Of Cat Temptation and Owen Wilson

Couldn't sleep last night, so I plucked Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome from off my bookshelf and read it. It's only 77 pages long, so it's not like reading Les Miserables in one night, but I'm happy that I finally did it. I bought the book when in college, after a friend of mine said that she couldn't stand it. So about 12 years ago, I bought it and never looked at it. Now it sits read and spent on my night table. I'm not going to write a review, but I liked it quite a lot. The scene where Ethan walks past a cemetery that just happens to have a gravestone with his name on it was strangely compelling to me. The stone reads:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
ETHAN FROME AND ENDURANCE HIS WIFE
WHO DWELLED TOGETHER IN PEACE
FOR FIFTY YEARS

Excellent. I love gravestones, myself, so that might explain, on some level, why I paused and thought about that for ten minutes or so before I continued reading. Actually, I that was most likely the point that I also went to the kitchen for a glass of iced tea.

Riveting!

I'm sad to learn that Owen Wilson, the actor and screenwriter, tried to knock himself off via overdose and slashed wrists. He's an extremely likable fellow, and his choice of movies to get involved in is quite good; The Life Aquatic, The Royal Tenenbaums (also screenwriter) and Wedding Crashers. If he can't resist the urge to jump out a proverbial open window I'm not sure what chance I have. Then again, that's been true for years. Not knowing what chance I have, that is.

Thanks go out to Michael, who tirelessly puts together the blog Art Nudes. There's now a link to this blog from there. Please don't let the "content warning" turn you away, this isn't pornography. I'll provide a link to his blog, if I haven't already. He tells me that he is also an atheist cat lover, although he has merely three cats. But I'm sure he knows that if you have three, you can easily end up with another, and then another. It's so easy to imagine myself becoming a crazy cat lady. Not so much the lady part, but the crazy cat part. I have a stray cat I'm feeding regularly in addition to the four I already have in my flat with me. Do you want another cat, Michael? C'mon, you know you do.