The finalists have been announced for the Gävle Lussekatt contest!
Apparently there were over 300 submissions, which were (with considerable difficulty) pared down to 10 finalists. I have cast my vote for Pricken (Dot in English), who reminds me so much of Apelsin I had to double-check that it wasn’t Apelsin (different markings though). I am pretty sure you need a Gastrikland address for your vote to count, but you can check out the contestants here: http://arbetarbladet.se/lasarnasab/lussekatten/1.1542948
Some discussion questions:
1) Is the hairless cat entrant a token entry to satisfy diversity requirements? Isn’t that condescending?
2) Is the yawning black cat a little too evil ‘basement cat’ to be considered cute?
3) Why don’t any of the persian/snub-nose entrants have a “nailed shut cat door” story to explain their appearance?
4) How is chewing on electrical cords funny? That seems to be the literary definition of tragedy.
5) This would offend my feminist sensibilities if it were a ‘pretty girl’ contest, so why do I find the kitty contest delightful?
6) Why should any cat other than Pricken win? (This is a trick question).
7) If Pricken left Gävle on an 05:25 Upplands Lokaltrafik Train and Zorran left Uppsala on a 05:34 X2000 train, who would get to to Sundsvall first, winning the can of herring? State your assumptions and show your work.
Those are the book club questions for this week, please discuss over fika.
1) Yes. And no. No more than a deaf Miss America.
2) Damn straight.
3) They do. But they are in Swedish, so the rest of us can’t read them. Secretly, the judges who selected the ten finalists are laughing extra hard at the door stories.
4) It follows the same logic as shaving a cat and putting him in a Kris Kringle hat, or dressing him in an eyelet gown and putting a silver halo in his head. You think these things are not tragic?
5) I think this can be delightful exactly BECAUSE they are not all pretty cats. I’m not even going to outline what I think the human pageant equivalents of these entrants would be for fear of representatives of Dick Clark Productions hunting my ass down. Perhaps this reflects back on Question (1) and the diversity requirements.
6) I agree completely with your selection of Pricken. The only other contender was Texas, who looked a little like he’d got into the punchbowl the night before sleeping in the sink. 😉
7) Pricken gets the herring. If any other cat nets the herring it is entirely due to the pity of the contest promoters for the, uh… diverse kitty. And no one wants a can of pity-herring.
I miss book club. And you.
oops. screwed up on my html. turned around the end tag after “hunting my ass down” and there was supposed to be another just around “diverse”. oh well. it’s sunday. and i’m sleepy.