Pet List

So there's been a lot of discussion lately as to the exact amount of pets to have come and gone in the Giuffre household throughout the years. So here's a chronological list as best as I can remember:

1980's
Merlin & Monroe - before my time, but I've heard about them
Sherlock - Horrifying dog who destroyed fences, got hit by many cars and refused to die
Lightning - Cat who in her waining years scared builders shitless
A couple rabbits - There's debate as to who actually left the hutch open

1990's
Patches - Annie's cat that ran away (ha)
Tiger - Adam's cat
Stripe - My cat who was almost always pregnant
Bigfoot - One of Stripe's kittens who stayed with mom during her recovery from surgery, then stayed with us until last year. Had seven toes and brain damage.
Five - The last remaining cat of the Old pack, found in a dumpster in Westfield by Annie
Peanut - Annie's cat. Doesn't really count, but she lived here for a while
Jack - The wonderful dog who when we were both 14 (he in dog years) we were the same height and weight (5'3", 110 lbs)

2000's (the age of strays)
Ahab - Real name Oscar, moved from down the street to here, then to my house in Mission Hill, then back home
Buster Brown - Walked into mom and dad's window and refused to leave, lived with me in JP for a few months where he was named by my roommate Marion
Puerto Rico - The stray who hung around my house in Austin
Dave - True name still undecided, found by Annie in Somerville. I call him Leto II after the Emperor of the Universe in Dune.

Grand total of my 25 year stay at this house is 12 cats, 2 dogs, plus one Puerto Rico. I have a vague memory of there being fish at one point and Lightning knocking the bowl over and eating them. Annie still has Peanut in San Fransisco, Adam's thinking about getting a dog, and Five, Buster Brown, and Dave still live here. I'm moving in a week to a house with two cats so those three are staying here.

I'm saving the good stuff. But you can have these.

So I guess I'll write a little on what's been going on. Things are progressing wonderfully with the Auntie Lee project, its just a matter of time. In the meanwhile I've been successfully scoring great interviews for the past few weeks. Still no bites and I'm waiting to hear from this one place on Friday, which would be not only a decent job but actually exciting and stimulating and could put me in a direction I've been meaning to lean myself. I had a great interview at a Candy Factory last Sunday and although the interview went well, when I went in to work the next day, the inner turmoil of a Father-Son operation presented itself. I never like when you have two bosses and neither can agree and both will occasionally come in to where you're working and tell you to work in a manner that completely negtates what the previous one had said, rising to the contradictory crescendo of me not getting hired. Tim raised the cute question of "Do you think anyone could have done that job?"

Saturday was lovely. Rolled into JP around the 3, got coffees at Miami Restaurant, which I'm convinced is the best and cheapest coffee in Boston or anywhere near it. Hung out with Keanne for a while then went over to Tim's and beat him at the version of dominoes Matt learned from the Domicans at his work. Then Tim beat me by not too much in the version his grandfather tought him. I think its the Cuban. After that we went to Same Old Place which is no longer the same old place because it now serves wicked cheap beer. We got pitchers and slices and they told us if we were to drink we'd have to do so in the back room which as it turned out was occupied with a six year old's birthday party. So we drank with a bunch of six year olds and were loud and vulgar and saw a Cabbage Patch Kid sticking ass-end out of a trash can. The party wrapped up and the moms assured us that if the kids had any more sugar they'd never go to sleep, so they gave us the rest of the birthday cake. We brought it home, ate it and played Mario Kart. We then went over to Chico's and found that we were the first to arrive at his basement show party. Chico's parties are usually really fun, but this one was totally busted. No one there, awful bands that I couldn't pretend to be interested in and a pay bar in the basement. We lost Harry and sang and drank all the way back to Tim's to get my car so we could go to All Asia where Aslhey was working the bar and could give us free drinks.

By the time we actually got to All Asia there was a line out front, I couldn't find parking, and I'd lost my voice singing along to Nick Cave so I just kicked Haggerty and Tim out of the car and went over to Amanda's. Woke up the next day to Karen christening me yet another nickname: Mini Gun. This is derived from a few weeks ago when I was talking about my noise band BCMG and said that rather than standing for Brian.Calderelli.Matthew.Giuffre, it stood for Big Cold Mini Gun. We drove to Swampscott, got scones and coffees, sat on a bench and looked at dogs and the ocean. At one point a jogging lady stopped to stretch and aimed her butt right at us, after which some wierdo said "Now I'm gonna stretch just like that" then gave us a bunch of seaglass in an oyster shell wrapped in painter's tape. "I'm saving the good stuff," he said. "But you can have these."

I then went over JD's and rearranged the shit out of his apartment and helped his downstairs neighbor move a washer and dryer from the basement to his second floor apt. He gave us ten bucks so we went to Kappy's and got some nice beer: Weihenstephaner Weissbeer Dark and Unibroue Seigneuriale (did I have to do a google search for spelling on those? Yes). We're waiting until another round of Resident Evil to crack them open.

So I've been keeping busy. I've finished four paintings since the new year, got a call from a freelance agency today, saw Watchmen and was pleased, started a band with two more hypothetical bands in the mix, and have just been doing well. The final piece is landing a job. Tomorrow I begin learning Javascript in an effort to learn ActionScript. And hopefully Friday I'm in love.

So I now know the basics of PHP and this shit is mad boring. Its the type of stuff that made me disinterested in web design in the first place. Oh well. Its good to know. I guess I'll move on to Java now. I'm going to start recording the jam seshes and maybe set up a youtube channel for it. We'll see.

Oh my. So I've been a creative tornado lately. I'm learning perl this week, and I'm moving on the php next week and I think I'm just going to code up some pages to show what I'm capable of, which is something I can't find a reason for not doing yet. I've been jamming constantly, typically with Brian at the metal shop in Lynn which is always fun and interesting. We pulled Marat in one week to play guitar and Tim the week before to play banjo with excellent results. Last Monday I had a wonderful jam with me playing drums, Tyler on upright bass, Marat on guitar, Evan on sax, and Tim from upstairs on trombone. Epic. Brian brought his set up but it was too loud and he just kind of sat out for most, but we're going to play again tomorrow night.

I've sold out of comics again and need to get to the shops to collect. I'm going to put this money towards printing my next comic once it gets finished, then from there sending shit to publishers. One of these days. I've begun drawing again. Large scale. Check out the work in progress as well as the two old boys that got finished. I only made two drawings last year in addition to other things. Although I did make two comics and started writing an intensive series of scripts. It was a good year kind of. Regardless, I aim to improve on this. Crummy pics, I know but I'm working on it.





And one of these days I swear to god I'll get a job. Until then, I'm still pretty happy. Its nice having a place to live.