Kitten the Pig

This here's a tale of my kitten, whose real name is Toulouse but whom I shall call Pig.

'Twas a few nights before Christmas
When all through the house,
There was nothing but scratching
And the jingle of a catnip mouse.
It seemed a few of Pig's claws had fin'ly gone bare,
And we had no more caps; there were none there.
So out we ventured into the cruel, bitter cold
To make a special trip to the closest Petco.
At the cash register we noticed not yule logs,
But what can this be? Breath mints for dogs?
Wait, we said, they have some for cats!
Let's try it, we nodded, they're called Pit'r Pats!
Home we brought them, and each cat got a treat,
Never mind that they smelled oddly like meat.
Skip forward, to 4 in the morn,
I woke up to sounds of metal on floor.
Bleary-eyed, I searched for the noise
Who could it be, but of course Piggy boy!
There lay the Pit'r Pats tin on the ground
Face down and open, not one mint around.
He had eaten them all, the gluttonous pouncer.
That's the last time I leave something up on the counter.

"The Ring"

Welp, here it is:

An Observation, A Photo, and Some News

Observation: Why must Starbucks make its hot tea no less than 247 degrees F? Instead of "refreshing hot tea" or whatever they list on their menu board, it should say "scalding hot drink guaranteed to burn all your taste buds off...enjoy!" Don't get me wrong, I like me a nice cup of hot tea every now and then -- especially when I'm sick -- but not when it leaves my mouth in agony. The mouth can be a delicate place...why, Starbucks, why subject it to such torture?! Your tea is cheap, but there's something else it isn't: potable.

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Photo: I have been promising forever to post the dang photo of me in the banana costume, and I keep forgetting. Here it is. In case you can't tell, Ryan is George W. "taking out the trash" (Osama).














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And finally, the news: Drumroll, please....Ryan and I are engaged! He popped the question at the top of a ski run on Christmas Day at Sierra at Tahoe. He got down on his knees in the snow and told me he had one more Christmas present for me. After crying like a little girl into my ski goggles, I of course said yes. No date set yet, but we are looking at September or October 2007. I'll post a pic of the ring when it gets back from being sized. :0)

Hope you all had a good Christmas too!

London Calling?

Not much to blog about today...I think I'm getting sick, and I'm not keen on having to work another whole DAY before I can enjoy the long weekend, but I thought I'd tell you about yet another winner of a phone call I got today.

Me: (Standard work phone greeting)
Weird Guy: "Yes, I wanted to tell you about my friend. My friend was in the movie 'Terrorists of the Neighborhood,' and one time, I couldn't find my bus pass, and when I found it in my back pocket, I ripped it up. But my friend was in this movie and he told me, 'You wanna know some shit?' and I..."
K: "Uh, is this about a story? Are you calling me with a story?"
WG: "Yes, this is the story of my everyday life. If you wanna know some shit, I'll tell you. But anyway, as it says in Corinthians 14, and Chapter 2, if you know what I'm talking about, is..."
K: (tunes out, wondering what to do with this call and worrying that if crazy guy gets pissed off, he'll come down to the office)
WG: "...so God bless you. I believe anyone who listens to my story is right with God, and that's all I want to say."
K: "OK, thank you."
WG: (click)

When the clerk returned from his lunch break, he said his voicemail was half full of similar messages from the same guy...he was unintelligible, saying something about the ghetto, and war, and who knows what else.

Yep, never a dull day.

Movie Tuesday!

This is to make up for no Movie Monday yesterday. It took me forever to figure out the blonde guy is Justin Timberlake! OK, I gotta give it to him for having a good sense of humor.

That Darn Cat

Sadly, people are dying of carbon monoxide poisoning in Washington.

This recalls an odd little tale I'll call "Kim's brush with death, 2004."

It was December, and I had just moved into a rental house in Livermore with my best friend at the time and her 3-year-old son. I broke my ankle moving a mattress, too, but that's neither here nor there. Just remember that I was a cripple at the time. ;)

Anyway, my roommate had been talking about wanting a cat, so I thought it would be a nice present for her and her son for Christmas. I searched high and low for this cat, because I wanted to make sure it would be somewhat compatible with my cat.

So I spent days and days scouring all over the place for the perfect cat. I finally found what I was looking for on craigslist. So I think it was Dec. 24 when I drove out to SSF to pick up the kitty, Rusty. He was pudgy and cute, pretty much what my roommate liked and wanted in a cat. I brought him home and the cats promptly hid from each other.

Well, I think it was that night or maybe 2-3 nights later that Rusty started coming out more and we discovered he really likes to meow. And by really likes to meow, I mean he would MARRY meowing if it were another cat. He liked to meow more than Britney Spears likes not wearing underwear. Y'catch my drift. So this constant dangnabbed meowing would keep us up at night.

Meanwhile, the heater was on the fritz. The freaking thing had been installed in 1978, when the house was built, and was never replaced since. The pilot light kept going out, and my friend's boyfriend would relight it to make the heater work for a little while. My friend called PG&E to come look at it, but they couldn't come right away. They told us we just had to wait a few days...or weeks, I don't remember which, either way it didn't really help us out and it was freezing because we had hardwood floors...but we had to deal with it.

So anyway, that 2-3 nights later, Rusty's constant meowing kept waking us up every couple hours. It was so frustrating because we were already cold, and I also kept waking up feeling mysteriously nauseous. We were getting mad at the cat because he wouldn't shut up, and it just wasn't a fun night all around.

Finally, the next day, PG&E agreed to come out and look at the heater, because we had a little kid in the house and told them we couldn't risk him getting sick from being cold. Well guess what? The idiot heater had apparently been spewing some form of carbon monoxide (started with an "a," I don't remember the exact name) into the house the night before. The heater was red-tagged and the landlords had to put in a new one (which took frustratingly long, but that's not really relevant to the story). What saved us was...the darn cat! Seriously, if the cat had not been waking us up every few hours, we would have stayed asleep and began to deeply breath in all the bad stuff, doing a lot of damage.

I ended up giving Rusty to my ex-boyfriend, and yes, he still meows a ton (Rusty, not the ex. The ex whines, but I don't know that it's a form of meowing. Maybe.). Weird how things like that work out, huh? So thanks, Rusty, for saving us!

Oh Please!

Now, I am not a huge Rosie O'Donnell fan. Not for any specific reason...I just don't think about her that much. But people are making too huge of a deal over this. Seriously...she's a comedienne. Not that that pardons her from making offensive statements, but I just don't find this to be offensive. Jeesh!

Headline of the Year: "You Kiss Prince Eric With That Mouth?"

First, check out this story.

I have to say, I was curious. So forgive me when I got all hyper yesterday upon learning that a co-worker in another office had purchased the doll. Through the magic of speakerphone, I listened while she mashed the button. At first all I heard was a tinny, high-pitched, somewhat distant "wa-wa-wa-WAAAAA..." But after a few times, I could indeed make out a faint "You're a sluuuuuut!" If someone hadn't told me the word was "slut," however, I might not have guessed on my own. Regardless, I find it hilarious. Oh Ariel, you poor unfortunate soul.

*BTW, our headline was: "Mermaid's mouth more like sailor's"

So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish

I present to you the next Crocodile Hunter....Dr. Mongolian!

*Bonus points if someone can name the source of this blog title. No Googling allowed!

Scientifically Speaking

A weird and somewhat philosophical thought randomly came to mind the other night as I was standing on the risers singing at a chorus concert. It suddenly hit me that science is manmade. Just like time is manmade, and the definitions for everything we know are manmade. (I'm sure my choir director would love to know how my mind wanders during performance, of all things. Yeesh.) Yet, science purports to be the answer to all things we don't know. Where does cancer come from? Well, we don't know...but SCIENCE is working to figure it out. People who don't believe in God tend to side with science. Yet, we made up the concept of science. So how is it any better to believe in that? And I guess the peripheral thought is, if we can't physically prove God exists, and we base our world on science but science was created by us, then technically no one belief is any better than the other. There's so much more to this, but I'll stop here to let you mull it over. Less is more, as they say in the journalistic world.

*No kidding, my word verification is smokr. Wootka!

Noooooo!

I called him first!

Just Have to Share

This is amazing!

Diary of a Mad Black Goat

I wonder where the phrase "got my goat" came from. As in, "you know what really gets my goat? Taxes!"

Is there a random goat somewhere that keeps disappearing? If so, who takes it, and where does it go? And why did you have the goat in the first place? Obviously not a very good caretaker, because if you had been watching it, no one would've gotten your goat. Now you are a goatless, irresponsible loser who smells like barn funk. And nobody likes a goatless, irresponsible loser. Sometimes we can deal with the barn funk.


Goat, if you're out there, I'd like to know how you feel about this. That's my job as as journalist, to ask "how does it make you FEEL?" And then I stand there while your lip quivers and you sob out the tragic story of how you were abused as a kid and bullied by the farm pigs, and now you are forced to live a life of walking around in public with some idiot who gets mad about things like taxes, and then all of sudden you *poof* into the netherworld of got-goatliness, where other confused, abused goats swirl around in the surreal ether of Out There, bleating in solemn despair, and how you'd give your left horn for the farm-pig-bullyin' days, when you could at least rely on one thing: getting your ass kicked. (Poor donkey, I heard he drowned on a raft from Cuba a few years back. Truly sorry, man.) I am here to serve, Goat. Tell me your story. Let it out.

And now a little friendly advice to all of you out there who regularly get your goat gotten: Stop it. No. Baaaaaaad. (I'm rubbing your nose in goat right now.)

Hug and kiss your barnyard pal today. Redeem thyselves.

Ugh

Don't you hate it when you're, like, in...oh, say Longs...and you're standing behind a troll lady who's buying Vagisil? Effing VAGISIL?!!! It's enough to make me puke, put my Reese's Big Cup back on the shelf, puke, and then leave. And then puke outside. And THEN, the puddle of puke would get up and puke on itself.

Dude. A troll lady. ::shudder:: I don't wanna think about her having a hoo-hoo, and then that hoo-hoo having problems. She's a freaking forest queen. She resides under bridges! Vagisil. OMG. And she had hairy ears.

Happy holidays.

Update: Here you go, Cyn.

Movie Monday

We're taking it mellow today here at The Rant Farm. Here's a nice photo montage someone made on YouTube set to one of my favorite songs, "10,000 Miles" by Mary Chapin Carpenter (also one of my favorite singer/songwriters).



And while we're on the topic of music, I'm also posting another of my favorite songs ("Everlong") by, you guessed it, another favorite singer/songwriter, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. The acoustic version kicks the original's arse.