Dan White

Today is the birthday of Robert Earl, my hugely overweight, semi-sentient tabby cat, who weighs 18 pounds, eats like a pig-animal and wakes me up every night with his ceaseless whining and yowling. (demanding yet another lump of food.) My pet doctor sent along this personalized birthday e-card, showing a bunch of kitties cavorting and playing and celebrating the birthday of my utterly shiftless feline, who has been attacking me and biting my face and trying to asphyxiate me ever since I rescued him off the streets of Santa Cruz. I am thinking of writing a book about him called The Fatness Eaters: How I Lost my mind – and Never Found Myself – While trying to Look after my Lazy, Snorting, Morbidly Obese “companion animal.” Anyhow, I hope you will send along your birthday greetings to him, or, even better, a sack full of cat chow. He’d appreciate that….

I want to hear from you — send those bios in!!Don’t be shy.(I haven’t heard from my reader from Iran for a while – If you’re out there, I hope you’re doing OK)I think I’ve got this whole RSS thing sorted out – almost. One of my readers sent me a how-to video showing me how to set it up. I’ll do my best. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Check out the wild assortment of events at the Booksmith this month at the Haight. In other news, you might have seen the “poet for hire” at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. He’s got a typewriter, and if you set a price and determine a subject, he will write a poem for you on the spot. I am going to take him up on this and blog his poem next month. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Sometimes – especially during a long recession — you need to “fake it ’til you make it.” Here is a heavily pixilated photo of me doing just that: making a fake power salute and victory gesture at the end of last week’s marathon. At the moment this picture was taken, I did not feel victorious; in truth, I was exhausted and wanted to fall to my knees and possibly vomit. In spite of this, I used my last little bit of energy to pump my fist at a camera man perched over the finish line. This strategy worked; it took the edge off my exhaustion, and helped me pick up my speed at the end. The woman in front of me looks very bummed out. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Thanks for all the great bios and info so far for Cactuseaters Readers in the News round two. At this rate, it’s going to fill up pretty fast so keep sending those in as quickly as you can. In other news, I’m aggravated (slightly) about the fact that my RSS feed is still not working. I’ll keep fiddling with it. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I’ve become quite a fan of Slinkachu’s miniature street art. You’ve got to pick up the book, Little People in the City — photos of homunculi in compromising positions. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

It’s time for installment two of “Cactuseaters Readers in the News,” in which you, the readers, step out of the shadows and talk about yourselves. Send in a brief bio of what you are up to, and what you are working on and I will try to cram it into a “digest” column that will appear anytime between two weeks and a month, depending on whether you are forthcoming and bold (or shy and reticent.) Feel free to send in whatever you like — just keep in mind that this isn’t an advertising site, so I won’t let you hawk bamboo steamers, cleaning solvents, etc, through Cactuseaters. Keep them rolling in! http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

To those of you who are new to this blog, Cactuseaters is primarily a way for me to amuse my Mother-in-Law. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

My legs feel like they are made of warm gelatin. I can barely move. Part of the problem is the run itself. Part of the problem is what I consumed on Sunday while running up and down through the entire city: about 10 tablespoons worth of sugar, one Starbucks coffee in a can (with artificial sweeteners), four bananas, 10 gloopy carbohydrate blocks and two packets of coffee-bean-shaped instant energy boosters. I feel like Keith Richards in 1973. Nevertheless, I have zero regrets. I’m planning to run at least one more before the year is out. (marathons are addictive; once you start, you really can’t stop) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Well, I managed to finished the SF Marathon. I had a nice time, although I practically crawled the thing. I could tell, from the first mile, that it just wasn’t happening for me this time. My legs felt heavy even in that first stretch along the Embarcardero. The Golden Gate Bridge was spooky and fogged in, but it slowed me down even more — it was a real traffic jam in there. Although I went quite slowly and hit The Wall the entire time, there were many highlights: 1. The man trying to hand out free Bloody Marys and beers to runners at the race. I saw no one partake. 2. A strange man clapping for us and wishing us well on the sidelines. The strange thing was — he was facing away from us, not toward us, while cheering us on. Really odd. It was almost as if he…