Category Archives: reader favorites

Things

My brother has spoken approximately 27 words in his entire life. It’s possible he speaks at work, when he’s deep in the bowels of the Pentagon creating the dinosaur-human hybrid super-soldiers that you must pretend to know nothing about, but I can’t vouch for that.

He gets this lack of verbosity from our father.

Among my mother and her legion of siblings, there has not been a documented break in the conversation since 1932. There are rumors that there was a moment of collective silence at a Church service in 1953, but lacking credible eye-witnesses, I choose not to believe it. Conversations in my mother’s family are like the audio recordings NASA pumps into space, they will be floating far out into the Universe long after our sun explodes and our galaxy is snuffed out in a fiery cataclysm.

My father, on the other hand, was a man of few words.

I don’t mention these conversational contrasts because I worry that someday life-forms in a distant galaxy are going to pick up an argument over cheeze-it flavors on their radio telescopes, which will have far-reaching implications for their civilization.

I mention it because my father had an effective method for dealing with busy bodies – those people who won’t take no for an answer and demand to know what else you need to do that could possibly be more important than what they want you to do.

The conversation would go something like this:

“But surely you can stay for a few more hours.”
“No, I’m sorry, I have things to do.”
“What sort of things?”
At this, my father would lean in, repeat simply, ominously, in very hushed tones, “Things.”

And then, he would smile.

It was the unexpected smile that sold it. If you’re curt and rude you just seem socially inept and boorish. If you smile and are polite as you brush them off, it unsettles them a bit and allows for a graceful get-away. I highly recommend it.

It might help if, like my father, you’re very large and heavily armed and otherwise never say a word, Regardless, I say go for it. If nothing else, maybe politeness itself will be enough to confuse them.

Galactica 1980

In February 2006 the SciFi channel aired a Galactica 1980 marathon. In a series of escalating dares, Husband goaded me into watching it. Perhaps it was the gray February weather, or maybe it was the drugs. Whatever the reason, I accepted.

Later, we needed to make room on the Tivo and I only saved one episode from this precious cache. I thought I could pick them up cheap somewhere for later, more leisurely viewing. This was a mistake, as I soon learned. For some reason (basic human decency?) the show wasn’t commercially available.

Until now.

Quite by chance, I just discovered that Netflix has every heart-wrenchingly bad episode available on demand. At long last, I can complete my journey through the darkness.

Here are the original posts from that first little (mis)adventure, to help newer readers understand why they shouldn’t try this at home. Not without first undertaking a rigorous training regimen. And possibly lobotomizing themselves with a number 2 pencil.

Remember people, I watch so you don’t have to. I am a trained media professional and this is the big time. You should not, I repeat, not, try this at home.

And if you do, I’m not responsible for the psychological carnage. Nor will I come to your home and scrape the fetid remnants of your anguished soul off of your rug.

galactica 1980 marathon, part I (caution: new series spoilers)

Cousin Oliver gets kicked to the curb; or, Galactica 1980 marathon, part 2

Mormons, or, Galactica 1980 marathon, part 3

Galactica 1980 marathon, part 4, wherein I talk about Knight Rider instead because I still haven’t been able to bring myself to finish watching episode 5

Galactica 1980 post part 5; I only wish the 6th episode starred Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce

And, if you got through all that, a bonus post, at no extra charge:
The Big Score, and a minor Battlestar Galactica (new series) spoiler

Now that I’ve reread them, I have to say that those were actually entertaining, if only because they brought back lovely memories of giant spaceships full of Lucy Lawless clones, getting in trouble for calling girl scouts “sugar whores”, the 1970s sci-fi show time travel Nazi-encounter plotline fad, and, a personal favorite of mine, our fearless leader freaking out over human-animal hybrids (Manimal?) in his State of the Union. Good times, indeed.

I am a murderer

I have a confession to make: I murdered Sven.

In cold blood. In our house. In our basement. In the bathroom, to be precise.

I think Sven now haunts our basement. I should probably put a little Day of the Dead shrine down there.

In my own defense, I feel I should put it on record that this was not a premeditated crime. Sven was an intruder.

I knew something was wrong the minute I walked into the basement on the way to the laundry room. I could hear something banging – well, splashing – around in the bathroom, but I was the only one home.

Honestly, when I first saw Sven, franticly swimming like his little life depended on it (and, as it turned out, it did) I assumed he’d come up through the toilet. It seemed logical. Why else would there be a rat in the toilet? I then did the only logical thing, I flushed. And flushed. And flushed.

There was also some screaming. And more flushing.

By “logical” I mean, of course,”logical at the time.”

Then I called Husband at work. He thought I was insane. He was also as deeply traumatized as I was about the possibility of rats coming up out of the toilet. While I was explaining the situation, and insisting that the rat had to be long gone because I’d flushed the toilet many times, Sven re-emerged.

Rats are amazing swimmers.

This was followed by more of the screaming and more of the flushing.

Later, Husband admitted to me that although he was disturbed by the goings on at the time, later he found the sounds of me screaming and flushing pretty damned hilarious. Husband is lucky he only admitted this much, much later.

Then I made calls to the plumber and to various exterminators.

The exterminator I talked to was very nice. He was probably periodically putting me on hold to laugh hysterically, but who could blame him? Our conversation went kind of like this:

“I think there are rats coming up through my toilet.”

“And why do you think this ma’am?” Asked, I might add, in the same soothing tone one might use with the mentally unstable.

“Because there was a rat in my toilet.”

“Is he still there?”

“No. I, um, flushed him.” At this point, even I realized that was a stupid thing to do, but the dispatcher was nice enough to at least pretend he would have done the same thing.

“We don’t handle live animal situations, that requires Pest Services.”

I took down the information he gave me about who to contact and then he continued, “It’s not like we can really send a guy over to sit there with a baseball bat and wait for the little guy to run back out from wherever he’s hiding.”

I laughed nervously, probably too nervously, prompting him to ask, “You aren’t sitting there with a baseball bat, are you?”

“Uhhh. Nope.”

“Broom?”

“Nope.”

“Shovel?”

“Nope. Golf club.”

“Wood or iron?”

“Putter.”

“Good choice. You’ll have better control.”

Obviously, he’d never seen me on the golf course.

At that point the plumber called, so I didn’t have to admit to the nice Rodent Death Merchant that I had weighted down the toilet seat with a pair of 8 pound dumbbells, just for good measure. Rats are very strong. And very strong swimmers. Have i mentioned that? The exterminator gave me a lot of information about rats, probably more than I will ever need to know, but now I’m never short on cocktail party smalltalk.

In fact, the rat took on the name Sven during this conversation because we determined that he was Rattus norvegicus (a Norway rat).

The plumber, in the meantime, assured me that, because we have an ejector pump, it was pretty much impossible for a rat to come into the house through our pipes. Then the plumber came over and inspected the whole thing, just to be sure, and also to make sure that I hadn’t destroyed said ejector pump. I also learned that it costs close to 1000 bucks to replace an ejector pump.

I was very, very happy to learn that the pump had not been damaged. My happiness was short-lived because he also explained to me that, since Sven was now long gone, I’d probably killed him by forcing him out through the pump.

Great. So now I had that on my conscience.

As near as anyone can tell Sven got into the house because we left the backdoor standing open while we moved some furniture. This apparently happens to neighbors with sliding doors a lot, but no one talks about it. Rat experts have no problem telling you about how your neighbors call them screaming like little girls when they find that their dog has cornered a feisty rat in their upstairs closet. I, of course, would never scream like a little girl when spotting a rat in my home. (I screamed like a banshee that had been set on fire).

Many experts have examined the house and that open door seems to be the only point of entry.

A few days later, I saw an exterminator at a neighbor’s house and I quizzed him about all things rodent. While we were chatting, a rat strolled down the road past us like he owned the place. Yes, Alexandria is a city by a river, but come on. This seemed a little weird, even to me.

The wayward exterminator told me about the City rebaiting the sewers after months of construction. The City confirmed this. In fact, the rebaiting process had started just hours before Sven entered our house and got trapped.

At least the mystery of why the rats suddenly streamed out of the sewer was solved.

One of my neighbors was convinced there was an alligator in there on a rampage and this was the first sign. I think the “fleeing disruption and poison in their nests” story fits the facts better, seeing as we live in Virginia.

Tip: it turns out you’re supposed to call animal control for a situation like this, which I did. In my own defense, I started calling them when Sven first appeared (on Friday) and they didn’t call me back until Tuesday because it was a holiday weekend (Memorial Day) and I wasn’t calling the emergency line, so even though the exterminators and plumbers kept referring me back to the City, I didn’t know for sure the right things to do for several days.

An article in the Washington Post that appeared during this time period confirmed that rats are in abundance in our area and living the good life. No kidding.

Somewhere around here I have some publicity images Mark Lewis gave me when he was here (in 1998?) to screen his excellent documentary, Rat, for the Environmental Film Festival. It’s tempting to frame one of the posters and hang it in the bathroom. It has the image of of a rat emerging from a toilet. I suspect I’m the only one who would find that amusing. (On a Mark Lewis tanget – I have no idea how long this link will last, but here’s a BBC page with video intros by Mark of all of his films, including perennial PBS faves Cain Toads and Natural History of the Chicken. Fun!)

I bring all this up because I’m more than a bit traumatized by ads for Flushed Away, the heartwarming story of a pet rat who accidentally gets flushed down a toilet. Husband has pointed out to me that in the movie, obviously, the rats are the heros and so by extension we can pretend that perhaps Sven survived his ordeal. Then I can take comfort in the film. We’ll see….

Hellbound

Last night I was listlessly watching the channel channel, the usual endless parade of crappy offerings scrolling round and round. Suddenly, a movie description yanked me out of my stupor. Something along the lines of “Chuck Norris as a Chicago cop trying to keep the evil sceptor out of the hands of the devil.” I underestimated what I was about to view, that’s for certain.

Hellbound turned out to be even better than it sounded.

For starters, it’s a circa 1993 Miami Vice rip off. Chuck Norris is Kung-fu Grip Chicago Cop Frank Shatter. His partner is the quintessential neatly dreadlocked, effeminate and non-threatening, endlessly wise-cracking Black man played by an “actor” named Calvin Levels. The IMDB links to a Calvin Levels who is most assuredly not the Calvin Levels in this movie, because that Calvin Levels is an older white actor while the Calvin Levels in Hellbound is none of those things.

Levels gets a lot of weird lines that are either cloying and ineffectual in-jokes about his character’s sexuality or just painfully bad writing, such as when he tells Norris that the reason he told him to turn left because “he was tired of (Norris) going straight all the time.”

So anyway, Shatter (Norris) and Jackson (Levels) are partners and for some reason they have to accompany the body of a murdered rabbi back to Jerusalem and answer some questions for the Israeli police. The biggest question, why a demon needed to go to Chicago in person to kill this rabbi, is never answered. Apparently, despite having loyal satanic minions, this particular demon is a bit of a control freak.

So Shatter and Jackson go off to Jerusalem, Jackson protesting all the way because, as a Black man, it’s cruel to make him miss the basketball playoffs. It’s necessary for Jackson to go because otherwise there’s no one to play the comic foil to the lovable pickpocket scamp they of course take under their wing. (And then forget about in the middle of a car chase – presumably the kid spends 45 minutes of the movie laying on the floor in the backseat of their car???)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Jackson and Shatter go to Israel. Jackson is allowed to cart a priceless gold sceptor-top in his jacket pocket, despite the fact that it is the murder weapon. And a priceless and mysterious artifact. And the murder weapon. Did I mention that?

Now, of course, before they head off to Israel for much wackiness, they show the sceptor-top to a beautiful archeologist at The University, for reasons that are too stupid to bother to explain, but which do explain to us that it’s a priceless and mysterious artifact. She tells them that the sceptor belonged on the staff of a demon, but some monk broke the staff into 9 parts and buried it in 9 different holy places so that it could never be put back together – although the monk left a map that shows where each piece is located of course.

She knows this because her boss, who is played by the guy who does the voice of the baby on The Family Guy just happens to specialize in this particular myth but he can’t talk to them because he’s on a dig in…Jerusalem.

You’ll never guess where that’s going.

So Shatter and Jackson go to Jerusalem, which is portrayed basically as Baghdad circa 1932 so that we can have much Indiana Jones type wackiness while the producers take advantage of the non-union ultra cheap labor, er, I mean, the authentic locations.

We learn that “flea market” is Israeli for “swap meet.” Really. But that’s not my favorite part of the movie. My favorite part is when Shatter and Jackson wait for the Jerusalem police department to close for the night, break in, disarm the police station’s night security guard and…

They wait for the police station to close. For the night. They break in to the police station, which is closed, for the night. The police station has a security guard.

Excuse me, I have to put my head down for a moment.

You know, what happens in this movie isn’t really important. What is important is that this film take it’s place at the right hand of the Exorcist II in the temple of Bad, Bad Movies. Although Hellbound lacks a drunk Richard Burton, James Earl Jones barfing up a leopard, or a gratuitous Linda Blair tap-dancing sequence, it is, nevertheless, a thing of great Badness.

This fine, fine film, incidentally, was directed by stuntman Aaron Norris, brother of Chuck Norris. What a wacky coincidence!

A mathematician, a physicist and a squirrel walk into a bar…

This morning I was getting out of my car when Dr. X, a mathematician, pulled into the lot. I left my car door open while we exchanged pleasantries.

I could have sworn I saw something out of the corner of my eye. That’s when Dr. Y came running over insisting he’d just seen a squirrel run into my car.

Sure enough, there was a squirrel careening around the interior of my car with a mouth full of acorns. Didn’t anyone tell this little monster that Squirrel Awareness Week doesn’t start for 3 more days?

We opened the passengerside door thinking he’d run out. Nope. He liked it in there. Unfortunately, to open the back doors you have to reach in and manually unlock the door. Everytime we’d try that, Rocky would make like he was going to claw us.

We decided we needed a plan to get him out. Animal Control was our last resort because Dr. Y insisted that they’re pretty sloppy around here and don’t care whether they get the animal out dead or alive. As irritating as this little gray ball of chattering psychosis was, I didn’t want him to get hurt. I just wanted him out of my car.

Then the mathematicians began making this project a lot harder than it needed to be, jabbering about vectors and shit. That’s when I remembered: these two are theoreticians. We were probably going to have to design a computer model first or something.

I had a sudden flashback to the incident involving the nuclear physicists, the espresso machine, and the powerstrip and decided to take matters into my own hands.

Don’t get me wrong, they were proposing a solid course of action, but I needed to get to work and we’d already spent an awful lot of time taking into account the basic concepts of rodent behavior. How long was it going to take us to factor in basic human nature? I didn’t have that kind of time. I wanted the little monster out of my car so I could get some coffee, er, I mean, get to work.

We were going to have to enact The Plan and hope for the best.

I can’t even begin to imagine how silly we looked.

We all gathered on the passengerside of the car. Dr. X inflated the plastic newspaper bag he found in his car. (Thank god they weren’t microbiologists or we’d still be there sterilizing the bag before one of them would get it near their mouth). As the designated physicist in the bunch, they left it to me to decide how much he should inflate the bag. I made up a nonsense theory about the relationship between sound pressure levels and the tensile strength of the plastic (eventually conceding that everything I knew about the subject I learned at summer camp) and then we were ready.

We counted to 3. And nothing happened. Dr. X didn’t hit the bag hard enough and it just sort of made a dull squeaking fart-esque noise, causing us to start laughing. We tried again.

1. 2. 3. Bang!

The squirrel made tracks, I got my briefcase, and, most importantly, I was reunited with my beloved coffee.

I made Dr. X promise to check in with the campus police to explain the loud gunfire-like sound so we didn’t have every cop in the area descending on this place looking for snipers.

That was what had originally hung up the plan…would people hear the popping sound and mistake it for gunfire? People are rather on edge here as there’s a sniper loose in the DC area and every belief that s/he will strike again.

Dr. X got to make the call because he has tenure, you see, and is not only expected but required by his rank to periodically make loony phonecalls like this to University officials. It’s part of the deal. If word got out that academics were even partially sane or, even worse, useful, they might expect us to behave like so-called normal people. Can’t have that now, can we? Ruins all the fun.

Originally posted October 4, 2002 10:06 AM at punkprincess.com

Imported Comments

Oh man. Talk about timely, huh? I have a story like that about skunks, sent to me by my mother this morning.

I’d post it, but I have to translate it into English first.
Posted by: Tara at October 4, 2002 12:50 PM

Funny you mention skunks Tara because I was thinking about the way these stories grow and mutate on campus, in a week or so it will have been a skunk. Or maybe a deer. By next semester there will be a rumor about a family of bears living in an SUV in the student parking garage.
Posted by: skarlet at October 4, 2002 05:43 PM

Hey, did you hear about the bears that escaped from Rock Creek Park and took up residence in a dorm? It’s hard to differentiate between bears and ordinary students, although the bears show up for class more often.
Posted by: Linkmeister at October 4, 2002 06:10 PM

I just very nearly did a classic spit-take onto my monitor, Link. *giggle*
Posted by: skarlet at October 4, 2002 08:56 PM

Very cute!
Posted by: Zelda at October 5, 2002 10:01 AM

The other day I was walking to BART in the wee morning light and was stopped by a squirrel blockade. There was this enormous fluffy beastie, scampering down the tree as fast as his little muscled legs could propel him, with a mouth full of almonds.

I have been known to leave out almonds, or brazil nuts, or even pecans, for the little guys when they get bullied by the my-fig-eating alpha squirrels.

So here’s this big fat squirrel, at eye level with me on this tree, teeth cradling 2 almonds, giving me The Look. The “I can fit two more, lady,” look.

Here are some adorable baby bears, apropos of nothing.
Posted by: Jessica at October 5, 2002 02:16 PM

You think the squirrels are organizing? They can take us, I think.

I found acorns in my car and I’m convinced it now has the faint aroma of squirrel pee, but maybe I’m imagining that…
Posted by: skarlet at October 5, 2002 02:39 PM

i’m laughing so hard i’m crying, and my son thinks i’m insane. i blame all of you. and the damn squirrels too.

i have no squirrels. i feel so deprived.
Posted by: kd at October 5, 2002 07:03 PM

This is one of the funniest damn stories EVER! EVER! EVER to exist! BWAAAAAAHHHH HAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: JeanNINE at October 7, 2002 04:21 PM

i have no squirrels. i feel so deprived.

Hey KD: expect a package. ;)

I’m only kidding of course.

No animals were injured in the making of this website.
Posted by: skarlet at October 8, 2002 11:37 AM