Month: September 2007

My rat-o-mer is turned down pretty low after living in New York and being exposed to that sort of thing every single day. But I saw a rat in Richmond that beat all previous records. He was at least a foot and a half long from his filthy head to his unspeakable tail. It was a major turn-off from an otherwise nice and sleepy neighborhood. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Hey, readers — feast your eyes on that little box at the bottom right of this blog page with the little number in the middle of it. That is my brand new reader-counting thingamabob! Many thanks to Kara for helping me install this wonderful new device that allows me to track the number of ‘hits’ I get into the site. This is huge for me. Each of the numbers that you see on the screen represents my total number of readers — in the hundreds of thousands. In other words, if the little box says “nine,” that means that 900,000 people have read my site. If it says, “10,” I’ve reached my one million readers mark. This means I can now accept gigantic advertising clients for my site (and retire comfortably by next year.) T-shirts, cross promotions, action figures, and a special CactusEaters cactus-flavored cereal, are sure to follow. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

What can I say about Sea Monkeys? They are actually shrimp, they mail them to you in a weird little vacuum-sealed package, and when you put them into the plastic tank, they flail around for a while and die off very soon. The weird thing about sea monkeys is, they never reproduce. There is nothing you can say or do to make sea monkeys take a romantic interest in one another. They just float around and ignore each other and, eventually, they all plotz, one by one. There is nothing you can do about this. In about a month, you’ve got a useless plastic tank with a bunch of floaties in it. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I have a lot to be thankful for. In the past week, I haven’t seen a single ant farm taking shape in my car. That’s pretty amazing, considering the size of the antfarm that was living in my car for the past month. I finally got tired of it and sprayed my car down with Fantastic, which did the trick. Also, as of this moment, no rats have tried to break into my house. In New York, rat break-ins were a frequent occurence. Once time (I swear, this is not a fabrication) I had to defend myself from a rat by bopping it on the head with a short work of experimental fiction. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I can’t believe this, but the rats apparently followed me from NYC to Silicon Valley. I joined the Rat Witness Protection Program but I guess someone “ratted” me out. The other day I was jaywalking (fun to do in Cupertino, and you need to jaywalk some of the time because the sidewalks end so abruptly) when a giant rat — the size of a shoebox — came charging out across the street, with a look of cruel intent in his eyes. In his jaws, he carried a coupon for a $100 I-phone rebate. I got out of his way. He was in a hurry. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I am now living in a peaceful, gorgeous house as part of my very last house-sitting gig. You would not believe the loveliness of this place. There is a pomegranate tree in the front yard, and pears and apples galore in the backyard. Anyhow, once I leave here, i will be living, temporarily, in a smallish tool shed. It will be cozy in there (six by four feet!) and there are lawnmowers and things in there, so it’s going to be a bit of a tight squeeze but it should be ok. By the way, I am temporarily in Silicon Valley, and, as far as I’m concerned, the place gets a bad rap. I had no idea that the place had so many forests, hiking trails, etc. They have a lovely open-space area called Rancho San Antonio — rolling chaparral foothills, hawks, deer everywhere, quail squeaking around in the bushes,…

Given that i misspelled Ms. Lohan’s first name in that last post, here’s another go at it: ‘Lyndsay Lohan arrested again’anagrams to … ‘Dastardly as annoying healer.’ Not quite as snappy. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I believe in the power of anagrams. Whenever I’m feeling confused about a current event, a scandal or a situation in my life, I try to enter that situation into an anagram-generating machine that will puzzle out the hidden meaning within. Here are a few anagrams for your consumption: The anagram for ‘Lyndsey Lohan arrested again’ is: ‘Rantingly analysed sorehead.’ The anagram for ‘Should senator Larry Craig resign” is … ‘Harlot’s coarse-grained slurrying.’ more to follow! http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Hi everyone. I want to direct you to a very funny blog, http://semprelaltracosa.blogspot.com/ Take a look at the list of blind-date-evasion excuses in the latest post. If you want to learn about life in the Bay Area, this is the blog for you. I also dig “dogpoet” (which is extremely well-written, and makes me feel kind of bad about the fact that I write my own blog entries in about two and a half minutes, tops.) and the shocking but very funny “stereolabrat” blog. I am jealous of the fancy fonts in some of these blogs, and the fact that the bloggers are technologically savvy and know how to put slide shows and films and three-dimensional twirly-swirly decorative stuff while my blog is just blocks of text, with the exception of the “Today Show” entry, in which you get to see me on television for about nine and a half…