WEB
The Teal Cat Project
Ever want to help tame feline population explosion by acquiring an aquamarine cat statue? I bet you have! Well, now there’s The Teal Cat Project (tealcatproject.com) an Omaha-based effort to raise money for a humane method of neutering feral cats, thus keeping the real-life cat population manageable. The best part? Buying the teal cat. Choose between trinket, mantel or centerpiece size. Or a T-shirt emblazoned with, you guessed it, a teal cat. Better still, the project allows you to donate your own vintage porcelain cat to be painted and sold. If that ain’t ball-snipping community teamwork, I don’t know what is.
BOOK
Distrust That Particular Flavor, William Gibson
Novelist William Gibson has predicted our eerie technological dystopia before. In fact, Gibson, author of Neuromancer and The Difference Engine, is credited with popularizing the term “cyberspace.” Now comes his latest offering, the nonfiction collection Distrust That Particular Flavor, which includes essays that have appeared in Wired, Rolling Stone, New York Times Magazine and others. The futurist (or perhaps presentist?) discusses life in culturally repressed Singapore, what “Martian jet lag” is like, and what’s wrong with the Internet. Read this if you want a better understanding of our crypticgigabyte existence.
ALBUM
Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen
If you didn’t get enough doom and redemption from Tom Waits’ recent album, we’ve got you one more. Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen has released his 12th studio album, Old Ideas. The grizzled baritone king sounds old here, but then again, did he ever sound young? “I’ll cut the darkness, it was drinkin’ from your cup,” he utters on “Darkness,” over the bluesy drawl of fuzzy guitars. “Show Me the Place” has the spiritual feel of gospel music, yet, slow and sleepy in its execution, it’s built around simple piano and a female chorus as Cohen yearns for the unfathomable. How’s the rest? You’ll just have to buy it. (Or steal it, whatever. But stealing from Cohen would be like dancing with the devil.)
