The Supervisor

This happened the other day:

Other than the talking part, but I know what his meows mean....

Then last night, I'm watching TV and I look over into my bathroom, and I see this.  I have no idea what it means, but I am pretty sure it is an intimidation tactic.

The Tragic Tale of Carlos and Mari

(there is a video here, RSS subscribers)

I used to have two Siberian dwarf hamsters just like these when I was in college. My boyfriend and I bought them together. It was his idea and when we broke up, not long after we bought them, I retained custody of them. They were named Carlos and Mari. They were both very cute but they met bad ends.

Carlos died during winter break while being watched by my sister, and is buried behind the dorm I lived in at the time. I paid my friend to clean out the cage and bury him for me, because he had been dead a while apparently, before I had been made aware of his demise. We used a spork to mark his grave.

Mari had a stroke sometime the next semester, I think (though I am not veterinarian), and I released her into the wild to enjoy her freedom as an act of kindness, and also because seeing her dragging herself around her cage in circles made me sad. My family likes to tell me that she was probably promptly eaten by a hawk the moment I set her free.

This is part and parcel to why I don't own pets anymore and why I don't think having children is a good idea for me either.

A Girl and her Bunny.

My family (and I, obviously) lived in Southern California when I was a wee one. Occasionally we would take trips up into the mountains between Oceanside and Ramona.  And of course, each trip has a fairly horrific story about me attached to it.

My memory doesn't separate any of the stories, but I have been assured that there were three different occasions, so for now, you only get to hear one of them-- you would have thought that they would have learned to stop taking me up into the damned mountains though.

This story, in particular, occurred on the first trip we made. While driving happily along, as we made our ascent up the mountain, I called out to my parents, begging them to pull over and stop the car.  Watching out the window, I  had seen a very fluffy rabbit on the side of the road that I desperately wanted as a pet.  They very kindly and patiently explained to me that the bunny wasn't sleeping.  The very bloated bunny was, in fact, very dead, which meant I really didn't want it.
"But, I want a dead bunny for a pet!" I told them eagerly.
"Why?" They asked with concern.
"Because I can hug it and it won't run away!"
 Which makes some sort of sense, I guess, but is a little morbid for a 4 year old.  I suppose I didn't quite grasp the concept of decomposition.

Thankfully, they did not allow me to have the dead bunny, but they did get me a rabbit pelt, which was probably the safest alternative to keep me from becoming a serial killer.

Smoke-butt get away from that fire!

When my computer broke, I got a lot of twitter spam about getting a free computer (if I just "filled out some survey") when I complained about the death of my hard drive. I got one the other night, when tweeting about my husband getting me dinner, offering advice on how to deal with men.  Once, I mentioned my best friend from college who died tragically and how she had come to my wedding, and was sent spam for wedding favors (I assure you, they got 140 angry characters back).

And so I have (almost) learned that you cannot mention certain things on twitter without expecting messages from obnoxious spambots:
Smoke, at all... kitchen on fire? Got a new gray cat? Like LOST?
Diets... Anti-diet? Gluten-Free diet? Diet Pepsi?
Harry Potter. No, really. Learned that last night.

Of course, there are lots of bots on twitter that redeem the whole random tweets from stranger-bots thing, like Sue Ellen Crandell who responded when I said "I'm right on top of that, Rose." Or how when you mentioned roads, the (now suspended) Doc Brown bot responded "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!" Totally makes spammy tweets like " Watch the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie for FREE!!! JUST CLICK THIS SKETCHY LINK!!!!" bearable.

It's a DOG!

I think I would like a pet goat, but seeing as I live in the middle of the city and... in a condo, it is probably not feasible.  Of course, I could just tell people it was a dog and then get really irrational and angry with them when they tried to point out that that was not the case so they would leave it alone.

I imagine it would go something like this:

Me, happily walking along with pet goat.
Neighbor: You can't have a goat.
Me: It's not a goat, it's a dog.
Neighbor: It has horns...
Me: IT'S NOT A GOAT! IT CAN'T HELP IT HAS HORNS! YOU HAVE HORNS!!!!
Neighbor, retreats inside.
Goat and I high-five.