Still going strong

I don't like Scotch.  Or, as a Scotsman would say, "I don't like whisky."  Except he'd never, ever say that, would he?

I don't like Scotch, but I've always been delighted at the sight of the Johnnie Walker logo.  "Born 1820, still going strong."  Today's version of the logo is a somewhat abstract or idealized version of its classical self, but still recognizably Johnnie. 

Neither liking Scotch nor drinking it, I hadn't thought much about Johnnie Walker -- whose ads no longer fill our better magazines as they once did -- until I came upon a column by "Charlemagne," writing in last week's Economist.  Charlemagne was primarily interested in pointing out that the makers of this highly successful whisky want to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom, and keep the United Kingdom in the European Union.  But he devotes a paragraph to Johnnie Walker's history, and to Britain's ability to distribute the beverage by merchant ship "to the ends of the British empire."

I was intrigued.

John Walker was born, according to the whisky's own website, near Kilmarnock, Scotland, south of Glasgow.  In 1805, not 1820.  But when his dad died in 1819, the family scraped together £537.15 (my goodness, folks, how anachronistic! -- back in 1819 that would have been £537 and 3 shillings!) to buy a grocery for 14-year-old John to manage.  By 1825, John's store was selling everything from stationery to home-made whisky.  When rail lines reached Kilmarnock in 1844, John began trading wholesale throughout the country.

His son Alexander took over the business when John died in 1857 (lives were shorter in those days).  At that time, whisky represented less than ten percent of the firm's sales. In 1860, "John Walker and Sons" began bottling blends (blends having been illegal until that year) in square bottles -- as they still are -- paying commissions to sea captains to sell the cargo around the world.  By 1906, the business, now run by Alexander's sons, was selling three blends: White Label, Black Label and Red Label.

But -- and here comes the big moment, as far as I'm concerned -- in 1908, cartoonist Tom Browne sketched "The Striding Man" on the back of a menu. The illustration showed a prosperous dandy (although probably not 14-year-old Johnnie) as he might have been dressed in 1820. His drawing became one of history's first globally-recognized advertising icons.

The rest of the Johnnie Walker history is merely brand puffery, as far as I'm concerned.  But I am interested in the fact that, over the years, Johnnie Walker has been sold in a variety of blends with a variety of labels:  besides the original red, black and white, there have been green, gold, platinum, and blue labels -- plus nonhued Premix/One and Johnnie Walker Swing.  Green Label was phased out in 2012, but you can still  buy all other blends at your favorite liquor store.

Sadly, the company shut down its facilities in Kilmarnock, its birthplace, last year, and its product is now produced in three other locations in Scotland.

In a changing world, where famous names seem to drop like flies, it's reassuring to note that Johnnie Walker (born 1820) is still going strong: smirking, striding and strutting.  I'll toast his good health and future longevity. 

With a gin and tonic.

Beyond understanding

Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
--J. B. S. Haldane

I'm reading Revelation Space, the first book of a science fiction pentalogy by Alastair Reynolds.  I'm reading it, quite frankly, solely because of a strong recommendation from a nephew. 

I'm only a third of the way through the first book, and I've made it clear to myself, if to no one else, that life is short and I feel myself under no obligation to continue reading beyond this first book.  But the book so far is amazing -- both in the imagination displayed by the author (a British writer with a Ph.D in physics and astronomy), and the detail with which he furnishes his universe.  This is no slapdash piece of writing by an author who has come up with something he considers to be a clever plot, and who rushes to dramatize that plot as quickly as possible.

The story takes place five centuries from now, in a universe whose peoples are clearly descended from those of us living on 21st century Earth, and who share our human fears and ambitions, but whose daily lives are as different from ours as ... well, as ours from Shakespeare, I suppose.  Far more different, really, which is logical once one extrapolates the ever accelerating rate of technological change five more centuries into the future.

I may well review the book and/or the entire series at some future date.  Not now, of course. Not while I still have two-thirds of the initial volume to read.

The reason for this post at this time is to verbalize my appreciation for the imagination that Reynolds displays, right from the first page.  His book is, of course, no Buck Rogers novel -- simply a showpiece for some cool rocket technology.   Reynolds's writing recalls to mind the Haldane quote at the top of this post.  Already, the initial novel has revealed ideas and concepts about the capabilities of the human mind far more foreign to how we think at present than my use of my Kindle would seem to an ancient Greek.  I know it's cheating, but a quick scan of Wikipedia contains the following foretaste:

The Revelation Space universe contains elements of Lovecraftian horror, with one posthuman entity stating explicitly that some things in the universe are fundamentally beyond human or transhuman understanding.

Yes, it's fiction.  Nothing in the series corresponds with what really will happen in the future.  Except -- first, I have no doubt that the future will be very different from the present, but that, as Reynolds suggests  -- so long as we remain human -- certain constants will continue to exist in human behavior.

And secondly:  That the Universe will forever contain mysteries beyond our mind's power to grasp --  aspects that are "queerer than we can suppose."  I find this attractive in many ways.  I also find it ineffably sad that mankind will learn and discover and at least partially understand so many things after I'm no longer around to appreciate how awesome our Universe -- "reality" itself -- really is.

Mellow bird

My heart knows what the wild goose knows,
I must go where the wild goose goes.
--Tennessee Ernie Ford

But where does the wild goose go?  And when?

I was wondering that today as I walked across campus -- keeping an eye on the Canada geese surrounding me on all sides.  Didn't  they used to stop by campus just twice a year, like Midwestern retirees, on their way south and north?  This year, they clearly haven't been going anywhere.  They were here in the summer, and they're here in the winter.

I can't recall ever seeing any formations of geese flying overhead.

The UW campus seems to suit them just dandy.  Lots of goosey treats snuggled in the lawns, apparently, just waiting to be eaten.   Students walk carefully around the munching geese as they walk from class to class.  The geese?  They aren't much inclined to get out of anyone's way.  Fearful, they are not.  They strut, they honk, they ... they leave their calling cards.  On the lawns, on the sidewalks.

Why aren't these migratory geese migrating, I wondered.  It's been a mild winter.  Maybe with the still unaddressed problem of global warming, the geese are losing their migratory instincts?  Maybe Seattle's becoming an all-year goose paradise?  Another thing to blame on the Republicans!

The Canada goose, or Branta canadensis, is native to our continent.  It's found from Mexico to the Arctic.  Canada geese do, in fact, migrate south to winter residences, and then back north again for summer.  But -- and this surprised me -- Seattle has always lain right smack in the middle of a narrow band of territory where the climate is so salubrious as to permit the birds to hang out year-around. 

Moreover, our local subspecies, Branta canadensis fulva, or the Vancouver Canada goose, has increasingly interbred with B.c. maxima, the Giant Canada goose, a subspecies that was once nearly extinct.  The Giant subspecies is nonmigratory by nature, and his half breed kids have inherited his lackadaisical attitude.  In other words, the entire species is becoming increasingly nonmigratory, regardless of where they live.

As Wikipedia puts it:

In recent years, Canada Goose populations in some areas have grown substantially, so much so that many consider them pests for their droppings, bacteria in their droppings, noise, and confrontational behavior. This problem is partially due to the removal of natural predators and an abundance of safe, man-made bodies of water near food sources, such as those found on golf courses, in public parks and beaches, and in planned communities.

And college campuses.  Indeed.  The Wikipedia writers also note the tendency of Canada geese to attack humans when they feel threatened.  They hiss.  They threaten back.  They charge.  If you're still around, they attack physically with tooth and claw.  Well, actually, with wing and beak. 

Sounds scary, but our campus birds are pretty mellow.  They know a good thing when they see it.  And -- despite all I say -- they're a pretty handsome bird.  They share a mutual tolerance with the equally mellow college students, and are actually kind of nice to have around.

Unless, of course, you want to sit on the lawn.

Cosmic joke

If you have a slowly-developing cancer, do you want to know about it?  This issue, in various forms, comes up frequently in the health care field.  Now it arises on a cosmic scale.

Just last year we were laughing and pounding each other on the back because we had -- probably -- discovered the Higgs Boson, right?  The "God particle"?   The particle that's a manifestation of the universal field pervading every cubic inch of the, well, Universe?  The field that gives what we perceive as "mass" to those bundles of concentrated energy that we perceive as "things"? 

Turns out that, metaphorically, we had discovered the MRI.  Today, we're told that the "MRI" reveals that we have incurable "cancer."

By calculating the mass of the Higgs particle, physicists now claim to be able to estimate the stability of the Universe.  Turns out it, it ain't.  Stable, that is. 

The physicists announce that a few tens of billions of years from now, pffft!  We'll be gone. 

"A little bubble of what you might think of as an ‘alternative' universe will appear somewhere and then it will expand out and destroy us," [physicist Joseph] Lykken said, adding that the event will unfold at the speed of light.

In other words, the cataclysmic event will reach us at the same instant as does the information advising us of the event's occurrence.  We'll cease existing, along with our families and our world, without even ever knowing what hit us. 

Oh, they try to reassure us that the sun will burn out in another 4.5 billion years anyway, so no big deal.  Please.  I have no doubt that within the next 4.5 billion years, mankind (or whatever has by then replaced mankind as intelligent life) will have figured out how to escape the solar system and find a more salubrious planet(s) circling a less short-lived sun on which to settle down, kick back, and watch TV. 

But I'm not so sure we'll find a way to escape the self-annihilating Universe.  To my way of thinking, it's pretty much all we have -- our very own little niche of space-time.  When it implodes, so does -- for all intents and purposes -- what we like to call "reality."  I realize that there may be billions upon billions of parallel universes living alongside us, worlds in which other Vikings raid other villages and other kids grow up under similarly bland Eisenhowers.  But barring discovery of  some way of visiting those universes -- or at least exchanging greetings with them -- I don't find their hypothetical existence to offer much consolation.

Dr. Lykken says that if the mass of the Higgs Boson had been just a tad greater or smaller, the instability leading to this calamity would not exist.

Well, damn!  That's really irritating, right? I wish they hadn't told us.

Golden isle

Three times I've been to the island of Rhodes:  The first time, while traveling alone for six weeks with a backpack throughout the eastern Mediterranean, hanging out in student hostels.  The second, an all-too-short trip to Italy and Greece with a former law school classmate.  And the third, overnight, aboard a Turkish gulet with family members, as a side-trip while exploring the near-by Turkish coast.

Rhodes was always Rhodes, timeless -- and yet, changing with the different periods of my life. As you might expect, it was that first visit, not long after finishing college, that lingers most strongly in my memories.  And it's those memories that are deliciously brought again to consciousness by my re-reading of Lawrence Durrell's Reflections on a Marine Venus. 

Durrell is best known for his fictional, somewhat Rashomon-esque Alexandria Quartet -- four novels I managed to devour one year on Maui, all in one week, arising each morning at dawn and reading on the patio for several hours until other family members finally came to life.  I'd be at a loss now to describe the story line; what I remember are the richly realized personalities of the characters and the haunting sense of life lived vividly in a fantastic and multi-layered Alexandria -- a city that no longer exists as described and, sadly, was always a fantasy of Durrell's imagination.

Durrell's short memoir of his days on Rhodes seems closer in tone and approach to the fictional Quartet than it does to his also excellent, but less impressionistic, memoir of life on Cyprus, Bitter Lemons, which I've discussed in an earlier post.   For Reflections on a Marine Venus is nothing if not impressionistic.

After spending World War II in Alexandria as a press attaché to the British embassy, Durrell was sent to Rhodes in 1945 to handle communications for the occupying British forces -- specifically, to publish newspapers in English, Turkish and Greek for the island's residents.  As described in his memoir, at least, his official journalistic activities seem to have been secondary to his social life and to his delight in returning to the Greek civilization that he loved so much.

Although times were hard -- he mentions the eating of Spam on several occasions -- he seems to have lived in a joyous dream world.  He had the company of British friends, both military and non-military, who shared to varying degrees his highly educated appreciation of history and nature.  His girlfriend from Alexandria came to live with him.  His job took him not only all over Rhodes, but throughout the Dodecanese island group of which Rhodes was the largest member.  He was fluent in Greek, and at ease in talking with everyone, from Orthodox abbots to illiterate fishermen.

The book discusses the Aegean as it was in 1945, contrasted at times with how it had been at the time of his earlier visits.  Durrell also passes on to his readers a trove of classical, medieval, and modern history and politics. 

Durrell has a well-developed aesthetic sense, and describes scenery in richly lyrical language.

The Aegean is still waiting for its painter -- waiting with all the unselfconscious purity of its lights and forms for someone to go really mad over it with a loaded paint-brush.  Looking down upon it from the sentinel's tower at Castello, from the ancient temple at Lindos, you begin to paint it for yourself in words.  Cerulean sky touched with white cirrus -- such fleece grows between the horns of nine-day goatlets, or on the cocoons of silkworms; viridian to peacock-tail green where the sea threshes itself out against the cliffs.  Prismatic explosion of waves against the blue sky, crushing out their shivering packets of colour, and then the hissing black intake of the water going back.  The billiard-green patch edged with violet that splashes the sea below Lindos.

At times, this literary ornamentation becomes a little tiresome -- Hemingway wouldn't have approved -- but in general it arouses in me a deep longing to live in his own un-hurried, un-touristed era, to see what he saw, and to feel what he felt.  

As I read, I recall my own memories of golden sunlight on marble temples; of the fortified city of the Templars, both forbidding and irresistably attractive; of the silver groves of olive trees; of the cozy harbor filled with fishing boats; of the "wine-dark" sea rolling in far below the high cliffs of Lindos.  The butterflies, the ceaseless buzzing of mid-day cicadas, the cold jugs of cheap local wine.  The outdoor table where your breakfast coffee and rolls are served -- whether graciously on linen, on a hotel terrace, or more convivially on plastic tables in the courtyard of a youth hostel.  The friendliness of the local Greeks, of course, but also of the fellow English-speaking travelers you ran into --  typical kids back home, I suppose, but kids whose minds and manners and sensitivities all seemed uplifted here, their curiosity heightened,  by exposure to the bright light of the Hellenic civilization, modern as well as classical, they found all about them.

Durrell's done it to me again.  I can never go back to being a happily indigent student, nor can I join him as a post-war British press attaché on a newly-liberated Greek island.  But Greece seems to call everyone, regardless of age or education or century.  I'd give much right now to be drinking strong coffee, staring at the blue Aegean, and listening to the steady buzz of the cicadas.

I guess I'll be making a fourth visit to Rhodes.  One of these days. 

Event in Siberia

In 1908, the "Tunguska Event" devastated 830 square miles of a remote area of Siberia.  The "event," an explosion over a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, knocked down 80 million trees and broke windows hundreds of miles from the epicenter.

When I was young, I heard many possible explanations for the "event," including flying saucer activities, a collision between matter and anti-matter, or a tiny black hole passing through the earth. 

Today, it's almost universally agreed that the "event" was the result of a meteor or asteroid entering the atmosphere and exploding.  This hypothesis was not accepted at first; the explosion was so great and yet left no evidence of meteorite material on the ground.  It's now estimated that the object, over 300 feet in diameter, exploded at an altitude of three to six miles, the fragments burning and vaporizing before they could hit the ground.

Today's blast over Siberia (is Siberia a meteor-magnet?) was a firecracker by comparison.  According to the Associated Press, the object was about the size of a bus, and exploded with the force of about 20 Hiroshima bombs.  Furthermore, its life ended much higher above the ground -- somewhere from 12 to 32 miles, according to varying American and Russian estimates, shielding the ground to a large degree from the force of the explosion.

Very interesting scientifically, but unnerving.  Fortunately there were no fatalities.  But it reminds us how precarious not only our individual lives may be, but the existence of life on Earth itself.  The dinosaurs took a red card 66 million years ago when the earth was hit by an asteroid massive enough (six to nine miles in diameter) to survive the atmosphere and actually strike the Earth near the Yucatan, releasing energy of over one billion (yes, billion) equivalents to the Hiroshima bomb. 

It could happen again.  The Tunguska Event was a reminder, and today's little fireworks display was just another prompt.  Most of the thousand people injured were folks -- many of them school kids -- who ran to their windows to see what was happening when they saw a flash brighter than the Sun.   They arrived at the window just in time for the blast to arrive, shattering the window and piercing them with glass.

Too bad they didn't display the instinctive reaction of my own generation.  When I was a kid, if our schoolroom had been hit by a blinding flash of light from outside the window, we would each have dropped to the floor under our desk, circled one arm around our face, and thrown the other across the back of our neck. 

Waiting with hearts pounding for the end of civilization as we knew it.  

A reluctant pope

Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation today. The news stories all remark on the unusual nature of his decision:  Benedict will be the first pope since Celestine V to resign voluntarily, for his own reasons -- as opposed to resignation as part of a brokered deal to end a schism.

"Celestine V" doesn't trip off my tongue as a household name, despite my one-time study of medieval history. So I looked him up. 

Pietro of Morrone was a thirteenth century monk and hermit.  Following the death of Pope Nicholas IV in 1292, the College of Cardinals appeared to be in no rush to choose a successor.  In fact, after two years, the Holy See still remained vacant, the cardinals unable to choose between favorites of competing Italian families.

Actually, it was a small college.  Only eleven cardinals were entitled to vote.  (At present, 118 of the 209 cardinals are entitled to vote for a new pope, under rules adopted in 1970 that require a voting cardinal to be under the age of 80.)  It was the last time that the cardinals were allowed to roam about freely before a pope was elected.  Since that time, they've been kept locked up in a "papal conclave" (cum clave = "with a key") in the Vatican until they reach a decision.  In subsequent conclaves, strict rules were enforced, limiting the amount of food permitted the cardinals after a reasonable time had passed without a new pope being chosen.

Pietro, already well known for his sanctity, lost his patience after two years.  He sent the eleven cardinals a letter warning them of divine vengeance if they didn't get their act together.  The cardinals responded by unanimously choosing Pietro himself as the new pope.  Clearly appalled by this unexpected development, Pietro tried to resist his election, even fleeing physically. Finally, however, he was persuaded to accept the office.  He was coronated in 1294, taking "Celestine V" as his name.

The papacy at the time was a political force, contending with competing secular powers and suffering from influence from within by corrupt Italian families.  Celestine, famed for a holy life as a hermit, had neither the skill nor the stomach to manage the worldly affairs of the Church as it then existed.  He abdicated after serving as pope for a mere five months, stating his reasons as "the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life." 

Who could blame him?

His successor, Boniface VIII, having encouraged Clementine in his decision to abdicate, had Pietro (né Clementine) seized and imprisoned as soon as he had assumed Pietro's former office.  The former pope spent ten months in captivity until he died.  His death has been attributed to "infected air," but some historians believe he was murdered on orders from Boniface.

As a consolation prize, I suppose -- although actually as a result of political pressure from French forces who had opposed the by-then-deceased Boniface VIII -- Celestine V was canonized in 1313 by Pope Clement V.

Unlike Celestine V, Benedict XVI did not simply throw up his hands and withdraw from an uncongenially active life.  Benedict has served to the best of his abilities, and by his own lights, in an office for which his temperament -- that of a scholar -- may not have particularly suited him.  He is resigning now, only when the frailities of old age are catching up with him.  Luckily, we live in a more civil age than that in which the hermit Pietro found himself.  We can rest confident that Benedict will be neither imprisoned nor done away with by his successor.

Instead, as do most of us, I wish him peace and enjoyment in his studies throughout his remaining years. 

From tiny acorns ...

Seattle flagship store

When President Obama selected Sally Jewell, president and CEO of REI, to be his new Secretary of the Interior, the landmark Seattle institution received another burst of national attention.

I say "Seattle institution," but that betrays my parochial perspective.  Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) is one of the nation's leading outdoor recreational equipment retailers.  REI has approximately 125 stores in 31 states.  It has 11.6 million "members," and annual sales of $1.8 billion (2011).  It sells both brand name merchandise, and some products manufactured under its own name. 

The flagship store in Seattle (pictured above) is a virtual temple to outdoors equipment of every sort -- not just camping and climbing gear, but clothing, ski and snowshoe equipment, bicycles and cycling equipment, running shoes, kayaks, travel gear, books, virtually anything related to fun in the outdoors -- dominated by a glass tower enclosing a 65-foot climbing rock.

'Twas not always thus.  When I joined REI, it occupied several old, single-floor warehouse buildings on Capitol Hill -- buildings cobbled together to create a commercial maze, somewhat like an old, funky bookstore.  It sold primarily backpacking and climbing gear.  Its formal name was already Recreational Equipment, Inc., but no one called it "REI"; it was simply "the co-op."  It was (and still is) organized as a member-owned cooperative that distributed its net profits to its members annually.  Members still receive an annual distribution, but for years the dividend has been stabilized at ten percent of purchases, regardless of the co-op's profits during the year.

The co-op had been formed in 1938 as a means of providing, at cost, hard-to-find climbing equipment to Seattle area climbers.  By the time I joined, it had expanded its scope, but climbing and backpacking equipment was still by far its primary focus.  Like most members, I took its function as a member-owned cooperative seriously.  When its annual catalog first contained what I felt were unusually flashy ads for skis, rather than simply technical descriptions, I wrote complaining that the purpose of the co-op was to serve the needs of members, not to create needs by advertising. (I received a friendly but noncommittal response.)

Such was my naiveté.  Even non-profit institutions employ real human beings, ambitious types with the human need to preside over greater and greater empires.  Annual profits may remain zero, but the officers' salaries increase as the organization grows larger.  I'm not saying that growth is bad.  REI in its present form serves my own needs, as well as those of others, for products beyond the narrow fields of climbing and backpacking.  But I still lament the loss of a certain purity of purpose and organization that the co-op possessed when I first joined, a certain form of upper middle class socialism, I suppose.

Sally Jewell leads Mt. Rainier climb

REI has been an excellent citizen of Seattle, and a strong promoter of all things good environmentally.  Despite the expansion of its mission statement, it remains run by folks with outdoors interests and an environmental orientation, not by green-shaded bean counters.  Back when I signed up, Jim Whittaker -- the first American to summit Everest -- was the CEO.  Today's CEO, our new Secretary of the Interior, is herself described as a kayaker, climber, and skier.

Time passes.  My REI number is so low that clerks look at me in surprise when I provide it while making a purchase.  That feels a bit awkward, I guess, but it's also a pleasure to have been a member during a large portion of REI's growth from a small local co-op into a giant national institution.

Vive le chat

The iron is dead ...

Once upon a time, a guy could easily buy a railroad for $200, but, oddly enough, turn around and find himself hit with a $75 bill for luxury tax.  In those days, everyone earned the same salary -- $200 -- but income equality hardly did away with class distinctions or the gap between the rich and the poor..  Rent in a flop house hotel on Mediterranean Avenue cost you only $250;  a stay in a grand Boardwalk hotel set you back $2,000.  You could be sent to jail for no stated reason whatsoever, but those in the know -- and in possession of a certain small document -- could get out of jail free.


... long live le chat.

Yes, Monopoly, of course.  The great game of depression America, and one of the continuing triumphs of the board game industry.   The game has evolved over the years, but only superficially.  Its adherents detest change.  Therefore, despite inflation since the 1930s, players still joyously accept $10 for winning second prize in a beauty contest.

One small change made front page news this week: a playing piece has died -- the sturdy (and curiously non-electric) iron -- and has been replaced by an icon more in keeping with the decadence of our own times -- a non-utilitarian cat.  The iron was voted off the island, so to speak, by players whose votes determined it to be the least favorite of present day playing pieces.

Well, duh.  I could have told them that.  I don't recall anyone ever voluntarily choosing the iron.  The thimble and wheelbarrow, yes.  Certainly the top hat.  The Scotty dog was voted most popular, and yet I don't recall his ever being in much demand when I played.  Was he even included in my set?  I don't recall.

Actually, the pieces I recall best weren't the present day metal pieces at all.  They were colored wooded pieces in various abstract shapes.  See my illustration below, if you don't know what I'm talking about.  My set had most of these same pieces, but not necessarily in the same colors.  My brother always chose what we called "the milk can" -- that cylindrical piece on the left with the groove circling the upper portion.  My first and only choice was always the piece that reminded me of an old fashioned rubber stamp -- it's black in the illustration, but a lustrous royal purple in my own set. 

It wasn't until later in my childhood, when someone gave me the "Deluxe" edition of  Monopoly, packaged in a white box, that I began using the current-style metal pieces.

It's been years since I've played Monopoly.  However, in the last few years a childhood friend has re-emerged from obscurity, hurling bizarre taunts my way, claims of my supposed childhood inferiority at the game.  Sooner or later, I suppose, I'll have to put the lad in his place.  How better to do so than with the newly minted cat?  She's sleek, she's new, she's sassy.  She's so "today."  My buddy will predictably choose some favorite piece out of his fading boyhood memories, relying on a pathetic sense of nostalgia.

Nostalgia's for losers.