| On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
99 wolves hurling themselves into a glass wall.
Merry Christmas. |
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| The Legend of Cat DeliciousThe following is something I wrote for
a friend. He wanted a description of his band for their new MySpace
site. He sent me this track so I would know what they sounded like.
This is what I came up with.
In 1987, the Sony Corporation commenced development on what was to be
the greatest breakthrough in commercial music technology since the
invention of the gramophone. Literally translated from the Japanese as
“Cat Delicious,” the product’s ultimate purpose was to create a stereo
capable of producing its own music, requiring only the subconscious
brain activity of its end-users both to power the system and to
contribute the musical aesthetic. “Dreams + Music = Profit” was Sony’s
guiding equation. It was affirmed during the morning exercises, written
on every inspirational poster, and served as the postscript for each
piece of internal correspondence in the department.
Hoping to capitalize on America’s growing market of economically
independent children, the so-called “dreambox” creators out-sourced the
research and development aspect of the project to Boy Scout Troop #342,
based in Bellingham, WA. As Sony’s in-house development team fine-tuned
Cat Delicious and its various components, dispatches from the Troop
#342 arrived bi-monthly in manila envelops. Over the course of a
decade, Sony received a warehouse worth of the troop’s daydreams,
summer catnaps and sugar-addled nightly respites.
With an abundance of American subconscious material and the
technological know-how of Japan’s most skilled engineers, Cat Delicious
was set to both create and conquer the dream-powered novelty stereo
niche. Only one thing halted its imminent success. Of the 1,300,000
units Sony hastened to manufacture, not one worked. The project was a
dismal failure. The Sony Corporation went bankrupt, recouping its
losses only after signing an agreement to develop a line of stereos
capable of playing the then-unknown compact disc music format. One of
the Cat Delicious units was kept in the office of Sony’s president as a
reminder of the ultimate consequence of attempted innovation. The other
1,299,999 units were delivered to Troop #342’s doorstep the following
Spring.
The arrival of the Cat Delicious units was met by the scouts with
excitement first, then confusion, and finally tearful frustration. The
boys, each yearning for the musical stardom they witnessed on MTV,
dreamed nightly of becoming the next Billy Ocean or Rick Astley. When
the morning brought only disappointing white noise from their Cat
Delicious units, the boys abandoned their dreamboxes. They grew up
spiteful and bitter, and soaked their once so visceral hopes of stardom
in many hundreds of bottles of beer until their dreams became as washed
and faded as their Bugle Boy jeans.
Only two scouts proved impervious to the lures of fame and fortune all
others saw in Cat Delicious. As the rest of the troop busily bulldozed
the mountain of Cat Delicious units into Semiahmoo Bay, Ryan Paul and
Conrad Slater cradled their Cat Deliciouses and warmly assured the
units of their indestructible fidelity. Over the years, the boys played
constantly with their units, taking them to the park, pushing them on
the swings, exploring condemned property with them, all the while
expressing the deep well a love that so often blossoms between a boy
and a quality Japanese product.
And Cat Delicious loved them back. Every morning for nearly two
decades, the boys have woken to a rainbow of sound and music, as pure
as the dreams of uncorrupted youth. Recently, word has reached Sony
that two of the Cat Delicious units are functional. Sony was quick to
contact the boys, pleading with them to reveal the secret behind their
operational units. The reply Sony received was at once an illuminating
revelation and an utter blow to their rekindled hopes of releasing the
product. Written on a seagull’s feather and sealed in a manila envelope
it read:
DREAMS + LOVE = CAT DELICIOUS
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| 
Er, I guess I should have explained a while ago that those last two
posts were actually lifted from discussion group postings perpetrated
by Christo deKlerk who has, heretofore, not expressed the intense,
obsessive affliction he once had for all things sci-fi. My reposting of them
was an attempt to "out" a fellow ex-trekkie.
Do you guys really think I'm the type to hide their dorky past? Come
on! I put my four years of being president of the Napa High Sci-Fi Club
on my resume!
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