Kung Hei Fat Choi, ratties!
Happy Chinese new year! It is the Year of the Rat, about which I shall offer no snark. For I am a rat, zodialogically speaking. It is my year. You hear that, Fate? MY YEAR. So back the hell off already.
Also, I like rats. One of our first outings together, I made Uncle B take me to a rat show.
Thinkest thou I be a-shitting of thee? Nay, ’tis not so!
Mice and rats are clean, cheerful little animals and have probably been kept as pets since forever. But this man, Jack Black, is the father of modern rodent fancy. He was Queen Victoria’s rat-catcher and he made a habit of setting aside and breeding any interesting specimens he ran across.
Beatrix Potter and Victoria herself may have been owners of Mr Black’s fine rodents.
Careful breeding of mutations in the ordinary brown rat (a coat known as agouti to fanciers) eventually resulted in dozens of well-defined variations. These are broadly classified as self (solid colors), marked (banded, hooded, siamese and the like) and other (to include varieties such as rex, which have a frizzy coat, and dumbo, which have stupid ears). Fancy mice come in all these varieties, plus tans (solid colors with tan bellies) and satins, whose coats have a beautiful, almost metallic sheen.
Mouse and rat breeding for show became a popular hobby among people with an interest in livestock but not enough room for cows. There are regular shows, with judges and ribbons and cups and grudges and all that. It’s pretty exciting, because rodent generations are so accelerated compared to other sorts of animals. A mutation can become a breed really fast.
I considered breeding fancy mice in my twenties, but nixed it on account of I am not ruthless enough. A proper mouse breeder culls any disappointing specimens as soon as their characteristics appear. Generally by crushing they little skulls.
It is a thorny one. The American Rat and Mouse Club frowns on culling, while the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association refuses to take a position.
Yes, American. What, did you think this was going to be a “those silly Brits” post? We took to the hobby like mice to peanutbutter.
I wouldn’t consider keeping a rat. They make lovely, intelligent pets, but they only live a few years — just long enough to get really attached — and they get dreadful diseases. Mice don’t live any longer and get the same diseases, but you don’t get so attached. They’re like house plants: feed and water them and they’re fun to look at. I’ve kept mice from time to time since I was a sprog.
So now you know something! Gung ho bok choi!
February 7, 2008 — 11:58 am
Comments: 54
Gimme a ‘T’!
Traditionally, I take one last photograph of the very last sunset of the year, just as the light goes out on New Year’s Eve. Tonight I was putting away the groceries and…ummm …forgot (but, on the up side, Asda had fountain pens for 79p each! w00t!).
So this is a photo of the penultimate sundown of 2007, shot yesterday during a sprightly walk along the Channel. The big T is a navigation aid of some kind. <shrug>
New Year’s Eve is a time for looking back on the old year — because, let’s face it, coming up with bullet lists is a hell of a lot easier than pulling original content out of your ass before Champagne Time. Me, I didn’t actually get around to compiling my lists, but here are some topics I considered posting about:
· The ten vilest smells of 2007
· Killing adorable small animals wounded by my cats; a retrospective
· The top seven remarks I blurted out and then instantly regretted
· What hurts: a musculoskeletal year in review
· 2007: Be fair, it sucked less than 2006
· Movies, music, television, books: things I didn’t pay the slightest attention to this year
I could go on, but then I wouldn’t be drinking, would I? Forty five minutes to the new year in Jollye Olde. Happy 2008, Minions!
December 31, 2007 — 7:17 pm
Comments: 29
Happy Boxing Day!
Happy Boxing Day, everyone! I was all excited until Uncle Badger told me Boxing Day doesn’t mean what I thought it did.
Huh. That’s what he thinks.
December 26, 2007 — 7:21 pm
Comments: 13
Loot. Swag. Plunder. Booty. STUFF!
Do you know why Christmas is so all-consuming crazy-making to your typical seven year old? Because a seven year old might — just might — find the thing he wants most in all the world tucked under the tree on Christmas morning.
Imagine for a moment you could have come down stairs this morning to find Santa Claus had paid off your mortgage, or left you a villa in the South of France, or fixed your teeth or made you a rock star or…you know, brought about world peace or some junk. Yeah, you bet you’d’ve been up at the crack of dawn today, pissing yourself with excitement.
You didn’t outgrow the magic; your wish-list simply got unreasonable.
This holiday time of year, when our society is battered from the right and the left (respectively) for its irreligion and shallow commercialism, please join me in remembering what Christmas is really all about: it’s about the STUFF, man! It’s about the swag, the booty, the sweet treats under the tree. It’s about giving each other useless toys and silly gadgets and some very nice things we can’t really afford, too. It’s about eating things that are costly and bad for us and having a dram or five of the good stuff from the back of the liquor cabinet. It’s about self-indulgence.
You know I’m right.
We’re in a happy, astonishing time and place, the first of our kind to be free of the constant grubby preoccupation with mere survival. We are scouts, explorers in this new world of post-evolutionary luxury, and this is the one day a year we give ourselves over to it utterly. Don’t feel ashamed. Don’t — on this day of all days — feel guilt.
Stand with Uncle Badger and me and say “fuck it — it’s Christmas!”
And have one more slice of something roasted in lard.
December 25, 2007 — 5:59 pm
Comments: 26
Melly Clismouse
Oh, sure, it looks cute.
When the weather turned this Fall, a plague of cold mice descended on Badger House. Uncle B found them in the trap, roughly one rodent per day. Dead, if he was lucky. Otherwise, he had an unpleasant deal of mouse-dispatchin’ to do.
The Maternal B — his mum — bought him this festive holiday rodent to commemorate all his festive holiday rodent skull-smashing.
That’s not the good part. This is the good part. It’s the song he sings when you press his belly.
I’ll bet you a shiny new penny that’s We Wish You a Merry Christmas sung by a Chinese woman who doesn’t speak a word of English.
Melly Clistmas, minions!
December 24, 2007 — 6:48 pm
Comments: 16
If I just woke up, it’s breakfast
The trip was uneventful, but so very, very long. I carried on bravely and as long as I could, like the courageous weasel that I am, but finally crashed out and slept the happy, dreamless sleep of the rabid and feral. Uncle B just woke me up with a bottle of champagne.
It isn’t the best champagne, but very drinkable and plenty good enough to get me out of bed and into some serious drinking.
Huzzah! Christmas is here!
December 20, 2007 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 13
A cat person in a dog people family
“How did you turn out to be a cat person, anyhow?” my dad asked last week.
A good question, in a way. The whole famn damily is dog people. My siblings, my cousins, my natural mother, my unnatural stepmother, my vile Texas grandma and my sweet little bluehaired down Eastern grandm’ma. We found a jaunty poem about a dead cat in Grandmother’s personal papers. Shit you not.
On another level, it was an incredibly fucking stupid question to ask someone bleeding from a fresh dog bite.
Yeah. Stoathund here had a few practice snaps before moving in for some delicious stoatburger.
“See, if she decides something is hers, you’d better not mess with it,” my father explained patiently, like it was real stupid of me not to know that. Problem is, she decides something is hers VERY FAST. Like, in the blink of an eye. Like, the entire contents of the dishwasher. Which is a bitch if you’re loading it and aren’t really paying attention. Yeah, you load the dishwasher then, you smart-alecky old coot.
I should have been on guard. I’d seen her pull silverware out of the dishwasher and parade around waving it in the air like, “g’wan, weaselbreath — dare you to touch my spoon!” Ugh. I probably ate grapefruit with it next morning.
Do you know what they do when she gets hold of something like that? To get the whatever-it-is away from her? They give her a treat.
That’s right. When the dog acts like a shitbag, they reward her. Now, I am but an humble cat person, but even I know when you reward a dog for being a shitbag, you might as well rename her Ol’ Shitbag, because you’re going to get a LOT of shitbaggery out of that animal.
Whereas cats are shitbags out of sheer joy and professionalism.
December 4, 2007 — 6:28 pm
Comments: 57
Oh. Right. Thanksgiving.
My assorted brothers had spousal families to eat with in the afternoon, so we had a Thanksgiving brunchy thing.
Have you ever had riced eggs? My stepmother is generally a very good cook, but I don’t know about this one. You boil eggs and then “rice” them with a cheese shredder, make a roux and pour it over the top. “The boys fight over this,” she said. And I saw them do it, too, but damned if I can work out why.
Anyhow, she makes the only edible grits in the world. She makes them the regular bland way, then mixes in raw egg and cheese and bakes it. Nice. Basically, you melt cheese on something, I’m going to eat it. I’m an au gratin kind of a gal.
I got three jackets, two pairs of slacks (slacks! That I should wear slacks!), several tops, a skirt and five pairs of shoes out of the deal. I like two of the jackets and one of the pairs of shoes, so I’m going to call this a success.
Now I’ve essentially got two weeks to de-junkify this place. And a headcold, which I presumably picked up in the airport in Cincinnati. Yeah, I knew that germy infant in the seat in front of me was going to give me a disease.
November 28, 2007 — 4:49 pm
Comments: 37
Happy Thanksgiving!
I give you this slideshow of 39 people, mostly celebrities, and their odd deaths. Many are too recent or too well known to be interesting. But how did I miss Christine Chubbuck, the Florida newsreader who committed suicide on-air in 1974? The Wikipedia article about her contains the greatest sentence in the English language:
She placed a .38 revolver in her bag of puppets and put it beneath her desk.
I definitely didn’t know Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap. He used to hold the cap in his teeth while he administered eyedrops. I think I knew that author Sherwood Anderson died of peritonitis after swallowing a toothpick. And everybody knows Isadora Duncan strangled to death in a tragic wardrobe malfunction when her silk scarf wrapped around the wheel of her convertible.
Shucks, here are a few more ways to die.
There! Now you have something to be grateful for! Happy Thanksgiving!
November 22, 2007 — 7:05 am
Comments: 24
There I go again
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s about two things I’m especially good at: gluttony and gratitude. And four days off!
I do it up big every year, with turkey and dressing and potatoes and peas and candied yams and those peculiar gluey white supermarket bake ‘n’ serve rolls I love so dearly but only buy for special occasions because they’re pharmaceutical-grade empty stodge. Then the cats and I sit down and eat ourselves spherical, pass out in an unseemly tryptophan coma, and wake up to three more days of vile, uncontrollable gas and glorious leftovers.
Friends and coworkers — and family especially — have always considered my attitude toward holidays unseemly and inappropriate. As an old maid, I guess I am expected to spend national holidays drinking weak tea, nibbling a dry biscuit and thinking how different things would be if only I had a family. At least two relatives phone each Thanksgiving (and, for that matter, Christmas) and ask wistfully if I am celebrating again. “What, with the turkey? And everything?” They sound exasperated.
My stepmother is especially resentful. She likes nothing better than getting us all together for T’day — but not for warm, happy, a very special episode of the Waltons reasons. See, she can use the big diningroom when there are people over. And the good silver. And we can all sit up straight in our Sunday best and pick at tiny servings of exotic food.
I did it, like, once. I was terrified the whole time I’d have a sudden, mysterious outbreak of adult-onset Tourette’s. I did say something especially stupid to my little brother. I forget what it was. (I’m lying. Of course I remember what it was). The experience was everything Thanksgiving isn’t.
Well, this year, she wins. This is likely to be my last Thanksgiving in the US, and she’s going to buy me a…a…oh, sweet Jesus…a dress. So, see, I have to go. I’m leaving this afternoon.
Back on Saturday. I don’t know how often I’ll have net access, so I’ll auto-post some shit while I’m gone.
What’s the opposite of thankful? Oh, yeah…dead drunk.
Ohmigosh! I almost forgot! It’s the anniversary of my favorite own post ever. Last year, I spent some time over the Thanksgiving holiday creating this moving tribute to Damien’s jaunty balls, snipped off in a tragic veterinary incident the week previous. The procedure did not, contrary to expectations, mellow him in the slightest.
I’m especially proud of the soundtrack. Do you know how hard it is to compose appropriate theme music for excised testicles?
November 19, 2007 — 6:25 am
Comments: 43