A week full of rats and tits
Meh. No proper post today. Enjoy some awesome rats and tits!
February 8, 2008 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 55
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
Things which disappoint
I struggled to pull a post out of my ass today, but I am in vile humor. Then Uncle B came to the rescue and dug up the perfect metaphor.
Literally. He was planting the hedges, and he excavated this small, heavy, useless chunk of metal. Yes, minions, I’m afraid this thing is what’s left of our machine gun. Can’t think what else it can be.
Perfetto!
Oh, and you know what? You’re not getting a pony for Christmas, either. Or a go-kart.
If you want my thoughts on McCain, go read Ace. Added: by which I mean, he wrote an essay that perfectly encapsulates what I’m thinking, not that I had any brilliant comments in that thread. Sometimes, you forget he’s not just another moron.
February 6, 2008 — 6:19 pm
Comments: 21
Don’t forget to vote!
Vote for me or I’ll kick you in the nuts! The nuts! Nuts! Nuts, I say! Hey, who said nuts? You calling me nuts? I’m not nuts! You’re nuts! Nutty nutnutnuts.
UPDATE: See-dubya, you magnificent bastard! Thanks for the Hot Air link. Thanks to Mike at Cold Fury, too! And welcome, link-hitters. I’m kinda worried this graphic might’ve…worked.
February 5, 2008 — 1:04 pm
Comments: 72
Psycho killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?
This, O my minions, is no pussycat. It’s a Scottish wildcat (Felis sylvestris grampia) — pound for pound, one of the evillest badass mofo’s on the whole mo-effing planet. Srsly.
About ten thousand years ago, two things happened in Catworld. Somewhere in the Near East, maybe out Iraq way, the ubiquitous wildcat, Felis sylvestris, up and self-domesticated its own self. Just rolled over, waved its legs in the air and showed mankind its collective fuzzy belly, becoming adorable Cheezburger-wantsing, succotash-suffering Felis sylvestris catus on the spot.
At the same time, two thousand miles to the North and West, the land bridge connecting Britain and France was drowned by global warming, isolating the local population of Felis sylvestris, which promptly morphed into Felis baddassicus mofocus. The bite of a radioactive spider may have been involved.
The Scottish wildcat is truly one of the wildest animals alive. It cannot be tamed. Hand rearing them from itty-bitty psycho-kittens makes not one bit of difference. Fancy Feast? Fuggidaboudid! A zookeeper who will happily go into a tiger’s cage will not go into the enclosure of a wildcat he raised from babyhood. A wildcat will attack anything and everything in its territory, including another wildcat. They were believed to be maneaters until the Fifties.
The Wildwood Trust, where Uncle B and I go to par-tay with the musty-lids, has a pair of Scottish wildcats. Never has a hating of my guts been communicated to me more eloquently through mere eyeballs. They made the wolf pack look like pussies.
The prehistoric version was up to four feet long, but modern wildcats are cat sized. They look like…adorable housecats. Like a squarer, chunkier Damien. Their tails are thick, and their ears kind of stick out sideways, but they’re totally catty in their catlikeness.
And that’s the problem: they’re interbreeding themselves out of existence. Like wolves and coyotes with dogs, wildcats freely interbreed with domestic cats. That’s the deal with keeping some in captivity, though captivity is clearly hateful to them: there may be as few as 400 purebred Scottish wildcats left. I’m not down with the hand-flapping over every newt and guppy and little brown bird that loses a bit of territory, but 400. That’s Siberian tiger kind of endangered.
Anyhow, dude has made a documentary about Scottish wildcats, due out on DVD this Summer. There’s a trailer at the link, but no ordering information yet. Part of the profits go to the Scottish Wildcat Association, a new charity that will be launched this Spring (let us hope by that time they’ve purged the dozens of “it’s” that should be “its” on their Web site).
I’m not necessarily advocating giving them money. Somehow, when you give to an animal charity these days, some human-hating commie seems to wind up with the money. But, you know, a DVD or a t-shirt might not hurt anything.
Protect our beloved endangered psycho killers.
SPECIAL BONUS QUIZ
Can you tell which one is Felis sylvestris catus and which one is Felis sylvestris grampia?
That’s right! They’re both crazed psycho killers!
February 4, 2008 — 1:13 pm
Comments: 45
Crassest of the 48
This week’s Weekend Weasel is late on parade. Uncle B kept me up past my drunktime last night trying to extract my opinion on the layout of the garden, now that the season is upon us. And I’m, like, “the garden. That’s where the plants go, right?”
I was scheduled for an all-day Division meeting Friday. So I was delighted when my dentist’s office called the day before to remind me of an appointment. A cleaning, but I’d take a filling over a division meeting. First thing…after which I could indulge a slow mosey into my meeting.
How slow does a weasel mosey when a weasel moseys slow? I stopped for breakfast afterwards. In the booth next to me were two young, affluent wives. And by “affluent” I mean “blessed with an enormous amount of money hindered in no way by taste.” There’s lots of very crass money ’round these parts.
So one of them takes a cellphone call from (apparently) her electrician. The Rhode Island accent is sort of like Brooklyn, only loud and vulgar, so this is more barked than spoken.
“Yah…put the switch on that far wall. Yah. Next to the other switch. Yah. I want a dimmer on the chandeleeeer. So, you put the switch right next to that other switch. Uh huh. It turns on the jets on the jacoooozzi.”
What kind of room has a jacuzzi and a chandelier? I don’t know, but I would’ve guessed it was in Rhode Island.
So I get to the meeting just in time for the free lunch. I only have to sit through a couple of dozy afternoon speeches. They don’t call me ‘weasel’ in tones of hushed admiration for nothin’.
The highlight? The Human Resources lady (Human Resources! I hate it when Personnel changed their name…it makes us sound like lumber or something).
She says we’ve hooked up with the American Women Engineers’ Society. Or the Society of Women Engineers. Or Vaginas with Sliderules or whatever. I thought we only had one female engineer, but apparently we’ve picked up a few more. Anyhow, we’ve assembled a team of five female engineers to “travel around the country exposing themselves to the engineering community.”
Judging from the reaction at the meeting, the engineering community will appreciate that very much.
February 2, 2008 — 10:20 am
Comments: 10
Only three days left!
Rare French anti-masturbation device circa 1880 for sale on eBay. Starting bid: $1,500.
I think the ventilation holes are an especially thoughtful touch.
Spotted on truemors.com — a community news-aggregator, from what I can tell. Don’t know if the site is going to be anything especially interesting; it looks to be early days. They’ve been advertising on the web-streamed version of WABC. (Yep. Listening to Limbaugh this week. That’s how depressed I am).
February 1, 2008 — 5:39 pm
Comments: 18
Ewwww…
The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn’t determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn’t count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.
[…]
On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip. Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least
50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.
January 31, 2008 — 8:28 pm
Comments: 10
I dub thee Flaming Asshole (in honor of Johnny Mc)
…click above to view this masterpiece of the toper’s art in glorious color…
Because Enas Yorl dared me to, that’s why.
It’s a jigger of Sour Puss, a jigger of creme de banana and a jigger of creme de noya (made from real fruit pits!) mixed up in a bud vase (looks all Star Trek, don’t it?) and stuck in the freezer for an hour. It’s…not as vomitously hideous as you might think. It’s…tart. And kicky. Yeah, I’m finishing it. Shut up.
So today, I saw the mover and the exterminator. Tommorow, the dentist, followed by an all day Division meeting.
But tonight belongs to Flaming Asshole.
— 7:42 pm
Comments: 9
Choose? Why?
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.
Big black crow? Uhhhh…no comment. Hey, I don’t write the nursery rhymes. I just press them into service when much brain hurt ouchie.
Excúseme, yo tienen que aprender hablar español.
January 30, 2008 — 12:08 pm
Comments: 34