Big Cat, Little Cat: Birthday Suit The Birthday Suit and the Paradox of the Cat I think I like cats because they combine some of the best traits–affection, playfulness, musicality–with some of the worst traits–distrust, schadenfreude, lack of accountability–of people. A cat will break something and just walk away. A cat will play with its…
Tag: caturday
Low-Hanging Fruit (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Low-Hanging Fruit Low-Hanging Fruit and Comedy I grant you that size isn’t a funny issue for everyone. There are people who are bullied for their size; made to feel less-than, etc. Telling jokes about these kinds of traditional topics is an art that presents interesting challenges. What I was trying to…
Jokes (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Bad Jokes Dumb Jokes I have a particular relationship with bad jokes. I come from a family of bad-joke-tellers. And I swore I would be better. That sounds like a joke; or the premise for one. But it’s actually not. My parents and grandparents and uncles and so on would say…
Impostor Syndrome (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Impostor Syndrome Impostor Syndrome It seems like nothing is as integral to the writing process as impostor syndrome. I should really have called this website 3 Rules of Writing. And the third rule should have been: “Stop it with this impostor syndrome bullshit. You’re not fooling anyone. We know exactly how…
Depression (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Depression Dealing with Depression… in Story I was reading a really interesting book the other day. My friend had asked me to be a beta reader for her new novel, written from the perspective of two house-cats. The background characters are a woman who suffers from what appears to be severe…
Mistaken Identity (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Mistaken Identity Mistaken Identity: The Oldest Trick in the Book It’s interesting to me that we continue to read Shakespeare’s comedies. On a separate note, it’s interesting to me that we no longer read the comedies of his contemporaries, such as Ben Jonson. But in a way, it’s the most natural…
Feel Better (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Feel Better Description Four identical panels sit in a group, two above and two below. In each, a large orange cat with darker orange stripes sits next to a smaller gray with darker grey stripes. The orange is looking down at the grey with an expression of contentment, while the grey…
The Fourth Wall (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: The Fourth Wall Was the Fourth Wall Always There? Back in my dissertatin’ days, one of my particular interests was: the occasions on which an epic poet talks in the first person. You might say: times when the poet breaks the fourth wall. For example, the way Homer does at the…
Jokes in Bad Taste (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Jokes in Bad Taste What is it about Jokes in Bad Taste that I can’t Quit? I’m a big believer in making jokes that punch up, not down. I will make jokes about transphobia or racism. But never about a trans person or a Black person. One of the canards you…
Sharing (Caturday Questions)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Sharing Timing a Joke Did you ever go through a period of maybe a few months or maybe… twenty years… in which every time you tried to tell a joke nobody laughed? And it took until you were in your mid-twenties to early thirties before people started actually laughing when you…