Around 20 years ago, I worked at an independent TV station in the middle of nowhere, in North Georgia. I ran master control 3rd shift and had the place to myself until the morning show crew came in.
Late at night, I’d be blasting some Rock and Roll station from Vancouver off the satellite or watching weird late night broadcasts from God-knows-where while cueing videos, switching the commercial breaks, etc…. and I’d see this flash of fur scurrying through the shadows; a mouse. As time passed, the mouse decided I wasn’t a threat to him and gradually he became quite bold, he’d cross the control room out in the open and sometimes he’d sit, practically at my feet, and we’d just look at each other until I moved or blinked, then he’d scamper away. I took some comfort in his presence there and thought of him in friendly terms.
Then one day, the daytime staff discovered there was a mouse (or a “rat” as they called it), and they set traps for my little friend everywhere.
So, every night when I came in, as soon as the person I was relieving left, I’d busy myself setting off all of the traps. I would even “gain entry”* to all of the locked offices and disarm the traps there too, relocking the doors when I was done. They all thought they were up against the World’s Smartest Mouse!
Then one night after arriving at work, I discovered that someone had, during the day, helped themselves to the frozen dinner that I had left in the freezer, leaving me totally without food or any way of getting food, all night. After my initial anger subsided and I determined there was no other food I could poach, I came up with a plan of action.
Surely some of the various secretaries and office-types had some food hidden away in their desks, all I had to do was find it. While I made my mousetrap triggering rounds, I searched for food. After an exhaustive search, all I turned up was a handful of mini candy bars, and a package of rice cakes.
Of course I ate the candy bars first, then set in on the rice cakes. I ate all of them I could stand (maybe 3 or 4) and realized I needed to come up with a way to cover my tracks. Soo… I carefully grawed a hole in the plastic bag they were in and then gnawed the edge of one the remaining cakes, making sure to leave plenty of crumbs in and around the bag. Then, in my best Jethro Bodine voice I said:
“Oh, it’s OK uncle Jed, I gnawed on the bag; make it look like the rat done it!”**
I laughed hysterically about that all night, to the point I was sore the next day… Hell, here it is 20 years later and that still makes me laugh.
And, it goes a long way toward explaining how conflicted I am by my present mouse dilemma.
*The piece of plastic that 3/4′’ videotapes are shipped with (to keep the spools from turning) makes a dandy “key” once you trim the nubbins off. Like a credit card, except roughly 5″x7″.
**There’s an episode of ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ wherein Jethro cuts down a tree in Mr. Drysdale’s yard and reassures Jed; “Oh, it’s OK uncle Jed, I gnawed on the stump; make it look like a beaver done it.”
So, I’m in the kitchen yesterday, getting ready fix something to eat. While I’m in the kitchen the cat jumps up on the counter by the sink (which she knows is off-limits.)
“Cali! Get down from there! You know better than that!”
I said, swatting at her with the loaf of bread I had just picked up. She got down and I went to the sink to wash my hands. Suddenly, out of nowhere a flash of grey fur appeared, dashed in front of me, across the stove, and vanished. I recoiled, jumping back spouting an incoherent, unintelligible stream of noises and fragments of words, punctuated with a few choice expletives.
This is a first for me; I’ve never had to deal with a mouse in the house. Bear in mind, I’m the type of person who catches bugs and releases them outside, and who is willing to disregard spiders if they stay out of my way. I don’t want to kill anything.
I have a great big (~16#) cat who’s quick as lightning; but she won’t kill a bug either, so I don’t hold out much hope of her being a great mouser.
I thought about a live-catch trap, but unless you take it out to some remote wilderness (which is in short supply hereabouts) you might as well just release it into someone else’s house. I find the glue traps to be just barbarically cruel, poison isn’t an option because;
a) I don’t want a dead, smelly mouse decomposing inside my wall or something and
b) the cat.
So, that just leaves two options;
a) hope for Caldonia to discover her killer instinct and hunt the mouse down (which seems unlikely, plus I’m not crazy about the idea of her getting some mouse disease) and
b) old-fashioned mouse traps.
So, today I go buy traps, two old-fashioned wood spring traps, and two plastic traps that operate something like an overgrown clothespin. I baited the spring traps with dark chocolate (which this mouse has demonstrated a taste for) and the plastic clampy ones with peanut butter. So, we’ll see how that goes.
Now if I can just get rid of the little bastard before he jumps out and makes me hurt myself, or gives me the Hantavirus, or the plague or something, that will be cool.
By the way, remember the loaf of bread from the beginning of this story? After swatting the cat with it, I made two sandwiches, ate them, and went for a ride. It wasn’t until today that I discoved the half-inch diameter, half-inch deep hole the mouse had eaten from the opposite end of the loaf… yuck!
Postscript: It now occurs to me that I may have sold the cat short. It seems obvious now that the very reason she ventured up onto the forbidden counter was that she was in hot pursuit of the mouse.
Cali has an affinity for pens and pencils. She will fish them off of the desk or table in order to play with them (thus hiding them from me); and Heaven help the pen that dares get up in her face!
Crazy about that kitty ’cause Caldonia is her name.
And here’s proof:
Several months ago I was driving to work… I’m turning left (with the arrow) and a lady coming in the other direction is inching forward, as though she’s going to turn right. As I made my turn I pointed at her and exclaimed (it’s worth noting that both my windows and hers were rolled up, this was purely for my enjoyment):
“Watch it there, SpoogeBlob HoochiePants.”
I laughed at my cleverness all night.
Cut to earlier today; I read something that mentioned SpongeBob (which, incidentally, I’ve never watched) and I spontaneously exclaimed:
“SpongeBath DookiePants”
and proceeded to laugh myself silly.
It’s hard to believe that I’m nearly 40 and not under the influence of something, isn’t it?
So, tonight was the final installment of Discovery’s “Greatest American”. Let me just cut to the chase; Ronald Reagan (the winner) is not a “greater” American than Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Benjamin Franklin. To assert otherwise is surely the product of idiocy, ignorance, lunacy, or some delusional form of jackassery.
I did enjoy Ron Jr.’s comments, particularly when the field had been narrowed to Lincoln and Reagan. He said (mind you, I’m paraphrasing here) that if his dad were alive today, he would vote for Lincoln. He was very gracious and polite, but I got the sense that he was very cognizant of, and a bit embarrassed by, the foolishness of the whole thing.
Which brings us to the central point of this rant. The American people are, by and large, idiots. During the broadcast a term that kept coming up was “cultural amnesia”, which is a bit kinder and more generous than my diagnosis of “rampant jackassery”. This really served to highlight one of the problems with the democratic process; that the vote of an ill-informed (or totally uninformed) moron counts just as much as the vote of a person with some rudimentary understanding of the issues and the “big picture”.
The sad thing is, you can’t cure stupid. If a person is dead set on remaining ignorant (as so many seem to be) there is nothing you can do to educate them.
Oh well, at least Oprah or Elvis didn’t win.
Just a quick postscript: I work with adults with MR/DD, Monday morning I asked one gentleman (who happens to love Ronald Reagan) which of the five finalists he thought was the greatest American, ever, and after a thoughtful pause he said “Lincoln”.
“‘I think you’ll find it quite different,’ Stewart said Wednesday during an appearance at the Promax&BDA conference of marketing executives in New York.
Stewart said it took awhile for her to figure out what she would use in place of Trump’s signature phrase. She even asked her employees via company intranet for suggestions.
‘I got some doozies,’ she reported. Among them: ‘You’re not a good thing’ and ‘You’re a bad thing.’”
I wish she had asked me, I could have given her some real “doozies”; how’s about:
“Is Martha Stewart going to have to shank a bitch?” regardless of the person’s gender. (And yes, I did shamelessly rip this off from the Wayne Brady sketch on Chappelle’s Show.)
She really should go with “You’re shanked!” For fun and an extra boost to the ratings she could, from time to time, really shank the person, ’cause heaven knows, we Americans love our mindless violence.
Hopefully someone will let me know if she steals my idea… I most definitely will not be watching.
So, a couple of days ago, here locally, I-70 was shut down for a large part of the day when a semi hauling 41,000 pounds of blasting caps and dynamite overturned when the driver fell asleep!!
Fell asleep driving a truck full of explosives! How is that possible? Just driving home with a can of gas for the lawnmower in the trunk of the car makes me as jumpy and nervous as a long-tailed cat in a rocking chair factory.
The truck was enroute from Kentucky, so it’s not like he’d been at the wheel for all that long, either. Hell, I’ve (recently) driven for 19-20 hours straight and not fallen asleep; and this without the spectre of being blown to smithereens if I did.
So, one of the obsessive behaviors I indulge in is poring over the raw log files from my webserver. Every night, some time after midnight, I engage in this ritualistic behavior. I find the whole thing fascinating. Of particular interest to me are the search terms that people have used to find there way here to the blog, or to my photos. Often times this prompts me to do my own search, to satisfy my own curiosity as to what they were really looking for, or why they were looking (as I mentioned in this post about Elvin Bishop.
This post is basically just an experiment/diversion and probably of no real interest to anyone aside from myself. Although it does provide an interesting glimpse into how people are finding their way here.
Anyway… so far this month, numerous people have come looking for:
“Elvin Bishop” (because he’s on tour)
“Jimmy Thackery” (also on tour)
“Tab Benoit” (also touring)
“Preston Hubbard” (Possibly due to this post to Craig’s List, seeking gigs between tours) More on Preston on his website.
“Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown” (sadly, due to his declining health and cancer diagnosis)
“Ohio ECheck” (I’m sure they all left quite disappointed)
“Chester Frost Park” (I haven’t figured out why, yet, but it’s a lot of hits; something’s up)
“Rainbow Lake Signal Mtn.” (I think they’ve been doing some trail work recently)
“Toadstools” (Again, no idea why, but this is a fairly popular one, especially in the UK)
“Oprah +Peppermill” (apparently she had a guest on who makes peppermills)
And someone else searched for “Peppermill, America’s Test Kitchen” (I’m hoping my glowing, effusive review of my new peppermill was of some assistance to them)
So, now this post can serve as a jumping off point, a portal of sorts for these common search queries… what a thoughtful and helpful guy I am!
So, have you seen the commercial where Yao Ming pulls into a little country gas station, steals like a nickel’s worth of gas, then leaves? What the Hell is that about?
All I get from said commercial is this:
He’s not from around here.
He doesn’t need directions because he has a GPS gizmo.
He doesn’t pay for his gas, probably because he’s really tall.
And apparently he gets 1000mpg because… I dunno, Chinese efficiency?
You see him get out of and walk to the back of his big ol’ American convertible, you see him pick up the gas nozzle, you never see him put it back, he doesn’t pay the poor, baffled old man, he gets back in the car and drives away, and the whole thing happens in 30 seconds.
The commercial is nearly effective, it forces me to pay attention, but I’m so fixated on the lack of gas nozzle continuity and proper payment protocol that I don’t know exactly what they’re selling, aside from the fact that its some sort of GPS.
Oh well, at least he doesn’t poop out sausage like that freaky Jimmy Dean.
You thought I was going to make some weird Bloodhound Gang reference, didn’t you? No, now get your mind out of the gutter! Anyway…
…have you seen the promos which start with a view from outside a hotel room… you hear grinding and see sparks flying beyond the door. Lance Armstrong walks up, in full Discovery team kit, opens the door and there sits his bike all ‘chopper-ized’ surrounded by the guys from American Chopper. There’s a long pause where he just stares, dumbfounded, while they sit grinning expectantly at him. Finally Mikey, with a downcast gaze, mutters; “Sorry Lance” and Paul Sr. shouts at him “Shut it!”
That cracks me up.
Oh, and by the way:
Yes I’m Siskel, yes I’m Ebert
and you’re getting two thumbs up
You’ve had enough of two-hand touch
you want it rough you’re out of bounds
I want you smothered want you covered
like my Waffle House hashbrowns
Ha!
I couldn’t resist.
So, I tuned in to the Discovery Channel’s Greatest American tonight, about 15-20 minutes after it started. I was immediately relieved to see that my greatest fear (in this context) hadn’t been actualized; the five finalists weren’t Oprah, Elvis, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Ronald Reagan. I was somewhat dissappointed that Reagan made the cut, although one could mount a convincing argument for his inclusion (as one could for his exclusion).
At first blush it seemed that the entire program had devolved into a popularity contest, pep-rally, jackass-athon, but, as I continued to watch, I was impressed (overall) with the level of dialogue; although I was a little puzzled that the panel onstage included Randy “Yo, dog; I used to be the bass player for Journey” Jackson… am I missing something here? (I get the American Idol connection, but still, how does his ’skill’ at judging third-rate ‘musicians’ translate to this?)
The interesting thing is this, of the four (in my opinion) legitimate candidates, I’m having a heck of time deciding. Martin Luther King? Abe Lincoln? Ben Franklin? George Washington? I’m going to have to put some further thought into this. As I pointed out in my previous post on this subject, you can vote here.
My faith in the American population renewed, I’m anxiously awaiting next week’s announcement of the “Greatest American”; and, as long as it’s not Ronald Reagan, I will be satisfied with the choice.
And yes, I do realize that this is basically a geeky version of “American Idol”, but, in my defense, a hundred years from now people will still know (and care) who George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. were.
So, last night around 2AM I headed out for a ride. It was much cooler than it has been, actually necessitating tights and armwarmers.
As always everything is very serene and quiet, especially out in the country. I come to a stop sign and there’s a car approaching from my left (the direction I’ll be turning). I decide to wait for him to pass, despite there being plenty of time for me to go. He briefly flashes a searchlight in my direction, (it’s a county cop) then pulls along side to speak to me. He asks if I’ve seen a couple of guys on dirtbikes (which I took to mean motorcycles).
“Nope, sure haven’t.”
“Well we’ve had a report of a couple of dirtbikes flying up and down this road, I don’t know if they have lights or not, so be careful and watch out.”
“OK”
And we went our seperate directions. As I’m riding away, something dawns on me; if there had been dirtbikes (or any other vehicles, for that matter) “flying up and down that road” at any time during the last 30 minutes, I would surely have heard them. Remember, these are quiet country roads, you can hear a motorcycle or a loud car miles away. This pointed to only three conclusions that I could think of.
A) The ‘dirtbikes’ were a fabrication, a mere pretense to speak to me and see what I was up to.
B) Some dimwit called the police because I was terrorizing the area, gliding along silently on my fixed gear (if I were up to something, would I be so well illuminated?)
C) There were actual dirtbikes, but it took the Sheriff’s Department so long to respond that they were long gone by the time he arrived.
So, for those of you keeping score at home, I saw/said hello to:
1 Deer (who ambled across the road ahead of me)
1 Bunny (who dashed across the road ahead of me)
1 Raccoon (bumbling along the edge of the road)
1 Cat (sitting at the edge of the road, watching, disinterested, as I passed)
Assorted cows and horses (going about their cow and horse business)
1 Sheriff’s Deputy (the only one who actually spoke back to me)