Category: Cats

The Devil’s In The Duo…

Timothy Price68 Comments
Sunrise looking north this morning.

…Lingo, that is. I got my annual stats from Duolingo. I was very happy to see that I learned a beastly 666 new words. While on words, I thought I would share my latest weekly stats from Grammarly, also. Besides, it bugs the heck out of me that they are tracking all my writing, besides correcting my manifold mistakes, but that’s what you have to do to be checked out, I do find the stats interesting.

I have given three papers at conferences about how natives of north-central New Mexico have a very unique vocabulary and word usage. I am a native of north-central New Mexico, and my weekly Grammarly stats always report that one-third or more of the words that Grammarly checks in my musings it consider them to be “unique words”. They must count many of the same words as unique each week because I know I can’t be coming up with 1,800 to 2,000 new and unique words each week. Last week, I seemed to have gone all out as Grammarly reported I used 3,387 unique words out of 9,656 of my words it checked. With my numb fingertips, I make a lot of mistakes, the reason I have Grammarly to watch over my words and probably another reason so many end up as unique.

Given my consistency in the number of unique words used each week, it supports my thesis that natives of north-central New Mexico have a unique vocabulary. However, I would need to have a large sample of word usage stats from many different north-central New Mexicans to really show that my thesis could hold any water from the Rio Grande.

A collage of my Duolingo and Grammarly stats with comments by Silver, Spunk and Gwendolyn.

While on words, there’s always the issue of Acronymphomania!

So Wired!

Socked, Boxed, Deodorized

Timothy Price78 Comments

Sasha

Since I can’t bring myself to drive to Target and negotiate their horrible parking lot, I simply ordered what I needed online and had it delivered. It was so much easier and the cats got a new box.

Glenda

Spunk

Spunk and Marble

Marble, Gwendolyn, and Spunk

Gwendolyn and Spunk

Jupiter

Sandhill Cranes

Interesting sunset in a crystal clear sky. Venus is on the left.

And The Winners Are…

Timothy Price60 Comments

Spunk waiting with AantíiciipÁation!

Gabriela announced the winners of her Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose poetry contest this morning. I am very excited to announce that I shared Third Place with D. Wallace Peach. Congratulations to Virginia Mateias for her First Place poem, and Ingrid Wilson, and Eric Daniel Clarke for their Second Place poems. You can read all the poems at: The Winners of The Poetry Contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose.

My poem is One Side Sacred The Other Side Profane inspired by Gabriela’s poem Between Sacred and Profane. I based my poem on W. Eugene Smith’s activism against mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan in the 1970s. He published a book titled Minamata: Life Sacred and Profane in 1972 that brought the issue worldwide attention. I first saw the book when I was a photo student at the University of New Mexico in the early 1980s. I wanted to buy a copy of the book back then, but I couldn’t afford it as a student. Now copies sell for hundreds of dollars, so I still don’t have one. W. Eugene Smith was one of the most important American photojournalists of the 20th Century. I don’t think he ever took a bad photo. His County Doctor series is brilliant. Chisso employees attacked and beat Smith in 1972. Smith lost sight in one eye and never really recovered. He died in 1978 at the tender age of 59. His death was a huge loss to the world of photography.

Dawn

We have cloudy skies tonight. The photos below are from last night before I encountered the zombies and sprites.

Christine’s Tree with the moon in the background. Mia’s Tree under Venus. Christine’s Tree with a bicycle in the background.

Sunset

Psycho-Delic

Timothy Price48 Comments

In trying to come up with a solution for video when I can’t be literal, I got the idea I could use a music visualizer to create psychedelic allegorical images. I tried a couple of different music visualizers and I liked the one I found on a gaming site called Animus. I decided to use my five-movement song called T.U.L.I.P. for the test. Some of you might remember that I posted T.U.L.I.P. on Tuesday back in early January as five separate short songs. I put them all together into one song with 5 movements. The five songs are more coherent as a single song.

T.U.L.P
Five-Point Calvinism in five movements
By Timothy Price

Total Depravity

Sitting shivering
In the heat of night
Sliced by rays
In the dark of light

Soul lies frayed
So depraved

Every thought a mortal
Every action a mortal
Every thought and action
A mortal Sin!

Unconditional Election

Some are elected
Others left in sin
Punished and damned
For their many transgressions
They can never win

Those few saved by grace
Unconditional love
Receive salvation
They are the few
Elected from above

All others
All the others
All the others get
All the others get damnation

Limited Atonement

Limited Atonement
Didn’t die for all
Elected are saved
Reprobates fall

No prevenient grace
Jeopardy double
Only the elect
Will make it through
Without any trouble

Redemption certain or
Redemption none
It’s predestination
Foreknown by

The One

Irresistible Grace

Irresistible Grace
Efficacy calls
Only some
But not all

For salvation

It could be me
It could be you
It may be neither
Grace for the few

Is Irresistible

Perseverance of the Saints

One saved always saved
No more death by
Trespasses and sins
Security of sanctification

Condition is secure
Eternal justification
Salvation for the
Saints persevere

Glenda doing the TULIP

Happy Halloween

Timothy Price114 Comments

My birthday cake. Costco didn’t have any cakes with Happy Birthday!

This is a display along Corrales Road. I’m happy I got it early. The skeleton disappeared after the high winds last week.

All the cats got to try on the bat wings. Loki in photos 12 and 13 was the best batwing model. Glenda (3rd photo) and Gwendolyn (last photo) were pretty good, also. Black cats know they look good in bat wings. Spunk, on the other hand, told me exactly what he thought about wearing bat wings after I took them off him (7th photo).

Saved From Hell’s Fire Rhyme

Timothy Price76 Comments

Miss Mousie (House Mouse, Mus musculus) in our grill in her nest of pink insulation after I had removed her nest and five tiny mouselettes so I could use the grill. She and her mouselettes were lucky the insulation kept the third burner from lighting before I saw her nest of insulation and turned off the other two burners.

Little Miss Mousie faced the flames of hell
Under cover of an accommodating grill
The third burner it didn’t light
Covered in insulation she stole in the night
Mouselettes were lucky they were not well done
As I gathered them up one by one

I moved them to a waiting pan
With pink insulation she had on hand
I put them in a safe place well hidden
While I grilled the thighs of a Costco chicken
Cleaned the grill shut off the gas
With the mouselettes tucked deep in the grass

I put things in order, went in for the night
I fed the cats, I turned out the lights
When morning came I wasn’t thrilled
To find that Little Miss Mousie was back in the grill.

Silver: “You saved mouselettes instead of grilling them for me? What kind of low life, pathetic, paparazzo, loser of a cat herder are you, anyway?”

Me: “I’m not going to murder innocent little mouselettes who you wouldn’t eat, anyway! Besides, Shey’s Dudes would never forgive me.”

Silver: “Well I think I’m insultated you morbid, mouselette mothering Monothelite!”

Me: “Do you mean ‘Philistine’? I’ve never heard of insulting anyone by calling him a ‘Monothelite’ other than by you completing an alliteration!

Silver: “Are you saying I’m ‘alliterate’? Now I’m doubly instultated! You profligate, pink, pasty skinned prelate of Peromyscus!”

Me: “OK! You’re not ‘alliterate’! BTW, while on the subject of morbid mothering, Silver, the last rather large mouse you carried in the house from the catio like it was a wee little kitten is still hanging out under the stove in the kitchen.”

Silver: “I thought that was a gopher? My bad!”