A hermaphrodite cat

My friend Mako has just found out that one of his three cats is a hermaphrodite. That's pretty amazing. A hermaphrodite cat. There may be a lot of interest among vets, circuses, and readers of NOW's adult classifieds.

Mako and I have been friends since high school. We both attended an alternative school in North York. He was into Bob Seger and Ted Nugent, and I was into Joe Jackson and Ian Dury. He was a cool guy with a girlfriend; I was a freak who had never been on a date. We once went to a cemetery at midnight and put a tape recorder on a grave, wondering if we would hear scratching noises and faint cries of "Let me out...." We invented a triangular turntable called the Rosaka 3000. For history class, with our favourite teacher, Carl, we created a talk show called Let's Talk History, and made cassette tapes of episodes instead of writing essays. I still remember the poignant Let's Talk History theme music.

Now Mako's a documentary filmmaker, and I'm a writer. Well, I was a writer back then too. In high school, he wrote plays. And they were good ones -- imbued with the drama of his family, and influenced probably by Pinter.

* * *

So, I'm reading this book now called Dr. Delicious. It's the memoir of Robert Lecker, who used to run ECW's Montreal office. I like Robert. He's a bristly, obsessive, funny, curious guy. He used to give me lots of freelance editing work, and he once gave me a $1500 advance to write a novel. I ended up writing a book of poetry, and he asked for the $1500 back "ASAP." But he has always been so supportive of me. I get two mentions in his book, and they're both pretty nice mentions. I'm only about 20 pages into it, but I'm liking it: he consciously decided to break out of his professor persona and go nuts with writing. Will it be of interest to anyone who was not once an ECW author? I dunno.

* * *

Lots more to catch up on in this blog, but I better get some work done today. I've begun the horrendous and seemingly endless task of cleaning/organizing my tiny apartment. I know that once that is done, the world will weigh far less.

Over and out.