Bill patiently wonders "You don't beat the cat when it actually >does< use the litter box, do you?"

I'm actually quite tenderhearted about most pets, but if I had a cat as poorly adjusted as, you know, whatsisface, it would have been placed none too-gently in the carrier and taken on a one-way trip to the veterinarian a long time ago. Come to that, such a creature might have rated only a rock, a burlap sack and a drive to the Oakland Estuary.

Seriously, after his extended periods away one grew accustomed to the Silence of the Lame. Norm reminds me of "Mr. Stinky," an alcoholic derelict (in better days a regular contributor to the old Byte magazine) who haunted McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz during the first years of my brother's tenure there. Mr. Stinky was filthy, belligerent, incontinent, mad. The library actually had to discard several chairs after prolonged contact with Stinky's shit-soaked trousers. He was an unwelcome regular there for a couple of years (the University piously declining to take action against him—although I suspect that had he been loitering in, say, the Chancellor's anteroom they might have taken action sooner) until he actually assaulted a student, whereupon a CYA restraining order was swifly obtained and enforced.

Norman King, AKA orion, AKA about three dozen other transparent sock puppets in the course of his long and dishonorable time here, is to the IWT experience what Mr. Stinky was to the McHenry Library experience back in the day. His participation adds nothing of value and it leaves the uphostery soiled and reeking.