Zoology 101

It’s been a zoo around here this past week. I’m serious—a veritable zoo. First, I’ve been having issues with a squirrel in my attic, and that’s not a euphemism for how my brain works, like literally ALL the time. No, there’s an actual squirrel who took up residence in our attic over a week ago by chewing a hole in our fascia. I noticed one day when I was putting laundry away that it sounded like a herd of elephants cavorting around the heating vent in the ceiling above me, and that’s when we discovered the hole. Ken got out the really long extension ladder (because our house is very old—the main floor is 14 feet high and the second floor is 8 feet high, plus the attic space, carry the 1, divide by the nominator, and draw a Venn diagram where I’m in the middle, terrified that he’s going to fall OFF the ladder—in fact, I came up with a very cunning Worst Case Scenario plan whereby if the ladder tipped over, he was to grab the eavestrough and then swing to the window ledge, leap towards the largest branch of the nearest spruce tree, and then fall into the springy bushes underneath. Ken’s reaction to this, while he was swaying back and forth on the ladder, was “Don’t be ridiculous—I’m not going to fall off.” Thankfully, he did not, but I was PREPARED.) Where was I? Oh, right. So we waited until the next morning when it seemed like the squirrel had gone out for the day, and then Ken repaired the hole. But later that night, it still sounded like there was something in the attic, so we got out the live trap. Ken baited it with peanut butter, and the following became the conversation for the next four mornings:

Day One

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Two

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Three

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Four

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

So now, not only do we still have a squirrel in our attic, he’s the most well-fed and happy squirrel on the block.

And then, I woke up on Wednesday morning, and there was a notification on my phone that our outdoor camera had detected motion around 3 am. What now? Had that bug decided to go on a walkabout? But no—I checked the feed and it was a GIANT RACCOON!! It galumphed from our side porch over to one of our outbuildings like it was having the time of its life and I was so excited, because the other day I saw a video clip about a man who had raised a raccoon and it followed him everywhere like a puppy. Atlas rarely follows me ANYWHERE unless I have food, so a raccoon would be awesome. I decided I would put out a big bowl of food and see if I could gradually tame it to hang out with me, but then Ken reminded me that raccoons are nocturnal so I’d have to be awake in the middle of the night to ‘hang out with it’, and that was kind of a dealbreaker for someone like me who’s asleep by 10 o’clock. Still, I really want more raccoon films so I’ll keep you posted on the results of my labours.

Finally, the strangest thing happened this week as Ken and I were travelling up North so I could do writing presentations to a high school in Cochrane. We went through this small town just as school had finished and we got stuck behind a school bus. It stopped, lights flashing, so we waited patiently while it unloaded. Then it drove off. But there was no child on the sidewalk—there was only a CROW. Just standing there like it was waiting to cross the street. And then from the other side of the street, another crow came hopping along very quickly, like it was coming to meet the first crow who had gotten off the school bus. And I’ve been thinking about that for days.

And finally finally, on a non-animal-related note—my Leacock Longlist stickers came on Friday! If you order my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do (which you can do by clicking here), it comes with the image of the sticker on the front cover, but the copies I ordered for myself are getting plastered with those bad boys!

Making A List

No, I’m not making a list, like a grocery list, or a checklist of tiny furniture I need to buy at the Miniatures Fair I’m going to later, or an excel spreadsheet of all my clocks—the list I’m talking about is a very prestigious longlist. The longlist for a humour competition I recently wrote about where my entry was number 69 on THAT list, which I found hilarious but everyone else was too mature to snicker at. Yes, to my absolute shock and delight, my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do was selected for the Leacock Memorial Medal For Humour longlist! That book, based on this little blog, was found worthy of being long-listed beside well-known Canadian funny people like Rick Mercer! (If you’re not Canadian, you might not know who that is, but trust me, he’s hilarious).

I knew that the longlist was being announced last Tuesday, and I hadn’t heard anything at all. I wasn’t sure if they let people know ahead of time, so I messaged a friend who had been longlisted twice in the past and he assured me that people only found out when the announcement was made. I don’t know if that was REALLY an assurance because then I was like, great, another week before I find out I didn’t make the cut. Then on Tuesday morning, I was getting ready to go shopping, and my email alert went off. The subject line said “2024 Leacock Medal Long List Announced”. I reluctantly opened it, wondering which big names in Canadian humour had gotten this accolade, and I squinted at it because I couldn’t find the several many pairs of reading glasses that I have scattered around the house but can never seem to find in a pinch. Then my squinty eyes widened as I saw what looked like my name. And I say, “looked like my name” because it WAS my name but it was spelled incorrectly—instead of Craig-Whytock, it said “Craig-Whytack”. But the name of my book was alongside it, and with sudden jawdropping surprise, I realized that I was actually ON the longlist. I felt faint. So I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken:

Me: Oh my god oh my god!
Ken: What? Are you okay? What happened?!
Me: I made the longlist for the Leacock!!
Ken: What?! That’s amazing!
Me: I think I’m going to cry!

But it was real. And then my daughter sent me a CBC article where my name was mentioned (spelled correctly, thanks, national broadcaster) and it started to sink in. And when it did, I was faced with another horrifying realization: people were going to read my book, and what if no one else thought it was funny, and everybody was like “Why the hell did they pick this piece of crap?” and “Wow, this lady is superweird” and “She has way too many clocks” and “She used the word f*ck 39 times in one book!” As Yoda would say, “The imposter syndrome is strong with this one.”

But the best part of all this is that I got an email from their director of communications yesterday (and yes, my name was still spelled incorrectly even though I’d told them, and even though they’d apologized, but I said ‘Don’t worry, it’s just an honour to be on the longlist’) offering me STICKERS to put on my book covers. GOLD STICKERS (well, they call them bronze but they look gold to me). Is there anything better than stickers? Even the word is the best: sticker sticker sticker sticker. The finalists, who are announced on May 21, get even nicer stickers and while I know I won’t make the finals, it would be cool if I did because the grand prize is $25 000 and the two runners-up get five grand each, and you can only imagine what I would spend some of that money on (hint: tick tock).

‘Excellence in Canadian humour’–find it here, folks. Sticker sticker sticker sticker…

It’s The Little Things Part 2; Online Launch Party for Charybdis!

The link to the online launch party for Charybdis is at the end of this post, so if you don’t want any humorous content first, you can skip right down to the end, but trust me, you’ll be missing some hilarious sh*t.

Anyway, it’s been another quiet week with a couple of notable exceptions. First…THAT BUG IS BACK. Yes, I woke up on Tuesday morning to another notification that there had been movement detected on my kitchen camera at 2 o’clock in the morning, and yes, it was that same bug. How long do house centipedes LIVE? Is this guy the Methuselah of insects?! And what the hell is he eating?! I looked it up and according to the google, house centipedes eat OTHER ANTHROPODS, which is so cannibalistic and creepy but then again, I’m not surprised that something that looks like the alien in ALIEN eats insect flesh. But then the article I read went on to say that if you have frequent sightings of house centipedes, “this indicates that some prey arthropod is in abundance, and may signify a greater problem than the presence of the centipedes” and OH MY GOD DOES THIS MEAN THERE ARE MORE FREAKY INSECTS IN MY HOUSE?!!  Then again, the sighting hasn’t been “frequent”—it’s only the one leggy dude waving at us like “Hey, just haunting your kitchen AND your dreams” so hopefully he’ll run out of food soon.

But the other thing is that I’ve definitely gone down the rabbit hole of miniatures, because a couple of weeks ago, I was at the antique market and I found a bag of vintage dollhouse furniture and a tiny voice in my head whispered, “Buy it. You know you want it. You can do something cool with it.” So I DID buy it and then it sat on the breakfast room table for 2 weeks until Ken whispered, “I can build you a box to put this doll furniture in” which he did. And suddenly, I became a fanatical miniaturist, and I created an entire “Antique Store Office Sanctuary” which now I want to live in and if I could only shrink myself down to 1/12” size, I would totally do it, just to live in my tiny room. Here it is, and I adore it so much:

The Persian rug is actually a mouse pad and I got all the tiny books from Amazon. I already had the Antique storefront from some wall art that I cut apart, and the wallpaper came from a book that I had bought years ago full of William Morris style wrapping paper that I podged on, and I had the trim and created the ‘paintings’ and HOLY SH*T I’m becoming obsessed and I really want to make more miniature rooms, but we all know what happened with the clock fixation, am I right?

In other news, I’m over 8 chapters into my new book “Nomads of the Modern Wasteland”, which centres on a group of people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic future, woven together by the poetry of TS Eliot. It’s actually going to be a novella, which is a mini book, so that tracks.

Also, the book launch for Charybdis is on May 26th in person, but if you’re a friend of mine who’d like to celebrate with me but you have NO WAY of coming to Ontario, Canada, my publisher has very graciously set up an online celebration for June 1 and you can register here–it’s FREE!: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/charybdis-by-suzanne-craig-whytock-launch-party-tickets-884105522417?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=1

Adventure Time Throwback

(This week has been a little too tame for an interesting blog post–edit, write, review submissions, repeat–so here’s a throwback to 2017 where I go to a live Adventure Room for the first time–I hope you enjoy it!)

A few years ago, I went to an Adventure Room at Casa Loma. For those of you to whom either of those things is a mystery, let me explain. An Adventure Room is a live-action game where a group of people work together to solve puzzles and escape from a room that they are trapped in. Casa Loma is a stunningly beautiful, ACTUAL castle in Toronto. It was built by a wealthy financier at the turn of the last century, and it rivals anything you might see in Europe. Or Disney. I went with a group from work, and I was really excited to go—the week before. On the actual day, true to introverted form, I was overwhelmed with the usual dread of social interaction. But I’d played it smart—it was $48 and I had no intention of forfeiting that much money just to go home and watch reruns of Brooklyn 99 all tucked up in my cozy bed with a nice glass of wine…which would have been a lovely option too. But I worked with really nice people, and I’d known most of them for a while, so off we went on our adventure.

First, we were ushered into a movie theatre, where we were to watch a film that would explain our upcoming adventure, described thusly: “The war is over, the fascists in Europe have lost, and it’s time for celebration in Toronto; or so it would seem. Deep beneath the gothic exterior of Casa Loma, there lies a secret. You and your closest friends stumble upon the soon to be decommissioned Station M. Within the hidden workshop of failed projects and confidential experiments, you find one last mission. Be careful who you trust, and make sure you have an escape plan.” Sounds cool, am I right? We would also be accompanied by a character who was part of the scenario, and we would meet him after the film. “But,” warned the young man who was explaining this to us, “you can’t touch him. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES CAN YOU TOUCH HIM. Do not EVER touch him. Are there any questions?” And all I could do was whisper, “So many…” because then we were ushered into a hallway and I couldn’t ask them, but here they are:

1) Why can’t I touch him?
2) What do you mean by “touch”? Does it count if I accidentally brush against him? Is it OK to poke him to see if he’s real, and not animatronic or whatnot?
3) Can I touch him if he touches me first, like in retaliation?
4) You said, “Under no circumstances”. But what if there’s a fire? Can I grab his arm and pull him to safety or do I just leave him to fend for himself? What if he falls down? Can I help him get up or do I just stand there staring at him?
5) Is this a rule you created because someone in the past slapped him for not giving them enough help with the puzzles? Is he really that unhelpful, or is he just a smartass?
6) What happens if I DO touch him, like he’s being funny and I lightly punch him in the shoulder, like one of those “Oh you!” kind of gestures? Will he taser me?
7) Is this part of the game? Is this a clue? Like when someone says, ‘Don’t think about elephants’, and then you absolutely do? Because now all I can think about is poking this guy, and I haven’t even met him yet.

And then I did meet him. He was in his early twenties and dressed in an old-fashioned suit. His name was ‘Steven Rutledge’. He claimed to be a spy or a secret agent or something, but I’m not really sure because I was trying not to touch him. We were in a room that was full of really cool antiques and things, but it was hard to concentrate because everyone else was running around looking for clues. I wasn’t sure for what, since I hadn’t really been paying attention, but suddenly someone yelled in triumph, a door opened, and we were all in ANOTHER room. Apparently the first room was like the launch pad for the actual adventure in ‘Station M’, which was to save a scientist from his Russian kidnappers. We had to get a radio to work, so I said to Steven, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” in an attempt to lighten the mood, but he gave me a weird, kind of dirty look. I wasn’t sure if he was just ACTING like he didn’t get it, or whether he really didn’t get it, so I said, “R.E.M.? It’s a pop culture reference,” to which he replied, “Pop Culture?!” and rolled his eyes. Then I knew why we weren’t allowed to touch him, because with THAT attitude, he would get slapped a lot as per question #5 above.

Anyway, we solved a lot of puzzles, and Steven was eventually pretty helpful, dropping cryptic hints and whatnot, until finally we were at the last puzzle. The timer was counting down, people were running around, it was madness, there was an air raid siren going off, lights were flashing, Steven was trying to avoid being touched, and then—we ran out of time. It wasn’t really a letdown, except that the scientist was still at the mercy of his Russian kidnappers, but it was a lot of fun. Casa Loma has two other adventure rooms, and I would totally do it again, because it finished early enough that I still had time to watch Brooklyn 99 in my own cozy bed afterwards. With a nice glass of wine.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Well, I guess the most exciting thing that happened last week was the eclipse. And it WAS truly exciting, I have to say. Ken and I drove to my aunt’s boyfriend’s place (it’s always so weird to say ‘boyfriend’ when people are in their late 60s, isn’t it, like he’s not A BOY, he’s a grown-ass man with grandkids, but I digress) and the whole fam had gathered to witness the event. I’d ordered those special glasses from Amazon, and I checked very carefully to make sure that they were legit and not going to render us all blind (as a side note, one of the larger towns near here ordered eclipse glasses also off Amazon and then had to recall them when they found out that they were knock-offs and not approved by NASA or whatnot but mine WERE and it’s been almost a week and I still haven’t gone blind). When we woke up on Monday morning, it was quite cloudy and Ken was being his typical gloom and doom self, going on about ‘cloud cover’ and wind speed and ‘chance of precipitation’ like the Weather Channel was paying him to give me his opinion, but I would not be dissuaded. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said, with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who has never given a sh*t whether or not she was wrong about anything.

We left shortly after lunch to drive down to the lake, and on the way, there was blue sky on the horizon. “See,” I said. “It will be FINE.” I said this with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who recently ran outside and across her front lawn in the pouring rain in her stocking feet and screamed “Get the f*ck of my street!” to an asshole in a pick-up truck who was trying to deface our Pride crosswalk by doing a burn-out on it. I got photographs of the truck AND his license plate—the jury is still out on whether or not the cops will do anything about it. Also, we had to leave Atlas behind, and a friend was going to give him lunch and let him out, but I had to message her and remind her not to let him out between 2:30 and 3:30 because he’s such a dope that he’d probably stare at it barking until his retinas burned out. She responded by sending us this picture of him on the couch, safely relaxing in the house:

At any rate, the closer we got to the lake, the more sporadic the cloud cover was, which filled me with incredible optimism. We arrived and hugged the family—Mom and Dad were there, along with my other aunt, and a couple of friends. We had snacks and wine, because what the hell is the point of watching a phenomenon of nature without ‘nature’s more fun grape juice’, and then sat on the deck. Waiting. It was still cloudy. The eclipse was supposed to start around 2:30 pm and right around then, the wind picked up and the clouds began to move. By 3 pm, the skies were blue and clear. We all had our glasses on, breathless with anticipation and freaking out that the clouds would return—but THEY DIDN’T, KEN, JUST LIKE I SAID.

It was an awe-inspiring moment. I’ve never in my lifetime seen a total solar eclipse and holy sh*t, let me tell you, it was worth the wait. And the best part was that Ken had his really good camera, and he got some amazing shots:

Don’t Blink Or You’ll Miss It

Last weekend, the local Lions Club had a charity auction. It was pretty good as auctions go, especially since a lot of area businesses donated brand new items. I bid on a few things, like some Lego for Kate and a bunch of old spindles that I told Ken he could use for outdoor woodcrafts. Then the auctioneer put up a new Blink home security system. We already have a Blink camera in the kitchen that I use when Ken’s away overnight. It’s hidden inside something (I refuse to be more specific, but I promise we never use it when we’re home with other people and I can assure you that I have never forgotten to turn it off and then been mortified at a notification featuring a clip of me dancing around the kitchen island while I cook), and unless the lights are on at night, it won’t pick up any movement that triggers the camera.

Anyway, I bid on the security system and got it for a really good price. So on Thursday night, after researching and reading the instructions and getting the exterior cameras set up, Ken mounted them outside the house on either side of our porch. That’s when I realized that when I armed them, it would also turn on the kitchen camera. But that’s okay, I thought, since there’s nothing in our kitchen at night. And then I woke up on Friday morning to TWO notifications that the kitchen camera had been triggered around 3 am and there were video clips and OH MY GOD, YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT I SAW WHEN I REPLAYED THEM.

And if you know me at all, you’re most likely thinking that it was a ghost. And you would be wrong. IF ONLY it was a ghost, because it was not.

Take a second and try to guess what it could have possibly been. I’ll wait...

Here is what I saw on the screen of my phone, and I really hope you can watch it:

sheer-terrorDownload

H. R. Giger has nothing on this thing and all I know is that it’s still in my kitchen somewhere and I will never be able to dance there again…

In other news, my new novel Charybdis is getting excellent reviews–here’s one by the Founding Editor of a prominent Canadian review site, The Miramichi Reader. Being compared to Edgar Allen Poe made me scream almost as much as when I saw what was on my kitchen camera:

Charybdis Getting Featured!

Smorgasbord New Book Spotlight – #Mystery #Historical Charybdis by Suzanne Craig-Whytock

Thank you so much to the lovely Sally Cronin of Smorgasbord Blog Magazine for featuring my new novel Charybdis in her Smorgasbord New Book Spotlight–you can read it by clicking on the link above. I really appreciate her kindness and that she took the time to craft such a wonderful promotion.

And if that wasn’t awesome enough, the amazing Susan Richardson of Stories From The Edge of Blindness featured Charybdis today on her phenomenal literary podcast A Thousand Shades of Green. Listening to her beautiful voice reading my work is always an incredible treat and you can hear her by clicking on the podcast link.

And of course, you can buy Charybdis in paperback and Kindle version worldwide by clicking here!

Things ‘To-Do’

Earlier this week, I looked at my list of things to do, and realized I hadn’t yet booked the hall for my book launch for Charybdis. We’ll be doing a Zoom launch with my wonderful publisher, JC Studio Press in the UK, but I’ll also be doing an in-person launch for family and friends towards the end of May. So, as I said, I looked at my to-do list and then promptly forgot about it because a to-do list is only valuable when you’re actually looking right at it, and I probably should have a to-do list in my car that says ‘Look at your to-do list’ because that’s where I was when I suddenly remembered that I had NOT, in fact, called the hall in Princeton. Princeton, Ontario. And I specify that for reasons which will shortly become clear.

I was in my car, driving (and I don’t know why I needed to specify THAT because what else would I be doing in my car—reading?) and I was super-excited because I had just gotten an email from Value Village offering me 40% off on accessories and that, of course, includes purses, and I’ve been doing very well lately in the fancy purse resale market, and if I sell enough purses, I can justify keeping a couple of the really nice ones, right? But suddenly I had an epiphany about calling the hall, and even though you’re not allowed, I was on a deserted back road so I got out my phone and googled Princeton and District Museum and Archives. It should be noted at this point that I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses, but I wasn’t SUPPOSED to be reading (note: this set of circumstances apparently negates my previous sarcastic comment about reading in the car quite devastatingly, doesn’t it?) and I saw the number to call and I hit the button, activating my car phone. The phone rang and rang, then someone picked up:

Man (groggily): Hello…?
Me: Hi…is this the Princeton Museum?
Man: Yes, but we don’t open until 10. You’re calling a little outside opening hours.

At this point, I was confused. It was 11 am. Was he drunk? Because he sounded drunk.

Me: Okay. Anyway, I was in the library branch yesterday and the librarian told me if I wanted to book the museum for my book launch, I’d have to call because your hours are hit and miss.
Man: We’re open every day, 10 to 4.

Now, I was even more confused. I know for a fact that the museum is NOT open every day—in fact, I was there yesterday and it was NOT open. But the man was obviously drunk so…

Me: I had a book launch there last year, and I’d love to book the museum again—everybody loved the space so much.
Man: You had a book launch here last year? What’s your name?

I told him my name.

Man: I don’t recall that. You say it was last year?
Me: Yes. We used the theatre space and the hall. When would be the best time for me to come by and pay for the rental? I’m just heading to Brantford right now so if you’re there until 4, I could be there around 2.
Man: Brantford?
Me (thinking, Wow, this dude is HAMMERED): Yeah, just up the road. Like literally 20 minutes from Princeton?
Man: Where are you calling from? Like, what province? Because I’m in British Columbia…
Me: WHAT?! I’m in Ontario.
Man: So on the other side of the continent then? I don’t think you’ll be able to make it by 2.

Can you believe that there’s actually ANOTHER place also called the Princeton and District Museum and Archives in this country? Yeah, I’d called a town in a time zone 3 hours behind my own, so no wonder he sounded so groggy—I’d probably woken him up, although why the museum man was even answering the museum phone from his own bed is anyone’s guess. And then I compounded my lack of geographical knowledge when I told Ken about it:

Me: And then he said he was on the other side of the ‘continent’. What a dummy—I think he meant COUNTRY, lol.
Ken: You know we’re part of the continent of North America, right?
Me: Look at these cool purses I got today.

At any rate, ‘call Princeton Museum in Ontario’ is still on my to-do list.

In other news, Charybdis is out in the world and so far it’s been getting excellent reviews so thank you to everyone who’d taken the time to give it some stars or say something nice about it—it means the world to me!



Lost In Translation

You may remember that Ken and I recently turned part of our house into a space for a Writer’s Retreat and it turned out beautifully. But the one thing I really wanted, the secret library door, had proven to be logistically not possible. The weight of the books alone would make the door possibly pull off its hinges, and other options, like buying books and cutting them down so only the spines were attached was financially not feasible. But then I was on Amazon and saw this amazing wallpaper/sticker type deal that looked like books on a shelf and was long enough that it could be simply stuck to the door, giving the illusion of a bookshelf that would hide the entrance to the library/writing room. I ordered it and it arrived last week. It was in a long tube, so I unrolled it. You may be shocked to learn that it wasn’t quite what I expected.

Me: Those books are REALLY big, like bigger than what a book should be.
Ken: They didn’t look that big in the Amazon picture.
Me: I don’t know if this is going to fool anyone.
Ken: I can always put molding on it to make it seem like there are real shelves…

Some of the books had plain spines, but some of them had titles. And then I started looking closely at the book titles…

Me: What kind of book title is this? ‘Tales Of Homeopathic Gherkin’?!
Ken: This one says, ‘Conquest and Mushroom’. I don’t think these are real books.
Me: I’m inclined to agree.

The titles of the books were all, with one exception, absolutely bizarre, like someone had taken perfectly normal book titles and then translated them into another language, and then translated them back, like the way the movie Twister was translated into Run! Run! Cloudzilla! in Chinese . The one exception was King of Darkness, which could very well be someone’s take on Lord of the Flies or Dracula or something like that. But I thought, just in case anyone asked, that I should have a synopsis of each of these books so that we wouldn’t take any flack for our cheap and obviously reverse-translated weird-ass secret library wall. So here are the books that grace the entrance to the writing retreat, and here’s what they’re about:

1) Tales of Homeopathic Gherkin

This charming collection of stories focuses on a young man in a bit of a pickle after eschewing traditional medicine in favour of herbal remedies. That is, until he comes across Sally Zucchini, an Italian naturopath who shows him the joys of a good brine bath. It’s a truly ‘dill’-ightful read.

2) Brave Slipper

Brave Slipper is the story of ‘the other slipper’—the one Prince Charming DIDN’T try to jam on Cinderella’s foot. Alone and bereft of her partner, the crystalline orphan embarks on a rescue mission to save her sibling from being ground up, melted, and turned into a bong.

3) Conquest and Mushroom

Speaking of bongs, this fun romp centres on a troop of conquistadors who experience a group hallucination after imbibing some homeopathic fungi. Believing that they are now famous disco dancers, they take the world by storm with their ‘hustle’.

4) Spell Ingredients

I-N-G-R-E-D-I-E-N-T-S

5) Dawn Fly Stuff

In the vein of Apocalypse Now, this intense war retrospective was made famous by the line, “There’s nothing like the smell of RAID in the morning.”

6) Sapphire of Magical Sniper

Raised in a small village on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, Steve The Sorcerer finds fame when he discovers the Holy Sapphire of Sparta. Using its magical powers to destroy his enemies, mostly other two-bit magicians and by destroy, we mean reveal how they do their card tricks, Steve becomes known as the Magical Sniper (and also, ‘that dick, Steve’). Until the Sapphire is stolen by his arch-nemesis, Vlad the Impersonator, a pseudo-magician slash ventriloquist who hides the precious gemstone in his dummy, also named Steve. When Steve goes missing (the dummy, not the dick), the whole world of magic is in an uproar. Will Steve be found in time to help Vlad get on Canada’s Got Talent? Stay tuned!

7) 2037

The year is 2037. Suzanne finally has her secret library room…

Cat In The Hat

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law messaged me. She was out shopping and had picked up a book that she thought I would like. “What kind of book?” I asked. She sent me a photo of herself holding it. The picture was a little out of focus, but it was a cat. The cat was wearing a hat. “It’s a book about making hats for cats,” she responded. How cool is that? I thought. I can learn how to crochet, or knit or something. Maybe I could make a bunch of hats and sell them at the market. I’m no stranger to the textile arts, if you may recall, having halfway completed a patchwork quilt for my daughter before giving up completely and letting my neighbour finish it. And when I was a teenager, I knit myself not only a scarf, but also a whole sweater. It took months, but I did it, and now, I could see myself in the wing chair by the fire, merrily making head cozies for kitties.

And then yesterday, my brother and my nephew came for a quick visit.

Nephew: Hi, Auntie Susu. Mom said to give you this.
Me: Oh, my cat hat book! I can’t wait to start knitting little cat hats.
Nephew: Uh…I don’t think you knit them.

He pointed to the cover. There, above the very large title Hats For Cats: How To Craft Fetching Headgear For Your Feline Friends, was a much smaller title that read “Cat-Hair”. The book is “Cat-Hair Hats For Cats”. Yes, the entire book, all 136 pages of it, was how to design and create hats for your cat using their own cat hair—collecting it, rolling it up, and then shaping into…hats. For your cat. The authors of the book describe themselves as a “fun-loving couple from Japan” who use the hair from their two cats to make hats and then make their cats wear their own hair as fashion accessories. Except one of their cats died 4 years ago, and they still use his hats and put them on other cats’ heads, which I suppose is no different from a human wearing a human hair wig, the hair from which belonged to someone who died, which I imagine happens more than we would care to know about. The introduction to the book ends with the statement “Making these hats has become our life’s work”. According to the book, they’ve made more than 160 hats to date, and all I can say about that is HOW MUCH HAIR DO YOUR CATS LOSE?!

There are several chapters, including ‘Animal Hats: Transform your cat into different animals’, like cows, elephants, and koala bears. There are Birthday Hats, Graduation Hats, Holiday Hats, and one called The Coonskin Hat, like it’s not bad enough that you’re putting your cat’s own dead hair on its own head, but now you’re shaping it like roadkill?

But the best section was Character Hats, with the perennial favourite and everyone’s obvious choice: Amelia Earhart, a hat with aviator goggles made out of cat hair with the recommendation that you can finish the outfit off with a jaunty red scarf.

And I’m not trying to make fun of this book (well, maybe just a little), because it’s obvious that the people who put it together WORSHIP their cats, and to be honest, after going through this entire book, it IS kind of adorable in its own weird way. Just like me. And now, since I no longer have a cat, I’ll need to go to my neighbours’ houses on a pretense and secretly brush their cats because The Princess Leia is something no cat can live without.

Ho F*cking Ho