63. Stray Cats

The sun is setting on a Monday in Brussels. I’m watching the sky gray while cats run around on the street below. It’s weird people treat some cats as parts of their families and treat others like squirrels, mostly ignoring them despite that they follow people around as though they’re out for a walk with their owner, often looking back to make sure their human is still coming along. They’re awful pretty for squirrels, not the mangy alley cats with tatty hair but sleek calicos and gray stripeys. I wonder if cats are happier pampered or free. Maybe it doesn’t occur to them.

62. Going Dutch

Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?



At the Belgian event, I thought it would be quite hip of me to read a chapter of my book not in English but in the audience’s own language—Dutch. The book store kindly lent me a copy of the Dutch/Flemish translation. After a brief lesson in pronunciation from Lenore, I had it sussed.

“Hello,” I said in English. “Eek ben uw scrijiver!” There was some hesitant applauding and I saw Lenore slide down in her chair. From there I switched over to English until the reading.

After the first paragraph, I glanced up from my novel and saw that everyone was looking around at each other, not snickering exactly, but puzzlement was clear. I paused to make a decision. I could

A. Plow ahead and confuse everyone
B. Save my face and switch over to English
C. Turn it into a game.

“You’re going to help me,” I told them like they didn’t have a choice. I sounded out a word a few times until someone figured out what I was trying to say. I repeated it back to him in his pronunciation, or what I thought was his pronunciation. Everyone giggled.

Screw the story, I thought. This was going to be fun.

61. Competition Winner

Congrats to Daniel D. for getting all 5 questions right! Art is coming your way.

1. Art: What color do you get by mixing yellow and blue?
Green

2. Science: Put these in order from biggest to smallest: Solar system, universe, Milky Way galaxy, planet
Universe, Milky Way galaxy, solar system, planet

3. Language: What part of speech modifies adjectives (among other things)?
Adverbs

4. Literature: If Lion King is based on Hamlet, who is the Shakespearean equivalent to Scar?
Claudius

5. Fandom: What is the name of the town in my first novel, Sheltered?
Pinkertown

60. Question Monday!

I’ve noticed that there is a steady increase in comments. More and more people are reading my blog. That’s great! Keep the comments coming. You may want to read comments because some interesting discussions are taking place. FYI, I do have it set up so that anyone can leave a comment. You don’t have to be a Blogger member.

I thought I’d sacrifice a post to highlight some of my favourite comments and emails, and answer some of your questions. If you all continue to ask such intelligent questions, I may make this type of post a habit.

Q1. Milo, you have a lot of fans, but what are we called? Miloteers? Tombettes? Milotons?

A. Good question. Let’s have a poll. Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Q2. Am I the only one thinking that maybe Milo’s the one making things up? I mean, how do we know who to trust?

A. Burbank has the curse of being brutally honest. Sometimes I try to downplay some of the events in comments because I’m embarrassed. And also because I don’t want to give away my secret hero identity.

Q3. Does Burbank come to book signings? I want to meet him.

A. You can’t. He’s very mysterious. Anonymity is what keeps him alive. In fact, if anyone were to work out who he is, he’d slip out of the fabric of space like water through your fingers.

59. Black and Blue Things

We ate Greek…well…we tried to eat Greek food. All the restaurant owners stand in the street and beg people to come into their restaurants. They seemed nice at first. Why they put all the restaurants next to each other like that, I’ll never know. So Darwin. Dangerous. I mean, we watched two servers have a punch-up right there in the road. We didn’t stop in either place. Then a waiter started flirting with Lenore to convince us to come in. He obviously just wanted our business, but it still pissed me off. So by the time one of the pushy servers touched her inappropriately, I was ready. I decked him in the face. Nobody else saw the whole thing, so all the workers from all the stores rushed over, formed an alliance, and ganged up on me.

We ran away.

Even with Burbank’s skills, it was still 20 against 3. We ended up hiding in an alley for a while and then buying dessert waffles off a cart (fabulous, by the way). My knuckles are black and blue, but now Lenore thinks I’m gallant.

58. Small Things

There’s a giant atom model in Brussels. Can you imagine how many atoms went into making that atom? It’s like making a tree out of books. Or a model of a cake made out of cake mix.

It got me thinking about the connectedness of things. If everything is just atoms, who’s to say this set of atoms is separate from that set? My set separate from this chair? Mine to yours? I call my set Milo and your set by another name, but it’s all conventions. Only words separate you and me, Lenore and me, Burbank and me.

57. Hot Things

My KitKat bar melted in my pocket today. This is why Burbank never buys chocolate in the summer. He doesn’t eat much candy in general, now that I think about it. He eats so much healthier than I do. No wonder he’s so fit.

I ate the KitKat anyway. The wafers first, which are oddly skinny without their chocolate coating. I guess it’s like if you were to take all the meat and skin off your arm, you’d be really surprised at how skinny your arm bone is. Then I licked the chocolate off the wrapper. I bet it was disgusting to watch.