From the Desk of the Foreign Correspondent

Yesterday afternoon, I had to close out of all running programs for IT to remotely install a program onto my computer. This meant no conversing with the Catman for a period of 20 to 30 minutes. The Foreign Correspondent caught the fallout. (It helps to imagine the Catman as a news anchor* while you read it).

Catman: j has disappeared

Foreign Correspondent: maybe in the sun room taking a nap?

Catman: maybe

Foreign Correspondent: you panicking?

Catman: pancaking

he's just being a bone

Foreign Correspondent: why now?

Catman: might actually do a second cup of tea

need something this afternoon

to keep me going

Foreign Correspondent: that's nice

Catman: eh blow it out your ear

Foreign Correspondent:

you call j a bone

then start talking about how you're having a 2nd cup of tea

how is that interesting to anyone?

Catman: gimme mines

Foreign Correspondent: now you're just muttering

Catman: underwear's riding up

never get short cut

Foreign Correspondent: now you're really being dumb

Catman: bad bear

*A news anchor at the very worst news agency in the world.

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Op-ed: The Relevance and Significance of the Catman in the 21st Century

This kind of exchange is what we've come to expect here at YDG, and probably doesn't surprise many of our readers. It's the same old equation: one part idiocy and one part frustration lead to a half part of comedy.

Some people may not know, but the Catman and I traveled to NYC this weekend. On Saturday night, he, alongside the Foreign Correspondent, regaled a small, but dedicated, group of YDG readers with tales of their travels. So the question is: With a shtick this old -- what is it that people like about the Catman? What brings them back for more of this cat-style of humor?

Could it be some fundamental flaw shared by all of them? While possible, it also seems unlikely. Could it be that the Catman expresses something they cannot, themselves, articulate? No. Definitely not.

I asked the Catman yesterday what he thought the Catman stood for, and he said "a guy who is like a cat but is also like a guy." The Catman has a very literal mind, and unfortunately, it doesn't receive much blood flow.

Then the answer arrived. The Foreign Correspondent informed me that one of the members of Saturday night's viewing audience told him that the Catman had been trying to get "back to basics" since High School, maybe even longer. To an audience spread across the world (we've got readers in 15 states and 17 countries), the quixotic and trivial pursuits of the Catman represents that one unchanging constant in their lives. To the solider in Afghanistan who sleeps restlessly under the fire of mortar rounds, and the Columbia grad student who finds his mechanical pencil has just run out of lead, the Catman is the one thing they can both agree to call home.