Well, I throw a lot of words around in this space, some small and efficacious ("this", for example), and some needlessly obscure and abstruse ("abstruse", for example). Usually, I know what the word means; sometimes, I only have a passing familiarity with it and am trying it on for size in this, my self-sponsored arena for cerebral calisthenics where YOU DON�T GET TO JUDGE ME!!!
Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, every now and then, I think I know what a word means until I come face to face with its actual definition and/or originally intended application, and discover that I never had a full understanding of it and all its nuances until that very moment. Last night was one such time. At approximately 3:30 in the morning, I was shaken from my sleep by the lurking presence of Definition, who wanted to call my attention to the true meaning of the word "caterwauling".
There was this ungodly noise filling the night air and reverberating in my bedroom, and at first I was terrified. Confused, disoriented, and terrified. It sounded like someone was stuffing a baby into a Cuisinart, or an alien was being skinned alive, and I had no idea where it was coming from. I was fairly sure it wasn�t coming from anywhere in our apartment, as we do not own a Cuisinart, but its origin was mysterious and difficult to pinpoint.
That is, it was difficult to pinpoint until I stood up and realized the fretful crescendo was coming from an alleyway behind the apartment complex. There were two cats (from the sound of it) hissing and scratching and wailing discordantly into the night, like contestants from American Idol, and one of them was not going on to the next round of the competition. It was like Thunderdome, or something. Two cats enter, one cat leaves.
Anyway, there was nothing I could do about from my bedroom, except call out things like, "You go, Skimbleshanks! Don�t let that punk-ass Angora get away with calling you a pussy!" I don�t know how productive it was, but at least I wasn�t just standing there doing nothing. In my head I imagined that one of them (Skimbleshanks) was kind of small and shy, and had to be brought out of his shell and taught to defend himself by an older mentor (kind of a feline Mr. Miyagi, if you will), and the other cat (Diablo) was like a kingpin of the cat mafia and had been terrorizing Skimbleshanks�s family for years and years. It really made it far more entertaining from my perspective. My perspective being extremely limited, in the fact that I couldn�t actually see either party involved in the dispute, and had garnered all my background knowledge second-hand.
Anyway, the event lasted for about twenty minutes or so until one of them killed and ate the other. Or maybe he just got bored and left. I don�t really know how these things end (I always change the station before they get that far when watching those documentaries on the Discovery Channel). And then I went back to bed again, where I just lay for a while, thinking about how Skimbleshanks had triumphed over Don Diablo and the world was safe for kitty democracy, and how all kittens now a folk-hero to celebrate. I imagined all the songs that would be written commemorating the great battle between Skimbleshanks and Diablo in the decades to come.
And then I thought to myself that maybe I hadn�t yet sobered up from the margaritas I had after work, when we went to the bar for happy hour to celebrate Sam�s last week in Los Angeles. So I had a glass of water and went back to sleep.
And now I know what true caterwauling is.
Someone Got Here By Searching For: "how to get close to your crush" And: "make money, no money" I�m Watching: The Apprentice, and actually feeling a little bad for Heidi. And CSI, and thinking how great a CSI/Apprentice crossover would be.