Hooking Up

With a couple of friends doing Match dot com, we've gotten hooked on "Hooking Up," the new ABC reality series about "real" New York women experiencing online dating.

It is hilarious. Highly recommended. So far, we hate Amy and love Sonja.

In that vein, we found out yesterday that our new little kitty, Penelope, apparently, hooked up.

Yes. The kitty's a whore.

I found myself regretting the decision to expand our little family yesterday, when, wallet a hundred clams lighter, I found out that she had fleas, needed shots, another appointment in a month, and left, in some alley somewhere, a brood of little ones who, hopefully, won't come asking for child support in the form of milk and tuna.

All of this, however, is small beer* compared to seeing the FYO hold her new little kitty.





*small beer \SMAWL-BEER\ noun

1 : weak or inferior beer
*2 : something of small importance : trivia

Example sentence:
The player was fined $10,000 by the league for his comments about the opposing pitcher, but that's small beer when you consider his $15 million salary.

Did you know?
"Small beer" dates from Shakespeare's day. The Bard didn't coin it (he would have been just a child in 1568, the date of the first documented instance of "small beer"), but he did put the term to good use. In Henry VI, Part 2, for example, the rebel Jack Cade declares that, when he becomes king, he will "make it felony to drink small beer." In Othello, Desdemona asks Iago to describe a "deserving woman." Iago responds by listing praises for ten lines, only to conclude that such a woman would be suited "to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer"; in other words, to raise babies and keep track of insignificant household expenses. Desdemona quickly retorts, declaring Iago's assertion a "most lame and impotent conclusion."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.