouncing when we open the door. This happens until we let him in. We feel that he could go on forever.
Pluky
@peej: More likely he preferred fresh cool water in the bowl before drinking therefrom.
Pluky
@Shortstop: Our Portie loved going through trash, so we put a door on the closet with the bin. He learned to open the door. We put a latch on the door. He learned to knock open the latch. We put a lock on the latch. He ripped the door off it’s hinges.
donnah
Our foxhound beagle mix Wendy is super smart. When the whole family is home, there’s no spot on the couch for her, meaning she has to give up her usual place on the end. This pisses her off.
We were all watching a movie one night and she was grumpily lying on the floor (the indignity!) when she jumped up, went to the front door, and woofed to be let out. We were engrossed in the movie and didn’t answer her, so she woofed again, and added a scratch on the door with her paw, to say I Mean Business. So I asked my youngest son to get up and put her out, at which point she doubled back around and jumped into his empty spot.
And then looked around like, “What?”
MattR
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: The cat version is great as well.
Svensker
@Comrade Mary:
That was the first info I’d seen saying the cops had been investigating the video before the Gawker/Star expose.
Wow.
Svensker
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
You know who else is a superintelligent blancmange?
Svensker
@PhoenixRising:
If you use a gender-neutral name and folks decide you’re a dude because of that…
That was the whole premise of Left Hand of Darkness and I wasn’t pissed at Ms. Le Guin when the reveal came. It made me laugh.
I HAVE noticed that some men won’t read “women” books, so gender neutral might up your audience.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Svensker:
Edward Snowden?
Higgs Heads for Hills. Hix Hunt Hotly.
Mnemosyne
@Phoenix rising:
Hmm. I can understand your reflexive disgust at the idea, because it probably seems like the editor is asking you to lie about who you and your wife are, but I can also understand the editor’s point that having a non-specific first name on the cover might get some people to pick up the book before their OMG it’s about GAY PEOPLE! filter kicks in.
Would you be comfortable using your initials (which is the other time-honored dodge)? Remember, the reason J.K. Rowling didn’t publish as Joanna Rowling is that they figured out that boys would refuse to buy a book with a woman’s name on the cover, but once it was a success, they didn’t care anymore.
Mnemosyne
@PhoenixRising:
Honestly, you may want to re-work those pages and put a few gender identifiers in, because that’s a good point that readers may be overly confused about who’s who right when you don’t want them to be. Having an ambiguous/androgynous name on the front cover is to get people to pick the book up and get drawn into the story without preconceptions, not to try and conceal things within the story.
Glidwrith
@burnspbesq: Porfavor – how do you get out of the mobile version? I have been silently suffering since the new look came on-line. Yes, I am utterly without computer-grokking.
bemused
@The Red Pen:
I thought his vocal cords were paralyzed or was that just Beckish drama to get attention like his “worst” hemorrhoid surgery in medical history?
WereBear
@Phoenix rising: Roll with it. The important thing is to get read.
I struggled with one book because it was action-packed and suspenseful and I refused to market it with a man’s name… and I think it hurt me with editors. So learn from my mistake.
I now have a male pen name picked out for my next shot at fiction… once I have the time.
And when it comes to superpowers, my cat Tristan can pout. I mean, cats get pouty, but Tristan is the first one I have seen who actually pooches out his lower lip.
Mnemosyne
Keaton has built actual pillow forts for himself — like, dragged the pillows into place and leaned them against each other. It’s pretty impressive for a cat.
Charlotte’s superpower is meowing. She’s able to come up with the strangest combinations of sounds. We’re still not sure if she’s actually trying to attract our attention or if she’s just amusing herself.
Annie’s superpower is to use her astonishing beauty to fake us into thinking she never does anything she’s not supposed to. Her favorite dodge is to lure G out of the home office and then take over his office chair. That one never gets old.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Really? I’ve seen many pictures of him on your website, but never one of him doing that.
ranchandsyrup
@Glidwrith: Go to bottom of the page. Should be a button for mobile/ipad version. Click to off.
PhoenixRising
@WereBear: @Mnemosyne: @Svensker:
Thanks to all of you. I hoped only for feedback on the statement, This sounded like a dude to me, and I got oh so much more.
I’m going to go with the suggestion from the editor, initials. She didn’t suggest that anything else had to change, or that we’re hiding anything. This market niche is entirely female and heavily political-Christian, so I think once they’re hooked they’ll forgive. If not, I already have cancer…so they can pray for me all they like! It’ll work!
Thank you again.
Another Halocene Human
Did anybody else catch major dickus Glenn Greenwald bragging that Edward Snowden knows the names of covert CIA operatives?
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/51362794#52186575
Look, I’m not going to pretend to understand national security or national secrecy or even really getting much of the point of it but like Stan Lee said, with great power comes great responsibility and in my life experience so far, shooting off your fucking mouth like that is not only more than likely complete cockgobbling bullshit but also highly harmful and irresponsible. I don’t… I don’t even. And none of this shit storm has fuckall to do with the PATRIOT Act, so stop pretending that it does. Fuck.
Another Halocene Human
@peej: Probably part Siamese or another of those super intelligent cats.
I have a domestic shorthair. She is dumb as a post.
Glidwrith
@ranchandsyrup: Thanks!
Another Halocene Human
@burnspbesq: I suppose that might also assist in hiding assets during the malpractice suit as well.
Another Halocene Human
@Svensker: Damn, I think I need to read that book again, if I missed something about the narrator… not that the narrator’s gender is all that important except for the angst the narrator feels about being immersed in a society where gender is a temporary condition.
The thing that always stuck with me about that book was that even though it was a society where everybody was a hermaphrodite (think sea hares), they were STILL incredibly sexist! But it kind of made sense, you know?
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Remember, the reason J.K. Rowling didn’t publish as Joanna Rowling is that they figured out that boys would refuse to buy a book with a woman’s name on the cover
Same thing with the Goosebumps series (let me note here: plenty of pre-teen girls read them too, hello) but I thought it was really cool that WGBH introduced the E.L. Stine as a character on Arthur. Hopefully some more kids will grow up without suffering from the delusion that they have to browbeat their own little boys one day into only choosing neo-Freudian patriarchy-approved things or else.
Another Halocene Human
@WereBear: And there are male authors who use female pen names. Probably more often than we think. The famous cases are where a book took off and it turned out to be a James L Frey stunt of some sort.
Publishing is very hidebound and superstitious. It kind of makes me laugh how ebook self publishers keep kicking their ass in the fiction category and then the “regular” publishers rush to imitate. Reaping the whirlwind of “going public” and then need to post higher and higher profit margins.
Other countries didn’t do this and their print world isn’t dying.
Mnemosyne
@PhoenixRising:
Yeah, again, you’re not trying to lie to them or conceal information, you’re just trying to get past the auto-filter of Woman Author Bad (and Gay Woman Author Worse) when they look at the author’s name on the cover and read the blurb on the back.
But the notes from the other editors do make it sound like you may need some rewriting of those first 90 pages since you’re writing nonfiction (I assume) and you don’t want to make the people who get that far into the book feel like you’ve somehow duped them.
Bob In Portland
There’s a dog in this house, Gilbert, who cuts the wickedest SBDs.
Jebediah
Superpowers, eh? Well, Juno has the superpower of being able to pin a dog that is about six times her mass.
I already posted this yesterday, so I might be guilty of dogwhoring…
mai naem
@Phoenix rising: I would use an androgynous name. Yes, there are guys who won’t buy books by women. Your goal is to get people to read the book right? So, you need to do whatever it takes to reach your goal. Nobody’s going to be mad because they find on page 151 that you’re a woman. I think they’ll think it’s clever, not be mad about it. I would stay away from making it a “gay” book in the sense that people think “another gay issues book, not interested.”
schrodinger's cat
Not exactly a super power, since all kittehs know how to relax but my orange kitteh does it like a Zen mastah.
Juju
Isabel the Wonderdog can hear a snack bag open from miles away, and be there begging before you put the first chip in your mouth. Quite impressive.
dexwood.
I had a dog, a German Shepherd mix named Hogan, who sang along with Linda Ronstadt. Heart Like a Wheel was his favorite album. As her voice rose within a song, so did his. As her voice grew softer, so did his. He was silent during the musical bridges always ready to come in again with her. No matter what he was doing, sleeping, eating, playing, he came into the room with the stereo and sat in front of the speakers, about halfway between them. Friends would come over just to hear him. They’d bring their friends along. Dead since 1983, but I still miss him and think of him nearly every day.
gelfling545
@Shortstop: This solved the problem for my pug ( and pugs are noted for flatulence).
Jebediah
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, that is a relaxed cat!
WereBear
@schrodinger’s cat: Shared to my Twitter followers!
xjmueller
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: but can it play tennis better than Angus Podgorny?
WereBear
There has always been a lot of male names writing Westerns, and female names writing Romances… who weren’t necessarily male and female.
And of course, in Science Fiction, Catherine Lucille Moore was C. L. Moore
jake the snake
Our two cats have one super power. The ability to discern the opening of a can of tuna from wherever they are, including in a deep sleep on the other side of the house.
One, a calico named Cami, thinks she has one, but it doesn’t work. My daughter calls it her Jedi-mind-trick. She will sit
and stare at a doorknob, waiting for it to open. I suppose you could say it does work, since one of us usually opens the door
for her.
PhoenixRising
@mai naem:
I guess that must have been my own mindset from the jump. I didn’t set out to write our story in a way that evades any of the essential facts about our family, and I don’t think I did that. Apparently the most essential facts about what happened during this narrative spin on the axis, ‘adoptive parents’ not ‘same-sex couple’. As well they should, since that’s the topic.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: Yes, if I only could capture that in a photo!
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Thanks, Kitteh Whisperer!
Mnemosyne
@Jebediah:
I love how proud of herself Juno is — “Lookit me, I’m winning!” And Chucky’s like, “Shh, don’t tell her.”
Gex
@gogol’s wife: Quite late, but Casey is the dog. It’s nice how he wants to steal your stuff, but neatly.
Jebediah
@Mnemosyne:
Thank you! – those would be perfect subtitles, and I have to make a DVD to send my mom who is so tech-averse that getting her to have and keep an answering machine is a major triumph that was years in the making. No cell phone, no computer… but she does have a dvd player, and she does want to see them rasslin’.
And I’m not sure Juno knows Chucky is letting her “win,” since she does snarl and yell if Chucky accidentally gets too rough, and since Chucky instantly complies with the “back off!” order, Juno might think she is the tuffness.
Original Lee
Our late great border collie Sam could open boxes of doughnuts and eat a few and then close the lid. We spent months thinking that Somebody Was Being Selfish before we realized that it was the dog.
WRT dog farts, we add brewer’s yeast tablets to the dog food. It doesn’t necessarily stop the farts, but they do smell a LOT nicer.
Betsy
@Phoenix rising: @Phoenix rising: ME ME ME ME ME
Sorry John
Betsy
@Glidwrith: oaachh thank you.i can breathe now.
TheronWare
When my boy Spencer makes a nest on the couch by moving up and down and turning around several times to find the perfect spot, I call it “Tamping Down The Grass”.
caune
My Jack Russell has the ability to sneeze out 3′ long boogers that, if not caught and wiped from his nose asap will stick to the floor, or walls, or sofa, like concrete.
caune
@Original Lee:
brewers yeast?
Do the farts smell like fresh baked bread lol