The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat.

—Norbert Wiener, Philosophy of Science (1945) (with A. Rosenblueth).

Courtesy my brother G., an aphorism about the best command-model for cat-thinking-about: Think about the cat you actually have. Problem of cat-concept solved.

This brings up the hilarity of phenomenology in general: What is the best (the only) description of a thing? The thing. (The thing beyond description. Chillin in its own little multiverse of thing-ness.)

Applies also to music: “What’s DOOM’s new album sound like?” “Well, you know—[insert comparison to other DOOM albums], [insert me humming a few bars]. It’s good.” Which is not to say that I wouldn’t enjoy going into figurative overdrive to describe DOOM’s work—only that my description would be inadequate for someone with little or no experience of paratactic/rhizomatic rap music about food, cartoons, and rap music.

This is all to say: I anticipate eagerly the new DOOM album, and if I have to paint a cat, I guess I have to paint my own cat, even if neither of us knuckleheads is happy about that situation.

Video/design expert and friend Patrick Davison designed Hello Cthulhu; lunchboxes and mousepads soon to come. H.P. Lovecraft was a top-notch bastard; this image would have probably driven him to an early (and soon unearthed) grave:

Writer and friend C.J. Hauser draws single-panel cartoons, every single day.

In terms of “famous” cartoonists and other drawers, I must note Partially Clips and Achewood (again), which have severely influenced my own stances toward talking animals and fourth-wall destruction.

Robot.

But here’s the twist: Robots, apparently, desire to be soldiers.

Whereas my cat would no doubt be content to play the robot pur sang—mindlessly spinning and cleaning and freaking out when I pour water on him [it?]—the poor robot whose job he’d so heartlessly steal would be an ethical soldier, one capable of making “the right choice” about when to unleash a devastating hail of armor-piercing minigun rounds onto children, compact cars, noisy televisions, life-size cut-outs of Adnan “Crazy Cheeze” Sabri, &c.

To clarify my position on ethical robotic devastation, I should add that attempts to trick-out the ethics of human soldiers have so far led to nada; as my man Philip Zimbardo points out on TED, the adoption of the uniform of an “ethical” government has—since the slave-Imperium of Roma, since the slave-empires of Sumer and Egypt long before—provided only a smokescreen, a chance to faux-ethically rationalize away our wars.

Perhaps robots can do us one better. Or perhaps we might pass the job of soldiering on to the noble (and highly irrational) cat. While certainly unethical, any given cat-soldier would also be pissy and libertarian, unable and unwilling to coordinate with the next—thus preventing the formation of a feline SkyNet or Matrix. Wars would be shorter and center around the control and distribution of fish-guts and whole milk. And—when the cats (individually) took command of the Roomba factories—the hardwood floors of the world would look a lot shinier, a lot faster.

(Paritur pax catto?)