Month: February 2008

giving a rat’s ass for Valentine’s Day

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My suggestion in last week’s rat-themed post (well, my first of several rat-themed posts) that we might like to see a line of greeting cards that make use of the expression “give a rat’s ass” was well received. Therefore, John and I collaborated to bring you these fine greeting cards. (Concept and design by alejna, photo by John, modelling by Phoebe and an Ikea rat.) Feel free to share them with anyone you give a rat’s ass about.

For those of you who would like to express your fondness beyond the Valentine’s holiday season, we have the more general Rat’s Ass version for you:
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Marvin: a short tale of a small rat

One the first pets I had as a child was a pet rat. (The first ever pets were some goldfish.) I was quite young when we got him, perhaps 5, so I may have some of the details muddled in my brain. But this is Marvin’s story as I remember it.

Marvin was a rat that had been a class pet in my sister’s first grade or second grade class. When Marvin needed a home, we got to keep him.

An important thing to know about this circumstance is that Marvin was our pet at our father’s house. Certainly not at our mother’s house. You see, our parents separated when I was three years old, and we spent the next few years living part-time with each of our parents. My sister and I were always together, but some of the time we lived with our daddy, and some of the time with our mother.

Marvin was a white rat with brown spots. He was small as rats go, definitely a domesticated variety of rat, and not your big scary urban rat. He had a pink tail, with a thin fuzz of white fur. He was quite cute and gentle, with very soft fur and dainty pink paws. He got to live on a coffee table in our living room, a circular sort of a tray of a table with a shallow rim, perhaps 10 or 12 inches off the ground. He wasn’t enclosed at all, as for some reason, he hadn’t figured out how to climb off this table. (There was at least one incident when he escaped from his table. He managed to stain the same couch cushion that my sister and I had damaged, with a small burn mark, while testing the Christmas tree lights a few months before. So that cushion ended up with a burn on one side, and a rat poop stain on the other. Which side to offer up for company?)

I was fond of Marvin in my way, and enjoyed occasionally picking him up and petting him. Mostly I observed him going about his business on his disc-shaped island. But I never actually talked to him. At some point, a TV crew came to follow our father around for a morning to observe him in his role as daddy and caregiver to two small children, an unusual role for a man in the 1970s. (There’s more of a story here, which I hope to share at some point.) I remember one of the crew prompting me to talk to Marvin, to get some footage. I was a bit baffled by this request. Talk to him? But he was a rat! He wouldn’t understand. I’d no sooner talk to my toys.

When my father died later that year, we had to give up Marvin as a pet. My mother had a zero tolerance policy for rodents, and wasn’t going to have a rat living under her roof. (Remarkably, she later allowed my sister to bring home a tarantula for a weekend, when that was her class pet. But that was only for one weekend.)

From what I understand, some friends of my father’s either took Marvin or found a home for him. At least that’s what I was told. I never saw nor heard news of him again. I thought about him from time to time over the years, sometime wondered if he really was given a home. I guess I didn’t want to know the answer if it wasn’t the case.

the Ikea Rat Launcher

40588_pe134275_s4.jpgFrom time to time, I have been known to do a product review. (Some of you may remember my review of the iPhone, and the followup discussion of the Apple iCup.) I’ve been wanting to share this product for a while, but thought it would be good to wait for the Year of the the Rat celebrations to kick in. So, here it is: a review and demo of the Ikea Rat Launcher.
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The Ikea Rat Launcher

This colorful and inexpensive device can launch an Ikea stuffed rat several feet up into the air, way up over a toddler’s head, resulting in a flying rat and a giggling toddler. (Individual results may vary.) Below are some images from our extensive testing of this product in late October of last year.

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For the full demonstration, you can watch this video.¹

This ingenious product also doubles as a storage device: rats can be collected and placed in the launcher for later launching. An attractive reptilian cover keeps the rats from escaping.
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Warning: this product is not recommended for toddler storage.

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While the Launcher appears large enough to accomodate a toddler, attempts at toddler storage may result in the following:²

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¹ Sorry it’s a bit long, at 2:42, but I was too amused by Phoebe’s belly laughter and backwards toddling to cut any of it out.

² This one’s only 15 seconds. You know you want to watch it.

rats!

Happy New Year, and welcome to the Year of the Rat! In celebration of this holiday, how could I not offer up to you a platter of rats? No, not to eat, silly. That would be gross. This is a generous helping of rat-themed¹ things for a festive ThThTh list.²

  • Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien. The Newbery Award winning children’s novel about a mother mouse and a colony of highly intelligent rats.
  • Templeton, the rat from E. B. White’s beloved book, Charlotte’s Web. Was voiced by Steve Buscemi in the 2006 movie based on the book.
  • I don’t give a rat’s ass. An idiom meaning “I don’t care,” akin to “I don’t give a flying fig.” One of those expressions that is always used with the negative. For example, one would not likely hear “I give a rat’s ass.” Or maybe one should. I could design a line of greeting cards, perhaps for Valentine’s Day: “I give a rat’s ass about you.”
  • ratty: An adjective to mean dirty, messy and/or worn out. Also a nickname for a cafeteria at my undergrad University. The Sharpe Refectory was long ago nicknamed the Sharpe Rat Factory, later shortened to The Ratty. The nickname was used so frequently that it was easy to forget that it wasn’t the cafeteria’s official name.
  • Ratatouille (2007) Pixar’s latest animated movie is about a young rat who loves to cook.

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  • Willard (1971), and its sequel, Ben (1972). There was also a 2003 remake of Willard, starring the appropriately creepy Crispin Glover. These were movies about the friendship between a man (or boy) and some rats. (Oh, and the rats are vicious killers. Note that you can find these movies on imdb via the plot keywords “eaten alive by rats.”)
  • “You dirty rat!” a phrase popularly attributed to James Cagney, though apparently a misquote:

    It should be noted, however, that he never actually said, “You dirty rat!”, a popular phrase associated with him….The phrase actually originated in the 1932 film Taxi!, in which Cagney said, “Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I’ll give it to you through the door!” often misquoted as “Come out, you dirty rat, or I’ll give it to you through the door!”

  • Rodents of Unusual Size (ROUS): Oversized rats (well, it’s not specified that they’re rats, but they look pretty rat-like in the movie) from the Princess Bride.

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  • The Pied Piper of Hamelin. A legend, sometimes written as a fairy tale, about a man who freed a town of its rat infestation by playing his pipe to lure the rats to drown themselves in the river. When the town refused to pay the agreed upon fees, the Piper then lured away the town’s children.
  • The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett. A Discworld book for young adults about some rats (and a cat) who work a Pied Piper scam.
  • I Was a Rat, a children’s book by Philip Pullman (of The Golden Compass fame). About a boy who was once a rat. A bit of a fairy tale retelling from an unusual perspective.
  • “Adventures of the Rat Family,” a fairy tale by Jules Verne
  • Amy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A character who turned herself into a rat to escape being burned as a witch, but didn’t manage to turn herself back into a human afterwards. Was then kept in a cage as pet by Willow for several years. When she eventually returns to human state, says “I felt like I was in that cage for weeks.”
  • “I think I smell a rat,” a song by the White Stripes. For Amy (see above item) clips set to the song check out this YouTube video.)
  • A few more rat-related items include: mazes, the rat race, The Rat Pack, and pack rats. There was also the rat who ate the malt in “This is the house that Jack built”

    This is the rat,
    That ate the malt
    That lay in the house that Jack built.

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¹ YTSL mentions, though, that this can also be considered to be year of the mouse. All the more reason to get around to a mouse list some time soon.

² Last year, I gave a list of pigs for Year of the Pig.

family outing

As those of you who have not recently been in a coma, had memories erased during an alien abduction, or who have other reasons for not being aware of it know, the political primaries are in full swing here in the US. (I realize that quite a few of you who tend to read this are not from the US, but I’m assuming that you have not managed to escape some of the US-centered news.) Today is Super Tuesday, a day when 24 states are holding primary elections. My state is one of them. And I’m happy to say that I voted.

John and I went together, and we brought Phoebe along. (She didn’t get to vote.) I’m not sure I’ve ever voted in a primary before. It seems not in this town, at least. I was a bit startled that they shout out your party affiliation as they cross off your name and give you your ballot. It was a bit disconcerting to hear the shouts of “name name, number blah street, Republican” for the 3 people in line ahead of us. I was afraid they were going to turn on us when they heard that we were (gasp) Democrats. I was heartened by hearing a couple of other shouts of “Democrat” while we were there, though. I suspect that we are not in the majority in this town.

It’s been a difficult process for me to choose a candidate. There were a number of candidates I could get behind. Just over a year ago, I mentioned that I was excited that Hillary Clinton had announced her candidacy. I was practically giddy from the thought that there were people who truly believed that she had a chance at the presidency, that people believed a woman could be US president not only in my lifetime, but now. But even though I wanted to support her for a number of reasons, I’ve continued to be unhappy with her position on the war in Iraq.

We can’t really know how Obama would have voted on the war had he been in the Senate in 2003. But we do know that at that time, he spoke out against what he considered to be an unneccessary war. (Thanks to TIV for posting his speech from that time.)

So I’ve been leaning more and more towards Obama. I was considering Edwards. Various quizzes I took told me that my views most closely matched Kucinich. (But of course those quizzes didn’t take into account views on UFOs. I think mine differ somewhat.) A couple of quizzes showed my views as overlapping roughly the same amount for Obama and Clinton. A quiz I found more recently, via pgoodness (and possibly some other places that I’m not recalling now) was the electoral compass. I like this one in that it showed how it placed the candidates on a map of social and economic issues, and gave links about how it calculated those positions. I was able to see how my views overlapped and diverged from theirs on particular issues. Looking at these questions really helped me to consider the candidates more objectively. (And holy crap, I’m frightened by what I saw in the Republican camp.)

If you haven’t voted already, vote when your time comes. (BipolarLawyerCook wrote a great call-to-polls post you should check out, too.)

brrrr

We just got back from a whirlwind trip down to visit John’s parents. John’s sister was visiting them, and John’s mother just had a birthday. Plus, coincidentally, my sister (from California) was in New York city for a couple of days for a trade show. So, a trip down to New York seemed in order.

We left Thursday night, after I got home from a really long day of teaching and meeting and commuting. We didn’t get on the road till about 8:30, which isn’t bad considering I got home at almost 7, and still had to pack and eat dinner. But it did mean an arrival time after midnight.

I then took the train into New York City to meet my sister Friday morning, and join her in checking out some retailers. (Actually, I don’t mean shopping, believe it or not. Though I did buy a bathtub drain stopper and some licorice. I lead a glamorous life like that.) I had a really fun time. This was the first time in years my sister and I just got to hang out together. With no babies or anything. It was rainy and windy and cold, and not really a great day for walking around outside. But walk around outside we did. I also took the opportunity to spend the time on the train reading a book for fun since I wasn’t lugging my laptop. I re-read Sara Caudwell’s The Shortest Way to Hades, one of my favoritistest books in the world.

John is going through a crazy-busy time for work now, and so we decided to come back home Saturday night. (It’s impossible for either of us to get stuff done when visiting John’s mother.) But first, we had the day with John’s sister, visited John’s Dad, then made a trip to my favorite restaurant in the universe. We then went back to John’s parents’ house, packed up, and were on the road by about 9:30 or 10:00.

Phoebe and I got to sleep most of the way home, which was great. Especially since, upon our arrival at home at 1:30 a.m., we found that the house was a nippy 50 degrees (that’s 10 degrees celsius). Our furnace had shut off at some point in the past couple days. We spent the next couple hours doing various things to speed up the warming process: turning on the oven, running space heaters in the bedrooms, and burning cardboard and whatever scrap wood we could find in the fireplace.

It was actually almost festive, with the roaring fire and the scavenging for amazon boxes and clementine crates. Phoebe had fun playing with her crayons while bundled up in a blanket nearish the fire. By 3:30, a space heater had brought Phoebe’s room up to a tolerable 60 degrees or so, and I managed to get her into her crib by 4. (We didn’t want to leave the space heater running in her room, so wanted to get the room warm before we left her in there.)

And I did sleep past 7:00 this morning, and seeing as I have no deadlines this weekend and have even read a book for fun and watched some TV, I now can lump myself in with those categories of people of which I was previously jealous. Hurray!

grrrr

Bear with me. Or, bears with me. Well, not really with me. But on the list. Yes, Themed Things Thursday¹ is coming out of hibernation, as I come crawling out of my work-induced cave of fatigue and grumpitude. And what better way to come out of a cave than being pursued by a whole lot of bears?

Some Bears ²

  • Winnie-the-Pooh: Pooh has to top any list of bears in my book. The bear from the books by A. A. Milne. (I prefer not to think about the Disneyfied version.)
  • Grizzly Adams: A TVshow about a man and bear.
  • Gentle Ben: A lesser-known show about a boy and a bear.
  • Grizzly Man A movie about a man who decided to go and live with bears. Eventually, the bears tired of him. From what I understand, he met a…um…grizzly…end.
  • Yogi Bear: A cartoon about a bear, smarter than the average bear, so he says. Stole pic-a-nic baskets. Yogi Bear was always allegedly “in the ranger’s hair.” But I don’t believe he ever actually ate the ranger. (I watched this show as a kid, but I’m not sure I liked it. I feel like I felt some empathy for Boo-boo Bear, the side-kick.)

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  • Goldilocks and the 3 bears:
    The classic fairy tale of breaking and entering. While a family of bears is out for a walk while their porridge cools, a little girl heads into their house where she steals their food and breaks some furniture.
  • Bears are also prominent in several other fairy tales, like Snow White and Rose Red.
  • Bear Snores On: A kids’ book (by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman) about a bear who snoozes through a party in his cave, when various other animals sneak in to get out of the winter storm.
  • There are a whole bunch of other bear books for kids, several of which are berry-oriented, like Blueberries for Sal, Jamberry, The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear.
  • bear hug: A hug characterized by a real squeezing of the arms, rather than just a symbolic arm-wrapping. As one might imagine it would be like if hugged by a bear. Though without the mauling.
  • “B is for Basil, assaulted by bears:” A page from The Gashleycrumb Tinies, Edward Gorey’s alphabetic masterpiece.
  • Fozzie Bear: a muppet who likes to tell bad jokes. (Wocka, wocka, wocka.)
  • fuzzy wuzzy, a children’s rhyme:

    Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
    Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
    Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very Fuzzy, was he.

  • “Bears Discover Fire:” A Hugo Award-winning short story by Terry Bisson in which bears…discover fire.
  • Bears are fairly popular mascots for sporting teams, especially brown bears, or Bruins (cf. the Brown University Bruins, UCLA Bruins, the Boston Bruins, or the Chicago Bears. And cf. also “da Bears” sketch from SNL)
  • teddy bear: A popular type of stuffed animal, named for Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
  • Gummy Bears: fruit-flavored, brightly-colored, gelatin-based candies shaped like little bears.

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    ¹ Yes, I realize it is now no longer Thursday. But I ran out of time, and I’ve had this draft going for over a week.

    ² This list is about bears, not bears…